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This is one of the most insightful Q&A's about Steve that I've read. I especially appreciated the part about the risers for the gumdrop iMacs not working perfe
by khazhoux 6y ago
This is one of the most insightful Q&A's about Steve that I've read. I especially appreciated the part about the risers for the gumdrop iMacs not working perfectly smoothly: he was pissed even though the audience couldn't possibly see the stuttering risers and even though the keynote was successful.
One might think Steve Jobs was an arrogant, perfectionist prick. But you realize in this small story, that the whole keynote could have been torpedoed, could have gone sideways and been ridiculed, if those mechanical risers had failed. The big moment for this product that could (and did) save the company, might have been a laughable sad trombone even though Steve had warned Wayne that it was a problem that needed to be fixed.
The work of hundreds of people, and hundreds of millions of dollars, were pitted against shitty mechanical hand-cranks -- that's why small details matter, and why Steve was pissed.
- soperj 6y ago>One might think Steve Jobs was an arrogant, perfectionist prick That's because he was, regardless of this story.
- anonytrary 6y agoYour comment is unsubstantiated, but okay. It is extremely unpopular on HN to like Steve Jobs for some reason. The way reputation works is that if you're extremely rude to 100 people but are helpful for millions, people will still remember you as an asshole. People only see the mistakes, not the overwhelming successes, and that is an empirical fact, turned proverb at this point...
- Razengan 6y agoAlso see Tall Poppies There’s this thing, or entity, that seemingly everyone is talking about. If I can point out even one contrary thing about it, I win. (or feel like I have)
- huhtenberg 6y agoThere's a whole book that substantiates this. Commissioned by Jobs himself no less.
- refurb 6y agoIf you’re a dick, it doesn’t matter how successful you are, you’re still a dick.
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoIt's perfectly acceptable to both like a company's products and dislike the person at the helm.
- Razengan 6y agoProbably because he was, first and foremost, a user. And users are fucking sick of the shit most companies and devs have been pulling since forever and we would treat them the same were we in a position of power.
- numpad0 6y agoAnd the fact that he was like that + attention deficit made Apple products the fastest and smoothest. Look how laggy flagship Android phones still are, compared to even obsolete iPhone... Fireworks exploding next to you is a tragedy but from miles away it's only beautiful.
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoThe two statements can live in unison you know; you can be a prick AND be at the helm of a company that makes products. But be aware that you don't have to be a prick to make great products; that's cargo cult thinking. And just because his company makes/made great products does not excuse his behaviour. The two are separate statements.
- Ambroos 6y agoYou haven't used the right flagship Android phones the last few years. Android on a recent Sony flagship feels smoother than iOS on an iPhone X to me.
- baxtr 6y ago> The mythology of him mostly comes from individuals that didn't survive around him. The people who got close knew the rules, knew how to work with him, knew his core desires and what he was trying to achieve. They never really had problems with it. From the article
- mcot2 6y agoEnd of this video: https://youtu.be/vN2vxYnAZf0 https://youtu.be/vN2vxYnAZf0 Steve was coughing quite a bit throughout so he was probably not in the best mood already.
- raverbashing 6y ago1:35:05 if anyone wants the exact timestamp
- tomaskafka 6y agoOooh, there is also very very beta build of Quake 3 demoed!
- yread 6y agoAh yes the commitment to make macs the best gaming machines!
- mikehollinger 6y ago> Ah yes the commitment to make macs the best gaming machines! So... if Apple brings iOS games to a MacBook, does that satisfy that promise? :-)
- netdur 6y agono! app store's arcade games is no nowhere close to 90s arcade games... let alone today's.
- vbezhenar 6y agoWindows 95 BSODed on demonstration in face of Bill Gates. Did not make it any less successful.
- ladyanita22 6y agoWindows 98 in fact.
- ollie87 6y agoUSB stack error I seem to recall, can't remember if it was a scanner or a printer they plugged in.
- goto11 6y agoHow do you know? It certainly did long term damage to the brand.
- Pyramus 6y ago> even though Steve had warned Wayne that it was a problem that needed to be fixed. I think you are mis-reading the situation here. In the Q&A Wayne says: > "A week before the event and we were still struggling to synchronize them and make the motion smooth. [...] However, Steve was on the stage watching these things not perfectly aligned with a little bit of stuttering. He wasn’t happy and we could see it in the video feed we were watching." There is no suggestion of a risk of failure or that or that it was a problem. Steve simply wanted a perfect, smooth, synchronised motion. > "But when you were in the audience, you couldn’t tell unless you knew what to look for." Watch the video posted by another user and judge for yourself.
- nojito 6y agoSteve cared about the most minute things. There’s a story about how he went into a meeting with an iPad and a MacBook and told his people that his iPad wakes instantly and his MacBook doesn’t. https://daringfireball.net/2020/11/the_m1_macs https://daringfireball.net/2020/11/the_m1_macs
- menzoic 6y agoStartup time isn't really a minute thing. Its a huge factor in conversion thats widely measured. Like the load time of a web page. People always prefer to wait less.
- raverbashing 6y agoThinking about it, I suspect the issue was that a CRT IMac in a small moving pedestal was probably very wobbly. And a CRT Monitor is definitely something you don't want in a wobbly pedestal.
- soneca 6y ago> ”The work of hundreds of people, and hundreds of millions of dollars, were pitted against shitty mechanical hand-cranks” That’s one way to see it. In my opinion, a faulty mechanical riser in his keynote would have resulted in exactly zero less iMacs sold.
