Steve Jobs Exhibit on Display at U.S. Patent Office Museum

[divinox]

Well, UNIX was developed at Bell Labs, actually... but the typical programmer today doesn't use UNIX on a terminal/mainframe configuration.

"Personal computer" prior to the Apple II is a term that is relatively inapplicable, as the computers prior to Apple II were not functionally accessible and programmable in the way we think of today. So, what I was saying is that what would Dennis Ritchie be doing today (prior to his passing) without the enormous market for personal computing in the consumer space that Apple basically created?

Nobody's saying Dennis Ritchie's contributions aren't notable... but an idea is only as useful as its implementation/application. Dennis Ritchie created something useful, but didn't manage (or really have the opportunity to, and that's not his fault) the resources necessary to see through a vision of personal computing that few people had the foresight to imagine.

Programmers see the world in terms that are relevant to them. But Steve Jobs saw the world in terms of what is relevant to the people who would make use of those resources and how they might do so five, ten, fifteen, twenty years into the future.

When I wrote a paper on internet music distribution in the mid-90s, very few people understood the large implications of how the internet would change our lives. At that point, people only had begun to use web browsers, fewer used computers for media, and search engines were still in relative infancy.

Engineers are very important to the scheme of things, but on a different level than someone like Steve Jobs. It doesn't make him more or less important than Dennis Ritchie. It's comparing oranges and, well, Apples.... His role isn't comparable to Ritchie's nor vice-versa.

But to put perspective on it.... We're long gone from the days when one engineer (Steve Wozniak) knew and worked on every single component inside a computer. By sheer growth of complexity, on orders of magnitude, engineers today are focused on very small parts of the puzzle. So think about this: What engineer would have looked at all the various pieces of the net, of computing, of mobile devices, of telecommunications, and have thought "Siri Personal Assistant"?

Even the World Wide Web was born on one of Steve's machines (Sir Tim Berners-Lee wrote it on a NeXT workstation). John Sculley has noted that if he had the vision to understand in 1985 what Hypercard really was (a hypertext language), Apple could have created the WWW almost ten years before Berners-Lee did. Sculley laments this as one of his biggest failures.

THAT is why Steve Jobs is hailed as a genius. From iMac to iPod to iPhone to iPad to Siri and beyond, his ability to see how the pieces fit together in ways other people just don't yet picture.... Steve Jobs was the most consistent and prolific visionary of our time, there since the beginning of the personal computing revolution that put tools in our hands that HP and IBM never imagined would be useful to the average consumer.

1) That Microsoft (if anyone) basically created. Since we're not playing "first", we're playing impact. In impact, Windows, and Windows 95 in particular, wins hands down.

2) Bill G, perhaps. Or any random engineer with a vision. But yes, i agree with what i believe is your point. There needs to be a puppet master, and said puppet master does not necessarily have to be an engineer. With that i completely agree. In ways, one is better off not being an engineer. That way you can be more "get this done!", than "how do we get this done?". Engineers tend to... be engineers in the end :- )

 

[gkpm]

I'm cool with an exhibition for Jobs design talent. But in my mind Ive is far superior in this aspect.

Ive is a an amazing designer, and Steve Jobs was able to recognise it very quickly - Ive rose to Senior Vice President of Industrial Design in 5 years at Apple - and gave Ive the right environment to realise his talent.

It also takes a special skill to do that and not many managers, let alone CEOs, get their creative team to that level.

Similarly, lets not claim we owe the existence of modern day computing to Jobs.

Certainly not the existence, but the way we interact with modern day computing, even the World Wide Web (remember HyperCard?) is very much based on Job's ideas and decisions while at Apple and NeXT.

 

[divinox]

There's some debate as to whether or not this conversation actually took place in the manner above... and it's still not a useful anecdote because Apple didn't steal the Xerox PARC team. They paid a large sum of money to Xerox to acquire a few PARC researchers and Smalltalk along with it. This is no different than executives from Korg going to Yamaha and making a deal to acquire the researchers Yamaha had snagged from Sequential Circuits as it was about to go under... The next machine Korg made was the Wavestation, a direct descendant of the Prophet-5 synthesizer. Nobody "stole" anything from anyone.

