Steve Jobs 1955-2011

Life Technology
21

[quote=“headhonchoII”]No…please don’t put Newton in the same sentence as Steve Jobs…what a joke!
This all sounds like religious talk to me, the prophet died, the guy was a businessman, that’s it. He headed a huge corporation which doesn’t really care that much about the working conditions of the workers, outsourced what could be outsourced and doesn’t care about environmental protection as they force you to ‘upgrade’ when your battery dies and promote consumption above all else.

Compare him to Bill Gates, now there’s a guy who figured things out a long time and doesn’t get half as much credit as he should. Plus he made time for his family, Jobs had sociopathic tendencies to me.[/quote]
Love him or hate him, you can’t ignore his influence on the design of mobile devices today, or how he revamped the music, software and mobile industry in the favor of consumers.

22

Huh? I’d have thought it would be someone like Terry Gou or Stan Shih or someone like that. Jobs was fluent in mandarin rhetoric? Who knew? :laughing:
Sorry to cast a wet blanket. The collar of my black turtleneck is a little bit itchy.

23

With all due respect–that’s horse shit. All of Apple’s early success were the result of patents it basically bought off the cheap or borrowed from Xerox. They did none of the innovation in the 80s themselves. They gained real market success through their gimmicky 1984 ad. It’s too bad Xerox really didn’t capitalize on their great R&D instead of handing it to Apple. And people accuse Taiwan or Chinese companies of taking other people’s technology? hahahah.

Since Jobs returned to Apple in the 90s, most of the design stuff was the result of Jonathan Ive. Call him an opportunist with a good eye for talent, but visionary or revolutionary? Don’t believe all the nice things journalists are writing about him. That professional [journalism] gets things wrong a hell of a lot more than it gets them right. :laughing:

Revolutionary? Maybe, in a bad sense. Like Mao, Jobs was responsible for a lot of suffering in China. Instead of keeping a close eye on his suppliers by auditing them regularly, he has allowed them to really violate the human rights of their employees with impunity. Just like Gore’s family ruined countless lives through growing tobacco [including his own sister], Jobs and Apple have a lot of blood on their hands. Furthermore, unlike Nike, that corrected its practices after the sweatshop allegations were brought against them in the 80s, Apple doesn’t seem to care what its suppliers do to their employees.

Something to consider next time you are at Starbucks using one of their products. :wink:

24

[quote=“Adam_CLO”][quote=“headhonchoII”]No…please don’t put Newton in the same sentence as Steve Jobs…what a joke!
This all sounds like religious talk to me, the prophet died, the guy was a businessman, that’s it. He headed a huge corporation which doesn’t really care that much about the working conditions of the workers, outsourced what could be outsourced and doesn’t care about environmental protection as they force you to ‘upgrade’ when your battery dies and promote consumption above all else.

Compare him to Bill Gates, now there’s a guy who figured things out a long time and doesn’t get half as much credit as he should. Plus he made time for his family, Jobs had sociopathic tendencies to me.[/quote]
Love him or hate him, you can’t ignore his influence on the design of mobile devices today, or how he revamped the music, software and mobile industry in the favor of consumers.[/quote]

In favour of consumers, really? That’s funny because most consumers cannot afford their devices. It’s a modern religion, they have their adherents and their fair weather friends and their detractors. Like any religion they have good tenets and bad ones and they get tithes from their ‘consumer’ worshippers. They preach ‘our way is the one true way’. They have houses of worship where only their products are viewed and promoted in a controlled environment. When you purchase into their religion you are not allowed to purchase into anybody else’s or you will lose the benefits.
The scariest bit about it is behind this modern religion there is a modern conservative and extremely powerful corporation run for the benefit of it’s shareholders, that’s it.

25

:roflmao: I just BET Apple shareholders and Foxconn would be DELIGHTED if that were true!

