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Please stop making him sound like a saint. He made phone and treated people like crap.. What did Steve do to serve humanity o_O
 
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"What it means to serve humanity."...? I would have chosen other words to remember him by. He did little to serve humanity. Building products and a business isn't serving humanity and the greater good...

I couldn’t disagree more. It is obviously serving humanity since people voluntarily trade the product of their labor for it. Technology has allowed man to live in an amazing level of comfort. The average person in developed countries has comforts that kings of old dreamed of.
 
So to commemorate his passing Apple is releasing 70 new emoji?

Oh how things have changed. I bet Steve would cringe at what Apple has become. Way to many models. Mac product offerings a complete mess. USB-C/Lightning confusion abound. Prices jacked up way too high for most common users.
 
What should have done then? How do you serve humanity?

Steve looked at things very differently from the typical person. He saw details that no one else did. He was able to drive the creation of devices and software that allowed people to communicate, create, and collaborate like very few others have before. Apple's design philosophies - driven by Steve Jobs and his eye for detail - have trickled into products from other companies, into print media, into home product design, and countless other things.

Hundreds of thousands of careers and companies were launched on the basis of what Steve did, whether it was Apple, NeXT, Pixar, or whatever. He was poised to take over Disney prior to his death. That company controls an enormous swath of the cultural landscape and was perfectly suited for a person with his mind and his eye. What do you think he would have done there?

I very rarely do this in debate, but in this instance I have to simply state: you're wrong. Its not an insult, and its not intended as an ad hominem. Please consider what those "products and a business" have provided: billions of dollars in wealth for common people as well as corporate, products that help us define ourselves and push our lives forward, and tools that augment creativity while boosting productivity.

Apple products very rarely allow people to do those things which they couldn't otherwise do. What Apple products do is allow people to do those things with a bit less frustration from the user interface. Which is good for me (I spend a fortune on Apple products because I like that less frustrating user interface), but I don't think it's really serving humanity in a meaningful way is it. How does a £1,000 iPhone server humanity? By being nicer to use than a £100 Android phone? Hmm.
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As a side note: the Watch is actually a Steve Jobs product, but it was for a completely different purpose

What purpose is that?
 
Indeed. Jobs was likely a sociopath with narcissistic tendencies who pointed fingers at his associates and insulted their work and themselves personally but whose Reality Distortion Field never allowed him to accept the blame when things went South.

You forgot "psychopath". I mean, if you're going to do armchair clinical psychology, you have to have all the tools there.

I think its very interesting how those three terms have entered popular culture over the past 18 months. I am sure it relates to some other event in recent history, but I just can't imagine what. In any event, suddenly half the country seems to think that they can be Patrick Jane and make snap judgements about people based on a few minutes of observation - even in the absence of interaction.

The story of how he cheated the Woz out the bonus for a game Woz designed for Atari - which Wozniak wouldn't learn about until the story was told in print years later - speaks volumes about the sort of man Jobs really was.

Don't forget about the the part of the story where Woz had made quite a bit of money off selling devices that bypassed toll systems on public phone networks. Apparently cheating is part of human nature. Perhaps Woz is a sociopath.

The way he and Bill Gates tried to take credit for inventing the Desktop Paradigm is another indication.

Indication of what? "Sociopath with narcissistic tendencies"? Please stop letting Youtube videos guide you in your formation of opinions on public figures. You don't know the complete story of Steve Jobs life, or that of Bill Gates. All you know is what you see, and what you don't allow yourself to see. You definitely have no idea of what you're not being shown.

Jobs had seen the Xerox Alto in 1979 and the direction of the Lisa's early design was absolutely based on the Alto. We can dismiss Gates' claim altogether: In 1979, Gates and Microsoft were unknowns with only a Basic for the MITS Altair and a version of Unix called Xenix under their belts and would never have gotten an invitation to Xerox, nor does anyone who worked at the Parc facility remember ever seeing Gates anywhere near their offices. Gates' claim was an indication of his own narcissism.

The part of the story Steve always neglected to mention was visiting the El Segundo facility in 1980 and seeing what would become the Xerox 8010: The Xerox "Star" Office System. Every aspect of what would come to be known as the Desktop Paradigm was developed for the 8010 at El Segundo and the direction of the Lisa changed to follow suit. Yet, Jobs and Apple always insisted the Desktop Paradigm was innovated by Apple. True, Xerox deserves part of the blame for never properly honoring and recognizing the work and ideas that the men and women of the Xerox Parc and El Segundo facilities produced but Jobs (and Gates) took credit for technical innovation neither men deserved.

