"How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people -- first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving...
I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves -- this critical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty. The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. Without the sense of kinship with men of like mind, without the occupation with the objective world, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific endeavors, life would have seemed empty to me. The trite objects of human efforts -- possessions, outward success, luxury -- have always seemed to me contemptible.
My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities. I am truly a 'lone traveler' and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude."
It has the style/tone of a snippet from Herbert's "God Emperor Of Dune."
Our industry -- probably more than any other -- attracted more than its fair share of pontification, over-intellectualization and frankly, narcissism. A sense of the over-importance of everything we're doing, which is really just about using ever more complicated computing tools to make money faster and faster and faster.
On the other hand, if we take the last, say, 5,000 years of history, digital technology must be in the top 3 inventions that have most effected humanity.
By way of cost-benefit analysis, I'd say that erring on the side of pontification, over-intellectualization and navel gazing, while pretty crass, is far preferable to the alternative. The sheer power of what has been invented, for good or ill means that we can really never be too careful or introspective about it.
To be even more specific: given the fact that energy prices rising 10x in a matter of months is now a reality, isn't the kind of introspection in Steve's email precisely the kind of thing we'd hope more of our CEO's were concerned about? Seems to me that our reliance on outside systems for our survival is a super relevant concern to anyone who's paying attention.
Digital technology is not even a top ten most impactful invention. Ahead of it we’ve got the germ theory of disease, the haber-Bosch process, use of fossil fuels, the internal combustion engine, analog electronics, anesthetics, antibiotics, hydro electric dams, architecture, and Portland cement. And a lot more really.
It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of sapho that thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains, the stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.
Makes me think of something I always wondered; did Steve know programming? He did work at Atari right?
I think I’ve always attributed Steve’s huge success to 3 things; Meeting Woz, Meeting Markkula and spending a lot of time to practise articulating himself.
I must admit, I envy the man. Who doesn’t. Apple is a fantastic company and keeps releasing great products.
Afaik he did know programming at a basic level, which back in those days meant that he knew enough to get something working without all of the tools, etc that we have today.
But it was Woz who was the true hardware/software talent; he spent his childhood designing processors that he didn't have the money to build. He was fascinated with circuits & electronics & processors.
Steve worked at Atari but got Woz in to do the circuit for breakout, Steve had no idea how it worked and couldn't have done it himself. When Atari paid for the work he shafted Woz by giving him a _much_ smaller amount than half of what he received.
Steve's skills mostly seem to have settled in the management/figurehead role. People say that he had excellent vision for design but realistically I think he had skills in none of the areas that he hired people to do and that his major skill was as company head, tying everything and everyone together into a cohesive unit.
He was very demanding and threw tantrums, but that's still human; however episodes like when Woz left Apple to go and invent the universal remote, he sent a prototype to Jobs and Jobs smashed it against the wall in a rage. Dude had power trip/anger issues to the max.
We can't forget that Microsoft/Bill Gates bailed Apple out at one point, too. I'd say this is likely a failing of their market at the time; Apple's market of doe eyed "it just works" fans didn't exist/wasn't large enough at that point in time. Nowadays, they don't have anything to worry about.
I, Woz; Steve Wozniak's autobiography is a great read for a bit more info into Jobs. He tells it like it was, though maybe slightly muted due to the fact that the two were still friends. The official Jobs bio is just revisionist prose.
At the time of the MS deal, Apple had 4 Billion in the bank because of a loan that Amelia had already secured.
Microsoft invested $250 Million in Apple and a month later, Apple spent $100 million to buy out PowerComputing’s Mac license. It also took 4 years before Apple was profitable after the deal
The other myth is that Microsoft “agreed to port Office to the Mac” in 1997. By 1997, Word and Excel had been on the Mac since the mid 80s. MS agreed to keep supporting Office on the Mac.
It’s also rips the context out of the deal: Microsoft “bailed Apple out” because MS was deep in an antitrust lawsuit, and giving a cash infusion to your main competitor was a way to signal to legislators - “we’re not trying to be a monopoly!”
And while the look and feel lawsuit wasn’t going Apple’s way, indications are that the QuickTime lawsuit where it was clear that MS was using Apple’s Quicktime code that was licensed to a third party had legs.
Also MS was much more concerned about snuffing out Netscape than Apple. Apple agreed to make IE the default browser on Macs.
