He might’ve been a marketing genius
Oncology… not so much
I was reading an interesting article the other day about how after World War II people were obviously opposed to populism, and by the '80s and certainly the '90s people that were born after the war had lost the awareness of the danger that hero worship creates.
At the same time, many organizations including government organizations had failed to update themselves over the years, so people romanticized the idea of someone walking in and magically making the correct snap judgments that would remedy the situation. This was so pervasive in the business world I think in part because it allowed corporate executives to justify f****** over ordinary employees. If the company makes or breaks because of one person at the top, who cares if you’re paying people minimum wage and they can’t even afford to pay for dental care or a car.
What amazed me is how long that vision of Steve Jobs stuck around. Even in recent years people have been praising him, but if you think of the value in his company, it’s mostly a load of s***. Those phones and computers are incredibly overpriced, and they have so many bad aspects, especially lock-in, which most people intuitively understand these days. And still we have Apple addicts.
This is the internet. You can say the word fucking.
Especially considering it’s what about 95% of all the websites are based on.
I’m not an Apple fan, I never liked the way he dictated form and function and told everyone to fuck off about their feelings. Now that said, his leadership did bring some things to market that would not have grown organically, for better or for worse.
The competition had to contend with good phone battery life, unibody laptops with high DPI screens, and large touchpads with physical feedback. Left to their own devices, these companies would have just kept regurgitating/iterating the same cheap designs they had made for decades.
He wasn’t magic; if he had any superpower, it was attracting and retaining talent.
Pretty sure Apple just packaged shit other companies made with extraordinary marketing. Like the ipod circle everybody went nuts for they settled a lawsuit with creative because of patent infringement. I actually had a creative zen and loved it because it didn’t have Apple software trying to control my music library.
I think if they would have kept the original tactile wheel that spun they would have been fine. When they redid it into a touch sensitive ring they were screwed.
A lot of the design elements came out of Johnny Ive, honestly I never really liked most of their design elements. But they did try to bring some premium look and feel in a time when every laptop out there was just plastic trash.
Jobs created toxic work environments. That’s nothing to envy. Nothing to replicate. But we’re in a capitalist society so fuck your feelings.
That’s nothing to envy.
I don’t think that word, or anything like it appeared in my statement.
Jobs created toxic work environments.
…and so did Linus Torvalds* — he’s certainly not the embodiment of capitalism. But I absolutely have a huge amount of respect for Torvalds, even if I don’t approve of his way of interpersonal/professional style.
(I used to run Arch btw [but I run Debian now].)
*He’s supposedly taken steps in the right direction here and has made improvements.
Your take feels incredibly aggressive. Most people do not want to tinker, they just want their tech to work… Regarding Steve Jobs, are you saying he did not steer Apple to a level of success and prosperity that 99% other companies dream of?
Your opinion of what is overpriced is just your opinion. Apples sales numbers says otherwise, they do not have a monopoly in any market they compete in.
Regarding Steve Jobs, are you saying he did not steer Apple to a level of success and prosperity that 99% other companies dream of?
Congratulations, you have defended ultra capitalism and the destruction of workers and competition for the personal profit of the shareholders.
Yes I’m an ultra capitalist because I recognize history? Good one bro
okay so you are right about people wanting their tech to work, but it really is categorically untrue that Apple is the only way to achieve that, or that they achieve that consistently at all.
Take for example the Google Pixel: price competitor to the iPhone, has parity with iOS on software updates, features, and functionality. I got my mom the Pixel 6 4 years ago, and she has never had an issue using that phone. in fact she uses it so heavily you’d think she’s a power user, despite having used a flip phone until 2018. it certainly can break, but I can buy Pixel genuine parts on iFixit and replace my battery or a friend’s.
Windows is actually ass, I’m not defending it - but it does “just work” for many non-technical folks, as bad as it may be.
and let’s talk about MacOS and Mac computers in general. Have you tried doing something as basic as snapping a window on stock MacOS, or worse, had one fail in some way and needed to have it repaired?
