Steve Jobs (1955-2011), an American businessman, the head of Apple, Inc, was the Henry Ford of the computer – but somehow also its John Lennon.
Among other things, he gave us:
- 1977: Apple II – the first successful mass-market personal computer
- 1984: Macintosh – the first mass-market computer with a graphical user interface
- 1995: “Toy Story” – the first hit film made completely by computer
- 2001: iPod – MP3 music player
- 2003: iTunes – digital music sold online
- 2007: iPhone – smartphone
- 2010: iPad – tablet computer
Jobs did not invent the MP3 player or the personal computer or any of it. Instead he took what he saw in computer labs and turned it into something cool and easy to use and priced for the middle-class.
He saw computers from the inside like an engineer and from the outside like the rest of us. Surprisingly few can. He understood the value of industrial design. He could attract, keep and lead top talent. His marketing judgement was better than any focus group, though sometimes he was ahead of his time.
He once said Bill Gates would have been
a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger.
Jobs did both. He even learned calligraphy, which seemed completely useless at the time but would later help him to design the Mac.
Jobs’s birth parents were students at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. His father, Abdulfattah “John” Jandali, was from Syria. He wanted to marry his American girlfriend but her father was against it, so they went to San Francisco to put Jobs up for adoption. They later did marry and had a daughter, the writer Mona Simpson.
Jobs grew up in San Francisco and its southern suburbs, which he would later help turn into Silicon Valley. Apple is just down the road from his old high school.
In 1967 at age 12 he saw one of the world’s first desktop computers: a neighbour worked at HP and had taken Jobs under his wing.
In 1974 he worked at Atari for a while and travelled to India, where he begged and became a follower of guru Neem Karoli Baba. (Jobs was a Zen Buddhist.)
On April Fool’s Day 1976 he started Apple in his parents’s garage. There he and his friend Steve Wozniak made the first Apple computers. Six years later at age 26 he was worth $149 million (66 million crowns). He modelled himself after Edwin H. Land, inventor of the instant camera.
In 1979 Jobs visited Xerox PARC where Xerox was designing the Alto, a computer for the 1980s that would be easy enough for secretaries to use. Jobs was completely blown away. That became the beginning of the Mac, which he modelled on the Alto.
Since 2004 Jobs has been fighting cancer on and off. In August 2011 he became too sick to work any more. Two months later he was dead:
We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know?
See also:
- Steve Jobs’s commencement speech at Stanford in 2005 – both video and text. Excellent! So good that Nora Ephron wished she had written it.
- iPhone
- Jonathan Ive – Jobs’s top industrial designer
- Kubrick – a perfectionist like Jobs
- Aldus Manutius – reminds me of Jobs
- crowns = 30 g of silver
Thank you.
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So he didn’t invent it? then what’s up with bill gates than. how did he become so rich.
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Steve Jobs, where to begin… he was just another tech CEO. Most CEO’s are pretty awful human beings and Jobs was possibly below average in this respect.
First, his “positives” that he is given credit for
1. inventing the modern GUI – stole it from xerox parc
2. invented the HDD mp3 player – compaq personal jukebox beat him by a few years
3. invented the modern personal computer – IBM released the PC years before the Mac
4. invented the smartphone – there were phones with equivalent features (although no touchscreen) years before, and touchscreen devices years before.
5. made digital music possible with the iTunes store – this is true however he made DRM the norm, which was a pretty awful thing to do
6. started pixar – incorrect, he bought it and lasseter led it to success
Now some of his negatives
1. denied paternity of his daughter for years – she was on food stamps when he was one of the richest people in the world. Lied in his deposition – claimed he was sterile
2. hired chinese labor with worker conditions so awful several people killed themselves
3. gave nothing to charity despite being one of the 200 richest people in the world
4. ended apple’s charity program and never restarted it even though he promised to
5. harassed and intimidated bloggers and journalists. sued a 19 year old over minor leaked info, causing him to close his blog permanently
6. treated subordinates at work terribly – screaming abuse at them, lying to them, underpaying them, overworking them
7. lied to his cofounder and best friend while he worked at Atari, getting wozniak to do work for him and stealing thousands of dollars from him
8. when going public refused to give up any shares or ownership to the people who helped him start the company. wozniak had to give them shares out of his cut
9. parked in handicapped spots for years just because he could get away with it
Gawker has a longer, more detailed list – go read it, and read Richard Stallman’s response to Jobs’ death.
