Steve Jobs dead at 56

The fact that such an article needs to even be written is pretty ridiculous. It's pretty much how I feel.
 
I've never really been an Apple person, but I always had great respect for the man.
RIP Steve, the coolest Silicon Valley pirate of all.
 
Sheepo said:
The fact that such an article needs to even be written is pretty ridiculous. It's pretty much how I feel.
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This is the bit that got me really:

But this type of one-upmanship of public displays of grief is both unbecoming and undeserved.Real outpourings of public grief should be reserved for those people who lived life so heroically and selflessly that they stand as shining examples of love for all of humanity. People like, for example, the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, who—along with his family—was bombed, beaten, and stabbed during his years of principled activism in the US civil rights movement. Shuttlesworth died yesterday, the same day as Steve Jobs. He did not die a billionaire
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He complained about grief one-upmanship then displayed one-upmanship himself by comparing Jobs to other people as if somehow we should always compare things to things that are worse.

Let's not remember 9/11 yearly because the holocaust claimed more victims and was therefore worse, yeah?

Makes no sense. Pretty much hypocrisy.
 
Stylo said:
Let's not remember 9/11 yearly because the holocaust claimed more victims and was therefore worse, yeah?
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Forced remembrance is gamey. Are we really going to forget... REALLY?
 
There was a point, around 8.15am British time, where I thought Princess Diana had died again. It got sillier from there.

He was pretty good at what he did, and it's sad that death comes slightly earlier to some people than it does to others. He doesn't inspire me to be a better person, though I may never wear a turtle-neck sweater.
 
Raziaar said:
Forced remembrance is gamey. Are we really going to forget... REALLY?
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What are we talking about again? Something to do with planes or Germans or something...

Though I agree that people have a point about overdoing it (Amy Winehouse for reference, everyone loved her work now that she's dead) if you really have that much of a complaint that some are mourning a guy who they thought was a great man or who they found some sort of inspiration from within his work, you're basically a D-Bag.
 
I don't have a problem with it at all.
 
Raziaar said:
I don't have a problem with it at all.
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My follow up comment wasn't aimed at you. :p

Also, ZT, yah. That's what I thought. I mean, he makes a few (if very little) decent points but totally undermines with the rest of the stuff. Lack of knowledge about Jobs, being a hypocrite and just generally being a dick in my humble opinion.
 
Stylo said:
He complained about grief one-upmanship then displayed one-upmanship himself
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No he didn't, though I can understand how you could think he did. The comparison was that neither is more or less worthy than the other of the grief of strangers.


Jobs was a great entrepreneur and salesman, but he was no messiah. I'm quietly amused at the wailing and gnashing of teeth from Apple's more devoted cultists however.
 
ZT said:
This article is quite bad to be honest, I am no fan of Apple, but this man apparently knows very little about the contributions and history of Apple and Steve Jobs. (I am mostly referring to 70's/80's stuff)
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And in what way does that make the article bad?
 
Eejit said:
No he didn't, though I can understand how you could think he did. The comparison was that neither is more or less worthy than the other of the grief of strangers.
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It clearly was. It was basically "Oh well this guy got stabbed and is a hero and died on the same day as Jobs and nobody cares about him", that was a significant part of his argument that people shouldn't be so upset that Steve Jobs is dead?

To a lot of people he was more than just the head of a faceless corporation. I don't even think the grief that some people have displayed can even be compared to regarding Steve Jobs as a "God" or "Messiah". There has been public displays of grief, perhaps some are undue and O.T.T but that doesn't mean it deserves a whole article on how awful of a situation this is and noting how other people are dying and are more hero-like than Jobs, questioning why they aren't having iPad candle vigils as well. The man was still battling cancer, that's a fight that's hard to win.

I don't know where the assumption has come from that the majority of the grief is coming from strangers either. Jobs was a very well-known man to the public and so was his work but I doubt that most of the people who're upset about it don't realise the impact of who he was and what he did. Most of the people I know who are unaware of his work say "Who is Steve Jobs and why do people care he's dead?"

Also, just for the record, I like Apple products because I made a switch recently from Microsoft PCs to a Mac and found that I had been missing out. I'm also a Uni Student and within my course, most of our work is done with Apple products and software. Not really a cultist.

I think it's a bit knee-jerk and unjust to instantly suggest that anybody who is particularly saddened by the death of a man like Steve Jobs is just following the masses or being part of some elaborate cult of personality surrounding himself and Apple.

I have issues with some of the things he did and the way he ran Apple but it's totally unfair, in my view, to just say "Yeah well, he wasn't Jesus or anything." We could say that about anybody unless their name happens to be Jesus.
 
