Excerpts From Steve Jobs' Wikipedia Entry
To consider today's Steve Jobs hype citing some excerpts from the Wikipedia entry about him seems appropriate.
Jobs returned to his previous job at Atari and was given the task of creating a circuit board for the game Breakout. According to Atari founder Nolan Bushnell, Atari had offered $100 for each chip that was eliminated in the machine. Jobs had little interest in or knowledge of circuit board design and made a deal with Wozniak to split the bonus evenly between them if Wozniak could minimize the number of chips. Much to the amazement of Atari, Wozniak reduced the number of chips by 50, a design so tight that it was impossible to reproduce on an assembly line. According to Wozniak, Jobs told Wozniak that Atari had given them only $700 (instead of the actual $5,000) and that Wozniak's share was thus $350.
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While Jobs was a persuasive and charismatic director for Apple, some of his employees from that time had described him as an erratic and temperamental manager.
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In the coming months, many employees developed a fear of encountering Jobs while riding in the elevator, "afraid that they might not have a job when the doors opened. The reality was that Jobs' summary executions were rare, but a handful of victims was enough to terrorize a whole company." Jobs also changed the licensing program for Macintosh clones, making it too costly for the manufacturers to continue making machines.
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After resuming control of Apple in 1997, Jobs eliminated all corporate philanthropy programs.
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In 2005, Jobs responded to criticism of Apple's poor recycling programs for e-waste in the U.S. by lashing out at environmental and other advocates at Apple's Annual Meeting in Cupertino in April.
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In 2005, Steve Jobs banned all books published by John Wiley & Sons from Apple Stores in response to their publishing an unauthorized biography, iCon: Steve Jobs.
The article doesn't go into the outsourcing of the production of Apple products to a Chinese company which is essentially using slave labor with 16 hour work days and a series of employee suicides. This while Apple products are beyond real price competitions and the company is making extraordinary profits.
Jobs was reported to be the 42nd of the richest men list in the United States.
He marketed some good products. The NeXT cube was nice. Jobs though wasn't a nice man.
Posted by b on October 6, 2011 at 18:29 UTC | Permalink
Thanks for mentioning this, b. Some of the same people at another blog I frequent are big fans of OWS, and yet they're falling all over themselves about Jobs and his death. That Cognitive Dissonance is so strong, you can almost smell it.
Jobs was one of the 1%. He advocated LSD use, yet Apple, no doubt, drug tests its employees. Designer Drug use is only advocated for the 1% who are not beholden to the law. Oh well, you can keep your CIA-designed and manufactured hallucinogen, Steve, Shrooms and Ayahuasca are superior....and they're free and natural.
Posted by: Morocco Bama | Oct 6 2011 19:56 utc | 2
Usually the stuff here is very good. But in this case it would be a bit more classy not to piss on a dead guy.
Posted by: Khalid Shah | Oct 6 2011 20:29 utc | 3
"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
"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 | 5
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
at least he hasnt invaded anyone elses country and massacred civilians on the excuse he was defending civilian from being massacred!
No, some stupid grunt was doing it for him so he could sit back and enjoy his wealth, status and power. You're kidding yourself if you think his prosperity isn't related to those invasions, one way or another.
Posted by: Morocco Bama | Oct 6 2011 21:50 utc | 9
@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
For the first eleven years of my life, we had one phone in the house, on the kitchen wall, and it sufficed for a family of ten. Today, everyone, including poor folk who appear to be spending their last dimes on it, has an I-Phone, or something comparable...so it seems. And, these phones have to be tossed after a year or two for another one with the latest and greatest useless features. Life Is Good....is it not? What a Wonderful Life....where everyone can have there own I-Phone, and get a new one every year that can do things the user doesn't even know about, will never know about, and will never use.
Now That's Progress!! Don't waste your lives. Death is imminent. Drop some Acid and expand your creative minds so we can produce and waste some more useless shit that we all can ultimately drown in so we no longer have to worry about wasting our lives before we imminently die.
Gotcha!
Posted by: Morocco Bama | Oct 6 2011 22:50 utc | 11
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
Steve Jobs was a great visionary, and he designed great products. But I have a big problem with his decision to have his 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.
He still could have been a very wealthy man without using Chinese slave labor. Too bad a few billion wasn't enough for him. And I wonder if the 200K+ workers at Foxconn will take a moment of silence for him?
Whether they do or not, he'll be sorely missed by most of us. And at 56 years old, he was taken from our world far too early.
Rest in Peace, Steve. May your legacy live on.
Posted by: Cynthia | Oct 7 2011 2:43 utc | 13
May your _outsourcing_ legacy live on. Here, fixed it for you.