Soldered SSDs that you can’t remove are not user friendly and don’t “just work” when 20 years of photos just went up in smoke because you needed a board-level repair expert to de-solder and read the NAND chips only to discover that they’re dead, not to mention having to buy a new machine every few years as the chips continue wearing out, and are serialized and paired to the device so you cannot replace them. Obviously, the customer won’t understand all that. But they will understand that they lost their photos and spent thousands of dollars that they could have saved, not because the repair tech wasn’t skilled at their job, but because hostile Apple design lost them 20 years of photos and forced them to get a new computer.
not to mention Apple’s literal crime against privacy in the UK. Also, those SSDs I mentioned? FileVault backs their encryption keys up to iCloud by default, meaning if your key goes to iCloud in the UK, the police and anyone who gets access to iCloud can decrypt and read the full contents of your machine by booting it into recovery mode and decrypting the volume with said key, because Apple bent over for regulators instead of just disabling iCloud for their users entirely and blaming regulators, or just leaving ADP as is.
I’m not sure what you’re defending Apple for.
Why is everyone so aggressive about history and facts? Please take your blind rage back to Reddit. This thread is about Steve Jobs, acting like he did not lead Apple to numerous successes is a bold face lie. You might not agree with his methods but that doesn’t mean he accomplished nothing.
Your example proves my point, the alternative, Google, is just as if not more evil than Apple… just because they allow third party stores and less lock-in does not mean their product is better. Each person can choose the product that suits their needs.
I can’t speak for everyone but I find facts and history important when discussing the behavior of any person or organization’s behavior.
Steve Jobs did make Apple very successful - but at the same time, Apple still did bad things and those things are a part of what he did, for better or worse, and refusing to critique them is also not advisable.
because they allow third party stores and less lock-in does not mean their product is better
each person can choose the product that suits their needs
less lock-in is better for user choice and user experience, as defined by the meaning of lock-in. If a user is massively inconvenienced by a service or device when they attempt to move away from it or if something else fits their needs better, that stifles user choice because the switching costs are too high.
your original comment mentioned that users want their devices to “just work” - do you think Apple’s more aggressive lock-in is conducive to devices “just working” when the user wishes to switch to Android or PC as opposed to iOS or Mac?
Of course he did bad things, he’s human, every great person has said, you learn and grow from your failures.
Apple’s iOS was far more polished than Android in the beginning. Hell, Apple’s iTunes Store paired with its iPods revolutionized the cell phone with the iPhone.
The lock-in has both pros and cons. Do i think it’s hard to move off of Apple once you’re in it? No not really, again they don’t own a monopoly in anything. They just provide a very polished experience in what they do aka “it just works.”
The only thing you can’t really transfer is one-time Apple App Store purchases.
Is it easy to switch from Gmail? Yes, creating a new email is easy, do you get the same benefits leaving the market leader? Most likely not…
More like he was one person in a company and gets all the credit because society can’t fathom that anybody other than the leech on top has the impact they really do
He tried to fight P.C. with apples.
Jesus Christ. That is fucking poetry.
Who the hell is Steve Jobs?
jobs deez nuts
Where is the “genius”?
Jobs paved the way for Musk. I hate that he’s so often cited as a genius to look up to in the tech world
Not musk, the entire silicon valley fake it and hope you make it mindset. Jobs opened the door for Holmes. Jobs opened the door for Uber to completely make up a business plan. Jobs opened the door to Elon buying “founder” status. His genius contribution is in making the tech industry the batch of lying scum it is today.
Which is one of the reasons I’m giving up on working in tech despite having a PhD from my home country in Telecommunications. I have skills and could learn the ones I lack but I just don’t have the mindset and attitude and don’t feel like developing them. I’d rather code my own projects in my own way while remaining underemployed.
People mistaking Marketing people for tech genies happens to often.
Maybe, but then you also have people like my brother who basically worship Jobs, and say shit like “Wozniak is expendable.”
I told him people like Wozniak are the real geniuses who actually make shit work, and he told me straight faced that without people like Jobs people like Wozniak will probably just have a desk job.
People that worship psuedo intellectuals like Jobs are just coping with that fact that they’re less intelligent. Sales dudes love having sales rule over engineering. I’d go as far to say it’s difficult to be a decent human being and in sales at the same time.
