He was a visionary, shook up the computing world and paved the way for mobile innovation, not forgetting getting people interested in tablets.
However, I dont like Apple as a company and really dont like their products at all.
I will remember Steve Jobs for his involvement with Pixar
Isn't an apple a day supposed to keep the doctor away? He should have been the healthiest man alive!
I may not have agreed with his methods, but there's no denying the genius. RIP Steve.
I'm not a fan of the Apple icon-status, the 'designer' ethos, but the company has sure lit a fire under the tech world, and not just for i-series products. It goes back to the '70s and their original desktop series ..... one of which I still have (as an antique).
Apple has done a lot for computing, and Jobs was the driving force behind that.
I might not like everything about how he's done it, but I have to admire the end result, and the guy was behind my first ever real computer purchase.
So much of the world we now all take absolutely for granted was the result of a handful of visionaries (and the companies they drove and/or founded), and what that led to. And Jobs was one of that handful. In future decades, or centuries, schools will be teaching about the computer revolution (and information revolution, which isn't quite the same thing) and Jobs will be one of the names featuring in that, just like we learn now about the moguls of the industrial revolution and the scientists and inventors throughout history.
Like him or not, he sure made his mark on many, many millions of lives, either directly or indirectly. After all, all those i-pod, i-phone and i-pad wannabe competitors had to have Apple light the way and, in large part, create the markets.
RIP, Steve.
Sad day for the tech world.
+1Originally Posted by Larkspeed
I can't imagine what he though of all the iPatent litigation - he strikes me as far too visionary and creative to be worried if other people imitated Apple products. He had a knack for hitting the market zeitgeist and instinctively getting products "right". As many important people have already said (Bill Gates, Larry Page, Steve Ballmer...) he's a loss to the industry as a whole. RIP Steve, and our thoughts go out to your nearest and dearest.
Sad news, indeed. R.I.P. Steve.
What I will say about jobs is most news outlets have failed to really explain what it was they did.
Everything Apple have ever done, has been done before. Steve Jobbs never innovated and from all accounts made very bad engineering choices the classic been the no fan on the Lisa.
But what he did do was to get non-geeks, non-techie types intrested.
That is more of an achievement, and of more use to the tech loving world. He got people to be willing to spend THOUSANDS of pounds on a mobile phone, and he got them on mass.
Just showing people how something can have such a significant change on their life its worth hundreds and hundreds is quite an achivement, and also helps move the field along.
If you look at the average cost of mobile phones pre iPhone, most were around £100 for a 'smartphone' as it would have been known, some costing £250/300, with a very few around £400. Now, its pretty much every new device seems to launch around £500.
That is an amazing achivement, to show people enough for them to be willing to spend so much money on something. That was his crowning glory!
Last edited by tiggerai; 07-10-2011 at 12:53 PM.
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Very sad. My heart goes out to his family. R.I.P
I'm finding it hard to stay sane with the number of times people say Apple invented the tablet with the iPad (now, the Newton they may have a point with...), or the smartphone with the iPhone.
The real vision was taking existing business tools, and turning them into Consumer Electronics devices. I had a smartphone that could perform all the functions of an iPhone (and more) over a year before the iPhone was released. But the iPhone was sleek and sexy; not exactly form over function, but with a much greater focus on design. It was a consumer device that happened to be a phone, and it revolutionised the smartphone market because suddenly everyone was a potential smartphone buyer. He took an existing product, and created a new market for it. Same with the tablet. It's not easy to do, and very few other companies have done it with the success and exclusivity of Apple: ASUS created the netbook market, but weren't able to dominate that market once it took off.
Ultimately, whatever your thoughts on the business practices of his company, it's hard to deny that Jobs himself was hugely successful in what he did. The industry will miss him, Apple will miss him, and most importantly his family and close friends will miss him, and our thoughts should be with them, as they should with anyone who has lost friends and relatives.
RIP Steve, and condolences and best wishes to your nearest and dearest.
spoon_ (06-10-2011)
That isw true of most people, including Bill Gates.
Both built a business from nothing, using different business models, Gates piggy backed onto the IBM PC (and later had some dubious business practices) Jobs built the hardware and software from scratch in his garage, and built his multimillion businesses from there. Right from the outset the differentiation was there, the Apple machines were sold as a hardware device that had software driving it, MS wrote the sogftware for IBM's hardware, which was later copied by other mfrs.
That aside, Jobs was innovative in that he took various technologies and used them to great effect - SCSI in the Lisa, embedding large parts of the OS in eeprom for fast boot times, bringing the GUI to mainstream computing. He may not have invented them ,but he saw the potential and developed them for the mass market. I remember using an Apple 2 (no gui) to drive digital to synchro (if anyone remembers them) cards, because there wasn't anything else at the time for the price, that could do it.
And regardless of the opinions of Apple as a company, they provided much needed competition for the other 'evil empire' of the personal computing world. a good thing for all consumers.
A great man.
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spoon_ (06-10-2011)
It was Steve Wozniak who in many ways was the main technical force behind the early Apple computers. He is technically still a part of Apple too and yet everyone seems to forget his contributions now.
Bunjiweb (06-10-2011),chrism (06-10-2011),DavidM (06-10-2011),Hicks12 (06-10-2011),j.o.s.h.1408 (06-10-2011),MaddAussie (06-10-2011),mikerr (06-10-2011)
this^
Now that is the part I strongly disagree with.
He is well documented as a bully, a snob and a truly atrocious parent.
As I said he had a tremendous influence on technology in the minds of the average joe, which I don't think any one person has come close too, but he was most definately not a great man.
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Absolutely. Woz always was the real engineer, but Jobs drove the business side. Put a superb engineer and a cross between a visionary and a 'sharp' businessman together and you have a potent mix. It's synergism.
Sorry to hear of your loss. Hope you and your family are bearing up
Bunjiweb (06-10-2011)
Not unique to Jobs though, you could apply the same criticisms to Nelson, Churchill, and other flawed heros in history, (as well as countless other people whose parental and social skills may have been lacking but haven't managed anything like Jobs's achievements)
But if you want want it qualified,
"A great man in the field of technology and computing"
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