Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Wozniak: “Actually, the movie was largely a lie about me”

plus.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 314 posts

Re: Wozniak: “Actually, the movie was largely a lie about me”

#131

Post by sliverstorm »

gokulk wrote: post #126
hobs wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hindu god. "the all-pervading essence of all beings, the master of—and beyond—the past, present and future, the creator and destroyer of all existences, one who supports, preserves, sustains and governs the universe and originates and develops all elements within. Though he is usually depicted as blue, some other depictions of Vishnu exist as green-bodied, and in the Kurma Purana he is described as colorless and with…

I am Hindu. I was just suprised Lord Vishnu has a social media account.

You think technology is beyond Vishnu?

Re: Wozniak: “Actually, the movie was largely a lie about me”

#132

Post by vdm »

tomasien wrote: post #100

I hate the "Great Man" theory of history. It misses everything. Hitler was responsible for NAZIsm in Germany lets SO many people off the hook (including people in the US, UK, etc.) and "Jobs made Apple" takes credit away from so many others who not only deserve it, but in aggregate deserve ALL of it. I'm a Jobs fan in many - but a fan of what he actually did (minus being a douche), not the myth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auteur_theory

Re: Wozniak: “Actually, the movie was largely a lie about me”

#133

Post by pyre »

larrys wrote: post #107
tomasien wrote: post #100

I hate the "Great Man" theory of history. It misses everything. Hitler was responsible for NAZIsm in Germany lets SO many people off the hook (including people in the US, UK, etc.) and "Jobs made Apple" takes credit away from so many others who not only deserve it, but in aggregate deserve ALL of it. I'm a Jobs fan in many - but a fan of what he actually did (minus being a douche), not the myth.

Agree. One thing missing from Wozniak's comment is that in the end Jobs did whatever he had to and created great products that many of us use. Woz doesn't seem to want to acknowledge the fact that creating great things in life or in business involves stepping on some toes and doing all sorts of shenanigans. Woz certainly didn't have the stomach to be Jobs but Jobs did. And with that you get credit perhaps you don't d…

> But it doesn't matter to many of the daily users of the Mac what Woz did they just want a product that is great that solves a problem that they have.

You're implying that the only thing that people care about is the end result; the product that rolls off of the assembly line for their use. If that's the case, then they equally don't care what Jobs did.

Re: Wozniak: “Actually, the movie was largely a lie about me”

#134

Post by phektus »

phaus wrote: post #44
mandeepj wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Jobs would probably have died homeless and friendless if Apple never existed." - so funny. Besides Apple, Pixar and Next made Jobs billionaire too. So, no jobs would not have died homeless and friendless :-) . Jobs was a natural leader and visionary.

>Besides Apple, Pixar and Next made Jobs billionaire too. If Apple had never existed, he wouldn't have had the hundreds of millions dollars that he spent on these endeavors. >Jobs was a natural leader and visionary. Jobs was good at recognizing when the right time to bet on a technology was. When you are filthy rich, you can turn this talent into a license to print money. When you aren't already rich, it just makes y…

>Jobs was good at recognizing when the right time to bet on a technology was. When you are filthy rich, you can turn this talent into a license to print money. When you aren't already rich, it just makes you the average person on HN.

Hahahahahaha. Yes.

Re: Wozniak: “Actually, the movie was largely a lie about me”

#135

Post by grey-area »

noname123 wrote: post #15
vezzy-fnord wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not really familiar with this stereotype. Quite the contrary, it seems to me that a lot of geeks and nerds are very passionate about their musical tastes. Classic example is Patrick Volkerding and Grateful Dead.

I think Woz is responding the myth that somehow Jobs has taken the aesthetics and free-spiritedness of the 60's counter-culture revolution and infused into Apple and that's what has made it stand out and thrive in comparison to the staid counterparts in computing (e.g., IBM/HP/Microsoft). Also, there was a long-standing rumor that Jobs had a long-time "under-the-table" liason with Joan Baez who was also a long time m…

Woz has been very, very generous to Jobs.

Re: Wozniak: “Actually, the movie was largely a lie about me”

#136

Post by alan_cx »

WalterBright wrote: post #10

It makes you wonder how wrong other movie biographies are.

I assume every single one has bias of some description. Problem is, they are all written by humans. I think most are an attempt at some sort of honesty, but with the best will in the world, they are always going to problems....

Hang on... Have I been whooshed? Was that meant to be amusingly naive?

Re: Wozniak: “Actually, the movie was largely a lie about me”

#138

Post by wirrbel »

abalone wrote: post #123
sliverstorm wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always wondered more about Woz than Jobs! We get plenty of shrewd businessmen; they aren't a dime-a-dozen, but they aren't an enigma either. Kind of an understood phenomenon. People like Woz (at least based on the myriad recountings; I have not met the man) seem to actually be rare. I wonder if there was an interesting aspect to his youth, or what. Maybe the same way that you can have a psychopath, you can have…

Jobs was more than a "shrewd businessman". Building Pixar over 10 years into one of the top movie studios was not some "shrewd" business decision. Ditto for NeXT, the early Mac, the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad.. It's more accurate to say he was a visionary who took a long term view. It's only in retrospect that we have the luxury of looking on his track record as smart from a business standpoint. Woz even criticizes t…

Jobs is a designer. Using existing pieces to create a good product. While this is an important skill to have, it is nothing I would idolize someone for, moreover, Jobs only was capable of focussing on design because countless Wozniaks did the plumbing (and really awesome hacking). This is _division of labor_. You just cannot build products alone.

While Jobs did his job, he certainly was arrogant and a few times too often humbled those people making his products possible. This is not cool at all. I refuse the viewpoint that a manager has to be that way to implement his vision.

Since the era of Romanticism in the 19th century, we like to think in terms of "Geniuses" and look out for them to admire them. This is pretty sad, because it should be well known by now, that only with collaboration real products and inventions can be delivered.

Re: Wozniak: “Actually, the movie was largely a lie about me”

#139

Post by atmosx »

jpmattia wrote: post #64

> Woz: And when Jobs (in the movie, but really a board does this) denied stock to the early garage team (some not even shown) I'm surprised that they chose not to show me giving about $10M of my own stock to them because it was the right thing. And $10M was a lot in that time. I have to say: That speaks volumes. And Woz, if you ever happen to read this: It's still a pile of dough in the year 2014.

Woz wrote that it was the board's decision and not Job's. But if you take a depiction of Jobs , Zuckerberg and Gates who are the most prominent examples of tech entrepreneurship, you get back-stabbing friends, socially unacceptable behaviors,a huge ego, etc. Given the fact that most of the times we get the sugar version of the story via Hollywood or books... I wonder if you have to be like that in order to get so high and what example all these important people had set for the ones who will come.

Were/Are Twitter's, FourSquare's, Google's, Paypall's, etc. Owners like that?

Re: Wozniak: “Actually, the movie was largely a lie about me”

#140

Post by atmosx »

WalterBright wrote: post #10

It makes you wonder how wrong other movie biographies are.

Holywood story-makers don't believe that reality is good for the crowds. So you get a sugar version, of what it could be.

Some times you go so far as making movies like 'Argo' where a total fiasco which led to the demise of a president, is pictured in totally different set-up and served as a success.

And here is the beauty of the Internet. We wouldn't know that, if information wasn't freely flowing online.

Post reply on HN