What HE DID do was bring the five biggest labels to the table. Because he knew that if he didn’t have them, people would still have to use multiple services. So he wen to the wall with the Big 5 and after great perseverance, convinced them to sign on.
You really have no idea what you’re talking about.
Yet, THEY did corner it. And no one can compete with iPod. Not the people who were doing first. And not Microsoft with their Zune, who spent probably near two hundred million dollars trying to do so. And this is after they had the iPod to copy! You really should leave your collective fantasies aside. It’s time.
You are using “invent” and “create” as synonyms. Not all creations are inventions. And if it was extraordinarily hard to market things successfully, think of all the useless stuff we wouldn’t have. If you’ll excuse me now, I have to talk to my Pet Rock with my Mr. Microphone while I cook some food on my George Foreman grill. I’ll be back to check this out later!
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Again, you demonstrate that you really zero idea of what you’re talking about. Perhaps you should call Microsoft and volunteer to champion efforts for Snoboarder Bo’s Zune II. :rolleyes:
And notice that you didn’t list any Apple products along with your Pet Rock.
Inevitably people will have to be brought up to speed as threads lengthen. The quote is totally out of context. It starts with talking about roads and bridges and referencing their importance to business and that those roads and bridges were not built by the company and yet they benefit from them. It’s an appeal to a balanced perspective on the way economies work instead of all the credit being given to executives and business owners. It is not to say business leaders are not critical. It is saying there are other things that are also critical and that credit needs to be spread around more responsibly for any rational conversation about the economy, taxes and related policy to occur.
Saying business leaders don’t deserve as much credit as they get is not the same as saying they deserve no credit. The hyperbole by the executive worshipers in this thread and this country is just baffling. But then thats the only way we wind up with the disaster of squander we have for the sake of perpetuating a royalty system.
This thread seems to have devolved into a debate about the greatness – or lack thereof – of Steve Jobs. Let’s grant that he was an individual of great talent and charisma, along with a handful of others including Bill Gates and Henry Ford. But they are the exception, not the rule. There are plenty of CEO’s who did not start the company and build it from the ground up. There are plenty of risk-taking entrepreneurs who fail and take their investors and employees with them, and many more who manage to achieve modest success but nothing of earth-shaking importance. I’m not downplaying the value of those who take a risk. But let’s remember that they’re not all Steve Jobs. Yes, they deserve some recognition for their accomplishments, but we don’t need to provide them with burnt offerings. Maybe we should also remember Henry Ford’s philosophy of paying his employees enough so that they could afford to buy the cars they built.
You’re right to suggest that there are plenty of cold cynical motivations to paying your employees more. It makes for good marketing, you get good quality products people can rely on, it’s a nice way to promote a companies image. These were all important in getting people to make th large investment in automobiles. On a national level more people making more money as only the swath of corporate pay policy can effect is highly beneficial to everyone
The problem is the wealthy no longer see the need to have these policies. In fact they see empowered Americans as a threat to their power, influence and legal immunity. Whatever the cause the people have little recourse other than a governmental one though that is mostly controlled by private parties as well, but at least there there is possibility, where if a private firm were a government it would be totalitarian and fascistic. Through various incentives and penalties we could sculpt a business environment that promoted the treatment of employees that we prefer. It requires a robust challenge to the money that controls our government. It’ difficult but the only way to reach those goals.
Clive Crook, for the Atlantic, makes a good point, then steps on it:
Now, it’s perfectly apparent that Obama was trying to copy Elizabeth Warren’s famous speech, and tripped over his line. It’s a gaffe.
And Clive Crook knows this, but then gets the vapors over “rich” people (that is, those who profit from owning the productivity of others) being asked to pay even the same proportion of their income (from other people’s labor) as workers pay on their income after the rich (who own the shop) take a cut.
What factory owner built his success without floor workers? What wealthy planter built his plantation without somebody in the fields? What investor built his success without businesses to invest in? If you didn’t have help, you’re either a swindler selling vapor or some kind of self-employed artisan.
But of course, neither Obama or Crook (nor Thatcher–maybe Warren) come out and say that, because then the answer would be obvious. You don’t owe “government.” You owe society. You owe the pool of people who were able to build your wealth by coming in every day and working. That cared enough to do the work honestly. You owe the system that taught them functional skills, the tradition of mores that taught them right from wrong.
