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Not worth it. Jobs was, for all intents and purposes a phenomenal business person in spite of the fact that many people early in his career didn't see it. Nam

Not worth it. Jobs was, for all intents and purposes a phenomenal business person in spite of the fact that many people early in his career didn't see it. Name a product apple invented that was HUGE? Go ahead and think about that. GUI & Mac was Xerox, the iPhone was Xerox and palm and... Simply put he was a master at finding good things and refining them into great things. Lets look at the design side. MacBooks for all their glory are just advanced machining (cnc + automation) put to work at scale (and thats "new" but not groundbreaking). OSX is just *nix with a nice GUI (something open source could learn from). Jony Ive leaves apple, then I might start to worry.

mcphage 9y ago
> Simply put he was a master at finding good things and refining them into great things. I'm not sure if you mean that as an insult, but honestly it's probably the most important thing he could have done; there's no shortage of good ideas out there, but most of them have terrible execution. Being able to see through that bad execution to the good idea, and imagine a great execution not encumbered by what it had, is a profoundly valuable skill.
Retric 9y ago
> iPhone was Xerox LoL what? Everything that's built with computers can be traced back to the guy who invented the transistor, but that does not mean innovation stopped then.
- IncRnd 9y ago
  The first implementation of a smart phone was likely the LG Prada not the iPhone.
  - abritinthebay 9y ago
    I mean... if you're playing that kind of naive equivalency then the first "smartphones" were the early PDA/Phone hybrids like the HP OmniGo 700LX, the pdQ, or the Nokia 9000 Communicator. But that would be silly, because the modern "smartphone" era was absolutely started with the iPhone.
    - IncRnd 9y ago
      You misunderstand. My answer was to refute that the innovation in smartphones came about with the iPhone and not the LG Prada which was released the year prior, market penetration notwithstanding. I was talking about smartphones in the vein of the iPhone not of the technology that could be assembled to make a phone. HP OmniGo 700LX, pdQ, and Nokia 9000 Communicator didn't have touchscreens and were like night and day compared to either the Prada or iPhone. You are comparing apples to oranges.
      - abritinthebay 9y ago
        Nothing in the LG Prada was innovative - it's design was that of PDAs from a decade before. It's touchscreen did nothing that previous models hadn't. Was it a nice industrial design? Yes. Wasn't very original though (and neither was the iPhone's). You're also shifting the goalposts - you said smartphone, not "had a touchscreen". It was the first capacitive touchscreen but not even close to the first touchscreen btw. The IBM Simon in 1992 likely takes that win. What the iPhone did that was innovative was in how it improved upon and combined the technology. It also pushed forward a lot of things in those technologies by several large leaps. Long story short - the LG Prada is superficially visually similar to an iPhone and, likewise, bringing it up shows a very superficial understanding of the history of the mobile phone space.
      - Retric 9y ago
        Touchscreen was simple hardware it does not make a smartphone any more than a Camera or Internet connection does. There where 3 major gaps, gestures, native apps w/App Store, and a web browser capable enough to run 'Web 2.0' apps. And while not a direct phone feature an internet plan with useful bandwidth caps for regular browsing which also a major jump in how you used them. Android, Windows phone, and iPhone all added these core features.
