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Of course, what makes you famous is how good is your "reality distortion field". No one buys "facts", people buy "stories". Steve Jobs never really invented an

• chasing 4y ago
  > Steve Jobs never really invented anything but he knew how to play the role. As far as I'm aware, Steve Jobs was, in fact, both the founder and former CEO of Apple. Unless he was pulling one HELLUVA ruse that I was unaware of.
  • diego_moita 4y ago
    My point is: * He didn't create the Apple II, Wozniak did. * He didn't create the mouse, GUI and Ethernet, the guys at Xerox's Palo Alto research centre did it. * He didn't really create Pixar, bought it from George Lucas. His idea and project was to have the company to make and sell hardware for CG, because that was the only thing he had ever done at Apple & Next. The movie production was an offshot from the demos and the business of creating intros for television shows. * He didn't create the iPhone. In fact Apple's engineers had to pressure him for years before he accepted. What got him accepting the idea was the fiasco on having iTunes into a Nokia phone. * He didn't invent the Appstore. In fact he only accepted the idea of people making apps to the iPhone because 6 months after release the sales were collapsing. Apple was and still is a very smart company. I concede that he was good at surrounding himself with smart people, and taking merit for what those people did.
    • another2another 4y ago
      And I don't believe he ever claimed to have. He was however the catalyst that allowed many smart and dedicated engineers to develop the things they did. Giving them drive and direction, money and resources to play with and develop the toys of their dreams. I love the folklore.org website that talks a lot about this. This means he does not fit in your list of fraudster and hucksters.
    • danaris 4y ago
      There's a big difference between "this person was a con-man, never actually did any of the things they claimed, and was outright lying in order to present a marketable persona" and "this person is commonly given more credit in the creation of some things than they deserve, but they were closely involved with all those things, and were unquestionably a major figure in their field, regardless of the extra hype that has attached to them (even if they may have encouraged some of that extra hype)". Steve Jobs was not a con-man. In fact, to the best of my knowledge, he never claimed personal credit for the things you're saying he didn't do; those were things that were attributed to him by others.
      • thecoppinger 4y ago
        Well, I think Diego’s point was that he knew how to create and utilise a powerful “reality distortion field” such that, without claiming direct creation over any of the vast classics that Apple created, he gained the status and fame of someone who seemed to have done so.
        • Retric 4y ago
          Trying to support someone’s point that’s literally unfounded seems odd in a discussion about “reality distortion fields.” People also assumed Bill Gates created DOS because they are misinformed, no reality distortion field required.
    • blowski 4y ago
      Leaders lead talented people into a position where their talents have higher impact.
    • aeternum 4y ago
      Create is a somewhat loaded term because no one person creates things of this scale. A better way of looking at it might be: The Apple II would likely not have been successful without both Wozniak and Jobs. Would the iPhone have come to fruition without Job's leadership, vision, and design + negotiation skills?
      • mixmastamyk 4y ago
        Not in the hands of Scully or Amelio.
      • diob 4y ago
        Yeah, I think you have it. Folks, especially humans for some reason, want to pin things on single individuals rather than groups. Even though our society and it's grand accomplishments are things that typically only groups can accomplish. Even a person building "alone" is building something on the backs of those who came before them. But that desire to name a single person as the "creator" leads to a lot of strife.
    • yucky 4y ago
      You missed the biggest one though - Apple, the company. Which was his creation.
    • AlbertCory 4y ago
      I'm not a huge fan of Jobs, but recognizing a good idea even belatedly and green lighting it, not to mention selling it, is worth a lot. And hiring people who can bring them to you is worth even more, especially if you're able to hear them when they keep insisting.
      • throwawaylinux 4y ago
        How do we even know it was belatedly? Something a lot of engineers fail to realize is that a successful product is not just about technology, it is about timing, cost, ecosystem, market. Who's to say Jobs didn't think the iPhone was not a good idea, but shouldn't be done earlier? The iPhone 10-15 years before the iPhone was the Newton.
        • AlbertCory 4y ago
          I was thinking of the PARC demo, where he famously said, "my guys were bugging me to go see this."
          • throwawaylinux 4y ago
            Seems like another case of technology existing ahead of other conditions required to successfully bring it to market.
    • TylerE 4y ago
      People use products, not abstract technology.
    • sosborn 4y ago
      In everything I've seen, Jobs doesn't say things like "I created xxx," it always seems to be "We created xxx."
