He is still has a significant influence, regardless of the usefulness of his apps, as highlighted by the position of this article on Hacker News. Had he written

He is still has a significant influence, regardless of the usefulness of his apps, as highlighted by the position of this article on Hacker News. Had he written a blog entry called "Developing for WebOS is awesome", the submission would still be wildly popular and quite a few people would be compelled to give WebOS a shot. And of course, he would be much less likely to talk trash about them.