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

Steve Jobs Book Excerpt: Why he wore the black mock turtleneck uniform

9to5mac.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 151 posts

Re: Steve Jobs Book Excerpt: Why he wore the black mock turtleneck uniform

#141

Post by ovi256 »

wazoox wrote: post #122
jarek wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no such thing as a timeless look. The only look I can think of going back to as late as the 60s - only 50 years - that could reasonably be claimed to be "timeless" is the business suit - and even that is becoming to look... unsuitable in an increasing number of settings.

An ordinary black suit, white shirt, black tie and black pants would be about ordinary from 1830 onwards. See http://lecostumeatraverslessiecles.chez-alice.fr/Costumes/XI...

The cut, fit (tighter or looser) and details such as pant length would date it pretty well. There's no such thing as a standard suit.

Re: Steve Jobs Book Excerpt: Why he wore the black mock turtleneck uniform

#142

Post by maxwell »

mvkel wrote: post #90

This is something I've thought about for a while. If you find something you're comfortable wearing and eliminate the "what am I wearing today?" process from your daily routine, your mind is that much more engaged in thoughts that matter.

I used to feel the way you do, before I met my girlfriend and saw myself through her eyes. She felt about my graphic tees and ill-fitting pants the way I did about her MySpace page's design.

I realized that what you wear affects people offline about as much as your webpage's stylesheet does online. It shows your creativity, attention to detail, and sense of design, or lack thereof. What you're wearing is already influencing what people think of you, whether you choose to acknowledge it or not. As with all those local businesses that don't think about their website.

It only matters if you care what other people think. If you can afford not to, or only interact with people virtually, great. But, whether you care or not, if you wear clothes that don't fit or the same outfit every day, people will probably think you have no taste/money/fun. There's a reason Steve Jobs used to dress like this:

http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/P1-BC890_Jobsda_DV...

You can bet he dressed differently at the Homebrew Computer Club meetings. And nothing wrong with programming in only a towel. Fashion is dynamic. Yes, it's just personal styling, but it's no more "superficial" than your CSS. Wearing a black or white t-shirt/polo/button-down and jeans/khakis is like using the default Wordpress/Posterous theme on your blog.

Does it really take that long to decide what to put on? Vint Cerf found time to dress with style and still invent the internet.

There's a reason software hasn't eaten politics, law, finance, apparel, and hospitality yet. Indochino and Airbnb are certainly a start with the latter two, and no surprise, they dress with style when appropriate[1][2].

[1] http://www.indochino.com/product/The-Ultimate-Navy-Blue-Blaz... [2] http://www.airbnb.com/founding-team

Re: Steve Jobs Book Excerpt: Why he wore the black mock turtleneck uniform

#143

Post by perokreco »

stretchwithme wrote: post #66
Multiplayer wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to do that when I was ceo of a company. I had a blue jeans and white button down shirt uniform, but, I didn't even know it - I was just so focused on the products. I must of had 20 of each. One day we had a company meeting and everyone came to the meeting in my uniform. It was hilarious and awesome. And that's when I found out.

Reminds me of how one first visit between teams at Apple and IBM had both showing up in each other's "uniforms".

That was Microsoft and IBM AFAIK.

Re: Steve Jobs Book Excerpt: Why he wore the black mock turtleneck uniform

#144

Post by zem »

sandGorgon wrote: post #97
dockd wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an entire book devoted to how he came up with the NeXT logo; you get to watch the design evolve. The book was probably published by NeXT itself; good luck finding one. I somewhat regret not "borrowing" the copy I saw lying around a computer lab at school.

Is it this book : http://www.modernism101.com/rand_next.php THE SIGN OF THE NEXT GENERATION OF COMPUTERS FOR EDUCATION There is an interesting comment posted about this topic by someone whose father worked as a technical writer on NeXT http://www.nextcomputers.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1590 Paul Rand was hired to design the logo for 50k, with the following rules: he would ask some questions concerning the mission of…

fascinating. this sort of "take it or leave it because i know better than you do what you really want" attitude is very reminiscent of apple's. it's nice to know that jobs could deal with people who saw things the same way he did.

