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It is weird. Jobs was divisive and (not infrequently) abrasive, and why would you miss a tech billionaire anyway? Yet I also feel indebted to him and to the fol

It is weird. Jobs was divisive and (not infrequently) abrasive, and why would you miss a tech billionaire anyway? Yet I also feel indebted to him and to the folks at Apple who helped to produce some of my favorite products like the Mac, the iPod, and the iPad. Jobs also said a lot of things that still resonate with me. Recently Apple introduced a "classic Mac" screensaver that shows how carefully designed the original Mac GUI was. I'm sure nobody misses the days when app bugs could crash the OS, but I wish Apple were as obsessive now about detail now as they were back then.

neom 2y ago
Now that I'm becoming an old man, I've taken the time to go back and listen to him properly, to analize his thoughts and words a bit more contextually, and I've come to believe that Steve Jobs was quite misunderstood, both by us, and by himself. When I miss him I think: his thoughts were so very refined for his time, it is quite incredible and I wish he was around to hear more of them. I guess I'm a fan? Oh well...worse things to be. (the article is good but giving you the hn for comments too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2131299 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2131299)
- 6stringmerc 2y ago
  I still think about how he tried to cure cancer with crystals and then when that didn’t work he used his wealth to get residency in a different state to jump in line for a transplant and still died before his yacht got completed. I don’t misunderstand him at all. Especially the parking in handicap spaces part. Very easy to understand what kind of person he was through his actions. Perhaps we will never see eye to eye, and I feel posts like yours do deserve legitimate opposition as applicable.
  - colechristensen 2y ago
    Ok, but more or less everyone is going to have a few things about them that you’re not going to like. When your whole life is up for scrutiny and you have unlimited resources, that’s how it is. If you had a billion dollars there’d be plenty of things people would criticize about you. And anybody else who did too.
  - pstuart 2y ago
    There's plenty to not like about Jobs as a person, but Apple exists because of him (twice).
  - al_borland 2y ago
    He didn’t jump the line, he just got in multiple lines.
    - hansvm 2y ago
      Sure. On the one hand, everything adhered to the letter of the law. On the other, he used his money to get served before other people in an otherwise similar position would have been able to do. I personally view that as more of a failing in the system itself (why are there multiple lines to begin with when organ transport is a solved problem?), but it's not unreasonable to look at somebody exploiting that broken system and question their character.
      - auggierose 2y ago
        I know very few people who would't use their wealth to try to save their lifes, or that of their loved ones. It's kind of what wealth is for.
        sapphicsnail 2y ago
        You know that's still bad right?
        globular-toast 2y ago
        Why do you only pay the minimum amount of tax?
        elygre 2y ago
        > Why do you only pay the minimum amount of tax? You didn’t pose the question to me. And yet. Very many people don’t. We know there are constructs that would enable us to pay less, yet we choose to not pursue them. We are part of a society that enables us to be what we are, why should we strive to give as little as possible in return? (And yes, we also don’t send extra money. This is not a contradiction.)
  - dlivingston 2y ago
    > Do I contradict myself? > Very well then I contradict myself, > (I am large, I contain multitudes.) When you speak ill of Jobs you are speaking on his moral character. When others (incl. myself) speak positively on Jobs, they are speaking on his design, business, and life philosophies, which are quite profound. [0] How you want to weigh the two is up to you, but it is not a contradiction to say someone contains both good and bad. [0]: https://youtu.be/cHuqhQmc4ok https://youtu.be/cHuqhQmc4ok
    - brookst 2y ago
      The worst part of internet culture is the conflation of simplicity and reductionism. Comments are short, people have different contexts, so there’s an instinct to reduce everything to binary and fight to the death over the binary value. Worst of all is the false good person / bad person dichotomy that leads to great offense at any slight praise for someone the reader has decided is a bad person, or any slight criticism of someone the reader has decided is a good person. I can’t think of anything less fruitful than arguing over whether a public figure’s personal plus professional life makes them a 100% good person or 100% bad person. It’s strange the conversation ever happens, and yet it’s so incredibly common.