Stylo said:
It clearly was. It was basically "Oh well this guy got stabbed and is a hero and died on the same day as Jobs and nobody cares about him", that was a significant part of his argument that people shouldn't be so upset that Steve Jobs is dead?
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Still missing the point I see. The article was giving an example of someone who is not a personal acquaintance of most readers who also died, and thus one would expect us to care/not care about him to the same extent as Steve Jobs. Nowhere does it say or imply that we should be giving more of a damn about Joe Civil Rights Activist Who Died than Joe Fortune 500 CEO Who Died, just that we shouldn't give less of a damn.

I think you have a different definition of 'stranger' than I am using btw.
Most of your post is misconstruing what I said and arguing against a strawman.
 
Everyone who owns an ipod will be called a hipster now that Steve Jobs is underground.

Courtesy of Willie's Facebook post.
 
Samon Fish said:
And in what way does that make the article bad?
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Because he evidently did very little research about the man he's writing his opinionated article about? Therefor, his article seems weak at best because of his poorly formulated argument because of his poorly collected research.
 
I went into work the day afterwards, and overheard some of my co-workers talking about this. It kinda went something like this:

"Brah, the inventor of iPhone died yesterday!"
"Fo reals? Shit, I wish I could invent something like dat!"
"**** yeah, ****a was one genius brah. Invented iPhone, iPad, and Apple computers, all kine electronics!"
"****a had so much money. Imagine if you invented dat shit, you'd be rich brah!"
"Wait, does this mean that iPhones no work no more?"
"Nah, I no more problems with mine. Should be fine."

I work in construction though, so I suppose that sort of thing was to be expected.

I'm really curious to know though, just exactly how much he was involved in product R&D.
 
ZT said:
Because he evidently did very little research about the man he's writing his opinionated article about? Therefor, his article seems weak at best because of his poorly formulated argument because of his poorly collected research.
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I don't think that's why you made a point of it at all. That article is justified and in no way worse off for his "poorly collected research" (of which there is no evidence for). His article is not weak. His article is fine. Your post is pompous and your umbridge unfounded - you merely wished to highlight what you know of Jobs and Apple, irrespective of this article, which is something you have made a point of in most of your posts in this thread.
 
sinkoman said:
I went into work the day afterwards, and overheard some of my co-workers talking about this. It kinda went something like this:

"Brah, the inventor of iPhone died yesterday!"
"Fo reals? Shit, I wish I could invent something like dat!"
"**** yeah, ****a was one genius brah. Invented iPhone, iPad, and Apple computers, all kine electronics!"
"****a had so much money. Imagine if you invented dat shit, you'd be rich brah!"
"Wait, does this mean that iPhones no work no more?"
"Nah, I no more problems with mine. Should be fine."

I work in construction though, so I suppose that sort of thing was to be expected.

I'm really curious to know though, just exactly how much he was involved in product R&D.
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Probably somewhere between "he was The Idea Guy" and "not at all", given that he has a history of outsourcing work and taking credit for it. :V
 
Samon Fish said:
I don't think that's why you made a point of it at all. That article is justified and in no way worse off for his "poorly collected research" (of which there is no evidence for). His article is not weak. His article is fine. Your post is pompous and your umbridge unfounded - you merely wished to highlight what you know of Jobs and Apple, irrespective of this article, which is something you have made a point of in most of your posts in this thread.
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Good lord.
 
I like to think this forum has some of the classiest posts in Internetland.
 
Samon Fish said:
I don't think that's why you made a point of it at all. That article is justified and in no way worse off for his "poorly collected research" (of which there is no evidence for). His article is not weak. His article is fine. Your post is pompous and your umbridge unfounded - you merely wished to highlight what you know of Jobs and Apple, irrespective of this article, which is something you have made a point of in most of your posts in this thread.
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I can't help but point out that you spelled umbrage wrong :p
 
RIP Steve. He's one of my personal heroes, a genuine entrepreneur who built more than just products, he envisioned a future made brilliant by technology and delivered it to us, and for that me and the thousands of Jobs fans are grateful.

Now, I try to avoid Apple products when I can, mostly because I disagree with some of the decisions they have taken along the way to building their business. But every time I use a Windows or Android device these days I am reminded of how shit these devices would have been without Steve to light a fire under their ass. The lost decade of UI design under Microsoft's monopoly is one of those things that could have been avoided if Apple had stayed relevant in the 90s.

