10 ms·

If you're an engineer, you should admire Woz, if you're a product manager or marketeer, Jobs. Jobs was a brilliant product manager and marketeer - every bit as

by Aloha 8mo ago

If you're an engineer, you should admire Woz, if you're a product manager or marketeer, Jobs. Jobs was a brilliant product manager and marketeer - every bit as brilliant as Woz is an engineer. The truth is, the sharpest engineers struggle to make a marketable consumer product - because they make it for themselves, and while thats quite laudable, however it's generally a tiny market compared to one targeted at normal people.

nekooooo 8mo ago
true. woz made a $900 universal remote in 1987. it could control 256 devices via IR and was programmable via PC at a time when you probably had 1 device in your house (with 7 channels.) Maybe 2 if you had a tape player. He clearly made it for himself and his sick component system.
keiferski 8mo ago
I admire both and I find the push to Pick a Steve Team really irritating.
- fragmede 8mo ago
  Both, the sum is greater than the parts. Neither of them would be there without the other.
  - fuzzfactor 8mo ago
    When you look at it squarely, Jobs could have sold any average product and made money, and Woz' product was so far above average it could have sold on its own (to a more limited extent), with each unit sold making money either way. Money would be made by each person regardless but this combination not only got more units to fly off the shelf, it got the company off to a more above-average likelihood of future products doing well with growth from there. The longer that structure can be maintained, the better. Most of the time a miraculous salesman or marketing strategist has an average to below-average product to represent, and they will still do very well. So well in fact, that they themselves may never find out what the full upside would be if they had a product that actually was above-average enough for it to be able to sell on its own one way or another. And then act as a multiplier to that. Through the roof can be hard to avoid then. Same business plan I had as a preteen, way before Apple got going.
    - al_borland 8mo ago
      Woz took the Apple 1 to HP to see if they wanted it, since he was working there at the time. They passed on it. It seems Woz would have just kept working as an HP engineer and bringing designs to the homebrew computer club to give them away as a hobby. Jobs went on to start NeXT (which became modern Apple) and turned Pixar into a the studio that released Toy Story. Jobs wasn’t just a salesman, he was a serial entrepreneur. His footnotes would be most people’s whole career. His talent wasn’t just sales, but also building teams of talented people and selling them on his vision.
      - fuzzfactor 8mo ago
        I fully agree, Jobs was like the ideal founder. And so was Woz. What actually hapened couldn't have happened any other way. >It seems Woz would have just kept working as an HP engineer and bringing designs to the homebrew computer club to give them away as a hobby. If so it could only continue for so long before a lesser entrepreneur took the position that Jobs undertook. And Apple might only be about half the size it is now. Is that so bad?
      - caycep 8mo ago
        And it's not always a sure thing. NeXT would have failed without Apple 2.0.
p00dles 8mo ago
They were both brilliant, but from everything that I've read, Jobs was an ass****, and Woz was the opposite, and that is a huge, huge difference. The mythologizing of Jobs is the canonical example of people condoning terrible behavior because they think that a person is smart/valuable/talented/etc. To me this is completely backwards and sets a terrible precedent - that you can act however you want if you get results - especially given how many people idolize and look up to Jobs.
- microtherion 8mo ago
  The other huge, huge difference is that one of the Steves has demonstrated he was able to build a successful product without the other's assistance.
  - fuzzfactor 8mo ago
    You could say that about the iPod or the iPhone which Woz wasn't involved in, but when you do the math, there's only one Woz and he was essential to define the company in the 20th century, and look how many people it took to "replace" him when it came to Jobs "alone" defining the company in the 21st century.
    - microtherion 8mo ago
      You could also say it about the Mac, which Woz was, at best, peripherally involved in. Not saying that Jobs created these products "alone" — he obviously did not. But he was a key contributor. Meanwhile, Woz has been involved in all sorts of products, including a cryptocurrency, and I can't think of a single one that got significant traction.
    - snek_case 8mo ago
      Another thing that people fail to remember is that Woz designed the Apple II, which is what made Apple a highly profitable company for many years, but instead of embracing that success, Jobs repeatedly tried to kill and replace the Apple II with the Lisa, then the Macintosh, and drove Apple into financial trouble. Apple would have done better, at that time, by simply building more advanced and backwards compatible followups to the Apple II, which is what consumers actually wanted (the original Macintosh was an expensive piece of shit). The Apple II had 7 expansion slots and was easy to open and service yourself. It was a machine designed for hackers, and it was highly flexible. Jobs kept trying to push his all-in-one closed design when it made no sense. He did unfortunately succeed eventually. What Jobs did after his return was to turn Apple into a "luxury brand", where iPhones are perceived a bit like Prada handbags. One thing I will give Apple is that there is still no PC equivalent to Apple laptops. That can probably only really happen if mainstream PC manufacturers fully embrace Linux.
BirAdam 8mo ago
This. When Woz created the Apple I and Apple II, the entire microcomputer market consisted of hackers, tinkerers, enthusiasts, and hobbyists. Had Woz been acting alone, the Apple I and Apple II would have made a splash at Homebrew, but they wouldn't have been products. Jobs made them products. After VisiCalc, this market expanded to finance professionals, but it was still a tiny market. It was really Raskin and Jobs who proved the viability of the Xerox PARC (and SRI before them) advancements around the GUI that propelled computing to a more general audience. Then, MS caught up, dominated the market in the 1990s, and Apple came back only when Jobs returned and began pushing industrial design and OS X. From the point until quite recently, most companies R&D could have just been attending Apple product launches and imitating as best they could (that's hyperbolic, but not entirely incorrect).
Findecanor 8mo ago
I have chosen to go by "Take no heroes, only inspiration", and take different inspiration from both.
rainbowcash 8mo ago
> The truth is, the sharpest engineers struggle to make a marketable consumer product - because they make it for themselves, and while thats quite laudable, however it's generally a tiny market compared to one targeted at normal people. Woz was perfect for those in the home brew club and Steve (basically vagabond) had a different perspective on users. It was the perfect combo in hindsight.

