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Stories of Steve Jobs in Safari Design Reviews (2014)

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

#91

Post by jwdunne »

graeme wrote: post #87
skybrian wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough. Is there anything you particularly recommend reading?

I enjoyed Becoming Steve Jobs. Covered the period of Jobs' return to Apple and also his growth of Pixar. His more mature phase, where he was able to nurturr organizations and had less of the unhinged asshole side about him. https://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Steve-Jobs-Evolution-Visiona... Haven't read it, but I've heard there is a section of Creativity Inc where Ed Catmull talks about working with Steve and how they op…

I enjoyed that book. I recommend it. Details how the Steve Jobs that left Apple wasn't the same as the one that returned, along with the journey of how he got there.

The Pixar stuff in there was really interesting. Creativity Inc has been on my reading list because of that book.

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

#92

Post by freyir »

gonehome wrote: post #19
qntty wrote: post #11

Anyone else annoyed by how deferential the author seems to be towards Jobs? Like surely after knowing him for a bit you'd get over that.

I've seen this kind of strange behavior elsewhere with less famous people who are in charge of companies. People who don't regularly interact with them seem to act strange around them (which isn't that surprising if they're not seen that often and they're in charge), but the weirder thing to me is that all the supporting staff around the leader also acts strangely and seems to make it worse. It reminds me of the stor…

The story is that Jobs was put off by Carmack's t-shirt (a smiley face with a bloody bullet hole in it). But they had a discussion, Carmack was critical of some of Apple's technical decisions, and Jobs listened and ultimately took Carmack's side. Jobs then yelled at one of his senior engineers.

https://www.facebook.com/JamesHBlack/posts/10156560054277932

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

#93

Post by wkearney99 »

acqq wrote: post #73
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…

> He was smart; he was lucky; he was a human, like anyone else. And like nobody else, he was personally who made Apple, Macintosh, iPod and iPhone what they were. In short, he many times proved to really be far from average.

No, he did not individually make those things. That is a phenomenal insult to the HUNDREDS of people that did the hard work of making those products.

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

#95

Post by sokoloff »

talltimtom wrote: post #62
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.

“I'm confident he had good ideas. I'm also confident he had plenty of horrible ideas...” ... as you walk along you path you meet a man. 50% if the time he tells you sage advice that makes you a multimillionaire and 50% of the time he tells you sage advice that doesn’t make you richer. What do you value the mans afvice as? It’s not a cult or a conspiracy when what the other part is selling actually materializes.

How many times can I ask his advice? If many times, I value it at over a half-million dollars a trial.

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

#96

Post by qntty »

sjwright wrote: post #30
qntty wrote: post #11

Anyone else annoyed by how deferential the author seems to be towards Jobs? Like surely after knowing him for a bit you'd get over that.

It would only annoy me if the author was being untruthful or disingenuous. Unless you have reason to suspect otherwise, I'll assume the author's personal recollection of his experiences as sincere. Or to be more blunt, he knew Steve personally and you didn't. Just because you have never met someone who garnered that kind of reaction from you doesn't mean such people don't exist.

It's not a matter of the experience itself, it's a matter of how you make sense of it. I don't doubt that the author felt as though he had to act a certain way around Jobs, but the way that he writes about it sounds like he was dealing with a king or something. Re-read this part of the post:

"When demoing something to Steve, you had to pace yourself. If Steve said, “Stop,” you fucking stopped. Hands down and waited. And you didn’t jiggle the cursor while he was looking at the screen. Certain death.

If he wanted to drive the demo machine then, by God, you let him drive.

And if your software crashed, you didn’t make excuses. You just made damn sure that particular scenario didn’t happen again. Ever."

> Or to be more blunt, he knew Steve personally and you didn't. Just because you have never met someone who garnered that kind of reaction from you doesn't mean such people don't exist.

I claim that no one (that I've known for a long time) would ever make me feel this way because I make a point to "kill my idols" as they say. The author of this post didn't do that and that's what I find annoying.

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

#97

Post by gonehome »

freyir wrote: post #92
gonehome wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen this kind of strange behavior elsewhere with less famous people who are in charge of companies. People who don't regularly interact with them seem to act strange around them (which isn't that surprising if they're not seen that often and they're in charge), but the weirder thing to me is that all the supporting staff around the leader also acts strangely and seems to make it worse. It reminds me of the stor…

The story is that Jobs was put off by Carmack's t-shirt (a smiley face with a bloody bullet hole in it). But they had a discussion, Carmack was critical of some of Apple's technical decisions, and Jobs listened and ultimately took Carmack's side. Jobs then yelled at one of his senior engineers. https://www.facebook.com/JamesHBlack/posts/10156560054277932

I think that’s a second story - I remember reading about both.

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

#98

Post by acqq »

wkearney99 wrote: post #93
acqq wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He was smart; he was lucky; he was a human, like anyone else. And like nobody else, he was personally who made Apple, Macintosh, iPod and iPhone what they were. In short, he many times proved to really be far from average.

No, he did not individually make those things. That is a phenomenal insult to the HUNDREDS of people that did the hard work of making those products.

He did not alone make them, but he made them they were. He was the one who decided from all the possibilities what will be implemented, how it will look like, how is going to be sold. We can talk about each of the items from the list, and his fundamental influence is provable for each. Without Jobs, all the things from the list would not even happen in the form they happened.

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

#99

Post by goto11 »

This is a weird and fascinating read since it says almost nothing about Jobs (good or bad), but is only about the fear and fawning and deference of the people meeting him. There is nothing in the stories that explains why they have this fear and fawning. Apparently Jobs made some silly practical jokes where the fun was that the victims were initially too afraid of him to acknowledge the joke. But no hint of why people would be afraid in the first place.

Apparently Jobs asked how the IE bookmarks bar looked and this guy googled an image. And this was one of the must harrowing but ultimately triumphant moments of his life.

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

#100

Post by machinecoffee »

graeme wrote: post #87
skybrian wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough. Is there anything you particularly recommend reading?

I enjoyed Becoming Steve Jobs. Covered the period of Jobs' return to Apple and also his growth of Pixar. His more mature phase, where he was able to nurturr organizations and had less of the unhinged asshole side about him. https://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Steve-Jobs-Evolution-Visiona... Haven't read it, but I've heard there is a section of Creativity Inc where Ed Catmull talks about working with Steve and how they op…

Folklore.org is an excellent site, I loved reading about the early days of the mac and gained a great respect for the first Macintosh team.

In my opinion they really moved the needle on ubiquitous computing for the masses, and did a great job on their first attempt.

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