"Jobs" vs. "Steve Jobs": Hollywood Takes Another Stab At Telling the Steve Jobs Story 266
theodp writes: Didn't like Jobs, the 2013 biopic about the life of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs starring Ashton Kutcher? Maybe you'll prefer Steve Jobs, the 2015 biopic about the life of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs starring Michael Fassbender. "Steve Jobs is a tech visionary, total dick," writes Esquire's Matt Patches in his mini-review of the just-released Steve Jobs trailer. So, is inspiring kids to become the "Next Steve Jobs" a good or bad thing?
We're All Dicks (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps half of us are (Score:2, Funny)
We're all dicks.
Half.
Seriously, does anyone make it to the top without at least some dickness?
Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, former Canadian Prime Minister Kim Campbell, consecutive former New Zealand Prime Ministers Jenny Shipley and Helen Clark, former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, and sitting German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Heads of government of major industrialized countries, not a D between them. (Source [wikipedia.org]) In sixteen months, we'll see whether former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will become the next Leader of the [relatively] Free World.
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Gary Johnson: "We're dicks! We're reckless, arrogant, stupid dicks. And the Film Actors Guild are pussies. And Kim Jong Il is an asshole. Pussies don't like dicks, because pussies get fucked by dicks. But dicks also fuck assholes: assholes that just want to shit on everything. Pussies may think they can deal with assholes their way. But the only thing that can fuck an asshole is a dick, with some balls. The problem with dicks is: they fuck too much or fuck when it isn't appropriate - and it takes a pussy to
Re:Perhaps half of us are (Score:4, Informative)
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The Greek people didn't take out the loans
No, but they voted for the bad policies that resulted in having to take out loans.
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So you're responsible for what Obama does then?
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Just like Americans voted for the bad policies that resulting in having to take out loans. If WE were part of the EU, how much would we be requesting?
Probably not much because so far, the US is fairly sufficient and is not defaulting on loans. You may recall a year ago certain political careers got deep-sixed over the suggestion of a situation that could let the US default.
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All of us may be dicks, but very few of us are so dickish as to fuck over even Woz.
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All of us may be dicks, but very few of us are so dickish as to fuck over even Woz.
And that's why most of us don't create companies like that.
I am not a fan of it but that's how it works and history has shown that even "perfect angels" are never squeaky clean.
Re:We're All Dicks (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure that letting your own daughter grow up in poverty because you're too selfish to admit your paternity and pay child support goes way beyond "not being squeaky clean."
Re: We're All Dicks (Score:4, Funny)
Testing a man's character (Score:3)
All of us may be dicks, but very few of us are so dickish as to fuck over even Woz.
That's because very few of us will ever have such an opportunity. While I think most people are generally good and decent, experience has taught me that an awful lot of those same good and decent people are not above temptation. There are a lot of people (including some reading this most likely) who would screw over a friend for financial gain. People will steal if they think they can get away with it. I think Abraham Lincoln said it best - "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a
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You have a pretty weak sense of morality if you can be tempted to screw over one of your best friends for a mere $2,200.
Re:We're All Dicks (Score:5, Insightful)
We're all dicks. It will inspire some to try to do it without dickness; others are going to be dicks regardless. Seriously, does anyone make it to the top without at least some dickness?
People call Steve Jobs a dick not because he was just a pushy businessman (like most other successful people) but because he really was a dick. He abandoned his daughter for years, which by itself is enough to show he was deep down not a good person. He chose financial success over his own child; other than murder or torture I cannot think of a worst act. It could be argued he became a better person later in life, since it appears he tried to rectify the worst thing he ever did. But financially supporting her after he had plenty of money is hardly a grand gesture.
The world is probably a better place because Steve Jobs existed, but that only goes to show even the most deplorable people can have a very positive impact on the world.
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You, sir, have very very low standards as to what a "positive impact" on the world is.
Mother Teresa and the countless number of volunteers helping 3rd world countries is a positive impact. Preventing a war is a positive impact. Donating to various charities and foundations is a positive impact.
