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Two Letters from Steve Jobs
- zw123456 14y agoHonestly, I am not sure I like this story or hate it. I like that you shared it, but my reaction to Jobs only saying "OK", my read on that is that he was too busy to say much more and therefor a jerk or if he, in a Jobs-like minimalist way just though that in a serious situation like that, less is more and not much more needed to be said. Either way, thank you for sharing an interesting and thought provoking story.
- robgough 14y agoPerhaps he believed that platitudes wouldn't have helped, but that giving the permission was enough (as it so obviously was for this person). I couldn't imagine it was a particularly easy request to receive and he could have just ignored it.
- graeme 14y agoI've dealt with busy people. In person, 1-on-1, they're great, absolutely focussed on you. And I've received emails from them like this. I concluded that it was not arrogance or a lack of empathy but rather that their time had gotten constrained. If they wanted to preserve themselves for other things than email, they HAD to email like this. If I had received this reply, I would have been thrilled too. Probably more thrilled to receive some other comment, but I wouldn't have been miffed by the terseness.
- mkoble11 14y agoI'm inclined to agree with robgough's response. Jobs didn't need to respond if he thought it was a waste of time and/or didn't care. He simply needed to give approval - not much else needed to be said.
- zw123456 14y agoThe thing that sucks the most, is that Steve is not here for us to ask, I am sure the answer would have been confusing and interesting.
- obviouslygreen 14y agoWhile this reaction is definitely understandable, I think along similar lines of some others here that someone that busy just doesn't always have time for a verbose response. "OK" may have been exactly what he had time for, and if that were the case, I'd say his response was likely sent faster than it would have been if someone had asked him an interesting but less urgent message. Of course, as with everyone else's opinions... this is 100% speculation. I have the same like-or-hate reaction, though for a different reason: This sort of thing encourages the irrational hero worship that Jobs fostered while he was alive and that's only grown in some circles after his death. Yes, this story shows that he did something good for someone. Once. And I'm sure there are other similar anecdotes. But the takeaway here will not be "this is something that Steve Jobs did that was nice," it will be "OH WOW STEVE JOBS WAS A SAINT."
- imsofuture 14y agoI'm more disturbed by the fascination that we as a species have with gadgets. I think that was a totally-chill-but-perhaps-not-especially-saintly thing for Steve to do. But... what... show iPad to dying friend?
- awolf 14y agoThe iPad was a true innovation when it was released and even more so 3 months prior to its release. To be able to experience a new invention so far before everyone else on that planet is a special experience. At least, I'd see it that way were I in her friend's shoes.
- lostlogin 14y agoI'm obviously a bit simple if I'm willing to admit it - but I still feel like I'm in the future when I pull the iPad out the bookcase/bag/couch crack. It's a computer, its only a few mm thick, and its now!
- DanBC 14y agoThere aren't many things that make me think I'm in the future, but the first time I saw an iPhone it was like a Star Trek device.
- ben1040 14y agoMaybe the story around it primed my reaction, but the terseness struck me a little differently. "Every minute I spend writing this email is another minute you will spend waiting for the response, and a minute less you will have with your friend."
- dools 14y agoEither that or it's a brilliant and ironic illustration of how fucking inconvenient touch screens are to type on.
- salgernon 14y agoBut he had to manually capitalize the second letter. iOS doesn't automatically complete "ok" with caps. (As evidenced by this comment.) Edit: typos
- snowwrestler 14y agoIf you're dealing with high volumes of email, terse responses are the only way to keep up. All this guy needed was the ok; that's what he got.
- vowelless 14y agoThe thing that amazes me the most is that Jobs responded within a couple of minutes.
- mkoble11 14y agoI sent Benioff an email once but never expected a reply, he replied in a couple of minutes as well.
- itafroma 14y agoI once wrote an email to Jobs at 8am on a lark and got a reply within 30 minutes. It seemed like if he was using his iPad and wanted to respond, he did so immediately.
- Samuel_Michon 14y agoRight, every time I emailed him, he'd reply within minutes. Always just a couple of words, but the questions lended themselves for that. In person, he was a lot more chatty. For instance, I met him at MacWorld Expo SF in January of 1999, we discussed the merits of the hocket puck mouse for over ten minutes.
- lostlogin 14y agoWhat are the merits? This isn't a troll, I'm interested, because I can't stand it (or most Asple mice for that matter). Their trackpads on the other hand... Every iteration blows the old one away and I love them.