As i said most CEOs are pretty awful people – there is evidence that they have higher than normal rates of psychopathic narcissism. But I think Steve Jobs stood out for his exceptional arrogance, greed and general dickishness.
I think it’s ironic that his arrogance led him to refuse proper treatment for his cancer. If he wasn’t such an asshole he would have lived longer.
It annoys me that Jobs is being worshiped now as if he was a great and noble inventor and humanitarian. He was a manager and great marketer, nothing more.
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This guy might have been a dick, he perhaps stole ideas, but he was essential at changing our lives. So weather you liked him or not, he did change the world.
As for Bill Gates, he is not actually the nicest guy around either. But he too has changed a lot in our lives.
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To sam:
Just because he “changed our lives” doesn’t mean that its a good thing.
Maybe we would have been better without him…
This is an “if” statement of course, things could have been different in another dimension with an other “Steve Jobs”.
I’m thinking the same thing about the white man when he came to us in congo to “colonize” us. Some white folks here in belgium think that we must be thankful to them because if they didn’t come and kill, rape, torture and create cities and road in our country we would have been nothing… I disagree.
I’m pretty sure we would be somewhere, doing something, and probably even be better than what we are today (making wars, killing, raping, torturing, being poor, etc..)
So, same reasoning for the Steve Jobs thing.
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@joe,
I knew some of those things but not to the extent you outlined them. Great informative post.
An interesting point. When you study study those people who have survived cancer. They survived when they were able to turn around let go of all the meanness and negative crap you listed (negatives).
For all the accolades and praise Abagond seems to want to promote Steve Jobs for. Beating Cancer was one particular aspect of his life he obviously didn’t have the visionary genius to discover how to do!!!
Thats why he died at the abnormally age of 56. And you wonder why?
Was it really worth it?
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Wow, interesting point about his cancer.
Stallman’s differences with Jobs, as far as I know, were over design philosophy. Stallman is for free software, which gave rise to Linux. Jobs’s machines were all highly proprietary. That allowed him greater control over how they came out, which is why, for example, the iPhone is better than most of the Android phones from a user’s point of view.
As a Unix guy I tend to lean towards Stallman, but on the other hand I have seen how Apple’s stuff is way more usable by those with no computer background.
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Welcome diversion
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Guys, Abagond has just observed the common rule of decency “De mortuis nihil nisi bene”. You know, you don’t waste time on exposing exactly how bad a dead guy, was, even that it was pretty bad.
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Teddy that would be fine but we don’t need to praise them either. I would love to have seen a post on Dennis Ritchie or Frank Kameny or Fred Shuttlesworth, all of whom contributed more to the world than Steve Jobs. Plus the internet is saturated with Steve Jobs hagiographies already right now.
To clarify my point about his cancer in case I was unclear, it was from this post:
http://www.quora.com/Steve-Jobs/Why-did-Steve-Jobs-choose-not-to-effectively-treat-his-cancer
“Mr. Jobs’ choice for alternative medicine has led to an unnecessarily early death.”
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Good points thus far! I guess I didn’t care too much to look into Steve Jobs, though I was generally familiar with his work. Shedding light on all of this tends to ground things in perspective instead of the usual “pedestal” treatment a lot of folks get.
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Is your last name Ruckspin #trollmoment
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Joe, as a matter of fact, that is what that rule says. On the other hand, what you did was just informing those people, who never knew that Steve Jobs existed, that Abagond was just being decent, and that there is really no reason for somebody in, say, Angola, to feel very sorry about Jobs being dead. That’s a good thing too.
