If I worked for 20 years with one of history's most influential entrepreneur, and we had a deep working partnership sustained by mutual respect and trust, and then that person died, I simply don't know how I'd continue showing up every day.
Keep in mind that when Jobs returned to Apple, Ive was not at all influential within Apple and on the verge of leaving. To go from that place to one of the world's most influential industrial designers — gosh, I'd have some ego too.
I'm grateful for his contribution. And I'm also grateful that his departure seemed to have opened new avenues of creativity and flexibility of thought at Apple.
After all, it was Jobs himself at the Stanford connection who said that death (or, thought of another way, departure) is life's change agent.
> overwhelmed by the death of a celebrity stranger
Jobs, like Lennon, was not just a celebrity. Both stood for what they believed and, by doing so, inspired countless others to do better. I know working with him was impossibly painful, but I wouldn't have thought twice at the possibility.
For some, that may sound masochistic, but, when my muscles hurt after a workout, I remind myself the next time I'll be running longer and faster. The people who work at Apple touch the lives of countless others and their quest for merging technology and art inspires us.
I don't think I would have been the same engineer I am now had I not used an Apple II+ as my first computer and had I not opened the case and been struck by its absolute elegance - if you are reading this, thanks, Woz, for being our profession's Mozart.
When I go over a post I made here (doing it right now, and there are few things humbler, in the literary sense, than a discussion board post), rephrasing everything until I'm happy with it, I feel satisfied you'll read something much better than what I would be able to do in a couple seconds, even if you miss the cut/copy/paste/type action.
> everyone was merged into another team working on something similar with new management. Meet the new boss same as the old boss
I worked for Apple before Jobs died. He'd frequently have several teams working on the exact same thing, in secret, and then pick the team that met his goals the best. Sometimes the "losers" would be merged into the "winning" team, but never treated well by the winners.
You know, I have some feeling surrounding Jobs' passing (while I never met him, I've known a number of people who did -- mostly from 20+ years ago), and I've appreciated the tributes. But there is also the desire and need to discuss it in context. Some respect may well be warranted, and there may not be the need to rush headlong into critical analysis, but Jobs' passing does promote a lot of attention and focus that will not continue indefinitely.
Richard's statement may seem in some ways including timing somewhat harsh, but it's entirely consistent with his position and it is a valuable counterpoint to the notion, and sentimentality, of Jobs as a savior of the technical -- and broader, in various definitions (U.S. industry, design, personal achievement, etc., etc.) -- world.
I felt that HN's front page organically filling with Jobs posts was a fitting, and moving, tribute. But this is also HN, where we analyze and discuss things critically. And I would expect the stories and comments to move to a full and varied spectrum of views.
The resurrection of the Mac, and of Apple, was built in good part upon BSD. Safari was born of Webkit. There is not just an either or in this story, there is a co-opting and commercial progression that is quite worthy of consideration and discussion.
There is also the fact that UNIX/Linux systems remained and remain expensive in the commercial sphere and difficult for the typical end user to manage in the free sphere. More and more people have been appreciating Apple products because, for they most part, they can plug them in, turn them on, and they "just work". It's a relief to have someone else managing "that security stuff" (whatever latent and perhaps nascent weakenesses may as yet remain largely unknown to the general public). And to have someone else deciding, we won't cheapen the design and manufacturing further, to the point where things break in six months or are uncomfortable to use.
Most of us never knew Steve, personally. It's a mark of his influence how we nonetheless feel the effect of his passing on our lives -- at a personal level.
But there needs to be room for a larger conversation. In part precisely because and as a reflection of this influence, there are important matter to discuss. Not all aspects will be flattering of Mr. Jobs. But that is the nature of the position he inhabited and the decisions he made.
So, lets make some room for that discourse.
For my part, "free" vs "walled garden" is a critical distinction playing out right now in the computational and communcations space. What Apple has done and offers really does need close consideration. Monitors and controls are general tools, readily turned to the purpose of the hand that wields them. So, what really will work for us, on this spectrum from "anarchy" to "jail"? Is it really a spectrum, or is it a slippery slope leading inevitably to one extreme or the other?
Steve Jobs made some important decisions and executed them superbly. Were they -- will they be -- the right ones?
You seem to be debating someone else; I haven't said that?
I think Jobs and Ive were a pair that complimented each other. I think when Jobs died, Ive lost that moderating influence, and "thin at the cost of good" and "we got rid of buttons" were the result for a while.
Because Jobs was still in control. As I understand it, this was a constant tension between Ive and Jobs. Of course Ive design eventually dominated after Jobs' death.
The full legacy of Steve Jobs will not be sorted out for a very long time. When employees first talked about Jobs’ “reality distortion field,” it was a pejorative — they were referring to the way that he got you to sign on to a false truth by the force of his conviction and charisma. But at a certain point the view of the world from Steve Jobs’ brain ceased to become distorted. It became an instrument of self-fulfilling prophecy. As product after product emerged from Apple, each one breaking ground and changing our behavior, Steve Job’s reality field actually came into being. And we all live in it.
That sounds like an enduring meme -- his reality-distortion field has become our reality.
He did mellow with age, though. The Steve Jobs biography actually latched onto this as a key narrative element—a way to construct Jobs's personal arch—and I do believe it's genuine based on everything else I've read about the guy.