Besides, at the time, MS made more on each Mac sold than Apple because of Office.
I think Steve's most important skill was the ability to say no. But even more important, was his ability to say no and that the person he said no to listened, agreed he said no, and then stopped working on the thing and tried to do something better.
If you've ever worked in a large company you know how rare that is and how critical that is.
It's easy to say no. The hard part is getting people to listen and that's what Steve Jobs did especially well. That was the point I was trying to make.
I've been on a ton of teams where everyone agreed we were not going to do a feature. Only to have that person go back to working on that feature because it was important to them and the work they were supposed to be doing, which the team depended on, didn't get done.
In my experience, this is a serious issue in large corporations and it happens at the individual, group and even division level. Apple, under Steve Jobs, didn't seem to have this problem and they seemed to get a ton done, with comparatively quite small teams, because of it.
I read SJ's biography...and know a bit about Wozniak...through his father, my grandfather's peer in Lockheed Martin. So yeah Jobs cheated Woz, the one time--and Jobs admits it--but come on, I know guys who cheat like that every uh time period thing according to the uh Gregorian Calendar. Week month something. But only Stephen Jobs started Apple, they didn't. And Steve gave Steve the money he promised, it was just less than half what he was offered. Still a good deal for Wozniak, just Wozniak had access to military CMOS for much longer than Steve J.
Steve Jobs gotta say does an amazing job of looking bad at tech while knowing everything, just everything. Like yes he couldn't do Breakout but he actually tried, trial and error for a while. Master at steps 1 and 3, ignorant but not completely and could have gotten a bad Breakout for his step 2 for he himself to pull it off. So that's why he teamed up.
Well yeah, of course, he was a vegan. He lived in a state of perpetual malnourishment that left him unable to maintain a calm and rational state.
That's almost certainly why, on finding out he had the only curable form of pancreatic cancer, he decided that the answer was to stick coffee up his bum.
He definitely knew how to program, just by listening him talk about it. I don't think he was a Midas but he understood it. He was really smart, listen to his lecture to MBA students in the early 90s, for a guy who never went to college, his understanding of microeconomics was amazing.
But a lot of people met Woz and Markkula during their lifetimes. And arguably Woz and Markkula had their biggest impacts in their work with Jobs. Woz in particular did a bunch of stuff after Apple and none of it was remotely as big as his role in founding Apple with Jobs.
So, empirically it seems like there’s something Jobs brought to these relationships, something pretty important. But it’s hard to describe. Perhaps that is one reason people are still talking about him a decade later.
If you ask me, Woz and Jobs -- together -- both sensibilities, are the heart and soul of what makes Apple Apple. The dueling ethos live on, hopefully keeping each other in check.
If we're talking about the technical and design merits of Apple devices anyways. Not the status symbol aspects.
So how many of the current products were influenced by Woz in 2022?
How many are influenced by Jobs - the Mac, the iPad, the iPhone, the App Store?
When Woz left, Apple wasn’t a major player in the tech space in the grand scheme of things. Apple became the most valuable company in the US right before Jobs passed.
My first computer was an Woz inspired Apple //e. My current computer is a Jobs inspired Mac that Woz had nothing to do with.
It's hard to really envy anyone who doesn't have a solid relationship with their kids...
No judgement, its impossibly difficult but it just seems like an incredibly painful existence and it feels like that relationship might be the biggest opportunity to have a direct influence on the future most (some) of us get.
But according to that punk'd biopic it seems like he got things on track near the end so hopefully it was all good.
> hard to really envy anyone who doesn't have a solid relationship with their kids
Why not tolerate a diversity of opinions on priorities? I'm personally better off for Jobs having a different preference matrix. My kids will be as well.
Great. And yes, I'd resent him had he traded the weekends we spent making balsa-wood gliders, filming Star Trek home videos (paper maché + sugar against a black t-shirt + handycam) and taking desert hikes for face time in the office.
But we are inarguably better off for Jobs--and countless others--having prioritised their professions over conventional needs. It simply seems a bit ruddy to footnote that sacrifice with scoffing.
> we are inarguably better off for Jobs--and countless others--having prioritised their professions over conventional needs
You don’t know the alternate reality where jobs did not do that. Perhaps another company would have done similar things or even something completely different than also improved our lives.
