4 ms·

Money quote: "By the way, what have you done that's so great? Do you create anything, or just criticize others work and belittle their motivations?"

CodeMage 16y ago
It's definitely an important quote. It goes pretty well with the whole "freedom from porn" and "no one is forcing you to use iPad or develop for it" attitude. It shows how good Jobs is at sophistry. I don't need to be able to build cars to recognize that something's wrong with mine. I also don't need to be an entrepreneur or an executive to spot one company trying to muscle another out of a market. So much about criticizing other people's work and belittling their motivations.
- lionhearted 16y ago
  > I don't need to be able to build cars to recognize that something's wrong with mine. I also don't need to be an entrepreneur or an executive to spot one company trying to muscle another out of a market. So much about criticizing other people's work and belittling their motivations. Actually, I disagree. I think you run the risk of missing important details if you're doing an untrained analysis. For instance, a layman might say - "Look how busy Amazon.com is - it could be so prettier with a more minimalistic interface!" They might not realize that Amazon are fanatical about split testing to get things to a minute detail. Amazon is a busy site, but it does what it's trying to do remarkably well. Someone untrained in web design could say "I don't need to be a web designer to spot an ugly website that's too busy." But they'd be looking at it entirely the wrong way.
  - CodeMage 16y ago
    Not being trained in something will certainly prevent you from giving an expert opinion on it, but that's not what I was saying. Someone untrained in web design could also say "I don't like Amazon's look", just like someone who has no idea about why Flash is not allowed on iPad would notice that his favorite casual web game portal is not working on his iPad. Or, to use my simple example, if I don't know jack about car engines (and I don't), I can still tell that somethings wrong if the engine sounds 10x louder than usually or if there's a funny smell coming out from under the hood. There's more than a single step from that to telling my mechanic that "my conbobatron is confusticated".
- boredguy8 16y ago
  Oh yeah, the doublespeak is definitely grand, too. But Tate's rambling responses fall short in comparison to Jobs' eloquence. Look: most people want something mostly simple and mostly worry-free and mostly nice-looking. Apple thinks the best way to deliver that is to present apps using their approach. The increased competition they face means their ideas are being tested, and we'll find out who wins. For instance, the iPhone OS fragmentation is an additional hit to what had been a very clean development space. That, the closed approach to app approval, and other constraints make it less attractive to develop in that space. But ultimately, saying, "I don't like how you run your app store" is all fine and good: don't develop there. But absent an equally successful alternative, it's a bit early to call the game against Apple.
leviathant 16y ago
Ending the dialogue with a worthless ad hominem attack seemed pretty weak to me. I don't have to be a virtuoso to know crappy music when I hear it. I haven't directed a single film, but can tell you when I think a film sucks.
jraines 16y ago
As was pointed out the last couple times this article was posted, this is an ad hominem fallacy. Criticism should be judged on its merit, not based on ones opinion of critics. Jose Canseco is completely nuts and an asshole to boot (go check his Twitter feed for a few minutes of fun), but that doesn't mean his claims about the steroid era in baseball are meritless.
- lionhearted 16y ago
  > As was pointed out the last couple times this article was posted, this is an ad hominem fallacy. Not ad hominem - it was a "by the way..." in a private email after a long exchange explaining his motivations and position first. And I think it's a fair criticism - I believe in looking at the messenger as well as the message. It probably should be 95% message and 5% messenger, but you ought to take criticism a lot seriously from people who are out doing important stuff in your field, and slightly less seriously from people who never have. So I wouldn't call it ad hominem. It is quite blunt, though. I don't know, I'm not normally a Steve Jobs fan, but I liked that quote myself.
  - jraines 16y ago
    Ad hominem doesn't mean "a public attack". It simply means arguing that a point is invalid/less valid because of who is making it. Or as Wikipedia says: "attempt to persuade which links the validity of a premise to a characteristic or belief of the person advocating the premise." -- in this case, the characteristic is "has not done something great in the eyes of Jobs".
- boredguy8 16y ago
  Well, first, most of the ranting on both sides is specious and fallacious. One of the lines in all this grandstanding, though, is pretty funny. This isn't dialectical interrogation of Truth going on here. Second, it's not fallacious if the point of the discussion is to explore what makes success. The criticism is, "You're not a revolution." Jobs' point is: OK, so show me what is. Lastly, to the extend this is a debate, Jobs beasted him on that question: Apple created app warehousing that seems to work. Having seen the collapse of such models in the past, and seeing so many people scramble to get on the gravy-train, I'd say the shift is pretty revolutionary.

