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> it's easy to argue that he was in fact targeting very competent peoples Competent in other fields of endeavour, sure. Jobs was in the business of selling co
by toyg 3y ago
> it's easy to argue that he was in fact targeting very competent peoples
Competent in other fields of endeavour, sure.
Jobs was in the business of selling computers that looked (and worked) good to people who would otherwise hate computers. Dealing with geeks was always (and still is) a necessary evil, so he'd have enough of an ecosystem to sell to "normies".
Jobs fundamentally hated the Macintosh and tried very hard to get away from it very early (Newton, anyone?). Once he got back on the saddle, his first Big Idea was to wrap them into colourful shells, and fuck the tech inside (jesus, was the first iMac dog-slow!). His second idea was to co-opt FOSS and Java developers, again to have enough geeks building stuff for his platform; they would be unceremoniously dropped once the iPod got traction and he could finally get to run the "better Sony" he always wanted to have.
The rest is just stories he told to power his reality-distortion field.
- samtheprogram 3y agoThere’s a couple inaccuracies you’re making, but here’s the most blatant: > Jobs fundamentally hated the Macintosh and tried very hard to get away from it very early (Newton, anyone?). Jobs had nothing to do with the Newton, it was started about a year after he was forced out, Sculley coined the term Personal Digital Assistant, and it was one of the first things killed when Jobs got back to Apple.
- BearOso 3y ago> Jobs was in the business of selling computers that looked (and worked) good to people who would otherwise hate computers. Dealing with geeks was always (and still is) a necessary evil, so he'd have enough of an ecosystem to sell to "normies". NeXT contradicts that. Though, I like how you mention he always wanted to be a "better Sony." That's definitely on point.
- jprival 3y agoSurely Apple recognizes “*nix-sphere web software developers who want a nice laptop” as one of their target professional markets in the OSX era, too. That’s sold a hell of a lot of MacBooks. It’s developers of software for their own platforms that Apple has long had a tense relationship with. The original iMac hardware specs were also pretty reasonable for when it came out, no?