What other company in 2007 was in the position to do the whole widget that Apple was? We know that Google was just interested in using Android to create a Blackberry clone and Microsoft wanted “Windows everywhere”.
Palm was mismanaged its entire life and kept spinning off and re-acquiring the same assets.
Stalin was therefore a sick fuck at the age of 6, so young, so young!
EDIT: That's how a woman I know got her husband to stop beating her, was ready with the knives, said some Shrinktalk quotes (the book may come soon), and the guy...didn't...didn't...have that much of a beating for her in him any longer.
Small Fry was written by his first daughter and I thought it was great, but sad. If you’re in Palo Alto it also talks a lot about the specific streets and stuff so that was fun.
> If you think Steve Jobs was just some lucky huckster you will never ship a great product
Help build, perhaps. But never command, ship or sell. It's one thing to recognize a skill in someone you do not have. It's another to fail to ever see it.
Exactly. You don't have to like him or like his work. But to fail to see his talent is like thinking that Magnus Carlsen was just in the right place at the right time. Your domain knowledge would have to be so abysmally low that you would have no business even making the claim.
Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were at the right place at the right time with the right resources. Now we have the internet and everyone is connected, it is harder because of the competition.
Bill Gates was an insanely good programmer and Steve Jobs was an insanely good product manager. Yes they also had the right circumstances to succeed, just like J.S. Bach.
IBM were a mainframe company back then. Both Apple and Microsoft were already household names in the personal micro computer world before IBM entered the market.
Source: I lived through that era writing software for micro computers.
From memory, IBM PCs were not things people had at home until much later. Actually they didn't really show up outside of word processing and spreadsheets in a business setting, in the early days (so for example University CS people were using VAXen and Sun workstations, not PCs).
Household object is not the same as household name. IBM transformed computers between the 1950s and 1980s, and people were aware of that even if they did not own an IBM product. They were a mega corporation with significant advertising and marketing budgets.
The point I made was that IBM were slow to release a home machine. And even when they eventually did release their first PC, it was still viewed more as a business machine. meanwhile Apple and Microsoft (amongst others) were already established in the home computer market.
It took years for the PC to become dominant. Frankly their dominance isn’t even because of IBM but instead because every other manufacturer ripped off IBMs design. Some of us old timers still call those macHines “IBM-compatible” since the term “personal computer” wasn’t always specifically referring to an x86+BIOS, like it later came to be in the 90s.
I do miss the 70s and 80s era of computing. Everything felt new and magical. It was like your imagination was the only limit. A bit like web development in the 90s and AI these days. As nice as it when an industry matures, there is a lot of fun to be had in the early days when everyone is doing silly things because there’s nobody to tell us otherwise.
Just to make sure someone says it, this is interesting partially because most people wouldn't feel that these sorts of statements were remarkable enough to write down. This is a record of a man finding it remarkable that actually he isn't responsible for the majority of mankind's progress.
I took this more as Steve writing a reminder to himself of the debt he owes to society. Almost the entire basis of his success isn't because of his own work or innovation. It is 99.9999% the work of the people around him, and the work of tens of thousands of years of humans throughout history. I imagine sometimes this is hard to keep in perspective if you're rich, famous, going down in history as an innovator, and have quite the ego.
i've always wondered why "Sent from my xxxxx" lines are tacked on. are those intended to blame poorly composed messages and typos on bad typing experience provided by mobile devices?
Or it's just a cheap ad or for the user to show off; after all they bought an expensive iDevice and not sime cheap Android. Or a little bit of everything's.
Sent from my Oh-MeGaphone SE with the official Firefox app
The deep irony of this is that Apple's approach to the digital ecosystem is to only have this type of model within the Apple universe. Jobs' was like it takes a village and Tim Cook is like "buy her an iphone" (in response to a person complaining about lack of interop on SMS/RCS such that his mom couldn't send videos to his iphone).
I have never resolved my conflict between a Christian love for my fellow human and being very fast to lose my temper with strangers. I wish I could swing to the former and away from the latter.
I feel it is rooted in a spidey-sense for detecting when people around me lack humility or competence. I am completely useless at so many things, I am self aware of this, and while I want to get better I am realistic about it never being likely to happen. I seem to encounter a significant minority of people who are not like this.