This keeps cropping up, despite every attempt at correcting the public perception of the historical record. The lone takeaway that Jobs grabbed solely from the Alto was that previous arcane terms for devices and processes could be considered as objects on a bitmapped display. That is it. The WIMP/mouse aspects had been around in various forms for a decade, going back to the Dynabook concept from Alan Kay, and Doug Englebart's work at SRI. I personally owned a later derivative of the Alto, that done by AT&T in their 3B2 machine of just a few years later, and please accept my statement when I say that nothing - NOTHING - in that interface could have influenced Apple or Steve Jobs any further than what I stated above.

Jobs did make the effort to recompense PARCs work by giving them stock in return for access to their IP and the right to use it. He also hired Larry Tesler from them, recognizing his talent.

Jobs should be remembered for inspiring others to produce great products and insisting on a tasteful and artistic approach even if part of that inspiration process was via threats and intimidation. He brought Apple back to life - give him credit where credit is due but leave the syrupy praise out of it.

I sort of agree. Jobs' big failure in the business world was his impatience with people, whether it be when they couldn't see what he was talking about, or when they simply didn't do the best work that they were capable of. He short-circuited the typical soft-pedaling that we all do and simply went for the jugular. Anything less was inefficient and he hated inefficiency. That was his way. Do it or get out of it. It doesn't change the fact that people fought to work for him, and in contrast with the typical cutthroat atmosphere more polite leaders can sometimes have in the tiers below them, people were more likely to push themselves harder than they were to undermine others in order to satisfy Steve, because he could see through that stuff. There was a documentary about him within the last couple of years, and they interviewed one of his team members from the first Apple tenure. The guy had lost his wife because of his dedication to Jobs and Apple. Through tears he said it was worth it and he would do it all over again just to experience it again.
 
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Time flies... 7 years already!
I remember reading the news on the very device he introduced to the market.
I miss him especially during Apple keynotes, they were way more interesting to follow when he was on stage.
Same
 

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Apple products very rarely allow people to do those things which they couldn't otherwise do. What Apple products do is allow people to do those things with a bit less frustration from the user interface. Which is good for me (I spend a fortune on Apple products because I like that less frustrating user interface), but I don't think it's really serving humanity in a meaningful way is it. How does a £1,000 iPhone server humanity? By being nicer to use than a £100 Android phone? Hmm.

Its easy to judge that, standing here at the (current) end of history. Take a look at the original iPhone keynote introduction and check out the reactions from the crowd. People went nuts over Visual Voicemail. Today thats nothing, but back then it was cause for people to stand up and cheer.

The overall effect of the phone was that it freed people from their desktops and offices and enabled mobile computing in a way that laptops hadn't achieved, despite being superior devices at the time. Productivity took a leap, and the effects of that are still being felt, still reinforcing other leaps in productivity. It all builds on previous work. You don't understand the dividends that are being paid out here.

I would also like to point you to couple of things in Isaacson's biography. Just two things.

First is the story of Steve bringing the first Macintosh to a party, where he encountered the hosts' young son. He spent the entire party with that child, giving him pointers on using the computer. He was enthralled by how quickly the boy had embraced the machine, and how quickly he had started creating by using the tools there. I am not certain since its been a while since I read the story, but I believe it was Sean Lennon.

The second is just a simple pic. You can see Steve with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, as Steve puts an iPhone through its paces. They're standing next to each other like a couple of besties, this alleged sociopath with narcissistic tendencies, and a powerful leader from the opposite side of the globe. Everything else in Medvedev's life seems to have melted away as he played with this wonderful device. For those few minutes, he was just like everyone else, affected by this brilliant thing that transcended politics and culture. The look on his face was priceless.

Obviously, every device ends up getting corrupted in its use case, and the iPhone was no exception. But people are building on that device, and on other things introduced to the world by Steve Jobs, and those devices are paying dividends for the foreseeable future. Since more and more is being done on these phones, their capabilities have grown, power has increased, and prices have risen. What about the day when everything is on the Watch, for instance, and one of them costs $1500 - but you won't have to have a desktop or even a phone. Will that bother you? Or will you accept the dividend and move on?
 
