# Do you think Steve Jobs was a "great man"? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 13, 2015, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-think-steve-jobs-was-a-great-man/734547 "2015-10-13T14:06:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![UberArchetype](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/2bfe46/32.png) [@UberArchetype](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UberArchetype)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2015, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-think-steve-jobs-was-a-great-man/734547/81 "2015-10-16T18:11:47Z")
…to Communicate. Certainly Jobs was a great man. Nobody who understands the industry and his former position in it would argue that. What the OP fails to communicate is her ulterior motive for attempting to trivialize, denigrate or otherwise tarnish his reputation in this word game. ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2015, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-think-steve-jobs-was-a-great-man/734547/82 "2015-10-16T18:55:28Z")
> [@UberArchetype](#): > > …to Communicate. Certainly Jobs was a great man. Nobody who understands the industry and his former position in it would argue that. What the OP fails to communicate is her ulterior motive for attempting to trivialize, denigrate or otherwise tarnish his reputation in this word game. I disagree. I mean, I agree with _you_: Jobs was a great man, in terms of having an historically-influencing impact. But over the past few posts, certainly you see that folks like **Peremensoe, Novelty Bobble, bump** and others _do_ argue that point. ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2015, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-think-steve-jobs-was-a-great-man/734547/83 "2015-10-16T19:19:40Z")
For the record-- I myself have nothing against Jobs. I think he had some good ideas, did some cool things. I just see historical greatness as a much higher standard. ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2015, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-think-steve-jobs-was-a-great-man/734547/84 "2015-10-16T20:01:12Z")
> [@Peremensoe](#): > > For the record-- I myself have nothing against Jobs. I think he had some good ideas, did some cool things. > > I just see historical greatness as a much higher standard. Yes, exactly that. He made some lovely stuff, had some good ideas and the single-minded vision to push through exactly what he wanted which ticks the boxes for a lot of people. But ultimately what he did was disposable and transient. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2015, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-think-steve-jobs-was-a-great-man/734547/85 "2015-10-16T20:59:17Z")
> [@Novelty\_Bobble](#): > > Yes, exactly that. > > He made some lovely stuff, had some good ideas and the single-minded vision to push through exactly what he wanted which ticks the boxes for a lot of people. > > But ultimately what he did was disposable and transient. Yep. I don’t see anyone running around praising Jack Kilby, Vint Cerf, Claude Shannon, Tim Berners-Lee or a host of other computer scientists for what they did, and it’s far more fundamental than anything Jobs dreamed of doing. But in 100 years time, we’ll still read about Kilby as the inventor of the integrated circuit, and of Berners-Lee as the father of the WWW, and Cerf as one of the inventor of TCP/IP and the fathers of the Internet. Jobs will be a historical figure much like say… Jay Gould, J.P. Morgan or Charles Crocker is to us. Bill Gates will be remembered more like Andrew Carnegie due to is philanthropy, but Jobs didn’t last long enough to be a philanthropist. ---
**Author:** ![TBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c89c15/32.png) [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2015, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-think-steve-jobs-was-a-great-man/734547/86 "2015-10-16T23:22:48Z")
> [@friedo](#): > > I think he was a genius. Was PT Barnum a genius? Because that’s the closest I can think of to another famous person to what Steve Jobs was. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2015, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-think-steve-jobs-was-a-great-man/734547/87 "2015-10-16T23:39:38Z")
Other people did the work, he took the credit. But, he did hire his own publicist. Seriously–just a down-dressed corporate type, no different from the rest. ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2015, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-think-steve-jobs-was-a-great-man/734547/88 "2015-10-17T00:21:21Z")
> [@TBG](#): > > Was PT Barnum a genius? Because that’s the closest I can think of to another famous person to what Steve Jobs was. Wow. That’s hilarious. ---
**Author:** ![pool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pool/32/4152_2.png) [@pool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pool)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2015, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-think-steve-jobs-was-a-great-man/734547/89 "2015-10-17T01:13:25Z")
He was a great businessman in many ways, and he had a vision, he pursued it and came out the victor after many prior failures that would have made a lot of people give up. I like apple products but I’m really kind of neutral on Jobs, he was an ok guy I guess, I don’t like some of the stories I’ve heard about how he screwed over his friends like Wozniak with the whole circuit board thing but maybe that’s been blown up out of proportion. Bill Burr sums up my feelings nicely: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ew6fv9UUlQ8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ew6fv9UUlQ8) ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2015, 9:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-think-steve-jobs-was-a-great-man/734547/90 "2015-10-18T09:49:34Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > All that is true, and Ford was STILL a man of immense importance. Ergo, a great man. Truly great men do not support Nazis. Period. ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2015, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-think-steve-jobs-was-a-great-man/734547/91 "2015-10-18T12:38:35Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > Truly great men do not support Nazis. Period. [mini-rant] I do not think that word means what you think it means. Back in the day, awesome did NOT just mean “gnarly” or “tubular” - it meant “full of awe” and typically referred to something of godlike impact. Great \<\> Good, nor is it just a nice adjective to include in a Sugar Frosted Flakes tagline. Great originally meant “Huge and fearsome” - i.e., describing a tyrant as “great and terrible.” I did a quick Google and somebody has a series of books called a Great and Terrible Beauty. Great has nothing to do with intentions. Ford had a huge impact, even while being a rascist anti-Semite fool at the same time. So - A) if Great is anchored in goodness, then of course Steve Jobs was NOT a great man. B) If Great is based on impact, some would argue that Jobs was a mere opportunistic marketing guy/huckster. C) If Great is based on impact, some would argue he was pivotal in the evolution from Computers as tools to Consumer Tech/lifestyle and culture changers. Yep. I’m in for C. I am not an Apple fanboy as a consumer at all. But I watched it play out and that is my read of his influence. He will be one of the few people highlighted a few hundred years from now when discussing this new era we have entered. [/mini-rant] ETA: regarding Claude Shannon. I read James Gleick’s book, The Information. Man, it was great. It does a wonderful job of putting Shannon’s work in perspective. Easy to see how he is due to be pulled from mainstream obscurity. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2015, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-think-steve-jobs-was-a-great-man/734547/92 "2015-10-18T13:54:14Z")
Fuck Henry Ford. ---
**Author:** ![WordMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e8c25b/32.png) [@WordMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WordMan)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2015, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-think-steve-jobs-was-a-great-man/734547/93 "2015-10-18T13:58:37Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > Fuck Henry Ford. Well, there is that 😉 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Yookeroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yookeroo/32/323_2.png) [@Yookeroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yookeroo)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2015, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-think-steve-jobs-was-a-great-man/734547/94 "2015-10-19T02:39:21Z")
> [@bump](#): > > They were all there already. Nothing Apple did was that groundbreaking though; we had MP3 players, and everyone was working on some kind of iTunes like marketplace. Apple combined the capacitive touchscreen with a smartphone (which existed in several forms already), to make the iPhone. People were already buried in their Blackberries and Palm Pilots long before the iPhone came around- Apple merely made it cool, and aimed it squarely at the everyday home user, not businesses, like RIM and Palm had. Even if this is all he did (and I think you’re selling him short, this strikes me as pretty groundbreaking. > [@bump](#): > > I see it the other way around; Apple had been around for years, and what kick-started their renaissance was the iMac in 1998. It wasn’t all that awesome, performance-wise. But it was cool, and most importantly, it was cute and came in different colors. I recall there being a big deal about it coming in MORE colors than it did originally. !. Aesthetics are important. 2. You’re really selling Apple short on the user experience. Apple products became “hip” because the user experience was pretty great. Whether it was the iMac, the iPod or the iPhone. The Apple II (which detractors seem to ignore and may be the most important product), the point and click interface, the iMac, iPod and iPhone. I find it pretty ridiculous that anyone could dismiss the greatness of the person who had a huge hand in bringing all of these to the consumer. He may have been as ass, but he was an ass with one hell of a track record. > [@bump](#): > > Not so much a minor impact, but the nature of what he did, and why Apple has been so influential is predominantly a product placement and marketing triumph, not some Herculean feat of technological prowess. Using technological prowess as the only measuring bar is a mistake. And dismissing marketing is also shortsighted. And even so, there’s more going on. Apple products tend to be very elegant. “It just works.” was marketing, but there was also a lot of truth to that. And whether or not what happened was inevitable, Jobs saw that when most didn’t. ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2015, 10:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-think-steve-jobs-was-a-great-man/734547/95 "2015-10-19T10:56:48Z")
> [@Yookeroo](#): > > Even if this is all he did (and I think you’re selling him short, this strikes me as pretty groundbreaking. > > !. Aesthetics are important. > 2. You’re really selling Apple short on the user experience. > > Apple products became “hip” because the user experience was pretty great. Whether it was the iMac, the iPod or the iPhone. > > The Apple II (which detractors seem to ignore and may be the most important product), the point and click interface, the iMac, iPod and iPhone. I find it pretty ridiculous that anyone could dismiss the greatness of the person who had a huge hand in bringing all of these to the consumer. He may have been as ass, but he was an ass with one hell of a track record. > > Using technological prowess as the only measuring bar is a mistake. And dismissing marketing is also shortsighted. And even so, there’s more going on. Apple products tend to be very elegant. “It just works.” was marketing, but there was also a lot of truth to that. And whether or not what happened was inevitable, Jobs saw that when most didn’t. But I think what I, and others, are trying to get across is that all of the above is not a massive shift in human development, none of it really matters to a huge percentage of the world’s population. It is stuff done a little differently and a little better (in some cases) than the competition. His achievements occupy a rather narrow slice of human life. I can go through a full day without having my life impacted by Steve Job’s output. Something that can’t be said of others to whom we ascribe true “greatness”. It really is just shiney, expensive stuff that is quite nice to use, it isn’t the eradication of malaria. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-think-steve-jobs-was-a-great-man/734547.md?page=4)