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Comment by basisword | Hacker News Reader

This thread reminds me of the last Steve Jobs related thread. So many people bashing Jobs based on stories they’ve read having never met him and knowing little about him. People seem to think they even know his private medical history based on only public reports. So much judgement and criticism and it feels completely unnecessary. It’s the kind of pointless outrage type comments we tend not to find very often on HN, but Steve Jobs seems to bring it out in people. I don’t doubt there are many valid criticisms of Jobs but it’s depressing that a thread linking to a post about his 10th anniversary has almost no talk of the incredible contributions he made in life.

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What about stories from actual Apple employees?

https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=90_Hours_A_Week_...

https://venturebeat.com/2011/08/25/michael-dhuey-apple-engin...

https://www.businessinsider.com/ex-apple-employee-on-steve-j...

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/01/former-apple-employee-guy-ka...

There's no doubt that Jobs was a very polarizing figure, had many negative character traits and made a lot of mistakes throughout his life. For what it's worth, I read his biography and he came across as repentant and apologetic when confronted, especially near the end when he knew he was going to die. He was a brilliant but flawed person, and he was aware of it.

What really rubs me the wrong way is people who refuse to give him credit for his tremendous achievements, and belittle and ridicule him instead.

Who is actually belittling and ridiculing him?

Some Apple defenders seem to be stuck sometime between the mid-90s when Apple was on the verge of collapse, and before the introduction of the iPod. Apple is the most profitable company on Earth. Jobs' place in the history books is assured. This isn't some plucky underdog that's in need of defense anymore. Even the fiercest critic of Jobs will need to recognize his accomplishments, and Apple's success. And even if they don't, so what? Apple is a giant. It has outshone M$ and made their mobile attempts look like a joke. Steve Jobs is a secular saint, an icon. Who cares what a few trolls think?

The most irritating thing about modern Apple fanboyism is that it lets the most profitable company on Earth and its leadership off scot-free. Anyone who criticizes Apple is put in the same company as bullies from decades ago who were on the side of Wintel and mocking a tortured genius. That's very outdated. And it blinds people from valid critiques.

For what it's worth, I read his biography and he came across as repentant and apologetic when confronted, especially near the end when he knew he was going to die.

Well, the thing with this is that while he might have been privately apologetic, the public image that relentlessly and abusively driving employees leads to success has stayed with us after his death and he certainly made no effort publicly debunk it. That certainly influences how I see him.

I like to think all reasonable computer nerds recognize the duality that created Apple: incredible engineering (Woz) combined with incredible passion, marketing and drive (Jobs). The problem is people point to Jobs as an example of unacceptable behaviours that are excused by his results. Yet somehow Woz showed us you could do really ingenious engineering AND be a decent human being, but they don't teach this in business school.

The “Steve Jobs” movie written by Soorkin does such a good job examining this question by having the two of them fight over the relative importance of their contributions. Since one of character-Woz’s strongest lines is “you can be decent and brilliant at the same time,” I assume you’ve seen it. If not, you should! Everybody here should, it’s a brilliant film.

One of the things that character-Jobs says is (something along the lines of) “you’d be the easiest A at Palo Alto highschool right now if it wasn’t for me.” What he’s getting at is that Woz didn’t know how to channel his engineering talent into successful ambition. This makes the question a lot more complex: it’s not “can you be talented & kind,” it’s “can you be talented & kind & successfully ambitious.” Character-Jobs is asserting that his ruthlessness, his faults, were a necessity for these things to happen with Apple.

The film probes at these questions from just about every angle. Perhaps not coincidentally, it portrays his greatest success at the time when character-Jobs is most able to be at peace with himself and work other people.

Sometimes people (me included) can't separate the person from their creations/actions.

I'm not saying they always should, but is just an observation.

I think is fair to say that Jobs changed several industries and that has a lot of value to me, but there are plenty of documented situations when I was left thinking he was not a good person.

I don't need to know him to learn from all those documented facts.

Well in the context of this post they're lionizing the individual as a stellar human, so I think it's fair to question you agree with this, or if it's even accurate.

I'm incredibly thankful for Jobs introducing the personal computer. Computers are devices that we can own and use, not intangible and unreachable academic things. We owe our careers in part to him and his work.

At the same time, I'm profoundly upset at his introduction of the App Store and sidelining of the right to repair. Our devices belong to us. We should be able to do with them what we please.

It's also incredibly anti-competitive to tell every startup in the world that what was once free to distribute, market, and form a relationship with their customer: "now you must sit atop Apple rails for (entirely artificial) reasons". It's extractive. There's so much more to solve in the world. Why take energy from those smaller than you? It lowered the fitness and innovation capacity of everyone else. Those dollars could be runway and additional labor for someone with bright ideas.

Jobs was a human just like the rest of us. There was both good and bad in him, and he made a profound mark upon society. The world was shaped by his short time here. No question.

Woz was introducing people to the personal computer that he built before Jobs even came around.

> "Jobs introducing the personal computer" ??

Um, no. Read some history.

I don't think this is really unique to Jobs. In fact I think he gets a pretty big break because people like Apple and, well, he's dead. Musk or Bezos, for example, seem to catch a lot more crap.

This "contributions" you're talking about someone elsewhere would have done it, and we can just imagine how better the world would be if those contributions would be for the benefit of the world and not for a company.

And even if someone else had made these "contributions," the nature of the them is dubious at best. The world is not a better place because of a phone, or a laptop, or a desktop.

His one and only innovation was the ability to say "no." "No" to superfluous features, and "no" to tracking. That is a rare quality, but hardly unique. Apple (under his leadership) even attempted to trademark ideas that were not their own.[1]

It is very worrying that society continues to fawn over this greedy man, while quickly forgetting those who made genuine contributions.[2]

[1]: https://lizerbramlaw.com/2011/10/12/apples-multi-touch-and-t... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_English_(computer_enginee...

Thanks for the links! And completely agree. That's what the media creates, and empty world full of false heroes.

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