Posted by: anon | Oct 7 2011 4:09 utc | 14
May your _outsourcing_ legacy live on. Here, fixed it for you.
Posted by: anon | Oct 7 2011 4:09 utc | 15
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
Such a hard-driving guy is unlikely to have been very nice. It's par for the course.
Posted by: alexno | Oct 7 2011 6:57 utc | 17
@ 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
@17, that's part of the problem with the Free Market Capitalism Infinite Growth Model. Of course, we all know that it's not that in practice, but instead it's State Capitalism....there's nothing Free about it, but the assumption of Infinite Growth is still there, and drives people to do more SHIT....faster. Change becomes institutionalized for Change's sake...forget about "if it isn't broke, don't fix it." Planned Obsolescence demands that everything be replaced after a certain expiration date...including ourselves. It reminds me of Floyd's Not Now John. Where in the fuck do we (Humanity) think we're going with all of this? What about the roses? Is a life lived if the pleasant aroma of the roses (while it still exists) was rejected by one's nostrils? Or, are I-Phones the chemically metallic roses of our future.....sterile, impersonal, toxic......DEAD???
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRnQ65J02XA
Posted by: Morocco Bama | Oct 7 2011 11:22 utc | 19
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
Personally I found Jobs to be OK, though he was a brutal hard-driver, and never gave anything to charity.
Richard Silverstein has found something where he went over the top.
Posted by: alexno | Oct 7 2011 21:15 utc | 21
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
At least it's better than Obama schmoozing among different political systems to find one that will get him reelected.
There's no schmoozing, only the appearance of such. Homes is on Auto Pilot.
I think it is wonderful that Jobs passed when he did. It's a Litmus Test for whether or not one is a true Revolutionary. You worship him, you're a phony baloney, and the slogans of 1% and 99% are complete bullshit. If you think this way, then you might as well break that 99% into further percentages, because I'm not on your side, if there are sides.
Posted by: Morocco Bama | Oct 8 2011 2:07 utc | 23
@ 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
at Microsoft, the people who wrote all of Apple's operating systems for a considerable period of time.
huh?
Let's not get too over-enthusiastic about mythologising ruthless profiteers and putting them on a pedestal.
You don't know what you're talking about either.
Paruse around here, follow some links, read some of the forum threads. NeXTStep & OpenStep were years ahead of any other development tools... many years.
You remember, back in late 80's >> early 90's... international Airline companies were valued, in large part, by their reservation systems? NeXTStep nearly single handedly made those valuations obsolete, as these entire reservations systems until that time took teams of conventional (procedural) coders 2+ years to develop. On NeXTStep... for about $150k investment in tools, an entire system could be built, deployed... in 2 months by 4 or 5 guys. All of the major airlines did this.
In the trade (coding), OOP (eg: O(bject) O(riented) P(grogramming) instantly became focus of world wide coding communities, as everyone else got caught w/their pants down when this stuff came online. It worked... perfectly & elegantly. For (from memory) around 5 years, the preponderance of serious tech coding research, in various OOP literature/forums/research programs, was fueled/fed by direct off shoots from NeXT, financed by NeXT, to explain the technology.
This stuff transformed coding from infancy to near limitless maturity. IMO (and many others in the trade) NeXT's OOP did more to (as the Apple slogan went) "Change The World" then what Jobs did at Apple these more recent years.
All of Apple's currently excellent and freely downloadable development tools, like OS X, derived from NeXT STEP.
It is useful, in life, to properly and accurately acknowledge people's contributions. It matters, and just in doing that, can go a long ways towards an individual's own knowledge based approximation of truth so that, having taken the time to do so, one doesn't get rolled by tripe from opinion makers who don't know whether to scratch their watch or wind their ass.
FWIW, I have never been an APPLE product owner.
Posted by: jdmckay | Oct 8 2011 11:00 utc | 25
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
@ 25 & 26.
It is useful, in life, to properly and accurately acknowledge people's contributions.
I agree. That's what you and I are doing, jointly if not cooperatively. You're waxing eloquent about his Luke Sky Walker side. I'm saying that his LSW side has to be balanced against his Darth side. But I'm certainly not saying he didn't have clever ideas, or didn't see potential others had missed, such as Xerox's mouse.
And someone, I'm sure you'll agree, would have invented the I Pod but he was probably better placed than most to see the looming storage potential in RAM chips.
I've never consumed an Apple product either, but only because there was always a more economical and less 'fashionable' product available when I was shopping for solutions. I'm in Oz(au) btw where Apple usually sells for an unjustifiable premium above the Homeland price list.
