Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine

Another?

He fucked his friends, he smelled like shit, and he tried to disown his daughter. America's greatest star.

Tarrant_sl said:

You forgot being a billionaire and refusing to acknowledge or support his daughter.

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He did eventually. But not before his actions painted him as a terrible human being.

Steve Jobs will go down as the smartest computer man of all time, way smarter then that Turing and his gay shroud! He'll be on the Olympia of men! Right up there wth Ghandi, Babe Ruth and Einstein.

Dandai_sl said:

I read his authorized biography cover to cover (ok, listened to the audio book from beginning to end) shortly after it came out, and I can definitively say he was nothing special as far as engineering goes. Even when Jobs worked at Atari, Woz did the heavy lifting.

Jobs was an exceptional marketer and businessman though. Bisi is right when he says Apple would've never made it out of homebrew. Woz is a company man, content to be on the lower rungs of the ladder, and is the polar opposite of ashamed to tell that to anyone who asks. The magic was in how well they complemented each other. Woz is a genius level engineer, and Jobs was a genius level marketer. Neither would've achieved anything remotely close to Apple without the other (and Jobs almost proved it with the startup he tried to do after he was evicted from Apple).

Jobs gets a lot of hate because he was such a terrible human being (and it's trendy to hate on Apple), but you can't argue with his record. He started Apple, made it a multimillion dollar company, got kicked out because he was an insufferable cunt, the company proceeded to churn out the same shit year after year and started failing (and failing hard), the board at Apple re-hired him as an interim CEO (fun fact - everything he made after his return to Apple was called iXXX because he was the iCEO) and it became the most profitable companyin the history of mankind. And Apple's success continues - Q4 2014 they posted the largest earnings statement for a publicly traded company in history.

Anyway, I found his story/life to be very interesting. I'm not sure why there's been so many re-tellings of the same story the past couple of years, but I guess people are still paying so we're going to keep getting more of it.

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This is a great summary and was hoping someone would articulate these points. I've worked side by side with Apple for about a decade in the education field. I've been with their engineers, trainers, developers, and just about any other position that is not an exec. They are a very impressive company and while it is trendy to hate on Apple, their products have enabled people to do some pretty remarkable things. I don't think people give Apple credit for how they target a very specific market or need and excel. I can think of a time where you would only see Apple products in Sound Studios, Design Companies, and Production Companies because this was their niche. Apple has been attempting to broaden their perspective for years and that's tough for a company where their corporate personality is like hugging a porcupine. However, you can still see their stubborn development personality in their DNA. Their most recent media day (and the last couple) has really focused on medical and fitness. So it's easy to get that "we really don't care about you and your casual day-to-day wants" from Apple. Honestly, they probably don't... However, they seem to find that niche and absolutely hammer it out until it's the best for that need. We had the opportunity to see that in education when the iPad very first took off. When Apple gives you their attention, it's a pretty incredible experience. However, when they move on to the next lucrative development, you really feel like you get left in the cold and completely ignored.

It's hard to describe it and as a consumer it's way too complicated to devote any time to understanding and I think that is why people just make another choice. I don't think the average consumer wants to discover why Apple is right for them because Apple isn't going to meet you half way.

That all seems to be irrelevant to Steve Jobs but I think that corporate personality is a reflection of his own. What you see of Apple to this day is essentially Steve Jobs. So regardless if you give him praise or hate, it's working and though Apple took a very different path reaching that corporate success that Gates achieved, they got there Jobs' way.