by Aloha 8mo ago

nekooooo 8mo ago

true. woz made a $900 universal remote in 1987. it could control 256 devices via IR and was programmable via PC at a time when you probably had 1 device in your house (with 7 channels.) Maybe 2 if you had a tape player. He clearly made it for himself and his sick component system.

keiferski 8mo ago

I admire both and I find the push to Pick a Steve Team really irritating.

fragmede 8mo ago
Both, the sum is greater than the parts. Neither of them would be there without the other.
- fuzzfactor 8mo ago
  When you look at it squarely, Jobs could have sold any average product and made money, and Woz' product was so far above average it could have sold on its own (to a more limited extent), with each unit sold making money either way. Money would be made by each person regardless but this combination not only got more units to fly off the shelf, it got the company off to a more above-average likelihood of future products doing well with growth from there. The longer that structure can be maintained, the better. Most of the time a miraculous salesman or marketing strategist has an average to below-average product to represent, and they will still do very well. So well in fact, that they themselves may never find out what the full upside would be if they had a product that actually was above-average enough for it to be able to sell on its own one way or another. And then act as a multiplier to that. Through the roof can be hard to avoid then. Same business plan I had as a preteen, way before Apple got going.
  - al_borland 8mo ago
    Woz took the Apple 1 to HP to see if they wanted it, since he was working there at the time. They passed on it. It seems Woz would have just kept working as an HP engineer and bringing designs to the homebrew computer club to give them away as a hobby. Jobs went on to start NeXT (which became modern Apple) and turned Pixar into a the studio that released Toy Story. Jobs wasn’t just a salesman, he was a serial entrepreneur. His footnotes would be most people’s whole career. His talent wasn’t just sales, but also building teams of talented people and selling them on his vision.
    - fuzzfactor 8mo ago
      I fully agree, Jobs was like the ideal founder. And so was Woz. What actually hapened couldn't have happened any other way. >It seems Woz would have just kept working as an HP engineer and bringing designs to the homebrew computer club to give them away as a hobby. If so it could only continue for so long before a lesser entrepreneur took the position that Jobs undertook. And Apple might only be about half the size it is now. Is that so bad?
    - caycep 8mo ago
      And it's not always a sure thing. NeXT would have failed without Apple 2.0.