And government is the agent of those people and those traditions.
Oh wait. I did. In the sentence immediately before the one you quoted.
Jobs was intimately involved in the design and functionality of Apple products. You really don’t know what you’re talking about if you think all he was was a marketing guy.
So were lots and lots of other people. It’s not tearing jobs down to build other people up that were also responsible for Apple’s success. If there are people out there as you seem to be that think Jobs is solely or even the majority of the success I guess in relative terms it’s a downgrade, but that’s just a matter of dismissing childhood fantasy, not something adults should worry too much about.
So what is your point then? I mean, are you denying that others had noted that devices need content? What makes Jobs’ realization any more groundbreaking than anyone else’s? Oh yeah, the fact that he’s the one who managed to make the most money.
It’s circular reasoning: “He’s obviously a great man because he had so much success. And he had so much success because he was such a great man.”
I think Steve Jobs was a very shrewd man.
I don’t know exactly what you think “intimately involved” means, but if you mean he said yes or no to a bunch of design proposals and maybe made suggestions on what he’d like to see, then I guess I can’t argue with you.
You do know that Jobs didn’t design the iPhone, right? Nor the iPad, the various iPods, the MacBook computers, or the iMac. You’re prolly not familiar with Jonathan Ive, tho, because that gets in the way with any kind of cult of personality narrative forming around Jobs.
You want to give credit where credit is due, try this on: the most important thing Steve Jobs ever did was to recognize the talent of Ive and to make him the head of industrial design.
And yet I’ve never heard you (or anyone else in this thread) acknowledge Mr. Ive in any way at all.
Hear in Silicon Valley we call him Jony. We know all about him. But, again, if you don’t think Jobs didn’t work closely with Jony to define the featuers and the look and feel, then you don’t know much about what goes on at Apple. I don’t work there mysefl, but I know quite a few people who do.
Right so if Jobs touched it all success related to it is attributable to him, the other people are incidental. Got it. Be great if all these companies could form one mega company. Then all the CEOs we recognize now could be incidental with the last man to get on top of the heap clearly being responsible for the whole world economy’s existence.
He’s a personal friend of yours? You call him Jony? You know all about him?
That’s a pretty raw deal, to ignore a friend’s contributions to a project and only mention his boss when talking about it.
Or are you trying to insinuate yourself as some kind of close personal friend, when in fact you’ve never met the man?
If so, that’s a pretty roundabout way you have of trying to set yourself up as some sort of authority.
At any rate, I guess we’ll have to disagree on exactly how much credit goes to Jobs for each individual Apple product’s design. To me, you’re POV is like trying to credit a film’s producer with how the movie turned out, instead of crediting the writer, director, actors, cinematographer, gaffer and all the other technicians and craftspeople who worked on it.
I am surprised by the extent to which the more conservative types here are tending to want to ascribe great accomplishments to an individual rather than a team. I guess that does seem to fit with a lot of conservative stereotypes, but I try not to reason from stereotypes…
Maybe I should pay more attention to them. Maybe I should take more seriously the idea that conservative ideology is a quasi-fascistic super-hero-worship unconcerned for the greater good and more concerned for the good of the powerful. I hope not though! I try not to believe that! But conservative talk being so damned suggestive along those lines.
Not sure why you think I was pretending to know him. I just found your insinuation that I didn’t know about him to be laughable. Not that I expect you to know much about my personal life, but I do, and I’ve been involved in the tech industry here in Silicon Valley for over 30 years.
No one is arguing that Apple wouldn’t have experienced some level of success if Jobs had never returned (and here, I’m ignoring all the amazing stuff Apple did prior). But if you had followed the ups and downs of Apple over the years, you can’t ignore the huge impact Jobs made after his return. Without him, it is unlikely that Apple would be the huge success that it is. Apple’s place in the tech world is light years from where it was in the 80s, when Jobs was originally booted out.
The directors brought him back to turn things around, and he did that in spades.
