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That time I had Steve Jobs keynote at Unix Expo
- gozzoo 8y agoI wasn't lucky enough to ever meet or work with Steve, but one thing I've seen during my time in the tech industry is that there are a lot of people who try to emulate him. Unfortunately it's a lot easier to emulate Steve's weaknesses than his strengths, so the result is that some people are just whiny entitled jerks without much else to offer. So true and so pity.
- gozzoo 8y agoThis reminds me of superstar CEOs like Elizabeth Holmes, Jack Dorsey and especially Travis Kalanick.
- adventured 8y agoDorsey is successfully, simultaneously steering two of the most important public tech companies on earth. Square particularly is a booming success story as a business. Twitter, which was supposed to be doomed financially, has been delivered to sound profitability and still has $4.5 billion in cash. Please explain to me how he fits into the category with Holmes and Kalanick.
- madeofpalk 8y agoI find it hard to put Square as one of the most important public tech companies. Sure, it might be successful, but is it important?
- ajmarsh 8y agoI'd say yes. Anything that reduces friction in commerce thereby creates more commerce. Time will tell I guess.
- organsnyder 8y agoAs someone who ran a business that accepted credit cards before Square (and others, I'm sure) made it a lot easier, I think it could qualify as important.
- dizzystar 8y agoSquare may seem less important because of Stripe. This is also a very tech-centric viewpoint, as many B&M stores use Square.
- organsnyder 8y agoA number of B&M vendors that used to be cash-only now accept credit cards. Definitely an impact, there.
- gozzoo 8y agoEach of them can be put in their own category and is/was very successfull in their own way. The common thing is that they are Steve Jobs imitators to the point of meaningless details like wearing same clothes as him or listening to the same music. There are many reports about Jack Dorsey being inspired/obsessed by Steve Jobs. Running 2 companies also rings a bell. As for Sqare, yes they are headed towards (big)? success, but they are not there yet. And from what I see they are much better at operations than inovations, which is different from what Steve Jobs was known for.
- hectorr1 8y agoKalanick is a giant asshole, but also built an incredible company. He then proceeded to nearly destroy it out of arrogance. So did Jobs during his first stint as CEO. Look at the heat Musk and Zuckerberg are taking these days. We would probably have a much different view of Jobs if he was in his prime in the social media era.
- artursapek 8y ago> We would probably have a much different view of Jobs if he was in his prime in the social media era. ...which one could take to mean that a lot of these peoples' problems today are self-created (see: not knowing when to shut up)
- coatmatter 8y agoAn "incredible" company thanks to asshole methods. Being an asshole was a prerequisite in that case and cannot be separated.
- MR4D 8y agoKalanick built an incredible idea. His company still loses billions of dollars per year. I've listed a ton of references, but my favorite quote is from [3] : The firm actually lost nearly $1.1 billion (GAAP net income) against just $2.22 billion in net revenue in the fourth quarter. It works out to a -49 percent GAAP net margin. Also, the graphs on [5] are pretty damning. So in my opinion, the idea is great (actually, truly freaking fantastic to me), but the company is burning through cash at an incredible (and often growing) rate. To me, that is not the making of an incredible company. [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-25/uber-loses-at-least-1-2-billion-in-first-half-of-2016 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-25/uber-lose... [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-06/uber-spent-10-7-billion-in-nine-years-does-it-have-enough-to-show-for-it https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-06/uber-spen... [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/13/ubers-loss-jumped-61-percent-to-4-point-5-billion-in-2017.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/13/ubers-loss-jumped-61-percent... [3] https://news.crunchbase.com/news/understanding-uber-loses-money/ https://news.crunchbase.com/news/understanding-uber-loses-mo... [4] http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/growth-vs-profits-ubers-cash-burn-dilemma/ http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/growth-vs-profits... [5] https://www.forbes.com/sites/lensherman/2017/12/14/why-cant-uber-make-money/#39032bd210ec https://www.forbes.com/sites/lensherman/2017/12/14/why-cant-...
- madeofpalk 8y agoDamn. This hits so close to home. We must have all had a bad boss like that at one stage.
- mkempe 8y agoDid you mean "pithy"?
- sangnoir 8y agoI'm guessing "such a pity."