The cause goes the other way
Edit: Lol sorry not sorry, salespeople
You need a desk to place the components on to build the computer and then to place the computer on, to do the programming.
I’d say, even with Jobs, Wozniak had a desk job.
Of course, unless you use a projector or floor-stands for the monitors and keep the keyboard+mouse on your lap, in which case, you can get away from the desk.
I find it really amusing to know Bill Gates ones made fun of him:
“Steve’s achievements are all the more impressive when you know that he couldn’t look at a piece of code and know what it was.”
However he also said:
“Clearly, he had so many skills that I didn’t, but we were both a little bit pied pipers in terms of getting people to work ridiculous hours.”
Which really should tell you everything you need to know given who made the money and how many people were made to work “ridiculous hours”.
The behind the bastards episodes on Jobs was really eye-opening to just how awful of a leader he was
Not to mention the actual pioneer of generic-text languages, the inventor of the compiler, Grace Hopper.
She was on Letterman. https://youtu.be/oE2uls6iIEU
well one is good at selling stuff including himself
My crusading teenage ass posted this in 2011 on social media. Nobody cared lol
Fact of the matter is way more people know who Steve Jobs is compared to Dennis Ritchie, so it’s no wonder his death garnered way more attention too. But the sentiment still stands IMO
I highly doubt the consequences of Dennis Richie not existing. Yes, his work was foundational, but he didn’t do it on his own, and if he wasn’t around, someone else would’ve filled in.
The same is true for Steve Jobs. In fact, most of his contribution was being a jerk to people so his ideas won. He had a clear vision, but his internal implementation was… iffy.
Steve jobs ain’t a genius. He was just a good salesman.
The sales people almost always end up doing well in companies. And then when they get high up in the company they only value others ability to make sales and work for bonuses. As time goes on a company’s e-suite gets more and more saturated with charismatic dummies who will do anything for a buck, leaving less room for good administrators and engineers.
Small thing, but I’ve never heard it called an e-suite, only c-suite. I assume the “e” stands for executive vs the “c” being chief.
An apple a day keeps the doctor away
true, with just an apple a day only the forensic pathologist will show up
If you don’t have anything funny to say, then don’t say anything at all
Being rich makes you so divorced from consequences that you start to believe that what is in your brain is what is real. Money isn’t what we think it is.
Money is like radioactive material. Having a little bit in your house probably is fine but having a mountain of it will make you hole up in a Las Vegas hotel with tissue boxes for shoes
Or you can become president
Or even better, you can buy yourself a pet president.
These words resonate so hard with me that my head is ringing like a bell right now. “Money isn’t what we think it is.” ^5, you.
There is a distinct type of person, very good at one thing, that is unable to understand that doesn’t translate to the rest of their life. Easiest to describe them as a high int, low wis character.
And by good at one thing you mean exploiting people and gaslighting the media.
Still incredible that people bought into “half the features twice the price” Apple products so hard that it corrupted the entire industry
I will give him credit he turned computers and phones into fashion accessories. He is closer to Coco Chanel than any tech visionary. If you think about it his methods were closer to QAnon or flat earth people. You can sell some people anything if you can convince them they are better than other people if they follow you. I am still salty about him overshadowed Dennis Richie’s passing who was a real tech visionary.
Steve Jobs, Edison, Elon are all similar to me as they used smart people and took most of the credit. Westinghouse at least for the time treated his employees above average.
Steve Jobs a fascist? Like Vichy collaborator and Nazi spy Coco Chanel?
Edit not defending Steve jobs over here
Considering how much control Apple tries to exert over how you use your devices that does seem pretty close to the truth.
Apple’s shitty software isn’t the problem. Literally everything online is collected. Why wouldn’t they? How much do you think this comment costs outside the fediverse? And fuck Apple, too you’re right
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize that convenience and simplicity are sometimes a feature. Just Works™ technology has a lot of value (assuming the thing does in fact just work).
I don’t have any Apple products, but there are plenty of other categories in my life where I’ve paid more for a worse product just because I didn’t have to think at all about the one I got.
Just Works™ technology has a lot of value (assuming the thing does in fact just work).
