- Apple has lost its visionary at a time when the company is headed into battle with its most serious challengers yet.
Jobs Transformed Tech, Media
The Apple co-founder, who pioneered the personal computer industry and changed the thinking on technology, died at 56.
Steve Jobs Dies at 56
Mossberg Shares Personal Story About Jobs
DEAL JOURNAL
Flashback to Apple's 1980 IPO
DEVELOPMENTS
Jobs’s Signature in New York: the Cube
SPEAKEASY
Public Theater Pushes Ahead with Play About Steve Jobs
SPEAKEASY
The Zen of Steve Jobs
MARKETBEAT
AAPL: The Steve Jobs Memorial Stock Rally?
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Walt Mossberg: My Phone Calls with Steve Jobs
Walt Mossberg: The Steve Jobs I Knew
Journal columnist Walt Mossberg shares his personal memories of Steve Jobs, from their late-night gripe sessions to one final walk together.New Apple CEO Has Big Shoes to Fill
Apple's Design Spotlight Shifts to Ive
Jobs Fans Mourn World-Wide
As news spread of the death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, Apple fans began gathering at the company's headquarters in California and chain of stores world-wide to express their condolences.
David Gelernter: Steve Jobs and the Coolest Show on Earth
On the Third Day, Steve Jobs to Rise Again from the Dead
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41 comments:
As usual, The Onion had the best headline.
I wrote about Steve Jobs the day before he died. Although Jobs was undeniably a visionary he had much less influence on society than Tom Edison or the much maligned Sam Insull. What would our county be like if there were more men like Jobs, and these men were allowed to focus their imagionation on solving the problems caused by peak oil and demographic disaster?
???
I don't really get your "Generalissimo" reference. (And yes, I do remember the SNL skits).
Wow, a lot of FIRE guys must have had the man-crush on Jobs. I am, eh, indifferent. A fancier phone? A music player? A tablet? The anecdote passed along by Rod Dreher at TAC about "maybe you need Apple more than you need a wife" says an awful lot, to me, about Jobs' character. Great? Maybe. History will judge. But good? Nah.
Best thing I've seen written about Steve Jobs:
http://mpcdot.com/forums/index.php?/topic/3490-steve-jobs-succumbs-to-grids/page__st__20__p__61619#entry61619
I'm a fan of Jobs' work, but the mass of effusive praise is getting a bit much. I wouldn't even rate him as a "great" man. More like a pretty shrewd salesman and uncompromising boss.
Today NPR was comparing him favorably to Edison, and that, I think, is a bit much.
Jobs stands out only because everyone ELSE was so bad. A guy who can find his behind in the dark, without a flashlight and a map, and with either hand, seems God-like compared to oh, Jeffrey Immelt, or Warren Buffett, or Reed Hastings, or Howard Schulz (opening Starbucks in Compton to "train" inner-city "youth" so the LAT informs us).
Jobs understood Apple could only make money by high margins, and that in turn meant making devices and computers that were ridiculously easy to use, so the extra bucks were worth it. There were other MP3 players out there, and still are, but Apple's are the easiest to use and integrate best with the software management of Itunes. Everything Jobs did was pursue high margin, by advanced design AND software/hardware integration. And contra perceived wisdom of 1977 or 1997, did so targeting the consumer not the corporate base.
This only seems remarkable because everyone ELSE failed at that. Even Time-Warner is happy to live at 4% or so, instead of Apple's rumored 25% or so gross margins.
Well, pretty much single-handedly creating the world's (intermittently) most valuable company, and one that actually provides people with something extremely useful (rather than being basically parasitic and manipulative), isn't something to sneeze at these days. Can any commenter name the last American business leader who would fall into this category? Plus there's the factor of dying relatively young, and at the greatest peak of his success...
But no, I'm sure that all the MSM adulation is really due to all the PC journalists eager to tout a half-Muslim-Arab-American...
Oh its all fun and games until Jobs takes over the isteve url from beyond the grave.
"I don't really get your "Generalissimo" reference. (And yes, I do remember the SNL skits)."
How many would get it without that reference?