- khazhoux 6y agoEven if it didn't hurt sales, it would still have been shitty and embarrassing if the big reveal of this massive multi-year investment had been torpedoed by the risers, and (to the story'd point) after the risers had been explicitly called out as a problem.
- menzoic 6y agoThis kind of thinking can be a problem. Spending outsized effort on unproven theories. Would it really have a serious impact if the shutters were bad? On the flip side, if it was truly so impactful, relying on the faulty shutters would have been a very irresponsible thing to do. They could have paid some humans to use a pulley system out of sight at that point.
- coldtea 6y ago>This kind of thinking can be a problem. Spending outsized effort on unproven theories. Would it really have a serious impact if the shutters were bad? Yes, because if he felt the same about other things ("woult it really have a serious impact if this/that") he'd have built worse or more-samey to other OEMs products. So, it's not like you can have some precise cut-off point to stop caring, where the faulty systems in the keynote don't matter, but some other aspect of the product does. If he ended up only caring for functionality, high impact, aspects of the products, it wouldn't be the same products. And if the Keynotes didn't have such high production value demands, they wouldn't been as good. It's not a binary issue (stop being too demanding and start being ok with good enough). It's "where to put the cutoff point" in a sorite range (human caring).
- EL_Loco 6y ago>One might think Steve Jobs was an arrogant, perfectionist prick. Because he was worried about an important aspect of an important presentation his terrible behavior towards others is justified? C'mon, there are almost a hundred examples of him treating others like crap. Was every case justified as 'something very important at Apple will crack if I'm not all over this employee'? It that was so, then they were the worst hirers of talent in Silicon Valley.
- bitexploder 6y agoIt is a dichotomy. On one hand you have an innovative titan of the tech universe doing really amazing things. On the other hand you have, by all accounts, not a very nice human being to those around him. I think the hero/innovator narrative really wars with the asshole narrative in popular media. He was both of those things and it’s okay to acknowledge his insufferableness along with his great accomplishments. I don’t think the worst of his behavior was required to be the industry titan he was. A lot of people mix these up as somehow critical to the success of Jobs. The truth is, inspiring leadership that treats people fairly is very hard. It’s an understandable fault, but still a fault. That is why I always tried to understand Steve as an innovator first and leader second. People followed him despite his lack of leadership because he was getting things done and it was worth it to be a part of the show. The people that stuck around made peace with his behavior (as illustrated in the article) and learned how to filter it in a way that let them work together, but that is not an easy working relationship and again I think it speaks to how much people believed in what they were doing despite the poor (human) leadership.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y agoJobs was a textbook narcissist. Absolutely by the numbers. But unlike most narcs he was actually good at some things, and he used those talents to create a Steve Jobs Memorial Corporation - i.e. Apple. The narcissism was the source of his drive to be the most amazing monkey in the room. If he'd been a normal human he wouldn't had the laser-like focus on creating a narrative about being the guy who made everything he touched game-changing, immaculately crafted, and insanely great. If you happen to be a narc you may have similar motivations. But it's unlikely you also have the talent. Which leaves a question - is it possible to be a billionaire wo makes game-changing, beautifully crafted, insanely great tech without being a narcissist? Arguably the 60s/70s crop of tech companies came closest. CEOs like Ken Olsen had a paternal attitude and an interest in employee welfare and development. DEC were insanely great in their own pre-Internet way, so he must have been doing something right. But there was no worldwide media attention, and the market was almost exclusively fellow grad-level professionals who were more impressed by substance and less by showmanship. As soon as you open that up and create commodified mass-market products the level of attention goes up a few orders of magnitude, and a self-absorbed rock star attitude is more effective market fit. Non-narcs just don't care about that kind of attention, and aren't driven by a need to create it. Which is non-narc CEOs may be millionaire successful, but don't have the unhinged drive needed to be billionaire successful. And they won't have the kinds of followers who need the reflected glow. And that's why the top of the tech tree is full of people who have these personality issues. They're unusually effective in some very limited areas, and a cocoon of money protects them from consequences. But they're still... limited. A real game-changing genius would be able to negotiate the attention and rock star challenge to do everything they do without paying the price of narcissism. But those people are not just vanishingly rare in general, they're actively cancelled by current corporate culture. And this is a bad thing, because we're going to need effective but healthy management over the next few decades. And it's hard to see where that's going to come from in this culture.
- trulyme 6y agoMeh. Remember Bill Gates presenting Windows 95 feature Plug'n'play, and the blue screen of death? The product wasn't exactly a failure, regardless. Presentation is important, but not that important.
- jldugger 6y agoIt probably helps to recall that Apple had been on the brink of bankruptcy at the time, and as a hardware company, gambles their future every year by ordering inventory.
- Schiendelman 6y agoFor Windows, presentation wasn't that important. For Apple, it would have been. Windows was the default operating system for business already. Apple's products at the time were an alternative, not the mainstream, and sold largely on the customer's desire to live a different life. Apple sells a lifestyle as much as they do a product; you've always been able to see that in their marketing. The customer visualization of themselves in that life is formed first during those keynotes - and it's easy to break with a problem like the one Jobs cared about. Since Cook took over, Apple's really switched largely to productionizing what they already had; that makes sense, it's what he's good at. Hopefully, he's kind of a caretaker until someone visionary can take the helm again.
- birdsbirdsbirds 6y agoThat's the power of a monopoly. Apple didn't have it when the iMacs were presented.