  - chipotle_coyote 9y ago
    I dunno. The LG Prada deserved credit for being the first (mainstream?) phone with a capacitive touchscreen, but I think if you're really looking for a spiritual predecessor to the iPhone, so to speak, then -- assuming you don't allow PDAs with phone functionality, like Handspring's line -- the Danger Hiptop, a/k/a T-Mobile Sidekick, is probably much closer. The Prada looks much more like an iPhone but the Hiptop/Sidekick had visual voicemail, one of the best mobile web browsers on the market[1], and an on-device app store. It doesn't get nearly enough credit for the trailblazing it did. [1] The Hiptop used server-side rewriting of web sites to adapt them to its screen. This seems bananas now, but remember, the web was less than a decade old, and the notion of "responsive design" was years in the future. Back then, most other phones were stuck with WML.
    - Retric 9y ago
      LG Proda had a capactive touchscreen, but it failed to use it. You simply pressed virtual buttons instead of using gestures. Pinch to zoom might not seem like a big deal but it's something that iPhone got right and everyone copied. Another issue is LG Proda stuck with J2ME instead of offering native apps. So, the Proda was close, but it really missed the mark. IMO, the fact it took 4 years to after the hardware was possible before the iPHone showed up shows how significant the innovation actually was.
  - bitwize 9y ago
    "Smartphone" was coined as a marketing term by Microsoft in the early 2000s to refer to PDAs with cell radios that ran Windows CE. These early smartphones were bricks -- not Zack Morris phones, but hand-sized bricks nonetheless -- and required a stylus to operate.
    - IncRnd 9y ago
      Yes. That was the point. However, you are forgetting that the first "smartphone" with a _touchscreen_ was Simon made in 1992 by IBM. Even so, Simon wasn't in the vein of the iPhone, which is really what this discussion is about, not marketing terms.
fhood 9y ago
I don't mourn the loss of Jobs as an inventor. I mourn the loss of Jobs as a person who could recognize great ideas for what they were. I hear some version of "He didn't actually invent it" over and over again, and I think it demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of what made Jobs a visionary. Before the iPhone, nobody was making anything even remotely as good as the iPhone.
gm-conspiracy 9y ago
No, you don't get it. The internet is just a bunch of sand, some pieces of metal and wood poles from dead trees? He had an amazing ability to synergize technologies into products.
kolbe 9y ago
> Simply put he was a master at finding good things and refining them into great things. Every great creator has stood on the shoulders of giants. That doesn't diminish their greatness. I can't think of a single creation in the past 50 years that isn't a pretty direct consequence of the knowledge that preceded it.
jjrh 9y ago
> OSX is just *nix with a nice GUI (something open source could learn from). I think open source developers know this but it's not their expertise. What we need is a way to make it easier for people with that expertise to contribute to projects. Doing a bit of work with GTK I realised just how hard it is to abstract the look/design stuff out, it's very intertwined with the code meaning folks with artistic ability have a steep learning make seemingly minor GUI changes. This explains why the web looks really good and stuff like electron is attractive.