Are you kidding right? Apple would never turned into a greedy fashionable brand under his leadership.


Thanks MacFather! That video interview is more relevant than ever before.

I suspect Steve would have left Apple to pursue other projects despite Apple’s popularity and financial success with the iPhone. He was driven to create quality tools that encourage creation and honor the arts and sciences—not kitsch toys for gaming, shopping, and socializing. Can you imagine him announcing emojis at a keynote? Of course, not.

I don’t think Steve would have been swayed by the decline in PC use. He would have recognized that it is household PC use that has declined. He would have continued to advance the Mac lineup for those who depend on them or made the iPad a more capable alternative.
 
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it seems that this time of year always floods my memories of sitting with the other restless attendeees of Macworld Expo and WWDC waiting for Steve to come back on stage for ‘One More Thing’!
 
Tim Cook: "Steve showed me--and all of us--what it means to serve the almighty dollar"
 
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Steve was an excellent businessman who did not fit the typical businessman's stereotypes.

With his excellent skills, he made very good products and a boatload of money. Some of these products were very good. Some not so much.

Serving humanity? I don't think so...
 
While some people here think the world should move on rather than paying annual tribute to Jobs, it's essential to remember just how fundamentally important he was to the Apple vision. He was prickly, singular, dictatorial and disliked by many, but these were the exact characteristics required to become an iconic company with a distinct identity.

While Tim Cook has clearly seen Apple build success upon success, Apple seems to have lost some of its soul and become just another tech company devoid of true inspiration (just as it was under the leadership of Gil Amelio). Sure this will upset younger Apple fans but it's 31 years since I first used a Mac and I'm not just regurgitating facts from Wikipedia.

Apple seem to have sadly lost touch with the educational sector, becoming more focused on youngsters buying iPhones than designing Macs for education and giving students a real alternative to the prevalent Microsoft platform. Microsoft understand education and it's not as if Apple is lacking the resources to make it's presence felt within education. They just don't seem interested, which is a shame.

Apple also doesn't seem to care about enterprise. Apple Remote Desktop is a potentially fantastic tool, let down by flaky performance and lack of real development. Server is being stripped back to the point where Caching and Profile Manager will be the only components left, and don't get me started on their lack of hardware aimed at enterprise. How the hell are you supposed to rack-mount a recent Mac Pro? I know, you're not supposed to, but the fact Apple have no commitment to education or enterprise is disheartening, especially when all the other big tech players understand these areas.

At the end of the day Apple are doing rather well out of selling phones. Nokia and Blackberry also did rather well, both being king of the hill at different points, and both falling precipitously from grace after becoming arrogant and complacent about their market positions.

Finally, Apple should seriously take a look at their green credentials. Or lack of them. Portable devices with non-replaceable batteries? Device life expectancy being deliberately curtailed by non-replaceable storage and non-upgradeable memory? None of these things are good for the environment or the customer, they only benefit the corporate bottom line. Apple are in a position to show the rest of the world how business should be done. Relocating manufacturing to US soil and paying fair wages would be a damned good start, followed by designing products that are easily serviced/repaired with a long life expectancy - and easily recycled at the end of that life.

These are all things Apple is more than capable of addressing if it chose to, and given the "Think Different" slogan, it's about time Apple stood up and showed the world how to be responsible and "Act Different".
 
Its easy to judge that, standing here at the (current) end of history. Take a look at the original iPhone keynote introduction and check out the reactions from the crowd. People went nuts over Visual Voicemail. Today thats nothing, but back then it was cause for people to stand up and cheer.

The overall effect of the phone was that it freed people from their desktops and offices and enabled mobile computing in a way that laptops hadn't achieved, despite being superior devices at the time. Productivity took a leap, and the effects of that are still being felt, still reinforcing other leaps in productivity. It all builds on previous work. You don't understand the dividends that are being paid out here.

I would also like to point you to couple of things in Isaacson's biography. Just two things.

First is the story of Steve bringing the first Macintosh to a party, where he encountered the hosts' young son. He spent the entire party with that child, giving him pointers on using the computer. He was enthralled by how quickly the boy had embraced the machine, and how quickly he had started creating by using the tools there. I am not certain since its been a while since I read the story, but I believe it was Sean Lennon.

