214441 replies to this topic

[speedz99]

iZuma, on Thursday, October 6th, 2011, 9:14 AM, said:

also, I think speedz just doesn't get it because he just isn't really smart enough to understand, that's all.

Hey, shuddup.

[speedz99]

Dread Aidan, on Thursday, October 6th, 2011, 9:25 AM, said:

He didn't start Pixar, he bought it from George Lucas.

Probably because he wanted to make the world a better place by entertaining children and adults alike! Certainly not because he thought it was a good, profitable business venture.I'm such an ass today.Someone uncreative: "Today?"

[vbnautilus]

speedz99, on Thursday, October 6th, 2011, 10:23 AM, said:

You say that as if it's a complicated history. He started it. He left. He went back and during his tenure as CEO it exploded. He was a big part of spitting out laptops that people love and handheld devices that were better than the competition. Did I leave anything out? Oh, yeah, Pixar. That one's pretty cool.

I guess I was right...?

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Computers were going to keep getting more efficient, faster, more user friendly, etc. without Jobs.

Yeah and the lightbulb was going to eventually be invented without Edison.

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I'm fine with giving him credit for the sleek design. Do we really care about sleek designs? Has that really done anything for anybody, other than giving Apple a bigger market share and making people feel hip?

It's not just "sleek design". Do you remember what computers were like before the mac? The human interface of every personal computer on the market up until that point was some version of this:The mac introduced not only a graphical window based interface, but the mouse. Jobs didn't invent any of these things, but he recognized their utility and had the vision to see that computers were for human life, not just for geek basements.

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You're guessing. The only fact is the thing about Apple's philanthropy, which is pretty damning in terms of how he feels about supporting charitable pursuits. I'll change my mind if it turns out he was privately doing great things with his wealth.

I mean first of all, fuck "charity". What a stupid concept, honestly, and now we are supposed to all agree that the pinnacle of human behavior is just giving money away? This is a naked emperor. Even Bill Gates has admitted that with all the money he's spent on charity very little has gotten done. A person has a responsibility to the world, and that responsibility is to do what they do best, to use their talents to the fullest of their creative potential. Maybe for some people that involves feeding homeless people. For some it might mean writing great songs or doing great science. To judge a guy who devoted so much creative energy to his life that millions of people carry around his vision in their pockets by the fact that he didn't throw money at some "cause" is just ludicrous to me.

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If you give me a source on that I'll be happy to agree. From my perspective, he just as easily could have been mainly concerned with building an empire because he was driven by the notion of personal success. I'm really not sure you can say, "He wanted to build the most user friendly smart phone to make the world a better place." I think he probably did it to increase the value of his company, which is fine, but not necessarily worthy of deification.

Again this stems from the fact that your knowledge of the man appears to be restricted to some media sound bites you heard circa 1998. This is so well documented that it will be hard to find a source among the current internet deluge, but I will look. If you're really interested you can read his biography.

Dread Aidan, on Thursday, October 6th, 2011, 10:25 AM, said:

He didn't start Pixar, he bought it from George Lucas.

He turned Pixar into what it became. When he bought it, it was a small division of lucasfilm with about 45 people in it. They had never created a full length animated film. Jobs created the deal with Disney that allowed them to make Toy Story.

[Dread Aidan]

vbnautilus, on Thursday, October 6th, 2011, 10:49 AM, said:

He turned Pixar into what it became. When he bought it, it was a small division of lucasfilm with about 45 people in it. They had never created a full length animated film. Jobs created the deal with Disney that allowed them to make Toy Story.

And Pixar had even fewer employees five years after he bought it when the deal with Disney was made. And even for the few years after that until Toy Story was released, the company was losing money and he was thinking about selling it. John Lasseter and Disney saved Pixar for him and turned it into a monster. I have a hard time giving him some sort of visionary credit for making a business deal to save his company.

