RIP Steve Jobs
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Alright, so that's at least three threads on this topic.
In the interest of making this one distinct, how about we discuss the impact Steve Jobs had on the world of technology and the popular adoption of computers?
In the interest of making this one distinct, how about we discuss the impact Steve Jobs had on the world of technology and the popular adoption of computers?
I didn't own a single one of his products, but that doesn't mean I can't be aware of the profound and largely positive impact he left on this world (from what I can tell, anyway). I only have to look across the landscape of my Facebook, Twitter, G+ and the like to know what he meant to people.
The world is once again a little smaller.
The world is once again a little smaller.
Woah, I just heard. I don't know how I didn't see it on the news first.
my stomach is still knotted...
I've only ever owned Macs myself, all the way back to 1993, when I bought my first from Sears when they sold the Centris under the Performa name, again in 1995 with the Power Macintosh 7200, in 1997 with the Power Macintosh 8600. We're a 4-iPod family, and am about to pick up a Mac Mini as a Home Theater PC so I can put the Apple TV in the bedroom.
He really did achieve a lot in his life, not the least of which start a company at 20 as a college drop-out in his garage, grow it, get kicked out of his own company, go away, start another computer company (NEXT), return to his original company when they wanted to buy the OS his second company made, turn that company around over the next 14 years to where, for a brief moment in the summer of 2011, they were the 2nd most highly valued company (2nd only to an OIL company!).
As a lot of others have observed, he didn't invent a lot (in the beginning, it was Woz who was the bigger geek), but he found ways to make those inventions accessible to a lot of people who otherwise would have had no use for computing. Where Woz loved to tinker and play with the technology, it was Steve who kept pushing to have it get out of the user's way.
He really did make technology "for the rest of us", when the rest of us were the non-geeks, the muggles, so to speak. And he's always been able to surround himself with people who could design and create the ideas he had in his head, most lately Jonny Ive. Tim Cook replacing him wasn't a split-second decision. Tim came back with him when Apple bought NEXT, so he's been there all the past decade and a half, the two of them growing together.
It's amazing from a business standpoint when you consider that the majority of their money is made from product categories that didn't exist for them 4 years ago (the iPhone and iPad). They were not a phone company, but they found a way not only to survive in that cutthroat space, but to dominate it. With regard to the iPad, they reinvigorated a category that everyone else in the PC space (including Microsoft) had largely written off. They did smartphones RIGHT. They did tablet PCs right. They OWN music downloads and have for the past decade. They did App Stores right, their "walled garden" model running roughshod over their competitors' "wild west" models.
So, for Steve Jobs, a big, fat, *********kin' bucket of win!
I've only ever owned Macs myself, all the way back to 1993, when I bought my first from Sears when they sold the Centris under the Performa name, again in 1995 with the Power Macintosh 7200, in 1997 with the Power Macintosh 8600. We're a 4-iPod family, and am about to pick up a Mac Mini as a Home Theater PC so I can put the Apple TV in the bedroom.
He really did achieve a lot in his life, not the least of which start a company at 20 as a college drop-out in his garage, grow it, get kicked out of his own company, go away, start another computer company (NEXT), return to his original company when they wanted to buy the OS his second company made, turn that company around over the next 14 years to where, for a brief moment in the summer of 2011, they were the 2nd most highly valued company (2nd only to an OIL company!).
As a lot of others have observed, he didn't invent a lot (in the beginning, it was Woz who was the bigger geek), but he found ways to make those inventions accessible to a lot of people who otherwise would have had no use for computing. Where Woz loved to tinker and play with the technology, it was Steve who kept pushing to have it get out of the user's way.
He really did make technology "for the rest of us", when the rest of us were the non-geeks, the muggles, so to speak. And he's always been able to surround himself with people who could design and create the ideas he had in his head, most lately Jonny Ive. Tim Cook replacing him wasn't a split-second decision. Tim came back with him when Apple bought NEXT, so he's been there all the past decade and a half, the two of them growing together.
It's amazing from a business standpoint when you consider that the majority of their money is made from product categories that didn't exist for them 4 years ago (the iPhone and iPad). They were not a phone company, but they found a way not only to survive in that cutthroat space, but to dominate it. With regard to the iPad, they reinvigorated a category that everyone else in the PC space (including Microsoft) had largely written off. They did smartphones RIGHT. They did tablet PCs right. They OWN music downloads and have for the past decade. They did App Stores right, their "walled garden" model running roughshod over their competitors' "wild west" models.
So, for Steve Jobs, a big, fat, *********kin' bucket of win!
Actually, Apple surpassed Exxon just weeks ago and was the planet's most valuable corporation. No idea where they stand now.
I happily stand corrected.
Made this tribute video for my company the day after his death.
[YT]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nR78Kn24hFI[/YT]
[YT]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nR78Kn24hFI[/YT]
I heared he trusted the wrong people to fix his health issues? There would be some justice in it if he bought a bad product for an exorbitant price, because that's exactly what Jobs and Apple have been doing themselves.
The impact is devastating. Apples existence and growth rested on two pillars, advertising, and planned obsolescence. I mourn for the people who have the bad luck to have puchased Apple products, made in low-wage countries, sold with 1,000% profit, breaking down the day the warranty expires, and are a burden to the environment.
The impact is devastating. Apples existence and growth rested on two pillars, advertising, and planned obsolescence. I mourn for the people who have the bad luck to have puchased Apple products, made in low-wage countries, sold with 1,000% profit, breaking down the day the warranty expires, and are a burden to the environment.
Well, what a nice epitaph for a RIP thread.
