5 ms·

> “how destructively eccentric Jobs could be” I miss Steve Jobs. He was clearly an asshole at close range, but at heart he was a humanist and a bit of a hippie

by pavlov 2y ago

> “how destructively eccentric Jobs could be” I miss Steve Jobs. He was clearly an asshole at close range, but at heart he was a humanist and a bit of a hippie. He made money but also left the world a better place. Such a massive difference to today’s crop of tech billionaires like Thiel, Andreessen and Musk.

SteveSmith16384 2y ago
History would suggest otherwise. Ripping Woz off springs to mind. And is giving the world expensive Apple products making it a better place?
Clubber 2y ago
I mean electric cars, solar panels, and rockets so we don't have to rely on Russia to get to and from space ain't nothin'. Then there's that torch thing. I can take or leave the other two. Netscape was pretty cool.
- pavlov 2y ago
  As a customer I find a stark difference between Musk and Jobs. I have a Tesla and I was also a customer of Jobs’s Apple since 1999. The big difference is that Jobs never lied to me. Sure, he was an enthusiastic salesman, but the products actually did what was promised. (I even bought Mac OS X 10.0 in a retail box. It was rough but it showed that their new OS is delivering.) Apple products fit my purposes and I kept coming back to buy more. Musk sold me a very expensive feature that still does nothing, six years later. He knew that he was lying about the capabilities of the cars, but still took my $7,500 for a feature that was worth zero. I’m never buying anything from him again. The same approach of bald-faced lies is evident in most of the tech industry today. Cryptocurrency products don’t serve any purpose but enriching people like Andreessen. AI is almost as bad. And now these titans of misinformation are barging into global politics. They don’t care about empowering people and creativity like Jobs did, they just want more personal power.
  - euroderf 2y ago
    It's not "lies" it's "reality distortion". So much more pleasant!
  - Clubber 2y ago
    >Musk sold me a very expensive feature that still does nothing, six years later. He knew that he was lying about the capabilities of the cars, but still took my $7,500 for a feature that was worth zero. I’m never buying anything from him again. I assume you're talking about auto-pilot? >The same approach of bald-faced lies is evident in most of the tech industry today. Cryptocurrency products don’t serve any purpose but enriching people like Andreessen. AI is almost as bad. And now these titans of misinformation are barging into global politics. They don’t care about empowering people and creativity like Jobs did, they just want more personal power. Yes, the tech industry went from promising Star Trek like future to Demolition Man meets 1984 where Taco Bell owns everything and spies on you. It's not great. Stallman was right, but he got conveniently pushed out of the conversation.
    - browningstreet 2y ago
      > I assume you're talking about auto-pilot? Full Self Driving. Tesla doesn't charge extra for Autopilot.
  - yapyap 2y ago
    Jobs lied all the time, only difference was that he had the luck of not being busted cause he could realize the lies before the due date. Not saying this makes him worse than Elon Musk though, Elon is obviously much worse. You can see this in just how he interacts politically and how he used his social media platform to influence elections.
  - 9rx 2y ago
    > The big difference is that Jobs never lied to me. I'm sure he will get around to providing FaceTime as an open industry standard any day now...
    - 2y ago
leoc 2y ago
Jobs is on the whole probably better than the modern "tech right", yes, if only because supposedly he turned down opportunities to get seriously into politics. OTOH, who knows what kind of strange political or personal journey he might possibly have taken if he'd been around for the past decade and more. And in fact I think he may have contributed to the US getting where it is now in (at least) one significant way. By committing his options-backdating caper and then avoiding punishment for it he contributed to the feeling that the Special Boy is too precious to suffer criminal consequences for his actions, something which has likely had consequences for the later career of Musk in particular.
- jkolio 2y ago
  Oh, I'm sure it's even fuzzier than that. Apple's cachet over the past 25 years was built on the type of class consumerism that reflects and then amplifies a lot of America's particular brand of social dysfunction. Much of tech during this time was focused (and continued to focus, to their market detriment, until they "wised" up and stopped) on a sort of egalitarianism; if the proposition is, "Anyone can benefit from our product," most companies whispered the qualifier, "...if you can afford it." Apple, on the other hand, shouted that last part from the rooftops, also encouraging the addendum, "...and it makes you better than people who don't use our products." Apple was a standard-bearer for the toxic exclusivity and gatekeeping that's kind of always been a part of American society, but that we occasionally see some chance of finally throwing off.
  - antonvs 2y ago
    > ... but that we occasionally see some chance of finally throwing off. That seems optimistic to me. What are you thinking of?
    - jkolio 2y ago
      [dead]
  - endemic 2y ago
    > it makes you better than people who don't use our products. It seemed to me that this was more of a product of the fandom. "Even though this Apple computer is less popular/useful, I'm a discerning tastemaker and am better than the unwashed Wintel masses."
yapyap 2y ago
don’t get me wrong Jobs definitely progressed the technology of that time by leading Apple but what exactly did he do to make the world a better place?
- achenet 2y ago
  if you believe that enabling people to easily communicate with each other and access basically the sum total of humanity's knowledge whenever they want is a good thing (ie if you think giving people iPhones so they can message each other and read wikipedia is a good thing), then you can say his work did help with that. You can also say that Macs have helped many people express themselves creatively (iMovie, Garage Band, Logic, Final Cut...), which you might think is a good thing.
  - SteveSmith16384 2y ago
    The technology to do all of those things existed well before iPhones & Macs appeared. You may argue that "yeah but he made them popular", but the iPhone & Mac users were never in the majority.
  - kelnos 2y ago
    At this point in time I'm not yet convinced smartphones are a net positive for humanity. They enable various forms of internet/"social"/consumerist addictions. Sure, there are great and transformative uses for them, but it's not clear to me yet how the scales balance out.
kelnos 2y ago
I'm not sure I'm convinced that running a super-secretive company and building a locked-down status-symbol walled-garden product that takes way the "owner's" freedom to tinker with it pushes him in the "left the world a better place" column. The iPhone and other Apple products are just that: products. There are not many products in history that I'd say made the world a better place. Certainly better-than-previously-available computers and phones wouldn't meet that bar for me. Tell me about all Jobs' philanthropy and maybe I'll agree with you. But you can't, because Jobs ran what was once described as one of the least philanthropic companies operating, and Jobs' own philanthropic activities were either so secretive that we still don't know much about them, or (the more likely option) were more or less nonexistent. I agree that Jobs was probably on the whole better than Thiel, Andreessen, or Musk, but IMO that's not saying much.

