What did Steve Jobs do?

Great places to start

Steve Jobs on Wikipedia

Commencement Address at Stanford

In short, he invented and actually built things early on, then created and headed a huge company, then got fired, then headed a smaller company, then got rehired, then headed the largest company in the world.

And he only went to one semester of college.

This is relevant, too

Oh, so he was a CEO?

Kids today….

Actually, he was the guy who convinced the world that computers were not just for big businesses, universities, and high-end science labs. Before Apple, it was honestly thought that nobody would ever want or need a home computer for any reason.

Jobs was more of a designer than a builder. What he brought to the table was vision. Once personal computers started taking off, he had some ideas involving mice, based on what he saw at Xerox. That led to the Mac, which led to Windows and various other GUIs for other OSs. He had a vision of simpler interfaces to bring computers to people who had an active aversion to ever wanting to learn how to use a computer, which lead to iOS.

He also had a good head for business, not so much in the number-crunching way, but in a, “This will be the next big thing!” sort of way. He didn’t so much make what people wanted though; he made things and was a master at convincing people that they wanted them. I mean, when the iPod first came out, most people were content with CDs.

@pcmonkey Check out pirates of silicon valley.

@XOIIO Awesome movie!

@ragingloli Brings up a really good point. I don’t think we can hold Steve directly responsible for the atrocities at Foxconn, but the fact that Apple as a whole hasn’t made a stand against them yet is sickening.

Foxconn can hire 3000 people in a day and they start work the next day.

It’s not what we want here in the US, but apparently people in China don’t think it’s such a raw deal.

Our problem isn’t with Apple, or even with Foxconn, it’s with modern Chinese culture.

@funkdaddy Agreed. Foxconn is an issue for China.

So I would be just fascinated by the thought processes of @Joker94 (“sickening”???) and @ragingloli (“relevant”????) to raise Chinese labor issues in responding to the question “What did Steve Jobs do?”

I would say more than anything, Steve Jobs revolutionized marketing. He managed to over and over again sell things to people that were pretty content without them (see, Apple II, iPod, iPhone, iPad, Macbook Air), and sell record numbers. The products are good, sure, but I think it’s a little sad that his legacy may lie with rather mediocre products from a both hardware and software standpoint rather than the skill the guy had in making you want to buy something.

@plethora
It is incredibly simple.
It is Apple, among other western companies, that outsource hardware manufacturing to those chinese labour camps. By doing that, they are actively supporting what is practically slave labour. And that is not all: They have more than enough economic leverage to make Foxconn them pay their workers wages that are not complete shit, yet they did not lift a finger to do so, because that would cut into their profit margin.
What did Steve Jobs do? Knowingly support and exploit chinese slave labour.

@plethora I think sickening is a pretty fair description of it all, don’t you? @ragingloli Summed up, for the most part, how I feel. If any company wanted to change the way Foxconn handles their labor force, it’d be Apple. They’re not solely responsible, sure, but they certainly haven’t helped the situation.

I think one aspect that consistently gets ignored is his work at NeXT. After being booted from Apple, he founded NeXT and his team created the NeXTSTEP operating system. The underpinning of this software created way back in ‘88 are part of the core of what’s running on all modern Macs, and iOS devices such as iPhones, and iPads.

It used the Objective-C language which is an incredibly elegant solution that allows a programmer to work at a “higher level” with object oriented programming while maintaining full C compatibility so you can still do things incredibly fast. The genius of this is that a smart programmer can create programs quickly, but also have them run fast too in the parts of the code that take lots of horsepower. Its a big part of why iPhones can do so much magic with such little hardware.

I also think @jerv nailed a big chunk of it above (GA).

He wasn’t building the devices, because he was above that. He already knew what needed what and partnered with the right people, (samsung) for instance with their engineers and his ideas. He was an engineer at the basic levels and I don’t doubt for a second he was on top of everything being inserted into an Apple product with out knowing every single function that worked the product.

@Joker94 @ragingloli No surprises here. I’ve seen enough evidence on fluther of the convoluted condition of your thought processes. Just wanted you to spell it out here. If I understand you correctly, US private industry should have addressed and changed Chinese working conditions. I would imagine that both the Chinese govt and the US govt would have some things to say about that which preempt efforts by a few companies who where having parts made there.

