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

9to5mac.com

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

#51

Post by Aloisius »

boop wrote: post #39
michaelpinto wrote: post #11

The point of this article isn't the damned turtleneck -- the lesson to learn is that Jobs was best friends with Issey Miyake. Think about that for a minute: How many other folks who work in tech in the valley have any friends who even work in fashion design? Add to that that this is the same guy who hired Paul Rand the grandfather of American graphic design to come up with the logo for NeXT. This is also the same man…

The point of the article is not the turtlenecks or who Steve Jobs knew. The point is that Steve Jobs was unique and followed his own path. Which other CEO or person do you know which would wear the same clothes every day?? Most people wouldn't and would fear they would get laughed at for doing so. But Steve was unique. Wearing the same clothes every day made sense for Steve and that is why Steve did that, period. He…

Which other CEO or person do you know which would wear the same clothes every day??

All the ones who wear suits?

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

#52

Post by dockd »

pitdesi wrote: post #46
noisebleed wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting.. I had never heard that, or anything about the Steven P. Jobs Foundation at all really. Now I'm curious to see the logo but I'm not having much luck finding it.

I too am curious and am no better at finding this logo online than you are, apparently ;) In case anyone is interested though, here are other logos that Paul Rand has designed: http://www.paul-rand.com/site/identity/ Amazing how many iconic logos are on that page. Jobs paid Rand $100k for the NeXT brand identity, and Rand created a 100 page brochure detailing the brand. Jobs on working with Rand: “I asked him if he w…

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.

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

#53

Post by Steko »

I think the lesson to take away is not about the designers or fashion so much but to see this as one aspect of Jobs getting past the bullshit to spend more time on the important stuff.

Five minutes less spent thinking about what to wear each morning translates to 30 more hours a year you have to focus on the big things (products, strategy, family, exercise, whatever).

Prolly also has something to do with why he drove a Benz 55 AMG with 500 hp.

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

#54

Post by vacri »

boop wrote: post #39
michaelpinto wrote: post #11

The point of this article isn't the damned turtleneck -- the lesson to learn is that Jobs was best friends with Issey Miyake. Think about that for a minute: How many other folks who work in tech in the valley have any friends who even work in fashion design? Add to that that this is the same guy who hired Paul Rand the grandfather of American graphic design to come up with the logo for NeXT. This is also the same man…

The point of the article is not the turtlenecks or who Steve Jobs knew. The point is that Steve Jobs was unique and followed his own path. Which other CEO or person do you know which would wear the same clothes every day?? Most people wouldn't and would fear they would get laughed at for doing so. But Steve was unique. Wearing the same clothes every day made sense for Steve and that is why Steve did that, period. He…

Uh... there are plenty of techies who wear the same clothes every day (sometimes literally), who do it because it feels right for them, and who aren't concerned about fashion or trends. Jobs is hardly unique in the 'I don't care' fashion stakes among techies. Period.

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

#55

Post by cubix »

This reminds me of an interesting story I heard about Honda. Apparently the workers are made to wear white uniforms on the factory floor. If a smudge of dirt is found on a uniform, it is deemed a flaw in the system and supposedly the line is shut down until its origin has been determined.

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

#56

Post by moheeb »

pyre wrote: post #32
[deleted] wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

The idea of imposing a standard uniform or wearing the same thing everyday can be viewed as a form of imposing conformity over individuality (mostly the uniform thing, and less the personal style thing). That said, for a US company (especially at that time), such thinking was definitely 'outside the box,' so it could also be viewed as being consistent with the 'Think Different' slogan.

The idea of wearing the same thing everyday is hardly 'outside the box'. Baseball players, judges, police officers, firemen, hospital staff, waitresses, painters, plumbers, construction workers...I'll stop now.

Oh wait....bums.

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

#57

Post by falling »

dockd wrote: post #52
pitdesi wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too am curious and am no better at finding this logo online than you are, apparently ;) In case anyone is interested though, here are other logos that Paul Rand has designed: http://www.paul-rand.com/site/identity/ Amazing how many iconic logos are on that page. Jobs paid Rand $100k for the NeXT brand identity, and Rand created a 100 page brochure detailing the brand. Jobs on working with Rand: “I asked him if he w…

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.

Can't link to it, but pictures of the NeXT identity book are in that page.

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

#58

Post by ary »

When reading this keep in mind that the Mac was still a skunkworks project inside of Apple when Jobs attempted to institute a uniform policy. Some of the comments have suggested this doesn't jive with the "Think Different" ethos he pushed. The Think Different campaign was initiated in 1997 shortly after his return to Apple. Many things transpired and he matured quite a bit in the intervening ~16/17 years.

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

#59

Post by farnsworth »

mathattack wrote: post #45
VBprogrammer wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that my socks are partitioned into two sets (washing basket and drawer) and as I mentioned above I would throw them out if the failure rate became high enough to impact the asymptotic behavior I'd say that O(1) is probably correct.

If a sock has a hole, it gets tossed. Now that I think of it, the mixed sock problem can actually be worse than O(n^2). For instance, if I decide that I want to wear my Marvin the Martian socks, and can only find one in the sock drawer, then it's a big problem. Look in the other drawers. Look under the bed. Look in the dryer. Repeat. Repeat. Until the other one is given up for lost.

It doesn't depend just on n since you aren't just searching through n available socks, you are searching k places with n_k socks in each place and with p_k confidence that you have thoroughly searched each place. I can't think of a more general problem that this might correspond to.

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

#60

Post by sambeau »

moheeb wrote: post #56
pyre wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea of imposing a standard uniform or wearing the same thing everyday can be viewed as a form of imposing conformity over individuality (mostly the uniform thing, and less the personal style thing). That said, for a US company (especially at that time), such thinking was definitely 'outside the box,' so it could also be viewed as being consistent with the 'Think Different' slogan.

The idea of wearing the same thing everyday is hardly 'outside the box'. Baseball players, judges, police officers, firemen, hospital staff, waitresses, painters, plumbers, construction workers...I'll stop now. Oh wait....bums.

And let's not forget 80% of Apple employees.
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