Genius...Steve Jobs 1955-2011

[rider]

what was your first mac? how did this man and his vision change your life?

i was a graphic designer, young, hungry, just starting out and everything for print was done by hand, with stat cameras, exacto knives, ruling pens and blue pencil...then there was this "computer" that came onto the radar, for me, it was the Mac Se. It was the visual extension of my hands, it changed my life...he changed my life and all those that will come after him.

all you need is love...and an apple.

[GlassOrganelle]

Rest in peace, Steve Jobs.

I got my first Mac when I was in year 7. I'm not an artist, nor a tech head, but my Apple products have made my life so much more tolerable. They pretty much could be considered my extra limbs now. No idea how people can stand using anything else.

[Rayuela]

Wozniak was the genius. Jobs was a marketeer.

"When Steve Jobs worked at Atari, the company was working on creating the arcade game Breakout, which required 80 Integrated Circuits (ICs). The less ICs there were, the cheaper the games would be to produce, so Nolan Bushnell (Atari's president) offered $100 for every IC that could be knocked out of the design. Jobs brought Woz the challenge, and over four days and nights at Atari they put together a design that only required 30 ICs. Bushnell gave Jobs his $5000 bonus, which Jobs "split" with Wozniak by telling him it was a $700 bonus, giving him "half," or $350. Woz was delighted, but years later found out the truth."

http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/hackers/steve-wozniak/

Steve Jobs a genius? Sure, he could brand build like H.T. Coca-cola.

[theetruscan]

"Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do."

First mac was a 512K. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_512K

[endersgame]

my first mac was a power mac 7100

I think it had OS 7.5 or 8? RAM was very expensive back then so you had to use "Virtual Memory" to run Aldus Pagemaker and Photoshop 3 simultaneously. But then it would crash every 5 minutes and you would have to tinker with extensions and do backups on Syquest drives, lol. Anyway, it was a nightmare from OS 7-9, but i loved it..

RIP Steve Jobs. Thanks for the memories.

[Nuisance]

Here's a guy responsible for the original Apple computer phenomenon and afterwords, the Macintosh. After being booted out of Apple he creates NeXT which a foundering Apple then buys (and uses its technology as the basis of the new Mac OS) whereupon Jobs becomes CEO again and resurrects Apple from bankruptcy and near total irrelevance to become the most highly capitalized company in the world. Oh in the meantime he also revolutionized cinema via Pixar, the mobile phone and tablet computing.

He wasn't just a marketing genius. In a world where the term "visionary" is way _WAY_ too overused, it can be safely applied to him, along with genius and just about any other superlative you care to employ.

RIP

Wozniak was the genius. Jobs was a marketeer.

Steve Jobs a genius? Sure, he could brand build like H.T. Coca-cola.

[marsa]

sad news indeed...

Ive probably had around 10 different ibooks, emacs, imacs, powerbooks and macbook pros over the last 10 years and lived happily ever after.

[Rayuela]

Oh in the meantime he also revolutionized cinema via Pixar, the mobile phone and tablet computing.

I'm aware of the history. He had a fine eye for technology and made clever, hard-ball investments.

Visionary? There is unquestionably an Apple world...

[Nuisance]

Individually you could perhaps characterize (dismiss) his innovations as simple cleverness, but in total there is no other word for his repeated ability to revolutionize markets and technologies than genius.

Not to diminish Woz, but are you honestly using him as a measuring stick of genius to disqualify Jobs? Truly Woz is an incredibly gifted engineer, but can you name anything he's done since his work on the original Apple in the 80's?

I'm aware of the history. He had a fine eye for technology and made clever, hard-ball investments.

Visionary? There is unquestionably an Apple world...

[Rayuela]

And I would call that genius marketing.

Let me be clear: saying Jobs didn't achieve colossal goals would be silly. What I'm getting at is that the language employed to venerate him subsumes the brilliance of many, many others, something that Jobs encouraged. Woz wasn't meant as a point of scale, rather as an example of someone left on the wayside. It took a Jobs the help him realise what he had going, and it was Jobs who left him behind.

This thread is probably intended as celebration and by this point it should be clear what I think of that. I'll leave it there, obviously you're free to respond and I'd be interested to continue but will likely reply via pm.

[Nuisance]

If he was simply a marketing genius then he never would have canned the Newton. When he got back to Apple he would have just "marketed it better" and created a new marketplace. He didn't because he wasn't just about marketing - he recognized the technology wasn't there yet and he killed it.

Creating the iPhone wasn't just marketing. It wasn't like there was a zoo of great smartphones out there and he just "played the game better." The iPhone was like alien technology when it was launched. When he had the insight to require the capacitance screen, optimize the UI for a single button interface, and create a small repertoire of interaction gestures, that wasn't cleverness or marketing savvy, in toto it's simply a work of genius.

Yes, lots and lots of other amazingly smart people have been involved. But it's not like Jobs tried to obscure that fact or make us forget Woz. The guy was just singularly brilliant. Not a moral paragon or perfect person, but unquestionably a genius.

And I would call that genius marketing.

Let me be clear: saying Jobs didn't achieve colossal goals would be silly. What I'm getting at is that the language employed to venerate him subsumes the brilliance of many, many others, something that Jobs encouraged. Woz wasn't meant as a point of scale, rather as an example of someone left on the wayside. It took a Jobs the help him realise what he had going, and it was Jobs who left him behind.

This thread is probably intended as celebration and by this point it should be clear what I think of that. I'll leave it there, obviously you're free to respond and I'd be interested to continue but will likely reply via pm.

[DRRRK]

I never had any sympathy for that guy, but please, as superfluous as public mourning is, especially in an own thread here, let's take it literally and let him rest in peace and not dance on his grave.

[marsa]

First Mac ad

(couldnt embedd the video - despite posting it correctly)

[quiet noise]

Charles Babbage discovered the computer, Bill Gates brought one to each and every home and Steve Jobs turned it into a fashionable accessoar.

Its pretty cool how he took the most "nerdy" piece of technology ever invented and turned into a branded sexy high-status object. In that way, he did completley change the way we look at technology. But his only vision was to make more money for himself and his company by selling other peoples ideas. Labeling old technology as "Revolutionary" and "Visionary" was two of his trademark branding-techniques, but it doesnt make him a revolutionary nor a visionary.

He should be remembered as a skilled marketer and businessman. A genious of modern PR. Nothing more, nothing less.

[swrecked]

He will be missed.