There are many legitimate reasons to think Jobs isn't worthy of the adulation he gets, and I'll try to address them here because there's so much vitriol out there, and he never particularly cared to defend himself. The most egregious offences he committed was screwing Steve Wozniak out of ~2500$ in the old Atari days, and trying to get out of raising his daughter when he was in his 20s. These stories are true, and definitely highlight a dark side to Steve's personality, one we saw glimpses of later in his abject rejection of corporate philanthropy (although it is worth noting that Mrs. Jobs has been involved in charitable causes for some time.) Jobs is no saint. That is not the reason why he is loved by millions. What he was is an aesthete, and a perfectionist. In an era of half-baked, semi functional computer technology, marked by driver conflicts and hardware incompatibilities and crapware and shit interfaces, he delivered to the end user a perfectly formed experience. That experience was not all-encompassing. To this day, functionally iOS lags behind Symbian. But he saw that the majority of people cared for computers only to the extent that it helped them get on with their own busy lives, and he delivered on that promise.

Steve's death will be mourned by many more than perhaps other people who made greater sacrifices or much bigger positive contributions to the world. But the reason so many Apple fans are upset right now is because he created a real, tangible change in their lives. In my own circle of friends, Steve is an inspiration whether it is for his steadfastness in putting the user experience at the center of product design or for his entrepreneurialism. And in the wider Silicon Valley scene, he was a personal hero to startup founders of all kinds. In fact, his entry into existing, boring markets and the explosion of innovation that followed is responsible for the coolest new startups around.

Finally, as to why he's credited with creating the iPhone/Pod/Pad, the answer is clear to anyone who knows Apple's history. The company was floundering when he returned, and he completely overhauled it's management with his own people to implement his own vision. No one saw the immense potential of these ideas that seem obvious in hindsight, even if other companies had products in that space. The man had a knack for gathering the best talent under one roof, spotting market opportunity and then capitalizing on it.
 
99.vikram said:
In an era of half-baked, semi functional computer technology, marked by driver conflicts and hardware incompatibilities and crapware and shit interfaces, he delivered to the end user a perfectly formed experience. That experience was not all-encompassing. To this day, functionally iOS lags behind Symbian. But he saw that the majority of people cared for computers only to the extent that it helped them get on with their own busy lives, and he delivered on that promise.
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This here is the only real reason he was successful, and he didn't even do the interface designs or anything. I don't see how going "man, these interfaces are shit" makes a brilliant genius godlike suckmydick entrepreneur. He didn't make anything new. He didn't do anything that people weren't already trying to do. All he did was get his company to accomplish it first. Thats it. He did what everyone else was doing, using the same technology everyone else was, and it was primarily his designers, not him. As the corporate figurehead and charming-out-the-ass spokesperson, he got all the credit. If you want to argue that the Apple company has made significant contributions to the technological world, I won't argue with you unless you go crazy with the extent. But Jobs himself, the person, is not a genius or hero-worthy at all as far as I'm concerned. He wasn't an inventor, he wasn't a designer or a brilliant philosopher that thought up brand new concepts, he was a guy who happened to see the path consumer electronics were going and got his company in there first, and then he became a really good figurehead and marketer. He's not an Einstein, he's not a Daimler or the Wright Brothers. He's just another ****ing Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch or whoever the hell runs Walmart.
 
BabyHeadCrab said:
God you really are such a hater. Why so bitter lately?
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5008_9c00_420.gif
 
Some quick googling and it sounds like Johnathan Ives is the brains behind a lot of apple's stuff:
Jonathan "Jony" Ive, CBE (born February 1967) is an English designer and the Senior Vice President of Industrial Design at Apple Inc. He is the leading designer and conceptual mind behind the iMac, titanium and aluminum PowerBook G4, G4 Cube, MacBook, unibody MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iPod, iPhone, and iPad.
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Krynn72 said:
This here is the only real reason he was successful, and he didn't even do the interface designs or anything. I don't see how going "man, these interfaces are shit" makes a brilliant genius godlike suckmydick entrepreneur. He didn't make anything new. He didn't do anything that people weren't already trying to do. All he did was get his company to accomplish it first. Thats it. He did what everyone else was doing, using the same technology everyone else was, and it was primarily his designers, not him. As the corporate figurehead and charming-out-the-ass spokesperson, he got all the credit. If you want to argue that the Apple company has made significant contributions to the technological world, I won't argue with you unless you go crazy with the extent. But Jobs himself, the person, is not a genius or hero-worthy at all as far as I'm concerned. He wasn't an inventor, he wasn't a designer or a brilliant philosopher that thought up brand new concepts, he was a guy who happened to see the path consumer electronics were going and got his company in there first, and then he became a really good figurehead and marketer. He's not an Einstein, he's not a Daimler or the Wright Brothers. He's just another ****ing Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch or whoever the hell runs Walmart.
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Except that, you know, all those designers and developers of similar caliber also work at every other company of Apple's size, such as Microsoft, yet it's Apple that set the trend in smartphones and tablets, not those other companies. What's the difference? I have no doubt that Microsoft employs designers just as good as the best of Apple. It's not the people doing the actual development that is the reason that Microsoft had been fumbling about with smartphones and tablets with styluses on pixel-precision interfaces for a decade before Apple showed Microsoft the way. It's the leadership, the people that set the strategy, that cultivate a certain culture within the company (within Apple that was a focus on design) that determine this, like, you know, Steve Jobs.

