Merged Steve Jobs has died.

OnlyTellsTruths said:
Can you name an apple product with the lower case letter i in front of the name that nobody bought?
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iTunes phone? Teamed up with Motorola to make a phone that could play iTunes DRM content. Was a total flop. So much so, this may be the first time you've heard of it.

Apple TV was a snoozer too.

The MOUSE from the Bondi iMac was a total abortion and they were thrown in drawers and forgotten in droves.

And there were several attempts at iPods with built-in content that lost major money.

ETA: And Next did not shake the world, either. Only once NextStep evolved into OSX did it have the impact he imagined for it.
 
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Not to mention his work at Pixar Animation, which saved animated filmmaking from Disney's pit of inanity and the mindless schlock Eisner had been pumping out for the prior decade or so.
 
nvidiot said:
Yes but what exactly did he actually do to generate this "cult like following"? I'm still trying to work out what we're supposed to be lauding him for aside from being somehow able to sell heaters in the sahara.

I don't want to step on anyone, but I'd dislike the hagiography that comes with the passing of celebrities. Hence the posting of "Everyone's a great bloke when they're dead" YT link earlier.
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Well, on the BBC Radio this morning (as opposed to TV), it wasn't all hagiography, his management style was referred to. The quote was something along the lines of, "Does being successful give you the right to be an *******?"
 
Just read the he was adopted. Never knew that. His father is still alive but they've never spoken.
 
Darat said:
Astonishing - any links? (Not that I don't Belleville you but it sounds very interesting.)
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I'd recommend not believing it.

http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2011/10/01/the-new-york-times-blows-it-big-time-on-brain-imaging:/

Since we're here in the obit thread I'd better say something about Mr Jobs.

I'm a PC guy. It's a work thing. I type this on bog standard Windows and IE because thats what we have at work. It's the default enterprise environment. In my pocket is another default enterprise device, a blackberry. It sits alongside my Android phone. I've never in my life owned an Apple product. Yet I have used them. I support the MacBooks iPhones and iPads that want to connect to my systems. I do know a little bit about them. They're classy well polished, a delight to their users and I respect that. Where Windows asks a dozen baffling questions Apple either knows what its users want or asks in a far less baffling way. I'm a nuts and bolts kinda guy. If I was into cars rather than computers I'd want the 20 year old technology you can fiddle with rather than a fly by wire porsche. If I were a camera guy I'd want an SLR that gave me direct control rather than auto focus. As it is I'm into computers and like those early linux machines where I can learn about every aspect of the entire machine. I'm not Apples demographic but that doens't mean I can't respect what they do.

So what it Steve Jobs to me? A great man. What did he do that was so special? What everyone else was trying to do but sooo much classier. You can scoff that Apple's innovations were evolution rather than revolution but what's so bad about that?

Is there nothing special about Usain Bolt, after all people have been sprinting for ages.
Rolls Royce? Just another car manufacturer: over priced and no better than a Ford?
What did Shakespere do that was so impressive? Plays and sonnets weren't exactly groundbreaking even then.

Steve Jobs did what he did and he did it with more style, more finesse more flair than any of his contempories. And he was enormously sucessful with it. That's a rare combination.

Even though I never thanked him with my cash, I know that the systems I do use today ripped off design and functionality that Apple brought to market. Without his influence the device I used to read the news on the train this morning wouldn't have a deliciously huge, inefficient, battery sucking screen, it wouldn't have a multi touch interface. I wouldn't even know that I wanted such a thing. The soft rounded edges and smooth animations that make no practical difference to my work wouldn't ease my soul. Heck there might not even be a mouse on my computer if it had been left to Xerox to market the concept.

That's without even touching on the Apple users who made so many marvelous things with those products. People like Douglass Adams, Richard Dawkins and Stephen Fry. Would an adoring public have squeezed a little less output from these fabulous writers if they had been a little less enomoured of their technology. I don't know.

Steve Jobs: a giant amongst technologists who will be sorely missed.
 
BenBurch said:
When a big design house has a runway show, all the designs are under then name of the guy who founded the design house and who selects and informs the designs.

This is no different.

And the contribution of that founder is usually not negligible.
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Not quite the same. A more accurate analogy would be when one design house has a star designer, in which case that 'star' designer is often....well, 'The Star'. In Apples case I believe all their breakthrough products were designed by one man...and it wasn't Jobs.
 
BenBurch said:
I'm just barely younger.

I wish I believed in a Heaven, because he clearly would be a candidate, not because of his work, but because he seemed to be a just and fair and good human being.
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Er he was widely reported to be a bit of a git to work for....
 