Compared to you I guess I do have a very low standard. I think someone being a good parent has a positive impact on the world. I think someone starting a construction company that builds quality homes for people has a positive impact on the world. I think someone who corrects a cashier when they give them $20 in change instead of $10 has a positive impact on the world.
I also think that in most cases, for profit enterprises have a much greater positive impact on the world than charities. They usually reach f
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Seriously, does anyone make it to the top without at least some dickness?
Depends on which "top" you mean. If you mean "wealth and power", then, yeah, those are ends that dicks seek and so the successful there are almost entirely represented by that type.
But it's possible to have a huge amount of money and a stupid ugly yacht and for many sensible people to still consider you a failure, especially if you have failed family relationships and your employees fear you.
"Some people are so poor all they have is m
Re:We're All Dicks (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, but Jobs was a quite unnecessarily big dick to pretty much everyone, including his own daughter and Woz. I mean, is parking in a disabled space and not having plates on your car really required to be successful?
Listen to his famous Stanford speech. "Stay foolish" is terrible advice. He was lucky, until he wasn't and his own advice to trust his gut/fate/karma instead of his doctor killed him. The whole speech is actually a classic example of the reality distortion field. Parts of it are demonstrably false, other bits clearly ridiculous, but his charisma and reputation carries it. So not only is he a dick to people around him, he's also a skilled and habitual bullshitter.
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From everything I've read, Jobs reeked of immaturity. Denying your kid is your own? That's something I think a lot of younger guys can relate to, if they're scared about becoming a father and everything it involves. Doubly so if you actually have grand plans for something like a business venture and fear that becoming a parent would decimate the free time and dedication you'd have to devote to it, to make it work. Same with a lot of the explosive rants against good employees and the childish "I'm right bec
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Denying your kid is your own? That's something I think a lot of younger guys can relate to, if they're scared about becoming a father and everything it involves. Doubly so if you actually have grand plans for something like a business venture and fear that becoming a parent would decimate the free time and dedication you'd have to devote to it, to make it work.
I'm just going to assume you don't have kids since you are rationalizing how abandoning your child because it will hurt your career is somehow okay, or simply being immature. If I abandoned my wife and kids I could save up enough money in one year to work full time on my startup idea for two years. Instead I am working on it 15-20 hours a week when everyone is asleep and occasionally on weekends. This doesn't make me a great parent, it just makes me not a sociopath.
Nope, you misunderstood, I guess ... (Score:2)
I actually have 3 kids and I wasn't trying to say what he did was "simply ok" at all!
I'm just saying it's definitely a thought that runs through the heads of immature guys when they find themselves in those kinds of situations. I watched it happen with people I knew through the crazy "dot com" era.
I think Steve J. managed to turn his personal life around considerably as he got older but there's no doubt it took him a long time to address his issues. (On the flip side? At least he finally did.... More than
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As I understand it, he was technically within the law to do it because he simply swapped out vehicles so regularly, none of them were owned long enough to require a plate? And parking in a handicapped space? I *think* he was only caught doing that on Apple's own campus --- not out in grocery store lots or anyplace else?
And Pixar. Basically, any place that wouldn't have got him towed. Both of those things (required to have license plates, parking in the handicapped spots) were expressions of the same attitude: "Those people can't tell me what to do." If there was a requirement, he would find a way around it because he knew better and the rules didn't apply to him.
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So not only is he a dick to people around him, he's also a skilled and habitual bullshitter.
Indeed, those are two of the most required and valuable CEO skills. The ability to take bold action rather than dither with mediocrity, and the ability to convince others that your products are great. Being a dick is a good executive skill. Lying---I'm sorry, I meant "marketing" is another.
Re:We're All Dicks (Score:5, Interesting)
We're all dicks.
I dislike how this phrase is being used because I think it trivializes the extent to which Jobs was not a good person and introduces an inappropriate levity into the discussion. A much better term would have been acute sociopath.
And another movie about Jobs? Sounds more myopic than biopic. When Hollywood starts making remakes of their failed biographies you know they've scraped through the bottom of the barrel. Most people today only know Jobs as the other Santa who introduced shiny new toys once a year. If you want to read about the interesting stuff, just check out Folklore.org [folklore.org]. It's filled with fascinating stories written by the people who created the Macintosh. Steve Jobs even shows up a couple of times.