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Given the emerging PC industry back in the 80's if Apple hadn't been so greedy or proprietary, as you say, it could have revolutionised PC usability, take up and availability. But that was never its goal under Steve Jobs leadership. Instead it was to make as much profit for himself and the companies shareholders.
Bill Gates is no hero or saint but even he ended up making more of a personal fortune than Steve Jobs. So was his entrepreneurial style really necessary? and Bill Gates is still alive?
I full agree with the assessment made by Joe. And from what I do know given my own 25 years in the IT industry. If Steve Jobs had shared his passion, vision and drive with the rest of the PC community, in the spirit of the way Linux originally came about. He might not have amassed as much profit for himself or Apple. But we probably would have had products like the ITunes, IPhones and IMacs much earlier as a global standard instead of a niche one.
Oh…and he would probably still be alive today. ..his choice.
So all his so called achievements where really secondary or incidental to his main motivation – which was extreme profit. Which he did of course achieve.
Sorry – Not the sort of role model or idol we need for aspiring Black entrepreneurs. A bit like the Cecil Rhodes of IT!!!
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I’ll just post a copy-paste message:
R.I.P. – STEVE JOBS. One dies, Millions Cry. Millions die, No-one Cries.
We remember your Memory:
• A ‘Genius’ whose Global Empire was literally built on the back of Underage Chinese Slave Labour working in horrific conditions. Some were driven to SUICIDE.
• Your fearsome Legal & Private Security Team that ANNIHILATED smaller prey.
• Oligarchal Power/Bilderberger Elitist Ruthlessly Striving for Global Domination
• Wielding Power Over Government, Media with fellow Global Plutocrats
• Censorship, Authoritarianism, bullying, humiliating, manipulation, intimidation & fear of Staff
• The HUNDREDS OF 1000’s of people that SUFFERED due to your relentless pursuit of GREATNESS, Love of GREED and POWER.
• Not 1 cent did you ever DONATE to Charity.
Did you leave your $7 BILLION to any of the underage Chinese workers whom you ruthlessly exploited driving some to suicide?
Finally, does your £7 BILLION keep you warm at night?
R.I.P.
Signed: Your Exploited & Indentured Slave Labour
(By Exposing the Truth)
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Sorry, but it is hard for me to bad mouth someone who just died. Maybe I should have waited to do this one.
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• A ‘Genius’ whose Global Empire was literally built on the back of Underage Chinese Slave Labour working in horrific conditions. Some were driven to SUICIDE.
• Your fearsome Legal & Private Security Team that ANNIHILATED smaller prey.
• Oligarchal Power/Bilderberger Elitist Ruthlessly Striving for Global Domination
• Wielding Power Over Government, Media with fellow Global Plutocrats
• Censorship, Authoritarianism, bullying, humiliating, manipulation, intimidation & fear of Staff
• The HUNDREDS OF 1000′s of people that SUFFERED due to your relentless pursuit of GREATNESS, Love of GREED and POWER.
• Not 1 cent did you ever DONATE to Charity.
“Sorry, but it is hard for me to bad mouth someone who just died.”
I understand your sentiment Abagond, but the truth still remains the truth, nevertheless.. I see an eerily familiar parallel here as I notice how much good ole Steve’s accomplishments (shown above) seems like an actual, factual, literal personification/representation of white-supremacy/racism’s accomplishments.
Yes indeed, Mr Jobs, RIP!
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I agree with Abagond. I’m honestly not sure if it’s appropriate to speak ill of the (recently) dead, but it just doesn’t feel right hearing all this criticism over Jobs. I mean come on. Its not like the dude was Hitler
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I don’t think “this one” needed to be done at all, unless you’re going to do a post for every fortune 500 ceo who dies.
Sorry, I’m not trying to be harsh. most people agree with you that he was a great man. It’s your blog and you should post whatever you want. I’m just a cynic who was never that impressed with apple products or Jobs and resents all the pro-SJ stuff in the news this week.
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I have an iPod…that’s about it.
