[HN Gopher] Make Something Wonderful - Steve Jobs in his own words
___________________________________________________________________
Make Something Wonderful - Steve Jobs in his own words
Author : olacks
Score : 172 points
Date : 2023-04-11 15:37 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (stevejobsarchive.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (stevejobsarchive.com)
| rrgok wrote:
| This may feel a little depressing, but I would like to hear the
| HN community's thoughts on this. Every time I hear about making
| progress or creating something beautiful, the first thing that
| comes to mind is: for how long?
|
| As humans, do we think about how long we are going to chase the
| ever-moving goal post of progress? Do we have a ballpark idea of
| it? Or are we moving like a dog chasing its own tail, going in
| circles, having just the illusion of going somewhere but never
| reaching anywhere?
|
| It is bad day for me. Software Engineering make me only realize
| that people are never happy. You implement a nice feature that
| helps people and what comes out of their mouth: but can we
| improve on that? Not even thinking about what has been
| implemented.
|
| Compared to 50 years ago, how much we improved. How comfortable
| our lives have become. And yet we are still chasing something and
| running somewhere.
| keiferski wrote:
| I think you might find some solace in the concept of _wabi-
| sabi._ An oversimplification is that it's an aesthetics of
| things that are temporary, a guide to appreciating beautiful
| things that inevitably decay.
| [deleted]
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > Software Engineering make me only realize that people are
| never happy.
|
| I'm not convinced this is an innate property of humanity,
| rather I think it is a conditioned behavior to keep us buying
| things. Pay attention to what marketing tells you, what it
| _really_ tells you, behind the ostensible message. It is not
| telling you good things about yourself or your life, and it is
| bombarding you _constantly_ with these intrusive thoughts.
| ozim wrote:
| Even my dog gets tired of eating the same feed all the time
| or playing with the same toy. It gets excited when I bring
| new toy and is much more eager to eat when I switch feed to a
| different type from time to time.
|
| I don't have a TV so my dog is not watching ads so I expect
| marketing does not affect it.
|
| Might still be that other dogs it plays with tell stuff "I
| got a new toy, get your owner to buy you new one too".
|
| I think it is innate property of living things to need
| different things/experiences and what not in order to
| survive/thrive.
| layer8 wrote:
| > for how long?
|
| As long as you have an itch to scratch. Steve Jobs didn't care
| about progress or about creating for its own sake. He had ideas
| about what he wanted to see existing in the world, and worked
| to make those ideas come true.
|
| You mention implementing nice features. The right thing to do
| is to implement the features _you_ want to use (and to validate
| their design by actually using them yourself). Even if no one
| else likes the features, _you_ like them and thus will have
| some fulfillment by implementing them. Furthermore, if you find
| the features useful, there is a good chance that there will be
| other people like you that also find them useful. So usually
| that is a good strategy, provided that you are an actual, and
| sufficiently representative, user of the product.
| Tepix wrote:
| With celebrities like Steve Jobs we have a lot of interviews,
| autobiographies and data available.
|
| It would be interesting to finetune a LLM using all this data to
| act like him. Then you add TTS with his voice and voila: Your
| personal Steve Jobs personal advisor running on your GPGPU or
| even phone, eventually.
|
| Makes you wonder if there will be laws against doing this without
| permission eventually. It's kind of hard to stop it if it's
| relatively easy to do.
| oldstrangers wrote:
| Seems like pretty straightforward exploitation akin to
| deepfakes.
|
| A repository of his work that you can search and work with
| would be perfectly reasonable though (similar to
| https://huberman.rile.yt/).
|
| EDIT: Apparently it already exists.
| systems_glitch wrote:
| And then someone steals the Dixie Flatline.
| marze wrote:
| Here is what Steve Jobs said about this in 1983 (copied from
| the book):
|
| "The problem was, you can't ask Aristotle a question. And I
| think, as we look towards the next fifty to one hundred years,
| if we really can come up with these machines that can capture
| an underlying spirit, or an underlying set of principles, or an
| underlying way of looking at the world, then, when the next
| Aristotle comes around, maybe if he carries around one of these
| machines with him his whole life--his or her whole life--and
| types in all this stuff, then maybe someday, after this
| person's dead and gone, we can ask this machine, "Hey, what
| would Aristotle have said? What about this?" And maybe we won't
| get the right answer, but maybe we will. And that's really
| exciting to me. And that's one of the reasons I'm doing what
| I'm doing."
| mxkopy wrote:
| In the popular T.V. anthology American Horror Story, Steve Jobs
| is shown to be conversing with aliens in a UFO. I thought that
| was a really apt and funny depiction given how advanced Apple's
| tech is. Though the vision and leadership that keeps Apple on top
| to this day probably can't be given by extraterrestrials.
| anthk wrote:
| Apple tech was not advanced. Back in the day Mac OS 9 was
| inferior to NT and years behind Linux 2.4 in stability and
| security.
|
| What you know today from Apple was stolen from NeXTStep and
| BSD's.
