Stories of Steve Jobs in Safari Design Reviews (2014) • Hacker News Board

Re: Stories of Steve Jobs in Safari Design Reviews (2014)

#51

Post by pinewurst » Fri, Dec 07, 2018, 10:05 PM UTC

maxxxxx wrote: post #46

sjwright wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't read anything that suggests that Steve was cruel or a jerk for the sake of it.

He told Wozniak that they had made $500 on a sale but in reality it was 5000 and he kept the rest. He refused to recognize his daughter for along time. He refused to give stock options to a lot of very early employees. Wozniak then made a up for it. He was a jerk. Especially the story about his daughter is plain evil. At some point you have to take responsibility for your actions.

His daughter recently published a memoir portraying Steve and his wife as creepy in the extreme. There's a number of excerpts out there as well.

https://www.amazon.com/Small-Fry-Lisa-Brennan-Jobs/dp/080212...

Re: Stories of Steve Jobs in Safari Design Reviews (2014)

#52

Post by jrs95 » Fri, Dec 07, 2018, 10:11 PM UTC

> between rounds of Overwatch

Ah, an Overwatch player. This explains everything ;)

In all seriousness, WSL has improved A LOT and I use it frequently on my gaming PC so I don't have to pull out my MacBook. Performance is definitely a bit worse but I have a Ryzen 2700X and an NVMe drive, so it's still plenty quick enough despite the inefficiencies on the software side of things. I used to always dual boot Linux on my desktops, but I just don't have a need to do that anymore.

Re: Stories of Steve Jobs in Safari Design Reviews (2014)

#53

Post by askafriend » Fri, Dec 07, 2018, 10:18 PM UTC

tw04 wrote: post #33

graeme wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been stories outside Apple of Steve Jobs giving incredibly good feedback in a variety of areas and people being glad to have it. Have you considered the possibility that: 1. Steve Jobs was a couple of standard deviations better at this than almost anyone 2. As such, people were glad to get feedback from him 3. Such ability is rare and hard to identify, and so trying to replicate that structure is nonethele…

Like insisting that notes look like a leather bound notebook? I'm confident he had good ideas. I'm also confident he had plenty of horrible ideas... Just like most intelligent humans.

Like someone else said, you can't talk about that decision without talking about the time and context in which it was made.

People were being introduced to wildly new concepts and it served to anchor people in familiarity.

Today, it's not as useful of an anchor for obvious reasons. Mobile phones and touch interfaces are ubiquitous.

Re: Stories of Steve Jobs in Safari Design Reviews (2014)

#54

Post by coldtea » Fri, Dec 07, 2018, 10:23 PM UTC

thanatropism wrote: post #35

graeme wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been stories outside Apple of Steve Jobs giving incredibly good feedback in a variety of areas and people being glad to have it. Have you considered the possibility that: 1. Steve Jobs was a couple of standard deviations better at this than almost anyone 2. As such, people were glad to get feedback from him 3. Such ability is rare and hard to identify, and so trying to replicate that structure is nonethele…

> a couple of standard deviations better at this The crucial thing is that "this" in this case is product management. I'm fine with Jobs being the Caesar Augustus of product; what bothers me is when he starts being touted as the Christ of Business.

Yeah, he just built a business from nothing to huge thrice, including the #1 by market cap company on earth.

Re: Stories of Steve Jobs in Safari Design Reviews (2014)

#55

Post by jcroll » Fri, Dec 07, 2018, 10:24 PM UTC

tw04 wrote: post #33

graeme wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been stories outside Apple of Steve Jobs giving incredibly good feedback in a variety of areas and people being glad to have it. Have you considered the possibility that: 1. Steve Jobs was a couple of standard deviations better at this than almost anyone 2. As such, people were glad to get feedback from him 3. Such ability is rare and hard to identify, and so trying to replicate that structure is nonethele…

Like insisting that notes look like a leather bound notebook? I'm confident he had good ideas. I'm also confident he had plenty of horrible ideas... Just like most intelligent humans.

he made a mouse with one button

Re: Stories of Steve Jobs in Safari Design Reviews (2014)