And it's notable that Jobs only really reached his zenith in these later years. The original Macintosh had a splashy launch, but sales began dwindling pretty quickly[1], and NeXT never had much commercial success before Apple bought them. My admiration of Jobs is really for the person he was in his last decade. He was a visionary long before that, of course, but ideas are relatively cheap, and Jobs couldn't execute.
Jobs was, to be sure, certainly still a demanding figure at the end of his life (and I would not have wanted to work for him), but I think Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have him beat.
>>He learned some humility back then in NeXT when not much went as planned for him, a quality, which would help him in later years in Apple. Jobs himself said that this experience was necessary and would define his future years.
Could you expand on this? Was it a move to more consumer testing and validation of product development ideas, or something else?
I think the point was that Jobs was working with the teams as a contributor more than a dictator. It very specifically pointed out that Jobs' ideas were decoupled from his role as CEO (as were everyone else's) so there were just lots of ideas, and the best ones stayed around while the rest were thrown out.
Perhaps Jobs started that process, but I'm sure it still exists with him gone.
> <edit> This segment made me literally tear up,, his entire speech.. it is clear that they were best friends. </edit>
You were not alone. I teared up quite a few times during the whole thing. A tragic loss, not only for the things he invented/led others to invent, but by the example he set of perfectionism. Al Gore's words summed it pretty well "keep on insisting that good is not enough, that even great is not enough, keep insisting that Apple products truly be insanely great". I don't work for Apple (an iPod and its companion iMac, I don't even use their machines that much), but I can relate to that. I am nowhere near the perfectionist Jobs was, but I would gladly work with him (and I know it was hard) for the selfish reason I'd become a much better perfectionist myself.
> "I was, but when NeXT stopped making hardware they laid me off. A week later, Steve called me and started to say “okay Wayne, we need to...” I interjected “what do you mean we need to? You laid me off.” He said “oh” and then click.
>Eight months later I heard from my brother, who was still working customer support, “Steve wants you to call. He won’t call you but you should call him.” The result of that conversation led to working directly with Steve on all his most important presentations at Pixar and Apple for nearly the next two decades."
Steve Jobs' true skill was identifying great talent and leveraging them.
I'm sad that he died, eapecially so young and by delaying treatment that could have improved his prognosis. But one thing I'm beginning to appreciate is that the reality distortion field is sort of fading away. Wozniak has stepped up and talked more frankly about Jobs's real role inside Apple, especially during the early days. And increasingly though he is still regarded as a Leonardo among product managers, people are recognizing that Jobs was a control freak and that technical people do not want to live in his locked down, curated universe.
So we mourn, but we also feel free to acknowledge things after his death that we stifled while he was still alive for fear of our hero losing his glamour and being less of a guiding light.
Steve Jobs died soon after he retired. And working at (nearly) the same company / dreams his entire adult life. Or more like he was forced to retire due to his health.
But Apple Park. As if He wasn't gonna let death get in the way of his Dream.
From reading books and listening to his talks he gave on life, I am sure he didn't regret it one bit.
“I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.” - Steve Jobs.
Not just a plan but the Plan, which Apple has followed ever since. It's fascinating to watch this section of Jobs's 1997 comeback presentation, knowing how successful this strategy was with the iPhone and the App Store: https://youtu.be/4QrX047-v-s?t=7m40s
My girlfriend's father died of the same illness as Jobs. When she saw Jobs giving a keynote in June, she was amazed that he was still working when it was so obvious (to her, having watched her father fade away) that the end was near.
> Do you think Jobs was a hands-off idea man who let others sweat the details?
Very much not the case.
I was on the iPod software team 15 years ago, and let me tell you, we got plenty of detailed feedback from periodic "SJ reviews". My manager (a line manager of a small team) went to those meetings and came back with lots of very specific things we needed to change.
One year (fall 2008) Steve was going on vacation to Italy for a week or two, and asked for a development version of the iPod shuffle we were working on to take with him on the trip. (We were terrified, because it wasn't really ready for that level of scrutiny.) That was at a time when the iPhone 3G and the original iPad were also under development, and yet we got a bunch of feedback on the humble little iPod shuffle when he returned.
He really was in the details, to an astonishing degree, and not just for the headline products, either.
If Jobs was alive, but didn't manage to build any more new products opening new markets in the next twenty years, your message would quite aptly apply to him too.
"Jobs made some quite important things twenty or thirthy years ago that are still useful or relevant nowadays. So what? It doesn't entitle him to be a pretentious, hypocritical "I know what's best for you" moron.
I'm sorry for the rudeness, but enough with the cult of personality, please."
Unfortunately he's gone, and we won't be able to tell.
If I worked for 20 years with one of history's most influential entrepreneur, and we had a deep working partnership sustained by mutual respect and trust, and then that person died, I simply don't know how I'd continue showing up every day.
Keep in mind that when Jobs returned to Apple, Ive was not at all influential within Apple and on the verge of leaving. To go from that place to one of the world's most influential industrial designers — gosh, I'd have some ego too.
I'm grateful for his contribution. And I'm also grateful that his departure seemed to have opened new avenues of creativity and flexibility of thought at Apple.
After all, it was Jobs himself at the Stanford connection who said that death (or, thought of another way, departure) is life's change agent.
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