I do recall the heydays of Apple computers; I recall that great day in 1980, when my dad brought home an Apple II+ and a few computer games – that was when I first started playing the D & D-like game, Ultima. My brothers are self-taught computer geniuses and have programmed their own software, but that’s because my parents allowed them to monopolize the computer, so I never got a chance to really experiment on my own. I took computer science at the same time as they, but without easy access I finally lost interest. Gaming and writing are what I use computers for, and I’ve always felt that a PC is much better for that than Apple products. Just my $0.02…
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It’s amusing to hear people who’ve probably never organized anything more complex than a softball game passing moral and operational judgment on someone who revolutionized 4-6 industries (depending on how you count them).
Perhaps this is an opportunity for folks to attempt to understand what the real costs (and demands) are for any great human enterprise. Spoiler alert: they’re unbelievably massive.
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While one may be bothered by others speaking ill of Steve Jobs, I (and many others like the author of the piece I posted) am quite bothered by all the hero-worship and fan-tears that are being shed over Jobs, because the truth is, this person was NOT the hero, the great pro-people messiah the media are making him out to be. If we do not speak out against this wrong depiction of a man who in reality exploited workers driving some of them to suicide and eliminated competition unfairly by monopolistic practices, this false media-generated image of Jobs being a blessing to mankind, and one who beat competition by pure technical innovations, is going to stay.
Where were all these soft hearts, when 19-year-old Chinese worker Ma Xiangqian committed suicide jumping off the building of Foxconn, a sweatshop in China that manufactures Apple products? Xiangqian worked 286 hours according to his pay stub in the 22 days before he died. He was among many who committed suicide at Foxconn. Suicide was so endemic at Foxconn that Foxconn installed nets around its tall building.
Steve Jobs defended Foxconn after it started to get a bad rep in the media due to the suicides, saying the working conditions were not as bad.
Apple is not the only one. Many multinationals are outsourcing to third world countries like India, China, Indonesia where labour is cheap, workers have no bargaining power due to extreme poverty and government apathy and hence are routinely exploited, the governments, the ‘free’ media and hence the small section of the ‘enlightened youth'(those who work for the corporates, consume as the media dictate and whose opinions are shown on TV) champion the cause of capitalistic corporatism.
If it were an average business owner, not the CEO of a multi-million company, maybe exposing his misadventures after his death would not have been so condemnable to some people. One seems to forget that whether or not a criminal is a genius or dead or a dead genius, it does not have anything to do with the fact that he is a criminal.
Or maybe some people are actually comfortable with the fact that their iPhones or iPods or iShits are made by exploiting people from other nations as long as they’re getting their goods cheap.
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If one remembers the mythical tale of white brilliance over all the other races thanks to which whites made some of the greatest discoveries and inventions of mankind and it had nothing to do with colonization, imperialistic practices and slavery, one will find another similarity between the Tale of Jobs and the Tale of ‘White Man’s Burden’.
The accomplishments(in its actual sense and not the sarcastic) are used to justify the oppression and glorify the oppressor.
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@Joe
You’re incorrect about one thing. Apple’s PC was years ahead of IBM. IBM didn’t come out with their first PC until 1981 whereas Apple introducted its first PC in 1976. And the OS on the PC was never as stable as that of the MAC (And my husband actually works for IBM). Secondly, while Jobs did use technology innovations from other companies, he was very good at taking disparate inventions and putting them together in a way that appealed to everyday users. Finally, while he might not be a philanthropist along the lines of Bill Gates, he was a vegetarian that fought for the rights of animals.
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Bill Gates a philanthropist? That is another sick joke. He is an eugenicist for chrissake.
When will people get over this corporate worship crap?
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“It’s amusing to hear people who’ve probably never organized anything more complex than a softball game passing moral and operational judgment on someone who revolutionized 4-6 industries (depending on how you count them).”