|
| You are basically using a rehashed NeXT environment with the
| Mac GUI on top.
| selectodude wrote:
| Stolen? Do you mean purchased?
| mturmon wrote:
| Indeed, NeXTSTEP was purchased by Apple, as a part of NeXT
| Inc.
|
| NeXT Inc., in turn, was originally founded by some guy
| named Steve.
|
| So yeah, not exactly stolen.
| anthk wrote:
| Not "stolen" in a derogative way, but OFC I knew NeXT
| it's from Steve. But Apple without NeXT and BSD core it
| would die in 2001 against XP in the desktops. 2000
| already was lights ahead Mac OS 9. In scientific Unix
| usage, GNU/Linux already won.
| eloisant wrote:
| Apple needed a new OS, for sure, just like Microsoft
| needed a new OS after their DOS-based Windows 9x branch.
|
| But there were other options than NeXT. They nearly
| bought Be (and BeOS) instead of NeXT and that might have
| worked. Also they could have built a new OS on top of BSD
| without NeXT, that might have worked as well.
|
| Of course by buying NeXT they also got Steve Jobs back
| and that's a big part of what made them successful in the
| 2000's.
|
| And by the way, Apple's rebirth in the 2000's was largely
| due to the iPod and iTunes more than MacOSX. It didn't
| really made a dent into XP's market share.
| [deleted]
| latexr wrote:
| > What you know today from Apple was stolen from NeXTStep and
| BSD's.
|
| The BSD code is open-source with a permissive license. Even
| if we were to consider that stealing, how could they have
| stolen from NeXTSTEP when they acquired it and both parties
| wanted exactly that?
| [deleted]
| zerop wrote:
| I read other book on Steve Jobs - "Inside Steve's brain". Good
| write up on his business Strategies and Apple revamping from late
| 90s
| naremu wrote:
| It's amazing how much "mystique" is assigned to a man who's
| success can probably be at least 75% attributed to just being an
| enthusiast about his own products in a business world where it's
| usually limited to the founding members.
|
| How many CEOs, product managers and the like have been caught
| promoting their own brand with a "tweeted from iPhone" tagline.
| Probably "efficient business people", but literally won't touch
| their own product while telling others to buy it.
|
| In contrast, one of the stories that always sticks in my mind
| about Jobs is one of early iPhone production runs having plastic
| screens, which got scratched by his keys in his pocket, which
| Jobs found entirely unacceptable.
|
| In a world where min-maxing cost to profit is all that matters,
| perpetual doubting of the efficacy of quality, all it took to
| cement Steve Jobs in the tech hall of history is some of the
| lowest hanging fruit left for him. Like hating crappy, easily
| scratched and degraded plastic screens.
|
| For all his faults, in retrospect, it was kind of nice to see an
| enthusiastic founding member of a large company say "we can do
| better" and in many ways, succeed.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| In some ways this can be read as minimizing Jobs, on the other
| hand you can hold this up against the vast majority of todays
| operators/founders and find them lacking.
|
| No one is going to care about your product more than you, so if
| you don't care.. then no one does. Jobs got that and lived by
| it.
|
| It sounds trivial, but how many of the current FAANG
| founders/CEOs actually care about their product outside of
| Zuck? Musk maybe, not necessarily for good reason, and his
| attention is spread far too thin.
|
| There's little modern analogy for the 80s-90s Jobs-Gates feud,
| and even Gates clearly didn't care as much given how early he
| exited and moved on with life.
|
| A lot of modern tech is founded by guys who want to cash out
| and move onto their science projects/hobbies, and it shows.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > outside of Zuck?
|
| I don't think Zuckerberg cares about his product, really. He
| cares about the income from his product. That's a different
| thing.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Probably right. He just seems the closest to caring. Maybe
| he just doesn't have good product taste ( _cough_
| metaverse), and he 's very happy to copy-paste competitors.
| iamdbtoo wrote:
| It's here where I personally find value in Jobs' ideas. I
| believe the products he developed are amazing because
| ultimately he cared about the user. He found those little
| places where people get annoyed with the things they own and
| made the user's needs in those moments a priority.
|
| We probably would've gotten along just fine with scratched
| plastic screens after some use, but for someone at that level
| to put their foot down and not let it happen is so incredibly
| rare.
| theaussiestew wrote:
| But the thing is, we all tolerate things which are sheer crap,
| if viewed through a different set of lenses. For example, you
| probably tolerate many things that I personally would consider
| rubbish, and vice versa. You say it's trivial to have good
| taste, but it's not trivial at all.
|
| My point is, many of us would have thought the plastic screen
| was fine, and that wasn't because we weren't "enthusiastic"
| about our own products. The same goes for a whole range of
| tools that we use everyday. It's likely that in several years
| time we'll look back and think it was ridiculous we thought
| some of them were good or even acceptable.
