16 ms·
Two perspectives on a designer who Steve Jobs could not hire
- drexlspivey 5y agoSteve Jobs also tried to hire Linus Torvalds to work on their BSD kernel (lol)
- samplatt 5y agoSeriously? Wow. Talk about tone-deaf.
- ineedasername 5y agoWhat an amazing clash of personalities that would have been.
- dfee 5y agoGuido had 6.5 years at Dropbox. That always surprised me.
- alisonkisk 5y agoWhy? That paid him to work on Python.
- sumedh 5y agoWhat did Dropbox get in return?
- icegreentea2 5y agoHere's Dropbox's goodbye post: https://blog.dropbox.com/topics/company/thank-you--guido https://blog.dropbox.com/topics/company/thank-you--guido To summarize: * Having THE language creator (dropbox was majority Python) around is super useful, especially from a soft-technical standpoint. Imagine the confidence boost a junior gets from that. * Worked on mypy
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- phendrenad2 5y agoHow so? Many engineers have given up on their ideals when a large enough paycheck is waved in front of them.
- winter_blue 5y agomacOS should have just used the Linux kernel. The fairly complex and difficult-to-duplicate Cocoa UI layer would have made the odds of a macOS-compatible open-source clone appearing anytime in the near future slim. Even today, I hope Apple makes a switch to their own patched version of the Linux kernel. It would be a great breath of new air into macOS. In terms of sheer features and compatibility, the Linux kernel surpasses Darwin by massive measures.
- cmrdporcupine 5y agoNeXTStep was built around BSD, and so BSD followed through to MacOS, which is really frankly just re-skinned NeXTStep. I'm pretty sure it would have been a real PITA to rework it around Linux at that point. Lots of existing applications and tools would have had to have been reworked. And at that time (late 90s) the Linux kernel was certainly awesome but not clearly that much more awesome than BSD. The amount of driver and architecture support in the kernel wasn't as expansive as now.
- phendrenad2 5y agoThe problem is the difficulty in mixing in proprietary blobs. The only way to link proprietary drivers into the kernel is the way Nvidia does it, and it's a legal grey area to this day.
- sangnoir 5y agoApple has a visceral dislike/distrust of the GPL, and goes to great lengths to avoid it - like authoring an entirely new compiler (clang) to replace the GPL-licensed gcc. This is also the reason why the version of bash bundled with Apple OSes is ancient.
- HWR_14 5y agoIf Steve Jobs had hired Linus, would OSX still be BSD based as opposed to Linux based?
- speed_spread 5y agoThose conversations would have been fun to hear.
- Waterluvian 5y ago“ Richard Sapper isn’t a household name like Jony Ive, Dieter Rams, or Phillipe Stark.” None of these are household names.
- smoldesu 5y agoApple's love for Dieter Rams has gotten them very far, but their recent pivot towards 'making the computer disappear' is at stark contrast with the design elements that he employed. Personally, I think we've gone as far as we can with those design cues: our tablets have been reduced to black slabs, and our computers arranged into thin silver clamshells. Apple's (re)introduction of color in the recent iMacs is a step in the right direction, but there's still so much of the 'domestic computer' design space that hasn't been explored yet. I think of Teenage Engineering and their colorful (albeit expensive) synthesizers, game consoles, and the various Homepod/Echo/Nest/Etc. smart assistants that now litter our home: these are all experiments in making the computer disappear, yet nobody seems to be paying much attention the field.
- hinkley 5y agoVacillating between understated and overstated lets you sell more product. A product I still buy, mind you, but I’m aware what’s going on.
- sangnoir 5y agoThat makes it easy for people around you to see if you're using the latest device as well, or still stuck on some old device. I don't care for devices-as-fashion, but I feel bad for teenagers who can't afford to always have the latest iProduct.
- dangus 5y agoI personally disagree! The computer disappearing is one of the most pure expressions of form following function. In the iPhone or iMac, what's on the screen is what is important. Nothing else is important, so it's not there. One of Rams' principles: "Good design is as little design as possible." Contrast that to a competing product like the ASUS ROG Phone: RGB lights, not-strictly-necessary cosmetic vents, asymmetrical lines, printed design patterns. Now THAT is a product that would make Dieter Rams throw up in his mouth!
- smoldesu 5y ago
- gerdesj 5y agoThe article sways around somewhat. For example, from the article, we have: "It’s a philosophy ... with HfG Ulm, a school that many consider the spiritual successor to the Bauhaus." Bauhaus are famous for "Form follows function." Richard creates: "When the Thinkpad is closed, it looks like a simple black slab. When opened, a cam at the hinge theatrically rearranges two keyboard halves to extend out of the computer. There are numerous colorful accents, including an IBM logo in red, green, and blue, and of course, the red Trackpoint." ... theatrically ... "The PowerBook, on the other hand, aims to be as simple as possible in whatever state." ... that's Bauhaus: simple. I like the stinkies' keyboard, but it is quite daft. His engineer creds are a bit underwhelming. Exploding coffee pots are pretty silly in a world that has had the pressure cooker, kettles and the steam engine for centuries/millennia.
- perl4ever 5y agoHave you heard of the musical group Bauhaus? I don't have a specific point, except that my impression is they were pretty theatrical. Also, I'd observe that a "spiritual successor" to something might have some significant differences? Anyway, I liked the folding Thinkpad keyboard. If it had been a flimsy malfunctioning attempt at getting attention, it would have been different. But it was very solid, wasn't it?