Most people do not know who he is and have never heard his name, is all. That you and I both have only shows that we are paying more attention than the average person with respect to tech stuff. (I’ve been using Apple products since 1979 and have followed the companies history fairly closely; DIY is a big part of my lifestyle/worldview/attitude and Apple seemed to exemplify that DIY was a viable strategy back then.)
I agree. I just don’t agree that he was the only factor, nor do I agree that, as is the central point being argued in this thread, he did it all by himself. Many other people were involved, and in many cases, Jobs’ contribution was simply to hire the right person for the task, such as the aforementioned Mr. Ive.
No, he didn’t. Apple created an aggressive marketing system which inculcated a desire for his product. More power to them.
The formats and theoretical research were conducted in the public sector and surrendered over to the private sector when the time was right, as is almost always the case. It’s certainly the case with DNA recombinant technology.
I simply don’t get all this debate about Apple / Steve Jobs.
It looks to me like the poster child argument for what Obama was saying.
Jobs was enormously talented at putting the right person into the right job, at leveraging on existing technology in a new way. He was a master of bringing together nascent ideas and technology and using it in a way that people wanted.
Did the man himself actually “invent” anything? That would be a stretch, (except for in his earlier days). But that really doesn’t matter. It is very clear that he put together some amazingly desirable products, and brought together teams to use technology and ideas that was otherwise languishing.
In ohter words, he is one of America’s most successful entrepreneurs that is standing on the shoulders of an existing system - just as Obama said is the case with America.
Could anyone else have done what Jobs did? maybe, maybe not. The way he turned Apple around you would have to give him pretty much full credit for “saving” Apple, and for the products that followed. Even if he wasn’t personally the invetor, he created the environment and culture where they could grow. What about that is difficult to understand?
He is the poster child for personal initiative, at the same time he is a perfect example of someone that leverages the efforts of others.
One further thing you must understand about him - he used to attend “free” classes at university, he had a whole range of amazing mentors throughout his career - without which, arguably, he would not have achieved anything. So when Obama says something like “you had a great mentor” he could have been talking specifically about Jobs.
You are just making this shit up. Really. You do not know what you are talking about. Apple didn’t even have a marketing campaign before it developed the iPod. So you think the company is going to invest God knows how many man-hours developing a product that really just hinges on a marketing campaign that they didn’t even have? THAT would be the opposite of genius.
:rolleyes: Like I’m going to watch an hour-long video in the hopes that some p[art of it has some bearing on this at all, never mind make a cogent point. :rolleyes:
Based on this logic, the only creators truly worthy of praise are the guy who came up with the wheel and the inclined plain. Edison? He had a lab, and employees. Employees who wore clothes so they didn’t die in the cold. Oh and they all ate food. Food they didn’t grow themselves. This logic that Edison or Jobs or others don’t deserve the credit for what they accomplished because, well, there was Gutenberg, the Sear Roebuck Catlaog, the Railroad and Aristotle is absurd. I would say it serves no purpose, but it’s worse than that; One is the point of the narrative you put forth? It’s creates a narrative that stuff happens without the initiative of the individual. Without the immense sacrifice and hard work, and without at times, genius.
It’s a false narrative. And one that is UNhelpful to society.
Why would anyone want to peddle this nonsense? Do they want to feel like they had something to do with the creation of the iPod or other great products? Are they insecure and feel minimized when there are people doing amazing great things? I just don’t get it.
And I think you made Newton turn in his grave. He was giving credit to the great scientists and thinkers that preceded him, not the guy who made his chamber pot or milked the cow.
Get it through your thick heads. Steve Jobs did not do it alone. And even if he had somehow been some kind of Kryptonian genius inventor-fabricator, he still would have a social responsibility to pay his taxes, like everyone else in the economy.
I don’t care how big a genius you are. PAY YOUR TAXES.
I don’t care how elite (or 1337) you are. PAY YOUR TAXES.
I don’t care if you’re Superman, or Opal. PAY YOUR TAXES.
You’re not being punished. It is not the apish hordes tearing down your little self-made corner of paradise (and I love that J.G. Ballard story, but it’s not). It’s for basic macroeconomic purposes to provide for the general welfare. You are not a Gawd. You are not Ozymandias or Superman looking down from above us all.