And that assumption is unfounded in Apple’s case. My parents have constant issues with their iPhones that you would never get on Android. But my mom is convinced that it’s easier to use than Android despite never having tried Android
I’d be interested to hear what those problems are. Not saying you’re wrong by any means, but the legacy of the iPhone has been, from the very beginning, a simple, non customizable, piss easy to use, smart phone for dumb people that basically can’t be broken (at least on a software level) because it won’t let you play with any of the fiddly bits. It does exactly what it does and if you don’t like that, shoulda bought an Android instead, because this iPhone isn’t about to let you change it.
That’s not to say that they can’t have bugs or issues, because they certainly can, but the ability of the phone owner to brick themselves is like a fraction of a fraction of a percent of what you’d see with Androids in my experience. Android will let you do what you want up to and including breaking your boot loader if you mess around with developer settings, Apple doesn’t even give you dev settings last I knew.
I’m an Android fan myself but I do see that Apple has a use case, and that use case is giving non technically minded people a device that “just works” mostly without having to fiddle with it.
I’ve switched to iOS exclusively about 10 years ago cause I got tired of android being full of it. I just wanted a phone that works without me tweaking every little thing. I don’t regret the choice one bit, other than giving money to the other tech giant.
This is not me hating android either; I guess I was unlucky with the phones I had.
That said, being a dev myself, my phone shouldn’t be a side project I maintain, but something I can use with ease. Apple products fit that description for me and just as that won’t be a universal sentiment (which it never should be) that’s nothing to be scoffed at.
I feel this way about cars. I still don’t even like automatic doors. Electrical systems in any car is a nightmare. Add 10k little doodads and features all drawing electrical power make so complicated a mess you’ll never sort it out and if you do you’ll probably realize that the automotive engineer set it up that way because there isn’t a better solution that’s obvious to anyone who knows how electrical systems are designed and work let alone a backyard mechanic.
I used to work as a court clerk and judges are like this. You cannot tell them anything because if they get it into their heads that they know better than you then they will completely ignore reality in favor of their own, largely arbitrary, fictional universe.
The best incentive ever not to commit a crime is to find out how utterly dysfunctional the legal system is.
The Alito brain is the end stage of this mentality.
“‘Any’ limitation?? Have you considered fish and birds aren’t mammals? The principal wouldn’t be happy! Checkmate EPA, now you can’t enforce water quality standards.” -SCOTUS last week.
Doctors failed to communicate the situation in a way he would grasp that his choices were death or chemo. Maybe a, "that’s your choice? OK, before you go, how world you like us to handle your corpse? So you want a full autopsy to confirm the cancer diagnosis, or would you prefer we didn’t? Is there a particular burial home you have plans with? "
But in all likelihood there’s nothing anyone could have said to him to make him see reason.
But in all likelihood there’s nothing anyone could have said to him to make him see reason.
“The CEO after you will mess up the design of apple products”
Also everyone will stop using iPods because they realized the truth that was always there which is that having a separate device for listening to music, when you already have a portable computer in your pocket is stupid.
I’m legitimately wondering if you’re young enough to not know that the iPod came WAY before the first iPhone, which was the first widely adopted smart phone.
You could play your music from your phone quite a good bit before the first iPhone. But even then, IIRC the iPod came before that was common.
Never understood what it did different to a regular mp3 player though.You clearly have never heard a 32kbps mp3 coming out of a 2002 phone speaker.
Yeah, that is true, but it’s also true like the other guy said, it was absolutely not worth it and sounded terrible.
There is a real systemic problem with healthcare. I dunno if it would have applied to Jobs, but with normal patients, the quick get-in get-out assembly line–like approach to healthcare means patients don’t feel well taken care of, which is a stark contrast to pseudoscientific woo-woo like chiropracty, reiki, naturopathy, and other “alternative medicine”, where the practitioners take their time and make the patients feel listened to. Is it any wonder that some people, especially those of minorities that have historically tended to be treated even worse by actual medical professionals (women’s “hysteria”, black people “feel pain less”, fat people “just need to lose weight”, etc ), are becoming more likely to embrace the thing that makes them feel good, rather than the thing that actually works?
