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President Obama on Steve Jobs: "He Changed the Way Each of Us Sees the World"

479 points by hornokplease 15y ago

coderdude 15y ago
You know you're a big deal when the president of the United States makes a statement about your death just hours after the news breaks.
- bodyfour 15y ago
  Also, if your obituary is simultaneously all 25 top stories on HN.
  - scarmig 15y ago
    Top 33, by my count.
- pwelch 15y ago
  Can't agree more.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- rphlx 15y ago
  It saddens me that the engineers and workers who actually designed and built the stuff will die unknown. Just reinforces that fame, popularity, charisma, self-promotion, wealth, and the ability to "manage" trump deep technical abilities.
  - kamechan 15y ago
    https://twitter.com/cperciva/status/121744770480615425 https://twitter.com/cperciva/status/121744770480615425 a retweet (not me). but, it struck a chord with me.
    - goblin89 15y ago
      Harder to evaluate the value of scientist's legacy. And, apart from being entrepreneur's inspiration, Steve is a bit of a pop figure. Or it's simply that salesmen are more popular as it's them who bring the results of scientists' work to lives of millions.
    - bad_user 15y ago
      People care about faces they know about. Normal people don't have knowledge about scientists or engineers in our field that helped changed the world. It is partly sad, as they do know about the crackheads that appear on MTV, and I would bet it would be major news if Britney Spears would die. Personally I am not offended that Steve Jobs is getting so much attention. At least here's someone that we can partly identify with, here's someone that did bring real value and who's death does reach normal people. And I don't know how much has Steve changed my life with the work he did on Apple, but he definitely changed my life with his speech at Standford, which I watched on Youtube from hundreds of miles away from where it happened, on an iPod Touch.
    - Locke1689 15y ago
      The fewer people that can understand your accomplishments, the fewer will notice and mourn your passing.
    - ubi 15y ago
      "Why do we care more about salesmen than scientists?" Saying Jobs was /just/ a salesman is beyond incorrect. But on a deeper level: making a useful widget is one thing, succeeding at convincing the world that they need it is quite another. ideas are nice, products are better, but Jobs could execute like none-other
    - tychobrahe 15y ago
      Why do we care so much about genius scientists but dismiss genius dilletantes? Also, why do we have to dillute our opinion on people and reduce them to the stereotypes? Is it something we do just to feel better? Saying that Steve Jobs was just a salesman is as incorrect as saying that Edsger Dijkstra was just an arrogant man. I'm sorry, but both were MUCH more than that.
  - evgen 15y ago
    Without the assistance of a person (or people) with all of those other characteristics, deep technical abilities accomplish nothing. If it were not for Steve the engineers and workers who actually designed and built the stuff would still have died unknown and they would have also probably died without having anything of significance to point to and say "I helped create that."
    - lukifer 15y ago
      Steve gave massive credit to the talent and sweat of Apple's engineers and designers in nearly every keynote. He was as humble as you could expect of a CEO.
      - microtherion 15y ago
        Yes, he did thank the engineers and designers in his keynotes – COLLECTIVELY. However, he also specifically abolished the previous practice of naming all software engineers involved in OS releases. Admittedly, there were plausible reasons given for this, but I felt that ultimately, the reason why Pixar gives personal credit to their movie contributors, while Apple does not do the same for its engineers, is that our industry is not unionized.
        rplacd 15y ago
        I don't think Pixar's unionized - not under IATSE, at least...
        mikeash 15y ago
        There are often consequences to working in a largely unionized industry even when your particular company isn't unionized, though.
        lukifer 15y ago
        I read somewhere that this was because of concerns with talent getting poached by other companies (which was especially a concern in the early days of OS X, when Apple was still "beleagured". Still, point taken; there are lot of unsung heroes within Apple's ranks.
  - anactofgod 15y ago
    This is an appropriate topic for HN, since it has to do with roles & responsibilities w/i a company. So, let's try to correct some misconceptions. Steve Jobs was the CEO of Apple. And... “A CEO does only three things. Sets the overall vision and strategy of the company and communicates it to all stakeholders. Recruits, hires, and retains the very best talent for the company. Makes sure there is always enough cash in the bank.” (from Fred Wilson, Venture Capitalist icon, requoting something he was taught early in his professional career) Jobs showed that he was able to do all three of these things extremely well, arguably better any other CEO of our time. He did communicate a vision and strategy [#1], and he used that vision and strategy to recruit the very best talent for Apple [#2], people better than Jobs himself was at getting done what needed to be done (i.e., the people you lament "will die unknown"). His ability to do both those things - and to make sure that everyone performed and delivered in line with the vision [#!, again] - is why Apple is projected to have $90+BILLION in cash reserves at the end of the year [#3], climbed from $10/share to $400/share, and is the highest valued tech company in the world. Remember, too that history reinforces that technical ability minus a clear vision and strong leadership doesn't produce Mac OS X/iOS, MacBook Airs, iPods, iPhones or iPads. They produce Pink/Taligent, 20th Anniversary Macs, Newtons, MacTVs and Pippins. And a company that loses its leadership position, is valued at $10/share, and comes within sight of bankruptcy.