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Is there a maximum dick level or does it just continue on until it reaches super villainy levels like in Kingsman?
Also wasn't it his dickness that ultimately killed him? Instead of seeing a regular doctor he decided that following the rantings of a witch doctor were a better course of action for his cancer treatment.
I'm not sure I want to see this soc
Inspire kids to be the next Woz, not Jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope I won't be disillusioned by someone who has done research into Woz, but what I have heard of Woz has pretty much been all good. Seemingly kind hearted, personal integrity, not all about the money. While Jobs is the guy who lied to his supposed friend about how much he got paid for a project so he could embezzle money from said friend. I know which person I'd rather my children emulate.
Re:Inspire kids to be the next Woz, not Jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
Steve Jobs was no saint, but he was an artist in his particular specialty. Woz, God bless him, is a great engineer and a super nice guy, but he'd still be designing hobby projects for fun and maybe have a job as a high level engineer at like HP or IBM or Intel or something today without Jobs. And that's nothing against Woz, but I just think that Woz doesn't care for that kind of success. He's probably happy he can live in some comfort, but he'd rather be an engineer than a corporate leader if he had to choose.
Woz got a little screwed by Jobs perhaps, but are you ever truly screwed if you didn't care to begin with?
Re:Inspire kids to be the next Woz, not Jobs (Score:4, Insightful)
Woz, God bless him, is a great engineer and a super nice guy, but he'd still be designing hobby projects for fun and maybe have a job as a high level engineer at like HP or IBM or Intel or something today without Jobs
And isn't that a better, much more realistic goal a parent should push their kid towards than founding a global tech company? Working a well paying job that allows you to live comfortably and gives you enough free time and means to do something you enjoy at home, what more could you ask for?
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Well, you should support your child being who they are. Woz is who he is, and trying to make him into Jobs would only make him unhappy.
However, Lil' Jobs would probably not be as happy if he didn't become Steve Jobs later in life. If his parents pushed him to be Woz-like, would he have been happy? I'm not sure he would have been.
For one thing, it is easy to be super chill when you are a naturally talented engineer who finds happiness in working on projects in your garage. Some people are built with a mo
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Well, you should support your child being who they are. Woz is who he is, and trying to make him into Jobs would only make him unhappy.
However, Lil' Jobs would probably not be as happy if he didn't become Steve Jobs later in life. If his parents pushed him to be Woz-like, would he have been happy? I'm not sure he would have been.
For one thing, it is easy to be super chill when you are a naturally talented engineer who finds happiness in working on projects in your garage. Some people are built with a more driving ambition to affect larger systems (used in the more general sense). They want to be executives so they can bring a grand vision to life, be it a corporation, mass movement, or an empire. Anything less will be frustrating for them.
I agree that you should try and instill values of respect and a healthy sense of perspective vs. worldly ambition in your child, but the world needs leaders too.
That's true, but realistically no one decides as a child that they will be a world leader or a CEO. Parents who drive and "prep" their kids from an early age to do so are more likely to just burn their kids out before they even get to college. Just like you said, Jobs became Jobs "later in life". Push your children to do what they enjoy, and if they have the talent and the desire to be the next Jobs, they will have the opportunity to do so.
Re: Inspire kids to be the next Woz, not Jobs (Score:3)
Not everyone wants a simple life (Score:2)
And isn't that a better, much more realistic goal a parent should push their kid towards than founding a global tech company?
Depends on the kid. I don't think you can realistically push anyone to be a global tech icon. That has to come from within and requires more than a tiny bit of luck. What you can do though is help provide opportunity and structure and see what happens.
Working a well paying job that allows you to live comfortably and gives you enough free time and means to do something you enjoy at home, what more could you ask for?