I wonder what event in Jobs’ life he was responding to.
gorgoiller, I was passing for a similar situation and I overcame the obstacle. On the beginning, I was hopeless. My advice is talking to people that lived what you are living now, they can give you ways to overcome this situation.
Source? This is absurd from a Christian perspective. Not a MAGA perspective but an orthodox Christian perspective. Or Islam, or Jewish, or Buddhist, etc
I think it's less a "Spidey sense" and more an ego self defense mechanism. You hate or fear something and go into anger mode because you want to change it. But there isn't actually any external threat - the threat is internal. You're fighting a feeling or thought you want to suppress, and it's being directed outward because you don't want to acknowledge it. (IANAT)
No, no, definitely not comical, but maybe ironic because I doubt in that moment he realized that he did put a dent in the universe perhaps as big as any of the things he was referring to.
I grow little of the food I eat, and of the little I do grow I did not breed or perfect the seeds.
I do not make any of my own clothing.
I speak a language I did not invent or refine.
I did not discover the mathematics I use.
I am protected by freedoms and laws I did not conceive
of or legislate, and do not enforce or adjudicate.
I am moved by music I did not create myself.
When I needed medical attention, I was helpless
to help myself survive.
I did not invent the transistor, the microprocessor,
object oriented programming, or most of the technology
I work with.
I love and admire my species, living and dead, and am
totally dependent on them for my life and well being.
sent from my ipad
>>>
Just when I thought Ashton Kutcher and Michael Fassbender had taught me everything I needed to know about this random billionaire I come across this... Well played internet...
Huh, 27 years apart and it's almost verbatim. Is it taken from some existing text or was it some personal mantra (for lack of a better word) he created?
Most people listen to medical experts instead of hippie crystal therapy like Steve chose, and when that didn’t work, he used his wealth and privilege to establish residency in a state where he could jump in line for a liver transplant, got it, was too far gone and died anyway. Wasted a perfectly good liver on that sociopath.
It's not because he knew better, but because he didn't like it. And frankly, who can blame him? The survival rate from pancreatic cancer is quite low, as is the median life expectancy. Moreover, he had the misfortune of getting a more aggressive variant. And the treatment is quite heavy.
Nevertheless, if it was me, everything considered, I'd still try to take my chances. And I believe most people would do the same. It's a pity, because there is still some chance he could still be around.
Given the complexities of the Whipple procedure, I'm not sure I would go through with it either, honestly.
I'm not a doctor, but I've dealt with a looot of oncologists, and with people at the end of life from cancer. Most cancer docs would choose to go through with far less cancer treatments than their patients typically choose.
His tumor was caught early and easily operable (it was a rare type of pancreatic cancer that was). No doctor would have suggested he ignore the surgical option for diet etc, changes. By the time he changed his mind/it got worse, his options were much more limited.
Even then he had options only the 1% can do - move to a state to cut in line. Still didn’t work. I think he was just trying to hang in long enough to see his $200M yacht get finished and in the water. Oops.
The Whipple procedure in pancreatic cancer is usually only performed with curative intent. It's not a palliative treatment. I think most people, when faced with the possibility of getting a cure for pancreatic cancer (which, believe me, it's not a nice cancer at all) would choose to go with that procedure.
I think you misunderstand - they're saying that the doctors would elect to receive less treatments than the average patient if they themselves were sick - presumably because they are well aware of the low likelihood of success and the brutality of going through it.
I'm not a physician, either, but this rings true with experiences from my own life, were people I knew who were doctors decided early to stop treatment and let the disease run its course (and subsequently passed away).
Also extremely strange is he received a liver transplant much quicker than average, in a state far from where he lived, which later received a $40mil anonymous donation
I'm honestly not sure why this was never more complained about. He ignored medical advice, that's fine I guess, his right. But he effectively stole a liver from someone and essentially wasted it. Must be nice to have FU money.
Isn't that one of the big positives of being rich? You can use your funds to get anything that civilization has to offer. If you are salty about this then it's not even a far reach to be salty about rich people in general. They have better food, better entertainment, less pollution around them etc, etc. Which all leads to them having a more longer and fulfilling life in general.
Definitely! My point was more that I find it odd to see the exact same mechanism all around you every day and then throw your hands up in disgust on this specific instance.
Let's not pretend rich people don't skip the line. I mean, it's so obvious it would happen, and no amount of regulation will prevent that because whoever is involved can easily be corrupted with FU money.