  - partition 15y ago
    I agree that this is suboptimal. But it's true that you need both business and technical skills to get something out the door competently. And for these engineers and workers, the feeling of fulfillment that they have working for Steve is real and satisfies what I believe to be an actual human need: to feel competent and useful. I just wish there was some other way to go about things than for, basically, impressionable technical types to be manipulated into doing work for narcissists. Maybe the problem is, again, education. School generally doesn't prepare you to be a good salesman, which is unfortunate because that's the only kind of skill you need to actually get ahead in the real world.
  - nupark2 15y ago
    As one of those former engineers at Apple, I can say definitively that Steve deserves it. Without him, we'd never have had the canvas on which to paint. He made our contributions possible.
  - gospelwut 15y ago
    I'm not a Mac person myself, but I do respect their design philosophy in the sense you don't have to do wild new things -- just standard things really well. So, by proxy I respect their engineers quite a bit. My only beef, really, was with their marketing department and some of their draconian business decisions.
  - bennesvig 15y ago
    Steve didn't manage, he led. Big difference.
abbasmehdi 15y ago
"And there may be no greater tribute to Steve’s success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented." <--- This is most telling.
- badclient 15y ago
  Not to be a douche(I shed some tears upon hearing the news and remain a tad shocked), but the accuracy of the above statement by Obama is very questionable IMO. Vast majority of the world still doesn't own an Apple device, I'd argue. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. That said, I did hear the news from my iPhone. And this comment? It's also coming from the same thing.
  - shantanubala 15y ago
    "much of the world" not "most of the world" It's a subtle difference in wording, but the meaning is very different.
  - snippyhollow 15y ago
    It's not only about Apple products, it's about personal computers, or large touch-screen based smartphones. Without the (first) Macintosh, the PC ecosystem would be different.
    - AppSec 15y ago
      Xerox might have something to say about that. Considering they were widely regarded as having the first Graphical UI. And some of the first Mac team came from Xerox. Who knows what would have happened if Xerox moved forward with it.
r0s 15y ago
That's a bit hyperbolic.
- Cushman 15y ago
  No it isn't. It's 100% true. If we can't honestly appreciate the incredible magnitude of the effect this man had on our world today of all days, when will we be able to?
  - r0s 15y ago
    Why do you(or the president) think exaggerating his accomplishments is warranted or even tasteful? It's not 100% true, I know plenty of people with no apple devices, who don't care at all about apple or it's products. Personality cults like this are embarrassing, and a major weakness for critical thinking. Celebrate the man for what he did, not some deified hero icon.
    - kemayo 15y ago
      Even if you don't own anything made by Apple and don't care at all about it, it's hard to deny that it has had a major influence on computing, and through that on the modern world in general.
      - r0s 15y ago
        That's fair. I don't see a lot of balanced assessment though.
        happyhacker 15y ago
        fucking asshole
  - hackinthebochs 15y ago
    I'm gonna have to agree and say that the hyperbole about what this man accomplished is over-the-top. He didn't change the world in any meaningful way. He made great products, and that's about as far as his influence extends to the world. The guy who invented the toilet "changed the world". Mark Zuckerburg has changed the world far more than Steve Jobs. Sometimes people need a reality check.
channelmeter 15y ago
http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/comment//2011/10/03a116f771ea60014f6c3a77a65effc7/original.jpg http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/comment//2011/10/03a11...
- Cushman 15y ago
  Chills.
- bitstream 15y ago
  Very apt. There is an easter-egg from this 'Think Different' campaign in OSX. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_Different#Mac_OS_X http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_Different#Mac_OS_X
  - kenferry 15y ago
    If you look super carefully at the book emoji on the iPhone, same deal.
kamechan 15y ago
"Steve was among the greatest of American innovators - brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it." "think differently" <-- i wonder if this was intentional.
- mirkules 15y ago
  I thought the same. Nice homage, to be sure.
- Florin_Andrei 15y ago
  Intentional, no doubt. As was the next allusion to "change".
maratd 15y ago
Mr. Jobs was an amazing person. I sincerely hope the President is mourning his loss. Unfortunately, his prior statements make me wonder whether he truly understood what Mr. Jobs added to our culture through the inventions he helped pioneer. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/7702359/Barack-Obama-criticises-iPod-and-Xbox-era.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/7...
- danssig 15y ago
  Is the Telegraph one of those rags that tries to be controversial just to get views? I was (before today) under the impression that they were a reputable paper but they also had to take some shots at Jobs' personal live in his Obituary. What Steve did in his personal life is none of our business. Maybe he did treat someone in his life poorly. That might mean I wouldn't have wanted to be his personal friend, but it doesn't change the fact that Steve literally changed the world.
yesreally 15y ago
And yet, he uses a Blackberry.

