“not a nice man”???
I never met him so I wouldn’t know. That’s what an honest person would say.
He may have done some shitty things. I have, too. You claiming you haven’t?

Posted by: ScuzzaMan | Oct 6 2011 20:59 utc | 4

It isn’t cool to treat workers the way that Apple’s subcontractors treat their employees in China.
The CCP bears much of the responsibility for allowing its people to be thus exploited but the actual decisions to insist on long work days, low wages, dormitory discipline, plant rules etc etc lie with the subcontractors who, one assumes compete to win the manufacturer’s contracts by cutting labour costs to the workers’ bones.
As b points out Apple is in the unusual position of being able to buck the market, set its own standards, brand itself benignly etc. Instead it acted with all the sociopathic unimaginativeness of any other corporation, devouring young Chinese lives to enhance its stockholders’ profits.
Capitalism is an evil system, a revival of cannibalism, which gets more evil as the years pass.
No doubt the stockholders will mourn the loss of this man, I will mourn the loss of the young girl committing suicide but leaping out of the dormitory window. I don’t know her name but I know the way that she felt. And I have no time for her bosses.

Posted by: bevin | Oct 6 2011 21:20 utc | 6

at least he hasnt invaded anyone elses country and massacred civilians on the excuse he was defending civilian from being massacred!

Posted by: brian | Oct 6 2011 21:28 utc | 8

@6, that was excellent, and I’m with you on who should be mourned.

Posted by: Morocco Bama | Oct 6 2011 21:59 utc | 10

There’s a certain irony to this event.
The passing of Steve The Outsourcer is a timely reminder that America is now, officially, a Jobs-free zone; and why and how it got that way.

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Oct 7 2011 1:59 utc | 12

May your _outsourcing_ legacy live on. Here, fixed it for you.

Posted by: anon | Oct 7 2011 4:09 utc | 14

The problem with institutionalizing THE Alternative is that it crowds out all the other alternatives. Let a thousand eOrgasmatrons bloom!

Posted by: Biklett | Oct 7 2011 6:52 utc | 16

@ cynthia – comment 13

… iproducts made in China. There is only one reason why he did this, bigger profits at the expense of the American worker. Forget the labor unions, forget the right to work states. Had Jobs produced his iproducts in the US, I would have ranked him up there with Edison and Ford.

Are you sure any of those devices could have been made in the US – maybe lack of capable workers in the US is another reason ? Cheap labor is of course attractive, and every single US tech company has its products made & assembled in China, not many are held to the same standards as Apple by the pundits, unfortunately. And Apple was not a trendsetter in this regard, definitely (I’m looking at you Dell).
@ bevin, comment 6 – I hope you also mourn all those anonymous workers who commit suicide in the US, Japan, etc – the working & living conditions at the ever so popular Toyota Prius factories in the Nagoya – Toyota area are quite heavy. I doubt it is much better for factory workers in the US, or the EU.
From the Onion: Last American Who Knew What The Fuck He Was Doing Dies. Not an unrealistic assessment.
@ b. I found your post poor. Just echoing the echo chamber of the intertubes.

Posted by: philippe | Oct 7 2011 8:57 utc | 18

aThe NeXT cube was nice.

NeXT OS & Development tools were 5-10 years beyond… *anything* else out there. NeXT STEP *defined* OOP… when CS professors were still saying it was a fad.

Jobs though wasn’t a nice man.

You don’t know what you’re talking about, b.
Jobs was hands on coder… and superb. He demanded the best from colleagues. He was revered by those who worked w/him on this stuff, both in his skill, precision, and good character.
Jobs was amongst the great human communicators walking the planet in my time. Only a few others… Bucky Fuller and a couple others, came close.
My reading of MoA of late is you are defining yourself into a similar box as those you write about. This didn’t used to be the case.
I would hope you’d blow out the tubes a bit, and re access just why you do this… you used to do it so well. Now, it’s turning into a narrow cult following.
I like you b, and respect much of what you’ve done. Be careful. Don’t be overcome by resentments beyond what you can control. Rather, find ways to overcome. That’s where human virtue comes forth. Being trapped in the box, and believing it’s always someone else that screwed up “my world”, that’s where human ass holes germinate. And when germinated to fruition, we get Khomeni, Bush Jr., and all the many other non-distinguised ass holes of the world.
Be careful, b.