Nothing wrong with what you describe but it won't change the world either. Some people want more out of their career than a comfortable life. Speaking for myself I've founded several companies, have run several others and I very much enjoy what I do for a
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Nothing wrong with what you describe but it won't change the world either. Some people want more out of their career than a comfortable life. Speaking for myself I've founded several companies, have run several others and I very much enjoy what I do for a living. I don't just want a basic 9-5 job with a few weeks vacation and a 401K. I want something more than that. I want to create successful companies. You aren't going to do that playing it safe or doing the comfortable easy thing.
I never said something like this was a bad thing, just that you don't push children into wanting to do something like that. Like you said, it comes from within.
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Agreed. I would much rather see a movie about Woz. Not only was his work much more interesting than anything Jobs did, but he's a character who I could actually root for. When I watch a Jobs bio, I spend most of the time hoping one of the other characters onscreen will just beat the shit out of him.
Woz is a nice guy but nice is boring to watch (Score:2)
Agreed. I would much rather see a movie about Woz.
I think you are firmly in the minority there. I have huge respect for Woz but he's just not all that interesting of a guy. I've read his autobiography and honestly it was pretty dull and I'm firmly in the group that should be the target audience. Furthermore without Jobs you'd have never heard of Woz. Possibly the reverse is true as well but I have a strong suspicious Jobs would have been more likely of the two to succeed without the other. I say that meaning no disrespect to Woz at all. Great guy, gr
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The irony is that it could be seen as "karma" that Jobs basically committed "suicide by woo", refusing to treat his cancer with any recognized scientific technique for most of a year and instead trying pretty much every technique in the book popular among the sort of person who typically believes in karma.
So perhaps all of the woo stuff actually works, but it plays in with the laws of karma ;)
Paths to success (Score:2)
Jobs is uninspiring to me. Without Woz, there would have been no innovation to sell, but with those two, they had an actual product to show off first thing.
No company of any consequence is built by just one person. The error in your argument is you are presuming that Jobs couldn't have found another path or partner to success without Woz. Given that Jobs built three companies (Apple, NeXT and Pixar) it seems somewhat reasonable that chances of Jobs succeeding without Woz would be fairly high. We wouldn't have Apple but perhaps we would have had something else.
Whether Jobs is inspiring to you or not is a matter of personal choice and I don't disagree. Clear
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Nice guys finish last. Woz is only worth about $100 million. That's chicken feed (relatively speaking). You don't want your kid to be a loser like that do you? No, encourage your children to "do what it takes" to get to the absolute top. You don't get there by being nice.
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Oh really? To be in an economic bracket only matched by the top 0.1% of every human being on the planet is a loser?
Count me in.
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Ironically, even though Jobs cheated him, Woz ultimately has amassed enough of fortune that he arguably hasn't had a real job in 30 years, - and IMHO that is largely thanks to Steve Jobs who kept working almost right up until his death.
Now, Woz has technically been employed by several companies but it seems his role has largely been limited to being a figure head. He also has many philanthropic pursuits, so I'm not accusing him of sitting on his ass. Ju
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If you've ever run your own company, you'll realize there's a special combination of goodness mixed with hard-assedness which is needed for success. Someone who's all kind-hearted can't bear to lay off people when the chips are down, and ends up sinking the entire company instead of casting off a few emplo
Why does Jobs always steal the limelight? (Score:5, Insightful)
Steve Wozniak as an engineer, and as a person in general, is much more of an inspiration to me.
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I remember Woz very tastefully saying that when Dennis Ritchie died a few days after Job's that none of what they both were doing at Apple would be possible without DMR.
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Well that was a stupid thing to say. The C-language and Unix were just one language and one OS amongst many. If they hadn't been around Apple (and NeXT) would have used something else.
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If you want to play the what-if game, Apple would probably have used BeOS. Which was better in many ways than Unix. And to an end user system based on Unix and one based on BeOS needn't look any different. Only the BeOS one would be smoother.
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But this is about Jobs not Apple. Apple's next gen OS quest whilst Jobs wasn't there is irrelevant. Jobs selected Unix as the underpinning for NeXTStep. But had Unix not been around something else would be.
Re:Why does Jobs always steal the limelight? (Score:5, Interesting)
I really don't want to underplay Woz and I agree with the comments, but you can see from his ventures since that the involvement of Woz does not necessarily make for a sustainable company, and Woz alone could not have created Apple.