479 points by hornokplease 15y ago

You know you're a big deal when the president of the United States makes a statement about your death just hours after the news breaks.

bodyfour 15y ago
Also, if your obituary is simultaneously all 25 top stories on HN.
- scarmig 15y ago
  Top 33, by my count.
pwelch 15y ago
Can't agree more.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
rphlx 15y ago
It saddens me that the engineers and workers who actually designed and built the stuff will die unknown. Just reinforces that fame, popularity, charisma, self-promotion, wealth, and the ability to "manage" trump deep technical abilities.
- kamechan 15y ago
  https://twitter.com/cperciva/status/121744770480615425 https://twitter.com/cperciva/status/121744770480615425 a retweet (not me). but, it struck a chord with me.
  - goblin89 15y ago
    Harder to evaluate the value of scientist's legacy. And, apart from being entrepreneur's inspiration, Steve is a bit of a pop figure. Or it's simply that salesmen are more popular as it's them who bring the results of scientists' work to lives of millions.
  - bad_user 15y ago
    People care about faces they know about. Normal people don't have knowledge about scientists or engineers in our field that helped changed the world. It is partly sad, as they do know about the crackheads that appear on MTV, and I would bet it would be major news if Britney Spears would die. Personally I am not offended that Steve Jobs is getting so much attention. At least here's someone that we can partly identify with, here's someone that did bring real value and who's death does reach normal people. And I don't know how much has Steve changed my life with the work he did on Apple, but he definitely changed my life with his speech at Standford, which I watched on Youtube from hundreds of miles away from where it happened, on an iPod Touch.
  - Locke1689 15y ago
    The fewer people that can understand your accomplishments, the fewer will notice and mourn your passing.
  - ubi 15y ago
    "Why do we care more about salesmen than scientists?" Saying Jobs was /just/ a salesman is beyond incorrect. But on a deeper level: making a useful widget is one thing, succeeding at convincing the world that they need it is quite another. ideas are nice, products are better, but Jobs could execute like none-other
  - tychobrahe 15y ago
    Why do we care so much about genius scientists but dismiss genius dilletantes? Also, why do we have to dillute our opinion on people and reduce them to the stereotypes? Is it something we do just to feel better? Saying that Steve Jobs was just a salesman is as incorrect as saying that Edsger Dijkstra was just an arrogant man. I'm sorry, but both were MUCH more than that.
- evgen 15y ago
  Without the assistance of a person (or people) with all of those other characteristics, deep technical abilities accomplish nothing. If it were not for Steve the engineers and workers who actually designed and built the stuff would still have died unknown and they would have also probably died without having anything of significance to point to and say "I helped create that."
  - lukifer 15y ago
    Steve gave massive credit to the talent and sweat of Apple's engineers and designers in nearly every keynote. He was as humble as you could expect of a CEO.
    - microtherion 15y ago
      Yes, he did thank the engineers and designers in his keynotes – COLLECTIVELY. However, he also specifically abolished the previous practice of naming all software engineers involved in OS releases. Admittedly, there were plausible reasons given for this, but I felt that ultimately, the reason why Pixar gives personal credit to their movie contributors, while Apple does not do the same for its engineers, is that our industry is not unionized.