by pavlov 2y ago

SteveSmith16384 2y ago

History would suggest otherwise. Ripping Woz off springs to mind. And is giving the world expensive Apple products making it a better place?

Clubber 2y ago

I mean electric cars, solar panels, and rockets so we don't have to rely on Russia to get to and from space ain't nothin'. Then there's that torch thing. I can take or leave the other two. Netscape was pretty cool.

pavlov 2y ago
As a customer I find a stark difference between Musk and Jobs. I have a Tesla and I was also a customer of Jobs’s Apple since 1999. The big difference is that Jobs never lied to me. Sure, he was an enthusiastic salesman, but the products actually did what was promised. (I even bought Mac OS X 10.0 in a retail box. It was rough but it showed that their new OS is delivering.) Apple products fit my purposes and I kept coming back to buy more. Musk sold me a very expensive feature that still does nothing, six years later. He knew that he was lying about the capabilities of the cars, but still took my $7,500 for a feature that was worth zero. I’m never buying anything from him again. The same approach of bald-faced lies is evident in most of the tech industry today. Cryptocurrency products don’t serve any purpose but enriching people like Andreessen. AI is almost as bad. And now these titans of misinformation are barging into global politics. They don’t care about empowering people and creativity like Jobs did, they just want more personal power.
- euroderf 2y ago
  It's not "lies" it's "reality distortion". So much more pleasant!
- Clubber 2y ago
  >Musk sold me a very expensive feature that still does nothing, six years later. He knew that he was lying about the capabilities of the cars, but still took my $7,500 for a feature that was worth zero. I’m never buying anything from him again. I assume you're talking about auto-pilot? >The same approach of bald-faced lies is evident in most of the tech industry today. Cryptocurrency products don’t serve any purpose but enriching people like Andreessen. AI is almost as bad. And now these titans of misinformation are barging into global politics. They don’t care about empowering people and creativity like Jobs did, they just want more personal power. Yes, the tech industry went from promising Star Trek like future to Demolition Man meets 1984 where Taco Bell owns everything and spies on you. It's not great. Stallman was right, but he got conveniently pushed out of the conversation.
  - browningstreet 2y ago
    > I assume you're talking about auto-pilot? Full Self Driving. Tesla doesn't charge extra for Autopilot.
- yapyap 2y ago
  Jobs lied all the time, only difference was that he had the luck of not being busted cause he could realize the lies before the due date. Not saying this makes him worse than Elon Musk though, Elon is obviously much worse. You can see this in just how he interacts politically and how he used his social media platform to influence elections.
- 9rx 2y ago
  > The big difference is that Jobs never lied to me. I'm sure he will get around to providing FaceTime as an open industry standard any day now...
  - 2y ago