It's the comeback that really makes Jobs stand out as one of the greatest businessmen ever. He had his moment in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and then it was over. But he wasn't.
It's kind of like how Frank Sinatra's career seemingly peeked with the bobbysoxer fad of 1945 when he was in his late 20s, but then he came back almost a decade later at an age when most pop musicians are washed up and pushed pop singing to a new peak. That's how you know for sure that Sinatra was the real deal.
Steve Jobs was the greatest American who ever lived. All alone he invented the Ipod, Iphone, the PC, and and digital music.
If Steve had died in 1980, none of this would have existed. I'm just glad that he died a Billionaire.
Apple, I assume, will collapse now that he's died since the engineers and software programmers have no one to receive instructions from.
I just hope Bill Gates doesn't go, otherwise our Operating Systems will wither and die.
Steve said: How many would get it without that reference?
Hunsdon replied: Well, maybe I'm dating myself, but it's what sprang to mind.
Edison actually invented stuff. Jobs was just a good salesman.
Its like Bart Simpson once said to Millhouse:
"With your book smarts, and my talent for exploiting people with book smarts, we'll be rich!"
Steve, you're forgetting Pixar. He made gazillions on three different, sort-of-unrelated occasions. That implies that his first success with the Apple II wasn't a fluke. Since the dawn of time regular Joes have discounted other men's spectacular successes as random flukes. It's hard to do that to him.
He was no Edison or Ford, but he was still closer to them on the innovativeness scale than to the average businessman of today. On many occasions he brought not even new products, but new categories of products to the market.
In the end, Apple products really aren't that expensive. Anyone who's ever blown a weekend or three getting your Windows PC back up and running knows the few hundred you save just ain't worth it.
I used to credit Pixar to Jobs, but then I read somewhere that he didn't much believe in it and was always trying to sell it.
But, two is enough to convince me that he was one of the greatest businessmen ever.
More HTML than I normally want from this site...
Given the outpouring of grief and also drive-by condolences by Michael Strahan and Eva Longoria et al. you'd never know he was bitterly controversial within his own industry. More shocking that Google posted a link (for 24 hrs time) on their home URL, instead of the promotional tie-in to "Horrible Bosses" which I would've expected. It is interesting what he apparently symbolized to the man in the street, and if Sailer wanted to "not rush out a Steve Jobs post" he might examine the psychological tension within the nomenklatura who despise Corporations but love late-capitalist technological dynamism (on 2nd thought Dave Brooks might have already killed that one dead). Anyway that's a take I'd like to read; calling Jobs an SOB is as relevant as Henry Ford's blog. In other news U.S. capitalism died a actually a few years ago, after a long illness. Did Gelernter have a comment on that?
Count me in the "Jobs is up there with Ford and Disney" camp. And I don't even own an iPhone. But in the three decades of my life I've seen American company after company run into the ground by a focus on short term profits over quality and product. Apple bucked that trend and focused on bringing the absolute best experience to the consumer. And yes, they asked the consumer to step up and pay more. And the consumer did dig deep, and overall they ended up happier for it.
And don't forget Pixar. The company started making 30 second commercials and within 10 years was making the best movie of the year, every year. Totally different field, but same vision and dedication. Jobs found people that could make it happen, drove them hard, and made shareholders, employees, and society richer.
We need more men like Jobs who can give a big F.U. to focus group tested crap (sorry Steve) and instead focus on making money only as a means to making something as good as it can be.
This old The Onion video is truer to life.
Jobs talked about Team a lot. He was an sob but did give credit to the Team...
Btw the guy who has run Pixar since the beginning is a former Disney cartoonist who turned out to be the best studio exec in Hollywood in terms of batting avg and grosses. I can't remember his name because he is a real Mr. Under the Radar
Jobs talked about Team a lot. He was an sob but did give credit to the Team...
Btw the guy who has run Pixar since the beginning is a former Disney cartoonist who turned out to be the best studio exec in Hollywood in terms of batting avg and grosses. I can't remember his name because he is a real Mr. Under the Radar
Just don't go to Slate whatever you do; the quirky/funky/edgy/hagiographic Steve Jobs stories have already crowded out the Sarah Emmanuel Goldstein dispatches from earlier in the day (although at this writing the advice column "I'm Married, Should I Stop Visiting Prostitutes?" is holding the #1 popularity slot)
"Today NPR was comparing him favorably to Edison"
Ahh, the Edison that wrecked Tesla, the real genius?