|
| Consider this website, the outdated interface is held up as
| some kind of filter against an "eternal September" of an influx
| of "normies" who can't see past the terrible UI for the
| apparently sheer brilliance and sophistication of the content
| on this site, but to me, it's just garish. This attitudes
| extends to so many different areas, especially in technology,
| where hostility to good taste and style is often seen as
| something to be lauded, with the idea that somehow, technical
| brilliance and design chops are inversely correlated and can't
| co-exist. With that attitude in mind, it's no wonder Apple
| became so successful, because they and Jobs actively embraced
| both.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > Consider this website, the outdated interface is held up as
| some kind of filter against an "eternal September" of an
| influx of "normies" who can't see past the terrible UI for
| the apparently sheer brilliance and sophistication of the
| content on this site, but to me, it's just garish.
|
| I certainly don't hold it up for any gatekeeping nonsense,
| and frankly I despise that anyone even uses the word
| "normies". What I like about this site's UI is that it places
| function over form and isn't built on a pile of trendy
| garbage and designed by people who never use it.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > You say it's trivial to have good taste, but it's not
| trivial at all.
|
| I 100% agree. "Good taste" is just another phrase that means
| "style that I prefer". There is no such thing as an objective
| ideal of good taste. It's all about human preferences, and
| that gets very complicated very quickly.
| eloisant wrote:
| Going with the vision of one man, and the "style that he
| prefers" is often better than design by committee, or data-
| driven decisions that end up in the best case being a bland
| product that nobody hates, and in the worst case in a
| crappy product designed with the interest of the companies
| that produces it and its partners before the interests of
| the users/customers.
| filoleg wrote:
| > "Good taste" is just another phrase that means "style
| that I prefer". There is no such thing as an objective
| ideal of good taste.
|
| Strongly disagreed overall. I agree that there are plenty
| of situations where it is indeed just a matter of
| preference and is very subjective. But it is disingenous to
| claim that there is never such a thing as an objectively
| better preference.
|
| Literally the specific example we are talking about in this
| thread - plastic prototype iPhone screens and keys
| scratching them. Is it really not objectively better to
| have a screen made of materials that don't get scratched by
| keys in your pocket easily? I don't think it is subjective
| at all.
| JohnFen wrote:
| "Taste" refers to aesthetics. The plastic screen example
| isn't related to taste, it's related to functionality.
| filoleg wrote:
| I would say it is a good taste to consider this a problem
| important enough to address it, while all you competitors
| are aware of it and just don't think of it as something
| in need of a solution.
| judge2020 wrote:
| It would've been fine, but it would not have been "perfect".
| Evidently some markets grossly overvalue quality of the
| product more than anything else (in comparison to other
| markets).
| alpaca128 wrote:
| I enjoy nice-looking UIs with smooth animations too, but
| first they have to cover the basics. That's why I like HN's
| UI a lot - it's not fancy but it has the rare property of
| being usable, which already places it in the favorites of UIs
| in my personal ranking.
|
| I don't think it's meant as a "filter", just built for its
| target audience of people with high enough standards to
| dislike blinking notification icons, cookie popups and
| website loading screens.
|
| > with the idea that somehow, technical brilliance and design
| chops are inversely correlated and can't co-exist.
|
| I don't think I've ever witnessed someone expressing this
| opinion. It just seems to be a rarity that a budget covers
| both function and form. And if I have to choose then I prefer
| to not throw my PC out the window.
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| > This attitudes extends to so many different areas,
| especially in technology, where hostility to good taste and
| style is often seen as something to be lauded, with the idea
| that somehow, technical brilliance and design chops are
| inversely correlated and can't co-exist.
|
| There's a fair chance I've misread the situation, but I don't
| think it's good taste and style is what's being pushed back
| against in these situations. It's all of the other things
| that so often get bundled with glossy UI -- aesthetics-above-
| all-else design, UI as branding, gratuitous amounts of badly
| written analytics JS added by non-engineers, NIH syndrome,
| trend chasing, etc.
|
| Most people I think aren't opposed to well designed UI that
| incorporates a central tenet of Jobs', which is that design
| _is_ functionality and not purely visual, but this is
| staggeringly unusual to the point that something
| idiosyncratic but simplistic (like the HN UI) is a safer bet.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > Most people I think aren't opposed to well designed UI
| that incorporates a central tenant of Jobs', which is that
| design is functionality and not purely visual
|
| Jobs _loved_ skeuomorpism, which isn 't inherently bad, but
| having iOS UI elements reproduce the stitching from seats
| in his private jet skews close to "purely visual". Also,
| the (early) iOS date picker was unforgivable - I assume
| Jobs was aware of its existence & approved of its rubber-
| stamp-like, user-hostile skeuomorphic design
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| Extreme skeuomorphism I would agree is purely visual, but
| I think there's a lot of functional value in buttons
| looking like buttons and other visual indicators of
| function.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Good points.
|
| Nit / correction (for helpfulness not pedantry)
|
| tenant: renter or occupant vs tenet: guiding principle
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| Nice catch, fixed.
