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Steve Jobs's Real Genius

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Re: Steve Jobs's Real Genius

#141

Post by rayiner »

vannevar wrote: post #132
rayiner wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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: cl…

This is a fair point, but that's the engineer's point of view. Looking at it from a product manager's perspective, why did so many decline to make the investment necessary to make touch work for the consumer? I would argue that they simply didn't perceive the enormous difference it would make (ie, that the risk was worth the reward). Faced with the engineering challenges you describe, they decided that there was just…

I agree that's a proper description of why Microsoft, etc, didn't do touch first, but what exactly is that relevant to?

Your contention earlier was that stylus -> touch was a "tweak." My point is that it's not just a tweak, it's throwing out the existing model and starting from scratch. You implicitly acknowledge that by referencing the investment to make the change, an investment that is incurred by having to throw out the existing design and start over.

Touch was not a tweak. It was throwing out the steering wheel and asking "so now how do you drive the car?"

Re: Steve Jobs's Real Genius

#142

Post by away »

endtime wrote: post #135
chubot wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I said as much -- there is some truth to it. However, there are thousands/millions of people that are "tweakers". That isn't Jobs' only talent or even his most salient characteristic. (The title of the article is "Steve Job's real genius".) Did any of the tweakers mentioned in the article start 3 companies and make billions doing it? I think it is backlash for giving Jobs all the credit for everything, which is a mis…

Okay, I'll bite...what did Jobs create that wasn't just an improvement over something someone else had already done?

No one really "creates" anything if one isn't allowed to build off of what already exists. We would literally be re-inventing the wheel right now if we weren't allowed to look at past inventions. Gladwell is one of those authors who appeal to the masses with his oversimplified pseudo-intellectual mumbo jumbo. I'd like to know what Gladwell has actually innovated in his life or how he changed the world.

Re: Steve Jobs's Real Genius

#143

Post by yardie »

Quarrelsome wrote: post #51
philwelch wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm reading this a lot, but I have a hard time figuring what Jobs contributed to society. Everyone who uses a personal computer, smartphone, or tablet of any description, or has watched a 3D computer-animated film, has been affected, for the better, by his life's work. So have the millions around the world who make a living, directly or indirectly, from the businesses he built.

I'm pretty sure there are many designers and engineers within Apple that we should be more thankful to and had more direct involvement with the creation of the products.

By that analogy you should be thankful to everyone everyday since everyone farm the fields, build the roads, build the trucks, drive the trucks, clean the roads, distribute the food, build the warehouses, run the logistics software, etc that put food on your table everyday.

Also, those engineers and designers came from other fields because there wasn't a real PC industry until Steve and Bill came along. Even those engineers that worked with him commended him for being able to see the bigger picture.

Re: Steve Jobs's Real Genius

#144

Post by irrationalfab »

matwood wrote: post #48
irrationalfab wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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'm not an expert in CS (not even close), but to me it looks like there is very little crust on Apple technologies. There is some, but not nearly as much as say what's in win32. This lack of 'crust' can be attributed to SJ's personality. He had no problems dropping something he didn't think worked. This led to headaches for 3rd parties, and is one of the primary reasons enterprise stayed away from Apple (along with n…

"It's not so much that you need to understand every in and out of the field. What you need to understand is effort level required develop something[1], and when you're clearly getting BSed."

Those are not trivial things to do. Is not so rare for me to underestimate the effort required for a change in own code (but this might be because I'm not such a great programmer).

Re: Steve Jobs's Real Genius

#145

Post by vannevar »

vannevar wrote: post #132
rayiner wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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: cl…

This is a fair point, but that's the engineer's point of view. Looking at it from a product manager's perspective, why did so many decline to make the investment necessary to make touch work for the consumer? I would argue that they simply didn't perceive the enormous difference it would make (ie, that the risk was worth the reward). Faced with the engineering challenges you describe, they decided that there was just…

It was throwing out the steering wheel and asking "so now how do you drive the car?"

Exactly my point. Let's say it drives by telepathy. The car wouldn't change much: it would still have a driver and be driven on the road. It would still have an engine, passenger seating, storage space and cupholders. It would still at a glance look like any other car. But that apparently small change would result in a profound change in the user experience (and yes, profound engineering challenges for the maker). It's a better car. But it's not an entirely new class of transportation, just a tweak to an existing one, like the automatic transmission and hybrid engines.

Re: Steve Jobs's Real Genius

#146

Post by podperson »

eatmyshorts wrote: post #128
podperson wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

I have actually used one of the Xerox PARC machines. Three button mouse, you needed to know which button did what or it was useless. No diagonal scrolling...

Re: Steve Jobs's Real Genius

#147

Post by jonhendry »

eatmyshorts wrote: post #128
podperson wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

"The main problem with the Xerox PARC machines is that they couldn't/didn't get the cost below $20k."

They probably didn't really care too much, since they sold high-end office equipment, not consumer products. Even if they got the price down, it would have been sold by Xerox copier salesmen to businesses.

Re: Steve Jobs's Real Genius

#148

Post by jonhendry »

wisty wrote: post #125
irrationalfab wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 whol…

To be fair, the Cube was expensive, but the pizza box-shaped NeXTStations were competitively priced to similarly-powered high-end PCs and Macs of the early 90s.

Re: Steve Jobs's Real Genius

#149

Post by jonhendry »

bluekeybox wrote: post #56
Retric wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Job's approach to development goes something like this: 1. Build a talented team. 2. Keep it small. 3. Give them time. 4. Keep them focused on the end goal not the internals of the project. 5. Cut all non essential features.

6. Don't tolerate crap. 7. Turn your product announcements into theatrical performances. 8. Have as your main goal keeping the end users happy, not the middle men.

"7. Turn your product announcements into theatrical performances."

Not so much... carry that too far and you get that recent Samsung CES thing with the kid 'Zoll' and the dancers promoting TV sets.

Re: Steve Jobs's Real Genius

#150

Post by jonhendry »

qdog wrote: post #121
absconditus wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

And yet there are people who followed him from Apple to NeXT and then came back to Apple, like Bud Tribble and George Crow. And people who went along from NeXT to Apple, or Pixar to NeXT to Apple. And people who were laid off from NeXT when they stopped making hardware, like Jon Rubenstein, who joined Apple in the Jobs era.

For being a prick, he seems to have managed to attract some long-term loyalty.

I think pricks are better-tolerated when they are trying to achieve something their underlings think is worthwhile and unique.

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