For sure. That’s the whole basis of healthcare in the US; the more money you have the better it is. I don’t agree with it and I’m glad my country does this differently up to a point but I don’t see why this particular incident is surprising or unfair if that’s the system Americans have decided to live with.
Yeah, but you still made the trillion pounds of e-waste from everything you did do, and profitted off of jony's shitty fucking life-cycle understanding of anything plastic...
Fuck Jobs worship.
He DID CREATE a ton of shit that the world doesnt need in the environment and by claiming that appl is some beacon of the most amazing design - nope. If appl was the bastion for thought on product design, I wouldnt have ~20 broken iphones, some of which went through many screens, nor would I have a fuck-ton-pil of shitty designed cables that cost $30 a piece, or a lot more of lame chinese knock-offs that they tried to block the device from recognizing, nor would there be a trillion tons of defunct plastic phone cases all over the world...
Your company is THE REASON SUICIDE NETS EXIST at foxcon
jony is a guy who literally removed any sort of lanyard hook from the phone -- when literally every phone in asia at the time of the iphone launch had one, AND there was an entire market for lanyard styles and accessories - because the lanyard "interfered with his vision" -- which CLEARLY his vision was FUCK TON of broken screens for appl profit.
If you dont know the history.... fuck that.
Should I fucking go on?
They are an environmental psychopath trying to punch you in the face with pollution and telling you to love them and give them money.
(the tech is not the question, its their response to the tech's impact (FFS I had a recalled macbook explode into fire in my bed and they refused to honor the FUCKING RECALL)
I respect your rage, but your use of f*ck too many times is actually a detriment to your arguments. I am not offended by it, I am simply suggesting that a different tone would have added to your credibility.
Every forum/thread comment is so saturated by the F word that I'm not even sure what it means anymore. I would bet that every 10th word on the Internet is the F word.
Everything you list are also done by any other big corp. I avoid Apple because of their walled garden at all costs, however I don't feel Apple is much worse than any other corp of similar size for the things you list.
And for Steve Jobs I always thought he is a selfish and arrogant asshole, however this might be true or not, by now I am more worried by the rich supposed philanthropists. We are maybe better off with selfish, arrogant asshole billionaires, than billionaires that try to change humanity "for the better".
Philanthropy these days is about tax haven "foundations" where you and your billionaire friends trade tax laundering "as charity" back and forth, and then appoint nepotistic kids to director roles at your foundation and pay them huge salaries.
One of the best examples of this was when Sarah Palin's teen daughter got pregnant, then got flack, so they created a "foundation" to fight teen pregnancy, and it was revealed that the Palin Daughter was being paid some ridiculous amount to be the head of the "foundation"
Anytime you hear about a billionaire's "foundation" -- think "money laundering"
The clinton Foundation (probably the most corrupt foundation known)? The Gates Foundation? The zuckerberg foundation... all of them are money laundering tax avoidance schemes. Irrespective of the small amount of "charity" they do - they money "stays in the family" as it were...
It as typed on an HP OMEN -- and through my 30+ years in tech I have had a lot of bad things to say about HP in the middlings -- (HP/COMPAQ had the best support mid '90s to very early 2000's (then the Carlie debacle bullshit happened) -- but the HP support right now... is stellar (at least in my experience currently).
Jobs had a pancreatic cancer with a very good chance of complete cure via surgery and chemotherapy. I think that a cure would have been a happier ending than suffering and dying from pancreatic cancer.
Pancreatic cancer actually has one of the worst survival rates; in the UK around 25% of people diagnosed survive past a year, with 5% living more than five years after diagnosis [0]. Chemo in those circumstances often has the effect of prolonging life while significantly decreasing the quality of life, and as such many people choose not to go through with it.
Right but Steve had a rare version of pancreatic cancer that was totally curable and had good odds of success. But he waited too long while wasting his time with at-home remedies (an all-fruit diet, which actually made things worse), and by the time he followed his doctor’s advice it was too late:
> Once it was clear that Jobs had the rare islet-cell pancreatic cancer, there was an excellent chance of a cure. According to Cleveland Clinic gastroenterologist Maged Rizk, MD, there’s an overall 80% to 90% chance of 5-year survival. In the world of cancer survival, that’s a huge milestone.
