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He designed new fluid monitors and x-ray equipment. He redrew that not-quite-special-enough hospital unit. It is scary to think what Steve could have accomplis

He designed new fluid monitors and x-ray equipment. He redrew that not-quite-special-enough hospital unit. It is scary to think what Steve could have accomplished if he lived into his 70's.

chugger 15y ago
it's even scarier to think what the millions of artists, entrepreneurs, etc. who Steve inspired will accomplish in the future. Right now there's someone working on the next billion dollar start-up in his garage that's going to blow us all away because he was inspired by Steve. That's Steve's greatest legacy.
- acangiano 15y ago
  I expressed the same thought on my blog a few weeks ago: "He managed to inspire a whole industry, while doing what he truly loved. Millions of entrepreneurs world wide have been inspired to do the same as a result of his work. This may be his greatest legacy and something that will live on in all of us long after his passing."
plnewman 15y ago
I once read that Howard Hughes did something similar while he was recuperating from an accident.
- philwelch 15y ago
  Robert Heinlein, while hospitalized, once designed, in his head, a far more comfortable hospital bed. He later wrote about it in one of his books in such great detail that when the waterbed was eventually invented, it couldn't be patented because Heinlein's written descriptions gave so much detail to qualify as prior art.
jodrellblank 15y ago
I do wonder; he was a multi billionaire personally, and Apple was a multi tens-of-billionaire as a company. So what was the most causative bottleneck stopping more new products and creations? Clearly not financial limits. Apparently not a lack of ideas. Was it logistical organisation of stuff? Managerial organisation of people? Which was the most constrained resource? Had anyone studied it or tried to optimise it?
- cstross 15y ago
  Diffusion of responsibility? When trying to create something disruptive and radical, it is much easier to screw things up than to get them right. (There are more Dunning-Kruger poster children with grandiose over-estimates of their own ability out there than there are actual geniuses.) Most corporations are structured to restrain loose cannons in positions of authority, because everybody except the loose cannon in question is afraid of losing their meal ticket. (See, for example, the recent fiasco at HP, where Leo Apotheker decided to turn HP into a fundamentally different kind of corporation and did immense damage to internal groups that didn't fit within his vision.) The standard form of corporate restraining structure is the committee. Committees are designed to promote consensus decisions, and consensus decisions stop random-looking outbursts from happening. From the stake-holders' point of view, this is a good thing. However, committee decision-making gets in the way not only of the very common bad internal entrepreneur, but in the way of the much rarer good internal entrepreneur. The last time Steve Jobs answered to a committee was 1985. And they fired him. Thereafter, he carefully structured his working environments as start-ups, where the founder could impose their autocratic will on the company without having to drag a boat anchor of committees after him. For most people, this would have been disastrous. Luckily for Jobs, he was as good as he thought he was.
  - jodrellblank 15y ago
    So the main bottleneck that meant Jobs-led-Apple released N products instead of N+1, was an attribute of Jobs himself? Because that doesn't bode well for Apple in future. Or for any of us looking to ape them.
  - adavies42 15y ago
    Apple is the modern poster child for both the best and the worst aspects of monarchy--a great king can accomplish far more than a great president/prime minister ever can, but the succession plan is to roll some dice and hope....

He designed new fluid monitors and x-ray equipment. He redrew that not-quite-special-enough hospital unit. It is scary to think what Steve could have accomplished if he lived into his 70's.

chugger 15y ago

it's even scarier to think what the millions of artists, entrepreneurs, etc. who Steve inspired will accomplish in the future. Right now there's someone working on the next billion dollar start-up in his garage that's going to blow us all away because he was inspired by Steve. That's Steve's greatest legacy.

acangiano 15y ago
I expressed the same thought on my blog a few weeks ago: "He managed to inspire a whole industry, while doing what he truly loved. Millions of entrepreneurs world wide have been inspired to do the same as a result of his work. This may be his greatest legacy and something that will live on in all of us long after his passing."

plnewman 15y ago

I once read that Howard Hughes did something similar while he was recuperating from an accident.

philwelch 15y ago
Robert Heinlein, while hospitalized, once designed, in his head, a far more comfortable hospital bed. He later wrote about it in one of his books in such great detail that when the waterbed was eventually invented, it couldn't be patented because Heinlein's written descriptions gave so much detail to qualify as prior art.

jodrellblank 15y ago

I do wonder; he was a multi billionaire personally, and Apple was a multi tens-of-billionaire as a company. So what was the most causative bottleneck stopping more new products and creations? Clearly not financial limits. Apparently not a lack of ideas. Was it logistical organisation of stuff? Managerial organisation of people? Which was the most constrained resource? Had anyone studied it or tried to optimise it?

cstross 15y ago
Diffusion of responsibility? When trying to create something disruptive and radical, it is much easier to screw things up than to get them right. (There are more Dunning-Kruger poster children with grandiose over-estimates of their own ability out there than there are actual geniuses.) Most corporations are structured to restrain loose cannons in positions of authority, because everybody except the loose cannon in question is afraid of losing their meal ticket. (See, for example, the recent fiasco at HP, where Leo Apotheker decided to turn HP into a fundamentally different kind of corporation and did immense damage to internal groups that didn't fit within his vision.) The standard form of corporate restraining structure is the committee. Committees are designed to promote consensus decisions, and consensus decisions stop random-looking outbursts from happening. From the stake-holders' point of view, this is a good thing. However, committee decision-making gets in the way not only of the very common bad internal entrepreneur, but in the way of the much rarer good internal entrepreneur. The last time Steve Jobs answered to a committee was 1985. And they fired him. Thereafter, he carefully structured his working environments as start-ups, where the founder could impose their autocratic will on the company without having to drag a boat anchor of committees after him. For most people, this would have been disastrous. Luckily for Jobs, he was as good as he thought he was.
- jodrellblank 15y ago
  So the main bottleneck that meant Jobs-led-Apple released N products instead of N+1, was an attribute of Jobs himself? Because that doesn't bode well for Apple in future. Or for any of us looking to ape them.
- adavies42 15y ago
  Apple is the modern poster child for both the best and the worst aspects of monarchy--a great king can accomplish far more than a great president/prime minister ever can, but the succession plan is to roll some dice and hope....