8 ms·
I really miss him in today’s world. I fantasize how he would have had the intellectual ability to dissect the craziness we’re seeing and putting it into perspec
by baxtr 2y ago
I really miss him in today’s world. I fantasize how he would have had the intellectual ability to dissect the craziness we’re seeing and putting it into perspective with some smart words.
- smolder 2y agoI think he'd be lined up with the other tech leaders just doing what's needed to gain power. He wasn't a saint, he was just a bit of a visionary with the greed to succeed.
- consumer451 2y agoPersonally, I hold him in somewhat high regard. At the same time, he made billions while conspiring to deprive many HN users of their just rewards. This should not be forgotten, or forgiven. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/04/24/306592297/tech-giants-settle-wage-fixing-lawsuit https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/04/24/306592297... https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/y9eyxq/til_during_the_2000s_google_apple_adobe_intel_and/ https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/y9eyxq/til_d...
- DC-3 2y ago> just rewards * liberalised labour market rewards unless you think there is inherent moral justice in being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to write software
- consumer451 2y agoYeah, I escaped communism as a child, so please excuse my potential bias. While I think that pure libertarians are just as silly as pure socialists, I do believe in the benefits of a well regulated market economy. If the market economy indicates that a dev with particular skills can be paid even 10M per year, then heck yes. Good for them. If the companies who hire these devs could not pay that, then the market for them would not exist. They could, and conspired not to. This is why they settled the case.
- bertylicious 2y ago[flagged]
- consumer451 2y ago> and it probably wasn't even communism. Please, tell me more! In your opinion, has "commumism" ever really existed/been implemented properly at scale? If so, please give me an example.
- bertylicious 2y agoThere just aren't that many countries that ever claimed to be communist. You speak like a privileged person, so you're probably born somewhere in the western world. Judging from the current time, I'd say Europe. My guess is your parents left socialist (i.e. not communist) Eastern Germany when you were little and you keep telling people that this was your great escape from communism ever since.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- consumer451 2y agoLet us avoid the personal, and entirely inaccurate personal attacks on myself. Instead, let's focus on openly provable facts: > There just aren't that many countries that ever claimed to be communist. Are you denying the agency of Russia, Cuba, China, and Vietnam as a few examples? Are you telling me that these countries did not at one point, and most even today, declare themselves as "communist?" It's amazing how privileged you are to deny factual history. [0] To be honest, I feel that you are agreeing with me that "communism" is just some theoretical panacea, as is "libertarianism." Both theoretical concepts which only ever existed in minds of true-believers, and nowhere else. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_socialist_states https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_socialist_states
- 2y ago
- saagarjha 2y agoSeems more moral than their employer conspiring to deprive them of that
- DC-3 2y agotrue
- whateveracct 2y agookay britta - are there people starving in uganda too?
- ikekkdcjkfke 2y agoI guess if you harbour skills that exceed those rewards you could start on your own taking your own risks. There are some tradeoffs and simple marxism does not take into account all the variables
- sneak 2y agoHe was a criminal who literally conspired to steal billions. It wasn’t just deprivation; it was stealing.
- colechristensen 2y agoI’d say he was… half as bad.
- kortilla 2y ago“greed to succeed” is a simplistic trope. He was already wealthy by the time he went back to fix Apple.
- smolder 2y agoI meant it a bit differently. You can still have drive to succeed even when money doesn't have much marginal utility. Social capital is a thing, not to completely discount money as a motivator.
- someothherguyy 2y ago"Already wealthy, no desire for more" is a trope as well
- kortilla 2y agoGreed is not a good driver for risking so much time on a failing company
- BurningFrog 2y agoI don't think anyone has claimed he was a saint... He had a genius for dreaming up products the world didn't know it needed yet, and for developing those products to perfection. Several of those products were quantum leaps that the world would not have figured out for several years, if ever, without Jobs.
- Hizonner 2y agoUm, bullshit. Apple II: Very similar to contemporary products. Interesting improvements added by Wozniak. Lisa: Stolen from Xerox (and made worse). Jobs' contribution: cosmetics, mostly. Mac: Oops, the Lisa was too good. Next: A somewhat better Xerox ripoff with a mix-in of other common stuff. Newton: OK, somewhat innovative. iPod: Stolen from a whole bunch of people iPhone: Nothing but a PDA with a phone integrated in it. Obvious next step. As for "developing to perfection", well, if a smooth, candy-colored shell around a deliberately limited device is perfection, then yeah. I guess you can credit Jobs with a willingness to break from standards, but not with unusually good judgement about when to do it.