- ksec 8y ago> Steve and I both showed up at the show in dark suits and white shirts. I thought Steve always wear his turtleneck. Even going with investment banks. My guess is that those days it was way more formal then what we have now. >He loved hanging out in art museums. My memory could well be off, but I remembered it as 300 new white shirts. He wanted a new one each time he dressed up. So he doesn't do any clothes washing? Would the old one be recycled? Throw away? Fascinating Story, I miss Steve. I miss the old Apple. Where they are relentlessly innovating. It is not that they have stopped now, but it has definitely slowed. And I think with this story, Cake will now get lots of invitation to its site.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- protomyth 8y ago> I thought Steve always wear his turtleneck. Even going with investment banks. In his NeXT and early Apple return years he wore a lot of things including expensive Italian suits (the business magazine were fond of mentioning that to show his style).
- Zelphyr 8y agoIf you peruse through his keynotes (https://allaboutstevejobs.com/videos/keynotes https://allaboutstevejobs.com/videos/keynotes) it seems like the famed turtleneck outfit actually came fairly late in his career.
- projectramo 8y agoI have often wondered why I am not as successful as Steve, and this was particularly perplexing since I was wearing black turtlenecks almost every day. Now it turns out that that is wrong, I should have been wearing dark suits with custom made Italian shirts! Duh! Looking forward to the great work that is to emerge now that I have course corrected.
- jhpankow 8y ago
- therealmarv 8y agoheck what is this WorldWideWeb ... Word with blue links
- macns 8y agoIronically, a guy named Tim Berners-Lee at Cern had developed something he called WorldWideWeb on NeXT machines. I was trying to figure out what it was good for. It was kind of like Microsoft Word, except some sentences were blue and underlined and if you clicked on them you got a new document that came from a different computer. Steve asked intensely the first time he saw it, “Is this cool?” I think that was his way of saying he didn’t get what it’s good for. I said I wasn’t sure.
- princekolt 8y agoI've heard the guys at Redmond have words with all sorts of colours!
- joncrane 8y agoI know that unflattering depictions of Steve Jobs are the big hits these days, but this one seemed more like an attempt to flatter that left me flat. He sounds incredibly annoying to work with and the people working with him have that hands-on-hips "oh, him!" attitude at some massively dickish moves. Blowing off peoples' ideas so glibly and pointing to the door imperiously to indicate they should leave? Threatening to ditch a demo and terrifying your employee? Ordering 300 custom made white italian dress shirts just so he could wear a brand new one each time? I know he accomplished some cool stuff but geez.
- fhood 8y agoBeing hard to work with may have been one of Jobs' defining qualities. The author seems to be making the point that his strengths outweighed his many shortcomings.
- cmacaskill 8y agoHi, I'm the author. :-) You're very right, he could be incredibly frustrating to work with. I've always thought it was strange that we have so many incredible stories about working with him, but few people tell them. Or if we do, we talk about the good things he did. I was trying to do that too because I liked him and deeply miss him, but wow could he be annoying.
- scj 8y agoHello! I have to admit that I have yet to read the article (work firewall), but I was wondering if you knew the answer to a question I've had for a while: Did Steve Jobs know how to use a UNIX CLI shell?
- murukesh_s 8y agoI don't know it personally, but having seen his technical abilities from demo videos, he definitely is capable of using UNIX CLI, in fact I do believe he can write programs if he wanted to. He is not a genius like woz, but a person with an average tech skill like most of us regular programmers, but with an additional marketing genius.
- santiagobasulto 8y agoThis is a great "growth hack" to introduce that service Cake. The story is really good too, but what immediately caught my attention was: "what is this cake thing?". It looks good btw, did anybody else know about it?
- thinkingemote 8y agoIt's co-founded by the author of the featured article. I was also impressed by it.
- ericls 8y agoWow. Cake is good! Story is also good! EDIT: how do I get an invite?
- vilen 8y agoJust click on any button on Cake (like post or follow) and you'll see a pop-up so you can put your email on the list and you'll get an invite shortly.
- Jenz 8y agoDamn this is great. I used to be an Apple-guy, although I've moved away from it recently, I wonder, if Steve was still there, would I have stayed with Apple?