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The day Steve Jobs dissed me in a keynote (2010)
- bravoyankee 13y agoThis has been on HN a bunch of times already. News is supposed to be new, correct?
- angersock 13y agoThis story was news to me, and I haven't seen it in a couple of years here. The only part here not news is Steve Jobs/Apple acting like jackasses--the particulars of the story are interesting.
- znowi 13y agoInterestingly, he was also a close mentor to Larry Page and Sergey Brin :)
- adventured 13y agoNot true. He was a distant mentor, not a close mentor. He did the same for Zuckerberg.
- _pmf_ 13y ago> Interestingly, he was also a close mentor to Larry Page and Sergey Brin The probably derived their "Don't be evil" from taking the reciprocal of what Steve Jobs "mentored" them.
- wavefunction 13y agouh... and how's that working out. Come on, "Don't be evil" is just clever marketing that a lot of people fell for at first, and some still do.
- ak39 13y agoAbsolutely! This sort of jingoism at corporate level, the sort of moral imperative front-facing cleverly marketed idealism is the new religion, I swear. I can understand when a company puts itself "out there" with "Being the best" or "Customer first" or some bullshit like that. But when the rhetoric enters the realm of good ol' fashioned morality and talks about Good and Evil .. yoh! ... Our bs sensors should now be howling, thanks to companies like Google.
- tyang 13y agoPlease tell us what you REALLY think. :)
- muyuu 13y agoSame here, and it's one of the most interesting pieces I've read in a while.
- sigzero 13y ago> This story was news to me, and I haven't seen it in a couple of years here. Which is it?
- aroch 13y agoPretty sure the meaning of the sentence is, "It's was news to me, I haven't seen it posted here during the couple years I've been a member"
- msvan 13y agoIf it gets to the frontpage, it's because it was upvoted by people who hadn't seen it before. If you've already seen it, you don't need to click it.
- epo 13y agoIt gets upvoted because anti-Apple and Anti-Jobs stories feed the drooling hordes who seem to have become the majority here.
- pavs 13y ago> News is supposed to be new, correct? I don't think there is any rule on HN that says that all submitted stuff has to be new.
- bornhuetter 13y agoThere isn't. Stuff gets posted all the time with [year] in the title; if it's interesting it gets upvoted.
- skidding 13y agoIt's highly probable that someone saw it while checking out the aufond.me demo a few points down the front page (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5879071 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5879071) http://aufond.me/sivers/got-dissed-by-steve-jobs http://aufond.me/sivers/got-dissed-by-steve-jobs
- beshrkayali 13y agoThat's exactly what happened. The only reason why I submitted it is that it was news to me.
- exDM69 13y agoHow about checking for previous submissions before posting and putting a [2010] in the title then?
- beshrkayali 13y agoI should've put 2010 in the title. HN shouldn't have allowed it if it was a problem/against the rules.
- pfarrell 13y agoYou can try to hit HN search or something, but if you didn't purposefully alter the URL to make it "unique" and the system accepted it, then you are playing by the rules that matter. Meta-disagreements from the community, notwithstanding, I appreciated your post. People like to complain. It's something you expose yourself to when you participate in a community.
- danmaz74 13y agoHN already does a check, if the submission is recent. For older submissions, very wisely, PG decided that they can be resubmitted - lots of interesting stuff comes out from time to time that is new to newcomers.
- weavie 13y ago
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- czr80 13y agoPrevious discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1896189 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1896189
- dualogy 13y agoBaffles me why the dupe-detector didn't work here? Exact URL after all, it seems.
- chris_wot 13y agoYup, Steve Jobs was an arsehole.
- gesman 13y agoAt the top there are crowds of these... :)
- dthunt 13y agoI think you learn everything you need to know about Steve Jobs by looking at the way he pursued his cancer treatment.
- kunai 13y agoThis is why I think Apple will do better with Cook, Ive, Federighi, and Schiller as the frontmen. They can collaborate and judge what's best uninterrupted by the arrogant ramblings of Holy Jobs.
- lostlogin 13y agoI suspect that Apple define success with their own metrics. There are a few measures by which Apple is already the best - which areas do you think a Cook Apple might target? From the short Post-Jobs era, I'd say that Apple was more secretive, and quicker to acknowledge fault.
- epo 13y ago
- barbs 13y ago" Whatever. Fucking Apple" Just about sums it all up, really.
- wavefunction 13y agoseriously
- themstheones 13y agoStory of my life!