Bottom Line…you’re both off topic. Check the question.

He was an idea guy, a salesman, and an organizer.
When he returned to Apple, they had something like 100 different computer models. He made them change it to four.

Right, then. Steve Jobs was an innovator, who never once stopped moving the wheels of progress forward. He continued innovating even after being kicked out of Apple, and though he hadn’t been extremely successful in his new ventures, he still was years ahead of his time, to the point where he was begged to come back. Sure, maybe he didn’t make all the right choices along the way, but I still have respect for him.

Incidentally, and quite sadly, it seems his company gave no collective fucks about their manufacturing force being funneled into a human meat grinder. And that’s all I have to say about that.

@ragingloli Slave labor huh? That sounds like a personal problem to me. If any worker wants more pay, they do so by forming a union and bartering for higher wages. Simple. The American blue print is there, for anyone to discover. Better slave labor, than no labor. I wish I had wages from any labor. Guess what? It’s still a personal problem. So tired of people complaining about other nations labor policies, as if they are in position amongst their government to do anything about it. Why not just join their nation, and join their government and fix it? Oh yeah, it’s easier to bicker amongst oneself afar. Steve Jobs isn’t some evil schemer. If you were a businessman, you’d do the best you can as well, or maybe not, so you’re not a businessman I’m guessing?

@whitecarnations Yeah, because in chinese sweat shops they have a union.

@XOIIO You’re missing the point.

@whitecarnations And so are you. You act as if it’s all easy, make a difference, stand up, ask for a raise but you clearly have no idea what the working conditions are, and what situation these people are in when they are in sweat shop workplaces. Sure, there are ones that are real workplaces but mass production is sweat shops.

@XOIIO Put simply, that sounds like a personal problem to me.

@whitecarnations Yes, because these people have a choice, between starving or making a couple dollars for 9 hours of work. Totally a personal problem when they support a family. I’d like to throw you in one of those sweat shops for a week, and see how your attitude changes.

@XOIIO You trying to put me in the corner is childish form of argument. One day you will know why America is so great. I’m not disregarding their situation by any means, but it’s people power that conquers such tyranny. It’s been proven through out history time and time again.

Haha, figures that you are american. And the fact is that you are in a corner, there is nothing childish about it, you just assume they can do things and have a horribly ignorant attitude. If you think people can overcome a dictatorship, go to china and start a revolution.

@XOIIO If you’ve studied any bit of history in China, you’d know their citizens are actually for the most part highly educated, and study American history. Their youth are highly progressive. What we perceive as dictatorship they see as a lifestyle. I know this because I have a buddy who lives in China. It’s not as if they are trapped in a bubble and tied to their feet. They can in fact protest and barter for higher wages if they wanted to. My attitude isn’t ignorant. Think of it like this. In black and white terms. Some mistreats you, what do you do? Okay you don’t actually have to answer that but there is simply cause and effect to every situation is there not? So it’s not up to me to fight for their rights as there are domestic issues I’d rather stick to.

How about this. You watch at least 2 documentaries about modern China, then you come back and tell me whether or not you think they are more than capable of uprising, if they want to, and if you feel they think it’s necessary. You can probably find them on YouTube as well. And when I say modern I mean 2000 and up.

@whitecarnations Except that for the most part you come off as ignorant based on you comments without even mentioning the slight possible chance it may not be their choice, your statements did not once even pay heed to that possibility. If you don’t take all things into consideration that you are indeed ignorant.

@XOIIO You shouldn’t pity a society that is not your own because then that would make you ignorant. Again, it sounds like a personal problem, if it’s a problem in the first place in their culture to work low wages. Do you offer a solution that would pay these, “slave labourers” an American wage? That’s not how business works. Take an economics class, a philosophical logic studies course and fulfill your history requirements in at least your general education breadth before you start to call others ignorant. You’ll oh so fast, how the world works with just those three classes at the basic level, you’ll discover business practice isn’t a moral practice, and that time and time again, people power triumphs.

@whitecarnations @XOIIO Hey, don’t make me separate you two!