A was struggling with one thought today, about my own resistance to medical therapy.
A healthy body does not need medication.
Yes or no? Or does medication make one healthy? There's not supposed to be an easy answer. I have some "heavy" duty ongoing medication I'm sad to depend on. (Let's not exaggerate though)
Medication can make one healthy. It can cure, prevent or control many diseases and conditions. Of course it's better to not need that medication, but when you need it it's better to take it than not.
It's a habit of the internet diaspora to label a person either good or bad; binary, with no wiggle room to model the complexity of psychology.
Steve, like any other human, is a shade of grey. He did some awful things and some great ones. That's that. It neither makes him a monster nor a saint. It makes him a... Human.
I doubt this is specific to the internet. Seems to me that people have always had a tendency to separate everyone else into "good people" and "bad people".
As I see it, people put label on things/others as a form of self-protection.
In layman's logic, someone who's already committed something bad in the past are likely to commit it again. Based on that logic, it's not completely unreasonable to use a critical point of someone's history to define that individual.
Of course it might be unfair, but the cost of error testing can be high, and your empathy might be exploited. Plus, if someone indeed did something wrong in their past, maybe they're the one who should put in the effort to redeem themselves.
That said, while I think it's not fair to judge someone based on few decisions they've made, I also don't blame labelers when they have good reasons.
I believe this is mostly true. When we - the broad-brush, general "we" - try so hard to vilify others, I find myself questioning the motives for doing so and it often appears to be self-serving. Looking carefully at the crises unfolding in our world, one can see that we - humans - are not the grand, omnipotent domain -rulers we believe we are. I think the bigger question for Mr Jobs and the rest of us is, what do we truly value and how do we honour and stay true to those values?
> Steve, like any other human, is a shade of grey.
Not the lightest of shades though, to many people?
I'm sure there is good in Alex Jones. It is very well buried if so, but it probably does exist. I still feel justified in never wanting to interact with him and wishing the rest of the world didn't have to either.
While we shouldn't be completely dogmatic and only consider someone's bad points¹, and I wouldn't say that Jobs was at all actively evil², the fact that someone isn't the blackest-of-black pantomime evil, or the gaudiest-of-gaudy moustache-twirling pantomime evil, doesn't mean we can't discuss their bad points. It might actually help other arseholes who don't realise that they are being a problem, if they see the discussion and think “hang on, I do that, maybe I'm upsetting people too, perhaps I should try a different tack”.
----
[1] or conversely only their good points: Churchill was undoubtably what we needed as a prime minister during and in the run up to war, a good family man by most accounts, supported some good social reforms, ete., but he also had some questionable views on race (less so by the standards of the time than now, but still), supported the use of chemical weapons, and so forth,
[2] just a bit of an arsehole by many accounts, and presided over a company that at the time³ benefited from what we now call modern slavery
[3] and to this day doesn't have a clean record on that count
Also to Churchill. Are you saying it is fine to talk about good things, but not bad things, in a person's make up & history? Do you feel that is particularly just/balanced/other? Balance comes from truth and acknowledging nuance, not cherry-picking either way.
Hating Steve Jobs fits tidily in the Anti-Apple rhetoric: which started precisely when they were pulled into the smartphone wars.
When I look at the criticisms of Steve Jobs or Apple, I look at it in context of the life of people and other businesses, and it takes a lot of double standards to make the argument land one way “he’s satan” or the other “he’s god’s gift”.
It's why when I hear Steve Jobs/Apple is evil, I hold it with the same credibility as people that say Steve Jobs/Apple are the greatest. I.E. With no credibility whatsoever.
This is really ridiculous. I am definitely someone who would fall into the category of “zealous Apple fan” but Steve Jobs was clearly an asshole of the highest order. Read the Walter Isaacson biography or his daughter’s memoir, Small Fry. Lisa Brennan Jobs has no reason to peddle “anti-Apple rhetoric”. She has a vested interest in the opposite! But her book tells her story about growing up with a massive asshole for a father.
The problem here is that I’ve brought up a scenario: people who frame Jobs as 100% one way or another (just like some people
frame Apple as one way or another.)
So what do you do? Frame him as one way - in this case in a bad light. Exactly as I stated some people do.
And what? You’re upset that I don’t value your opinion on the matter because you can’t process inconvenient shades of grey.