In both cases it was an acquisition of talent and patents. Period. In fact, that Gates story is so romanticized it's overlooked that Microsoft not once but TWICE was granted licenses (however stupid this was on Apple's part) to the Mac OS GUI in order to develop the first applications for Mac, including Multiplan and Word.

True or not, i fail to see how the analogy does not fit. Bill G is in essence saying: Xerox had this great idea, we both went for it - you just happened to get there first. Also, so what if key people moved? Heck, aren't Apple currently suing HTC for infringement, and highlighting the fact that one of their former co-workers is now working for HTC as evidence in all of it? IP (generally) does not follow the inventor, but stays at the company.

But yeah, if you were just referring to stole. Fine. Already said that i agree with you on that. Of course its not Jobs fault that executives at Xerox did not realize what they had at hand.

As for the license between Apple and Microsoft i have two comments: First, thank god they did (and that it now belongs to pretty much no-one and everyone). Second, had they not been able to get it from Apple, they would've gotten it from Xerox.

----------

Ive is a an amazing designer, and Steve Jobs was able to recognise it very quickly - Ive rose to Senior Vice President of Industrial Design in 5 years at Apple - and gave Ive the right environment to realise his talent.

It also takes a special skill to do that and not many managers, let alone CEOs, get their creative team to that level.



Certainly not the existence, but the way we interact with modern day computing, even the World Wide Web (remember HyperCard?) is very much based on Job's ideas and decisions while at Apple and NeXT.

Jobs was not the only one to see the use in graphical user interfaces, nor was he the creator of the desktop metaphor or WIMP. Thus, while Xerox may not have been the ones giving it to us, someone else certainly would have.

Second, if not someone at Apple had done a "hypercard", someone else would have. Things may have been different, but differences always come in better and worse. For all we know, Jobs and Gates may have slowed down technology rather than sped it up. Hence, what-if scenarios are quite useless. What we do know however is that problems tend to get solved sooner rather than later. Its no secret that great solutions tend to pop up somewhat simultaneously either. So... yeah.

 

[croooow]

Wow that's cool, I wish I didn't live so far from the exhibit.

I work about 15 minutes from there. I might stop by on my way home today.

 

[Avatar74]

True or not, i fail to see how the analogy does not fit. Bill G is in essence saying: Xerox had this great idea, we both went for it - you just happened to get there first. Also, so what if key people moved? Heck, aren't Apple currently suing HTC for infringement, and highlighting the fact that one of their former co-workers is now working for HTC as evidence in all of it? IP (generally) does not follow the inventor, but stays at the company.

You're missing my point. Apple didn't just hire the Xerox PARC team. They made an investment IN Xerox in exchange for key researchers AND the rights to Smalltalk. This is not the same as someone defecting and breaking NDA and noncompete clauses that are enforceable. This was a deal with Xerox to lawfully acquire the team and the technology.

But yeah, if you were just referring to stole. Fine. Already said that i agree with you on that. Of course its not Jobs fault that executives at Xerox did not realize what they had at hand.

Yes. Thanks. That's part of my larger point.

As for the license between Apple and Microsoft i have two comments: First, thank god they did (and that it now belongs to pretty much no-one and everyone). Second, had they not been able to get it from Apple, they would've gotten it from Xerox.

Not exactly, because Smalltalk was far, far off from what actually evolved into Mac OS. ... since Apple had already licensed it, it wasn't something Microsoft could have gone to Xerox for anyway at that point. But, let's assume they could... Smalltalk was more primitive than Windows 1.0, which was awfully primitive compared to Mac OS. It would have been a developmental step backward for Microsoft to go to Xerox.

And regarding your earlier comment... yes, my point isn't that Steve Jobs is the only visionary out there. I don't know if Bill Gates would have the vision to think of Siri, maybe some iteration of it but that's really beside the point. Gates is a smart businessman, that's his strength... but what I was about to say is that while Microsoft played a large part in the proliferation of the PC, Apple had tremendous growth to begin with and they were, in fact, Microsoft's first major source of revenue as Applesoft Basic, Multiplan, Word, etc. had a market because of Apple. Had that not happened, IBM would not have cared to enter the PC market (which they've now exited) because they didn't see the commercial viability of it.

