9 ms·
In Praise of Bad Steve
- danso 15y agoThe talk about "Bad Steve" reminds me about Gundotra telling the "Icon Ambulance" story the day that Steve stepped down, in which Steve calls him up on a Sunday because "we have an urgent issue" involving the color gradient on the Google iphone icon. https://plus.google.com/107117483540235115863/posts/gcSStkKxXTw https://plus.google.com/107117483540235115863/posts/gcSStkKx... For many people, that kind of anal attention to detail (and describing it as an "urgent" matter) would be the key sign of a "bad" boss. I think it's acceptable in Steve because if anyone has shown a good grasp of the cost-benefit analysis of such perfection, it's him.
- ajross 15y agoI don't think that's really justified. Jobs had a long career, and only two real industry-dominating hits: the Apple II (most of which was Woz's work) and the iPhone. A lot of the hyperbole we're seeing right now is because Jobs had the mis/fortune to die at the very peak of his hit. Had we all been doing the same analysis in the mid-90's when NeXT was failing and Pixar a mostly academic curiosity, I doubt anyone would be talking about how great a judge of the "cost-benefit analysis of perfection" he was.
- 2arrs2ells 15y agoWouldn't Pixar count as "industry-dominating"? It may be too early to tell, but I'd bet money the iPad will also end up in that category. The man took a company that was going out of business and turned it into the largest company in the world. I don't think this talk is "hyperbole" in the least. http://www.google.com//finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=maximized&chdeh=1&chfdeh=0&chdet=1313784000000&chddm=1400562&chls=IntervalBasedLine&q=NASDAQ:AAPL&ntsp=0 http://www.google.com//finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1...
- davvid 15y agoPixar is beyond "industry-dominating". They basically invented the (CG film) industry. When Steve first acquired Pixar he was losing $1 million/year. It takes a true visionary to realize the potential in an idea and work through what to most would seem like an insurmountable challenge.
- alexsb92 15y agoI think it's more than the just the Apple II and the iPhone. The way I see it, the man's main hobby was disruption. He disrupted the PC industry with the Apple II and later the Mac line. He disrupted the music industry with the iPod and iTunes, and the phone industry with the iPhone. He changed the animation industry with Pixar one of the most successful, both financially, and critically acclaimed movie company. He revived an industry which most considered a dead horse with the iPad and where most companies are still playing catch-up. I agree if this was to happen back in the 90s, he wouldn't be as praised as he is today, but what does that have to do with anything? If I was to judge anyone before their greatest moments, they wouldn't pass the bar. And yeah, he was kind of an ass in his early days, but by most accounts he became a lot more mellow when returning to Apple.
- ars 15y agoI don't think you know what disruption is. The PC industry is working just fine, and a Mac and PC are more similar than they are different. The music industry has hardly changed due to the iPod, you sell one way you sell another - that's not disruption. And the phone industry most certainly did not change, it's just an incremental improvement on the fancy phones that have been getting steadily better. The iPhone may be great, but fundamentally it's just a better version of what was already there. His business was taking an idea and perfecting it so people liked and used it. But it was not disruption.
- Volpe 15y agoPartly what you say is true. But I'd say iTunes (music store) was disruptive. It changed how the music industry operated. The iphone changed how we 'use' phones more than it changed the 'phone industry'. In fact, on writing that, I think that captures what Apple does best, it 'disrupts' how people perceive and use a product, that may in-turn distrupt an industry, but that is a consequence, not the goal (for Apple).
- _delirium 15y agoI see the iPhone as popularizing the smartphone concept, but not fundamentally disrupting the concept of phones and their usage. Palm I think was the real disruptor there, but Apple perfected it.
