Untitled topic

I think he was a great integrator. He got people working together that needed to. Internally with groups at apple, and externally like the record labels and apple.

I think he also listened to a variety of people and made course corrections.

As to affordability: they always had high margins.

wikipedia says of the original macintosh 128k:

Introductory price: US$2,495 (equivalent to US$6,220 in 2020)

Having read multiple Jobs biographies, it also seemed to me that he may have been bipolar, but unmedicated because of his stance on medication. Sometimes very hard to work with or be around. People ascribe incredible genius to this guy, but forget that he could be a very impulsive, arrogant and sometimes cruel human being.

Regarding Steve Wozniak, that's another big issue. Not only the betrayal, but it betrays a divide between Jobs and Wozniak. The original Apple II was a computer designed by Wozniak, and very open to tinkerers. Jobs didn't want the computer to be open or to have many extension slots, he wanted total control over the system. He designed his vision of a computer (the Macintosh), and it was a flop. Jobs killed the Apple II and sent the company on a downwards spiral that lasted several years.

It kind of pains me to see that so many people in tech love Apple products, but forget that Apple is not a platform made for creative engineers, it's designed to be a closed system they have control over. They don't really value or encourage your curiosity. They don't want you to peek at what's inside. Even though Apple, like most tech companies, was started by creative engineers.

I don’t think Apple was « affordable ». Even under jobs it was expensive.

But I agree it wasn’t expensive for the sake of being expensive (the definition of luxury) like today where the high price is almost a feature. It was expensive because they always tried to be different and it allowed them to set higher prices.

I think he did quite a bit out of the ordinary, according to reports like this (1):

> "Through a legal, little-known practice called multiple listing, Jobs doubled his odds by getting on waiting lists in California and Tennessee. Competition was too stiff back home in California, and Jobs, his wealth and fame notwithstanding, may have died waiting. But in mere weeks he jumped to the top of the list in Memphis, ahead of dozens of others."

I would have a much higher opinion of Steve Jobs if he'd have kept Apple manufacturing in the USA instead of helping gut the Bay Area's electronics manufacturing industry by outsourcing to Foxconn and others. He was basically another clever CEO with a rather ruthless streak, hardly the Heroic Idea Man he's portrayed as.

1. https://archive.naplesnews.com/news/southern-transplants-how...

He screwed over a ton of Apple employees. In Jobs' mind he truly deserved all of the credit and profits for their success because he was the vision guy. Woz and the rest of the team were just doing the boring implementation stuff.