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Remembering Steve Jobs
- project2501a 1y agoIt is better to remember Dennis Ritchie instead: Humble man, great engineer, brilliant in his designs.
- veltas 1y agoThere's no 'instead', you can remember them both.
- bradleyCreat 1y ago[dead]
- tekbruh9000 1y agoWe can do a lot of things. Must we? Should we? Burning resources to memorialize the past we only see through rose colored glasses of naive youth is vanity. Biology is self selecting and that's all that's happening here. There's no intention or future value. It's plain old signal attenuation and entropy going on; memory is fading as those who experienced it churn out of existence. A species still escaping banal worship of history ends up avoiding progress.
- codr7 1y agoWe're standing on the shoulders of many creative heroes; some technically brilliant, some better described as visionaries and designers. They all played a role in getting us this far. No one is forcing you to admire Steve Jobs.
- laborcontract 1y agoSomewhat related: I recently googled Steve's son, Reed, out of curiosity. I haven't thought to look his kids up since when he died. Reed is a spitting image of Steve[0] - voice and all. Steve was a hero of mine since I was a kid (I don't care what your opinion is about having a hero, let alone having steve as one). Seeing reed talk made me wistful. I miss steve dearly. It also reminded of the many things I miss about the Apple I grew up loving. Leadership with an opinion is one of them. And by opinion, I mean a leader who isn't a slave to the A|B test or to shareholders. Someone who cared deeply about his product and could communicate it in words that made me care. 0: edit here's a link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHBZhruuQ44 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHBZhruuQ44
- hackernewds 1y agowhat's wrong with a/b tests?
- rhetocj23 1y agoInstagram is a product of a/b testing. Go figure
- laborcontract 1y agoI'm using A|B as a blanket term for things that make a company think it's improving by using the opinions of others in lieu of having an opinion themselves. Focus groups also fall into this category.
- bitpush 1y agoIt works for hardware, because that's the only way to do it. There's no 2 populations for hardware. All decisions are one way doors. Software must use feedback, otherwise you'll end up with duds like Camera Control, 3D touch, and .. Apple Maps (1.0). Apple doesnt have that culture, and it shows in their software.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- robin_reala 1y agoI don’t dislike them inherently, but as people tend to believe they’re a one-stop solution it’s worth pointing out what they can’t do: - On their own they don’t provide a hypothesis. You need to do user research to discover those. - On their own they don’t tell you the value in what you’re testing. You need further analysis to understand that. - They’re typically a short-term solution to longer-term problems. It’s easy to use them to achieve local maxima without understanding the wider picture. - They’ll only tell you what the majority of your users find effective, without highlighting what hurts the journey for a minority of users. For example you could A/B test something that improves the journey for every group apart from visually impaired users, but block them completely, and still implement it because it’s the winning bucket. Yes, there are guardrails you can put in place for all of these, and good teams do, but that requires a degree of maturity that is hard for a lot of organisations.
- comrade1234 1y agoWish we could get his opinion on the notch...
- bigyabai 1y agoWe're talking about the "you're holding it wrong" guy. It's pretty easy to guess what he would say.
- FollowingTheDao 1y agoI wish he did not smoke [4], or convert to a largely fruit diet [1,2,3,5], they both most likely caused his pancreatic cancer. My father died of pancreatic cancer, he smoked for most of his life and ate a ton of honey. I see it in my genetics (ABO, SOD2) and luckily I quit smoking when I was very young and could never tolerate sweet foods. I also eat a high manganese diet (the cofactor for ABO), lots of mussles, and take it as a supplement on occation. I wish Jobs were still alive, I would probably not want to sell my iphone right now because of liquid ass. [1] https://www.uclahealth.org/news/release/pancreatic-cancers-use-fructose-common-in-western-diet-to-fuel-growth-study-finds https://www.uclahealth.org/news/release/pancreatic-cancers-u... [2] https://www.aicr.org/resources/blog/glucose-fructose-and-the-alarming-pancreatic-cancer-news/ https://www.aicr.org/resources/blog/glucose-fructose-and-the... [3] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10722142/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10722142/ [4] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5455596/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5455596/ [5] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/steve-jobs-followed-extreme-diet-220010824.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/steve-jobs-followed-extreme-d...