      - rplacd 15y ago
        I don't think Pixar's unionized - not under IATSE, at least...
        mikeash 15y ago
        There are often consequences to working in a largely unionized industry even when your particular company isn't unionized, though.
      - lukifer 15y ago
        I read somewhere that this was because of concerns with talent getting poached by other companies (which was especially a concern in the early days of OS X, when Apple was still "beleagured". Still, point taken; there are lot of unsung heroes within Apple's ranks.
- anactofgod 15y ago
  This is an appropriate topic for HN, since it has to do with roles & responsibilities w/i a company. So, let's try to correct some misconceptions. Steve Jobs was the CEO of Apple. And... “A CEO does only three things. Sets the overall vision and strategy of the company and communicates it to all stakeholders. Recruits, hires, and retains the very best talent for the company. Makes sure there is always enough cash in the bank.” (from Fred Wilson, Venture Capitalist icon, requoting something he was taught early in his professional career) Jobs showed that he was able to do all three of these things extremely well, arguably better any other CEO of our time. He did communicate a vision and strategy [#1], and he used that vision and strategy to recruit the very best talent for Apple [#2], people better than Jobs himself was at getting done what needed to be done (i.e., the people you lament "will die unknown"). His ability to do both those things - and to make sure that everyone performed and delivered in line with the vision [#!, again] - is why Apple is projected to have $90+BILLION in cash reserves at the end of the year [#3], climbed from $10/share to $400/share, and is the highest valued tech company in the world. Remember, too that history reinforces that technical ability minus a clear vision and strong leadership doesn't produce Mac OS X/iOS, MacBook Airs, iPods, iPhones or iPads. They produce Pink/Taligent, 20th Anniversary Macs, Newtons, MacTVs and Pippins. And a company that loses its leadership position, is valued at $10/share, and comes within sight of bankruptcy.
- partition 15y ago
  I agree that this is suboptimal. But it's true that you need both business and technical skills to get something out the door competently. And for these engineers and workers, the feeling of fulfillment that they have working for Steve is real and satisfies what I believe to be an actual human need: to feel competent and useful. I just wish there was some other way to go about things than for, basically, impressionable technical types to be manipulated into doing work for narcissists. Maybe the problem is, again, education. School generally doesn't prepare you to be a good salesman, which is unfortunate because that's the only kind of skill you need to actually get ahead in the real world.
- nupark2 15y ago
  As one of those former engineers at Apple, I can say definitively that Steve deserves it. Without him, we'd never have had the canvas on which to paint. He made our contributions possible.
- gospelwut 15y ago
  I'm not a Mac person myself, but I do respect their design philosophy in the sense you don't have to do wild new things -- just standard things really well. So, by proxy I respect their engineers quite a bit. My only beef, really, was with their marketing department and some of their draconian business decisions.
- bennesvig 15y ago
  Steve didn't manage, he led. Big difference.