Even more amusing is a racist POS making gross ASSumptions about, and passing judgement on, a group of commentors on a blog…now, THAT’S funny! 😎
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And I know many racist, classist mean fascist-mentality bastards who are quite capable of seeing an innocent die and feel nothing while shedding a fountain of tears for animals. Hypocrisy++
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@ angelsanddimensions:
Agreed. I think similar hero-worship was evident after the death of Walt Disney, creator of “the happiest place on earth”…his personal demons were fascinating research, from a clinical perspective.
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@KM
Bill Gates has given away more than a third of his wealth in the interest of global health. Yes that would make him a philanthropist. And being kind to animals is noteworthy. Compassion is compassion whether it’s directed towards humans or animals.
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Is acknowledging someone’s contribution the same thing as “worshipping” them? For instance, does mention of Alexander Graham Bell or Benjamin Franklin or Sir Isaac Newton mean that we are worshipping them, or are we simply saying they left a profound legacy? If we look hard enough, we can find something wrong with everybody. Should all of our faults be printed in our obituaries? As for the atrocities Jobs has been accused of, it is fascinating how people take so much time rumaging through the trash of successful people when they could be using that time to make their own contribution. Was Steve Jobs a hero? No. But when you really think about it, who is? For any person you come up with, someone will find a list of their character flaws. If “meanness” kills you, what does envy do?
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KM, Bill Gates a eugenicist?
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C’mon. Gates and Jobs were/are capitalists. You think that a business of that size is run by some ethical codes and/or moral guidelines? Of course not. Bottom line is the bottom line: how much money we can make and how we can make even more. That is what the guys and companies of this caliber are thinking in the first place. Everything else comes after that, if at all.
@minnesotamom: Well, Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian and did not drink any alcohol, he was also a great animal lover and the nature preserve laws he dictated still form the back bone of present day enviromental laws in Germany. But he had his bad sides too.
@maluson: I did not say Jobs was a good guy, I just said he changed the world just like Bill Gates. Like it or not. I never liked Hitler, Mao or Stalin but I can not say they did not change the course of history.
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Can we please stay away from the invocations of Godwin’s law. We’re smarter than this, yeah?
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@Sam
You are not really comparing Jobs to Hitler, are you? As a Hindu that believes that all life is equally valuable, I appreciate the fact that he was both a vegetarian and the fact that his companies were animal friendly. If you were expecting perfection, well all I can say is that no human is perfect.
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Conventional treatment? Jobs lived longer than most, with pancreatic cancer. I think one should know in detail about someones illness, before they speak on it. Its his life.
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You know I’m happy Steve Jobs did some good innovation of ideas and things that were already in existence but I too am kind of upset that so many people have come out praising Jobs as the creator of many of the products he innovated. I personally owned a mp3 player almost 3 entire years before the iPod was released and I remember people were amazed like the iPod was some completely new thing. I just shrugged and was pretty unimpressed as the iPod had to have only mac related song file formats and could not play several other formats that other mp3 players could play and the other mp3 players had already been around for at least 3 years. Macintosh computers have always been very “as is computers” and non-up-gradable for almost every mac system I’ve ever used when it comes to hardware options. I have used Macs since the apple 2 not my own but usually trying to help other people fix or upgrade them, in all honesty they have been harder to use over the years then every other computer platform I’ve worked with and I’d like to note again that yes IBM beat the Apple 2, so I hate to say it but there’s another fail on the list. It was not a created idea but an innovated one. I work with computer technology quite a bit and I have seen “touchscreen” technology as far back as the year 2000 and it was being developed originally on IBM or PC platforms, possibly through something other then windows based operating systems but it was developed first by several other computer companies before Jobs innovated it into iPhones and iPads. He didn’t create these technologies no matter how much his tech cult followers think he did. Trust me I have had several heated debates about this with some very stubbornly mac loving people and I’ll say it again Jobs was an innovator not a creator of great ideas. It’s too bad not everyone can be a millionaire from stealing other people’s ideas, I’m not entirely sure how Jobs got away with it for so long but I guess cancer did him in so who knows maybe he deserved it.
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