| bboygravity wrote:
| > Consider this website, the outdated interface is held up as
| some kind of filter against an "eternal September" of an
| influx of "normies"...
|
| No. Hold up.
|
| This interface has 1 obvious reason that I see that no fancy
| polished interface can ever come close to: loading speed.
| lobstrosity420 wrote:
| You can absolutely have both. A little CSS would go a long
| way here, there is no reason to go full JS SPA to make a
| page look nice. In fact many times it's the opposite.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I prefer HN website design for an entirely different
| reason: readability.
|
| More "modern" designs put a lot of crap and distractions
| between me and what I'm at the site to do: read the
| articles and/or comments. HN doesn't so that, and that
| makes the HN design a million times better than most
| others.
| quacked wrote:
| The day HN starts running that awful "squares on squares"
| JS design method where everything is a button with no
| borders is the day I leave HN. Luckily I don't think that
| day is coming.
| fumar wrote:
| Why is it garish? I see it as the opposite and I am curious
| to hear another perspective.
| scj wrote:
| Steve Jobs made products for himself. He just subsidized costs
| by selling to the rest of us.
| matthewfcarlson wrote:
| The more I read about Steve Jobs, the most I'm convinced he was
| potent mixture of persuasive and picky. I'm sure there was
| business sense, making some good bets, and the usual. But I
| think the key was him always saying we can do better. Makes him
| a real pain to work with, but you get good stuff as a result.
| jrowen wrote:
| What's amazing to me is how some people continually try to
| minimize him. The proof is in the pudding. He assembled the top
| talent to produce the best products that pushed our experience
| with technology forward. Very few people are able to do that.
| Any time someone says "oh he just," it says more about their
| own insecurity than him. Yeah he had a lot of help, yeah he had
| personal relationship issues, he's not a god, but I don't
| understand why some people refuse to appreciate what he
| accomplished. It's a limiting "hater" mindset. (This is not
| necessarily entirely directed at the above post [which did kind
| of strangely come around]).
| birdyrooster wrote:
| After seeing Elon fail upward I have to agree.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > Very few people are able to do that.
|
| All kinds of idiots have done that: Bill Gates, Larry Ellison
| and even Donald J. Trump have all proven capable of not
| mucking up if they've got enough help.
|
| When you strip away Jobs' great council of advisors, amazing
| industry connections and production value, you're left with a
| guy. Kinda like how without the marketing and software, an
| iPhone just becomes a computer again. It's a vulnerable fact
| to accept, but denying it doesn't make us closer to
| understanding how humans or iPhones work. The hunger for
| knowing what made Jobs special left us foolishly vulnerable
| to worshiping him. A man with a big company is still a man,
| and if that man is an asshole then we shouldn't preach the
| opposite to respect their vision. Same goes for Walt Disney
| or Elon Musk - a futurist can still be deeply wrong in their
| beliefs. Many are, which is why their ideas are so grand in
| the first place.
|
| So, let's appreciate the good parts and use the bad as a
| cautionary tale. Both sides of his life give us plenty to
| teach from.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| I don't think I can agree with this take.
|
| > He assembled the top talent to produce the best products
| that pushed our experience with technology forward.
|
| Assembling top talent is something a lot of people could do,
| what made Jobs special is that he did that while still
| actually giving a shit about the quality of the product his
| company produced. "Oh, he just" is less a way of dismissing
| jobs than it is a way of saying "hey assholes, you could be
| more like Jobs if you just actually gave a fuck".
| petilon wrote:
| > _Assembling top talent is something a lot of people could
| do_
|
| Absolutely not. First you need the ability to recognize top
| talent. That's already super hard. Then you have to
| convince them to come work for you. Top talent is not
| always just motivated by money alone, so how do you attract
| them? Then after you hire them you have to retain them,
| which is also hard, because you have to understand what
| they are building, and inspire them.
| adventured wrote:
| It's one of the hardest things any leader will ever have
| to do. Jobs said as much repeatedly. Older Jobs lavished
| credit onto his teams because he knew very well how hard
| it is to put them together and keep them together. And if
| you can manage to acquire them, and if you can manage to
| retain them, you have to then _manage_ them as an
| individual and in function with a lot of other people
| that will inevitably clash at times (egos, conflicting
| ideas /visions/paths, whatever it may be).
|
| Assembling top talent is something very few can do.
| Assembling it and then keeping that talent together and
| getting it to work in some manner of harmony, almost
| nobody can do that, it's an extraordinarily rare skill.
| DoneWithAllThat wrote:
| That's really another facet of this that shows what a
| uniquely talented leader he was: top talent wants to work
| both with and for top talent. It says loads about Jobs'
| strengths that he got so many absolute geniuses to work
| for him for years.
| detourdog wrote:
| It was never about the technology it was always about what
| the technology can do for us. This point of view is often
| hard for engineers or the actual people developing the
| technology.