Posted by: jdmckay | Oct 7 2011 20:23 utc | 20

I agree with jdmckay @20. Jobs could be brutal in pursuit of his aims, but at least the aims were worthwhile.
I am not a lover of apple systems, and I don’t use them, but I see the point.
At least it’s better than Obama schmoozing among different political systems to find one that will get him reelected.

Posted by: alexno | Oct 7 2011 21:34 utc | 22

@ 20.
“Jobs was hands on coder… and superb. He demanded the best from colleagues” … at Microsoft, the people who wrote all of Apple’s operating systems for a considerable period of time.
Let’s not get too over-enthusiastic about mythologising ruthless profiteers and putting them on a pedestal.

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Oct 8 2011 4:36 utc | 24

This NYT’s article on Jobs’ last days is far better accounting of that guy, then any of gossip links I’ve read here.
I’d also point out… that Jobs didn’t publicly announce giving to various philanthropic efforts as others have said here (and elsewhere) in now way, whatsoever, means he didn’t do so on his own… elsewhere.
I’m almost certain he did… in big ways. He (and many other very wealthy people) didn’t want attention drawn to these efforts.

Posted by: jdmckay | Oct 8 2011 11:06 utc | 26

It is useful, in life, to properly and accurately acknowledge people’s contributions.
What, exactly, were his positive contributions? A strong case can be made, that the only “positive” contributions he has made, have been to the wealth and status of his fellow 1% shareholders, whilst the technology he helped develop and further has been used to further fragment and enslave us while hastening the destruction of the planet.
I call that contribution Less Than Zero on the grand scale of things, and he would have done better not to have done anything, for anything one does in this System that is heralded by the Establishment can only have the aforementioned effect(s).

Posted by: Morocco Bama | Oct 8 2011 14:14 utc | 28

@jdmckay NeXT OS & Development tools were 5-10 years beyond… *anything* else out there. NeXT STEP *defined* OOP… when CS professors were still saying it was a fad.
NeXT came out 1988/89.
I learned object oriented programming (OOP) 1985/86 on a Symbolics LISP Machine which had a very nice graphic interface. The machine was of course running at a computer science department at a university and there were several capable CS professors around who were working on such machines and saw them as the future and not as a fad.
Jobs didn’t invent with NeXT. He created a really nice package of existing technologies using a UNIX derivative and aspects of the LISP Machine and Smalltalk. Objective-C was developed in early 1980s. Jobs just licensed it. People at XEROX and elsewhere had been working at such stuff for years before Jobs adopted them.
NeXTStep did not define OOP. It made it wider available. There were already some 7000+ LISP machines sold before NeXT came onto the market.

Posted by: b | Oct 8 2011 16:33 utc | 30

I was flashed by Macs from the start, got my first in 1987, for all the usual reasons. And I’m typing on a second-hand Mac Book Pro right now, it works superbly, I’m used to it, etc.
What dismayed me shortly after late 80s early 90s is that easy math-stat-tools, or even good Excel type d-base, for the larger public on the Mac (of course specialists can always manage, or with a lot of education and payment one can do OK, etc.) went off the radar, to concentrate on gadgets (iphones, tablets, etc.), dipping into narcissism, photo books, music, basically entertainment for the in-crowd.
Tools to analyze – nope, though some independents had a stab but didn’t succeed or go far. (Nothing good for free / cheap in any case.) Perhaps there wasn’t enough demand, etc. but it really seemed like a dumbing down exercise to me.
Apple made a big thing of catering to the disabled (e.g.) blind, but that was a technical challenge, and they didn’t actually do much. The blind appreciate the iphone for sure, but that is all.
Of course, Apple was not in the humanitarian biz, but out to make money for its owners, executives, and shareholders.
Bill Gates cut the pie in two – made and makes bundles – and gives, so to speak, to his “foundation” to undercut others, or re-organize, donations in the health line to the 3rd world, that is not pretty either.
The digital divide doesn’t concern either, which is natural.