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Absolutely. If Woz wasn't at the Homebrew Computer Club, Jobs would have recruited someone else, with similar results. There were plenty of other engineers who were capable of single-handedly putting together a microprocessor based computer board at the time.
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And there were probably asshole CEO level people that could have created "Apple" as well. Nobody is irreplaceable.
Maybe Bill Gates would have been famous.
Oh. Wait.
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The Gates/Jobs match is over. Gates might have lived longer, but Jobs won the business game. Apple is the biggest tech company in the world and Microsoft is in rapid decline.
Still, yes, Gates had different but comparable business skills. That makes 2.
There were far more engineers that could design a microcomputer.
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There were plenty of other engineers who were capable of single-handedly putting together a microprocessor based computer board at the time.
Although this is completely true, Woz is special because he had a.. sorry there is no word for it but genius mind for reducing the number of components required to perform a particular function. So Woz was a a very lucky find as he could make a cheap computer. Cheaper than anyone else could for the same functionality. He could do the same thing with code (though there are other examples), but I think the combination was a large contributor to their early success. Sometimes one smart guy really does make a d
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Although this is completely true, Woz is special because he had a.. sorry there is no word for it but genius mind for reducing the number of components required to perform a particular function.
This is the off told myth, but in reality that was standard practice at the time. Components were simple to understand but expensive. Everyone came up with nifty tricks to minimise components.
Jobs mix of talents were rarer.
Re: Why does Jobs always steal the limelight? (Score:3, Informative)
People don't want to hear it today, but Microsoft played a big part in the early growth of the Macintosh. It was a threadbare platform without Microsoft Word and Excel. Excel, in particular, was a Macintosh program for quite awhile before Microsoft had a Windows environment good enough to run it on.
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The legend grows (Score:3)
You have intrigue, a second act, and an untimely death to the lead role.
This is likely not even the final rendition.
Folklore.org (Score:3)
http://www.folklore.org/ [folklore.org]
Not a bad source for stories about Jobs dickish behavior...and before some /.er wants to point it out I'll do so. There's one story with Knuth where Steve looks like a pretty big doofus. It's been reported that Knuth has denied it - in particular in a talk by Randal Monroe's where he was present - the actual quote from Knuth though could easily be interpreted as avoiding the question rather than denying it.
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The Knuth story is obviously apocryphal. The selection of Knuth for the story and the use of the word "all" is exactly what you would do if writing a gag. The fact that Knuth has denied it has laid it to rest for anyone who's rationality isn't blinded by hatred.
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I have yet to see where Knuth clearly denies the story. It is corroborated by the two other living people in the room (although they have differing recollections as to how strong the rebuke was). So it's at least plausible.
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Where is it corroborated by two other people in the room?
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Not a bad source for stories about Jobs dickish behavior...and before some /.er wants to point it out I'll do so. There's one story with Knuth where Steve looks like a pretty big doofus. It's been reported that Knuth has denied it - in particular in a talk by Randal Monroe's where he was present - the actual quote from Knuth though could easily be interpreted as avoiding the question rather than denying it.
Reading the story, it is inconceivable that Knuth would have said what he said. And surely Steve didn't look like a doofus at all, but as being polite, which makes Donald Knuth's purported answer an absolute dick move. And I'm sure that Jobs knew who Knuth is, and that some employees had told him about Knuth's books and how important they are.
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Reading the story, it is inconceivable that Knuth would have said what he said.
If you take a look at the comments. The other person in the room recalled a somewhat softer rebuke. I'm sorry that either are beyond your ability to conceive.
And surely Steve didn't look like a doofus at all
I think someone who says "I've read all your books" to Knuth really didn't know to what he was referring. TAOCPS was at three volumes in 1986 and I doubt Steve Jobs - based on his not-very technical reputation - would have got through them. Not to mention a few books on math, typography as well as the MIX/360 users guide.
Steve Jobs accomplished some
Who watches these things? (Score:2)
You would have thought the market for this kind of thing would have dried up long ago.