| attractivechaos wrote:
| Many CEOs have their preferences but their preferences may not
| be shared by their customers (e.g. metaverse). In my view,
| Steve Jobs was different in that a) his "taste" was deeply
| shared by targeted customers and more importantly b) he knew
| how to materialize his taste. Many people only like a product
| when they see/use it. Jobs was among the few who could make
| that product by instinct.
| mbesto wrote:
| > which got scratched by his keys in his pocket, which Jobs
| found entirely unacceptable.
|
| Which required a technological innovation that may or may not
| existed at the time. This is like saying "autonomous cars can't
| ever hit a human being". Well, no shit, that would be great,
| but the technology isn't there yet.
|
| It's well and good to romanticize Steve Jobs, but "assigning
| single factor causation to the output of complex adaptive
| system is a triumph of hope over experience"...his obsession
| with product design was certainly a factor, but it wasn't the
| ONLY factor.
| eloisant wrote:
| One thing Apple was good at is not releasing a product until
| the technology to make it good exists.
|
| There have been rumors of an iPhone way before release, even
| the name was obvious to everyone (after the iPod and the
| iMac), and Apple probably had a prototype with a stylus and a
| plastic screen. However they didn't release it until
| capacitive screen were ready for consumer electronics.
|
| That's why Apple is often seen not as the company that makes
| a certain product category popular: because they wait until
| all the pieces are in places when other companies will
| release earlier with whatever tech is available at the time.
| amelius wrote:
| Yeah, it seems that all Jobs did better than the rest is caring
| about his product rather than profits. And it seems that
| everybody is wondering why such a strategy could work and
| deliver actual profits.
| Ryder123 wrote:
| I think the real magic is that he cared very deeply about
| both.
| wmeredith wrote:
| > And it seems everybody is wondering why such a strategy
| could work and deliver actual profits.
|
| Survivorship bias. Jobs himself was almost Apple's undoing
| multiple times because he cared more about the product than
| profits.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| The flip side of this is Bezos who cared about profits but
| not the product, generally speaking. He was a great
| operator clearly, but no product vision.
|
| Probably why we all use Amazon but none of us love doing
| so. If someone else figured out delivery & pricing (Walmart
| is trying with Jet), we'll all slowly defect. There's no
| lock in.
|
| Kindle is an adequate product that has sporadic iterative
| improvements and occasional backslides. Hardware is finally
| fine after many years of not, software is less so.
|
| Alexa is whatever.
|
| AWS is a cash cow, but thats more of a B2B/Enterprise
| offering.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > If someone else figured out delivery & pricing
|
| That _is_ the product and it 's clear Bezos & crew
| obsessed on getting commerce to be as frictionless as
| possible & earning customer loyalty. Dealing with Amazon
| as a customer is still 2x better than any other online
| retailer in my experience.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Eric Schmidt famously got a lot of flack at Google because he
| insisted on sticking with his blackberry
| steveBK123 wrote:
| And its not like Sergei & Larry cared about product either.
| didgetmaster wrote:
| It is surprising how hard it is to find co-founders with
| business experience who will actually be enthusiastic about the
| product they are supposed to promote.
|
| I am a technical founder who has tried (and failed) a few times
| to get a business partner on board to promote and sell the
| product. I had two guys join on with big talk about how they
| were perfect for turning it into a home-run project. Neither
| one lasted even a year. No matter how many demos I showed them
| and walked them through the product (software that does data
| management); I just couldn't get them to try it out on their
| own and be excited about the technology.
|
| https://didgets.substack.com/p/looking-for-another-steve-job...
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| I wish I could say I was surprised. This lack of vision is
| endemic, and business culture both attracts and preaches that
| watching out for #1 is the highest value.
|
| Did you ever discover any questions/filtering criteria for
| weeding out potential founders who lack the vision needed?
| deanCommie wrote:
| Watch (or listen to) some of the old Steve Jobs interviews at
| ALl Things Digital:
| https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/steve-jobs-at-the-d-al...
|
| It is remarkable how prescient he is about the future that was
| a decade away. How revolutionary some of the things he demo'd
| were at the time that we now take absolutely for granted.
|
| The man was mercurial and probably not fun to work for. And
| many a marriage or personal relationship was probably ruined by
| the intense Apple work environment at the time.
|
| But he shaped (not built) a lot of our future. No one else at
| the time was as visionary.
|
| And I say this as someone who endlessly criticized Apple at the
| time. I hated everything they were doing. I thought they were
| making toys for finger painters. I didn't see it.
| donmcronald wrote:
| And this one (from 2:25):
|
| https://youtu.be/oeqPrUmVz-o?t=139
|
| It's 3m and to the point. Build products the customer wants
| instead of building and marketing your existing tech.
| bilater wrote:
| Steve Jobs' ideas and perspective continue to be relevant and
| valuable to anyone interested in technology, business, and
| innovation.
|
| I built AskSteve (https://www.asksteve.xyz/) to provide a Q&A
| platform where users can ask questions and get relevant results
| based on his real-life speeches and interviews.