@jerv I’d say were having friendly convo :D I think I’ve been fair in no name calling or direct criticism.

Agree, it’s not his/her fault they are american.

lol just kidding.

Jobs was a great marketer. He got people to buy his products based on looks and made them pay much more for the name brand recognition when they could have bought the same product from other companies for less.

@amujinx I used to be Windows user, always frustrated with crashes and had to deal with trojans and viruses regularly. I switched over to Mac OS in 2008 and my computer life has changed dramatically for the better. True story, I’ve crashed probably 10 times in my whole Mac career. True buying a Harddrive at the Apple store is absurd, but there are specifications with those Hard Drives that make it much smoother. I don’t buy those however, but I’ve seen them in action. When it comes to memory buying 3rd party is the way to go. But from a production artist stand point, and in my opinion Mac is the way to go.

@whitecarnations There’s a much larger group of people who run on PC’s, so more malware is written for it. Apples can get viruses too, but I will admit that OSX is more secure than Windows because OSX is UNIX based. A PC user can go Linux instead of Windows if they have a greater knowledge of computers and still get a UNIX based operating system that is more secure than Windows. So the options are there if you don’t want to overpay for the components of your computer.

@whitecarnations Odd. I used to be a Mac person, but in all my years of computing (over 30), I have only had two viruses, and one of them was on a Mac. As for crashes, those are likewise a bit rare, and I have crashed enough Macs to not consider that an advantage. My general rule of thumb is that people who cannot keep a Windows-based system clean should probably not be trusted to raise children (a far more complex task), and I may be hesitant to trust them with a houseplant.

The funny part is that most of the artists I know switched from Mac a few years ago because their graphics are inferior. See, there was a while where they got their slim form factor by using totally laptop-grade graphics chips that were inferior to my $40 video card, so you can imagine how they compared to a $400 card, yet, a high-end PC cost far less than a mid-range Mac. Macs cannot even think about dreaming of being cost-competitive in some market segments, though if I were in the market for a dual-Xeon, the Mac Pro actually holds the unique distinction of actually being a bargain.

As @amujinx points out, not all PCs run Windows either, and many current Linux distros are dead-simple to install; just remember your name, your time zone, your language, and how to click a mouse, and you can install them. Note that many servers, a surprising number of graphics workstations, most supercomputers, and a majority of mission-critical, “must not fall!” systems use Linux as well.

@plethora
Figures that you would consider simple and straightforward logic “convoluted”.
It is like trying to explain modern physics to a medieval peasant.

@jerv “yet, a high-end PC cost far less than a mid-range Mac.”
I tested that recently, configured a PC with parts from Amazon only. The whole box came at about 850€. The Mac Pro of comparable performance cost more than 4 times that much.
Even comparable systems from Dell and HP cost less than half of the Mac.

@ragingloli Or business decisions to a medieval peasant.

If you had ever owned a Mac you would not even be talking price.

@plethora I have owned both, and the only way I would own another Mac right now is if I got a hefty discount, and wiped OS X off the drive. I admit that the 11” Macbook Air is kind of neat, but for that price, I would not settle for the same HD 3000 graphics I have in my obsolete $500 Toshiba despite the other specs. In fact, 64GB storage and 2GB RAM is barely better than a cellphone these days!

Then again, if I owned twelve Porsches and three mansions, price would not be an issue either.

@plethora That’s an entertaining argument. I was a mac person for a long time, especially as a kid when I had the pleasure of getting one gifted to me.

Macs are great, but they’re not ⅓ times the price great. And I’m pretty sure most people who have owned both Macs and PCs would agree with that.

@jerv If I ever got a mac in a raffle or something I would sell it. I’d sell an ipod too, probably keep an ipad, but wouldn’t buy one XD

@XOIIO I wouldn’t go that far. I mean, I can tolerate a few flaws for something free.

@DeanV That depends on how tech-savvy they are, and how much they have to do to pay for the computer. I notice that most of the people that I’ve seen who prefer Mac are less tech-savvy and either wealthy or have their parents pay for their Apple products.

@jerv Well I mean I could use the money more than the actual ipod, since I have one, and a macbook is useles now that I hackintosh.