leoc 2y ago

Jobs is on the whole probably better than the modern "tech right", yes, if only because supposedly he turned down opportunities to get seriously into politics. OTOH, who knows what kind of strange political or personal journey he might possibly have taken if he'd been around for the past decade and more. And in fact I think he may have contributed to the US getting where it is now in (at least) one significant way. By committing his options-backdating caper and then avoiding punishment for it he contributed to the feeling that the Special Boy is too precious to suffer criminal consequences for his actions, something which has likely had consequences for the later career of Musk in particular.

jkolio 2y ago
Oh, I'm sure it's even fuzzier than that. Apple's cachet over the past 25 years was built on the type of class consumerism that reflects and then amplifies a lot of America's particular brand of social dysfunction. Much of tech during this time was focused (and continued to focus, to their market detriment, until they "wised" up and stopped) on a sort of egalitarianism; if the proposition is, "Anyone can benefit from our product," most companies whispered the qualifier, "...if you can afford it." Apple, on the other hand, shouted that last part from the rooftops, also encouraging the addendum, "...and it makes you better than people who don't use our products." Apple was a standard-bearer for the toxic exclusivity and gatekeeping that's kind of always been a part of American society, but that we occasionally see some chance of finally throwing off.
- antonvs 2y ago
  > ... but that we occasionally see some chance of finally throwing off. That seems optimistic to me. What are you thinking of?
  - jkolio 2y ago
    [dead]
- endemic 2y ago
  > it makes you better than people who don't use our products. It seemed to me that this was more of a product of the fandom. "Even though this Apple computer is less popular/useful, I'm a discerning tastemaker and am better than the unwashed Wintel masses."

yapyap 2y ago

don’t get me wrong Jobs definitely progressed the technology of that time by leading Apple but what exactly did he do to make the world a better place?

achenet 2y ago
if you believe that enabling people to easily communicate with each other and access basically the sum total of humanity's knowledge whenever they want is a good thing (ie if you think giving people iPhones so they can message each other and read wikipedia is a good thing), then you can say his work did help with that. You can also say that Macs have helped many people express themselves creatively (iMovie, Garage Band, Logic, Final Cut...), which you might think is a good thing.
- SteveSmith16384 2y ago
  The technology to do all of those things existed well before iPhones & Macs appeared. You may argue that "yeah but he made them popular", but the iPhone & Mac users were never in the majority.
- kelnos 2y ago
  At this point in time I'm not yet convinced smartphones are a net positive for humanity. They enable various forms of internet/"social"/consumerist addictions. Sure, there are great and transformative uses for them, but it's not clear to me yet how the scales balance out.

kelnos 2y ago

I'm not sure I'm convinced that running a super-secretive company and building a locked-down status-symbol walled-garden product that takes way the "owner's" freedom to tinker with it pushes him in the "left the world a better place" column. The iPhone and other Apple products are just that: products. There are not many products in history that I'd say made the world a better place. Certainly better-than-previously-available computers and phones wouldn't meet that bar for me. Tell me about all Jobs' philanthropy and maybe I'll agree with you. But you can't, because Jobs ran what was once described as one of the least philanthropic companies operating, and Jobs' own philanthropic activities were either so secretive that we still don't know much about them, or (the more likely option) were more or less nonexistent. I agree that Jobs was probably on the whole better than Thiel, Andreessen, or Musk, but IMO that's not saying much.