  - orangepanda 2y ago
    Pancreatic cancer is known for being incurable, even in the best of circumstances, early diagnose or not. Having witnessed a family member go through the same thing, I understand Jobs's reaction of trying literally anything else.
    - eecc 2y ago
      Sorry for your loss. Though SJ "He was diagnosed with insulinoma, which unlike other pancreatic cancers, is curable and can be treated with surgery." see: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-16157142#:~:text=He%20was%20diagnosed%20with%20insulinoma,his%20pursuit%20of%20alternative%20remedies. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-16157142#:~:text=He%20wa...
      - neom 2y ago
        Well, given apparently the posts in this thread reveal me to be an "manic crazy person" (or such I inferred) - I suppose I'll add to it then by saying: I too have read and understood Yogācārabhūmi-Śāstra. I hadn't thought much about it till today, but, I suspect, will do as Steve did. :) :)
- joseppudev 2y ago
  [dead]
- astrange 2y ago
  He's definitely misunderstood. If you read his biography it's incredible how much the author of it misunderstands, but if you read between the lines you can see through them. In particular you should note how he changes before and after getting married. The biography is really awful though. It constantly misquotes people - Bill Gates is directly quoted as saying something so technically inaccurate he can't possibly have said it. I also remember that every time his son is quoted it's because he was telling a dick joke. At one point the book claims this is why Apple Park is a circle. Why the author did this is not clear to me. (Btw, I have an unreported Jobs story about this myself. Actually two. I'm not going to tell them, so feel free to just imagine.)
  - al_borland 2y ago
    I don’t remember many details from the biography at this point, but I remember not liking it either. It seemed like it was written with the assumption the reader already knew the about Steve’s more public life and career, and skipped over much of it. It didn’t feel like it would be a good source for future generations to learn about Steve, as it seemed to largely ignore the entire reason a book was being written about him. I also remembering it seeming largely negative, trumpeting the views of critics, and while downplaying the good to balance it out. Though this could also be my memory fading, feel free correct me if I’m wrong. It was my first Isaacson biography, and didn’t leave me excited for another one.
    - alpaca128 2y ago
      > I also remembering it seeming largely negative It definitely was, but at least parts of that must have been warranted given Jobs refused to read it, saying something along the lines of "I know I wouldn’t like what it says"
      - al_borland 2y ago
        I think that was him trusting the author to be fair and show a balanced view of who he was; maybe that trust was misplaced.
    - 2y ago
- pepinator 2y ago
  [flagged]
- APPLE_LOVER 2y ago
  [flagged]
baggy_trough 2y ago
> why would you miss a tech billionaire anyway Because we miss new instances of the great products they created to earn all that money.
- astrange 2y ago
  I could easily be wrong about this but I don't believe Jobs or anyone else at Jobs-era Apple became a billionaire because of it. Because of early infighting/getting fired, ownership was too dispersed for that. He became a billionaire because Disney bought Pixar.
  - baggy_trough 2y ago
    [flagged]
perfmode 2y ago
Jobs was more than a tech billionaire. He was someone who had refined personal taste and stood on values and was willing to do what it took to see them through, despite the friction. And the outcome was a computing company that was waaaay less mediocre than 99% of these other memetic, mediocre gradient-descent chasing privacy-abusing, ad-supported companies. Apple has raised the bar so high. And the DNA of what is manifesting is Steve’s insistence and vision followed by Tim’s clarity of execution. Look at the Apple Architecture moves. They got Intel’s hot, slow CPUs out of the device. And replaced them with excellent, quiet, fast, efficient CPUs, with UMA and great features. It’s hard to nail every detail when you have the surface area of Apple 2025. A huge huge company with billions of users and dozens of device families and services. But the bar is high for most of what they do.
- dlivingston 2y ago
  I think of Apple like I think of Disney: _consistently good_ products. Maybe not the best in all the things all the times, and some duds from time to time, but if you blindly hit "play" on a Disney movie you're going to be watching something at least pretty good.
eleveriven 2y ago
It's not just about the products themselves, but the philosophy behind them. He had this relentless obsession with making technology feel right (it is all from my perspective)
musicale 2y ago
And I need to be more obsessive about proofreading before HN's editing timeout expires.