abbasmehdi 15y ago

"And there may be no greater tribute to Steve’s success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented." <--- This is most telling.

badclient 15y ago
Not to be a douche(I shed some tears upon hearing the news and remain a tad shocked), but the accuracy of the above statement by Obama is very questionable IMO. Vast majority of the world still doesn't own an Apple device, I'd argue. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. That said, I did hear the news from my iPhone. And this comment? It's also coming from the same thing.
- shantanubala 15y ago
  "much of the world" not "most of the world" It's a subtle difference in wording, but the meaning is very different.
- snippyhollow 15y ago
  It's not only about Apple products, it's about personal computers, or large touch-screen based smartphones. Without the (first) Macintosh, the PC ecosystem would be different.
  - AppSec 15y ago
    Xerox might have something to say about that. Considering they were widely regarded as having the first Graphical UI. And some of the first Mac team came from Xerox. Who knows what would have happened if Xerox moved forward with it.

r0s 15y ago

That's a bit hyperbolic.

Cushman 15y ago
No it isn't. It's 100% true. If we can't honestly appreciate the incredible magnitude of the effect this man had on our world today of all days, when will we be able to?
- r0s 15y ago
  Why do you(or the president) think exaggerating his accomplishments is warranted or even tasteful? It's not 100% true, I know plenty of people with no apple devices, who don't care at all about apple or it's products. Personality cults like this are embarrassing, and a major weakness for critical thinking. Celebrate the man for what he did, not some deified hero icon.
  - kemayo 15y ago
    Even if you don't own anything made by Apple and don't care at all about it, it's hard to deny that it has had a major influence on computing, and through that on the modern world in general.
    - r0s 15y ago
      That's fair. I don't see a lot of balanced assessment though.
      - happyhacker 15y ago
        fucking asshole
- hackinthebochs 15y ago
  I'm gonna have to agree and say that the hyperbole about what this man accomplished is over-the-top. He didn't change the world in any meaningful way. He made great products, and that's about as far as his influence extends to the world. The guy who invented the toilet "changed the world". Mark Zuckerburg has changed the world far more than Steve Jobs. Sometimes people need a reality check.

channelmeter 15y ago

http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/comment//2011/10/03a116f771ea60014f6c3a77a65effc7/original.jpg http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/comment//2011/10/03a11...

Cushman 15y ago
Chills.
bitstream 15y ago
Very apt. There is an easter-egg from this 'Think Different' campaign in OSX. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_Different#Mac_OS_X http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_Different#Mac_OS_X
- kenferry 15y ago
  If you look super carefully at the book emoji on the iPhone, same deal.

kamechan 15y ago

"Steve was among the greatest of American innovators - brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it." "think differently" <-- i wonder if this was intentional.

mirkules 15y ago
I thought the same. Nice homage, to be sure.
Florin_Andrei 15y ago
Intentional, no doubt. As was the next allusion to "change".

maratd 15y ago

Mr. Jobs was an amazing person. I sincerely hope the President is mourning his loss. Unfortunately, his prior statements make me wonder whether he truly understood what Mr. Jobs added to our culture through the inventions he helped pioneer. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/7702359/Barack-Obama-criticises-iPod-and-Xbox-era.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/7...

danssig 15y ago
Is the Telegraph one of those rags that tries to be controversial just to get views? I was (before today) under the impression that they were a reputable paper but they also had to take some shots at Jobs' personal live in his Obituary. What Steve did in his personal life is none of our business. Maybe he did treat someone in his life poorly. That might mean I wouldn't have wanted to be his personal friend, but it doesn't change the fact that Steve literally changed the world.

yesreally 15y ago

And yet, he uses a Blackberry.