I wonder why they keep making these movies (Score:2)
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These movies are really just one manifestation of the general public all having iPhones and Facebook accounts now.
Jobs is admired because greed (Score:3, Interesting)
Let's face it; the reason Jobs is so admired is because we live in a "gimme gimme" world. The 1% love him because he actually did "build it" out of nothing (on the backs of thousands of other employees) -- which was their mantra while Mitt Romney was trying to prove that the 1% were the "job creators". The reality of course is that most of the very wealthy inherited their money; but that's the subject of another discussion.
What Jobs did was bully the people below him into creating great work. He knew they could do better if they just put in that 100-hour week and ended up divorced and alcoholics. Only by destroying those below you can achieve greatness by taking credit for all their hard work.
The 1% love Jobs because that's what they want to do; abuse everyone below them and in so doing, whip them into making something they'll be admired for.
But they are forgetting that Steve actually did have some out-of-the-box thinking; he wasn't a total idiot, and he could sell ice-boxes to eskimos. He actually had some skill and talent and a fuckload of charisma, and that's also why people were willing to kill themselves for him.
But the average borg-drone MBA only sees Steve being a dick, and assumes that's how he's supposed to treat his employees, and that's why America is so fucked up.
Apple made nice things, but America can't have nice things. Unless of course, you're already fabulously wealthy.
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I admire Jobs because he made design, quality and user experience the overriding factors in creating products. And he had the confidence to know that approach would win out in the end. And the taste to be able to personally ensure the company kept on track.
The people who hate jobs are invariably people who don't appreciate design, and think it's just decoration.
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As you pointed out, OS X has a single digit market share in most places. So who in the hell are you talking to all of the time? Besides, if you are exposed to this weirdo OS all the time and you have an IQ higher than my Labrador Retriever, you should have been able to figure most of this stuff out.
It's for the 'rest of us' after all.
Snowflake.
People (Score:4, Insightful)
People will put up with a lot of shit if you're brilliant.
If you're just average, they're just going to call you "Asshole!" and walk away.
Teaching people to emulate Jobs is teaching them to be dicks, not to be brilliant.
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If you look at Jobs' negatives, I _know_ people personally who were much worse in their personal life, without any redeeming features. And there are plenty of bosses who behave as bad or worse, again without the redeeming features.
Hopefully you can't teach that anyway (Score:2)
Hmm... (Score:2)
He was a liar and craptastic 'parent' (Score:2)
The whole thing with his daughter (lying about paternity, even lying in open court saying he was infertile -- it's on record), so he didn't have to take responsibility for her, that alone to me put him high on the raging asshole list. Meanwhile he was already a millionaire, and the mother had to go onto public assistance to get by.
Sure, he eventually reconnected with his daughter, once she was like 18 and after he was now a billionaire -- but those early years without a father, can never, ever be replaced n
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The whole thing with his daughter ...
And I know people who have been worse. A lot worse. Fathers where the problem was not that they weren't there, but that they were there.
And comparing to Gates, Gates got involved with a woman whom he then married much, much later in his life. Jobs also got married much, much later in his life and I haven't heard anything bad about that marriage, and about his children from this marriage. And who says there aren't one or two little Gates' around somewhere in the world who never knew who their father is?
Too badd about Patches (Score:2)
Too bad Matt Patches can't learn to communicate elegantly rather than using foul language. He has no credibility as a result. Ignored.
Trailer left me unimpressed (Score:5, Interesting)
I didn't know Jobs well [brucefwebster.com], but I did have a number of direct conversations with him, sat in on meetings at NeXT with him, spent five years developing software for NeXTstep, and had many talks with people who worked closely him (again, mostly at NeXT); our last conversation was him calling me up to yell at me for an op-ed piece of mine in BYTE (Nov 94) called "Whither Nextstep?"
With that tee-up, I'll say that Fassbender's portrayal of Jobs in this trailer pretty much falls flat. Fassbender looks too professional and lacks that burning gaze that Jobs used to such great effect, even while using up the people around him. Frankly, Fassbender comes across more like John Scully trying to act like Steve Jobs than like Jobs himself. Also, it took me a bit to realize that Seth Rogan was supposed to be playing Woz; again, the wrong vibes and aura. Frankly, I think that Jack Black with a beard would have been a better choice for Woz. ..bruce..
