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RIP Steve Jobs


Rotwang

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I can't stand Apple and their products but still, RIP.

 

I don't like Apple either but I still think they've had a positive influence on the market as a whole - e.g. notice how much better MS products got after they started to lose market share to Apple in the Noughties, compared to how shit they were when they had a near-monopoly in the Nineties.

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I'm a Mac user, but not of the "Apple cult", "Apple fanboy" type.

 

I respect Steve Jobs as a successful CEO and member of a successful product development organization, but it's kind of been bugging me how much I see/hear people deifying him.

 

People who, just months ago, wouldn't have given a shit one way or the other about him, are now saying what a visionary he was, what a genius he was, blah blah blah.

 

I also keep feeling a strong inference underlying a lot of these comments that every Apple product that has ever existed was conceived and developed by Steve Jobs, with maybe secondary assistance by others. Hardly. :rolleyes:

 

Just today at work I heard one co-worker say to another "I've never heard anyone say anything bad about him..." Really? What about the board of directors who voted him out in the late 80's? I bet they had some bad things to say. Of course, they ended up eating their hats in the long run, but the guy did have a reputation. The kind of reputation that is irritating and hard to work with when a company is small and of minor influence, but when the company becomes big and of great influence, is magically transformed into 'visionary', and the meaning of the word 'uncompromising' suddenly transforms from a bad one to a good one.

 

If Steve Jobs had died before Apple introduced the iPod, he would be remembered as the co-founder of a small and quirky computer company that peaked in the early years of the PC era. But since Apple has transformed from primarily a computer company to primarily a company of hugely popular consumer devices, people perceive him differently. I say that whatever genius people see in him now he had back when Apple was talked about with sarcasm by all but a small percentage of people, and whatever drawbacks he had back then he had even when everyone and their dog had an iSomething. Perception appears to be the biggest influence on the man's legacy.

 

To sum it up: he was a good businessman, but not all good businessmen end up heading successful companies. Good ideas don't always catch on, there's an element of chance in what becomes popular. Apple almost wasn't a successful company. And don't anyone forget that Steve Jobs didn't create Apple. Without Steve Wozniak, there would have been no Apple Computer.

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People who, just months ago, wouldn't have given a shit one way or the other about him, are now saying what a visionary he was, what a genius he was, blah blah blah.

Isn't that the case with most recently-deceased famous people, though? I don't know how much of Apple's success can be attributed to Jobs but I'm pretty sure he deserves his tributes more than e.g. Lady Di or Jade Goody deserved theirs.

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@Veracohr: IMO, Steve Jobs is not becoming a deity as you put it. I read an interesting article saying why people feel like they're "friends" with Steve Jobs and why they mourn his death as if he was a close, good neighboor:

 

1. Apple products are perceived as "elegant and sophisticated", most people may be dressed like beggars but they feel "chic" if they're carrying an iPad, iPhone or a iPod. Or typing in a MacBook in a cafe. And they feel they owe this "elegance" to the work of Jobs. This affects people personally, in their ego.

2. Jobs and Apple are seen as examples of honest success, fruit of hard work and intelligence. Something people really miss these days in USA, due to the bad current status of US economy. And he made Apple a #1 company without any official help. This also is something that people could feel related to him too, the perfect American dream came true.

3. Jobs was a master of promoting Apple products. He naturally became the "face of Apple" with his shows to introduce new Apple devices. Nothing wrong with that also: he never lied, never promised functions that were not there later. His success and honesty was "shared" with Apple customers, when they bought an iPhone, for instance.

4. Jobs was the pioneer of introducing technologies to the masses available to the geeks only, such as the touchscreen. All of a sudden people realized they could save precious minutes with only one device (iPhone and iPad), they could carry all their "musical identity" in an economic and pretty device (iPod and iTouch), and they could have a computer that really worked well - the Macs. Moreover, people felt "good" to have devices that worked well at home and at their offices too.

 

I agree with all that I read. Of course Jobs was a human being, full of faults at home and at work too. But to diminish his role in the technology field because he didn't create some of the technologies he used in Apple devices is the same that to diminish the role of Henry Ford in the creation of the automobile because he didn't create the wheel and wasn't the first to discover petroleum. Last, some may argue that he didn't create Apple, so what? The important thing is that he was the brain of the company. He was the one who fought to make touchscreen available at a reasonable price when other companies, like RIM of CEO Balsillie, said that touchscreen was s**t because people could not understand it and the screen got smeare, and people would never swap a Blackberry for an iPhone, this in 2007. Guess what is happening now? RIM is sinking like a Titanic, because Jobs idea was so good it just smashed Blackberry old keyboard technology.

This is only an example of how his ideas were so ahead of their time. iPad is another example of a creation that was ridiculed when it was launched and now, only 2 years later, is seen as the natural substitute for desktops.

 

He may not have been the perfect inventor, creator or businessman. But he was what every company in the world wished as a CEO.

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He definitely deserves praise, but I see a lot of overdoing it. As an entirely unprovable guess, I think many of the technical achievements he's praised for would have been introduced by someone else if he hadn't. I'd say the style of Apple is where he shined.

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He definitely deserves praise, but I see a lot of overdoing it. As an entirely unprovable guess, I think many of the technical achievements he's praised for would have been introduced by someone else if he hadn't. I'd say the style of Apple is where he shined.

 

Well, I see a lot of people praising him, but I see, probably, the same amount of people and with more intensity writing bad things about him. Take a look at the CNN headline saying he had passed away. People said he deserved to die, really angry people. So you see, if we're talking about unreasonable behavior, then the "bad side" wins, because I don't anything wrong praising a person who has passed away (actually we have to do that, out of respect, even to people we didn't like when he/she was alive. It's called politeness). But I do see "overdoings" when people write that he had it coming.

 

Of course, someone would someday create the same innovations. But to say that he is being overpraised because someone would do it someday, then we have to stop The Nobel Prizes, for instance, following the same example. What the Nobel laureate did yesterday is of no importance, because someone who knows, in year 3056, would do it anyway. Follwing this thought, all science would come to a stall.

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A great visionary and although i still prefer PC i think the iPhone was really a turning point.

May he rest in peace.

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I am not a fan of his products, in fact I hate them.

 

But that doesn't hinder me to wish him to rest in peace and all the best wherever he may be now from the bottom of my heart.

 

RIP

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Where did you see people saying he deserved it?

 

It was on CNN's comments under the headline announcing Jobs death, but CNN mods deleted them. In minutes it was overflooded with RIPs and the same ammount of irrational comments like he had it coming, why didn't he gave his billions to donations, that he died one day before 4S introduction but Apple hid his death till one day after the fact, all sort of paranoia.

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R.I.P.

I hope he can't hear some of the bullshit being said about him though.

I heard him reffered to as "the Ghandi of Silicone Valley" Ghandi? Really? Why can't people just say he was a great businessman as that's what he was, not a saviour.

He added a hdd to the mp3 player, then added a phone and then made it huge. Cool shit but it ain't leading a country to independence through non-violent civil disobedience: not even close.

He was a smart guy who made a crappy little company into a market leader. He knew the market and how to get people to buy his shit. Please people...talk about the things he actually did rather than making completely untrue comparisons. It is completely disrespectful to make stuff up, even if it's positive stuff, it should be said if it's not true.

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