Steve Jobs RIP

[Goldengreen]

To me Apple are really just a marketing and design company not a leader in technology, they are usually playing catch up in the technology stakes.

Back in 2004 I was using my iRiver Multi Codec 40GB HDD media player to listen to my music, look at my pictures and flims on the colour screen, used it too to connect to external USB devices like my camera to transfer pictures over to it, listen to the radio and use it as a voice recorder, while the iPod still had the black and white screen with sub standard quality of music, in farness a few months later aplle did introduce the ipod photo (colour screen so you could view pictures on it).
Of course for a Techy like me the interface on the iRiver was grand but for a non-techy it was a nightmare and that where Apple comes into its own the design of the interface, made technology like this available to the masses and through marketing made it a status symbol too, hats off to them on that front but technology leader, I am sorry but no.

[armaghniac]

Henry Ford didn't invent the car, but he did a lot of ensure that everyone could have one.
Steve Jobs brought technology to the masses.

[rrhf]

Listen guys we have very high standards if we dont rate Jobs.  He achieved a wee bit more than most.  Some of the folks on here would criticise Eddison because the electricity was already there in the first place.    I couldnt see the Celtic Tiger take too long to roar again with some of the  product designers, inventers and marketeers that are on here at the helm.
"The real fool is the individual who cant understand the greatness of others."  F Larmor   

[EC Unique]

Listen guys we have very high standards if we dont rate Jobs.  He achieved a wee bit more than most.  Some of the folks on here would criticise Eddison because the electricity was already there in the first place.    I couldnt see the Celtic Tiger take too long to roar again with some of the  product designers, inventers and marketeers that are on here at the helm.
"The real fool is the individual who cant understand the greatness of others."  F Larmor

Great post RRHF. Too many people are glass half empty people. They are the ones who will still be paying a mortgage when in their mid 50s and grumbling about people like Jobs not being that good. He and others at apple are obvious genius'.

[Tony Baloney]

Listen guys we have very high standards if we dont rate Jobs.  He achieved a wee bit more than most.  Some of the folks on here would criticise Eddison because the electricity was already there in the first place.    I couldnt see the Celtic Tiger take too long to roar again with some of the  product designers, inventers and marketeers that are on here at the helm.
"The real fool is the individual who cant understand the greatness of others."  F Larmor

Great post RRHF. Too many people are glass half empty people. They are the ones who will still be paying a mortgage when in their mid 50s and grumbling about people like Jobs not being that good. He and others at apple are obvious genius'.

I don't think too many are begrudging, a bit of perspective would be nice. He made billions from making shiny gadgets.

[Bingo]

EC and RRHF have it nailed on. Very easy to run achievements down but Apples are on a scale that only a handful reach.

[Bingo]

Should also be noted that jobs went beyond apple. Pixar was largely down to him after he changed the whole dynamics of the company. They say it never had a flop since and it was due to how he changed people's perceptions and relationship in the comany.

He can also be credited for mentoring the google creators.

[Blowitupref]

Henry Ford didn't invent the car, but he did a lot of ensure that everyone could have one.
Steve Jobs brought technology to the masses.

Ford developed a production line that helped mass produce cars to help bring the cost down to a more affordable level for a lot of people. Jobs was different in that Apple products had (and still do) a price premium attached to it and never really focused on major mass production to satisfy budget end technology, and in doing so made more money per unit than manufacturers making budget-end products that were being sold of a third or quarter of the price. Michael O'Leary would be a much better comparison to Ford than Jobs was.

`

Spot on & must be said Jobs was a marketing genius, certainly one that could sell snow to the Eskimos & Sand to the Arabs.

[Gaffer]

Steve Jones?

Never heard tell of him until today ...................

And I have an Iphone 4 !