- mikeash 15y agoI'd say at least five. The Macintosh was also an industry-dominating hit. While the Mac itself never dominated in terms of market share, it so dominated the market that almost all PCs shipped in the last 20 years are imitations of it. The iPod pretty much took over the portable music player market and remains the dominant player today. And finally the iPad pretty much created the tablet market and everybody else is still trying to catch up to it there. I think you have a good point about the timing of all of this. However, Steve was consistently and shockingly successful for the past decade and a half, which I think is more than enough time to say that these qualities aren't just an artifact of timing.
- MaysonL 15y agoAnd then there were Pixar and Next.
- stickfigure 15y ago+1 for Pixar, -1 for NeXT. You come out even.
- Udo 15y agoWhile NeXT might have been a commercial failure, the vast majority of entrepreneurs can only dream of having such a business once in their lifetime. In the end, NeXT was acquired by Apple and the foundation of their operating system became what is now OS X. NeXT would not be called a failure if any other person had founded it - it just seems less successful by comparison in the light of Jobs' other endeavors.
- fpgeek 15y agoIf any other person had founded it, NeXT wouldn't have been acquired by Apple.
- officemonkey 15y agoJobs had not taken over Apple and acquired NeXT, both NeXT and Apple would in the same boat as BeOS and Palm: failed companies, fondly remembered.
- msbarnett 15y agoWe could argue about the domination of the Mac or the impact and legacy of NeXT and Pixar, but... You really don't think the iPod was an industry-dominating hit? They sold hundreds of millions of them, and no other company ever really came up with a successful answer to them. It was left to Apple itself to kill them with the iPhone.
- vacri 15y agoThe ipod was around for three years before it took off in sales, and there were plenty of other music players available at the time that were more popular and had better functionality. Most of the iPod's initial success wasn't because of anything innovative about the product, but because of very, very savvy marketing. It's very interesting to watch all this historical revisionism that paints Jobs as the mysterious shadowy figure that was the creator of the digital portable music device, which was a boom product from day 1. Don't forget, Apple has also had several flops over the past decade, but no-one remembers them because of selective bias. Jobs was an incredible man, but let's see him for what he did; don't turn him into a myth.
- AlisdairO 15y agoI agree on the marketing being important, but I remember thinking at the time it first came out that the iPod was by far the smallest hard disk mp3 player I'd seen - the first that might be practical for the non-geek market. Were there others around that time that I'm not aware of?
- 2arrs2ells 15y agoDid you ever own a non-iPod MP3 player? The user experience on those devices was usually terrible (especially navigating through songs without a scroll wheel). Loading songs onto those players was painful, or at least nowhere near as simple as iTunes (especially once Apple bought SoundJam). Additionally, Jobs' relentless addition/pruning of the iPod lines (mini/shuffle/nano/color/touch/etc) kept Apple with both a streamlined offering and ~70% market share. I'm not arguing that the first ("less space than a nomad") iPod was a revolutionary device at launch. But dismissing the iPod's success as "savvy marketing" is doing the device a huge disservice.
- watmough 15y agoThe iPhone wouldn't be what it is without OS X. There's another thing.
- angelbob 15y agoI find myself hoping the iPod/aquarium story is true.
- jmjerlecki 15y agoCouldn't this mean a number of things? 1. The device isn't fully sealed. 2. Isn't there always going to be air unless you cover each area of the device and seal it off?
- nknight 15y agoI think you missed the point by a couple light years. Air escaping means there's room in the case for air to be in the first place. Air molecules aren't magic, and can't occupy the same space as other objects.
- sampsonjs 15y agoSo what would happen if I dropped an Iphone 5 in water?
- freedompeace 15y agoNo air bubbles -- it doesn't exist.
- melling 15y agoAir bubbles would escape and you would have to make it smaller. That was a really stupid question. Yes, sometimes I wish I could be Steve and herd the Geek community. I could make a shippable Linux that consumers would pay for. Gnome, KDE, Unity... Hey, let's call it LibreOffice... get it? Geeks should try to think like normal humans... All that effort could actually change the world.