(just being flippant, isteve readership style)
Changing 4 industries is no small job - we're talking personal computing, music, film, and phone/smartphone.
Btw, I am a fan of RKU's comments. He exposes the isteve pleb readership for what it is - thoughtless.
A lot of the coverage has been saying that he was the greatest person ever but also that he was proof that this country is still awesome and will bounce back from the depression because of awesome Americans like him. How can he be a rare non-since-Edison genius and also a reliable-like-clockwork recession-killing exemplar of American durability?
Anyway, a lot of the worship over his product seems to be premised on the idea that people are perfectible and universally educable and so his awesome gizmos will educate us all into a utopian future.
I remember all those 'great' business lessons about microsfoft vs apple - and market share.. well in the long run? I guess the 'experts' will have to forget their old analysis, just like financial ' experts'
The genetic aspect it the most fascinating -the sister becomes famous in her own right and apparently the great grandfather in syria as well. thought he is half anglo-german
I'm not quite sure what all the hubbub is about. You don't typically see people crying and writing effusive eulogies over the deaths of people who invented products or headed companies they liked. Then again, I'm a PC, so maybe I just don't "get it".
I find the competition that seems to be going on to make the most over-the-top statement of praise for Jobs to be an interesting sociological phenomenon. There really should be a name for this. I nominate "hyperbole auction."
Steve Jobs was a great capitalist with a unique style and by all accounts was a fine father, husband and highly effective boss. His company's Apple products are beloved by millions worldwide as are Pixar movies, and he made lots of money and made many others wealthy as well so why the case of sour apples, Steve?
Envy-Green sour apples are they? Uncommon bad form on your part. Show proper manners and at least wish the man R.I.P. if you can't acknowledge his deeds and admirable personal attributes.
Now we'll see how well Jobs likes being uploaded to the cloud.
iCult.
iPope.
iSteve.
still iDead.
Journalists live to deify CEOs; that is the characteristic of journalism. Further, Steve was exactly the kind of CEO they want to spend their days fashioning stories about. It was a royal wedding made in heaven--the widow journalists are grieved to have lost their soulmate. "He was really one of us"
I did a little Googling. From an interview with Jobs's father in the Saudi Gazette:
“My father was a self-made millionaire who owned extensive areas of land which included entire villages,”
http://news.discovery.com/tech/apple-logo-steve-jobs-111007.html
Steve Jobs was an artist and what's more he was able to not only create a product, but also produce it and sell it. A few can do one or two but very, very few people can do all three successfully. He understood that a visual image contains not merely intellectual and material information but also spiritual. God speed.
the yuppie moses ... brought the tablet down from heaven.
"Oh its all fun and games until Jobs takes over the isteve url from beyond the grave."
Damn, I wish I'd said that.
Such a blasphemous title from a supposedly Catholic journalist.
Yuppie moses? Yuppies hated computers in general because computers eliminated secretaries. But they feared Apple even more than Microsoft because Apple made computers fun and further wrecked yuppie self-superiority over drone-like support staff. Techies hated Apple because the graphic user interface (GUI) destroyed their C> drive mystique.
Apple and Steve Jobs won over dreary code-crunching snobs and establishment snobs in the end because it saved money and allowed people to focus on producing a product or service at a lower cost.
Gasho Steve Jobs
Empty-handed I entered the world
Barefoot I leave it.
My coming, my going-
Two simple happenings
That got entangled.
- Kozan Ichikyo
“My father was a self-made millionaire who owned extensive areas of land which included entire villages,”
Jandali is exaggerating of course. During his father's time, Syria was dirt poor. You'll notice that he doesn't mention what his father actually did. During those times, it was very difficult to create wealth unless you inherited it. What is even stranger about Jandali is that after getting a PhD, he decided to run a restaurant. Despite his intelligence, he doesn't seem to have been as driven as his son or daughter.
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