@jerv “most of the people that I’ve seen who prefer Mac” I think you’re looking in very different places than I am. There is a pretty large developer community that is predominantly Mac based. Between iOS, OS X and a lot of web development (Ruby on Rails in particular) there are a ton of very technical geeks who much prefer the experience of OS X, and the tight integration of hardware and software. This is another key point that Jobs made: “People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.” Apple is able to thouroughly test the hardware of its relatively small product matrix. You never have to worry about driver conflicts from sketch ball parts vendors selling at bargain basement prices writing sub-par drivers.

If you ever do have a problem, their customer service is exceptional. You call, speak with an informed American who can pleasantly walk you through what you need without crazy hold times. Alternatively you can stop by the Genius bar and they have never failed to sort out my problem to my satisfaction on the spot.

In my experience, those that raise the value argument tend to undervalue their own time and effort when dealing with support issues, or time spent building, configuring, activating and installing their systems of choice. Furthermore on the performance angle, they tend to ignore all of the memory and cycles that get burned by anti-malware software that is not only unnecessary on the Mac, but also can screw up an otherwise healthy system.

There are examples where the price gap is pretty egregious (particularly when paying for Apple’s upgraded RAM) but in the more typical use cases, when you fully spec out a competitor like Dell with Apple’s more competitively priced machines, you’ll often find that the Mac is very competitive. The mistake people make is to compare a bare-bones pc looking only at CPU, RAM and graphics, while ignoring screen resolutions, multi-touch trackpads, integrated cameras, ports, bluetooth, energy efficiency, battery life, magsafe power cords (which have saved my ass many times already), automated backups and the time/data that can save etc.

@gorillapaws My experience with Apple customer service has always been pleasant and timely, but ineffective since I have a nasty habit of finding myself in odd predicaments. I am the King of WTF! In other words, if I need help then either I am still under-caffeinated, or it’s fucked in ways that are not covered in the book.

Oddly enough, with the exception of my iPod Touch, I have never really needed technical support much anyways, so the one area where I agree that Apple deserves all the praise they get is also near the bottom of my personal priority list. I know too many things about magsafe connectors to trust those, so while I applaud the effort, I consider that to actually be a flaw. Multi-touch trackpad? I have something you can multi-touch right here! Bluetooth? Got it. Ports? For what I need. Battery life? Got enough. Reliability? Apple is fourth, and Toshiba beats them. Basically, most of the selling points of Apple are irrelevant to me, some are utterly invalid, and that does affect my opinion of them.

You also ignore the fact that PC =/= Windows, and that it is possible to write decent software outside of a walled garden.

@pcmonkey Steve Jobs also ignited a Flame War of biblical proportions; one that will likely go on for at least another century; Mac vs. non-Mac.

@gorillapaws “Furthermore on the performance angle, they tend to ignore all of the memory and cycles that get burned by anti-malware software that is not only unnecessary on the Mac, but also can screw up an otherwise healthy system.”

Macs can get malware too. As I stated before, it is less likely because less people write malware for Macs and it is UNIX based (and as I pointed out, so is Linux, and as @jerv pointed out, the new versions are easy to use), but running a Mac without any anti-malware software is extremely foolish.

As for your “undervaluing time spent on support issues” argument, there are those of us who have few support issues and can solve the ones we do get fairly quickly, so there is no justification to spend more for support.

I just priced a Mac Book Pro compared to my 6 month old gaming laptop. For the same specs I would be paying $1300 more for the Mac Book Pro. The time to take off Windows 7 and install a version of Linux isn’t long enough to justify that type of price difference in my mind.

@jerv is exactly right, Jobs did create a flame war about Mac vs. PC, and the fact of the matter is they are both fine if they do what you want them to do. Macs cost more because they run on the platform of software and hardware while PCs are just about hardware. If you want or need the software support in addition to the hardware and you can pay the extra price, then Macs are great for you. If not, PCs are just as good. Claiming that one is superior to the other is just Jobs marketing rearing its head and perpetuating the flame war. That is where the difference really is; marketing.

@jerv I’m not saying that a Mac is the ideal machine for your needs. Simply that it’s common for people to spec out a “comparable” PC and a Mac and point to how huge the price difference is, but they end up ignoring a lot of the features resulting in an apples to oranges comparison (pun is regrettably unavoidable).