- itronitron 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bauhaus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bauhaus
- gerdesj 5y agoBauhaus was a German design house. The band was named after them. I remember seeing the band on Top of the Pops (UK) back in the day. Their videos etc were generally in b/w which echoes the design house which majored quite heavily in black, white and chrome. The music was pretty stylistic too. Anyway, the Bauhaus in the article is the design house and not the band.
- perl4ever 5y ago
- hamburgerwah 5y agoI really don't know why people want to venerate anything to do with Steve Jobs. He was an absolute disgrace of a human being, treated people like garbage, a borderline psychopath. And yet some venerate him because he made some pretty things before other people would have inevitably made those same pretty things. P.S. I somewhat agree with the commentator saying that hacker news is in many ways a sort of venture capital pornography, but I think the people comparing jobs to historical figures that confronted adolf hitler or changed the course of human history need some very long and deep self reflection.
- alisonkisk 5y agoIt's been 40 years and no one's made pretty things like them yet.
- michaelmrose 5y agoCan you give some examples? Certainly good ideas that nobody has replicated for decades would be valuable avenues worth pursuing.
- spoonjim 5y agoThe entire concept of what a “computer” is in people’s minds comes from Steve Jobs’ evangelism of these ideas. While you can be certain that the transistor would have been invented by someone if not Shockley, computing would be very different (perhaps better, perhaps not) without Jobs.
- robbiep 5y agoI’m honestly confused by the points of view that hold that unless a person was/is as pure as the driven snow they deserve to be scrubbed from the history books. Jobs, Churchill, Gates, Musk - I don’t understand. It’s as if proponents of that view believe that the only people deserving of recognition are those that were completely internally consistent, including by the times in which they are being judged (ie present tense). Humans are complex. None of us (or at least, very very few of us) are fully internally consistent. The personality flaws that cause the greatest consternation may also be those that lead to our greatest triumphs. If they are not criminal, why not recognise people for doing great things? And why is it so hard to say add the caveat that like all humans, they had their flaws?
- 1propionyl 5y agoOne small problem with this piece: Richard Sapper, while responsible for the overall design of the ThinkPad line, did not invent or design that keyboard. The honor of the original idea goes to John Karidis, and credit is also due to other IBM designers who helped refine the design.
- pcurve 5y agoAnd original thinkpad project started in Japan. Fun story about the red pointer device https://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/news/2017/10/16/meet-the-father-of-the-thinkpad-laptop.html https://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/news/2017/10/16/meet-th...
- exporectomy 5y agoOh, and I thought it was the child porn in the middle of the article.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Jugurtha 5y ago>Clockwise: Richard Sapper, Dieter Rams, Ingo Maurer, Gerhard Richter I wonder how people went about this one with the 2x2 picture matrix.
- lovich 5y agoI don’t understand what you mean
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- croes 5y agoIngo Maurer is the guy at the bottom right not bottom left. Usually we read from left to right from top to bottom 1 2 3 4 But here it's clockwise 1 2 4 3
- lovich 5y agoah, well in my case I just completely missed that and read it like your first example
- Jugurtha 5y agoIn addition to what "croes" wrote, this also is a clockwise 2 3 1 4 One might be tempted to read it that way, starting at the bottom (closest to the figure label), and on the left, for a left-to-right document.
- elromulous 5y agoBill Burr so eloquently captures my feelings towards Steve Jobs and the Steve Jobs fandom. https://youtu.be/E3s-qZsjK8I https://youtu.be/E3s-qZsjK8I
- zxienin 5y agoGenuinely curious. Are there any examples, where a worthy achievement was made by a nice, agreeable, likeable person? Each achiever story I recall, is accompanied by how asshole the person is/was, to a set of folks.
- jasonwatkinspdx 5y agoThere are tons, they just don't tend to generate controversy, so they aren't talked about as much, or in the same way. But a simple example would be Einstein. Or in the field of CS, Turing was well liked by his collaborators as well, despite having some idiosyncrasies.
- AlanYx 5y agoEinstein actually isn't a particularly good example. His treatment of both his wives is fairly controversial, and a lot has been written about his alleged refusal to co-credit Mileva Marić on any of the work they collaborated on.
- robmusial 5y agoDon Knuth comes to mind.
- j7ake 5y agoJohn Bardeen
- scaryclam 5y agoSteve Wozniak
- tincholio 5y agoCheck out Richard Feynman, for example.
- amelius 5y agoI'm reading more about product designers than about the people who actually designed the hardware and software.
- twobitshifter 5y agoAnother designer he couldn’t hire built the connection machine http://www.tamikothiel.com/cm/index.html http://www.tamikothiel.com/cm/index.html > How the Connection Machine inspired Steve Jobs: My old friend Joanna Hoffman was marketing manager for the first Macintosh and the NeXT computer, and Steve Jobs' "right hand," as depicted by Kate Winslet in the film "Steve Jobs." In 1986, when the Connection Machine came out, Jobs asked her to get its designer to create his new NeXT computer as well. To which Joanna replied, "Too late, Tamiko has gone to Europe to become an artist!" But the machine made a lasting impression on him, and from that point on, Jobs' designs were not merely useful - they were visually sublime. See "CM-1/CM-2 Design Legacy" >>
- hinkley 5y agoI wonder if that really would have worked out. They say you should never meet your heroes. Working with these people likely would have pushed them into his “shithead” category.
- setpatchaddress 5y agoEh. He worked with frogdesign, Paul Rand, Avie T., and a host of software people with strong opinions at NeXT. He wasn’t incapable of working with other people.
- wildpeaks 5y agoOh it's so nice to see a reference to Tamiko in the wild, she's a wonderful person.