    • WalterBright 4y ago
      Without Jobs, * Woz would have remained an obscure engineer working at HP * Apple would never have happened * The Mac would have never existed * Pixar would have vanished without a trace * Apple would have gone bankrupt in 1999 * OSX would never have existed
      • simondotau 4y ago
        If Jobs didn’t return in 1996— * Apple would still be wasting its time marketing 420 SKUs of beige Macintosh, along with its panoply of zero-value-add peripherals * Apple would never have tried to make an iPod, which was, for Apple, an insanely out-of-left-field hobby project driven by Jobs * Without the iPod, there would be no iTunes Store, which near-single-handedly pulled the music industry into its post-Napster era * There would be no iPad, a project inspired by Jobs’ personal reaction to a dinner with Gates * There would be no iPhone, a project spun off from iPad development and fast-tracked for earlier release * If Apple ever did develop a phone or tablet, it probably would have been based on NewtonOS and fail to crack 1% market share * Android would have stayed on course to be a competitor to the Blackberry
    • paleotrope 4y ago
      "I concede that he was good at surrounding himself with smart people" Plus, he had to make the decision ultimately. That's way way way way way way more important than I think most people realize.
    • barrysteve 4y ago
      The iPhone and the Apple Newton before it, was stuck with a stylus. Jobs wouldn't release an iPhone that relied upon a stylus. Multi-touch displays was the key technology Steve Jobs needed to greenlight the iPhone. Steve was completely invested in electing products that generated an experience the customer valued. This didn't always line up with the technical merits of the product. He subordinated the company to that goal, including holding releases back to hit a specific timing. Steve said he did this strategy because he had the scar tissue to prove that making an amazing piece of tech and trying to market it, never worked for him. He didn't create tech. He created relationships to the customer that made Apple billions.
    • Justin_K 4y ago
      I'd actually argue that the engineering is the easy part and doing everything else right, to keep the company going and engineers employed, is the hard part.
  • deleted 4y ago
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• TechBro8615 4y ago
  > Steve Jobs never really invented anything Would we have the iPhone if Steve Jobs were never born?
  • kyriakos 4y ago
    Most likely yes, maybe even by a different company
    • foobarbecue 4y ago
      Maybe it would have been called the mePhone
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    • astrange 4y ago
      There were already smartphones like BlackBerry and Danger. None of them were "the iPhone".
      • wkat4242 4y ago
        No but someone else would have made it eventually. Maybe a little bit later. Tech does not happen in a vacuum, even in earlier centuries the same invention happened around the same time in different parts of the world.
  • dommer 4y ago
    I believe Steve Jobs hate the idea of turning the iPod into a phone. Rejected the idea from his smartest people for a long time.
  • reustle 4y ago
    Definitely. Connected palm pilots / PDAs existed for years before.
    • 4y ago
• zpeti 4y ago
  You’ve clearly never listened to Steve Jobs speak, or you didn’t understand what he was saying. And it’s not just me. A lot of very respected smart people think he was way above them. That’s not a conman. Also, conmen usually have an expiry date or they have to switch roles or disappear into new communities once they get found out. Same with psychopaths. They get found out and get rejected by society. That’s not what Steve Jobs did. He was respected to the end and built products to the end. As a side note, I also think the obsession with UX and design in tech never would have occurred without jobs. The only reason we have fairly well designed apps and websites at this point is jobs’ influence.
  • travisjungroth 4y ago
    Agree with you on conmen getting rooted out. I don’t think that holds for psychopaths or not nearly as much. They can cement themselves in positions of power.
  • foobarbecue 4y ago
    You really should read The Greatest Hoax.
    • rexreed 4y ago
      The Valley of Genius is another great book and doesn't hide much about Steve Jobs and his opportunism. That said, he sure knew how to raise money, build a team, and get attention.
  • lisp-pornstar 4y ago
    Side note : Well designed apps and websites represents exactly what some of us probably find unusable, I often find myself constricted when I'm in front of a windows/mac machine, and everything I use on my computer, ( no trackpad, but a trackpoint, almost no design, a shell, a term, several virtual desktop, no wallpaper or picture, nothing else than text ) is exactly what Mac/windows people find unusable.
• foobarbecue 4y ago
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  • foobarbecue 4y ago
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    • kruuuder 4y ago
      I downvoted your comments because your comments trigger emotions, whereas good comments trigger curiosity. It sounds like you call everyone that liked that movie an idiot with no taste (I haven't seen the movie by the way). Now you even edited your second comment to say "Cowardly downvoters", which is a reason to flag it.
      • foobarbecue 4y ago
        [flagged]
        • colineartheta 4y ago
          I also downvoted, and it’s honestly because your point comes across as not understanding any of Martin Scorsese’s direction and body of work. Nearly all of his movies (primarily, mobster and crime related) are centered around characters and stories of wealth, excess, and the blatant flouting of rules and law in order to obtain power, followed by their near immediate downfall and loss of everything that truly matters. The Wolf of Wall Street, the movie, isn’t about the glorification of wealth: it’s about the vapidity and shallowness of that component of human nature and the ultimate self destruction and meaningless of life when it’s pursued. Someone can recommend that movie because they appreciate that moral and sentiment, not because they want to be a conman investment banker (or a gangster for that matter).