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- shin_lao 13y agoI think the problem was charging $ 40 to get to iTunes. Either you give the full catalog or you don't but it shouldn't be something you can purchase.
- mathattack 13y agoFrom reading the text, was he able to charge $40 again? Seems unclear. I can see Apple not wanting to introduce a middle man.
- infinitone 13y agoHe does say in the comments that after the refund- most of the artists told him to keep the $40.
- mathattack 13y agoI usually skip the comments and just come here. :-)
- msandford 13y agoThe $40 was a service fee to cover the cost of having someone at CDBaby go into the warehouse, pick up a copy of the CD, put it into the CD drive, type in all the album, artist and track info and hitting "scan" and then putting it back when things are done. Doesn't sound like that big of a deal, you could do it for "free" yourself at home. But if CDBaby had to do 5000 of them there's a real cost associated. For a lot of people it's worth $40 to not have to think about anything and for it to "just work".
- kefs 13y agoAs I read the article, I couldn't figure out why Derek and cdbaby didn't just script a solution to submit the data appropriately from his already amassed archive (which he could then sell as another service on the side).
- 13y ago
- hobs 13y agoLong story short, dont trust others with your business. I have seen this dozens of times where a smaller company gets really excited because they are working with the big brute, and they get screwed because the big boy gets to make all the terms, and if/when they break the contract or act like complete assholes, you have really no recourse.
- gesman 13y agoBig entities can afford to be arrogant and are well known to pay with promises instead of money. Silicon Valley is full of skulls and bones of little guys who got too excited too soon. Business as usual until papers are fully signed and money in the bank.
- mathattack 13y agoReally the second half. It's the money in the bank. :-)
- gesman 13y agoRight. I'll ditch papers for money.
- infinitone 13y agoThis- this and this. If every entrepreneur knew this from day 0, I'd garner we'd have a lot less mental breakdowns :) It reminds me of a story of me when I got super excited about a contract with Zipcar, it was going great after meeting and email then silence. And 2 weeks later, got the call to end it all. The lesson is to be humble/modest and don't get excited/lose focus when dealing with bigger cats- once the contract is signed AND money is transfered then maybe you can celebrate a bit.
- numbsafari 13y agoThis is the essence of this story. The past year of my life has been spent dealing with a founder who assumes every compliment is a business deal ready to happen. We've wasted so much time and money chasing after "paradigm shifts" and "game changers" that were literally nothing more than polite, small-talky blow offs. There's a certain kind of narcissism at work in the minds of many founders. Perhaps it is what makes them successful on some level. Perhaps it is what motivates them to go forward. I dunno. Whatever it is, it is endlessly frustrating.
- Jd 13y ago"They had 300,000 songs while Rhapsody and Napster had over 2 million songs. (Over 500,000 of those were from CD Baby.)" Something about this does not compute.
- mavroprovato 13y agoOf the 2 million songs available at Rhapsody and Napster, over 500,000 were from CD Baby
- Jd 13y agoIf that's what it means, it is a bit misleading since it is combining two other services (Rhapsody and Napster) against one (Apple).
- brickmort 13y agoCD Baby was HUGE in the early 2000s, especially for independent bands/musicians. This was before anything like Amazon music, iTunes store, etc. For the most part, digital music was still heavily being pirated at this point in time, at least until the music industry got a better grip of the digital music market.
- jcampbell1 13y ago> I flew home that night, posted my meeting notes on my website, emailed all of my clients to announce the news, and went to sleep. > When I woke, I had furious emails and voicemails from my contact at Apple. How was this unexpected? Who goes to a business meeting with a potential partner that can make your business soar, and then goes and blabs all over the internet about the partner's business strategy. Who does that shit? He literally published Apple's perfected pitch and detailed strategy online the very next day: http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=66729&cid=6133882 http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=66729&cid=6133882 Apple & CD Baby's partnership was ultimately very beneficial for both companies, but Derek certainly went a bit overboard publishing those meeting notes.
- fakeer 13y ago>>Who goes to a business meeting with a potential partner that can make your business soar, and then goes and blabs all over the internet about the partner's business strategy One who has thousands of people(and more who can be potential independent businesses(musicians/singers) on his portal) to communicate to in a short time and the other guy(business) who never mentioned[0] secrecy[1]. [0] Yes, you out to have done that. [1] Source: post.
