You can try this post on reddit: Jony Ive on What He Misses Most About Steve Jobs
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Jony Ive Writes Touching Letter About Steve Jobs a Decade After His Passing
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I found this blog post from a former Apple employee really very interesting and much more articulated that a distasteful short easy rant:
The little things Apple misses from Steve Jobs
and especially this part, pertaining to your rant:
______________________________
(…)
Culling
You’ll sometimes hear stories about how Steve is this awful tyrant and how he cruelly disassembled a project someone was working on during a presentation. All these stories have one thing in common: they come from former Apple employees.Now, you could argue that a current employee would never talk, but I think a disgruntled one would talk anonymously at least. There are many cases of this.
I’m calling this trait “culling” because Steve was not only very direct, he was seeing how you handled the pressure. If what you were demoing to him was crappy, he would tell you it’s ****. Now, some people would take great offense at that, typically those with larger egos, while others see it as just part of the making great products.
Over time, I think this led to management and lead engineers being thick-skinned and willing to change when the CEO told them they were way off track. If you’ve worked in software, I think you can see the benefit of being able to take criticism.
Overall, I think it led to a stronger workforce that was less prone to petty politics or bad-mouthing others. Instead, people would criticize products, not people and that led to great people making great products.
(…)
______________________________
Indeed, "let's not rewrite history"… like some people do it by telling a story from their one-sided interpretation of what it was.
Steve Jobs passed away 10 years ago tomorrow, and in commemoration, Apple's former design chief Jony Ive has penned a remembrance of his friend and colleague for WSJ. Magazine. In his first public comments about Jobs since delivering his eulogy in 2011, Ive reflected on his memories of Jobs across nearly 15 years of working together.
"We had lunch together most days and spent our afternoons in the sanctuary of the design studio," wrote Ive. "Those were some of the happiest, most creative and joyful times of my life. I loved how he saw the world. The way he thought was profoundly beautiful."
Ive said that he and Jobs had a shared curiosity that formed the basis of a joyful collaboration. "He was without doubt the most inquisitive human I have ever met," wrote Ive.
"Steve was preoccupied with the nature and quality of his own thinking," said Ive. "He expected so much of himself and worked hard to think with a rare vitality, elegance and discipline. His rigor and tenacity set a dizzyingly high bar. When he could not think satisfactorily he would complain in the same way I would complain about my knees."
Ive believes that Jobs was not distracted by money or power and was instead driven to make something useful for humanity.
Ive left Apple in 2019 to create his own independent design firm LoveFrom with fellow designer and longtime friend Marc Newson, and he said that he still collaborates with Apple, without sharing any specific details. Ive also continues to work with Laurene Powell Jobs, who is focused on philanthropic work through her company Emerson Collective.
"When her brilliant and inquisitive children ask me about their dad I just cannot help myself," wrote Ive, about Powell Jobs' children. "I can talk happily for hours describing the remarkable man I loved so deeply."
Ive ended off with some very touching words:The full remembrance can be read at WSJ. Magazine.
Article Link: Jony Ive Writes Touching Letter About Steve Jobs a Decade After His Passin
I remember thinking what a great new Apple CEO Mr. Ive would make…
Pity cards played out the usual beancounter way…
It is also unfortunate that the flaws of a man who, in the memoirs of his daughter, repeatedly emotionally traumatized her is given the "complicated" pass. Heck he repeatedly subjected his daughter to sexually uncomfortable situations as she recounts, nothing "complicated" here. He's a tech genius but a horrible person just like many other CEO's. Let's not confuse the merits of Apple and his work there with his merits as a person. I own a mac, iphone and might be considering an apple watch. They're good products but I don't let this blur my hold on reality and assessment of the man.
Last edited by a moderator:
He lost his great friend and collaborator. Jony never seemed truly excited for anything after Steve passed away.
I would not call people desperately sticking to their actual job if you can list Apple in your resume while looking for another job.
But, yes, it is getting paid for your work...
Who is saying the victims are the problem? I never said that. Is that what you’re saying? The problem is that you are being reductive and using labels. Jobs did many things in his life. Including sometimes yelling at employees and sometimes being an amazing friend and sometimes changing life on earth.