Posted by: Noirette | Oct 9 2011 18:55 utc | 32

Jobs didn’t invent with NeXT. He created a really nice package of existing technologies using a UNIX derivative and aspects of the LISP Machine and Smalltalk.

Nonsense. “Nice package of existing technologies” does not begin to describe quantum leap between the LISP stuff you described, and the package that was a rich, nearly bug free, fast, reliable environment which allowed production for coders just as I said… 5-10 years ahead of anything else on the planet at that time.
Much of what later became OOP specs, from which SmallTalk (and the other pure OOP languages… ADA, and several other) which never, ever had major commerical use… those specs were adopted based upon what was demonstrates so elegantly in NeXT Dev tools and OS.

People at XEROX and elsewhere had been working at such stuff for years before Jobs adopted them.

Right… and XEROX abandoned that work as non viable.

NeXTStep did not define OOP.

It sure as hell did.

Posted by: jdmckay | Oct 11 2011 2:31 utc | 34

b, I’m studying Lisp right now (as a hobbyist) – talk of coincidences! so MoA will become my reference site for programming, too, not only for politics?

Posted by: claudio | Oct 11 2011 6:59 utc | 36

b @ 35J:

It seems that my factual experience in IT and programming, especially around the time when the NeXT was created, is leading to somewhat different conclusion that those you opine.

First of all, “factual” and “experience” may or may not go hand in had. Given how thoroughly so many on the planet are misinformed currently, I would suggest that something akin to a thorough discussion of just what an “experience” is might yield insights for many.
That aside… I have no idea what you did, or do wrt IT (I thought you were an mech or elec Engineer, just a notion).
But I was right in the middle of IT during those years, through ’05. Had our own shop in Bay Area, rode the wave from beginning of dial up internet and accompanying technologies, right through to the end. We delivered tons of stuff.
NeXT emerged right at the beginning of that, and right in my backyard. And that backyard was where *everything* was happening. We had interns from UC Berkely & Standford IT programs for 12 years. We regularly, often, communicated w/professors from both depts, less known (but actually better program IMO) Cal State Hayward the same.
I was in the middle of RFC programs for all kinds of stuff that became standards. I was criticically capable and taught in all of the pure OOP languages.
So I know something of this stuff as well, b.
NeXT tools did exactly what I said, leapfrogged everything by huge margins. That stuff just tied it all together, was an elegant working envirnment with a rich library of tools far beyond ADA/SMALLTALK/LISP and the others… far beyond.
They all had some neet stuff, and some cool designs and all that… they also all had, at best, very very incomplete toolsets for anything even approaching enterprise work. Most of ’em never even had internet widgets… drop, set properties and events etc… until well after ’95. SmallTalk only got a niche because of IBM’s commitment in this later era.
What NeXT did, with both the OS and Dev Environment, was envision and *implement* requrired OOP *principles* needed to tie the whole thing together… so that paradigms were understood whereby *everything* needed in an object environment could be defined, implemented… and work!!!
LISP, existing OOP standards… nowwhere close to this at the time.
The various Bay Area schools I mentioned… all there programs were teaching procedural coding, mostly in C, C+ and Pascal. Any Object Oriented future was peripheral, discussed and referred to in passing, as more or less and adendum.
Tons of code monkeys/shops/Corp. IT depts *immediatly* were producing very high quality products, w/small teams, in short periods of time… with NeXT. Nothing else was close.
Among other things, I had a lot of experience in logistics at that time, trained by the best in the world. When I got wind of what they (NeXT) were doing over there, I pounded on the doors and got myself into managing whole parts of Logistics for there (huge, very widely and informatively conceived) events to both promote their “stuff”, but also to train.
I had a few encounters w/Jobs, but mostly w/his IT team. They were the most turned on, focused, and largely (and I do mean large… meaning, comprehending the entire environment swhich they addressed w/those tools) exemplified mastery of so much… all defined in OOP terms/concepts/principles which nobody out there… nobody, was even close.
Those guys, to a man… w/no exceptions, always fully acknowledged Jobs as leading, communicating, conceiving and engineering the whole thing. I never heard anyone, not a single person there, say anything other then deep respect/admiration/belief in what Jobs did there.
Within 6 months of 1st NeXT release, professors from all the programs I mentioned were getting “schooled” by the little known, but hugely well organized educational arm NeXT set up to *teach*. And in all those programs, until NeXT closed shop… and in the tools available to our shop… I never saw any other effort catch up, or even come close.
Even today, 15 years after they close, whole lot of world class enterprise projects are being speced and writting in NeXT tools.
…
philippe @ 22:

.net is the Microsoft’s side of the story.

Right… M$ finally got around to OOP w/.NET 15 years + later then NeXT’s offering… and far less elegantly implemented. And… M$’s .NET chief engineers were all brought in from elsewhere, as M$’s understanding of things did not have, in their culture, the expertise to bring in forth in a usable product.
…
My experience w/Jobs was direct, 1st hand… and from that, like so many others I knew much closer to the hearbeat of things, hugely respectful of what he did there… both in technicaly precise concept >> workproduct, but also in his ability to cleanly, purposefully communicate all that to his teams, so they could play in that game.
My impression, also, was the Jobs was among the best, most effective human communicators I have encountered on this planet… a skill not in great evidence these days, and one that for many, many years I’ve held in high regard as among the most virtuous of human capabilities.
…
What is always the case, however, is someone once/twice/(however far) removed from the source of something worthwhile… someone who has more regard for their own “judgement” then sense enough to go find the reality of that which they’re judging… well, they freely will flood their given environment w/”opinion” stated as fact when… more often then not, they don’t know squat about what they are squawking about.
An that… as I see it, is generally the biggest problem we’ve got on this increasingly himan populated planet right now… whole lot of “experts” squawking who don’t know squat about the subject they are pontificating.
I find it hugely useful in life to acknowledge folks who actually do something worthwhile. Jobs did.
With all due respect b… and I’ve gone to lengths here for a long time to acknowledge *you*… well, you’ve just gotten off track w/stuff. Your “Jobs is not a nice man” is, frankly, many times removed from the source BS.

Posted by: jdmckay | Oct 11 2011 13:53 utc | 38

MB @ 39:

You come off as an Elitist, and perhaps you are…considering your Eugenics undertone, or overtone.

How u get from anything I said to… eugenics,… sheesh.
whatever.

Posted by: jdmckay | Oct 12 2011 5:20 utc | 40

Talking about ‘many times removed…’
That’s an odd thing to append to a confession that you were so bedazzled by the opportunities to make money that scratching beneath the surface of the marketing illusions never occurred to you.

confession?
You are reading what *you* believe, not what I said… you added that, made it up.
Which is just what I said was happening here now, as so many other places… you may want to take note, b. That your readers are showing… writing here, reflections of *your* prejudices, and burping them up like birds of a feather.
When you build a chorus of folks confident they are *right* about everything that’s wrong, it feeds the delusion of some meaningful justification in that, fed by the agreement amongst those in the chorus. What is lost in that… the story of the ages, is that there is nothing… nothing of use to others from that chorus, until someone breaks the agreement and finds a meaningful, created and authentic new way.
All this really begs the question, what is the truth?
“Don’t mistake the finger pointing the way, ’cause all
you’ll get is the finger.”
Some guy

Posted by: jdmckay | Oct 13 2011 12:45 utc | 42

Sounds like a confession to me…

No doubt.
You are just making up stuff. No way, by anything I’ve said, you have any idea what we did there, other then follow that technology. Beyond that, NeXT was never a big $$ operation. They led the way on the technology, but never made money.
Many such endeavors in history, for tech and other endeavors… where smart folks had insights/learning/observations that moved things forward forever in many domains of knowledge, but never profited from those efforts.
But your accusations flow.
Like I said above…

Posted by: jdmckay | Oct 14 2011 4:33 utc | 44