I completely agree that it’s possible to write decent software on other platforms, but I object that OS X is a walled garden. You can run any software you want, from your favorite flavor of Linux to Windows. Furthermore, you can install anything you want on OS X, and even when Mountain Lion is release, you will always have the option to run anything (although the default setting prevents code that isn’t signed by a developer who registered with Apple). Also, why is there such an absence of elegant, well designed, and beautiful software on these other platforms? What are some examples of truly sexy apps for Linux, Windows or something else?

As far as the PC != Windows, you’re of course absolutely correct. Although, if one asked 100 people on the street that question I think > 95% of them would wrongly think they were the same.

@amujinx “running a Mac without any anti-malware software is extremely foolish.”

The reality is that there are no serious threats in the wild for an up-to-date system that don’t involve tricking the user into manually authenticating malicious software (and there’s not much of anything that can protect even the most secure system from that kind of problem). To quote one Apple software engineer: “You couldn’t get me to install Norton on OS X if you slipped me the date rape drug.” (Source). I’ve personally met several Apple engineers and none that I spoke with would dream of running anti-malware. I know many OS X and iOS developers and they don’t run it either. These are not “extremely foolish” people, they’re taking a calculated risk say 1 in 100,000,000 chance that they’ll get an infection vs. running software that’s burning up tons of resources in the background and annoying the fuck out of them constantly with false positive alerts. Furthermore, Anti-Virus software has the potential to be much more vulnerable as an attack vector than the OS it’s supposed to be protecting.

As far as your comparison, I’d like to see the specs—I’ll bet you’re doing an apples to oranges comparison. If you get the ram for the MacBook Pro from Crucial (every Mac geek I know of does) I suspect that gap drops by a lot.

Addressing the “it’s all marketing hype” argument, read the 300+ page OS X Human Interface Guidelines and I think you’ll appreciate the depth of though involved in the design. In many ways reading the HIG is a great way to understand Steve Jobs, the way he thought, and the essence of what really sets Apple apart.

@plethora
I perfectly understand the “business decision” to outsource production to slave labour countries and the immorality of unfettered predatory capitalism. I care about the latter. You do not. That is why I am a communist.

@gorillapaws The UI is another one of those things that others consider a positive that I am (at best) indifferent about. However, that one is also one that can easily be called up to personal preference, just as I am not entirely a fan of automatic transmissions. Whether it be a car, computer, or something else, I often find that streamlining often limits options and/or has unexpected bad consequences, so what you call “sleek”, I may well consider uncontrollable and/or restrictive. Put another way, if you replace my steering wheel and pedals with a button that says “Go!” and/or weld the hood shut, I don’t care how much other people like it, I won’t. Neal Stephenson does a great comparison of Mac, Linux, and Windows in In the beginning, there was the command line

@jerv Perfect analogy!

@gorillapaws Yes, people who actually program and develop for OSX will probably not come into a lot of problems with hacking/ malware, but the more average mac use (as I have seen and met) like macs because “They have big buttons and it’s easy to use” will be more susceptible to clicking a bad link, or downloading the wrong file somewhere. If I had a mac I would use an anti virus simply so that my computer wouldn’t be a carrier for viruses for other systems.

I do have to admit that the laptop side of things has improved to where I can consider them merely slightly overpriced (as I do Dell and Sony), but the desktop side is still ridiculous.

@XOIIO if you’ve got a user that will read a “Are you sure you want to install EVIL_MAC_VIRUS.app?” and click the “run” button, then no amount of anti-virus software is going to protect them. The default security settings under Mountain Lion will be infinitely more useful that AV software, that’s constantly annoying you and training you to not read dialog boxes and always click the button that makes it go away the fastest. The last point you raise is really the only good reason to ever run AV software on a Mac imo. AV companies have a vested interest in keeping Mac users paranoid about this malware that’s supposedly out there, but it’s like having to get expensive daily injections to inoculate you from being infected by some weak strain of the cold that only exists in a research facility somewhere. I’ll get inoculated when it’s clear there is actually a legitimate threat. This is a great post about the malware fear-mongering that’s been going on since ‘04: Wolf!

