Steve May have been a categorical jerk in many ways, but his opinions often had moral grounding and backbone. Just before I joined Flipboard way back in 2010, Jobs had apparently visited the office after their epic launch. He spoke for a few moments about apps and then launched into a lengthy diatribe about the death of fish in the ocean and how a company like Flipboard needed to amplify those kinds of messages. Use its power to save the planet. A strange monologue given the context, but also kind of amazing.
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#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
What about stories from actual Apple employees? https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=90_Hours_A_Week_... https://venturebeat.com/2011/08/25/michael-dhuey-apple-engin... https://www.businessinsider.com/ex-apple-employee-on-steve-j... https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/01/former-apple-employee-guy-ka...
There's no doubt that Jobs was a very polarizing figure, had many negative character traits and made a lot of mistakes throughout his life. For what it's worth, I read his biography and he came across as repentant and apologetic when confronted, especially near the end when he knew he was going to die. He was a brilliant but flawed person, and he was aware of it. What really rubs me the wrong way is people who refuse…
For what it's worth, I read his biography and he came across as repentant and apologetic when confronted, especially near the end when he knew he was going to die.
Well, the thing with this is that while he might have been privately apologetic, the public image that relentlessly and abusively driving employees leads to success has stayed with us after his death and he certainly made no effort publicly debunk it. That certainly influences how I see him.
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#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
With the glaring exception of the butterfly keyboard debacle (typing on, what, my fourth right now? and already showing some signs of wonkiness), I agree hardware quality is amazing & best its ever been. The software though... Fit and finish has fallen off a cliff. So many weird glitchy anims and dumb usability issues.
The wireless mouse that can't be used while being charged is the one that gets me. I don't know that Jobs would've approved that
Was he there for the hockey puck mouse?
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#204I think that Apple suffers from not having that person at the top with taste who was willing to say “this is shit”. The overall software quality has dropped markedly at Apple and the hardware more uneven since he left. There were misses under Steve like the Cube where there wasn’t a market. But the product was great. Now there is a market but the product is middling like the Watch. Yes the watch was started when he w…
The guys at Pontiac who had this power with the Aztek probably thought they had taste; who defines this? Jobs never cared about the type of non-functional quality that we typically do in the software world; there are plenty of cases where he picked design aesthetics over performance, reliability, and everything else.
Most modern CUVs have a similar side profile to the Aztek. One of the reasons they look less awkward is that bigger wheels are more popular. There's a few other awkward design quibbles with the Aztek, but for the most part similar cars sell like hot cakes now.
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#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
Steve quotes in the video "I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been" which is of course a Wayne Gretsky quote, and I think it captures this sentiment very well. Moving from leader to follower is such a classic move for an incumbent like Apple, and with Steve they never seemed to lose that insurgent mindset, even when they were absolutely enormous. They've steadily stagnated and truly lost that…
Did you know Steve Jobs personally? I'm stupefied as to how someone who didn't know him socially can miss a CEO of a giant faceless corporation, especially one known to be such a monumental asshole. I mean his company made consumer products. It's like saying you miss the former CEO of Braun. I honestly don't get it.
I’m stupefied as to how someone who didn’t know him socially can miss the CEO of a giant faceless corporation
Would you have called Apple “faceless” if Steve Jobs were still CEO?
I miss Steve Jobs because he did great things and he inspired others to do great things. The world was a more vibrant and creative place with him in it. As a software engineer I have used Apple products to do almost all of my day-to-day work since 2004 and I am thankful I have not had to use Linux, Windows or Android instead. It makes me sad to think of what we might have today if he was still alive.
And in comparison, here on HN, you mention the CEO of company that makes - electric razors? Whose name you cannot even remember?
The fact that Steve Jobs was an asshole to people at times is irrelevant. You value people for their strengths, not their weaknesses.
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#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't think of much I would trade from now for something in the Jobs era. I can do without the rich Corinthian leather, the PowerPC, and the colored plastic. The new keyboards aren't great, but I've dropped this MBP at least 30 times and it still keeps chugging; I'm pretty sure an errant dust particle could have take out my first Intel Macbook.
> rich Corinthian leather What does this mean? Is this a metonymy for skeumorphic design?