CodeMage 16y ago

It's definitely an important quote. It goes pretty well with the whole "freedom from porn" and "no one is forcing you to use iPad or develop for it" attitude. It shows how good Jobs is at sophistry. I don't need to be able to build cars to recognize that something's wrong with mine. I also don't need to be an entrepreneur or an executive to spot one company trying to muscle another out of a market. So much about criticizing other people's work and belittling their motivations.

lionhearted 16y ago
> I don't need to be able to build cars to recognize that something's wrong with mine. I also don't need to be an entrepreneur or an executive to spot one company trying to muscle another out of a market. So much about criticizing other people's work and belittling their motivations. Actually, I disagree. I think you run the risk of missing important details if you're doing an untrained analysis. For instance, a layman might say - "Look how busy Amazon.com is - it could be so prettier with a more minimalistic interface!" They might not realize that Amazon are fanatical about split testing to get things to a minute detail. Amazon is a busy site, but it does what it's trying to do remarkably well. Someone untrained in web design could say "I don't need to be a web designer to spot an ugly website that's too busy." But they'd be looking at it entirely the wrong way.
- CodeMage 16y ago
  Not being trained in something will certainly prevent you from giving an expert opinion on it, but that's not what I was saying. Someone untrained in web design could also say "I don't like Amazon's look", just like someone who has no idea about why Flash is not allowed on iPad would notice that his favorite casual web game portal is not working on his iPad. Or, to use my simple example, if I don't know jack about car engines (and I don't), I can still tell that somethings wrong if the engine sounds 10x louder than usually or if there's a funny smell coming out from under the hood. There's more than a single step from that to telling my mechanic that "my conbobatron is confusticated".
boredguy8 16y ago
Oh yeah, the doublespeak is definitely grand, too. But Tate's rambling responses fall short in comparison to Jobs' eloquence. Look: most people want something mostly simple and mostly worry-free and mostly nice-looking. Apple thinks the best way to deliver that is to present apps using their approach. The increased competition they face means their ideas are being tested, and we'll find out who wins. For instance, the iPhone OS fragmentation is an additional hit to what had been a very clean development space. That, the closed approach to app approval, and other constraints make it less attractive to develop in that space. But ultimately, saying, "I don't like how you run your app store" is all fine and good: don't develop there. But absent an equally successful alternative, it's a bit early to call the game against Apple.

leviathant 16y ago

Ending the dialogue with a worthless ad hominem attack seemed pretty weak to me. I don't have to be a virtuoso to know crappy music when I hear it. I haven't directed a single film, but can tell you when I think a film sucks.

jraines 16y ago

As was pointed out the last couple times this article was posted, this is an ad hominem fallacy. Criticism should be judged on its merit, not based on ones opinion of critics. Jose Canseco is completely nuts and an asshole to boot (go check his Twitter feed for a few minutes of fun), but that doesn't mean his claims about the steroid era in baseball are meritless.

lionhearted 16y ago
> As was pointed out the last couple times this article was posted, this is an ad hominem fallacy. Not ad hominem - it was a "by the way..." in a private email after a long exchange explaining his motivations and position first. And I think it's a fair criticism - I believe in looking at the messenger as well as the message. It probably should be 95% message and 5% messenger, but you ought to take criticism a lot seriously from people who are out doing important stuff in your field, and slightly less seriously from people who never have. So I wouldn't call it ad hominem. It is quite blunt, though. I don't know, I'm not normally a Steve Jobs fan, but I liked that quote myself.
- jraines 16y ago
  Ad hominem doesn't mean "a public attack". It simply means arguing that a point is invalid/less valid because of who is making it. Or as Wikipedia says: "attempt to persuade which links the validity of a premise to a characteristic or belief of the person advocating the premise." -- in this case, the characteristic is "has not done something great in the eyes of Jobs".
boredguy8 16y ago
Well, first, most of the ranting on both sides is specious and fallacious. One of the lines in all this grandstanding, though, is pretty funny. This isn't dialectical interrogation of Truth going on here. Second, it's not fallacious if the point of the discussion is to explore what makes success. The criticism is, "You're not a revolution." Jobs' point is: OK, so show me what is. Lastly, to the extend this is a debate, Jobs beasted him on that question: Apple created app warehousing that seems to work. Having seen the collapse of such models in the past, and seeing so many people scramble to get on the gravy-train, I'd say the shift is pretty revolutionary.