That's my real point... in order for this revolution to happen, someone had to see the future. IBM and Microsoft weren't so much skating to where the puck would be as they were skating to where the puck was at any given moment. When the money was with Apple, Microsoft went to Apple. When IBM came to their senses and decided to play "me too" with the IBM PC and PC Jr., then Microsoft went to them.

But Steve Jobs is a vastly different animal from Bill Gates. He doesn't see the world from a practical applications standpoint. The metaphor of Apple/Steve living at the intersection of technology, humanities and the liberal arts is a very good descriptor of what makes Steve's and Apple's "DNA" very different from most companies... money is just the reward they collected due to the dedication to those ideals, it wasn't the driving reason they wanted to enter those markets.

Bill Gates wanted to rule the world (and speaking purely in financial terms, he does). Steve Jobs wanted to change it.

In the end, Steve achieved both by focusing on the latter... but I'm not repudiating Bill. I think both of them grew up and in the end, when Steve was ill (according to Isaacson's biography) they recounted the old days like old friends who simply saw the world from different perspectives. I respect them both.

 

[scoobydoo99]

I happen to be in DC right now, and this is only 4 miles away from me! I'm heading over right now to check it out. Thanks MacRumors for the heads up

 

[croooow]

To me Ive was always a better designer then Jobs was. And Ive deserves a tribute to his design genius not Jobs. Wait . . . . Ive already had one exhibition dedicated to him.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/08/27/apple_design_guru_featured_in_german_exhibition.html

"Not too shabby..."

 

[libizboy74]

But who paid for this?

In such a crappy economy when we're laying off lots of government workers, and the patent and library systems are already overloaded and years behind, I have to ask... WHO PAID FOR IT?

I love it, and Steve is one of my heroes... but....

 

[Rot'nApple]

Where are the custom made white earbud shaped movie seats?!...

WHO PAID FOR THIS?... The same people in government who have no problem using tax dollars in paying $16.00 for a muffin or taking two airline jets, hours apart, to the same vacation spot! So does it really matter who paid for this?
/
/
/

 

[divinox]

You're missing my point. Apple didn't just hire the Xerox PARC team. They made an investment IN Xerox in exchange for key researchers AND the rights to Smalltalk. This is not the same as someone defecting and breaking NDA and noncompete clauses that are enforceable. This was a deal with Xerox to lawfully acquire the team and the technology.



Yes. Thanks. That's part of my larger point.

Im leaving this behind.

Not exactly, because Smalltalk was far, far off from what actually evolved into Mac OS. ... since Apple had already licensed it, it wasn't something Microsoft could have gone to Xerox for anyway at that point.

Wasn't talking about smalltalk, really. But i guess i might as well have. However, Apple licensing X does not (necessarily) give them exclusive rights to X. License != own. Thus, unless you're sitting on data suggesting that it was indeed exclusive, they very well could've gone to Xerox.

But, let's assume they could... Smalltalk was more primitive than Windows 1.0, which was awfully primitive compared to Mac OS. It would have been a developmental step backward for Microsoft to go to Xerox

.

Was referring to the desktop metaphor and WIMP. When it came to coding, i think Microsoft could handle their own.

And regarding your earlier comment... yes, my point isn't that Steve Jobs is the only visionary out there. I don't know if Bill Gates would have the vision to think of Siri, maybe some iteration of it but that's really beside the point. Gates is a smart businessman, that's his strength... but what I was about to say is that while Microsoft played a large part in the proliferation of the PC, Apple had tremendous growth to begin with and they were, in fact, Microsoft's first major source of revenue as Applesoft Basic, Multiplan, Word, etc. had a market because of Apple. Had that not happened, IBM would not have cared to enter the PC market (which they've now exited) because they didn't see the commercial viability of it.

First: I agree. Jobs was a great marketer, in the nice sense of the word that is.
Second: Indeed they were, but still, while Apple may have shown the way, Microsoft were the ones that mainstreamed it. As for the rest, its just another round of the "what-if" game. What if Gates, instead of doing code for Apple, would've met Y and then revolutionized the world.