Yes, and specifically the phase Apple went through with excessively over-the-top skeuomorphism. As I recall, after the brushed metal fad had finally ended Mac OS X settled on a decent and fairly consistent look by 10.6, then in 10.7 there was a fresh excess including actual stitched leather textures: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2011/07/mac-os-x-10-7/5/
That OS X release would have been frustrating for its usability and feature regressions even without the skeuomorphic textures, so also getting such heavy-handed, in-your-face design excesses made it a really disappointing release.
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#207The myth, that’s the Steve Jobs that I idolize. I’m not sure what he’s actually like or at what cost the world paid to fulfill his vision.
There’s two events in my life where I can clearly recall what I was doing at the time. The first is 9/11. I was eight years old and I came down from my bedroom, my parents were staring at the TV in disbelief. I knew I was witnessing something important.
The second is Steve Jobs’ death. I was sitting at my college’s math center. My friend who was sitting next to me suddenly declared: “Steve Jobs is dead.” Not sure why but I cried a little bit. It felt sad, and I didn’t even know the guy.
Steve Jobs whether you hate him or love him, you can’t deny the impact he had on our world and industry. He made technology relatable. He made it Human. He redefined how humans relate to each other via the introduction of the iPhone. Smart Phones rewired how we perceive the world and ultimately our consciousness.
I remember the naysayers. It’s too expensive, he should’ve stuck to iPods. He had a knack of being unconventional. In Japan, my home country, I remember a TV show where some rich businessmen bought the iPhone but primarily used their flip phone for work. It’s a toy they said. A decade later and now almost every citizen has some kind of smart phone.
Google and Facebook built an empire on Steve’s Jobs platform and ideas. Search and social media wouldn’t have been able to scale their power so widely without the introduction of the iPhone. He left a seed and technologists grew an Amazon.
Personally I listen to his Stanford graduation speech occasionally. Whenever I feel lost in life I remember, “stay hungry, stay foolish.” Those four words takes loads off my shoulders. I could only connect the dots looking back. I don’t have all the answers and that’s okay.
Day to day at work, I’m reminded that the systems and product we build have real life users. My job is to develop a relationship of trust directly with the user. There’s a lot of temptations to take shortcuts during development from management pressure or career ambitions, but it’s easy to push back if you imagine the user next to you frustrated that their app broke because you couldn’t write a simple test. My earliest memory of this ethos stems from Steve Jobs. No matter how fast you finish coding or how impressive the technology, experience is the only thing that matters.
Apparently he was a terrible person. :shrug: Why do I care? I learnt a lot from him and never had to deal with his shit. Do my heroes have to be saints? It would be nice sure, but the best stories I’ve seen are about complex anti-heroes and he played the part perfectly.
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#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
Steve quotes in the video "I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been" which is of course a Wayne Gretsky quote, and I think it captures this sentiment very well. Moving from leader to follower is such a classic move for an incumbent like Apple, and with Steve they never seemed to lose that insurgent mindset, even when they were absolutely enormous. They've steadily stagnated and truly lost that…
Honestly I don't see this. I realize it's a simple narrative, and it's one that plays well with the heroic arc, but businesses are not Aesop's Fables, sat on this earth to give us a morality tale to use to guide our children. The facts on the ground are far more complicated than "Apple was creative under Steve and isn't under Cook." Apple had MORE products when in the market when Steve came back as CEO, and he ruthle…
I agree, and I don't think the time is right for the next major product category. Force something through and you get the cube again. They'll presumably wait for head-mounted displays of some sort, and a play at cars.
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#209if the iPhone had never come out, I think we'd have monstrosities for smart phones with massive keyboards running windows CE. I'm glad it happened.
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#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
I generally agree, although there are all kinds of issues on iPhone as well. The one that bothers me most often is autocorrect sporadically changing correct English words to nonsense, or the complete inability to select certain bits of text properly (even in Apple apps).
I'm so mad at all the phone keyboards for not having some kind of priority for predictive. And ability to remove words. There's some typos I get consistently and the correction is from a very normal word (probably, for instance) to a really seldom used word (poetically, in this example) and I'd prefer to remove poetically from my dictionary than to keep having it pop up. Repeat this for a couple dozen very common wor…
GBoard allows you to remove words, and the gesture is very simple. For example, "pepsi" is corrected to "Pepsi" but who wants that. So, just type "pepsi", and "Pepsi"'ll appear in the bar above the keyboard. Drag it up, and it won't be corrected again. Easy. As usual with gestures, zero affordance...