          • foobarbecue 4y ago
            Maybe I should try some more Scorsese. Which movie do you recommend? I'll make an exception to my rule for the purpose of education :-) If he was attempting to do what you describe with TWWS, I think he missed the mark. It seemed to express a a general nihilism rather than some message about how criminals ruin their own lives. Things that would have made the movie better, in my eyes: - At least one female character who was more than an object (Bechdel test was failed by a mile) - Any scene with the perspective of any of the victims (the people whose lives Belfort destroyed are totally out of frame all movie) - If Belfort's supposedly convincing / charismatic speeches were even slightly persuasive or entertaining (he did not sell me that pen at all) - Less time wasted with blurry camera stumbling around on drugs The funny thing is that I loved Catch Me if You Can when I first saw it and went to see TWWS hoping for more of that. So... maybe TWWS was more real. Crime does pay, and financial criminals are not geniuses, just bog-standard douchebags, and they get a slap on the wrist when they're caught and the world keeps spinning. Perhaps THAT is the message.
• heywhatupboys 4y ago
  > Steve Jobs never really invented anything but he knew how to play the role. this is an absurd suggestion. Steve Jobs has been a pioneer in making computing ubiquitous
  • foobarbecue 4y ago
    pioneer != inventor
    • junofan 4y ago
      He’s listed as inventor on hundreds of patents. I think that qualifies.
      • PretzelPirate 4y ago
        Its not surprising that Jobs would be included on patents that were filed by people who worked for or with him. He was known to be mean and pushy and could easily force his name to be included. Do we know of one thing that Jobs actually invented or co-invented, or was he always the marketer?
        • zaroth 4y ago
          Hundreds of things. Peyton just told you that. But you like the idea of Jobs being a “conman” better than the truth so why disabuse you of the notion? In case you’re wondering, filing a patent with an improperly listed inventor is fraud and invalidates the patent. Every patent app includes a signed oath and declaration by the inventors that they did indeed invent it. The idea that Jobs didn’t have direct input on the functionality of novel features of Apple products is beyond absurd. Aside from the fact that he was notoriously hands-on, Apple has been coasting on his achievements and direction for over a decade now.
          • WalterBright 4y ago
            Look at the post-Jobs Apple. It's just been step-wise refinement.
• MrsPeaches 4y ago
  As easy as it is to crap on Paris Hilton, given trauma she survived, I’m actually kinda impressed how well she did in her life. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/mar/18/they-stole-my-childhood-paris-hilton-teenage-trauma-sex-tapes-having-baby-by-surrogate https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/mar/18/they-st...
  • youngtaff 4y ago
    Read that interview yesterday… makes you think about her slightly differently than before
    • tetris11 4y ago
      Does it though? Every single one of us have survived some life-changing childhood drama with varying degrees of severity, but not too many of us act out publicly because of it or ask to have cameras rolling when we do.
  • 4gotunameagain 4y ago
    she did so well, leading a life of promotion of vanity and desolation, drug abuse and promiscuity. Should we thank her for her contribution to a hyper sexualised world as well ? As easy as it is to disregard life choices because of trauma, I'm actually kinda unconvinced.
• graeme 4y ago
  >Steve Jobs never really invented anything but he knew how to play the role. You're of course getting engagement here. But the key difference is this: Abgnale outputted nothing. Steve Jobs outputted Apple, Pixar and Next (basis of Macos and iOS). You can quibble over what share of what credit for the specific products of each of those three companies. But there's no disputing Next wouldn't have existed without him, nor Apple, and Apple would have failed without him. Pixar had been declined by 45 other investors; only Jobs said yes. So it likely would not have got off the ground without him. Everyone involved in the output of those companies speaks highly of him and ascribe him a vital role. Key competitors do the same. Your argument amounts to say: 1. He had a well known reality distortion field 2. Therefore he accomplished nothing and everyone who was there on the ground is wrong, for they were subject to this field 3. All of the output of those companies happened, no thanks to Jobs.
  • rowanG077 4y ago
    Huh? What about his autobiography. Or the movie? I find the Argument that he never "outputted" anything extremely unconvincing.
    • hillcrestenigma 4y ago
      I agree. Abagnale never outputted anything for the public, but he has outputted tremendous good for himself at the expense of others. Him and Jobs both achieved feats that no average man could have achieved.
    • graeme 4y ago
      Abgnale outputted a story. I’ll grant that. Point of my comment is people also accuse Jobs of outputting only a story. But it’s ludicrous to believe all the rest of the stuff is just coincidence that happens to surround Jobs, again and again and again.
    • astrange 4y ago
      He didn't write an autobiography. His biography had some glaring errors (people like Bill Gates are directly quoted as saying things with basic tech mistakes they couldn't have said) and of course he died before it was finished, so he couldn't have reviewed it.
• deleted 4y ago
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• Someone 4y ago
  > Steve Jobs never really invented anything but he knew how to play the role. Do you think orchestra directors or managers of sports teams contribute nothing to their team’s success?