- Razengan 1y agoSince this is inevitably going to come up during any mention of Jobs: Why does Linus Torvalds get a pass, even admired (like in this thread right here), for OPENLY being an extremely vitriolic f*ker, and continuing to be so even after being called out for it to his face in interviews/questions from the audience, but Steve Jobs still gets shade for allegedly being an asshole based on mostly hearsay long after his death? Telling people to be aborted, outright insulting them in various ways, I have to keep making sure I'm not reading 4chan instead of the Linux mailing list. I doubt Jobs ever even came close to that. People give Linus a pass for literally the same reasons that Jobs had to be an "asshole" for: "Linux is his baby" "No one else is suited to lead" etc
- antisol 1y agoCan you point me to a picture of Linus Torvalds' car parked in a handicapped space?
- davidw 1y agoI haven't followed it much, but didn't Linus have some self reflection and talk about toning things down a bit?
- Razengan 1y agoI don't use or follow Linux but I do stumble upon news about it here and there, and I saw a video just a month or so ago, about Linus going off on RISC-V etc. Maybe it was this, not sure, not gonna go dig it up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8E8Gb7Ikm2o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8E8Gb7Ikm2o
- firefoxd 1y agoOne part of his legacy that will forever be misunderstood is that being brutally honest, being demanding, being abrasive is a trait that only translates to success when you are at the top [0]. Countless mid level managers believe it is the only way to lead. > For Steve Jobs, it's not that being an asshole was his secret sauce. It's that his unique position allowed him to survive the downsides of his personality. [0]: https://idiallo.com/blog/you-cant-be-an-asshole-as-a-manager https://idiallo.com/blog/you-cant-be-an-asshole-as-a-manager
- FollowingTheDao 1y agoIf Steve Jobs were on HN he would be ruthlessly downvoted.
- IAmBroom 1y agoYes. He was inflexible, and that made him very difficult to get along with - if you weren't either a yes-man, or able to look past his social skill issues to see his capabilities. Nothing about social media is friendly to looking past social skill issues.
- cheschire 1y agoyeah but try explaining that to the narcissistic sociopaths that embody those traits and they'll think you're absolutely right, those other guys should listen to you.
- Razengan 1y agoI just now posted a top-level comment expecting this lol, about how Job gets hated for being an asshole in private, while Linus Torvalds gets forgiven and even admired for being much worse in public. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45482539 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45482539
- wredcoll 1y agoTorvalds has publically apologized and taken some kind of "being nicer" class and people, here at least, constantly criticize his rudeness. Obviously he has defenders and fans for various reasons, but I think its nice to see.
- crims0n 1y agoI sometimes wonder what an alternative history would look like if Jobs was still around. Apple has done well, but they have largely played it safe. Even their riskiest product, the Apple Vision Pro, seemed like less of an innovation and more a response to market expectations. Jobs excelled at taking a niche product category and reinventing it for the masses. He did it with desktop and mobile computers, he did it with the mp3 player, and did it with the smartphone and tablet. What has post-Jobs Apple done? Maybe the smartwatch… but one could argue that in itself is an iteration on the iPod (remember the Nano and Shuffles?). Credit where credit is due, they are killing it in silicon - but that is a bit opaque culturally.
- drexlspivey 1y ago> What has post-Jobs Apple done? The Airpods are one of the most successful products ever
- wredcoll 1y agoThat blows my mind. I walk by an apple store regularly, its full of people standing around, even at like 2pm on a weekday. I'm always confused. What are those people doing? I get buying apple products, I generally don't, but they're good at somethings and bad at others, so you know, choices. But why go to an apple store, much less stand around? Apple products are just generic at this point. There's a new phone, which is exactly the same as the last 10 phones. Or a laptop or a tablet, etc.
- CPLX 1y agoThey’re probably waiting for someone to bring back their iPhone with a replaced screen after they dropped it.
- AnonC 1y ago> Apple products are just generic at this point. There's a new phone, which is exactly the same as the last 10 phones. This is way too much of an exaggeration to be taken with any amount of seriousness! If you can’t see the huge upgrades in capabilities over the last 10 phones, you’re not the target customer for any smartphone and haven’t been paying attention to the announcements every year.
- iaw 1y agoI know this wont go over well but I think it's important to remember: Steve Jobs did not treat his pancreatic cancer when he was first diagnosed and it was treatable, he instead sought holistic/alternative medicine treatments[1]. He leveraged his vast wealth to get a replacement liver [2] that at the time was known to only extend his life. That liver could have gone to someone that did not have such a negative prognosis and possibly saved their life for a lot longer than it did Steve. He used a chunk of his remaining time to work on his last yacht. He was a great product person but I don't think that excuses all of the horrible things he did as a human. [1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/food-for-thought/201110/alternative-medicine-the-death-of-steve-jobs https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/food-for-thought/201... [2] https://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/06/24/liver.transplant.priority.lists/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/06/24/liver.transplant.prior...
