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Jobs was an idea person, not an engineer. You have to imagine the engineer getting excited about the ideas going into building something. Later, Jobs sees that

Jobs was an idea person, not an engineer. You have to imagine the engineer getting excited about the ideas going into building something. Later, Jobs sees that same idea popping up everywhere, and his natural response is to claim that it was "ripped off". I think the same thing happened with the iPhone/Android controversy. Many of the similarities are emergent from the technology that became available at that time (larger screens, accurate multitouch panels, faster processors), but all Jobs saw is the idea.

jgw 15y ago
This has been bugging me for a while, too. Jobs is given (and quite frankly, claimed) credit for far more than he deserves. The sad part about that is that it actually detracts from the many tremendously significant contributions things he did make. But as far as invention goes, I don't think Steve Jobs actually invented anything other than, well, Steve Jobs.
- micahgoulart 15y ago
  This comes up all the time. Here's a quick way to put that argument to rest, an interactive feature by the New York Times showing the patents Steve Jobs is personally listed on: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/08/24/technology/steve-jobs-patents.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/08/24/technology/ste...
  - munin 15y ago
    "CLAIM The ornamental design for packaging, as shown and described." really?
    - Cushman 15y ago
      It's called a design patent. It explicitly covers only the ornamental, non-functional design of the object, and is subject to somewhat different terms than a utility patent. In terms of IP law, it's actually quite reasonable. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_patent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_patent
      - munin 15y ago
        appreciated, however I don't think that people mean "design" as in aesthetic design when they say "invented" for example, the spinning beach ball is patented... I think we have passed the point where "patented" has anything to do with what people think of as "invention"
  - Pheter 15y ago
    How does this put the argument to rest?
  - gnaffle 15y ago
    While he did invent lots of stuff, I think it's pretty undisputed by the people close to him such as Jony Ive and Andy Hertzfeld, that Steve was famous for claiming other peoples ideas as his own. [Edit: Jony Ive describes this in chapter 26 of the biography. See folklore.org for more examples.]
  - Drbble 15y ago
    The CEO is on a lot of corporate patent applications for contributing" to the invention. I have seen two CEOs on my applications for patents.
- gnaffle 15y ago
  Jony Ive mentioned this in the biography, and said it was especially annoying to him since he always remembered who came up with an idea. It's the same "phenomenon" described by Hertzfeld here: http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Reality_Distortion_Field.txt http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Reality_Distortion_Fi... That said, this story is about an invention that Steve Jobs _doesn't_ take credit for. It's another example of how Isaacsons biography gets simple facts wrong by simply quoting people without doing research (just like the NeXT quote by Bill Gates discussed earlier). Also, I think Steve Jobs comes off as belittling the accomplishments of Woz here, by saying that the power supply was just as revolutionary as the logic board, which apparently is clearly false.
gnaffle 15y ago
Well, it's hard to say that other companies didn't rip off the "idea" of the iPhone. After all, all the hardware had been available for a number of years, including displays, CPUs, GPUs, capacitive touchscreens, batteries etc. Someone else could easily have come along with a multitouch phone two years earlier, but nobody did. Of course, the "idea" of the iPhone wasn't new either, but Apple was the first to make the idea into a working, usable product.
- oconnore 15y ago
  You just contradicted yourself: "it's hard to say that other companies didn't rip off the 'idea' of the iPhone." and "Of course, the 'idea' of the iPhone wasn't new either". If the idea wasn't new, then other companies weren't ripping off the iPhone's idea. I'm not attempting to detract from the fact that Apple executed on the iPhone almost perfectly. Realizing that the market was ready, and then providing a product that delivers on that analysis is what Jobs should be known for, not this notion that he invented multitouch devices.
  - gnaffle 15y ago
    Maybe I should have written that they ripped off Apples _implementation_ of the idea. Or maybe they were just "inspired". The right question to ask is this: Would multiple capacitive multitouch phones similar to the iPhone have been introduced in 2007 / 2008 if the iPhone had never launched? Some people seem to think so, but I see no evidence that other companies were working on similar technology / user interfaces at the time, and plenty of evidence that they were caught off guard.
- gst 15y ago
  There's a simple reason why Apple was often the first one to put something into a product: They could afford to sell high-end products for a high price and know that they still have lots of users who buy their stuff. Most of the other companies had prototypes using those technologies available, but they didn't build products out of them because (at this point) they would have been too expensive for their target audience. And even if those other companies built a product before Apple, Apple would still claim that it was first: Two examples: (1) LG Prada (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada) was there before the iPhone, yet (AFAIK) Apple claims that basically all the touchscreen phones are a copy of the iPhone. And (2) Netbooks and Subnotebooks have been on the market for nearly a decade now - I've used Thinkpad X-series laptops for years now (which weight about as much as a Macbook Air). Still, as soon as a company announes a new Subnotebook now someone will claim that it is a copy of the Macbook Air.