IMO alternative medicine practitioners who discourage their customers from going to real doctors should be imprisoned. But the big problem is a lack of funding to real doctors to allow them to spend more time providing more personal care to patients.
The guy had practically unlimited money. He could have paid a world class doctor to clean his bathroom every week while giving health advice and playing the guitar at the same time.
I know people who are well off, have serious health issues and spend a lot of effort to go to doctors who are experts in their fields. I’d say part of the problem is that most doctors are really bad with humans.
At some points, people are adults and allowed to make their own bad decisions
See also: Nobel Disease.
What was the one thing he was good at?
People say he was good at marketing but really he was only okay at marketing. He got fined because everyone hated him. Then they completely mismanaged the company and had no choice but to bring him back, which of course just reinforced his ego.
The truth was they could have got any moderately competent CEO and they would have brought Apple back from the brink, just as much as Steve Jobs did. Look at Tim Cook, he’s not doing an obviously worse job than Jobs did, but because he doesn’t have the formers aura, people rightfully call him out every time he does something stupid.
I think he had a good grasp on consumer desires. Which seems to be really tough for the majority of people, perhaps business people in particular.
I call it the engineer disease. Good to know that other fields have it as well…
Ever met a surgeon?
Their mentors advised them to work with unconscious patients only.
The Dunning-Kruger effect can affect anyone, including experts.
Especially experts. I am good at $thing, so I must be good at everything.
Every PhD ever
Also bought his way up the organ donor list even after he took so long ignoring it, passing over a bunch of people who should have had claim to it and some who died instead, all just so he could die anyway because he took too long to get treatment. Failed so hard multiple people died.
Source on this? I read that Tim Apple offered a donation and Steve refused. I have not read that he had the surgery.
You can literally just look on Wikipedia. Tim cook offered part of his, jobs said “nah I want a whole one from some poor person” and the rest is history.
He did get a transplant, in TN. Not in CA where he lived. He used his wealth to add himself to a areas with more donors and fewer on the wait list because he could hop on a jet unlike normal plebians.
That doesn’t describe jumping a line, it just describes waiting in more lines. Is that all there was to it?
At the surface level, but there’s more to it than that. Transplants don’t work by taking a number and waiting, they assess the person’s current condition as well. Since he waited and tried to cure cancer with fruit he fucked his liver and basically got to skip the line in another state. This was only possible because he had the transportation necessary. It’s not an option you or I could use and say, just book a flight.
That also means that someone in a slightly better condition (But mind you, still needing a new liver) would have been passed over in their own state.
The behind the bastards episode will teach you a lot about this piece of shit. Wozniak is the genius, this is just another predatory businessman. Good riddance.
Yknow, while I 90% agree with you there seems to be some element between the technical genius (Wozniak) and the idiot businessman that is Tim Apple.
Jobs may have been a piece of shit but there’s something to be said for the uncompromising non-technical focus on UX that allowed Jobs to make the iPhone a success.
And when he got cast out of Apple, his drive created NeXT, which then became MacOS X. Still, good riddance.
Sure Wozniak invented the Apple I and II. But if he never met Jobs his inventions would have stayed a hobby and Apple would have never existed. Woz also didn’t push for an OS with a GUI (which was revolutionary back then) that was Jobs’ idea. Not to mention that Woz had nothing to do with Apple’s comeback. He has been an honorary employee since Jobs was fired. Woz is a genius but people give him way too much credit just like they do with Jobs.
Jobs had no ideas. GUI, like everything else, was stolen from someone else. Apple and Microsoft both got big by stealing ideas.
Is it really stealing if you pay for it?
Xerox PARC had lots of great ideas, and then just never really commercialized any of them.
Woz had great ideas he never would have commercialized without Jobs either, no doubt that that was what he brought to the table: a pricetag.
“Invent” is the wrong term, it’s “design”.
a new idea is an invention, the implementation is a design.
Wow, they made 4 episodes about him, each over an hour long.
Haven’t listened to Behind The Bastards but will give this one a listen.
Oh boy, welcome to the Bastards club. Brought to you by Raytheon and Blue Apron.