Where would we be without the iPhone? No doubt still fucking about with Windows Mobile and such. Before Microsoft scrapped it and started on (thankgod) Windows Phone 7, this was rumored to be the interface of Windows Mobile 7:

http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/4/2008/04/wm7leakold.jpg

Look at that shit. No one (with any knowledge anyway) is suggesting that Steve Jobs drew out the designs for the iPhone and soldered the parts together and wrote the software for it, but it's pretty clear that he was what made Apple's products possible. How is that not a noteworthy achievement? I have little doubt that Job's philosophy on design and that it matters played an important part in where we stand with consumer electronics today. In fact, mobile devices weren't even aimed at consumers before Apple released the iPhone. Mobile computers were really a business kind of thing.

he was a guy who happened to see the path consumer electronics were going and got his company in there first, and then he became a really good figurehead and marketer
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You can trivialize anything like that. Doesn't mean it was actually a trivial thing though.
 
PvtRyan said:
Where would we be without the iPhone? No doubt still fucking about with Windows Mobile and such.
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Android was first unveiled in November of 2007, just months after the iphone. Like I said, they did what other people were doing first, but they weren't the only ones working at it. And that fact pretty much addresses every single other point you had as well. I don't deny that they beat everyone else to the punch, but to suggest that he was the only one thinking about it or trying to get his company to work that way is just silly. He was faster at it, and marketed it harder. Thats all. And if you acknowledge that and still think that makes him a genius, then you and I have very, very different standards when it comes to calling people geniuses.
 
Samon Fish said:
That article is justified and in no way worse off for his "poorly collected research" (of which there is no evidence for). His article is not weak. His article is fine.
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I don't know where you read articles, but generally, when someone writes an opinionated article on someone or something, their opinion will be stronger if they show at least some evidence that they did some unbiased research outside of skimming a ****ing wikipedia article. The author presents no knowledge of the subject he is bitching about and instead presents a childish, contradictory attempt at making his audience have a guilt trip for something totally unrelated. It's obnoxious, not informative.
 
The nerdrage runs deep in this thread.

Carry on, don't let me stop any of you...
 
Krynn72 said:
He didn't make anything new. He didn't do anything that people weren't already trying to do. All he did was get his company to accomplish it first. Thats it. He did what everyone else was doing, using the same technology everyone else was, and it was primarily his designers, not him.
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That's not the point. He was not an engineer (not an extraordinary one anyway) and he was not primarily a designer. His role was that of a gatekeeper, preventing the myriad mediocre ideas that arose inside Apple from seeing the light of day before they had been refined to a certain level of quality. All companies have smart engineers and designers in them. The trick is to know what's worth pursuing and what isn't. This is what Steve Jobs did, and this is what kept Apple from releasing abortions like Microsoft Bob or Windows ME or Vista to the world.

He didn't simply do what others did, he walked into market after market and showed the world how it ought to be done. He wasn't simply part of the technological conversation, he defined it. In fact, I remember that before the iPad launched *everyone* knew tablets were going to be the future of mobile computing. It was all over the blogs and tech news sites, but none of the other companies had the balls to enter the market until Apple showed them how it was done. It was embarrassing to watch Google, Microsoft and the others hanging by the sidelines waiting for Apple to make the first move into the market. You know what's more embarrassing? They still can't get it right.

As far as I'm concerned, Steve Jobs is right up there with Henry Ford in terms of changing the way we think about the products we make. And lest you think I'm an Appletard, another company I admire greatly is Amazon, which has done much the same as Apple - experimenting with new things, focusing on how their product fits into the user's life, and generally delivering well rounded experiences that people will gladly part with their money for.
 
I don't get the love Jobs gets. I agree with Krynn that he did none of the hard work and got all of the credit. I will also take it further than that by pointing out that he had a daughter that he abandoned. Gave almost no money to charity. Ended Apple's charitable programs. And ****ed Wozniak over who did all the actual engineering/development work for Apple I.

Don't get me wrong, nobody is perfect. But why this guy gets elevated to such god-like status is beyond me. He was a good businessman, nothing more. And from everything I read as a human being he was a bit of a selfish douchebag.
 
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