Did Steve Jobs actually design products like MacBooks, iPhones and tablets?

The Clark

The Clark

macrumors 65816
I was just wondering if Steve Jobs was actually an innovator in his later years, or if he just had a design team that took care of the more recent Apple innovations. I tried to do some research on Mr. Jobs but everyone says different things. One person claimed he was nothing more than a businessman with some knowledge is computing. That same man also said he wasn't loyal and he stole + claimed credit for work that others did. I just don't really know what to believe but Im curious.

Perhaps MR can fill me in? Sources would be amazing too.

:D
 
I'm not sure but when he passed they claimed 'he has the next five or so years of devices lined up already' so it seems that way.
 
Well from reading the bio Walter Isaacson wrote, it's fairly clear that Steve wasn't really a technical person. Early on it was Woz who did most of that and Steve was the business end.

That being said, he did shape some of the best products Apple came up with. No doubt he had an excellent team doing all the technical and design aspects but they worked according to Jobs directions.

Like with the iPod:

The engineers explained that they had to reinvent inventing to create the iPod, and that it was simply impossible to make it any smaller. Jobs was quiet for a moment. Finally he stood, walked over to an aquarium, and dropped the iPod in the tank. After it touched bottom, bubbles floated to the top.

"Those are air bubbles," he snapped. "That means there's space in there. Make it smaller."
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There are other anecdotes online that you can find like where he made an engineer work his ass off to get a better "click" when you plugged headphones into the iPhone and how a junior member of the team was brought on board simply because he came up with the way objects on the screen bounced when you scrolled passed the edge. Or how the iPhone UI was influenced by a simple drawing he did on a board.

There are dozens of them.
 
carjakester said:
Isnt that why apple is at the standard of perfection it is today?
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Is that a joke?

Half of Apple's products have been complete crap, a lot of them such as the Ipod, were only able to succeed because of the competition's complete ineptitude.
 
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Zombie Acorn said:
I get more the impression that he was an unrelenting ******* who accepted nothing short of perfection.
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I disagree. A lot of Apples products were far from perfect and from a technical perspective, often inferior to other companies products. He did strive for design perfection, aiming to produce something not only aesthetically pleasing and functional, but also something that could almost be regarded as a work of art. However there's not much point having a futuristic looking sports car, that is slow and breaks down all the time, is there?
 
zedzded said:
Is that a joke?

Half of Apple's products have been complete crap, a lot of them such as the Ipod, were only able to succeed because of the competition's complete ineptitude.
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I'd disagree on you with that. I love my rMBP.
 
Zombie Acorn said:
I get more the impression that he was an unrelenting ******* who accepted nothing short of perfection.
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I think people were too scared of him so they worked their asses off to keep their job.

Steve was an egomaniac. He would tell others what to do and how to make it better, I don't think he was the one actually designing it.
 
I always thought of him as the final-word guy. While he wasn't in the labs neck deep in CAD programs or banging away on OSX himself, he did have an eye for style, design, and usability, and used that to his advantage. If he didn't like something, he'd keep sending it back until the engineers and designers made something he did.

Basically, Steve Job's greatest asset to Apple were his high standards. That, and his almost cult-leader charisma up on stage. Guy could sell fridges to Eskimos.

While I'm of the opinion that Jobs tends to get more credit than he deserves, he was a big part of the overall process. He didn't make the iPad himself, but he was one of the people in a long line of people who were responsible for the iPad being as good as it was.
 
For all his eloquence and (widely promulgated) vision, I think Jobs is one of the most over-glorified people. He unquestionably knew what worked and what didn't but there assuredly were legions of talented people around him, working more intimately on projects than he was. Steve, no doubt, had a hand in forging the culture of Apple -- which, contrary to the belief of many a doomsayer, is one thing that could last for all of posterity.

Many claim that Apple's darkest days would not have occurred had Steve hung around. I think that's rubbish. Apple had already begun to flounder towards the end of his first stint, hence his firing. Woz has been vehement about Steve's lack of leadership early on. It's probably best the way things played out. Had Steve been more closely associated with Apple's initial demise, chances are he would have left sometime in the 90s and not returned (or been asked to return).
 