jgw 15y ago

This has been bugging me for a while, too. Jobs is given (and quite frankly, claimed) credit for far more than he deserves. The sad part about that is that it actually detracts from the many tremendously significant contributions things he did make. But as far as invention goes, I don't think Steve Jobs actually invented anything other than, well, Steve Jobs.

micahgoulart 15y ago
This comes up all the time. Here's a quick way to put that argument to rest, an interactive feature by the New York Times showing the patents Steve Jobs is personally listed on: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/08/24/technology/steve-jobs-patents.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/08/24/technology/ste...
- munin 15y ago
  "CLAIM The ornamental design for packaging, as shown and described." really?
  - Cushman 15y ago
    It's called a design patent. It explicitly covers only the ornamental, non-functional design of the object, and is subject to somewhat different terms than a utility patent. In terms of IP law, it's actually quite reasonable. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_patent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_patent
    - munin 15y ago
      appreciated, however I don't think that people mean "design" as in aesthetic design when they say "invented" for example, the spinning beach ball is patented... I think we have passed the point where "patented" has anything to do with what people think of as "invention"
- Pheter 15y ago
  How does this put the argument to rest?
- gnaffle 15y ago
  While he did invent lots of stuff, I think it's pretty undisputed by the people close to him such as Jony Ive and Andy Hertzfeld, that Steve was famous for claiming other peoples ideas as his own. [Edit: Jony Ive describes this in chapter 26 of the biography. See folklore.org for more examples.]
- Drbble 15y ago
  The CEO is on a lot of corporate patent applications for contributing" to the invention. I have seen two CEOs on my applications for patents.
gnaffle 15y ago
Jony Ive mentioned this in the biography, and said it was especially annoying to him since he always remembered who came up with an idea. It's the same "phenomenon" described by Hertzfeld here: http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Reality_Distortion_Field.txt http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Reality_Distortion_Fi... That said, this story is about an invention that Steve Jobs _doesn't_ take credit for. It's another example of how Isaacsons biography gets simple facts wrong by simply quoting people without doing research (just like the NeXT quote by Bill Gates discussed earlier). Also, I think Steve Jobs comes off as belittling the accomplishments of Woz here, by saying that the power supply was just as revolutionary as the logic board, which apparently is clearly false.

gnaffle 15y ago

Well, it's hard to say that other companies didn't rip off the "idea" of the iPhone. After all, all the hardware had been available for a number of years, including displays, CPUs, GPUs, capacitive touchscreens, batteries etc. Someone else could easily have come along with a multitouch phone two years earlier, but nobody did. Of course, the "idea" of the iPhone wasn't new either, but Apple was the first to make the idea into a working, usable product.

oconnore 15y ago
You just contradicted yourself: "it's hard to say that other companies didn't rip off the 'idea' of the iPhone." and "Of course, the 'idea' of the iPhone wasn't new either". If the idea wasn't new, then other companies weren't ripping off the iPhone's idea. I'm not attempting to detract from the fact that Apple executed on the iPhone almost perfectly. Realizing that the market was ready, and then providing a product that delivers on that analysis is what Jobs should be known for, not this notion that he invented multitouch devices.
- gnaffle 15y ago
  Maybe I should have written that they ripped off Apples _implementation_ of the idea. Or maybe they were just "inspired". The right question to ask is this: Would multiple capacitive multitouch phones similar to the iPhone have been introduced in 2007 / 2008 if the iPhone had never launched? Some people seem to think so, but I see no evidence that other companies were working on similar technology / user interfaces at the time, and plenty of evidence that they were caught off guard.
gst 15y ago
There's a simple reason why Apple was often the first one to put something into a product: They could afford to sell high-end products for a high price and know that they still have lots of users who buy their stuff. Most of the other companies had prototypes using those technologies available, but they didn't build products out of them because (at this point) they would have been too expensive for their target audience. And even if those other companies built a product before Apple, Apple would still claim that it was first: Two examples: (1) LG Prada (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_Prada) was there before the iPhone, yet (AFAIK) Apple claims that basically all the touchscreen phones are a copy of the iPhone. And (2) Netbooks and Subnotebooks have been on the market for nearly a decade now - I've used Thinkpad X-series laptops for years now (which weight about as much as a Macbook Air). Still, as soon as a company announes a new Subnotebook now someone will claim that it is a copy of the Macbook Air.