| keiferski wrote:
| I still remember exactly where I was when Steve Jobs died. I
| think it was because at that moment, I had a realization about
| him: that there was no other person in recent memory who made
| such an impact on the everyday lives of people. He wasn't some
| grand political figure that uplifted millions with inspiring
| rhetoric or an athlete that had achieved some amazing physical
| goal.
|
| But every single day, pretty much everywhere in the world, a
| sizable portion of humanity uses a device that he ultimately
| brought into being. And I thought that was pretty cool.
| anthk wrote:
| What? Stallman alone changed the world 20 times more than Jobs.
| The indirect effects of GCC, Emacs, the FSF and GNU around
| Linux and servers are astounding. From Android's core to the
| 90% of the growth of companies on tech. And not just tech:
| physics, genomics... lots of them backed and helped with free
| software from GCC to Coreutils. At least to build and port
| BioPerl sucessfully. And, still, Perl's growth was closely
| bound to GNU and Linux.
|
| Libre software democratized the access to technology, science
| and free as in freedom books on lots of term and inspired
| parallel licenses for media and documents.
|
| In 1995 you would need to spend $300 dollars in books and $3500
| in a proper workstation to run scientific software. Later, with
| GNU/Linux, the costs plummeted down. Today you have free
| compilers, free documentation and cheap NUCs to learn the
| basics on nearly any STEM career, at least if you can simulate
| it.
|
| You can even compose music and multimedia FFX with libre
| distros and DAW software. There are even neural network based
| translators with libre licenses and models. That's astounding.
| contingencies wrote:
| You both have good points, and while Jobs' role in Apple's
| technology is clearly overstated he did create space for
| execution. I think more broadly the key point should be that
| we as creative technology participants can be somewhat
| objectively said to often have power to change the world in
| ways that few individuals in other walks of life can even
| dream of.
|
| Consider Library Genesis/Sci-Hub, Wikipedia, citizen science,
| instant messaging, online dating, torrents, Bellingcat, etc.
| marze wrote:
| You can see how far-seeing Jobs was by reading his words from the
| '70s / '80s, they don't sound "dated" at all, but sensible and
| reasonable.
|
| So awesome this collection exists!
| [deleted]
| dcist wrote:
| What did Steve Jobs actually make other than hype? He wasn't an
| engineer and wasn't an inventor. He was a salesman (a great one!)
| but a salesman at the end of the day.
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| Compare to Edison, who was both an inventor _and_ a successful
| businessman. His products are in use and delivering benefits to
| almost everyone in the world today.
|
| All the laud for Jobs ignores that there is a sizable portion
| of people who don't use Apple products and do just fine. I've
| been using computers since the time when the only Apple Corp.
| was the Beatles' record label, and with one minor exception[0]
| have never felt the need to purchase any Apple computer product
| or software or MP3. I have eight computers, one MP3 player, and
| one smartphone at this time and they are all Linux or Windows
| or Android machines.
|
| [0]One time many years ago I need software to play a video on
| short notice and paid for a license for Quicktime.
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| The Three Types of Specialists Needed for Any Revolution
| https://kottke.org/13/05/the-three-types-of-specialist
|
| "Slazinger claims to have learned from history that most people
| cannot open their minds to new ideas unless a mind-opening team
| with a peculiar membership goes to work on them. Otherwise,
| life will go on exactly as before, no matter how painful,
| unrealistic, unjust, ludicrous, or downright dumb that life may
| be.
|
| The team must consist of three sorts of specialists, he says.
| Otherwise the revolution, whether in politics or the arts or
| the sciences or whatever, is sure to fail.
|
| The rarest of these specialists, he says, is an authentic
| genius -- a person capable of having seemingly good ideas not
| in general circulation. "A genius working alone," he says, "is
| invariably ignored as a lunatic."
|
| The second sort of specialist is a lot easier to find: a highly
| intelligent citizen in good standing in his or her community,
| who understands and admires the fresh ideas of the genius, and
| who testifies that the genius is far from mad. "A person like
| this working alone," says Slazinger, "can only yearn loud for
| changes, but fail to say what their shapes should be."
|
| The third sort of specialist is a person who can explain
| everything, no matter how complicated, to the satisfaction of
| most people, no matter how stupid or pigheaded they may be. "He
| will say almost anything in order to be interesting and
| exciting," says Slazinger. "Working alone, depending solely on
| his own shallow ideas, he would be regarded as being as full of
| shit as a Christmas turkey."
|
| Slazinger, high as a kite, says that every successful
| revolution, including Abstract Expressionism, the one I took
| part in, had that cast of characters at the top -- Pollock
| being the genius in our case, Lenin being the one in Russia's,
| Christ being the one in Christianity's.
|
| He says that if you can't get a cast like that together, you
| can forget changing anything in a great big way."
|
| Steve Jobs started out a #3, worked his way to being a #2, and
| was able to attract and retain #1's
| adventured wrote:
| It's approximately the structure Microsoft had in its early
| core Gates + Allen + Ballmer. Vision (Allen), engineering
| (Gates + Allen), understanding tech (Gates + Allen),
| pragmatism (Gates), selling (Ballmer).