Sure quote Lisa, I could come back
and quote J Ive - because different people have had different experiences with him. It merely proves that shades of grey exist.
Still you seem incapable of seeing that people have different views of him. That perhaps he was good in some ways, awful in others.
Hence why I will never pay any credit to people who can’t look at, and pay appropriate credit to all of the information. Everything exists in a shade of grey.
> because different people have had different experiences with him
This is true, but also highlights an important asymmetry. Somebody who is an asshole only to some people is really an asshole all the time. They're just a smart asshole, aware of the need to secure others' cooperation or more generally manage others' opinion of them. By contrast, a nice person is no worse than neutral to (within epsilon of) everyone. They don't need to manipulate others into being allies.
> Everything exists in a shade of grey.
Both sides, eh? Even grey has different shades. Yes, we should consider all the information and reach nuanced conclusions, but there's nothing wrong with recognizing that someone's "default setting" was to treat others poorly and that others should not try to emulate them. The "brilliant asshole" archetype, of which Jobs was very much an exemplar, has done immeasurable harm to our industry, and a few stealth-PR "revelations" don't change that.
I'll say it once more: I don't hold value to opinions which need to place people/things into these absurd good/bad columns. It's naive, especially when one can trivially find opposing examples.
So do what works for you though, I really don't care - that's my point. I care about people who can hold a nuanced view, they're the ones who are going to inform me without some adopted bias coming into play. Deliberately filtering the available information to create a convenient strawman is cherrypicking.
Being able to have a backbone and say a person did good and bad things and articulate clearly what those things are takes courage. Especially when the bandwagon has decided on one way or another.
In this case we're talking about Steve Jobs, so I'll also restate it: People who act like this man was god's gift are similarly holding a view I don't value. I actually said that in my original comment, so you can clearly see my view here. Whether you're choosing to make him out to be all good, or all bad is creating a false image, a lie.
Now perhaps you might be asking? What's so bad about a little lie, why shouldn't a person just round off these people into good or bad boxes and call it a day, isn't that easier.
No, because such behaviours are a slippery slope. Perhaps your own personal life is what someone else would classify as deeply and morally wrong. Then perhaps you'd be the one to hope that others don't throw you into the trash based on the one-line assessment of a stranger.
> Steve, like any other human, is a shade of grey. He did some awful things and some great ones. That's that. It neither makes him a monster nor a saint. It makes him a... Human.
This statement is a truism; it's valid for every person, and it doesn't contain any information.
Based on the information publicly available, my assessment is that he had a narcissistic personality disorder. People with such illness are certainly not in the ballpark of mass murders, but they're definitely very damaging to other people, and they are generally labelled as "bad people". What saves Steve Jobs in the eyes of the public is that he had, without any doubt, exceptional talents.
Since he's dead (and he hasn't been diagnosed by a specialist), there will never be certainty, however.
In NO way anyone is making a comparison of Steve Jobs to a dictator. The original post was claiming:
> It's a habit of the internet diaspora to label a person either good or bad
> Steve, like any other human, is a shade of grey.
i.e. the completely correct but also completely useless claim that there is no person who is absolutely evil or absolutely good . What the analogy is trying to do here is to say "OK, so you don't think Hitler is absolutely evil?", not "OK, so you don't think Steve Jobs is Hitler?".
Since they’re long dead, little is lost by labeling them evil. But the closer they are to our present time, the more we must sacrifice by declaring someone an anathema. Worst of all is living people, of course.
Those are extreme exceptions. Steve Jobs and the others you mentioned are not even in close leagues. That was my point, we try to judge everyone with the same yardstick and divide them in strict binary buckets. By that logic, Steve Jobs would either belong to same category as either Hitler or Gandhi.
Are they exceptions? I'm sure they had normal families and lives prior to their murderous transitions.
My point is be careful how much you choose to let people get away with a "they're just human" pass. Some people deserve the labels. For anyone that worked with Steve I'm willing to bet they think he deserves the arsehole label they give him.
There's something to be said about the system that allowed that to happen, and the people who made that system possible. I can't expect a person who is fearing for their life to make the most rational and compassionate decisions.
Slander? It's factual that he used his money to get to the front of the line for an organ donation. It's possible someone in Tennessee died because a foreigner took the liver he deserved.
