What If Steve Jobs Hadn’t Returned To Apple In 1997?
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What If Steve Jobs Hadn’t Returned To Apple In 1997?
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Re: What If Steve Jobs Hadn’t Returned To Apple In 1997?
#2I'm a fan of apple (no, not a 'fanboi') but that 'article' was the fappiest piece of fap I've read in ages
Re: What If Steve Jobs Hadn’t Returned To Apple In 1997?
#3So Arrington was a lawyer, and a hot shot one at that. That may help explain why he rubs some people the wrong way - speaking as an LLB myself.
I love Steve Jobs, but I think this article is disingenuous on a couple of counts. One, these disruptive industries that Jobs "created" were coming anyway. He's riding the wave, not creating it. Two, the iPod was in development at Apple before he returned (IIRC).
Steve's talent (IMHO) is to get the best out of creative people, to charm people with his reality distortion field, and to tweak things slightly to make them much better. That third point reminds me of what John Cleese said of Graham Chapman:
[he] contributed comparatively little in the way of direct writing. Rather, the Pythons have said that his biggest contribution in the writing room was an intuition as to what was funny. John Cleese said in an interview that one of Chapman's great attributes was "his weird takes on things." In writing sessions Chapman "would lob in an idea or a line from out in left field into the engine room, but he could never be the engine", Cleese said. In the Dead Parrot sketch, written mostly by Cleese, the frustrated customer was initially trying to return a faulty toaster to a shop. Chapman would ask "How can we make this madder?", and then came up with the idea that returning a dead Norwegian Blue parrot to a pet shop might make a more interesting subject than a toaster. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Chapman#Monty_Python
Re: What If Steve Jobs Hadn’t Returned To Apple In 1997?
#4I must admit that this article rather made me realize that most of what Apple did is just to create some fancy looking PCs. The iPhone was revolutionary indeed, but overall the achievements seem overblown.
I still think that Steve Jobs is cool, though.
Re: What If Steve Jobs Hadn’t Returned To Apple In 1997?
#5I must admit that this article rather made me realize that most of what Apple did is just to create some fancy looking PCs. The iPhone was revolutionary indeed, but overall the achievements seem overblown. I still think that Steve Jobs is cool, though.
> just to create some fancy looking PCs
that's not true..
Re: What If Steve Jobs Hadn’t Returned To Apple In 1997?
#6NeXT could have ended in the perfect Linux distro, open sourced, leading the Linux kernel development, making the distros environment even richer (Mac Linux for mac users, Ubuntu-Debian & similars for those who don't buy Apple hardware, Chrome OS for netbookers; and minoritary distros for the ones who tweak their own flavor.)
The world would be a better place.
The hardware? Some has been good. Some really advanced to their time. Some G4Cube-ish.
I have to admit the guy is brilliant.
Re: What If Steve Jobs Hadn’t Returned To Apple In 1997?
#7I must admit that this article rather made me realize that most of what Apple did is just to create some fancy looking PCs. The iPhone was revolutionary indeed, but overall the achievements seem overblown. I still think that Steve Jobs is cool, though.
The % of people who use macs because they're "fancy looking" is pretty small. Most use them for a variety of other reasons - build quality, unixy, os+hardware from single vendor=less issues etc As well as all the cool gadgety stuff multitouch/mag power connector, mag lids etc
Re: What If Steve Jobs Hadn’t Returned To Apple In 1997?
#8So Arrington was a lawyer, and a hot shot one at that. That may help explain why he rubs some people the wrong way - speaking as an LLB myself. I love Steve Jobs, but I think this article is disingenuous on a couple of counts. One, these disruptive industries that Jobs "created" were coming anyway. He's riding the wave, not creating it. Two, the iPod was in development at Apple before he returned (IIRC). Steve's tale…
Steve's talent (IMHO) is to get the best out of creative people, to charm people with his reality distortion field, and to tweak things slightly to make them much better
Doing this is at least an order of magnitude harder than any purely technical or directly productive work. People are fickle, ever-changing, unpredictable, complex, etc. Brilliant people are even more difficult to manage. The art of surrounding yourself with great people and getting them all working together is underrated.
Even if Steve Jobs contributed nothing to the ideas that were developed (which is unlikely, based on what I've heard), he still deserves the praise for being the human gravitational well that pulled all those people to work together and create awesome products.
Re: What If Steve Jobs Hadn’t Returned To Apple In 1997?
#9Apple is a data point in one of the eternal HN debates: Ideas vs. Execution.
The functional design of the iPhone was a surprise to no one, everyone wanted it, Apple delivered.
There are many operating system, but OSX is still an asset to Apple.
It may be the case that Apple has great ideas, but they certainly have great execution.
Re: What If Steve Jobs Hadn’t Returned To Apple In 1997?
#10I must admit that this article rather made me realize that most of what Apple did is just to create some fancy looking PCs. The iPhone was revolutionary indeed, but overall the achievements seem overblown. I still think that Steve Jobs is cool, though.
> just to create some fancy looking PCs that's not true..
How is it not true?