mcphage 9y ago

> Simply put he was a master at finding good things and refining them into great things. I'm not sure if you mean that as an insult, but honestly it's probably the most important thing he could have done; there's no shortage of good ideas out there, but most of them have terrible execution. Being able to see through that bad execution to the good idea, and imagine a great execution not encumbered by what it had, is a profoundly valuable skill.

Retric 9y ago

> iPhone was Xerox LoL what? Everything that's built with computers can be traced back to the guy who invented the transistor, but that does not mean innovation stopped then.

IncRnd 9y ago
The first implementation of a smart phone was likely the LG Prada not the iPhone.
- abritinthebay 9y ago
  I mean... if you're playing that kind of naive equivalency then the first "smartphones" were the early PDA/Phone hybrids like the HP OmniGo 700LX, the pdQ, or the Nokia 9000 Communicator. But that would be silly, because the modern "smartphone" era was absolutely started with the iPhone.
  - IncRnd 9y ago
    You misunderstand. My answer was to refute that the innovation in smartphones came about with the iPhone and not the LG Prada which was released the year prior, market penetration notwithstanding. I was talking about smartphones in the vein of the iPhone not of the technology that could be assembled to make a phone. HP OmniGo 700LX, pdQ, and Nokia 9000 Communicator didn't have touchscreens and were like night and day compared to either the Prada or iPhone. You are comparing apples to oranges.
    - abritinthebay 9y ago
      Nothing in the LG Prada was innovative - it's design was that of PDAs from a decade before. It's touchscreen did nothing that previous models hadn't. Was it a nice industrial design? Yes. Wasn't very original though (and neither was the iPhone's). You're also shifting the goalposts - you said smartphone, not "had a touchscreen". It was the first capacitive touchscreen but not even close to the first touchscreen btw. The IBM Simon in 1992 likely takes that win. What the iPhone did that was innovative was in how it improved upon and combined the technology. It also pushed forward a lot of things in those technologies by several large leaps. Long story short - the LG Prada is superficially visually similar to an iPhone and, likewise, bringing it up shows a very superficial understanding of the history of the mobile phone space.
    - Retric 9y ago
      Touchscreen was simple hardware it does not make a smartphone any more than a Camera or Internet connection does. There where 3 major gaps, gestures, native apps w/App Store, and a web browser capable enough to run 'Web 2.0' apps. And while not a direct phone feature an internet plan with useful bandwidth caps for regular browsing which also a major jump in how you used them. Android, Windows phone, and iPhone all added these core features.
- chipotle_coyote 9y ago
  I dunno. The LG Prada deserved credit for being the first (mainstream?) phone with a capacitive touchscreen, but I think if you're really looking for a spiritual predecessor to the iPhone, so to speak, then -- assuming you don't allow PDAs with phone functionality, like Handspring's line -- the Danger Hiptop, a/k/a T-Mobile Sidekick, is probably much closer. The Prada looks much more like an iPhone but the Hiptop/Sidekick had visual voicemail, one of the best mobile web browsers on the market[1], and an on-device app store. It doesn't get nearly enough credit for the trailblazing it did. [1] The Hiptop used server-side rewriting of web sites to adapt them to its screen. This seems bananas now, but remember, the web was less than a decade old, and the notion of "responsive design" was years in the future. Back then, most other phones were stuck with WML.
  - Retric 9y ago
    LG Proda had a capactive touchscreen, but it failed to use it. You simply pressed virtual buttons instead of using gestures. Pinch to zoom might not seem like a big deal but it's something that iPhone got right and everyone copied. Another issue is LG Proda stuck with J2ME instead of offering native apps. So, the Proda was close, but it really missed the mark. IMO, the fact it took 4 years to after the hardware was possible before the iPHone showed up shows how significant the innovation actually was.
- bitwize 9y ago
  "Smartphone" was coined as a marketing term by Microsoft in the early 2000s to refer to PDAs with cell radios that ran Windows CE. These early smartphones were bricks -- not Zack Morris phones, but hand-sized bricks nonetheless -- and required a stylus to operate.
  - IncRnd 9y ago
    Yes. That was the point. However, you are forgetting that the first "smartphone" with a _touchscreen_ was Simon made in 1992 by IBM. Even so, Simon wasn't in the vein of the iPhone, which is really what this discussion is about, not marketing terms.

fhood 9y ago

I don't mourn the loss of Jobs as an inventor. I mourn the loss of Jobs as a person who could recognize great ideas for what they were. I hear some version of "He didn't actually invent it" over and over again, and I think it demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of what made Jobs a visionary. Before the iPhone, nobody was making anything even remotely as good as the iPhone.

gm-conspiracy 9y ago

No, you don't get it. The internet is just a bunch of sand, some pieces of metal and wood poles from dead trees? He had an amazing ability to synergize technologies into products.

kolbe 9y ago

> Simply put he was a master at finding good things and refining them into great things. Every great creator has stood on the shoulders of giants. That doesn't diminish their greatness. I can't think of a single creation in the past 50 years that isn't a pretty direct consequence of the knowledge that preceded it.

jjrh 9y ago

> OSX is just *nix with a nice GUI (something open source could learn from). I think open source developers know this but it's not their expertise. What we need is a way to make it easier for people with that expertise to contribute to projects. Doing a bit of work with GTK I realised just how hard it is to abstract the look/design stuff out, it's very intertwined with the code meaning folks with artistic ability have a steep learning make seemingly minor GUI changes. This explains why the web looks really good and stuff like electron is attractive.