[Eamonnca1]

As others have mentioned, it was Benz and Daimler that invented the automobile but it took Henry Ford to bring it to the masses.  Without Jobs and Woz it would have taken a whole lot longer for you to have the easy-to-use computer that you're now sitting at typing your dismissal of his contribution. If you're pissing on Jobs' legacy via a graphical user interface then I'm sure he'd get a good laugh at the irony of that if he were to see it.  And that includes if you're sitting at a Windows machine, remember?  MS stole the GUI idea from Apple?*

I can't believe someone posted that Apple were always playing catchup to other tech companies.  Apple led the way in:

• Use of the GUI
• Standardized GUIs in all application software (remember when it was revolutionary to have the pull-down menus in the same place in every program starting with File and Edit? Took PC makers a while to realize that this was a good idea.)
• User-friendly WYSIWYG graphic design and desktop publishing software
• Product design (remember after the first iMac came out, suddenly all the PC manufacturers started trying to use translucent coloured casings and failing miserably to achieve the same effect? Notice how all mobile phones are now trying to look like iPhones? Notice how all tablets are now trying to look like iPads?)
• Inclusion of CD drives as storage devices issued as standard
• Use of the floppy disk as standard
• Abandonment of the floppy disk with the first iMac (remember how everyone thought they were mad? Hands up how many people use floppy disks now?)
• USB
• An MP3 player that you can actually use without being a computer expert
• Smartphones (remember when a Blackberry with its keyboard looked high tech? Or when all phones were flip-phones with tiny screens? That wasn't so long ago.)
• A tablet computer that you can use for casual web and media use without being a computer expert

To dismiss Apple's achievements as "just" improving on existing technology is completely missing the point. The lad in Detroit who invented intermittent wipers was "just" rearranging existing electronic components that had been invented by other people. It was the way they were arranged and the benefit to the consumer that added value to it. Charles Dickens didn't invent the word "It", the word "was", "the", "best", "of", or "times" but his arrangement of them added value.

And some in the open source software movement have a big problem with Apple's centralized control of software. Well you know what? The fact that there's a Kremlin-like organization in Cupertino making sure that stuff works before it appears on Apple devices is a good thing! There's a reason why Apple hardware and software is so much more reliable than any of that Windoze "blue screen of death" shit. And it costs a little more because it's worth it. You're welcome to save a few hundred dollars and get yourself some HP contraption running Windoze but you'd better make sure and have some money in reserve and plenty of spare time for the inevitable wrangling with tech support to get the damn thing working.  I just took delivery of a new iMac the other day and instead of wasting my time installing drivers, security patches and Christ-knows-what-all I just got stuck into editing some video. 

"Sucker" you say? How many times have you had to reboot your PC over the years? How many irreplaceable hours have you lost on the phone to tech support?  Call me a "sucker" or "fanboy" all you like. I've been using Apple stuff since the 1980s as well as PCs, Linux and Unix.  Apple is by far the most advanced and the best solution for anyone who just wants to get shit done. I've had one or two bad experiences, particularly towards the end of a computer of phone's life, but in general my experiences with Apple's products has been positive. Sure they fell a little bit behind in the 90s (when Jobs was absent, oddly enough) but other than that they have been consistently ahead of the game. Consistently.

Greedy? By all accounts Jobs actually did plenty of charitable giving in his own way behind the scenes. Not as ostentatious or high profile as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation** but he was no miser either.   He wasn't driven by the accumulation of wealth, he wanted to change the world. And unlike a lot of the armchair experts posting on this thread he succeeded.

I really feel sorry for these "glass half empty" merchants who can't bring themselves to give credit where it's due. They remind me of the people at GAA meetings who shoot down innovative ideas because "oh that'll never work" or bitch about the cost of something but conveniently overlook its benefits.  Jobs took risks and on occasion he got it wrong or came up with devices or services that didn't take off. For every iPhone or iPod there's a Cube computer that didn't capture the imagination or offer any major benefit to the user. But that's part of the creative destruction of business. Sometimes you have to push the envelope a little too far to see where the limits are.

I shudder to think what the world would be like without Apple.  All computers would be terse, clunky, and unreliable. With Apple we have a place to go where we can shelter from all that. As someone who spends most of my working day on a computer I'm glad I have one that's actually pleasurable to use. I like the feel of the keyboard, even the noise the keys make. I like the user interface. I like the sensation of getting my work done without the sinister sensation at the back of my mind that something is going to go horribly wrong and I'm going to lose my hard work.  I feel free to think about what I'm doing, not how I'm doing it.  The difference between using a PC and using a Mac is like the difference between driving an old Lada and driving a new Ford Mondeo.

To hell with the cynics and begrudgers. Jobs will be up there with Brunel, Whittle, Edison and Marconi in the pantheon of engineers who changed the world. You can piss on his memory all you want, but I for one tip my hat to him.