- jcampbell1 13y agoI agree that he needed to communicate with the artists. The problem is the level of detail of the notes he shared. Did you read through his notes? Those notes were a perfected business plan handed to Yahoo / eMusic / Rhapsody, and a bit of a slap in the face to the major labels. I have mixed feeling about whether it was right for Steve to be vindictive, but I am certain I would be pissed.
- rmrfrmrf 13y agoEverything the guy did just screams amateur. The first issue is posting information about a deal before a contract has been signed. However, I'd argue that the bigger issue is the $40 price tag that was slapped onto the iTunes upload service. The record label is already making money off of its customers through sales on iTunes; why on Earth would you cheapen the service by making it seem like anyone with $40 cash-in-hand can become part of the iTunes catalog? The fact that the author made $200,000 (!) in iTunes service sales alone says a lot.
- skue 13y agoThere's a great expression that is especially useful when dealing with big companies: "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately described by incompetency." [1] While it's tempting to think that Jobs was pulling all the strings, the reality is that Apple is a large company where legal departments take forever, internal debate occur, and communication is slow. It sucks that Jobs made that $40 statement without someone vetting (or caring) that they were negotiating with CDBaby and that's their price. It sucks that Apple did not communicate better about the reason for the delay. But doing enterprise deals is nothing like working with an individual, and in that context I wouldn't simply assume that Apple/Jobs was being spiteful. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor
- larrys 13y agoLook Jobs could be the way he is because he has things that people want (I don't mean Apple products so much as what someone like Jobs is able to do for someone economically). If he didn't have those things nobody would pay attention to him or care about him other than the base level that anyone cares about anyone day to day. He knows that. Same as some pretty girls know why guys are interested in them. (Or rich guys hopefully know why girls are interested in them). It's a symbiotic relationship.
- SiVal 13y agoRead Jobs's biography (or talk to any of us who worked with him) and decide for yourself 1) whose personal decisions were behind the actions of Apple down to a "micromanaged" level of detail, and 2) whether that guy was better described as malicious or incompetent.
- aneth4 13y agoNot to be an apologist, but it seems like Apple's actions make a lot of sense. First of all, who posts meeting notes from meetings with top executives when given a heads up about upcoming products? NOBODY. Of course it's confidential by default. Second, Apple was right to presume a company charging to get music in the App Store would likely provide lower quality music. Charging for access completely reverses the motivation of record companies. Until they were ready to open the floodgates, excluding companies that charged was a reasonable if rough quality filter.
- msandford 13y agoConfidential by default? Says who? Just because you say so doesn't mean everyone assumes that. It's not as though the people there didn't know that Derek represented a bunch of independents who would all be able to make their own decisions. And if they somehow did not know, then they're fools for not spending 5 minutes to understand how CD Baby worked and what it meant for Derek. They could have said in less than three seconds "This is all confidential." And then Derek would have had a conversation with them about what he could and couldn't say. I don't think he was at all in the wrong to not assume confidentiality at the get go. People sharing information have a responsibility to set expectations on it's use. Not the people receiving it.
- parasubvert 13y agoSays who? Anyone that's ever been involved with technology businesses for 30+ years knows you risk your relationship when you breach confidence. It's common sense. Of course, common sense is rarely common, which is why we have NDAs.
- k2xl 13y agoHave to disagree. If hundreds of people are "invited" it's almost like a mini conference. In fact, the entire issue was that Apple never created a relationship with him in the first place. I totally understand why under those circumstances someone wouldn't assume what was said is confidential.
- psychotik 13y ago'Whatever. Fucking Apple.' As a developer, I find myself saying that more often than I would like. Glad this isn't just a developer thing that Apple does - it seems like a consistent part of their DNA.
- kbenson 13y agoYour glad about that?
- psychotik 13y agoYou don't see the sarcasm there?
- kbenson 13y agoNo, I didn't. I'm happily wrong though. :) I thought it was a bit of schadenfreude or just happiness that developers weren't being singled out. Poe's law is alive and well on HN, so I find it hard to spot sarcasm here unless it's fairly overt.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- k2xl 13y agoCouldn't agree more. As a developer I can't stand their review process. http://k2xl.com/wordpress/ios-is-the-worst-platform-for-development/ http://k2xl.com/wordpress/ios-is-the-worst-platform-for-deve...
- apl002 13y agoHa! "Whatever. Fucking Apple." was literally the only thing i took away from this as well. shout out to us frustrated developers.
- dmourati 13y agoWhat you should have been doing (hindsight 20-20 and all that) was quietly going around to the other hundred or so people and getting together on this. Come through with one legal team representing the newly founded consortium and then negotiate from a position of strength. Sign the deal, get cash up front, and then begin the drudgery of complying with Apple's byzantine requirements as a group.