Who gave him a “pass” for being “complicated”? Not me. I’m just describing, accurately and objectively, a man with very strong, often wildly polar, behaviors. Being complicated isn’t a free pass, it’s just… true. And if you read what I was replying to, it was the silly notion that because he was sometimes tyrannical at work, that he could not also, sometimes, be an amazing friend and mentor.
Thank you for pointing us in the direction of the full text. It was very heartfelt.
“A concerned Chrisann writes that he was: "ridiculing her with sexual innuendos,” and “joking about bedroom antics between Lisa and this or that guy.”
“Chrisann says that she was scared for her daughter, but adds: "I will be clear, Steve was not a sexual predator of children.”
I can’t help but think that the only reason you’re euphemistically calling him “complicated “ rather than an outright creep is only because of his tech genius. Morally, he is a terrible creep that needed to be chaperoned around his 9 YEAR OLD daughter
“Terrible creep” seems myopic and incomplete to the point of being inaccurate. Life is complicated, isn’t it? Massive amounts of greater good versus anecdotal incidents of individual pain? His failings as a father were terribly hurtful for his child. It sucks. I know I wouldn’t hire a young Steve Jobs to babysit my kids. But that’s not really how he served the planet, was it?
If you were God and had to make a binary choice: Steve Jobs exists, and the world has PC’s, and user interfaces that aren’t for lab technicians, and laser printers, and Pixar movies, and the music industry doesn’t implode under Napster, and average humans have computing power greater than the Apollo rocket in their pocket, and human communication is transformed and empowered in ways previously unimaginable, and “design language” has become a revolution that has changed product design for nearly every industry on the planet, but there are a handful of people who have to experience pain and difficulty in his wake, OR… Steve Jobs doesn’t exist, none of that stuff happens, the world is drastically different, computers are still mainframe-based, individuals are infinitely less empowered or informed, high-level creativity and production is still only in the sphere of wealthy, trained professionals, education is stuck in the past, communication is mired in old paradigms, music sucks, things are way less colorful or interesting, hundreds of thousands of critical, life-saving medical breakthroughs never happen, hundreds of thousands of social injustices continue to go unnoticed and uncorrected, and millions of technological, social, and quality of life advances advances aren’t made or even dreamed of, and a few dozen fortunate people never have to deal with the part of Steve Jobs’s personality that’s negative. Which is the better world?
Based on what I’ve read from people who knew him, and some who hated him, my guess is that the majority of them would say that despite their difficulties with him, they’d rather have a world with him than not.
You’re free to focus on the smallest, worst parts of the man. Judge him by his imperfections, not his contributions to the lives of the people around him and the change he made on a planetary level. Men should be great fathers. Bosses should all be great managers. And visionary geniuses shouldn’t have to ruffle feathers to disrupt the status quo. People should be nice! Maybe you can make some hay with that worldview. I choose to focus on the best that real, imperfect people in the actual world are able to do, despite their own foibles & demons, and how we can cultivate more of that.
Last edited:
You can tell a lot about someone by their heroes, and Steve Jobs’ heroes were the people he put in the Think Different ad: Einstein, Gandhi, John Lennon, Jim Henson… people who changed the world with their mind, their advocacy, their art, their creativity, their heart. I’m glad that Steve and Jony found each other, and were able to change the world themselves with their shared sensibilities and a devotion to beauty and simplicity. I’m also glad that they were able to share the profundity of silence, one of life’s underappreciated pleasures.
we all do
... Steve had said live each day like it was your last. I'm sure this is why it was so critical, for us all.
Profound! I thought I heard it to.
I wonder ... if sounds of latches at Apple Campus spaceship, the design studio whilst alone, walking anywhere there may have had too many memories that brought tears to his heart of a dear friend gone that he HAD to leave Apple.
I am not rich, and I do not worry about money to pay bills or to keep a positive balance in a bank account so the bank can get rich or grow the economy, only time I worry about money is if I do not have any to go out and have fun with. Having money and paying bills is not a concern nor is it success, its the amount of fun you have in life and the amount of people you have fun with.
Steve was the best, Apple never would have survived without him, and we all would be stuck using garbage, WE NEED ANOTHER STEVE BADLY.
Amazing. Tormenting his daughter is a “small part” of the man. And I reject this nonsensical binary choice. You don’t have a magic power where you can say that no one else would have made a similar product. You’ve made your position clear, he made a computer you like so let’s call emotionally abusing his daughter a “small” part of him and shove it under the rug. Disappointing