---

*I know I know, they got the idea from Xerox, but Xerox had no means of exploiting it. It's be like Lotus cars making a breakthrough that would only benefit the aviation industry.

**That's not to knock Bill Gates, I think he does great work and a high profile foundation is just another way of doing philanthropy that works well for Gates.

[Eamonnca1]

I would say in technology terms, 2001 to 2006 seen more advances than 2006 to 2011 where more emphasis has been placed on usability.

Usability is kind of a big deal. I once had an old Samsung phone that could so some things my iPhone 4 can't. I could even read email on it, in theory. But I hated that old Samsung with a passion because of the futery and unfathomable user interface. All the technology and features in the world are useless if the user can't figure out how to get at them. Without usability then there won't be widespread uptake and the cost of such technology won't come down as a result.

You're obviously a technically minded person, and this is something that people like you don't always understand:

People buy benefits, not features.

Clive Sinclair (a British pioneer of consumer electronics and computers) thought he was going to impress the world with the clever features and technology that went into his electric C5 vehicle, but it brought his mighty technology company to its knees because he didn't appreciate the difference between technical ingenuity and the public's need for the product to actually benefit them. Yes it was clever, but nobody wanted it because it was no use to them.

People don't care if the aerial protrudes or not, they don't care how many transistors are crammed into the chips inside, they don't care about how it's put together. They do care if it works and is easy to use.

[mannix]

When i were a lad back in the late seventies and early eighties the height of technology was

1. Headmaster in national school using a hand operated drum printer to copy sheets for the older students.
2. We got this tape recorder radio thing at home in about 1981 and had hours of fun listening to playback of my father cursing and blinding( we usually wound him up about breaking or losing something).
3. the " good radio" took five minutes to warm up before sound would happen.
4. I can truthfully say I never seen a color tv until 1980.
5. Our American cousins would marvel that we never seen a cassette player in a car, we were lucky to see the car.
6. Then in about 1983/84 a neighbor got a Sony Walkman and sure the girls were only dying to be with him, tape player that required replacement batteries and rewinding after playing the tape.

Today I can fart on top of Croagh Patrick and while it's still potent  somebody in Durban or San Francisco can know about it via text. I am writing this while supposedly working on an iPad  and will later go for a run while listening to the iPod, sometimes I wonder if it was better not having so much connectivity and information at the touch of a button.

[Boycey]

Those lovely Westboro Baptist people are talking about picketing Jobs funeral, you know the God hates fags guys who picket soldiers funerals. How are they spreading this poison? by iPhone of course...

@MargieJPhelpsMargiePhelps


God remembers he taught his neighbor to sin. #eternaltormentnow Westboro must picket funeral. MT @Pogue: Steve Jobs has died. Remembrances.


19 hours ago via Twitter for iPhone

[David McKeown]

Jobs managed to revolutionise arguably 4 industries and he did it without really inventing anything and along the way he made 8 billion dollars that's some epitaf for anyone.

I met Jobs once but I was to young to appreciate fully who he was and what he had and would achieve

[seafoid]

Usability is a big deal

Especially women

http://stephenleahy.net/2008/12/22/electronic-gadgets-fuel-congo-rape-mines/

Coltan is a rare and extremely valuable metal used in cell phones, DVD players, computers, digital cameras, video games, vehicle air bags, and more. It has long been implicated as both the source of funding and primary cause of the ongoing conflict and extraordinary violence against women. "A friend mapped the locations of the mass rapes in the DRC and they correspond to coltan mining regions," she said.
This "blood coltan" — akin to blood diamonds — generates billions of dollars of sales every year for electronics manufacturers in rich countries and brings hundreds of millions of dollars to rebels and others who control the coltan-producing regions. Coltan is also produced in other countries, and the DRC's "blood coltan" is often transported to those countries to give it a sheen of conflict-free provenance.

Foxconn is Apple's outsourcer

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10182824


The deaths at Foxconn are being discussed by everyone here and people are keeping a macabre score of how many young people have leapt to their deaths. It's very sad. Yesterday Foxconn sent a letter to be signed by all employees, removing liability to the company should an employee die. It immunised them against law suits. There was an outcry in the Chinese media and today Foxconn withdrew the letter.