His biographer was interviewed on ABC.au 7-30 program a couple of days ago and the subject of how history will remember SJ came up. The gent concerned reeled off a string of big names, including Michaelangelo, and rejected them in favour of Howard Hughes as being as close as he could get to an historic equivalent.
That sounded about right to me.
Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Oct 8 2011 12:43 utc | 27
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
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.
Yah, sure, that case can be made. Just like W' made a "strong case" to invade Iraq, and Wall Street made a super strong, saturatingly so case to flood the planet w/guaranteed-to-fail mortgage bonds.
Don't act like an ignorant dumb shit, slapping your 1% label on everyone that makes $$. There's plenty of really really smart, innovate, authentic people bring forth worthwhile and enduring "stuff" that the world needs. They distinguish themselves by getting money flowing from these contributions, as opposed to crooks to take money and lie about their contributions (eg: none).
Those who have a clear eye can make the distinctions. Those who pre-judge (eg: prejudice) see everything the same... a death trap.
Posted by: jdmckay | Oct 8 2011 14:30 utc | 29
@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.
Looks like Gawker doesn't read MoA: What Everyone Is Too Polite to Say About Steve Jobs
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
I have never met Steve Jobs and never talked with him on the phone or even communicated via email with him. But I have talked with Woz, the co-founder, a couple of times on the phone at length during the early days when the Apple II was the rage - color, sound, available I/O expandability for hobbyists thru the 16-pin gameport, easy to program with Basic language or even in 6502 machine language. A very good machine where many of us "old timers" learned the basics of computers. Woz ordered by a hand written letter to me a few of the products that I had developed and I put a hand written note with the shipment to him with my phone number asking him to call me with his comments if he liked them. Soon thereafter I received a phone call from him. Woz was going to College then to get a degree under the alias name Rocky Clark if I remember correctly. He made it a point back then to buy at least one of every third party product being sold for the Apple II to try out at his new home in Los Gatos, Ca. I remember Woz being pretty excited and impressed with the new machines soon to be introduced by Apple and I remember him mentioning the trouble they had with cooling as Jobs had a firm rule at the time "NO FANS!"
Anyways, you won't find a nicer guy than Woz and it is no secret that Woz had some misgivings with Jobs. Woz was a technical genius in my book and by genius, I mean like where Thomas Edison defined genius as 98% perspiration and 2% inspiration. I have no direct evidence to state that Jobs was a technical genius. But there is no doubt that Jobs had great vision and marketing abilities.
Anyone should, and probably would, be proud to have a friend like Woz but I cannot say the same about Jobs from what I have heard and read. It is possible that I have the wrong impression of Jobs but I have read nothing here to change my opinion. It is not the accusations of him firing people too easily -heck, with the quality of Corporate America's products and services that I have become subjected to over the last decades, I wish more people would be fired - for proper reasons, that is. Jobs did strive for quality without a doubt. But in the end, there is a simple question of Job's personal integrity that lingers in my mind.
Posted by: Rick | Oct 10 2011 2:31 utc | 33
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
@jdmckay - 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. So be it.
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
@jdmckay – the OS that powered NeXT computers was the 1st to fully build on OOP principles. In that sense it popularised OOP further and build the stepping stones for others. The later versions of that OS would evolve into Openstep, and later Cocoa - the underlying building stones for OS X and iOS. .net is the Microsoft's side of the story. Xerox and others did much of the work on OOP principles in early to mid seventies; Smalltalk influenced some of the programing behind Apple's Lisa (~1979) and then (to much less extend) the first Macintosh. Jobs and the others would left Apple with him in '85 took all that experience with them to NeXT. The various articles on Wikipedia are pretty clear on that.
Posted by: philippe | Oct 11 2011 12:08 utc | 37
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
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.
You come off as an Elitist, and perhaps you are...considering your Eugenics undertone, or overtone.
Posted by: Morocco Bama | Oct 11 2011 23:29 utc | 39
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
@ 38.
Your "Jobs is not a nice man" is, frankly, many times removed from the source BS.
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.
Birds of a feather?
Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Oct 13 2011 1:36 utc | 41
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
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.
Sounds like a confession to me...
Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Oct 13 2011 13:35 utc | 43
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
@ 42.
All this really begs the question, what is the truth?
No it doesn't, jd. That's preposterous.
The only question "all this" (the foregoing) begs is:
"Is there a difference between not knowing the truth and not wanting to know the truth?"
Some people think there is. You seem to think there isn't.
Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Oct 15 2011 1:18 utc | 45
The comments to this entry are closed.
Steve Jobs was an institution in the gadgets world. He was undoubtedly an icon.
Posted by: Jose Antonio | Oct 6 2011 19:02 utc | 1