cannot wait for this book. it is insane that steve jobs has somehow become underrated because the lesson has become “sometimes assholes are geniuses”… that is such a painfully reductive narrative it beggars belief. there is a reason he is in/on the pantheon, and to talk yourself out of it is to do yourself a disservice. it’s just that a lot of his skills are not transferable because you have to cultivate the kind of taste he spent his whole life acquiring. the only transferable skill is in finding the next one (me, obviously, xP), so that we can similarly talk ourselves into how it was obvious and evolutionary and etc.
i cannot summon any other product announcements that ANYONE cared about in the way that people in my (nerd) dorm did for steve. you don’t have to put his merits and demerits on a ledger to appreciate his greatness. just take “the good parts” and leave the bad. he is sui generis.
Anyone with a hot negative take on Steve Jobs should watch some of the interviews and presentations he gave as early as the 80s. To me he comes across as a really sharp and surprisingly genuine person. Certainly with flaws but compared to others he just seems real, for lack of a better word.
The things he says are sometimes amazingly prescient, like the interview was made in the 2000s instead of decades earlier, and it's interesting how much effort he puts in to trying to explain it to those who had no idea. It certainly impresses me, when I see it with the benefit of knowing what happened.
I would have loved to see his take on the current AI developments. There is a primordial stew bubbling now that reminds me of both the personal computer and smartphone revolutions but nobody in the circus seems to have any real idea what the most important implications are. I think Steve might have.
> it’s just that a lot of his skills are not transferable because you have to cultivate the kind of taste he spent his whole life acquiring
Steve had great taste and keen insights as a PM, but what pushed him to GOAT status was his intuition for people and his capacity to rally them to his cause. Whether pre-Apple, at early Apple, NeXT, Pixar, or modern Apple, he was consistently able to identify world tier performers and get them to join the vision and do great stuff.
Witness that some of those people are still making Apple what it is 15 years after his death. That’s an insane skill that you very rarely see, whereas as a designer I see people with great taste not that infrequently.
> the lesson has become “sometimes assholes are geniuses"
In my experience, the asshole label, when faced with competence comes from people who are incompetent, insecure or, very often, both. I've seen this in action more than once.
When someone who is --to generalize-- one standard deviation more competent than a group comes into that group, they tend to be attacked like white blood cells attack foreign matter. Office politics and culture can be brutal and destructive this way. If everyone is comfortable, professionally non-threatening and at the same relative competence level, all is well. Smooth sailing. Introduce someone significantly better and you have a problem.
I might be unpopular, but that does not make it not real. I have witnessed this kind of thing multiple times in different organizations and at different levels over my 40+ year career.
I think of it as what happens in the show Survivor, where people sometimes team-up and vote out the strongest players because they perceive them as a threat, rather than taking advantage of them to help the team advance in the game. In other words, it's human nature.
What a crappy thing to say to someone speaking honestly and passionately . I don’t worship the guy but I sure as hell consider myself lucky to have watched the iPhone announcement live on a webstream. It’s inarguably one of the most important products in human history. It changed all of our lives whether you own one or not.
You can argue that someone else would have got there eventually, but Apple did it first and it amazed everyone who used it. And if it didn’t amaze you, I think you’re bitter and cynical. I’m not the person you responded to, but Apple nerds can throw insults too.
I think it would have taken many years for other companies to get to the 1.0 version of the iPhone and they would have done it worse. Steve’s incredible demand for “just works” when it came to stuff like that wrangled employees to do what was considered impossible at the time.
I was on the team that delivered the first iPad and you wouldn’t believe how excited we were for the announcement as other companies introduced tablets that weren’t anywhere near as good during the months leading up to it. It was a magical thing to be a part of and I think the hardware and software engineers responsible for the first iPhone genuinely accomplished the impossible.
Steve Jobs was one the only people who could have steered a company to do what Apple did during his second time there. He resuscitated a dying company and made it the cool brand for young people and a veritable juggernaut. I can’t do that. I doubt you could either.
> one of the most important products in human history
the pill (birth control) and the washing machine were the two single most significant products of the 20th century due to their role in liberating women. i can think of others (the light bulb, the car, the television). do you really believe the iphone compares (in terms of historical significance) to these products?
> And if it didn’t amaze you, I think you’re bitter and cynical.
it didn't amaze me because consumer electronics don't amaze me. sorry.
> I was on the team that delivered the first iPad and you wouldn’t believe how excited we were for the announcement as other companies introduced tablets that weren’t anywhere near as good during the months leading up to it.
being proud of your work is fine. assuming it is of historical importance is arrogant. sorry again.
If we want to be pedantic, the transistor is perhaps the linchpin of the modern world. The combustable engine before that, of course. And if we really want to divorce the conversation from its origin, I believe that systems of writing are the most important invention in human history.
>> I was on the team that delivered the first iPad and you wouldn’t believe how excited we were for the announcement as other companies introduced tablets that weren’t anywhere near as good during the months leading up to it.
> being proud of your work is fine. assuming it is of historical importance is arrogant. sorry again.
I didn't say my work was historically important. I said I was on a team working on a similar project during that time period. The _iPhone is historically important_ and I specifically called it out as such by stating that the team that built it did the impossible.
Either you're putting words in my mouth or you genuinely don't understand the points I'm making. I was talking about the enthusiasm of _my team_, which was not the iPhone team, because I wanted to portray the enthusiasm of the employees building products under the CEO being discussed. The iPhone team genuinely changed the world.
> If we want to be pedantic, the transistor is perhaps the linchpin of the modern world
Great example. Shockly and Bardeen got a nobel for it. Did Steve Jobs get a nobel for the iPhone? Sorry I'm not aware.
> The iPhone team genuinely changed the world
I feel like not a single person on this site has ever taken a writing class.
My guy you've repeated this claim thrice now without a single instance/indication for how. Do you not understand that I don't agree with you and therefore your job (if you choose) is to convince me, not just reiterate the same shtick over and over hoping I just magically change my mind.
Edit: it's amazing to me how asinine this discussion is. Only on hn would I be debating whether removing a physical keyboard from a consumer electronics device is considered a historical event. If you think it was more than that, that the iPhone ushered in the era of mobile connectivity, you're delusional (but I guess the reality distortion field is still strong at AP).
You must be a hoot at parties. Getting to pick and choose what you and everyone else around you should care about and how they define terms to fit exactly what’s important to just you.
Orthography may be independent of language, but shockingly in society, it’s part of written language.
brother you were trying to "gotcha" me by saying my language is imprecise because i didn't capitalize. i'm pointing out that the two things have literally nothing to do with each other.
It’s not trying to be a gotcha, it’s pointing out the sheer arrogance to criticize someone for your own decision to take a commonly used metaphor literally, and then to go on and act high and mighty because you’ve decided to be the outlier in society who’s decided that you get to pick and choose language norms at your whim.
But you do you. I’m sure it gives some self satisfaction to pick pseudo intellectual arguments. There’s no point continuing this discussion because it’s clearly been in bad faith from the get go.
i cannot summon any other product announcements that ANYONE cared about in the way that people in my (nerd) dorm did for steve. you don’t have to put his merits and demerits on a ledger to appreciate his greatness. just take “the good parts” and leave the bad. he is sui generis.