- melling 15y agoThe point was that Steve wanted it smaller so he made a dramatic gesture to demonstrate to the engineers that he would not accept no for an answer. Steve understood what is important in a product, and more importantly, what is not. The Linux community, for example, has spent many years divided, building several window managers and hundreds of distros, never focusing on what is really important to consumers, in general. The iPad already has more Internet market share than desktop Linux in a very short period of time. Was that better guys? Personally I like my first response better. Definitely had more flavor, but hey, this is HN and one needs to tread lightly.
- ScottBurson 15y agoI've never worked for Apple and never really aspired to, mostly because my interests didn't overlap with what I thought I would probably be doing there, but partly, I have to admit, because I had heard the stories of Steve the tyrant and was put off by them. Maybe my ego is sturdier now, because I wonder if I wouldn't have enjoyed the challenges he set people. One thing is for sure, you could know that if you did what he wanted, it wasn't going to be a me-too product.
- jonnathanson 15y agoI've worked briefly at Apple, but had only one face-to-face encounter with Steve. It was intensely scary. He was loved -- LOVED -- on the Apple campus. But he was also feared. And I felt that fear when I saw him. He was, and remains, the only person I've been genuinely "star struck" upon encountering. A lot of that was born of admiration, but just as much was born of terror. In retrospect, I realized that I wasn't really afraid of Steve. I was afraid of myself: my limitations, my shortcomings, my relative talent (or lack thereof), and my performance in life vis-a-vis my self-theorized potential. When I saw Steve Jobs in the flesh, I saw an embodiment of everything I was not, and probably never would be. Frankly, I felt like a fraud. I felt unworthy. A lot of that seems silly now, and will strike readers of this post as childish, if not fawningly fanboyish. But it was a very intense feeling that he inspired, even if unintentionally.
- michaelochurch 15y ago99% of corporate executives and celebrities are underwhelming in actuality. You find yourself saying, "I could do that" or at least, "I know someone who could do his job". And you know what? Most of the time, that sense is right. The people on the top of society's heap are generally not more interesting or talented than the average HN poster-- possibly less so. Steve Jobs is not in that category. His combination of vision, discipline, and courage is unusual.
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- Alex3917 15y agoThis idea of people as heroes or villains strikes me as being myopic. The very idea that people can be either good or bad shows that we're all just mushrooms growing out of a much larger mycelium. Ever notice that so many of the most popular American tourist destinations are places like machu picchu, the great wall of china, the pyramids, etc? The fact that these places exist says far less about their creators than it does about the societies that produced them. (Although perhaps the fact that Americans are obsessed with the monuments of slavery and fascism says something about us.)
- iand 15y agoContrary to popular belief, the pyramids weren't built by slaves. They needed precision and skill. http://www.nationalgeographic.com/pyramids/pyramids.html#who http://www.nationalgeographic.com/pyramids/pyramids.html#who
- ars 15y agoI always thought that was a terrible argument. So they weren't slaves like blacks in the US south, but they could have still been slaves. Slaves can have skill, families and pride in their work. Historically some slaves were trusted to go out on their own and do business for their owner, and not run away! Some slaves became so important to their master than they actually inherited the estate when the master died. So they may have been high level slaves, but slaves nonetheless.
- Alex3917 15y ago"So they weren't slaves like blacks in the US south, but they could have still been slaves." Relationships are complicated, maybe its best not to put labels on things. In all seriousness though, regardless of what their specific status was, most societies where people are building things like pyramids tend to be pretty messed up.
- ars 15y agoA slave is someone who does not have permission to chose his own work, and does not have permission to (or is prevented from) quiting. (Note that I said permission, not ability.) A slave can still be paid. Based on my definition of slave I believe the pyramids were built by slaves.
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- paul9290 15y agoHistory shows many luminaries to be like Jobs was or even worse; ruthless and totally unethical. Thomas Edison (http://www.reformation.org/thomas-edison.html http://www.reformation.org/thomas-edison.html) comes to mind.