26

[quote=“headhonchoII”][quote=“Adam_CLO”][quote=“divea”]The three apples that changed the world

Eve’s

Newton’s

Steve job’s :thumbsup:[/quote]
Wow, that’s impressive! :notworthy: Did you make this up on your own, or did you get it from somewhere? I want to tweet this and want to know who to source! :slight_smile:[/quote]

No…please don’t put Newton in the same sentence as Steve Jobs…what a joke!
Newton invented calculus so he could explain the laws of nature. He managed to put light on some of the mysteries of the universe and was instrumental in the scientific revolution.

This all sounds like religious talk to me, the prophet died, the guy was a businessman, that’s it. He headed a huge corporation which doesn’t really care that much about the working conditions of the workers, outsourced what could be outsourced and doesn’t care about environmental protection as they force you to ‘upgrade’ when your battery dies and promote consumption above all else.

Compare him to Bill Gates, now there’s a guy who figured things out a long time and doesn’t get half as much credit as he should. Plus he made time for his family, Jobs had sociopathic tendencies to me.[/quote]

Yeah, but Newton was quite a nut himself–sticking needles into his eyes for optic experiments, and he was quite a jerk, it seemed–and anyhow, Leibniz invented calculus the same time as Newton, and came up with better notation :stuck_out_tongue:

27

Ah yes I know Newton was definitely ‘out there’, seemingly he was a virgin all his life and lived with his niece. Let’s not detract from him though, he was a true genius.

28

Full disclosure: About 80% of my revenue from the past 5 years has come via iTunes (where the majority of users find my podcast) or the app store (where I sell several iPhone apps). So I have a lot to thank Steve and company for. In the past, independent developers like me couldn’t compete with big software companies - now we can.

In the past, if you wanted to buy a song, you typically purchased the full CD for $10. Nowadays most people buy singles from services like iTunes for $0.99. Isn’t this better for the consumer? Lot of packaging costs are saved in this new process. Win for the environment?

In the past, if you wanted to buy a piece of software, you had to visit a retailer and purchase a package off the shelf for around $50 US. How many middle men were involved in getting the product from the developer to the consumer (manufacturer, distributor, warehouses, truck drivers, retail stores) and how much environmental waste in packaging and distribution was involved? Then you had to go through the whole rigmarole of installing the software on your computer and finding a safe place for the manual / CD.

Nowadays, most software (for mobile phones and Macs now, but soon to be part of Windows 8) is sold as apps that are downloaded from various app stores. Average cost to consumers? $5 or less (most on Android platforms are free). All the environmental costs from packaging and distribution have been eliminated. Win for consumer and win for environment.

In the past, smart phones were complicated devices for techies. Apple introduced simplicity in design and a huge portion of their market is non techies - grandmas and the like who are wowed by the simplicity. Techies who want more features can still get them from competing platforms. Another win for consumers.

Sure, there are a lot of haters out there - that’s what happens when you succeed. But judging from all the reactions I’m seeing from competitors and non techies out there, it seems that the products Jobs and company created, had a huge influence on several industries and a lot of people.

29

They are consumer devices designed to be obsolescent and thrown away within a couple of years, they DON’T CARE about what happens to them when they are thrown away as long as the consumer buys another one. They DON’T CARE about the workers in China who get paid peanuts to make them. They DON’T CARE about if the consumer is getting a good deal or not. In fact they DO CARE if the consumer is getting too good a deal in their eyes as they are then losing potential revenue. They are a massive public corporation, just like any other.
The fact their music is downloaded was not invented by them, that it saves on packaging is totally incidental to them, in fact it was already going mainstream before the iPOD arrived. Smartphones were already common in business when the iPhone arrived on the scene. Other companies had touchscreen devices and google was already working on Android. It was all going to happen anyway, just Apple had the good business sense to go full tilt at it, design good products and an ecosystem and establish themselves as the leader in the mass consumer market before the others.

The usage of cloud devices is not good for the environment, it will probably be very bad in reality as the energy costs increase hugely due to the computing power increasing exponentially. I’m not saying I won’t use the devices as they embed into everything, but I do not hide from the facts.