@jerv a big part of design is figuring out what features to remove. This concept is very alien to the open source community which tends to “design by committee” and so each person adds the features that they want/need and the result is a software equivalent of the car built for Homer. Steve Jobs hated this, and wanted easy, intuitive, and obvious solutions to getting things done. Every extra option adds to the cognitive work that needs to be done every time you use a piece of software. If you’re mentally having to filter out: “not-that, not-that, maybe… never mind not that either…” even if it’s a split second every 30 seconds or so, the aggregate result is that it’s mentally exhausting to use on an unconscious level. A great UI book (written for websites, but widely applicable to software as well) is Don’t Make Me Think. I doubt Steve Jobs ever read it, but I think he would have loved it if he had.

@gorillapaws I am familiar with that philosophy; Bruce Lee used the same when developing Jeet Kun Do. The problem is that the definition of “intuitive” is vague at best, and that is without getting into alternative neurology.

I favor simple solutions, but my idea of “simple” is likewise different. Back to cars for a moment, I find manual transmissions simpler because I know exactly what inputs will yield what outcomes under all conditions, and having some automated system think it knows better has nearly killed me a few times. Other people may prefer to just put it in D and go, but they give up a degree of control for that, and also wind up with something that is vastly more difficult and expensive to fix.

Back to computers, a simple all-in-one may seem nice, and they look cool, but they are vastly more complicated than a system with discrete modules. That is why I consider the Mac Pro to be the best of the Macs; they are simpler under the hood.

I find that I do my best work when I shut off my brain and act on instinct. That is why I prefer Android over iOS; what others see a complex enough to need to be sealed off, I consider simple and find that limiting options make certain tasks more difficult. Maybe that makes me a freak, but I fail to see how OS X or iOS are really simpler if they make me think instead of act on instinct, and it’s not just a matter of familiarity either. I honestly find Apple less intuitive.

@jerv that’s a perfectly reasonable perspective. I wasn’t trying to say your preferences were somehow “wrong” simply to try to clarify the advantages/vision of how Apple designs things. This was done under the larger umbrella of trying to appreciate Steve Job’s vision to keep things as topical as possible to the OP’s question. The Cockpit UI approach works really well for trained pilots, but it’s pretty overwhelming to just about everyone else. Some people who really know what they’re doing appreciate having control of nearly every single parameter, it sounds like you fit into this category. That doesn’t make you wrong, or a “freak,” or make your opinion any less valid, but it also means that you’re clearly outside of Apple’s targeted audience, which I believe is ultimately orders of magnitude larger. I think this raises another important aspect of Steve Jobs in that he never wanted to build systems that would satisfy everyone’s needs. He knew how to focus on a subset of users and work really hard at polishing the experience for a more limited set of requirements.

A final point I would add is that being a geek, doesn’t necessitate favoring the non-Apple philosophy (which comes up a lot). I often hear the argument that OS X is for artsy-fartsy types, but real geeks use [insert Linux/Windows/something else], which is simply untrue. There are many geeks who don’t want the added noise on the screen, it allows us to focus on whatever technical task we’re trying to accomplish (for me this is coding, reading documentation, debugging, and other stuff). That may make us the “freak” minority of the geek universe, but it ultimately boils down to one’s personal preferences for how they work best.

@gorillapaws Yes, Steve Jobs had a vision of making computers and technology more accessible to a demographic that I do not fit into. And despite not agreeing with many of his design decisions, the fact remains that he was a genius and a pioneer.

As for your comment about geeks, there are many kinds. Some thrive on a multi-monitor rig with windows plastered all over all three screens, some favor a minimalist setup with a spartan desktop and commands accessed by a long list of arcane keystrokes, and some don’t care so long as they can do what they want/need to do. Most of the computer geeksi know are frugal and gravitate towards PC (especially with Linux) merely because of the bang for the buck. Regardless, no one system can satisfy everyone, and the easiest way to make money is to go after a market that nobody else has tapped.

@jerv It doesnt use a .app that you download, its a simple script or code injected in the right spot that does it.

@gorillapaws Damn, man, you know Apple. Loved all your posts and got an education on it too.