neom 2y ago

Now that I'm becoming an old man, I've taken the time to go back and listen to him properly, to analize his thoughts and words a bit more contextually, and I've come to believe that Steve Jobs was quite misunderstood, both by us, and by himself. When I miss him I think: his thoughts were so very refined for his time, it is quite incredible and I wish he was around to hear more of them. I guess I'm a fan? Oh well...worse things to be. (the article is good but giving you the hn for comments too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2131299 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2131299)

6stringmerc 2y ago
I still think about how he tried to cure cancer with crystals and then when that didn’t work he used his wealth to get residency in a different state to jump in line for a transplant and still died before his yacht got completed. I don’t misunderstand him at all. Especially the parking in handicap spaces part. Very easy to understand what kind of person he was through his actions. Perhaps we will never see eye to eye, and I feel posts like yours do deserve legitimate opposition as applicable.
- colechristensen 2y ago
  Ok, but more or less everyone is going to have a few things about them that you’re not going to like. When your whole life is up for scrutiny and you have unlimited resources, that’s how it is. If you had a billion dollars there’d be plenty of things people would criticize about you. And anybody else who did too.
- pstuart 2y ago
  There's plenty to not like about Jobs as a person, but Apple exists because of him (twice).
- al_borland 2y ago
  He didn’t jump the line, he just got in multiple lines.
  - hansvm 2y ago
    Sure. On the one hand, everything adhered to the letter of the law. On the other, he used his money to get served before other people in an otherwise similar position would have been able to do. I personally view that as more of a failing in the system itself (why are there multiple lines to begin with when organ transport is a solved problem?), but it's not unreasonable to look at somebody exploiting that broken system and question their character.
    - auggierose 2y ago
      I know very few people who would't use their wealth to try to save their lifes, or that of their loved ones. It's kind of what wealth is for.
      - sapphicsnail 2y ago
        You know that's still bad right?
        globular-toast 2y ago
        Why do you only pay the minimum amount of tax?
        elygre 2y ago
        > Why do you only pay the minimum amount of tax? You didn’t pose the question to me. And yet. Very many people don’t. We know there are constructs that would enable us to pay less, yet we choose to not pursue them. We are part of a society that enables us to be what we are, why should we strive to give as little as possible in return? (And yes, we also don’t send extra money. This is not a contradiction.)
- dlivingston 2y ago
  > Do I contradict myself? > Very well then I contradict myself, > (I am large, I contain multitudes.) When you speak ill of Jobs you are speaking on his moral character. When others (incl. myself) speak positively on Jobs, they are speaking on his design, business, and life philosophies, which are quite profound. [0] How you want to weigh the two is up to you, but it is not a contradiction to say someone contains both good and bad. [0]: https://youtu.be/cHuqhQmc4ok https://youtu.be/cHuqhQmc4ok
  - brookst 2y ago
    The worst part of internet culture is the conflation of simplicity and reductionism. Comments are short, people have different contexts, so there’s an instinct to reduce everything to binary and fight to the death over the binary value. Worst of all is the false good person / bad person dichotomy that leads to great offense at any slight praise for someone the reader has decided is a bad person, or any slight criticism of someone the reader has decided is a good person. I can’t think of anything less fruitful than arguing over whether a public figure’s personal plus professional life makes them a 100% good person or 100% bad person. It’s strange the conversation ever happens, and yet it’s so incredibly common.
- orangepanda 2y ago
  Pancreatic cancer is known for being incurable, even in the best of circumstances, early diagnose or not. Having witnessed a family member go through the same thing, I understand Jobs's reaction of trying literally anything else.
  - eecc 2y ago
    Sorry for your loss. Though SJ "He was diagnosed with insulinoma, which unlike other pancreatic cancers, is curable and can be treated with surgery." see: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-16157142#:~:text=He%20was%20diagnosed%20with%20insulinoma,his%20pursuit%20of%20alternative%20remedies. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-16157142#:~:text=He%20wa...
    - neom 2y ago
      Well, given apparently the posts in this thread reveal me to be an "manic crazy person" (or such I inferred) - I suppose I'll add to it then by saying: I too have read and understood Yogācārabhūmi-Śāstra. I hadn't thought much about it till today, but, I suspect, will do as Steve did. :) :)
joseppudev 2y ago
[dead]
astrange 2y ago
He's definitely misunderstood. If you read his biography it's incredible how much the author of it misunderstands, but if you read between the lines you can see through them. In particular you should note how he changes before and after getting married. The biography is really awful though. It constantly misquotes people - Bill Gates is directly quoted as saying something so technically inaccurate he can't possibly have said it. I also remember that every time his son is quoted it's because he was telling a dick joke. At one point the book claims this is why Apple Park is a circle. Why the author did this is not clear to me. (Btw, I have an unreported Jobs story about this myself. Actually two. I'm not going to tell them, so feel free to just imagine.)
- al_borland 2y ago
  I don’t remember many details from the biography at this point, but I remember not liking it either. It seemed like it was written with the assumption the reader already knew the about Steve’s more public life and career, and skipped over much of it. It didn’t feel like it would be a good source for future generations to learn about Steve, as it seemed to largely ignore the entire reason a book was being written about him. I also remembering it seeming largely negative, trumpeting the views of critics, and while downplaying the good to balance it out. Though this could also be my memory fading, feel free correct me if I’m wrong. It was my first Isaacson biography, and didn’t leave me excited for another one.
  - alpaca128 2y ago
    > I also remembering it seeming largely negative It definitely was, but at least parts of that must have been warranted given Jobs refused to read it, saying something along the lines of "I know I wouldn’t like what it says"
    - al_borland 2y ago
      I think that was him trusting the author to be fair and show a balanced view of who he was; maybe that trust was misplaced.
  - 2y ago
pepinator 2y ago
[flagged]
APPLE_LOVER 2y ago
[flagged]