- _delirium 15y agoTrue, though there are plenty of very humble, friendly luminaries as well. Woz and Bob Moog come to mind.
- lurker19 15y agoWho is Bob Moog? The class that includes Edison and Jobs is the class that wins the recognition and respect of the general public, including my 80 year old aunt who has never used an Apple product. I guess of doesn't really matter though, if the luminaries and some of their fans choose not to care what the public thinks. The nice thing about choosing your own definition of success is that we can congratulate both Jobs and Woz for their success even though they reached incredibly divergent outcomes and there is no way they could have ever both reached the same point.
- the_grind 15y agoThere is no doubt he left his mark on the world. However, I'd bet that > 90% of people who are praising him now would never have enjoyed working for him in any capacity.
- nknight 15y agoI'll bet some of the people who willingly did so for years didn't really like "working for Steve". If you get enough satisfaction out of the results, though, that doesn't really matter as much. People sometimes stay in otherwise intolerably boring jobs for years because they really like their bosses and/or coworkers, and sometimes they stay in incredibly exciting and fulfilling jobs for years despite loathing same.
- gbsi 15y agoI've worked with dictators (kitchen chefs in very high end restaurants) since I was 13.. First I hated it then it got to me.. If you're truly passionate about something, and its your life mission, not much else matters. http://www.sagmeister.com/work/all#/node/207 http://www.sagmeister.com/work/all#/node/207
- mikeash 15y agoI imagine you're right, but so what? A lot of excellent people are unpleasant in person in some circumstances. There's a lot more to being praiseworthy than simply being a nice person.
- wuster 15y agoI've wondered about this myself - while I admire his accomplishments greatly, the stories of the kind of fear and admiration of Steve as a boss makes me wonder if that type of personality would have jived well with my wanting constructive feedback and positive reinforcement. It appears that in his later years (2000s), he attributed credit to his team and thanked them for hard work whenever he introduced a major product. Tangent: One person would have first hand knowledge of Steve's management style: Andy Hertzfeld of the original Macintosh team: https://plus.google.com/117840649766034848455/posts https://plus.google.com/117840649766034848455/posts
- chaostheory 15y ago"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." Bernard Shaw
- saturn 15y agoI have always thought that quote was ridiculous. What is unreasonable about noticing an improvement can be made in your surroundings, and endeavouring to make it? There is a grain of truth I suppose, vis-a-vis humanity's general restlessness, fixing what ain't broke, etc, but I think that this generalisation that anyone who isn't perfectly happy and satisfied with the exact present state of things is "unreasonable" is not true at all.
- chaostheory 15y ago> What is unreasonable about noticing an improvement can be made in your surroundings, and endeavouring to make it? I guess if the Steve Jobs aquarium urban legend didn't sound unreasonable, you probably have the silicon valley mindset. It's really easy to think of the current state of things and to feel that everything done up to now is 'reasonable'; especially if you live in a really progressive, techno-friendly place like Silicon Valley. You need to know the historical context from the perspective of an average non-technical person in places that aren't as open minded and progressive. One example would be an average person wondering why people wasted their time making unreliable experimental horseless carriages when clearly horses were superior. I also can't help but think of the author of Gulliver's Travels making fun of people experimenting with electricity.
- lurker19 15y agoBeing dissatisfied isn't what was considered unreasonable. Thinking that changing the world is easier than changing your expectations is what is considered unreasonable. From a frequentist statistical point of view, that is true. But some people are outliers who are able to bend the world to their will.
- reledi 15y agoI would like that quote more if it read > Therefore all innovation because I think progress can still happen in a world that does not adapt to change, but innovation cannot.
- m0wfo 15y agoApparently he died of an extremely rare variant of pancreatic cancer called node.js
- funkdobiest 15y agoHe was a visionary. He foresaw his own death, and started wrapping things up back in August.
- podperson 15y agoThis article along with the New Yorker's piece rank as the best I've read since he died. He was an amazing man, and changed my life and many others', but not perfect.