- IAmGraydon 1y agoWhich of the things you listed do you believe are "horrible things he did as a human"?
- bigyabai 1y agoJobs' relationship with his family was famously strained.
- devteq 1y agoThe whole buying a liver thing?! Do you have any idea what the process is to get a liver, even if you are dying of liver failure? I liked Steve until that point.
- orionsbelt 1y agoHe didn’t buy a liver, he registered in Tennessee which has low waiting times.
- Rebelgecko 1y agoWas it some sort of black market exchange?
- DanielPhillipe1 1y ago[dead]
- antisol 1y ago[flagged]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- stevenjgarner 1y agoI'm a piece of shit. I have changed very few lives and accomplished very little. There are a lot of us. The only reason we are talking about Steve Jobs here is that, piece of shit or not, Steve changed very many lives and accomplished much.
- antisol 1y ago[flagged]
- stevenjgarner 1y agoAh perception vs perspective. We perceive the same things but have different perspectives. And yes I have done terrible things. I even worked for Steve Jobs.
- antisol 1y ago[flagged]
- dang 1y agoPlease don't post like this to HN. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. You may not owe people who you feel are pieces of shit better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- antisol 1y agoWith respect, I'm not sure which of these guidelines you think my post violates? Could you clarify for me? I'm particularly interested in your "destroys what it is for" comment, I'm not sure I understand. If you could elaborate that would be awesome. I think it's important to point out that this person who is lionised by so many was actually an objectively bad person who did reprehensible things.
- goodthink 1y agoI always remember this: https://spectrum.ieee.org/smalltalk https://spectrum.ieee.org/smalltalk He knew a good thing when he saw it. Too bad he only wanted the overlapping windows.
- linguae 1y agoTo be fair, Steve Jobs acknowledged this in a 1990s interview: "And they showed me, really, three things, but I was so blinded by the first one that I didn't even really see the other two. One of the things they showed me was object-oriented programming. They showed me that, but I didn't even see that. The other one they showed me was really a networked computer system. They had over 100 Alto computers all networked using email, etc., etc., but I didn't see that. I was so blinded by the first thing they showed me, which was the graphical user interface. I thought it was the best thing I've ever seen in my life." https://youtu.be/J33pVRdxWbw?si=D6lfFFCXGcKNAQ4S&t=386 https://youtu.be/J33pVRdxWbw?si=D6lfFFCXGcKNAQ4S&t=386 Jobs would revisit object-oriented programming and networked computing when he started NeXT in 1985. NeXT is closer to the Smalltalk environment than the original Macintosh was, with its support for networking thanks to its 4.2BSD underpinnings and with its object-oriented APIs and programming environment, coded in Objective-C, which is essentially the Smalltalk object model on top of C. There's another Xerox PARC-inspired technology that was a core part of the NeXT experience: Display PostScript, which was NeXTSTEP's foundation for rendering graphics. While PostScript is an Adobe product, Adobe was founded by the creators of Interpress, an earlier page description language that was a Xerox PARC project. Steve Jobs definitely knew a good thing when he saw it :)
- linguae 1y agoOne of the things that I admire Steve Jobs the most is his good taste. He had a great ability of recognizing talented individuals and adopting some of the best ideas computer science had to offer at the time. For example, the Lisa and the Macintosh were heavily influenced by the work Xerox PARC did on the graphical user interface. The original Macintosh team had many excellent people; off the top of my head, I'm thinking of Jef Raskin (RIP), Bill Atkinson (RIP), Joanna Hoffman, Andy Hertzfeld, and Susan Kare. Larry Tesler (RIP) and even Alan Kay were both brought in from Xerox PARC to join Apple. When Steve Jobs left Apple in 1985 and started NeXT, he not only brought some original Macintosh team members with him, but he hired other brilliant people such as Avie Tevanian. NeXT also looked to Xerox PARC for inspiration, this time adopting PARC's work in dynamically-typed object-oriented programming (Smalltalk, but in the form of Objective-C) and networking. When Apple purchased NeXT in late 1996, NeXT's operating system became the foundation of the next-generation Mac OS, Mac OS X, which fused a visually updated Macintosh interface with NeXT underpinnings. Mac OS X under Steve Jobs was a truly excellent desktop operating system, with excellent technical underpinnings and a well-considered user interface with strong usability guidelines. I miss Steve Jobs, and I wish the computer industry still had champions of personal computing.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- lr1970 1y agoOne of the best movies about history of Apple and people involved is "Pirates Of Silicon Valley". Pretty accurate portrayal of Steve Jobs, Woz and the rest.