|
| I'm sure all sorts of variations of combinations will work
| (and in different quantities), but you need most of it to
| build something big from something small.
| scottyah wrote:
| Seems like you are very new to gathering information about
| Steve Jobs. There is a ton of literature that could answer that
| question for you, but to start here's Bard's answer: Steve Jobs
| was not an engineer or an inventor, but he was a visionary
| leader who had a keen eye for design and a passion for
| simplicity. He was also a master of marketing and storytelling,
| and he was able to use these skills to create products that
| were both aesthetically pleasing and user-friendly.
|
| Some of the products that Steve Jobs is credited with creating
| include:
|
| The Apple II computer (1977) The Macintosh computer (1984) The
| iPod (2001) The iPhone (2007) The iPad (2010) These products
| were all revolutionary in their own way, and they helped to
| shape the way we use technology today. Steve Jobs was not an
| engineer or an inventor, but he was a visionary leader who had
| a profound impact on the world.
|
| It is true that Steve Jobs was a salesman, but he was also much
| more than that. He was a creative genius who had a deep
| understanding of human needs and desires. He was able to take
| complex technology and make it simple and accessible to
| everyone. He was also a master of marketing and storytelling,
| and he was able to use these skills to create products that
| were both aesthetically pleasing and user-friendly.
|
| Steve Jobs was a complex and controversial figure, but there is
| no doubt that he was a visionary leader who had a profound
| impact on the world. He was a master of design, marketing, and
| storytelling, and he was able to use these skills to create
| products that changed the way we live and work.
| carlycue wrote:
| From the outside looking in, founder CEO's like Steve Jobs and
| Elon Musk are enigmas. They are able to convince the most
| brilliant human beings to devote their lives to them. That's
| their real talent. Their belief in their mission is so strong and
| their confidence is unshakable. I wonder what mix of nurture and
| nature produces human beings like this. Out of billions of
| people, a handful are born this way.
| anthk wrote:
| Cults. Jobs woudln't be nothing without Woz and without Unix
| and even GNU/Linux' raise in late 90's.
| oldstrangers wrote:
| Jobs would certainly still be something without Woz, he just
| wouldn't be the Steve we know from Apple.
| jimbokun wrote:
| And Woz would not have created Apple without Jobs, either.
| Probably would have just stayed at HP.
| beauHD wrote:
| > Steve Jobs and Elon Musk are enigmas
|
| Elon is listening to the music inside his own head. He has the
| right people working for him, and he's often mistakenly seen as
| the person who takes all the credit, but he's sitting on the
| work of countless engineers who work painstakingly to create
| his product range. As for Jobs, again, sitting on the work of
| countless designers and product people who make Apple what it
| is. Jobs & Musk are only genius tier people insofar as they
| piggyback on others hard work.
| misiti3780 wrote:
| except lots of people that have worked directly for him and
| with him say the exact opposite.
|
| here is one example:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33703617
|
| many others are documented in books about spacex and tesla
| Capricorn2481 wrote:
| Elon has demonstrated publicly that he doesn't understand
| some pretty basic shit.
| filoleg wrote:
| And? You can demonstrate your complete lack of knowledge
| of something basic in one area, and understand some
| extremely complex things in another.
|
| Ben Carson (a US presidential candidate from 2016) is one
| of the most brilliant neurosurgeons in the world, and yet
| he derailed himself often by bumbling about his
| conspiracy theories about pyramids in Egypt being used as
| rice silos. He showed himself a fool on a number of
| public occasions. And yet, he understands all
| complexities involved in being a great neurosurgeon
| better than heavy majority of experts in his field.
| judge2020 wrote:
| That's what they said? Knowing when to invest both time and
| money into certain products and concepts and knowing what
| areas need the most investment from engineers and designers
| (simplicity for Jobs, speed and convenience for Tesla and
| AMZN [in different ways]) is how you attach your name and
| success to actual products making a big impact on peoples'
| lives. Would these products exist without the founders
| putting in the initial effort to build POCs and get VCs and
| investors onboard? Would the industry be x years behind
| without them?
| jimbokun wrote:
| But that is their genius, the ability to convince other
| geniuses to devote themselves to Jobs/Elon's vision.
| musictubes wrote:
| I was working at an Apple Store when Jobs died. People started to
| leave flowers, management put up huge sheets of paper in the
| windows and people wrote all sorts of heartfelt messages. What
| other CEO's passing would engender that kind of sentiment? Those
| people didn't just prefer Apple equipment, they loved it.
|
| Jobs tapped into something deep with his ethos and product
| vision. He had an uncanny knack of understanding what appeals to
| many people _and_ bringing them to market. Arguably he also had a
| knack for forming teams that bought into his vision and were able
| to execute at a high level. I think that Tim Cook has said that
| Steve's most lasting legacy is Apple itself.