Re: Steve Jobs Book Excerpt: Why he wore the black mock turtleneck uniform

#145

Post by away »

nostromo wrote: post #5

Many articles have been written lately about how an outsider drop-out like Jobs would have never been given an opportunity to succeed in East Asia. So it's interesting that here we have a story about how Steve Jobs tried to introduce a company uniform at Apple that emulated Sony. Especially odd given the "think different" slogan of the era. In any case, I love the idea of a personal brand that doesn't change -- and a…

Can you show an article talking about how Steve Jobs would not be successful in East Asia?

Re: Steve Jobs Book Excerpt: Why he wore the black mock turtleneck uniform

#146

Post by ichc-werker »

jarek wrote: post #78
stretchwithme wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just when you think a maverick is following the maverick game plan, he deviates.

By this definition, there is no maverick game plan.

Upon hearing this, jarek was enlightened.

Re: Steve Jobs Book Excerpt: Why he wore the black mock turtleneck uniform

#147

Post by epo »

cycojesus wrote: post #131
ankeshk wrote: post #107

Interesting. I always thought how Jobs made the decision to wear the same clothes was similar to how Feynman made a decision to eat the same icecream (chocolate) all the time. They both thought it was pointless to decide about mundane things and would rather spend time on other more worthy problems. Interesting to read about how he wore a uniform for better bonding purposes.

That's just sad. At least in the ice-cream case just point a random flavor, none or little more effort spent and a whole new world of potential surprises.

An affectation really (like wearing a bow-tie). "I'm so important I can't even be bothered to think about what ice cream I want", if true probably done just to be the subject of an anecdote.

Re: Steve Jobs Book Excerpt: Why he wore the black mock turtleneck uniform

#148

Post by ramchip »

MrKurtHaeusler wrote: post #123
ramchip wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, googling "三宅一生 ソニー" returns a Sony time capsule: ソニーのユニフォームは何回かデザイン変わってますけど、1981年に採用が決まった最後のユニフォームはなんと三宅一生氏のデザインですよ。 Translation: The design for the Sony uniform has changed several times, but the last uniform for the hiring of 1981 was a design of Issey Miyake. Ref: http://www.sony.co.jp/SonyInfo/CorporateInfo/History/capsule... Edit: there's an English version here http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/CorporateIn…

What about any actual pictures of the designs?

I googled for a while in both languages and couldn't find one, unfortunately. I did find a book on Amazon Japan with Sony uniform pictures (amongst other companies), but I doubt the specific uniform here is included.

Re: Steve Jobs Book Excerpt: Why he wore the black mock turtleneck uniform

#149

Post by jarek »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #98
jarek wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no such thing as a timeless look. The only look I can think of going back to as late as the 60s - only 50 years - that could reasonably be claimed to be "timeless" is the business suit - and even that is becoming to look... unsuitable in an increasing number of settings.

Jeans and a tshirt go much further back than that.

To the 1940s? I'm pretty sure the tshirt as we know it didn't exist before then.

Re: Steve Jobs Book Excerpt: Why he wore the black mock turtleneck uniform

#150

Post by stretchwithme »

perokreco wrote: post #143
stretchwithme wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of how one first visit between teams at Apple and IBM had both showing up in each other's "uniforms".

That was Microsoft and IBM AFAIK.

From http://applemuseum.bott.org/sections/ppc.html

"IBM officials often tried to accomodate Apple and vice versa so that both could comfortably work in unison. One popular anecdote talks of one of the first meetings between the two computer giants. IBM engineers dressed in blue jeans for the meeting, while Apple engineers dressed in suits. They both tried to make each other feel compfortable by conforming to what they thought the other was like."

But I wouldn't be surprised if it happened a lot.

Post reply on HN