baggy_trough 2y ago

> why would you miss a tech billionaire anyway Because we miss new instances of the great products they created to earn all that money.

astrange 2y ago
I could easily be wrong about this but I don't believe Jobs or anyone else at Jobs-era Apple became a billionaire because of it. Because of early infighting/getting fired, ownership was too dispersed for that. He became a billionaire because Disney bought Pixar.
- baggy_trough 2y ago
  [flagged]

perfmode 2y ago

Jobs was more than a tech billionaire. He was someone who had refined personal taste and stood on values and was willing to do what it took to see them through, despite the friction. And the outcome was a computing company that was waaaay less mediocre than 99% of these other memetic, mediocre gradient-descent chasing privacy-abusing, ad-supported companies. Apple has raised the bar so high. And the DNA of what is manifesting is Steve’s insistence and vision followed by Tim’s clarity of execution. Look at the Apple Architecture moves. They got Intel’s hot, slow CPUs out of the device. And replaced them with excellent, quiet, fast, efficient CPUs, with UMA and great features. It’s hard to nail every detail when you have the surface area of Apple 2025. A huge huge company with billions of users and dozens of device families and services. But the bar is high for most of what they do.

dlivingston 2y ago
I think of Apple like I think of Disney: _consistently good_ products. Maybe not the best in all the things all the times, and some duds from time to time, but if you blindly hit "play" on a Disney movie you're going to be watching something at least pretty good.

eleveriven 2y ago

It's not just about the products themselves, but the philosophy behind them. He had this relentless obsession with making technology feel right (it is all from my perspective)

musicale 2y ago

And I need to be more obsessive about proofreading before HN's editing timeout expires.