2 criticisms (Score:2)
1) Of course they're going for drama, thus will focus on and magnify anything they can find that makes Jobs look "mercurial".
2) Is it true, what I read a couple of weeks ago, that in the movie the team that built the Mac is depicted as 8 men? If that is actually the case, the director and producer should dragged onto the back lot and shot. The team that built the Mac was 8 men and 4 women. Why on earth would they, in the year 2015, write the women out of the story???
Where is pirates of the Silicon Valley 2? (Score:2)
Zen and the Art of Creating Computers (Score:4, Informative)
"I'm gonna see it! I want it to be as beautiful as possible, even if it's inside the box. A great carpenter isn't going to use lousy wood for the back of a cabinet, even though nobody's going to see it." This is Steve Jobs pushing the Macintosh team to redesign the circuit board [folklore.org] because some of the spacing was ugly.
Steve Jobs also pushed them to make it boot as fast as possible [folklore.org], rejected computer fans because of noise, and said a multibutton mouse would be inelegant [wsj.com]. He went to great pains to make the Apple Store out of glass. Even his slides were Zen [blogs.com].
He was a complex character. He certainly wasn't your typical businessman [businessinsider.com]:
"My passion has been to build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products . . . the products, not the profits, were the motivation. Sculley flipped these priorities to where the goal was to make money. It's a subtle difference, but it ends up meaning everything."
Really? (Score:3)
He was an asshat who accomplished some interesting things.
Let's just leave it at that.
The real question: (Score:2)
Is encouraging kids to grow up to be a trailer reviewer a good thing?
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Heh, even Jobs couldn't avoid being thrown out of Apple. It's just that he got to come back.
Re:"Musk" "Elon Musk" "Minky Musky Sly Stoaty Stoa (Score:5, Funny)
I'll wait for the furry retelling.
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I'm hoping it opens with a young Elon watching as his parents are brutally hunted for their scent glands.
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Name one original thing that Elon Musk has done. (Score:2)
Or anybody else for that matter. Everything under the sun has prior art. Every "new" invention involves combining some prior technology with a spit-shine and then reselling it.
Apple is held to a standard that noone else in technology has ever been held to.
Re: Name one original thing that Elon Musk has don (Score:2)
The point he was trying to make was the Jobs didn't invent anything, not even an improvement over an old invention. He was just a charasmatic guy who got other people to do the work for him.
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For all his faults, he was terrific at determining what people actually wanted to buy and directing engineers to create that.
Your invention is worthless if no one uses it.
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"not even an improvement over an old invention."
Right. Because the Macintosh was exactly like the Xerox Star, right down to the three-button Mouse and Smalltalk commands. Which Jobs licensed for a very agreeable amount - and he then directed the improvements that led to the popular GUI-driven personal computer.
The iMac - a minimalist, low-cost, laptop-derived machine with a CRT that was extremely easy to set up and which was design-forward - good-looking enough to put it in the center of your living area an
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The iMac - a minimalist, low-cost, laptop-derived machine with a CRT that was extremely easy to set up and which was design-forward - good-looking enough to put it in the center of your living area and not hide under a desk. Yeah, that was totally already done.
Are we talking about these things? [maclife.com] The only time something like that was good enough looking to put in the living room was a short period in the 60s (if they came out in the 70s, they would have been uglier shades of orange and earthen brown). I'd rather have a beige mini-tower in comparison.
It was not exactly a stunning debut for Ive's design; he got a lot better when he discovered the joys of barely-translucent white. Most of the rest of his designs have been home runs.
you havent read his bio carefully (Score:2)
Musk bought Tesla from a couple of creative engineers. He didnt start it.
However he great job of making both prominent companies.
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Yeah, you're right. Engineers would be so much better off if we just let them develop their ideas, market them, and fail in peace.
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Someone is lazy and untalented if they think a father who abandoned his child is a dick? There are plenty of other examples of what a horrible person he was, but that alone is enough to damn anyone.