That's my real point... in order for this revolution to happen, someone had to see the future. IBM and Microsoft weren't so much skating to where the puck would be as they were skating to where the puck was at any given moment. When the money was with Apple, Microsoft went to Apple. When IBM came to their senses and decided to play "me too" with the IBM PC and PC Jr., then Microsoft went to them.

Indeed. But there are rarely just one vision, or one visionary. Second, I'm not so sure i agree with you here on the Gretzky analogy. And, after all, MSFT were the one that ended up scoring here, not Apple (even if things have recently changed). Point is, that MSFT did not opt for the Apple route does not make the visionless. Gates wanted to put a PC in every home. What if he saw the route MSFT took as the key towards achieving that? How is that not skating to where the puck will be? Its not like we had a multi-billion market readily available. To large extent, they created it.

But Steve Jobs is a vastly different animal from Bill Gates. He doesn't see the world from a practical applications standpoint. The metaphor of Apple/Steve living at the intersection of technology, humanities and the liberal arts is a very good descriptor of what makes Steve's and Apple's "DNA" very different from most companies... money is just the reward they collected due to the dedication to those ideals, it wasn't the driving reason they wanted to enter those markets.

I agree that they are different. Very different in fact.

Bill Gates wanted to rule the world (and speaking purely in financial terms, he does). Steve Jobs wanted to change it.

In the end, Steve achieved both by focusing on the latter... but I'm not repudiating Bill. I think both of them grew up and in the end, when Steve was ill (according to Isaacson's biography) they recounted the old days like old friends who simply saw the world from different perspectives. I respect them both.

Here i dont agree. While Gates certainly saw that there was money to be made, he too had vision. In that sense i don't think the young Gates is that different from the old. He just didn't share Jobs vision.

 

[gkpm]

Jobs was not the only one to see the use in graphical user interfaces, nor was he the creator of the desktop metaphor or WIMP. Thus, while Xerox may not have been the ones giving it to us, someone else certainly would have.

Oh I see, so in your view we shouldn't celebrate anyone because, well, someone else would have done it eventually anyway.

Christopher Columbus? Irrelevant. Other countries would establish links to America eventually, maybe after developing transoceanic flight. Who knows, he might even have slowed down progress in Europe!

Benjamin Franklin? Just a regular bloke who got lucky.

Karl Marx? If he hadn't written down his ideas someone else would.

Alan Turing? A mathematician like many others who just figured out computing slightly ahead of everyone else

Gordon Moore? Useless inventor, we'd just have better valves in our computers now.

Albert Einstein? Meh, theoretical physics. It's not like he created anything, all of it was there already.

Is this how you feel? Give me a break...

 

[Mad-B-One]

...

You summed it up nicely. I agree 100%.

 

[brdeveloper]

Apple launches iPanel?

 

[divinox]

Oh I see, so in your view we shouldn't celebrate anyone because, well, someone else would have done it eventually anyway.

Christopher Columbus? Irrelevant. Other countries would establish links to America eventually, maybe after developing transoceanic flight. Who knows, he might even have slowed down progress in Europe!

Benjamin Franklin? Just a regular bloke who got lucky.

Karl Marx? If he hadn't written down his ideas someone else would.

Alan Turing? A mathematician like many others who just figured out computing slightly ahead of everyone else

Gordon Moore? Useless inventor, we'd just have better valves in our computers now.

Albert Einstein? Meh, theoretical physics. It's not like he created anything, all of it was there already.

Is this how you feel? Give me a break...

way to a) miss the point b) put Jobs on a pedestal.

p.s.

as for Marx, ever heard of Engels? (ok, Marx were more eloquent, ill admit that)
as for Columbus, come again? Why not bring up Armstrong?

Since you didn't get it, i'll be nice: Celebrate Jobs, but do so for the right reasons.

 

[scoobydoo99]

While Gates certainly saw that there was money to be made, he too had vision.

Probably the first time I have heard someone attribute "vision" to Bill Gates. LOL. He may be a shrewd businessman and a fine philanthropist, but vision is one thing he cannot be accused of having. He's never had an original idea in his life.

 

[divinox]

Probably the first time I have heard someone attribute "vision" to Bill Gates. LOL. He may be a shrewd businessman and a fine philanthropist, but vision is one thing he cannot be accused of having. He's never had an original idea in his life.