Please get off your soapbox here. This is a RIP thread, and and old one at that. If you have issues with the man or his products, go make a separate thread about it.
The thing is, people with questionable contributions to computing like Steve Jobs get RIP threads everywhere, people crying over them as if the world has ended, news coverage all over the place, worldwide mourning, get idolized without a proper evaluation of what they did really accomplish.
At the same time people who have done tremendous things for computing are found dead a few days later, and there's no mention of them anywhere in the media or the forums. I'm talking about Dennis Ritchie. He created the C language, which has inspired most programming languages in use today. He invented the crazy idea of a portable operating system – one that you can run on different kinds of hardware. He helped create Unix, which most current operating systems (except Windows) are inspired by.
I think it's quite appropriate to question all the mourning... Without any differing opinions in the RIP threads people reading them later might get quite false impressions about it.
I don't care who it is. This was just a rude thing to say about someone who's died, and and even ruder thing to use this anecdote just to poke jabs at the products the guy's company produced.
Well, to be fair, the more famous somebody is, the faster word is going to get out about this. That's the very nature of fame. And the level of such fame is not always equivalent to the level of contribution the person made. Some people contribute a lot, but are never heard of (sometimes by choice even).
Yes. People who sell different things as time goes on deserve to be exploited by charlatans and die of cancer. That's a completely reasonable stance to have.
For the record, Jobs delayed surgery by less than a year, investigating a special diet in an attempt to stave off the cancer. Personally, I don't blame him for being skittish. The surgery he had involves removing half of the digestive system and stitching the parts back together in some vaguely workable arrangement. Additionally, the type of cancer he had is so slow-moving, the delay between discovery and treatment probably didn't cost him a significant amount of longevity.
Still, nice of you to mosey in to talk about how his wife deserved to be widowed because you don't like the attitude copped by some of his customers. Class act, all the way.
Is this a joke? You talk about things being made in China as if that's unique? Pretend that no other company ever revised a product? Ignore stuff like Apple's in-store electronics recycling program? And let's not even talk about "planned obsolescence."
They all do the same, but apple's been a bit worse than the rest. I was a single time in an apple shop about 20 years ago, and couldn't help but shaking the head. Motley and streamlined desktop computers. What for? Do they have to account for drag? More than twice the price of a comparable Windows PC. The ipod. Several hundred $ when walkmans and portable cd players were down to ten bucks or so, fit with a battery that went dead after one year, and couldn't be exchanged. The iphone. A device than does a little of everything, and nothing properly. We are we now, 5 years after the introduction, iphone X? The ipad. I rather stick to an old-style laptop with twice the power, a proper keyboard and screen, and half the price. Another superfluous product imo.
I'm eager to learn more about the Apple electronics recycling program. Do they take your old Apple PC back when you can't resist but buy a new one? And then put them into containers, and ship them to landfills in Africa?
Apple shops..20 years ago?...
Sorry, the Apple store is relatively modern invention..
Steve Jobs when he retook Apple eliminated many of the "Big Box" retailer's contracts
(Except for Comp USA) and determined that Apple had no control over product display..
Hence the opening of the first Apple Store in 2001...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tysons_Corner_Center
Facts please..not suppositions..nor opinions..
Sorry, the Apple store is relatively modern invention..
Steve Jobs when he retook Apple eliminated many of the "Big Box" retailer's contracts
(Except for Comp USA) and determined that Apple had no control over product display..
Hence the opening of the first Apple Store in 2001...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tysons_Corner_Center
Facts please..not suppositions..nor opinions..
Unfortunately his "special diet" was completely baseless from a medical perspective and he was informed as such. I can certainly understand being skittish about surgery, but the impression I got from the biography was that by the time he finally agreed to get the surgery it had already started to spread... something that may not have happened if he had followed the medical advice he had been given. And that was something that he himself regretted after the fact.
I agree with the sentiment that the context it was used in this thread is inappropriate. But Jobs' reaction to his cancer diagnosis is essentially a high profile exercise in what happens when you replace medical expertise with pseudoscience and I think it's important to recognize that to help prevent other people from making the same mistakes in the future. And if Jobs had chosen differently he very well could still be alive today.
Perhaps Kai is thinking of Apple's efforts to maintain an Apple Store "within a store" a few years earlier. That would also coincide with the description of streamlined computers since that was about when the G3 was released.
I've never been able to justify the cost of an Apple product. I came close to buying one or two back in their earlier years, but my money always went to other computers that tended to be cheaper and just as powerful. So I can appreciate a miserly aversion to Apple products. However, Apple has consistently delivered a cleaner user interface through the years. It was the system of choice in education, graphics arts, and desktop publishing for years, and the engineering firm I worked for preferred them for all business applications until there was a change in personnel in IT.
Apple has worked hard to standardize and streamline the user experience over the years and that's one of the reasons some people prefer it. Windows is comparatively kludgey with such interesting notions as pressing the "Start" icon to shut down the computer and menus that vary widely from program to program. You won't see that kind of thinking in an Apple product. And that earns them fans who are willing to cut the company slack for other shortcomings. People will pay more for a product that looks nice. Why buy a Porshe when a Volkswagon will get you to work reliably and attract fewer car jackers?
Personally, after having been interested in the Apple II+, the Apple IIe, and the Apple IIc, I found it curious that the computer manufacturer best known for systems with color graphics and a design that encouraged users to open the case and fiddle with the innards put out products like the original Macs ... black and white graphics in a case that required a special tool to open. That change is what drove me off Apple originally, and the same mentality persists through the current product line with some of the nonsense Kai outlines.
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