It's really too bad nobody has been able to step into the role Steve had for the industry. We lack the ability to effectivly communicate what's new and exciting to people and it's effecting the moral across the board.
Now it's hypemen with teams of engineers pushing their solutions more and more.
I'm not saying Steve didn't contribute to hype, but somehow he made it feel natural and welcome.
There is a niche that is left empty for Jobs' style of presentation.
> We lack the ability to effectivly communicate what's new and exciting to people and it's effecting the moral across the board.
I have a harder time with this.
The last presentation that stuck with me is Framework's 12 inch laptop [0]. It's absolutely not polished, the camera shakes, I don't know if they even rehearsed it or made multiple takes. And they seem to be conscious enough to have publicly asked for video producers to contact them to make better videos.
But that presentation gets to the viewer everything it needs to, it's clear, well explained, succinct, and makes you want to go buy it now if the product is for you.
I don't want the second coming of Steve Jobs with graphs with no Y axis or reality distortion fields. I want companies confident enough that their products can mostly speak for themselves and only need simple and straight explanations.
> It's absolutely not polished, the camera shakes, I don't know if they even rehearsed it or made multiple takes. And they seem to be conscious enough to have publicly asked for video producers to contact them to make better videos.
One of the things that is clear from watching that video (which is great by the way), is that they tell this story day in day out. They know their story, and they know their audience wants to see the detail they're sharing. Posting the M1 Macbook reveal [0] isn't going to turn the head of someone who wants replacable RAM in their laptop, but having someone take it apart on their desk is.
He did present things as revolutionary that already shipped months ago elsewhere, and this was irritating at times. But. This is exactly the point that so many other companies/brands missed. Serve your usebase, make the product revolutionary with as boring tech as possible.
Yes of course Apple, a fantastically capital-strong enterprise did spend a lot on tech R&D, but they usually did their own non-standard thing. (Vertical integration, the consequence of narrow focus, later the advantage of product/brand differentiation.) Of course, again, all possible due to the wildly successful Mac/MacBooks.
> He did present things as revolutionary that already shipped months ago elsewhere, and this was irritating at times.
He knew that who did it first didn’t matter as much as the first one to do it right. New technology can’t be revolutionary if the products it’s sold in flop or never escape their tiny niche, no matter how cool it is.
Mac and MacBooks were not wildly successful back then. iPods were, though. I can’t find a graph for 2000s, but Apple desktop and computers started being used more after iPhone came out (and after MacBook Air came out).
They did, I am just disputing the notion that they were “wildly” successful.
iPod and iPhones I would describe as wildly successful. Even AirPods. Even iPads. They were THE device to get in that market segment, and if you looked around lots of people had them. The M processor MacBooks are also wildly successful. But I don’t remember the iMacs being like that in early 2000s.
> He did present things as revolutionary that already shipped months ago elsewhere, and this was irritating at times.
It was irritating to a specific brand of nerd who valued "doing it first" over "doing it right". They were a fascinating sideshow back then, if not a little irritating themselves. To see someone write this in 2025 is like learning about the Japanese holdouts after World War II.
I still think they are not doing things right. (Their UI continues to look and feel crazy. Hardware is amazing, software is made for a circus show. Just give some simple task that involves Finder, or any settings on any of their device.)
But it was way more snappier than the median Android device, and usually looked more consistent too.
Thats a good observation. Never thought about this but nobody recent comes to mind. These days everything feels pushed on us. Like we are just a role in their agenda of ushering the world into VR experiences for example. Steve had a way of delivering what we were waiting for and truly wanted. That probably helped the presentation of it all
It did help that Steve was alive during the personal computing revolution. He was a big part in shaping it but it was also just a good time to be in his position.
There's not been the same kind of thing for a while. His death came as personal computers had managed their way fully into our pockets.
Now there are new technologies, but nothing I think we all agree is as ubiquitous as the PC. Even AI is hard to sell because unlike the word processor or the portable music device, AI isn't always functional, and so it doesn't feel as much like a complete solution.
Technology is suffering more and more from itself lately, and I really hope a leader will emerge and help us take an honest look at ourselves and what we accept in terms of usability. No more cookie warnings pretending they solve privacy issues, but complete overhauling of contracts and agreements between technology companies and users, just as an example.
It used to be everyone was normal and to become a billionaire you had to sell a product to a bunch of people. Now there are already billionaires, everyone's already indebted to several, and they basically compete with each other for market share.
Now it's hypemen with teams of engineers pushing their solutions more and more.
I'm not saying Steve didn't contribute to hype, but somehow he made it feel natural and welcome.