The Unexpected Patents of Steve Jobs 198
Harry writes "It's no surprise that Steve Jobs' name is among those credited in Apple's patents for MacBooks, iPods, and other iconic gadgets galore. But the man holds patents for packaging, a staircase, iPod cases, and several intriguing products that Apple hasn't built to date. They all add up to an interesting portrait of the world's most famous tech CEO."
Re:Don't Forget the Lanyard (Score:5, Interesting)
Wait, what? Did I miss the irony?
You think Jobs contributed in any technical way to any Apple product? Heritic! May the Woz have mercy on your soul.
And a patent that references 47 other patents is far less impressive than vice-versa.
Re:Apple (Score:1, Interesting)
Edit the source code? You can't even install a different music player on your iPhone.
Re:Really? The *infamous*? (Score:4, Interesting)
His philanthropic accomplishments are certainly praiseworthy, but it's worth remembering that his vast wealth was mainly accumulated with some really unpleasent business tactics.
See "A History of Anticompetitive Behavior and Consumer Harm"
http://www.ecis.eu/documents/Finalversion_Consumerchoicepaper.pdf [www.ecis.eu]
Jobs has led his company through fewer, but still not close to zero, unpleasant business tactics. On a personal note, he goes out of his way to make his employees unhappy. He's also fabulously wealthy, and he doesn't give significant money to charity, where Gates has so far given half of his wealth away. Gates seems like the rather bad for some other businesses and good for the people he's affected, where Jobs is moderately bad for other businesses (or perhaps much worse, considering the inability of other companies to produce make clones) and terrible for the people he directly affects.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
What about Dave? (Score:3, Interesting)
And that Bill Gates guy might be a tad more famous, though I worry about mentioning this since it seems like flamebait. Also, he's not a CEO anymore.
Re:Don't Forget the Lanyard (Score:5, Interesting)
"You think Jobs contributed in any technical way to any Apple product?"
Actually, yes.
Jobs is nowhere near technically competent as Woz, but can hold his own. Probably better than most coders here. Woz would probably agree if asked.
I know in the project that ended up being OS X, he was one of five engineers developing the product and while his role was more along the lines of project manager, he would get his hands dirty occasionally and contribute code or fix others foul ups.
I know this goes against the heavily manicured image he likes to maintain...he wants to be seen as the inspiration and not the source, but he still has a lot of geek pride. Those that work closely with him know that he is as willing to tear a piece of hardware apart as look at it...or ask to see the source. Occasionally his 'revisions' are more zenlike reductions of the code (which goes along with the infamous ordering of the engineers to align resistors on the back of the iMac circuit board to be more aesthetic). Those not within his inner circle only get to see the superficial side of all of this.
Left anonymous for obvious reasons.
So ... (Score:2, Interesting)
All of a sudden patents are all cool and nice and nicer!
Just because Steve has few!?
Re:Really? The *infamous*? (Score:1, Interesting)
Don't forget that Gates' father was the President of Planned Parenthood which was created by Margaret Sanger who was a proud eugenicist and racist.
This clearly proves that Gates is a racist. Wait, what?
Barack Obama is President of the USA, a country which was created by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, etc who were proud racists and slaveowners. Ergo, Obama supoorts slavery. QED.
Re:Don't Forget the Lanyard (Score:5, Interesting)
BTW speaking as someone whose work has received more than one patent I can tell you that someone's name being on a patent doesn't necessarily mean they contributed in any intellectual way. They may simply have provided money. I'm not dismissing the importance of money to a design coming into existence but I'm not so sure that anyone should be listed as an inventor if they didn't make an intellectual contribution to the design.
Re:Don't Forget the Lanyard (Score:5, Interesting)
If you look at those patents in TFA, they're mostly related to design. It is not stretch of the imagination that Jobs actually designed the cases for those patents while working at Apple the second time.
Jobs might charm smart people, etc., but there is substantial evidence that Jobs does more than that. Yes, it actually looks like he works for a living sometimes.
Re:Really? The *infamous*? (Score:3, Interesting)
Wait, you're deleting thumbnails & metadata?
If you were my server admin, I'd punch you in the face for deleting those.
Ever think they might be useful and/or necessary for your users? If nothing else, so they don't have to recreate them every time they access the data.
And again you show ignorance of the tools - these tools are used at shops that have tens of thousands of client machines -large newspapers, Disney & Pixar studios, large ad firms. They don't worry about compliance or policies any more than an AD installation does.
And back to my original point - if you use MS's tools, they still cost a shitload more than any of the tools I mentioned. You HAVE to buy AD, you HAVE to buy CALs, you HAVE to buy SUS, you HAVE to buy AV, and it costs, and costs, and costs.