Do you mean a pleasant and attractive personality rather than ‘good’? Because I’m struggling to imagine how either Hitler or Stalin could be described as good, though I do recall that Hitler was apparently an understanding and patient boss (well if you weren’t losing Stalingrad or something like that) as attested to by his secretaries and other close associates while Churchill was a bullying, loud-mouthed, ill-tempered prick. I assume thats what you mean?
As for Steve Jobs, while I’m sure I’ve experienced his impact on the world at a remove I’ve quite happily never owned any Apple products (no particular reason, they’ve just never caught my attention) and though I was vaguely aware that he was the head of Apple that was about it. Just one persons opinion.
Bill Gates would leap to my mind more quickly as a ‘Great Man’ both because of his impact on the world and his philanthropy.
I usually don’t, save when people as if Jobs was a great man.
I do think that Apple would be an ideal production to manufacture in the United States. People would still buy it, the product is a cool status symbol.
By definition, anyone who reaches some point near the pinnacle of their industry or occupation designing and producing products or services that benefit society in general is a “great” man or woman. The problem with this question is differing opinions on the meaning of the term “great” in this context.
Someone once said “Don’t try to be a great man. Just be a man, and let history make its own judgements.”
I think history is being very generous to Steve Jobs, if he had more time, I like to think he would have improved as a human being.
So, ultimately, you are holding discussion on the definition of “Great.” I am inclined to go with the definition used in the context I mention about, as an approach to studying History: does this individual “cast a long historical shadow” and seen as a pivotal actor in historical events?
Looking for Great to mean something like “decent and honorable and acting on those principles to affect history” is a non-starter for Jobs, so why discuss. Great meaning “brilliant” - meh. Yes, you may argue with the relative importance of what he was brilliant at - e.g., marketing vs. creation of Consumer Tech - but he was clearly brilliant.
The iPod itself was life altering to me. I’m a music lover. I can’t tell you how much of my income has been devoted to buying music in its various formats including digital. I can’t tell you how much space I devoted in my home to storing my personal music collection.
How I bought, and listened to music, completely changed after I bought my first iPod.
Digital music wasn’t Jobs’ invention, you’ll argue. Perhaps not. But the iTunes library WAS. Jobs PERSONALLY met with music executives and influential artists (e.g. Don Henley) to convince them to join HIS library. The breadth of that library from the moment they released the iPOD was essential to its success. It wasn’t just a little music player. It was a way for a non-computer literate person to download not just whole albums, but individual songs, at a reasonable price, across most music labels and just about every genre. All you needed was to search it.
Unlike other formats, once you bought it, it was yours forever because it would never crack or break or skip. Even if you lost the device, all you had to do is replace it and voila! all your music was restored.
Revolutionary.
The only downside, IMO, is the loss of the album art. I still miss that.
But I digress. Had it not been for the force of Jobs’ personality and his ability to convince music executives and musicians themselves to buy into his idea, we might not have the streamlined method of buying music that we have today. Sony might have come up with their own proprietary platform, their own proprietary player, their own pricing. And then MCI would have invented their platform. Yuck.
So, yes, Jobs helped change the culture. And I’m not even talking about the iPhone.
Thanks for a great example of what I was referring to above.
You call this “life altering.” But what exactly was altered in your life?
You have and do something now, that you had and did before, just with different logistics. The new ones have advantages, some downsides too.
Are you a new person? A better person? Do you have broader freedoms, new realms of ideas before you? How will our grandchildren’s generation be different, for the fact that Steve Jobs brought us iTunes, specifically, in the present one?
I’m sorry, but a more convenient delivery system standard for recorded entertainment seems like a pretty small achievement upon which to hang the mantle of Greatness.
Any kind of innovation can be reduced to being a mere incremental improvement. I mean, all the car ever did was provide a more convenient means of transportation.
no I’d have to agree with Peremensoe. Not only did jobs not invents portable music players. Itunes was not the first electronic music store either so we be pretty much where we are now without it.
I really am not getting what this major cultural shift was regarding electronic music that Jobs brought about. Doing what others are doing a bit better doesn’t really clear the “greatness” bar for me.
Sure, but I’d suggest the ability for people to travel further, faster and more reliably than ever before in history brings about an immense and important cultural shift.
The train was so revolutionary and game-changing that the concept of time itself had to be altered. That is a culture change.
A music delivery system that’s a bit nicer than other ones available? I just don’t see the equivalence. I think people tend to lose a bit of perspective when talking about apple.
No, he was a great organizer. Witness the assembly line, possibly his greatest invention. He was a poor businessman, a tyrant who ran all his top talent off to other companies and nearly ran his own firm into the ground. Plus he was a great admirer of Hitler’s policies. Not even Steve Jobs, asshole extraordinaire, was as bad as Ford.
I look around and see adults, teens and children buried in their smartphones. I see extensive commentary on this phenomenon, with much applause from Pros lauding its capabilities, and much hand-wringing from Cons - both commenting on how different things are culturally now that these smartphones are ubiquitous.
We can debate the degree to which Jobs was a prime mover in getting to this point, but framing the emergence of Consumer Tech as a “step up in incremental convenience” seems way too modest for its impact, now and continuing to emerge.