Ethan Thane Athen said:
Er he was widely reported to be a bit of a git to work for....
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Yes, I found that a slightly odd opinion. I don't much care for Apple products, but I understand that he's done very well at selling them to the world at large, but indeed everything I've read about him over the years says that he's thoroughly unpleasant to work with or for. And obviously he cancelled all of Apple's philanthropic programmes when he returned.
 
nvidiot said:
Yes but what exactly did he actually do to generate this "cult like following"? I'm still trying to work out what we're supposed to be lauding him for aside from being somehow able to sell heaters in the sahara.
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But that's my point - he was almost singularly good at creating "buzz" around generally average to good products in a very crowded segment. That is an accomplishment, and in his case an extrordinarily rewarding one.

How did he do it? Beats me. If I could explain it (or even describe it), I'd be less impressed by it. I am certain that he owes some measure of his success to the same mystery force that allows TV to sell ad time on any number of "Reality" shows.
 
Ethan Thane Athen said:
Not quite the same. A more accurate analogy would be when one design house has a star designer, in which case that 'star' designer is often....well, 'The Star'. In Apples case I believe all their breakthrough products were designed by one man...and it wasn't Jobs.
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Define design.

Jobs gave (very strict, AFAIK) guidelines on what the products should do, how they should behave, and what they should look. Jobs understood that design ultimately encompasses everything, not merely the outer shell, but also the software, UI, and the technology that is needed to run all that.

The designer you speak off happened to have similar guidelines, so he is eager to follow them, but he was not responsible for the whole product. His field of expertise encompasses the hardware, what you can touch and see from the outside, and it ends at the technology. He certainly didn't design the processor or wrote code, though he is responsible for finding a way to mate the technology to his designs.

Both people (and more) are needed to make the product. But there needs to be a person at the top that leads the team. The one that says "Junk!" or "Great!". That was Jobs. Hopefully, he has selected successors that understand his vision.
 
BenBurch said:
I'm just barely younger.

I wish I believed in a Heaven, because he clearly would be a candidate, not because of his work, but because he seemed to be a just and fair and good human being.
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Apparently his first fiance and daughter didn't get the memo about Steve Jobs being a fair and good human being. Nor the team that worked on the the first Macintosh and Lisa computer systems.

Steve alienated his first fiance after she got pregnant and disavowed his first daughter for much of the earlier years of her life.

They did not reconcile untill much later in his life.

He was also extremely hard on his employees during the early years of Apple.

You can see a bit of his arrogance in the documentaries "Triumph of the Nerds" and "Nerds2.0.1" By Robert X. Cringely
 
Also, just for the record, Steve Wozniak was the technical genius behind Apple in the early years.

Steve jobs was very good at getting existing technology (I.e. tablet PC, PDAs, MP3players, etc.) and dressing it up in chrome, dumbing it down for the masses and selling them like hot cakes at twice the price of the competition.

You have to give Jobs credit for getting us to want his shiny baubbles like an addict craves crack.

For that I will miss him. I can only hope that Apple will be able to continue without his unique stewardship. (Apple didn't do so hot the last time he was not at the helm.)
 
BenBurch said:
My friends who have worked for him say he was only hard on people when they screwed up big time. 99% of the time, my experience is that big time screw ups are usually things you could have avoided.
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Fair enough - you appear to have better info than me. I stand corrected.
 
elgarak said:
Define design.

Jobs gave (very strict, AFAIK) guidelines on what the products should do, how they should behave, and what they should look. Jobs understood that design ultimately encompasses everything, not merely the outer shell, but also the software, UI, and the technology that is needed to run all that.

The designer you speak off happened to have similar guidelines, so he is eager to follow them, but he was not responsible for the whole product. His field of expertise encompasses the hardware, what you can touch and see from the outside, and it ends at the technology. He certainly didn't design the processor or wrote code, though he is responsible for finding a way to mate the technology to his designs.

Both people (and more) are needed to make the product. But there needs to be a person at the top that leads the team. The one that says "Junk!" or "Great!". That was Jobs. Hopefully, he has selected successors that understand his vision.
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Jonathan Ive is described as the leading designer and conceptual mind behind the iMac, titanium and aluminum PowerBook G4, G4 Cube, MacBook, unibody MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iPod, iPhone, and iPad.

Sounds like the 'designer' to me.

Of course I don't think he designed the processor - I believe Apple products have used both Intel and ARM processors. Neither of which, AFAIK, were designed by Jobs.

C'mon, Ive is reknowned in the industry as the guy behind Apple's innovative designs. For any common use of the word 'designer', he's it.
 
uruk said:
Steve jobs was very good at getting existing technology (I.e. tablet PC, PDAs, MP3players, etc.) and dressing it up in chrome, dumbing it down for the masses and selling them like hot cakes at twice the price of the competition.
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Yeah, remember all those great $250 tablet PCs when the iPad was introduced!
 
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