> Jobs couldn't pay for an organ. Nor could he pay to cut the queue. But what someone with Jobs' resources could do, according to liver transplant surgeons and ethicists, is to use money and mobility to improve the odds either by going to an area of the country where there are more organ donors, or by signing up at multiple transplant centers.
> "It's not for anybody but the rich. It's called multiple-listing, a practice some would say is unethical," said Arthur Caplan, co-chair of the United Nations Task Force on organ trafficking and chair of the department of medical ethics at University of Pennsylvania.
And do you think if you every other human being and put them in his position at that time, do you think they would behave better or worse? Be honest with your answer.
you mean he was selfish? I'm pretty sure this is widespread trait among humans. Let's say if people were in the same situation as him with FU money and the ability to do that, I'm pretty sure most would do exactly what he did.
If you had the money and desperately needed a liver transplant, you’d do the same. Or try to.
Disclaimer: I don’t know if the statement you made is factual or otherwise, but if the system let him do it, then I don’t see the point in expecting him to be altruistic.
The American healthcare system, and capitalism in general, tells us that richer people have more right to healthcare than poorer people. Even when supply is fixed (say land), we distribute it based on the ability and willingness of someone to pay, not on need.
the organ collection does not follow any capitalist principle. You can't sell your own organs even if you wanted to. So thats a pretty bad point to make.
> Jobs couldn't pay for an organ. Nor could he pay to cut the queue. But what someone with Jobs' resources could do, according to liver transplant surgeons and ethicists, is to use money and mobility to improve the odds either by going to an area of the country where there are more organ donors, or by signing up at multiple transplant centers.
> "It's not for anybody but the rich. It's called multiple-listing, a practice some would say is unethical," said Arthur Caplan, co-chair of the United Nations Task Force on organ trafficking and chair of the department of medical ethics at University of Pennsylvania.
He was a Zen Buddhist (in the Soto Zen tradition, his teacher was Kobun Chino Otogawa). I wouldn't outright say he was an "atheist", although I'm sure some might disagree
It is a thankfulness meditation, which is a basic ingredient for feeling content. And rich people need to feel content as well. It is sort of like prayer, but to actual real beings. That's why I thought it could be an atheist manifesto.
> The rich are no different to the poor. They can't take their worldly possessions with them to the next life.
This holds true, assuming that there's an afterlife of any sort.
If there isn't, then the rich would simply live lavish lives, before ceasing to exist. Same outcome as for the rest of people, rather different experience during their lives.
Finding a loophole in the system and working out a shortened lease length with a dealership on a $100K car is not a very strong example of a "vain egomaniac". I could also easily argue here a certain "hacker spirit", and that Jobs really valued his privacy.
Would you say the same about people who pay for VPN services to mask their IP address while browsing online?
Is that a car that would be particularly out of place in an Apple parking lot or even in any parking lot in Silicon Valley? I’ve certainly seen way more expensive cars on the lots. If I recall correctly Ives drives Aston Martins and Bentleys.
I'd suggest reading the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson. Humans are complex creatures and a distilled one sentence summation rarely does us justice.
I'm not extolling or making any other value judgement on anyone. I'm saying that humans are complex and the particular human that parent was expressing incredulity about has a detailed biography available that might be of interest.
Would you please stop posting flamewar comments and breaking the site guidelines? We ban accounts that do those things. We're not going to ban you for criticizing $celebrity, obviously, but please stop degrading the thread(s) like this.
I think the severity of the response matches the unwarranted adulation usually heaped on Jobs. Some seem to almost think that he was some sort of minor deity.
> He had no redeeming qualities. He was just an asshole who got lucky and then got rich enough that everyone enabled him.
He was an asshole, and also had a lot of redeeming qualities. They're not mutually exclusive. People aren't 2-dimensional, even if it's easier to pretend that they are.
I don't know, to me it seems pretty hollow, like something the character Gavin Belson in "Silicon Valley" would do to virtue signal to himself to stroke his own ego. Words don't cost anything, especially to yourself.
"How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people -- first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving...
I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves -- this critical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty. The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. Without the sense of kinship with men of like mind, without the occupation with the objective world, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific endeavors, life would have seemed empty to me. The trite objects of human efforts -- possessions, outward success, luxury -- have always seemed to me contemptible.
My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities. I am truly a 'lone traveler' and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude."
-- Albert Einstein