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Steve Jobs's Real Genius

newyorker.com

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Re: Steve Jobs's Real Genius

#121

Post by qdog »

absconditus wrote: post #81
truth_hurts wrote: post #33

I never met Jobs and I know nothing about him personally. But if the stuff in this article is true, he was an obnoxious prick, genius or not.

I would love to work for such an obnoxious prick. I am tired of all of the incompetents in the corporate world who just try to get along with each other while accomplishing little or the startups producing yet another "social" site.

You might want to look into how it was like to work for neXt. There were more than a few layoffs during that phase of Jobs' life. Jobs had about a decade where he pretty much seemed like a failing prick until Disney funded Toy Story and start the second successful era of Jobs.

I'm pretty firmly of the opinion that Jobs' #1 asset was his Reality-Distortion-Field, anyone standing too close to him would get caught in it, it seems.

Re: Steve Jobs's Real Genius

#122

Post by vacri »

vannevar wrote: post #120
siglesias wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to be pedantic, but the iPad preceded the iPhone as a concept. Jobs requested a prototype multi-touch display that you could type on, saw inertial scrolling, and decided that the phone should come first. There's very little about the tablet product category that he "tweaked." He threw out the stylus and built a touch OS from scratch.

Good point. I'd agree that the real innovation in both the iPhone and iPad was touch. It seems obvious now that touch is a completely different experience from the stylus, but it wasn't obvious enough that anybody else made the big investment to make it work, before Jobs.

It is worth recognising though that touch did exist before iOS, something a lot of people don't realise. It wasn't in consumer products so much, but it had been out there for quite some time.

Re: Steve Jobs's Real Genius

#123

Post by vacri »

jroseattle wrote: post #72

I'm ready for the Jobs dissertations to be finished. I've made up my mind -- he was professionally successful but a personal failure. It's my interpretation, so I'm not trying to change anyone else's opinion. But to me, if you have to scream at subordinates and mock colleagues and generally treat everyone else as inferior, you have failed -- in spite of one's accomplishments. Some call that perfection or simply deali…

It reminds me of my opinion on folks like Russell Crowe. Incredibly talented at what they do, but destroy people to further their product. Crowe uses and abuses people. He also has a reality distortion field, but woe betide you if you're in his way. Friends of mine say "but it's okay because he's such an artist!" to which I say bullshit, you can provide his product without being a mongrel. And people do.

Re: Steve Jobs's Real Genius

#124

Post by vacri »

bluekeybox wrote: post #82
MortenK wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should read a bit more of Gladwell's works as well as his background before labeling him as a "relatively dumb medium".

Well if the article in question exemplifies Gladwell's thinking, then I will save reading more of him for a rainy day, and will instead read about those people who do things instead of those who talk about those who do. As someone said, one's time on Earth is limited.

There is considerable irony in your reply.

Re: Steve Jobs's Real Genius

#125

Post by wisty »

irrationalfab wrote: post #37
chubot wrote: post #29

It has some truth to it, but ignores a lot of salient facts in favor of a cute argument (insert Gladwell dig here). Steve Jobs' had many parts to his genius. Tweaking products until they were really finished was one. But I would say the most important (and impressive) part of his genius was holistic thinking . He wasn't a programmer, a hardware engineer, an industrial designer, an advertising copywriter, or an archit…

"But I would say the most important (and impressive) part of his genius was holistic thinking. He wasn't a programmer, a hardware engineer, an industrial designer, an advertising copywriter, or an architect, etc. But he deeply understood the essentials of those fields and was able to harness them to create a hugely successful business and set of products." I still have no clue about how he managed to do it. For examp…

I've only seen Steve on TV, but here's my guess.

1) Ask smart questions to smart people. Steve seemed to be a master at this - he can sense when someone is glossing over something, and attacks it. I.E.: "What do you mean, 'for now'; will there be problems later on?". Most people don't want to hear the things you clearly omit. Steve went for the jugular.

2) Experience. Heard of the Next computer? Uneconomic - the whole automated assembly, and razor-sharp magnesium corners, and 16 different shades of black thrown out because they weren't quite right drove the costs up too much. Heard of WebObjects? Steve had his failures. He tended to salvage what he could, restart them, and finally get them working; but he still had failures. I bet he learnt a lot from them.

Re: Steve Jobs's Real Genius

#126

Post by rblion »

bloggergirl wrote: post #98
ghshephard wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also important not to leave out his ability to convince people of his vision. From Jurveston: "During this time, corporate partners came to appreciate Steve’s enthusiasm as the Reality Distortion Field. Sun Microsystems went so far as to have a policy that no contract could be agreed to while Steve was in the room. They needed to physically remove themselves from the mesmerizing magic to complete the negotiation…

That's a book I'd love to read: "How to Mesmerize Like Steve Jobs"

All you gotta do is explore is cosmology, psychology, and Buddha-nature. Steve did the thinking that most were afraid to do and convinced with tenacity.

