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Remembering Steve Jobs

For all the naysayers regarding Tim I would just say look at the present day MacBooks. Then remember those plastic-bodied models that used to crack at the corners. There were plenty of products in Steve's time that didn't really adhere to his oft-repeated high standards. What I remember Steve for was his vision but the implementation with regard to product has improved vastly with unibody and Apple Silicon to name just two aspects.
People get hung up on clickbait testing of stuff aimed squarely at undermining what products have to offer. Without finding and exaggerating issues their videos won't succeed.
Steve's vision is still there even if there are gaps and areas that need attention - it was ever thus. I look at what I'm typing on now, my phone, those Airpod Pro 2s and the Mac Mini M1 that saved me during Covid and I am incredibly thankful to the legacy of Steve and the present-day achievements of Tim and his team.
 
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turbineseaplane said:
Such a key difference between Steve and Tim

(Among several others)
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Lol. Right. Steve who famously didn’t want to share a penny with his colleagues when Apple went to market, unlike Woz. Steve who earned billions vs cook who earns (hundreds of) millions. If cook was just in it for the money he’d have taken another position at another company years ago. They’d pay him.
 
thiscatisfat said:
I agree with you. He knew a good product will bring in revenue, so he focused on Apple delivering the best possible product. Having good sales was a side-effect of that. It's the complete opposite with Cook and his finance bros. Cook is delivering mediocre products and mediocre software since 2014, you can just tell that Cook's Apple is milking the legacy, nothing more. They keep pushing for a "better" product every year, and yes they do get incrementally better, but it's always more of the same. Nothing groundbreaking, nothing like a flop after flop under Cook. Jobs was a salesman, but he understood that a good product will have good sales. Cook's philosophy is making an "okay" product that won't make Apple lose too much on R&D and production and aligning with marketing to push the thing as hard as possible to make sales, it feels very forced. Under Jobs, it just felt natural. You saw the new thing, it was pretty much self-explanatory why you'd want to buy it, you didn't need a pre-recorded hour-long ad with 30 people telling you why you should buy the new product.
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I'd go as far as to argue that the one thing that has changed at Apple since Steve Jobs was alive is not the quality of coders, designers, or managers, but that the company's core reason for existence has gone from wanting to "put a dent in the universe" to "vacuum up every dollar from the market it can"
 
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neomorpheus said:
And as usual, Steve The Woz Wozniak is chopped liver.

Yes, I know, its Jobs anniversary but I hate how The Woz is not mentioned at all as if Jobs founded Apple all by himself.
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He's not dead though? This is about Jobs' death and remembering him... not retelling the Apple story from the ground up. Woz has mad respect and recognition IMO...
 
Imperial926 said:
For all the naysayers regarding Tim I would just say look at the present day MacBooks. Then remember those plastic-bodied models that used to crack at the corners. There were plenty of products in Steve's time that didn't really adhere to his oft-repeated high standards. What I remember Steve for was his vision but the implementation with regard to product has improved vastly with unibody and Apple Silicon to name just two aspects.
People get hung up on clickbait testing of stuff aimed squarely at undermining what products have to offer. Without finding and exaggerating issues their videos won't succeed.
Steve's vision is still there even if there are gaps and areas that need attention - it was ever thus. I look at what I'm typing on now, my phone, those Airpod Pro 2s and the Mac Mini M1 that saved me during Covid and I am incredibly thankful to the legacy of Steve and the present-day achievements of Tim and his team.
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The white plastic Macbooks were made for education specifically. It was meant to get you through school and get recycled, and to grab marketshare in that area. It wasn't meant to be built to last, it was something you'd get for free as a student from your school. I really wish these were still around, my work laptop is some sort of a Dell and it's just crappy black boring plastic computer that looks like it's stuck in 1995. If that's all my company can afford for everyone, fine, I'd rather have a Macbook, even if it's plastic as long as my company can afford it. It was very much the 5C of Macbooks, it really didn't matter.
 
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Steve121178 said:
???

He was a salesman. A great one. He made you want to buy the product he was talking about.

He was absolutely doing it for the money. To suggest otherwise is just ridiculous.
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Yes, he was a salesman. But once you get to a certain amount of money many people don’t do it for that anymore. They do it for altruistic reasons or the love of the game. Jobs said many times why he was so passionate about computers. Not all of that is just salesman speak. Don’t put people in a simplistic box. We’re all more complicated.
 
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Brighton Apple Guy said:
The reason I switched to Apple was simplicity, and that was by Steves design.

These days the Apple ecosystem has become over complicated, full of stuff that doesn't work properly or never gets finished. I get that the Tech landscape has changed hugely in 14 years, but still. They have the resources to be better.
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What doesn't work properly or isn't finished? Can you give specific examples of Apple products that are not working as they are designed to work?
 
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djgamble said:
Damn he'd be 70!!!

Sigh... the days when Apple was truely innovative. I miss the days when iPhones weren't just iteratively larger, with more cameras glued on each time.
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Oh I'm pretty sure we wouldn't have a lineup full of phablets exclusively. I can't imagine Jobs seeing the new 17 Pro and be like hell yeah, that's what we're doing. Make it orange to match the pedo's face! It would be more like what he said about using a stylus. "Yuck!".
 
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R.I.P. Steve Jobs. And to all those who've decided to take time out of your day to bash Jobs on the anniversary of his death, I will never understand this behavior. It would be far easier to scroll on. Trolls will forever be trolls though.
 