- tod222 13y agoYou and only a few other commenters have recognized the abuse of power here: > They said sorry - you need to use this software - there is no other way. It would have been easy for Apple to work with entities such as CD Baby to whip up an alternate method to handle the importation of large catalogs of music. Once specified I'm sure such a trivial web API could be implemented and tested quickly. But Apple and Jobs didn't do this because they knew they had the power to insist that their software be used even though it was only suited for single CD submissions. I find it interesting that many commenters are critical of Sivers while completely overlooking Apple's abuse of power. dmourati not only recognized the abuse of power but recommended a method for meeting it head on.
- robomartin 13y agoBrings back memories. After a series of emails with Steve Jobs --all while I was coding at four in the morning!-- my then partner and I flew to Cupertino for a meeting with VP's directly under him and about thirty engineers and managers from various areas of the organization. We brought with us nearly a million dollars of equipment to put on a good demonstration and illustrate our technology. Apple asked us to develop a product they needed. We threw a ton of money and effort at the task and got it done in three months (a redesign of an existing product). They started to promote the product, gave us a direct link on their website to ours. It was amazing. Six months later a cheaper (20% of our price) bad quality product (among other things, there were reports of it catching fire) came into the scene. Apple dropped us like a hot potato. We lost a ton of time and money on the deal. Am I angry? Nope. I have enough experience dealing with large companies to know you should go into these deals nearly expecting the worst corner cases. This, I think, is certainly true for small companies. Besides, I had a conversation with Steve Jobs at four in the morning. Perhaps that alone was worth the cost of admission...and I am not even close to being an Apple fan boy. As for the OP, I don't think he was very wise in posting meeting info as he did.
- infinitone 13y agoHmm... sounds like the other product was a Jawbone product :d- the up maybe?
- robomartin 13y agoIt's been a few years. It wouldn't serve any purpose to air details as this is ancient history. Pivot and push forward.
- larrys 13y ago"Am I angry? Nope." Usually when people do get angry about these things it's because they don't have what you say next, in other words they haven't been around the block: "I have enough experience" More directly people get mad when you feel naive that you expected something and were fooled. In other words "I'm loyal to that girl and now she cheated on me". So you are mad at yourself for trusting and feeling fooled. Sivers of course will most likely never make that type of mistake again. He has learned from the situation. If he does do the same thing though it will be with full knowledge of the possible outcome.
- oconnor0 13y agoIt's interesting to me that Apple's complaint is that anyone could get their crappy music into iTunes for $40 and that's a problem, but that free is fine.
- thehme 13y agoWow! The things to learn. I am not sure how I feel about this or what to get out of it, although I am feeling a bit dizzy/warm. Should we buy music from Apple or other "nicer" companies? Pretty messed up though what Jobs did, although posting their business plan was most likely what made "them" angry. I am with you though that if it was confidential, you should have been given notice.
- danbmil99 13y agoTL; DR: Steve Jobs really was quite a dick
- danbmil99 13y agoThe fact that a statement like this will never be voted up says so much. Do we rational hacker types really believe in ghosts? He did great shit, and he was a dick. Is that so hard to accept?
- lolcraft 13y agoI'm somewhat amused that many here mention the amateurishness of Sivers' behaviour, yet there's no mention of Jobs' passive-aggressive bullshit. "But we realize record companies do a great service. They edit! Did you know that if you and I record a song, for $40 we can pay a few of the services to get it on their site, through some intermediaries? We can be on Rhapsody and all these other guys for $40?" Dude, what a pompous douchebag. You got a problem with what I did, tell me. Just don't screw around, sending mixed signals in a very roundabout way in the hope that I get it, because you're too scared of any confrontation in your Garden of Reality Distortion. I know Apple likes being this impenetrable Kremlin, but this is just plainly taking pages from Stalin's Guide to Management. "Did you know some CEO from a very successful tech company is a pompous douchebag?..."
- WalterBright 13y agoI saw a documentary on a guy who has amassed the largest vinyl record collection in the world. The claim was made that 87% of all vinyl is not available on CD or other formats. It'd be nice to see all that back catalog stuff available. I know I have a number of records that are good, but are not available digitally.
- UniZero 13y agoCan you remember what that documentary was called? I would love to see that
- WalterBright 13y agoIt was on the Roku's PBS channel. It's called "The Archive" under "PBS Online Film Festival".