And Jobs top 5 original ideas are.........

 

[the8thark]

Image
"Not too shabby..."

That cracked me up. Very funny indeed.

 

[scoobydoo99]

And Jobs top 5 original ideas are.........

Well, the subject post of this thread gives you the top 300. Just look at an iPod compared to every MP3 player that came before it (or after, for that matter). Look at the iPhone compared to every phone that came before it. Look at the original Macintosh! I mean, if you can't see the artistic genius in the integration and harmony that Steve brought to these products, then you really never will "get it". No, he didn't invent the touchscreen, or the graphical user interface, or the MP3 player...he made them all better in ways that no one had ever thought of before. He guided others to evolve ideas and bring them together in revolutionary products.

Monet put paint on canvas just like ten of thousands of other artists have done. That doesn't mean his creations are any less extraordinary. The artistry and inventiveness is not in the silicon or the glass, its how one brings it together to make something "magical". Steve did that. Bill cranks out mundane and derivative products that never innovate or inspire.

 

[medazinol]

OK, first: who paid for that display?
Second: please fix software patent laws. It's totally out of control.

Thanks

 

[divinox]

Well, the subject post of this thread gives you the top 300. Just look at an iPod compared to every MP3 player that came before it (or after, for that matter). Look at the iPhone compared to every phone that came before it. Look at the original Macintosh! I mean, if you can't see the artistic genius in the integration and harmony that Steve brought to these products, then you really never will "get it". No, he didn't invent the touchscreen, or the graphical user interface, or the MP3 player...he made them all better in ways that no one had ever thought of before. He guided others to evolve ideas and bring them together in revolutionary products.

Monet put paint on canvas just like ten of thousands of other artists have done. That doesn't mean his creations are any less extraordinary. The artistry and inventiveness is not in the silicon or the glass, its how one brings it together to make something "magical". Steve did that. Bill cranks out mundane and derivative products that never innovate or inspire.

First, the iPod and the tight coupling with of a music device and a music store originates with Fadell, not Jobs. Second, the iPhone, which original ideas are you pointing at here? The App store, he didn't foresee? And the Mac? Come on... Also, thats the best you can do? Heck, you didn't even get to 5.

Im not saying Jobs were your random Joe, or that he didn't know what he was doing. I'm saying, in a way, that he was good at recognizing great ideas - while turning down good - not necessarily thinking them up a) himself and/or b) first*.

And since were (for some reason) ascribing enterprise products/concepts to individual persons (and ignoring the long nose of innovation), what about kinect? surface? photosynth? what about the work they're with 3d? multi-user perspective-based screens (shooting light to your (and everyone else's) eyes based on your (and everyone else's) position in relationship to the screen, making the screen into a virtual window into another world).

* to re-use the terminology of Sambamurthy, Bharadwaj and Grover in their seminal 2003 paper on agility, Jobs had stunning strategic foresight, and almost as great systemic insight. But these are qualities of an entrepreneur, not an inventor (without saying that one cannot be both).

 

[AmpSkillz]

Where are the custom made white earbud shaped movie seats?!...

WHO PAID FOR THIS?... The same people in government who have no problem using tax dollars in paying $16.00 for a muffin or taking two airline jets, hours apart, to the same vacation spot! So does it really matter who paid for this?

http://www.usatoday.com/news/offbeat/story/2011-10-28/16-dollar-muffin/50981468/1

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/29/u...tice-depts-16-muffin-greatly-exaggerated.html

 

[Corbin052198]

It's still not as big as a Samsung Galaxy Note

 

[slapppy]

Wow. That's awesome!

 

[wikus]

The guy's dead, get over it world.

Agreed.

 

[Lochias]

Just the facts, ma'am

WHY IN THE WORLD is there a PUBLICLY FUNDED museum in the US Patent Office at all??? We're $15 TRILLION in debt. Isn't it about time we make some decisions as to what the government does with the money it confiscates from me after I have earned it?

The only problem with your question is that the USPTO is not publicly funded. It is funded by fees paid by the applicants prior to award and patent holders through the life of each patent.