#56

Post by graeme » Fri, Dec 07, 2018, 10:33 PM UTC

skybrian wrote: post #43

graeme wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been stories outside Apple of Steve Jobs giving incredibly good feedback in a variety of areas and people being glad to have it. Have you considered the possibility that: 1. Steve Jobs was a couple of standard deviations better at this than almost anyone 2. As such, people were glad to get feedback from him 3. Such ability is rare and hard to identify, and so trying to replicate that structure is nonethele…

The hype and celebrity worship (even at the time) make it nearly impossible to distinguish the man from his reputation. So in the end, there are few facts you can point to, just an awful lot of opinions. I mean, you could point to the many products he was involved in, but there are a lot of subjective opinions there too.

There is a vast treasure trove of books, articles, interviews and stories from people that worked with him. Almost all of these include criticism.

Your comment gives the impression you've read none of this and only read meta-commentary. Or that you consider any person's story subjective and non-credible. In which case, what would you call a fact? The same standard would apply to any person.

(I wouldn't include the Isaacson bio, he regrettably focussed very little on Jobs' process.)

Re: Stories of Steve Jobs in Safari Design Reviews (2014)

#57

Post by ilove_banh_mi » Fri, Dec 07, 2018, 10:36 PM UTC

tw04 wrote: post #33

graeme wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been stories outside Apple of Steve Jobs giving incredibly good feedback in a variety of areas and people being glad to have it. Have you considered the possibility that: 1. Steve Jobs was a couple of standard deviations better at this than almost anyone 2. As such, people were glad to get feedback from him 3. Such ability is rare and hard to identify, and so trying to replicate that structure is nonethele…

Like insisting that notes look like a leather bound notebook? I'm confident he had good ideas. I'm also confident he had plenty of horrible ideas... Just like most intelligent humans.

If skeuomorphism is the worst sin you accuse him of, he must have been pretty good at what he achieved.

Re: Stories of Steve Jobs in Safari Design Reviews (2014)

#58

Post by psoy » Fri, Dec 07, 2018, 10:55 PM UTC

graeme wrote: post #16

benwerd wrote: post #12

This is how I know I would suck in a company like this. Yeah, it's Steve Jobs - but I find the level of reverence on show in this piece to be a little hard to take. It's certainly revealing of the culture there at the time. > And when you can get the time for thoughtful reflection on your idea from a visionary like Steve — well, that’s a good day. Being humble is one thing, but forcing yourself into this kind of fawn…

There have been stories outside Apple of Steve Jobs giving incredibly good feedback in a variety of areas and people being glad to have it. Have you considered the possibility that: 1. Steve Jobs was a couple of standard deviations better at this than almost anyone 2. As such, people were glad to get feedback from him 3. Such ability is rare and hard to identify, and so trying to replicate that structure is nonethele…

> 1. Steve Jobs was a couple of standard deviations better at this than almost anyone

This is a statistical oxymoron.

Re: Stories of Steve Jobs in Safari Design Reviews (2014)

#59

Post by rchaud » Fri, Dec 07, 2018, 10:57 PM UTC

I used to think Jobs' Reality Distortion Field only worked on tech bloggers who loved Apple's story and narrative so much, they went overboard to praise their products, in spite of tone-deaf stuff Jobs would say in public like "You're holding it wrong".

Turns out there were plenty of people right there at Apple who fell under that same RDF.

Re: Stories of Steve Jobs in Safari Design Reviews (2014)

#60

Post by hn_throwaway_99 » Fri, Dec 07, 2018, 10:59 PM UTC

ilove_banh_mi wrote: post #57

tw04 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like insisting that notes look like a leather bound notebook? I'm confident he had good ideas. I'm also confident he had plenty of horrible ideas... Just like most intelligent humans.

If skeuomorphism is the worst sin you accuse him of, he must have been pretty good at what he achieved.

I really don't understand the push against skeuomorphism besides "fashions change." I mean, I get that using so many physical world metaphors could be limiting, but the subsequent shift to everything just being circles, boxes and triangles, without any words, was so much more confusing and unnecessarily faddish in my opinion.