AppleGoat said:
For all his eloquence and (widely promulgated) vision, I think Jobs is one of the most over-glorified people. He unquestionably knew what worked and what didn't but there assuredly were legions of talented people around him, working more intimately on projects than he was. Steve, no doubt, had a hand in forging the culture of Apple -- which, contrary to the belief of many a doomsayer, is one thing that could last for all of posterity.
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Exactly well said. I think Jobs was a smart guy, but he wasn't a genius or a visionary, he had a lot of luck, was surrounded by some very switched on people and got very rich at a very young age. And with that money he was able to continue to surround himself with the best people money could buy. To be honest if hadn't of made so much $$ in his early years he would have ended up a failed business man. The fact that he was a millionaire in his 20s allowed him to continually make mistakes and to continually fail and get away with it. In many, many areas he was a failure from his ability to manage people to his business acumen, his technical skills, his interpersonal skills etc etc. And people praise him for being a perfectionist - even this was cockameany - he turned down over 2000 different shades of beige for the the colour of the first Mac - he wasn't happy with them, yet allowed the Mac to be built under spec with poor quality parts that were unreliable. Someone that designs and sells a product who is a perfectionist, is someone that is anally retentive about every aspect of the product not just what shade of beige the case is and what shape the case screws are... that's moronic and exemplifies that really Jobs was a beer short of a sixpack when it came to developing products. He was saved by the fact he was rich and in the initial years, powerful at Apple - enabling him to do what he pretty much wanted.

"I want all the machinery in the factory painted turquoise and mauve!"

"But Steve this is high precision equipment and repainting them may cause them damage"

"I said paint em!"

"Erm Steve all the turquoise and mauve high precision equipment we repainted has all failed......."

That should normally cost someone their job. As I said the guy was lucky, 80% lucky 20% smart
 
Society has a way of deifying popular figures; fashioning them into indestructible idols. You see this with Jobs, with Lennon, with others. These individuals undoubtedly had great attributes, profoundly affected the world -- but they weren't everything people make them out to be. Both luck and gratuitous recounts of importance were at their side.

If Apple were to crumble under Cook, everyone would ascribe it to Jobs departure -- which I think is baloney. Remember, Jobs was gravely ill for much of his final years with Apple, limiting his involvement. Nonetheless, Apple continued to flourish during those years.
 
The Clark said:
I was just wondering if Steve Jobs was actually an innovator in his later years, or if he just had a design team that took care of the more recent Apple innovations. I tried to do some research on Mr. Jobs but everyone says different things. One person claimed he was nothing more than a businessman with some knowledge is computing. That same man also said he wasn't loyal and he stole + claimed credit for work that others did. I just don't really know what to believe but Im curious.

Perhaps MR can fill me in? Sources would be amazing too.

:D
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Ive and his team designed the products and Jobs added his inputs frequently. Including things Ive and co. might not have thought of initially.

AppleGoat said:
For all his eloquence...
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zedzded said:
Exactly well said...
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AppleGoat said:
Society has a way of deifying...
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You two should get a room.
 
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daneoni said:
Hilarious.

You should do local standup or join the circus.
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It was said in jest, but that's pretty much what happened isn't it? Ive has publicly stated how upset and frustrated he was when Jobs continually introduced new designs as his own work, yet it was Ive that was solely responsible for the products design.
 
Ive also said he and Jobs were on the same wavelength when it came to designing products and worked together in the studio a lot and drove them to do things differently. An example being the original iPhone which would've looked/felt markedly different without Jobs' intervention.

I'm not saying the guy wasn't greedy and didn't take false credit. But to suggest he did nothing besides those things is myopic.

Anyway, to each their own.
 
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daneoni said:
Ive also said he and Jobs were on the same wavelength when it came to designing products and worked together in the studio a lot and drove them to do things differently. An example being the original iPhone which would've looked/felt markedly different without Jobs' intervention.

I'm not saying the guy wasn't greedy and didn't take false credit. But to suggest he did nothing besides those things is myopic.
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No I do agree with you there and I think Jobs was able to push Ives, motivating him to think outside the box when it came to designing products. Without Jobs, a lot of the Apple products we see today wouldn't exist, at least not in their current guise. In some ways he was the catalyst that enabled Apple to start pushing out innovative products and get Apple back on it's feet. I guess I get my back up a bit when I hear people going on about Jobs being this genius, a visionary, who was solely responsible for all of Apples products etc etc
 
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/08/24/technology/steve-jobs-patents.html?_r=0

Here are some of the patents he was partly responsible. I say partly because in most of them, he's one of many people that got credit for the patent. Steve Jobs was a collaborator. He wasn't very technical but he understood technology well enough to push the more technical engineers to do things that they normally wouldn't do. He would often come up with designs for devices and software UI's and push the engineers and programmers to make his vision a reality.

I think a good comparison is Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto. He was never a programmer and instead had a background in art. So when he was designed with the task of creating Donkey Kong, he would talk with the more tech savvy people about what the available technology could achieve and build a game around that collaboration.
 
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