If you like that they’re all pretty solid, but I recommend you check out the MKULTRA episodes. I thought I knew about it, I didn’t know the half of it. I didn’t even know about the one way mirror masturbatorium.
Careful, it’s addicting, I’ve probably listened to over 100 hours of Robert Evans talking about the scum of the Earth now.
Not to worry, I’m binging a few addicting podcasts already and I need something to fall back to once they run out. Recently discovered “Lateral” by Tom Scott (the youtuber).
Still remeber an interview to Buffet in his time when he used to hang with Bill Gates.
It surprised me he considered Gates a talented investor, like he shouldn’t supposed to be. I mean Warren, Bill is an investor as much as you are. Even Buffet was confused from the “tech nerd” aura of Bill.
Same with Jobs, Musk and so on. They’re just good investors (and usually despicable persons).
Im sure the iPod was Wozniaks idea.
Back on the old site on one of those text based subreddits there was a question posted:
Would you rather have free WiFi wherever you go, or any apple product you wish at any time.
My (then unrotted) brain was like: mmh WiFi everywhere is good, but apple cake, apple pie, apple sauce, apple spritz, apple cider, apple strudel, dried apples… Yeah I’m going with apple products
Wifi might become obsolete some time in the future, but apple pie is eternal.
Until Jimbo fucks it.
Apple cream pie
I mean, fucking up is a common thing people do and is an integral part of the human condition. What should be emphasized about Jobs case is that he fucked up his own liver, learned the cause and treatments, used his wealth to cut in the waiting line to get a liver transplant, and then fucked his second liver just the same way. This is the definition of terminally stupid, and no UX focus will ever change that.
I remember reading a story a while back about the documentary they were making on him. He had his special diet of juices and supplements and whatnot, which he claimed helped him while his liver was failing. The actor who portrayed him started following the same diet to better get in character. Only then he collapsed on set with liver problems. They did a full medical work up and basically told him whatever you’re doing stop doing it because it’s killing you. He went back to his normal diet and he was fine. Raising the serious question, did Steve Jobs outsmart himself to death? If he had given up all the diets and supplements and whatnot might he have lived?
If he had pursued modern medical treatments rather than a sugar filled diet he might have lived. He would have to have stepped down though and he did not want to do that.
He would also have to admit he was completely wrong about his diet and that he absolutely did not want to do as it was tied to some dumbass “philosophy” he followed.
If “outsmart” is ignore people who know things because you believe you know everything…yes
A better description would be that he treated his body the way he treated his employees. Or he let himself believe his own reality distortion field. “Outsmart” is not the word I’d choose for a narcissistic asshole who thinks he knows better but in fact does not.
How did he fuck up his liver? Do you mean that he was doing something that caused him to develop that tumor?
Jobs ate only fruit. That is a lot of sugar. Your liver doesn’t like that.
Iirc, what we normally call “sugar” is sucrose, made up of glucose and fructose. Glucose is used all over the place and too much is definitely bad (ask diabetics), while fructose is processed in your liver. Like a poison.
Just trying to remember that from stuff I’ve seen from Robert Lustig MD. There’s a very old “sugar: the bitter truth” lecture of his on YouTube, plus lots of media since then.
Glucose is only bad in the same way oxygen is bad. I think you need to rewatch your lecture.
Diabetics don’t have a problem with too much glucose they have an issue with too little insulin or insulin resistance
Too much glucose is a great way to get diabetes.
Kind of? Getting fat and eating too much regularly are great ways to get diabetes, and sugar is a great way to get fat.
Sugar is also acidic. Not enough to kill you, but that’s why ketoacidosis kills people. It also increases blood viscosity, making it pump harder and causing hypertension. Plus, it causes chronic inflammation, which calcifies triglycerides in your blood to form clots.
Sugar has tons of negative effects.
As is an autoimmune disorder
Not the commenter but as a type 1 diabetic yeah you’re right, but when most say diabetes they mean type 2, which is the kind where you eat unhealthy and don’t exercise where type 1 is when your immune system just doesn’t like your pancreas
I was going somewhere with this but completely lost my train of thought
Forgot about that. I too am deeply irresponsible with my liver, but I would never ask for a second one. That’s an entire human organ!