- sambeau 14y agoIt's funny. I've never understood the hatred of the hockey puck mouse, I always loved mine. I think the answer was in how you held it. I held it very lightly with the tips of my fingers and so could throw it around with real speed and accuracy. I thought it's shape made it far more manoeuvrable. Because it had a chord I never had any problems with orientation either. I liked it's solidity too. For a long time I assumed that the criticisms came from people who had either never used it (or had used it very briefly at a reseller's). I still believe this to a certain degree. There was a lot of irrational and ill-informed Apple bashing at the time and, to me, this was just one of the anti-Apple style-over-substance mantras.
- mkoble11 14y agoThere's something really awesome when you start reading something on the front page of HN and realize the blog post is from someone you know :) Good stuff, David!!!
- utopkara 14y agoBrilliant title.
- austenallred 14y agoI was looking for a second letter. It took me a minute to realize the two letters were "OK."
- joering2 14y agoIt was interesting short story that put a tear in my eye (seriously) but since you knew Steve (even little bit), why did you put "SJ R.I.P." at the end?
- joering2 14y agoJust to clarify to those who downvoted; Steve was a Buddhist. As you know, Buddhist underlying position on live after death is that it doesn't exist. After death you are simply being reborn. So Steve had nowhere to "rest in peace". He's alive again.
- MikeCapone 14y agoThe person writing it might not be a Buddhist.
- Tycho 14y agoWas he really a Bhuddist? I never heard this then just after he died it started appearing in articles with the same sort of dubious quality as statements like 'Stanley Kubrick had a 200 IQ', 'Einstein was bad at maths in highschool.'
- jmotion 14y agoLegend. It's all that was needed.
- euphoria83 14y agoI think SJ found it natural to just say "OK" because he thought that the person mailing him knew him enough and was mature enough to just need that permission.
- hkmurakami 14y agoFrom what I've heard from Apple people, terse emails (or just forwards with no additional message) were very common from Steve Jobs.
- runjake 14y agoAs someone outside of Apple, the few times I got replies from SJ were of similar brevity, aside from one, which was a vegan cake that used apple sauce instead of eggs along with directions. I wish I had kept it longer, knowing his fate.
- philwelch 14y agoI'm really curious how you ended up getting recipes from Steve Jobs.
- aridiculous 14y agoThis is the minimal response I would expect from anybody in the company. We shouldn't applaud this behavior as some kind of exemplary gift from the corporation. Why? Because it normalizes the chain-of-command, rules-are-rules way that we typically see. It makes it seem OK that someone wouldn't grant this request. In fact, he probably shouldn't even have to ask.
- jmotion 14y agoYou should ask. It's not an employee's 'opinion' based on an emotional decision on whether they can share something with an individual that has cost millions (billions?) to produce.
- HelloWorldClub 14y agoOK.
- vingt-2 14y agoDid your dying friend really had to see an iPad? I mean, in her last moments, who cares about a bigger iPhone? I'm not trolling, I'm myself a tech enthusiast, and I'm not quite sure I'd expect from a friend to come tell me goodbye and show me his "latest toy he's been working on lately".
- josephagoss 14y agoSounds like they knew each other from working at Adobe and perhaps they were really interested in this type of advancement. She may have been really interested in where computing for the consumer was heading and the iPad was more than a toy to him, he was probably working on it non-stop for a year or two. Just think, instead of being your average tech consumer they are the type of people that built these devices and thus he felt she may have been glad to have a look at where things were before she left. Its a nice gesture, "Look at this thing that no one even knows about yet".I thought it was a bit sweet.
- fusiongyro 14y agoActually, this is exactly trolling, and depressingly presumptuous and untrusting of you. She wasn't your friend, she was his friend. Quit optimizing stranger's lives.
- inopinatus 14y agoI resent that my time as a functioning nexus of memory and intellect is limited by biology. It is the future I miss the most. The things I will never live to see. I would be so pleased if, in my last moments, a friend gives me a glimpse of what's next. Even better if I am lucid enough to appreciate it. Cherry on top that a friend of MINE is involved in it and proud of it. This is a great story.
- m_eiman 14y agoWhat he wrote in the email wasn't that he wanted to show the iPad, he wanted to show her photos on the iPad.
- vingt-2 14y agoYeah I guess you're all kinda right. I was just thinking about the situation, not judging anyone.