The second is just a simple pic. You can see Steve with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, as Steve puts an iPhone through its paces. They're standing next to each other like a couple of besties, this alleged sociopath with narcissistic tendencies, and a powerful leader from the opposite side of the globe. Everything else in Medvedev's life seems to have melted away as he played with this wonderful device. For those few minutes, he was just like everyone else, affected by this brilliant thing that transcended politics and culture. The look on his face was priceless.

Obviously, every device ends up getting corrupted in its use case, and the iPhone was no exception. But people are building on that device, and on other things introduced to the world by Steve Jobs, and those devices are paying dividends for the foreseeable future. Since more and more is being done on these phones, their capabilities have grown, power has increased, and prices have risen. What about the day when everything is on the Watch, for instance, and one of them costs $1500 - but you won't have to have a desktop or even a phone. Will that bother you? Or will you accept the dividend and move on?

That sounds like an example of what I'm talking about - what does Visual Voicemail really let you do that you couldn't before? It just makes the experience a little less annoying, which is great, and something Apple fanboys like us love and consider worth paying for* but doesn't substantially alter peoples lives. If Apple hadn't brought out the iPhone we'd still have tiny computers in our pockets that we could go on the internet with, they'd just be less nice to use.

*well, actually I don't have visual voicemail right now as my current provider doesn't support it and I don't think it's worth paying for a more expensive provider to get it, because I almost never use phone calls any more, but you know what I mean - in general the nicer interface Apple provides is worth paying for, to me.
 
Well, Steve was a great thinker and entrepreneur but I don’t think he was the humanitarian that Tim Cook is describing him.
Not to sound completely cynical, but Cook celebrates Jobs' high-profile persona that's very valuable for Apple, the guy behind the myth is forgettable at best.
 
I imagine it'll become less common as fewer people personally knew Jobs are still working at Apple.

Maybe after the 10th Apple as a whole won't be talking about it for the 11th-14th, and instead individual executives might tweet about him or something, but Apple will bring him back for the 15th, 20th, 25th, 30th, and every decade after that...

Although IDK. How often does IBM bring up Watson the man? I left the company 4 months before the 60th anniversary of his death.
You are certainly optimistic regarding how long Apple will be around, at least as primarily being a computer company. Technically all the iOS gadgets are computers, but Apple is still generically categorized by the namesake of this forum - the Mac. That has begun to change over the last few years, as it has really become mostly a mobile phone (and accessories, dongles, etc.) company. Steve Jobs main contributions were with the Macintosh and the iPhone. Ten years ago no one could have fathomed how much the iPhone lay in Apple's future, and I'm guessing no one right now can really guess what Apple will be ten years from now. In 1976 a company called Eastman Kodak encompassed 85% of the markets in photography. It is still around, but only as a phantom of what it once was, after nearly going bankrupt in 2013. I was surprised, upon Googling it, that it still exists. I suspect Apple will go a similar route, but much more quickly due to the accelerated speed of the tech industry. Most of the folks who still admire Jobs were of the Macintosh era of Apple. My guess is that a lot of the people clamoring for "let's move on regarding SJ" are mostly too young to remember the significance of his rise - fall - and resurrection of the company he founded. Cook, and even Ive, are at least old enough to know they wouldn't be where they are now without Steve Jobs. That is where Tim Cook comes from, and what he can't forget. Eventually, the Mac (at least as we know it) will die, the iPhone will change and mutate to something we can't imagine, and the people like Cook who came to prominence under Steve Jobs, will also retire or die. After that, Jobs will be consigned to a footnote in history which most people won't remember. Just a guess ...
 
What exactly did he do to serve humanity? I would say nothing at all but he certainly served himself and his company. Much as it may pain many on here, I would argue that Bill Gates has done and is doing more to serve humanity than Steve Jobs ever did.
 
Jobs founded and ran a company that has designed and at one point manufactured (manufacturing is all outsourced now) great products at a premium price. There is no record of Jobs 'serving humanity.' Many people have pointed out that Jobs was an incredibly selfish man, so much so that he insisted on parking in disabled parking; long before he ever got physical sick.

While it is possible he gave to charity anonymously, his public personal was not of a person 'serving humanity.'
 
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