|
| I'm looking forward to reading this book. A founder that had deep
| convictions, the business chops to make it profitable
| (eventually), and the luck/skill/determination to inevitably
| launch at exactly the right time has a story to tell.
| iamerroragent wrote:
| I have a thing for not taking advice from someone that doesn't
| listen to their doctor.
| [deleted]
| manmal wrote:
| That could imply that humans are very low dimensional, such
| that a habit of not listening to doctors immediately carries
| over into their product design habits. Have you found this to
| be the case about humans? I personally haven't. I've
| experienced humans to be highly complex and multi layered,
| often applying different concepts and world views to different
| domains. In some areas they are driven by fear, in other areas
| by curiosity or perfectionism.
| iamerroragent wrote:
| I've worked hand-in-hand with technologly static religiously
| devout Amish. They listen to their doctor.
| manmal wrote:
| That's because listening to a doctor is not a great way of
| measuring reasonability.
| peteradio wrote:
| So would you take advice from Amish person about iphones?
| iamerroragent wrote:
| How is that appropriately analogous?
|
| Do you go to your doctor for advice about iPhones?
|
| Ironically I did learn how to get a dead engine to start
| via an Amish mechanic (he ran a business repairing
| generators for his community)
| peteradio wrote:
| You've established a general reason to mistrust a person
| but then bring up the Amish for no apparent reason. What
| do the Amish have to do with this thread besides that
| they apparently always trust doctors (which I doubt is
| generally true)?
| iamerroragent wrote:
| Point is that even groups we often associate with
| backwards thinking still will do the reasonable thing
| like caring about their health and listening to medical
| professionals.
| peteradio wrote:
| So, excepting for their strict doctor standards they are
| otherwise quite backwards thinking (according to you)? So
| I again can't quite tell what the Amish have to do with
| this and whether they should generally be trusted. Sure
| on the doctor metric they excel, but is there any other
| standard by which you would characterize a peoples
| standards of opinion?
| iamerroragent wrote:
| Are you sincerely suggesting that Amish, to the general
| American population, are not considered backwards
| thinking when it comes to technology and dress?
| smoldesu wrote:
| Honestly, it might be a nice change of pace.
| [deleted]
| nicenewtemp84 wrote:
| I dated a doctor for all of medical school and through that
| became friends with their social circle and keep in touch with
| many now doctors. Imo, most of them are barely capable at doing
| their own speciality correctly day in and day out due to
| burnout, and are almost completely worthless at anything just
| slightly outside their exact preferred area of expertise inside
| their own speciality.
| scottyah wrote:
| Always get second+ opinions, in my experience doctors rarely
| come to the same conclusion and it can be bad for your health.
| Anyone who trusts strangers based solely on titles or past
| performance is going to have a bad time.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Something I always keep in mind: the medical field is one
| where the provider gets paid no matter the outcome.
|
| You notice nobody in the field advertise their success rates
| or makes any firm commitments...
| filoleg wrote:
| I have a thing for taking advice in specific fields from people
| who are doing great in those fields and appear to have
| something useful to say on related topics, and not taking
| advice from them on topics they don't seem to be knowledgeable
| about or make poor decisions in relation to.
|
| I would definitely love to listen to Steve Jobs's advice on
| topics of building products or companies. Not that they should
| be accepted as the ultimate truth, but i would be interested to
| hear his takes on it nonetheless.
|
| If someone seriously considers listening to medical advice from
| someone who has zero education, experience, and expertise in
| the field, as well as going against what the actual experts say
| (with very predictable results in the end), I hope they
| strongly reconsider their life choices.
|
| EDIT: the last paragraph wasn't mocking Jobs, it was mocking
| people who would seriously consider listening to him for
| healthcare advice.
| iamerroragent wrote:
| "I hope they strongly reconsider their life choices."
|
| Well unfortunately Steve waited too long to do that.
| filoleg wrote:
| Yes, but it doesn't mean that because Steve was foolish
| when it came to taking care of his health, all the other
| things he wasn't foolish about are suddenly worthless of
| being listened to. And it isn't like he was publicly
| promoting his healthcare advice in any way either.
| iamerroragent wrote:
| Well suit yourself but for me personally it makes me
| really question the persons ability to reason in all
| other aspects of life as well.
|
| I think it's dangerous to ascribe talent and expertise to
| someone just because they made a shit ton of money.
| camjw wrote:
| I don't think anyone ascribes talent and expertise in
| building products to Steve Jobs purely because he made a
| shit ton of money... its because he made really good
| products.
|
| I wonder what random flaw we could pull out on you? Do
| you put sugar in your coffee?
| iamerroragent wrote:
| Jobs is a salesman. Not an engineer.
|
| An eye for aesthetics perhaps. Getting people to buy your
| shit is a necessary function for any business.
|
| For advice on actually making something, I'd consider Woz
| more.
| camjw wrote:
| Yes that is very true only engineers build products /s
| iamerroragent wrote:
| No. Children build the products.
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-knowingly-used-
| child-l...
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