I own an iPhone and it’s a good piece of kit, no doubt about it, but they have many restrictions due to the insistence of linking to their own platfort. I can’t replace the battery on my iPod nano because they will charge me a fee of 800 NTD as an inspection fee and it will take a week just to see if it really is the battery that has the problem (I know it is the battery, it shows it on the front screen for God’s sake!). The battery replacement and shipment cost is extra on that. I can’t unscrew the back of the device myself.That’s why I think this company is going to look outdated pretty quickly when new environmental regulations are enforced. That’s why I think Jobs is not so great as he was made out to be, they will look like a dinosaur in the future.

30

Seems like they do.

They have also been working hard to make subsequent products more recyclable than previous ones.

Aren’t the workers in China working for Foxconn? Doesn’t Foxconn make products for other companies as well? If Apple used American factories instead and raised their prices accordingly, would consumers buy their products at triple the current prices? Seems like there are other questions we should be asking here.

The consumers themselves seem quite happy though. Happier than with other brands. Seems to me that it’s Apple’s competitors who should be working at improving their products.

Some perspective on Apple products versus other everyday products.

31

Apple make products that are for a small section of society, they can’t compete when cost is a more important factor. I’m not an Apple ‘hater’, just amazed how much free positive press they get all the time for expensive and restrictive products. Apple products hardly exist in India or China or Africa or many other regions of the world

The graph you reference isn’t showing the full story of CO2 production. That’s because cloud devices are supported by massive server banks which is where most of the computing and energy use obviously happens, not in the device itself.
It seems that cloud services are more energy efficient than stand-alone computing devices or independent IT departments. pikeresearch.com/newsroom/cl … rd-by-2020.
The problem I see is that when everything is on the cloud and wired up and intelligent the energy costs must increase by a factor of many times simply due to the easy access to computing power. It facilitates an exponential increase in computing demand. Simple examples being video on demand or video calls or active GPS maps or intelligent guides on your phone. Here is a link to Google’s usage- zdnet.com/blog/green/google- … tion/18758

It’s good that Apple have a program to recycle, however that in the end is a lie because of the reasons I have mentioned already and the market imperative to launch a new improved version six months later or whatever (all companies do this but consumer electronics companies are among the worst, this is also due to consumer demand aswell, it is a two way process). However you know that there is something IN PARTICULAR, as a company policy, really wrong if you cannot change the battery in a device. If you could change the battery I would have more time for their recyclable program.

Companies like Apple wash their hands of the uncomfortable reality of manufacturing and exploitation of workers. When you realise the profit margins on Apple products you know that it is entirely possible for them to manufacture their devices in the US, but they don’t because it would impact their profit margin and they would have to deal with pesky unions or environmental regulations. Imagine it, employing workers in their own country, wouldn’t it be revolutionary eh?

32

My god this forum is depressing some times. This thread was started about a man who has done so much for computing and has now passed away. As this is a forum board, critical comments are always welcome, but there is still the matter of appropriateness. Please show respect by keeping the comments relevant. If you feel so strongly about how the company he built operates, perhaps do what he did. Start a competitor, out of your garage if you have to, and change things. If you’re crazy enough to think you can, maybe you will.

33

What we can’t talk about the company he ran, that is all connected to who he was, he decided on everything didn’t he, we don’t have to ‘venerate’ him because he is dead. A great business man, a marketing genius, smart with technology, no one questions that. Respect, this is a public forum not a funeral service.

34

So we have a company that has the highest customer satisfaction ratings in the industry (by a huge margin). And they are the most profitable in the industry, also by a large margin. It seems that Steve Jobs has figured out the formula to success - create products and services that people love, and you’ll be paid handsomely for it. I think we could all learn from that.

Higher profits means higher growth. Higher growth means more jobs created, which also bucks the industry trend. What is the problem there?

35

The article is incorrect, it is losing market share to Android as is iOS. Higher profits are from outsourcing, it creates more jobs in China by using questionable ethical practices and avoiding labour regulations in the US. It’s a well trodden path which is one of the reasons why unemployment is so pervasive in the US now. You see the details of how a company operates really do matter although I myself am angry personally because of their terrible attitude to customers who want a new battery of all things. I just don’t get that and Jobs definitely agreed with this kind of customer exploitation policy.