Re: Steve Jobs's Real Genius

#127

Post by rayiner »

vannevar wrote: post #119
rayiner wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean I suppose it depends on your definition of "substantially the same form" and "proven." I'd argue that the Zen Jukebox did not prove that HDD MP3 players could be successful, and that Treos and other smartphones, though proven successful, were not substantially in the same form as an iPhone, and that previous tablets were proven failures and also not substantially in the same form as iPad's. I think the iPad is…

Stylus input and finger input are just completely different ways to approach the user interface. I agree that getting finger input right was the critical factor, but I don't think it was at all obvious that it would produce a completely different user experience. Looking forward from five years ago, I don't think you could call it anything but a tweak---it's only with the benefit of hindsight (unless you share Jobs'…

I disagree that it's a small design change. The decision to use finger input as opposed to stylus input has a cascading effect on the whole UI. Fingers are too fat to click on lots of little buttons, so you have to use direct manipulation everywhere you can.

Take something simple like zooming or scrolling a page. In Windows Mobile circa 2006, the basic paradigm was the same one you'd use on the Xerox Alto in 1973: click on scroll up/down buttons to scroll, click on a menu and then on zoom in/out to zoom. The stylus was just a less capable mouse on a smaller screen. On iOS circa 2007, you pinch to zoom the page and swipe to scroll it. There is no analogue to this in the previous Windows/Menus/Icons/Pointers paradigm.

I think the iOS UI is really the perfect example of something that wasn't just tweaking. Windows Mobile was just a tweak of the mouse-based Windows UI for stylus input. iOS threw away the Mac UI, predicated on the mouse, and started from scratch. "What does a UI look like when you start from the assumption that you're manipulating it with your fingers?"

Re: Steve Jobs's Real Genius

#128

Post by eatmyshorts »

podperson wrote: post #54
chubot wrote: post #29

It has some truth to it, but ignores a lot of salient facts in favor of a cute argument (insert Gladwell dig here). Steve Jobs' had many parts to his genius. Tweaking products until they were really finished was one. But I would say the most important (and impressive) part of his genius was holistic thinking . He wasn't a programmer, a hardware engineer, an industrial designer, an advertising copywriter, or an archit…

I agree wholeheartedly. To compare, as Gladwell does, Microsoft's "copying" of Mac to make Windows to Apple's "copying" of Xerox PARC's half-assed UI to make Mac is completely missing the point. Jobs produced "copies" of things that transcended the things he copied (he "copied" an MP3 player with (a) a simpler but better MP3 player, (b) cross-platform software with automated ripping and an online store, (c) seamless…

Have you ever used one of the Xerox PARC machines? I have, and I would hardly call it a "half-assed UI". In many ways, it was better than the Mac OS until OS X. The main problem with the Xerox PARC machines is that they couldn't/didn't get the cost below $20k. IIRC, the Apple Lisa also suffered a similar fate, and the 128K Mac was little more than a doorstop. The Xerox GUI instead was saved by Moore's Law, when the hardware could be made cheap and fast enough to make consumer products.

Re: Steve Jobs's Real Genius

#129

Post by [deleted] »

vannevar wrote: post #118
chubot wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The iPhone wasn't merely a "tweak" on existing cell phones, or even the Palm Pilot. What's your standard? Name a few products. The Walkman? If the Walkman qualifies as an innovation, then surely the iPhone does. Calling the Macintosh a tweak on the Xerox Alto I think is also hardly fair. If that is true, then all products ever released have been tweaks, which makes the distinction meaningless.

The iPhone wasn't merely a "tweak" on existing cell phones, or even the Palm Pilot. Are you kidding? It was clearly a tweak of the Palm Pilot and the Treo phone. Same form factor, same 'one app open at a time' philosophy, same launch screen. The key tweak was eliminating the stylus. Calling the Macintosh a tweak on the Xerox Alto I think is also hardly fair. Why? It was certainly similar enough to litigate the issue.…

[deleted]

Re: Steve Jobs's Real Genius

#130

Post by tedunangst »

bluekeybox wrote: post #82
MortenK wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should read a bit more of Gladwell's works as well as his background before labeling him as a "relatively dumb medium".

Well if the article in question exemplifies Gladwell's thinking, then I will save reading more of him for a rainy day, and will instead read about those people who do things instead of those who talk about those who do. As someone said, one's time on Earth is limited.

I'm very confused. Did you think this article was about "people who do things" or about "people who talk about those who do"?
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