p00dles 8mo ago

They were both brilliant, but from everything that I've read, Jobs was an ass****, and Woz was the opposite, and that is a huge, huge difference. The mythologizing of Jobs is the canonical example of people condoning terrible behavior because they think that a person is smart/valuable/talented/etc. To me this is completely backwards and sets a terrible precedent - that you can act however you want if you get results - especially given how many people idolize and look up to Jobs.

microtherion 8mo ago
The other huge, huge difference is that one of the Steves has demonstrated he was able to build a successful product without the other's assistance.
- fuzzfactor 8mo ago
  You could say that about the iPod or the iPhone which Woz wasn't involved in, but when you do the math, there's only one Woz and he was essential to define the company in the 20th century, and look how many people it took to "replace" him when it came to Jobs "alone" defining the company in the 21st century.
  - microtherion 8mo ago
    You could also say it about the Mac, which Woz was, at best, peripherally involved in. Not saying that Jobs created these products "alone" — he obviously did not. But he was a key contributor. Meanwhile, Woz has been involved in all sorts of products, including a cryptocurrency, and I can't think of a single one that got significant traction.
  - snek_case 8mo ago
    Another thing that people fail to remember is that Woz designed the Apple II, which is what made Apple a highly profitable company for many years, but instead of embracing that success, Jobs repeatedly tried to kill and replace the Apple II with the Lisa, then the Macintosh, and drove Apple into financial trouble. Apple would have done better, at that time, by simply building more advanced and backwards compatible followups to the Apple II, which is what consumers actually wanted (the original Macintosh was an expensive piece of shit). The Apple II had 7 expansion slots and was easy to open and service yourself. It was a machine designed for hackers, and it was highly flexible. Jobs kept trying to push his all-in-one closed design when it made no sense. He did unfortunately succeed eventually. What Jobs did after his return was to turn Apple into a "luxury brand", where iPhones are perceived a bit like Prada handbags. One thing I will give Apple is that there is still no PC equivalent to Apple laptops. That can probably only really happen if mainstream PC manufacturers fully embrace Linux.

BirAdam 8mo ago

This. When Woz created the Apple I and Apple II, the entire microcomputer market consisted of hackers, tinkerers, enthusiasts, and hobbyists. Had Woz been acting alone, the Apple I and Apple II would have made a splash at Homebrew, but they wouldn't have been products. Jobs made them products. After VisiCalc, this market expanded to finance professionals, but it was still a tiny market. It was really Raskin and Jobs who proved the viability of the Xerox PARC (and SRI before them) advancements around the GUI that propelled computing to a more general audience. Then, MS caught up, dominated the market in the 1990s, and Apple came back only when Jobs returned and began pushing industrial design and OS X. From the point until quite recently, most companies R&D could have just been attending Apple product launches and imitating as best they could (that's hyperbolic, but not entirely incorrect).

Findecanor 8mo ago

I have chosen to go by "Take no heroes, only inspiration", and take different inspiration from both.

rainbowcash 8mo ago

> The truth is, the sharpest engineers struggle to make a marketable consumer product - because they make it for themselves, and while thats quite laudable, however it's generally a tiny market compared to one targeted at normal people. Woz was perfect for those in the home brew club and Steve (basically vagabond) had a different perspective on users. It was the perfect combo in hindsight.