Evidence does not bear this out. Certainly, he was not a programmer or hardware engineer, but the notion that he did not development costs or have a general understanding of the technology involved is belied by the fact that the products developed under his tenure have been insanely profitable, and Apple went from the brink of bankruptcy to having a market capitalization twice that of Exxon.
He certainly drove away some people, especially in the early days of Apple. It definitely did not drive away the incredibly talented people who learned to work with him, such as Jony Ive, Tim Cook, Phil Schiller, etc.
So are you saying that the people who buy the competitors’ phones aren’t replacing them every year or two? People are buying a Samsung Galaxy phone and then keeping it for three, four, five years? I doubt that it’s any different in the Android world.
I’m sure it’s not any different in the Android world. I just a little amused, though, at how different it is in the non-smartphone world. I’ve had a Motorola Razr for more than ten years – amazed that the battery still lasts about a week or more between charges. And it has two terrific features that I use a lot: (1) a button that turns it on and off, and (2) a hole that I can talk into, and someone far away can hear me. That’s why it’s called a “phone” – that’s a contraction of “telephone”, young people, and it means “sound at a distance”. It’s a wonderful invention and making it completely mobile and portable is more wonderful still.
Steve Jobs did great things for music with iTunes and the iPod and with the various desktop and laptop platforms and especially with extending the consumer experience into new realms with the iPad. I understand he also did something with phones, but I still can’t figure out what it is. As far as I can tell, it’s something that causes normal human beings to become self-obsessed assholes disconnected from the real world, constantly pecking at something in their hand regardless of any and all circumstances of the real world around them.
I struggle with OPs like this. You are asking a question, but are also putting forth a POV striking down the OP question, and you don’t seem open to hearing other points of view.
That’s fine; if you think all Jobs did was be a marketing shill, I am not going to try to change your mind. But then why ask the OP? Just start a thread saying “Resolved: Steve Jobs was not all that.” and hang your POV out there.
For what it is worth, your OP could not be more incorrect. Steve Jobs’ vision of computer-powered consumer devices, branded to appeal to consumers and lifestyles, and part of a closed-system ecosystem, pervaded his vision of Apple from the start. That vision has been what has led Apple to its current position.
I am no Jobs fanboy. He was a jerk on a number of levels. But you must be able to step back and look at the overall arc of what Apple has done to appreciate how pivotal Jobs has been to how we view tech consumer products. If you can’t do that, then you are welcome to your POV, but you are missing the biggest part of the discussion. The folks saying “read the book” are actually saying “Dude, you really don’t know what you are trying to argue. You should consider educating yourself about the history of consumer tech and how Apple fits into that. Isaacson’s book is a decent place to start.”
While not a fan of Mac OS, I do have to say that the quality of the build of their laptops is top notch compared to the normal slew of windows machines I’ve used. So yes marketing, but that marketing allows them to maintain higher quality due to excluding competition allowing them to build it how they would like to see it built.
But… Jobs never created anything that other people weren’t already working on or that wasn’t already in place but to a lesser degree, in other words, he may of been a few years ahead of other people but they already had MP3 and Smartphones.
The one thing I think he definitely gets credit for he was the first person to have a strong and clear vision that computers were for everyone to use and not only for technology geeks. But, again, that would of happened with or without him. He was just the first.
So, yeah, very over hyped. Also, I realize my comments have been made many times before. I just think they are incredibly accurate after thinking it over since this thread began.
This is true of absolutely any successful inventor. Bell wasn’t the only one working on the telephone. Edison did not make the first electric lightbulb. Ford was not the first to make a gasoline-driven automobile…
But all of those people made the first really commercially successful one. And while there’s a certain amount of luck involved in that, it’s incredibly dismissive to ignore it.
And Jobs didn’t just do this once. He did it several times. The Macintosh, the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad.
In every case, there were existing products in those categories. And, in every case, the Apple version pretty well blew them out of the water in terms of usability and polish. And then all the devices that followed looked a lot like the Apple one.
Yeah, that is definitely true. LOL, I remember my old Dell MP3 I had when the Ipod came out. It’s like comparing a Honda Civic to BMW. The Ipod had style and class. And was very easy to use.
People have mentioned how the the iTunes music store revolutionized music sales (Apple is the world’s largest music retailer now), but I don’t think anyone has mentioned the Jobs-created Apple stores, which revolutionized retail sales. Apple stores are the highest-grossingretail stores in the US, exceeding the second-higest (Tiffany’s) by 50%.
I read the Issacson book as well as the Pixar book, and I came away disliking Jobs even more than before. You cannot truly know the depth of my loathing of Steve Jobs until you to have had to open an iPod or an iPhone to work on it.
Lots of folks remembered in history were jerks, or evil, or petty or otherwise humans with obvious frailties. That’s not what this is about. The OP is stating that they don’t see that Jobs really was the pivotal actor in the success of Apple. Which is incorrect on a variety of levels as discussed in thread.
Jerk? Oh yeah.
Historically famous for valid reasons? Oh yeah.
My view of the computer industry encompasses the entire history of Apple, and I’ve never been particularly impressed by the company or it’s products. So I can agree that he was the pivotal figure behind Apple, I disagree on the importance of Apple’s products. Importance, not success.