36

After all he did for the British fashion industry and the landmine victims, he’s surely going to be missed.

37

Erm, did you read about Eve’s apple too??? I wasn’t comparing them. It’s just a way of saying that those 3 apples had a huge impact on society.

38

Sigh! Article from this past summer showing which company had the most job postings in Silicon Valley. I’ll let you guess which company that is.

Those are high paying tech jobs. Doesn’t include all the employees they hire each time they open a new Apple store.

Regarding your battery issue, Apple products are known for their unibody / screwless designs and usually lead the industry in battery life. Perhaps they chose design and performance over letting the user replace their battery?

39

They couldn’t put four screws in the back of their devices no? Everything they do is by design and that’s a very important design feature that fulfills it’s purpose. I’ll repeat their policy again, to even accept them to attempt to change the battery they will first charge a 800 NTD ‘inspection fee’ (the minimum wage in Taiwan is something like a 100 NTD) no matter what the problem is that you have identified, then there are shipping charges and the cost of changing the battery (which their staff weren’t even bothered explaining to me as obviously they couldn’t make much profit from that) plus the fact that is has to be shipped to Taipei or wherever it is and it takes a week or two to do. :loco:

There’s all this stuff in the media about Steve Job’s ‘taming technology’ or ‘revolutionising technology’. No he just moved consumer electronics along out of it’s poor design phase and Apple boldly invested ahead of other companies and they had marketing geniuses that tapped into consumerist culture, consumer electronics products are just the tip of the iceberg of the technology industry. It just so happens that, right now, Apple is the king of the heap, not so long ago it was Blackberry, a few years later it will be somebody else.

40

The increasing per device profit comes from growing consumption of goods on the platform. Songs, movies, apps, books. The % growth of digital content on smartphones and tablets is dwarfing even the meteoric rise of those devices themselves.

It is not on decreased COGS from outsourcing to China, since every computer and consumer electronics manufacturer in the world have been doing this and there are no signs of recent competition-driven price collapse in outsourced manufacturing. This doesn’t justify what happens in China, but that is a problem that permeates the industry as a whole and not any one company in particular.

That said, what Mr. Jobs was able to accomplish was to align various disparate industries to create a marketplace for digital goods in a way nobody was able to do before. Moreover, his company made it so convenient that people were willing to pay for the convenience. One of the few things that is better than free after all, is convenient. In doing this, Apple made it so that thousands of developers, writers, musicians could have a place to sell their things, thus ushering in digital goods in a way that allows the necessary creative destruction to happen to intermediaries, but at the same time give the content owners a new avenue to earn a living.

That his last keynote was for iCloud is a nice last salvo. Many were living this having your stuff just show up on multi-devices, remote storage and dispatch paradigm back in the 80s and 90s at research laboratories, universities and at Job’s NeXT. He talked often of it in keynotes. But this was on $7000 USD (in 1990’s money) machines. This could not be made accessible and useful to the masses until a number of technologies made it possible. Moore’s Law and the Law of Storage made processing and local storage big and cheap enough. Battery technology jumped to an acceptable enough state to allow real mobility. Cellular data networks came of age. And yes, globalization, automation and improved quality control processes made labor and manufacturing arbitrage accessible (via outsourcing) so these things could be built at prices that were affordable to many. In a way, this was a dream that he and others were trying to get to the masses for a quarter century, and the iCloud is his realization of that.

The true genius of Steve Jobs I feel was in sensing when technology would be really ready many years before it was, being able to steer a company to make big bets to chase those things, aligning all the other players to make the offering more valuable, driving the creation process at a very high bar until it was perfect in his eyes, then sharing his vision to everyone in a simple way, with relatable story telling that made it easy for people to understand and share in that vision.

At the very least, his ability to make these visions a reality for the masses is an inspiration to many an aspiring technologist and that’s what we are celebrating.