Absolutely. But also, as a species, we're such a fan of these narratives that lionize people like Steve jobs. A brief article written by a friend about a project from their college years is much more humanizing than anything I've read about Steve Jobs. Sure, there's the "garage beginnings" part of the story but even that is very much lionized as "grind and hustle".
I think the way the myth of Steve Jobs and his impact on the world is a great example to juxtapose against Linus\Linux in so many ways. Linux runs nearly everything and was given away for free and the broader public is totally unaware. Steve Jobs sells hardware and constantly played up the lion narrative as a push to make money and be important. Im more interested in the former than the lot.
Inflammatory comment? Maybe. But I think we need to shift the values that we collectively encourage and this article is fantastic.
> But I think we need to shift the values that we collectively encourage and this article is fantastic.
Thank you for expressing that, I agree wholeheartedly. There's this increasing sentiment that everything is a product - something many people on HN are responsible for promoting. Where once was humility, there's now opportunism: Terminal emulator? Meet subscription service. In an industry defined by it's ability to generate hype cycles and profit off them, there's something brilliant and refreshing about FOSS and it's culture.
Steve Jobs got the private jet and the flashy keynotes, but Linus Torvalds is undoubtedly the bigger rockstar.
Woz had nothing to do with saving Apple in the 90s - and nothing for nearly 40 years - the only reason we talk about Apple today at all is because of Jobs and the small group he supported himself with in the late 90s. He was clearly smart enough to figure out how to save Apple. That’s more than “just” being a designer. 3 predecessors couldn’t figure it out and Gil Amelio wasn’t an idiot (Spindler wasn’t an idiot either - but oof talk about being out of your element)
The Apple of Wozniak is a historical footnote. Apple of today is NeXT - Jobs’ company.
A company doesn’t just succeed on technical prowess which is more where Woz’s skills lay. Trying to decide which one of them is more intelligent is pointless. Steve Jobs was smarter than the majority of the commenters here IMHO.
> the only reason we talk about Apple today at all is because of Jobs and the small group he supported himself with
It's fair to say that success can be attributed to the Apple II, which without Woz wouldn't exist. Yes, he did not make the iPod - but he bolstered Steve when his technical council was empty and was content doing so for next-to-nothing. There's no need to belittle his actions, obviously nothing he did competed with the work Jobs was doing. The two operated in their own lanes.
> Trying to decide which one of them is more intelligent is pointless.
I mean, I agree. Suffice to say that Steve Jobs could have never turned in his first Atari contract if Woz didn't do the work for him, though.
Yep, Apple needed them both. The Apple II was there early, but by the mid-80's it was very overpriced for its capabilities, compared to the Commodore 64 and Atari 8-bits. It needed Jobs' marketing abilities.
Late 80's and 90's Apple survived purely because of marketing. Both Commodore and Atari had them beat technically, with the Amiga and ST. Remember, both of those could emulate the Mac and were half the price.
I remember them, and I have to tell you the Commodore and Atari 68k machines were not obvious winners. Ugly software, ugly hardware. I know this isn’t what fans of those machines want to hear, but Apple’s design aesthetic blew them and the PC away; Apple was simply in another league.
Late 80’s Macs had the best user experience available. Again, this isn’t a popular take, but it is absolutely true. “Apple’s marketing prowess is what sold them” is bullshit; Apple was better at selling, but not so much better that it could overcome perceivably middle of the road products. Apple’s industrial and UI design led the industry. Everybody else followed.
You are, of course, right. Apple's UI was better. I was primarily an Amiga user, but also had a friend with an Atari ST around that time, and both their desktops were kinda ugly. Amiga got more professional looking with 2.0, but still no match for the Mac in terms of usability.
And they filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and were bought for a file sale price by SGI (I think Cray could have used some high quality market research in the 80s.)
> Steve Jobs was smarter than the majority of the commenters here IMHO.
Nah, you really think so?! Just because he was probably the most successful business leader in his generation you think he was smarter than us, HN commenters, despite our incredible feats like foreseeing the DropBox fiasco, predicting the LISP AI revival and so many others?
Kind of odd generalizing 'smart'. People have different skill sets and it's pointless comparing eg dev skills with marketing skills.
Imo, Jobs was good at making hype, that was his skill set and he was undoubtedly good at it. Woz, Torvalds, have very different skill sets from his but it's apples to oranges.
The brains behind the hardware and software of the Apple II - a remarkable accomplishment, to be sure, but even there, the marketing and packaging that Jobs contributed was not nothing. And Woz contributed nothing whatsoever to the Mac, let alone the iPod, the iPhone, or the products that came later.
Woz left pretty much no traces on contemporary Apple. Jobs is all over the place (and, if anything, it's Tim Cook who is the underrated contributor). And for all the narrative of Woz as the unsung hero, he parlayed his fame and wealth into an impressive string of failed products, up to and including a blockchain (which, I think, is still a going concern).
I think some of this is because people don't have the same freedom to tinker with things for fun or altruism without a profit motive, because life is so much more unaffordable now. Generations Y, Z and α are all struggling to just survive let alone potentially retire.
I think most of these opinion threads about Steve Jobs should be unhooked and connected to a root thread that points to Walter Isaacson's biography. It's painfully obvious most people haven't read it.
Steve Jobs was one of the greatest marketers in recent history, and from that perspective he really was "totally dependent on them for [his] life and well-being".
Others did the work going from zero to one, he did the work of going from one to a hundred.
While I do agree with you on the effort assessment, or certainly the "trailblazing" factor... (to me, writing a kernel and operating system that could be used by the entire world before there existed a notion of what that kernel and operating system might look do that is infinitely more impressive than being a salesman)
.. I do think it's a red herring. To me it's not so much about effort than it is impact. If every person to ever write code was trying to sell a product, progress would have halted as it started. It's both the effort, the philosophy, and the philanthropy of it. Which is also what has made it thankless-ish.
Jobs figured out how to collect and amplify the efforts of talented people into a industrial organization with products that have had a world-changing impact.
I don't know how much of that is his talents and efforts and how much of that is luck of being with teams that succeeded at a time when industries he chose were rising. I wouldn't discount either the possibility that he was distinctly good and industrious... or that dozens/hundreds/thousands of people of equal distinctiveness didn't make it for arbitrary reasons. And anybody who isn't sure the rewards are equitably distributed is probably correct.
But I do recognize that functioning in such a way that you can effectively collect and amplify the efforts of talented people is a non-trivial feat.
The modern world is underpinned by such discoveries--very accidental or curious types that go on to change the world and impact a lot of people.
To quote a Steve Job's line: "I love and admire my species, living and dead, and am totally dependent on them for my life and well-being" [0]
[0]: https://putsomethingback.stevejobsarchive.com/