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Pezimak said:
I don’t think he envisioned handing his company over to someone who would waste literal billions on a car project and ignore the next biggest market in tech in Ai.
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I might be the only one, but I simply don’t care or use AI at all. In fact I despise it.
 
Thank You Steve

Though you’re not here, the wonder you left behind continues to shape the world. Apple is not just a company—it’s a living expression of your vision: where technology meets the humanities, where design speaks as loudly as function, and where simplicity hides unimaginable depth.

You showed that true innovation lies at the intersection of technology and the liberal arts. You taught that it’s not enough for something to work—it must inspire. You built not just devices, but experiences. And you gathered around you a remarkable group of people who still carry that torch—people who believe, as you did, that great technology must also touch the human soul.

Thank you for daring to “think different.” Thank you for reminding us that beauty and precision can coexist. Thank you for leaving behind a legacy that’s more than machines—it’s a philosophy, a way of creating, a way of seeing the world.

Endlessly greatful for Apple and the the products it creates on earth, products that enhance life.
 
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Brighton Apple Guy said:
The reason I switched to Apple was simplicity, and that was by Steves design.

These days the Apple ecosystem has become over complicated, full of stuff that doesn't work properly or never gets finished. I get that the Tech landscape has changed hugely in 14 years, but still. They have the resources to be better.
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This is all true, but keep in mind the staggering growth in complexity of technology in general. Every new feature, accessory, and connected device requires its own controls and UX.

The iPhone can do so many more things it could at the start, and by necessity this is force that challenges the notion of simplicity in very tangible ways.

This isn't to say Apple couldn't do better because it most certainly could, but that complexity is a rising tide that forces more complexity into the UX over time, and you can hide it or keep it simple only up to a point.
 
When creatives run the show things get exciting and edgy. Coming from a creative background, the best places to work were where those artists run the circus. Steve wasn’t just a creative he had a perspective on the industry that no-one else had. He could see where the future was heading and he skated to the puck (so to speak). Yes, we have all heard how he was difficult to work with at times, but my best learnings came from the headstrong creatives that were deeply passionate about what they were creating. To them it was like birthing a child, so I can now understand why they are the way they are. My very first computer was the original Macintosh. Boy have things changed.

R.I.P Steve, regardless of your flaws, you made the world a more interesting and exciting place to live in. The passion isn’t there today which is why everything feels clinical but one can hope we get to see another Steve Jobs electrify the stage for that, one more thing!
 
H.E. Pennypacker said:
It’s funny how every Apple thread like this turns into Steve Jobs would’ve never let this happen, or Apple died with Steve Jobs. Look, no doubt Steve was a genius and set the bar for product vision and design. But Apple’s strength was never just one man. Jobs himself famously said, “I hire people smarter than me so they can tell me what to do.” Tim Cook was handpicked by Steve, not by accident, but because he knew Apple needed operational excellence to scale the kind of innovation he started. And guess what? Under Cook, Apple became a multi-trillion-dollar company that now builds its own chips and redefined wearables while still making massive impacts in the iPhone category.

So yeah, Steve made an impact but pretending Apple’s a mess now because he’s gone is like saying Disney stopped being creative after Walt died. The founder laid the blueprint the company built the empire.
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Definitely true. Though I have a feeling, Steve left a very long road map of products and strategies for Tim to follow, otherwise why would Steve have appointed such a linear thinker.

I also don’t think Tim followed the road map as planned.

The question that sticks in my head is, why would Steve have chosen somebody so opposite himself to lead? Unless he anticipated Johnny Ive being a strong leader to assist in the plan.

Tim Cook’s narrow-mindedness and a lack of vision led to Johnny’s exit. I doubt Steve saw that coming.
 
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Tim Cook and it's associates focus on Boomers, Gen X and investitors. Jobs had a mentality much ahead of it's time, and also understood what the userbase really wants. I'm pretty sure that with him, everything would be diferent, from iphones to macs and software.
 
thiscatisfat said:
I agree with you. He knew a good product will bring in revenue, so he focused on Apple delivering the best possible product. Having good sales was a side-effect of that.
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Exactly Peter Drucker 101.
thiscatisfat said:
It's the complete opposite with Cook and his finance bros. Cook is delivering mediocre products and mediocre software since 2014,
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No he’s not.
thiscatisfat said:
you can just tell that Cook's Apple is milking the legacy, nothing more.
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No he’s not.
thiscatisfat said:
They keep pushing for a "better" product every year, and yes they do get incrementally better, but it's always more of the same.
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Do you believe the iPhone 4s was leaps and bounds ahead of the 4? Similar to what you are claiming Cook does.
thiscatisfat said:
Nothing groundbreaking, nothing like a flop after flop under Cook.
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You mean forgetting about the jobs flops and missteps.
thiscatisfat said:
Jobs was a salesman, but he understood that a good product will have good sales. Cook's philosophy is making an "okay" product that won't make Apple lose too much on R&D and production and aligning with marketing to push the thing as hard as possible to make sales, it feels very forced.
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That’s not correct.
thiscatisfat said:
Under Jobs, it just felt natural. You saw the new thing, it was pretty much self-explanatory why you'd want to buy it, you didn't need a pre-recorded hour-long ad with 30 people telling you why you should buy the new product.
Click to expand...
And yet Steve did just that. The world has changed and the Steve RDF is in effect unfortunately.
 
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