- jyap 14y agoOn a related note I did quite like the email replies that Steve Jobs would write when he was still around. I started to collect them at one point in a web site. http://emailsfromstevejobs.com http://emailsfromstevejobs.com At the time it felt like an interesting meme but over time I began to really feel the philosophy of the man and Apple not having previously been a fan of Apple. To me the interpretation was that Steve always was product focused and wanted to put out the best user experience possible. I began to appreciate this customer focused approach. So I can see why he said 'OK'.
- justin_vanw 14y agoSteve Jobs was an amazing person, but who cares that he let someone show somebody an iPad? Basically, this story boils down to: "Billionaire CEO lets employee talk about work with a friend." Not really some super amazing thing, unless you are just honored and in awe that Steve Jobs momentarily knew who you were.
- josephagoss 14y agoStory is about the simple straight to the point reply.
- khet 14y agoPerhaps the OP thought the iPad was a piece of the future and showing it to his friend is way of living a little more? I was touched by what the OP did more than what Steve did. What Steve did was alright, any decent person would have done the same.
- adventured 14y agoWhat did his billionaire status have to do with anything? I know why you said it of course, that kind of wealth has a stigma these days. And what could be more obnoxious than a billionaire CEO! There's no evidence Jobs coveted being a billionaire, he didn't make an effort to show off his extreme wealth, and he didn't go out of his way to brag about it.
- anonymfus 14y agoBecause it affected his mentality. For example, he bought new Mercedes SL55 AMG every 6 months so he could avoid putting license plates on it.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- alphakappa 14y agoLeasing a new car every 6 months is a world apart from buying a new car every 6 months.
- zwischenzug 14y agoMan says OK to simple human request. Big deal.
- lostlogin 14y agoNever optimize anyone's life but your own - they come to you for tech support.
- Nux 14y agoI think this is getting ridiculous, everything Steve Jobs did or said is getting blown out of proportions. Yeah, it was nice of him to let this guy take the device to his friend, but let's not make him a saint or martyr or what not. Don't forget the poor bastards in China living on the edge of humanity to make the said devices..
- kayoone 14y agoThis. Looking at this as a skeptic Apple user i cant help but think WTF ? Steve Jobs writes OK in an email and the worshippers go "OMG, HES SUCH A LEGEND, JUST 2 LETTERS".
- chris_wot 14y agoExcept it wasn't just two letters, given how ballistic they went when the iPhone got leaked allowing him to carry the iPad with him was actually a significant risk. Steve Jobs was an arsehole. But the brevity of that message does not make it any less special to the one receiving it.
- daigoba66 14y agoExcept he was already allowed to carry it. He was just not allowed to show it to anyone.
- foobar14 14y agoAs someone who has had carry privileges for pre-release iOS devices, I can tell you that the rules are extremely strict, and breaking them generally results in being fired.
- kayoone 14y agoAs i understand it the guy was already allowed to carry the ipad around with him and given the fact that Jobs suffered from a similar illness i dont think it was such a big deal to him a couple of days before offical launch.
- celerity 14y agoThe only reason this story is remarkable is because Steve Jobs was a jerk all of the time, so exceptions and exhibitions of humanity seem special. Really, I'd see him as a cool guy if he were always like this. Not that him being an ass in any way devalues his abilities. It is what it is.
- 38leinad 14y agoI personally think writing just "OK" does not make him less of a jerk. Seriously! This guys friend is terminally ill and he does not have a few nice words to spare? Just "OK"???
- lylejohnson 14y agoThis was my thought. Could he not have spared another second or two to express his condolences?
- larrys 14y agodaigoba66 wrote: ""Except he was already allowed to carry it. He was just not allowed to show it to anyone." Assuming that's the case then he could have weighed the possible downside (almost nil) to showing the device to someone on their deathbed (with nobody else in the room of course) vs. the risk in asking Steve for permission and the potential repercussions of doing that. [1] Almost daring him to either not respond or to say "no" instead of "ok". I suspect there is more here than meets the eye. [2] [1] Certainly a risk greater than showing the device to someone on their death bed. [2] Shows the level of brainwashing more or less like asking the Priest, Minister or Rabbi for a pass on a ritual that has been drilled into your head. After all only you yourself know you have committed the transgression.
- gambiting 14y agoNot necessarily, I am pretty sure that prototype iPads had location logging enabled and if he just took it out to a different city there would be questions asked. If he had an email from Steve himself, he had an excuse.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- arianit 14y agoIs this a joke?