- thomassmith65 2y agoTo recap: • Steve Jobs's bad judgment led to the Apple II, Mac, iPod, and iPhone. • John Sculley's good judgment led to the Apple Newton. That assessment seems like a refusal to be impressed by the public idolatry of Steve Jobs. Yet even if he wasn't some superhuman philosopher king, nor even supremely technical, he still had talent, and did help bring some seminal tech products into the world.
- Hizonner 2y agoIt's an "innovation" coin, not a "judgement" coin or a "profitability" coin. For some reason, people get the idea that innovation comes from executive management. It doesn't. Popularization may. Commercial success may. Innovation generally doesn't. Jobs had talent for (a) packaging up existing stuff, but not in shockingly innovative ways, (b) recognizing and refusing to accept garbage products, and (c) selling the stuff. That's all execution, not innovation.
- khazhoux 2y ago> he was just a bit of a visionary Maybe he deserves "a bit" more credit than that?
- antris 2y agoJobs didn't believe in cancer treatment https://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2011/10/24/steve-jobs-cancer-treatment-regrets/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2011/10/24/steve-j... I'm pretty sure he'd have fell in line to the fascist insanity just like all other billionaires. He lived at the time of the height of neoliberal ideology, when most people believed in the conjured public images that the tech bro CEOs gave out in PR. Behind the scenes, things were quite different. Jobs has been reported to be petty, insulting and belittling of his employees
- Mistletoe 2y agoI'm not even a Jobs fanboy but let's give him the benefit of the doubt. He at least believed in things, which is more than I can say for the tech giants that are bending the knee right now.
- antris 2y agoWell I'm just going by what's been reported in the media. It gives no indication that Jobs was an anti-fascist ready to resist.
- caycep 2y agoat least judging from his products sense, what he believed in was more grounded in the real world
- goosejuice 2y agoOh they believe in things... https://a16z.com/the-techno-optimist-manifesto/ https://a16z.com/the-techno-optimist-manifesto/
- ConradKilroy 2y agoThank you for referencing his idiot behavior leading to his own demise, I hope that will be on his coin.
- khazhoux 2y ago
- 999900000999 2y agoWoz is still here.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- tgv 2y agoHe’s by and large responsible for mobile phone/social media addiction, which is bad enough on its own, but also enables divisive propaganda, and you think he could offer perspective?
- wqaatwt 2y agoThat’s like Henry Ford is by and large responsible for most traffic related deaths since 1910s. Technically correct, I suppose. Entirely meaningless, though…
- tgv 2y agoBut it wouldn't make Henry Ford the person you hope will solve your traffic jam.
- cbozeman 2y agoThis is hilariously offbase and untrue. Social media was already taking off long before the iPhone was on the scene. Facebook was open to the public in 2006, MySpace had already taken off like a rocket at that time, receiving more visitors than Google and Yahoo in the US. Twitter launched in 2006 as well. The iPhone wasn't the first smartphone - not even close in fact. It was just "the best" in terms of user experience, and caused a rapid acceleration of development for Android, which had started to shift to mobile phone development in 2004 anyway, but really hit overdrive when the iPhone was debuted. Windows Mobile 6 was out at this time - 2008 - and it was straight trash. I had a T-Mobile Wing that I got in 2006, I believe it had Windows Mobile 5.1. It's usability was a joke compared to the iPhone. This pushed Microsoft to create a mobile OS, and eventually they had something that could have been a real contender, because Windows Phone had a really fantastic interface that actually was a lot more usable than iOS or Android, but Microsoft made fuckup after fuckup in a series of events that almost defies belief.
- tgv 2y agoExactly. The combination of those things is what enabled the cancerous growth of facebook and twitter. Perhaps "by and large" irked you, but Jobs' contribution was essential.
- teleforce 2y agoHis vision for PC based world even far surpassed of Gates with the Next platform in which two important technology underpinning the online world were invented using the platform namely the WWW by Berners-Lee and the Doom by Carmack. Not to say that now most of the Apple devices from smartphone, laptop, PC, tablet, smartwatch, etc, are currently using Next derived system as their operating systems. He also envisioned one of the ultimate aim of computers is creating an experience where we can resurrect Aristotle intelligence and interact with him to receive his wisdom, not unlike something like LLM that we have today.