[vbnautilus]

This are excerpts from a great interview he did with playboy in 1985First, for the damned charity thing:PB: What does the money actually mean to you? Jobs: I still don’t understand it. It’s a large responsibility to have more than you can spend in your lifetime–and I feel I have to spend it. If you die, you certainly don’t want to leave a large amount to your children. It will just ruin their lives. And if you die without kids, it will all go to the Government. Almost everyone would think that he could invest the money back into humanity in a much more astute way than the Government could. The challenges are to figure out how to live with it and to reinvest it back into the world, which means either giving it away or using it to express your concerns or values. PB: So what do you do? Jobs: That’s a part of my life that I like to keep private. When I have some time, I’m going to start a public foundation. I do some things privately now. PB: You could spend all of your time disbursing your money. Jobs: Oh, you have to. I’m convinced that to give away a dollar effectively is harder than to make a dollar.On apple's motivation:Jobs: We've never worried about numbers. In the market place, Apple is trying to focus the spotlight on products, because products really make a difference. [...] Ad campaigns are necessary for competition; IBM's ads are everywhere. But good PR educates people; that's all it is. You can't con people in this business. The products speak for themselves.Picasso had a saying: 'Good artists copy, great artists steal.' We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas...I think part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians, poets, artists, zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world.Jobs: Let me compare it with IBM. How come the Mac group produced Mac and the people at IBM produced the PCjr? We think the Mac will sell zillions, but we didn’t build Mac for anybody else. We built it for ourselves. We were the group of people who were going to judge whether it was great or not. We weren’t going to go out and do market research. We just wanted to build the best thing we could build. When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through. PB: Are you saying that the people who made the PCjr don’t have that kind of pride in the product? Jobs: If they did, they wouldn’t have turned out the PCjr. It seems clear to me that they were designing that on the basis of market research for a specific market segment, for a specific demographic type of customer, and they hoped that if they built this, lots of people would buy them and they’d make lots of money. Those are different motivations. The people in the Mac group wanted to build the greatest computer that has ever been seen.

[speedz99]

vbnautilus, on Thursday, October 6th, 2011, 9:49 AM, said:

Yeah and the lightbulb was going to eventually be invented without Edison.

Tessla was way cooler.

vbnautilus, on Thursday, October 6th, 2011, 9:49 AM, said:

The mac introduced not only a graphical window based interface, but the mouse. Jobs didn't invent any of these things, but he recognized their utility and had the vision to see that computers were for human life, not just for geek basements.

You can't be giving him sole credit for the above, can you?

vbnautilus, on Thursday, October 6th, 2011, 9:49 AM, said:

I mean first of all, fuck "charity". What a stupid concept, honestly, and now we are supposed to all agree that the pinnacle of human behavior is just giving money away? This is a naked emperor. Even Bill Gates has admitted that with all the money he's spent on charity very little has gotten done. A person has a responsibility to the world, and that responsibility is to do what they do best, to use their talents to the fullest of their creative potential. Maybe for some people that involves feeding homeless people. For some it might mean writing great songs or doing great science. To judge a guy who devoted so much creative energy to his life that millions of people carry around his vision in their pockets by the fact that he didn't throw money at some "cause" is just ludicrous to me.

Man are you reaching. Please don't tell me that pulling Apple's philanthropy program and never reinstating it wasn't a hugely dick move that showed he cares more about his company's bottom line than things like helping other humans. Actually, please, make that argument, because it'll be complete bullshit. Building a business empire does NOT prove that someone is trying to change the world for the better. It proves they're smart, driven, and pretty badass.

vbnautilus, on Thursday, October 6th, 2011, 9:49 AM, said:

Again this stems from the fact that your knowledge of the man appears to be restricted to some media sound bites you heard circa 1998. This is so well documented that it will be hard to find a source among the current internet deluge, but I will look. If you're really interested you can read his biography.

I will grant you that he probably did believe that, in addition to building an empire, his products were useful to other human beings.

vbnautilus, on Thursday, October 6th, 2011, 9:49 AM, said:

He turned Pixar into what it became.

With the hopes of changing the world for the better!Look, you like your Mac, and you're glad you have it instead of a Windows based PC. You're glad you have an iPod and an iPhone, because they're slightly better than what you could get otherwise. That's fine, I don't blame you, and I understand why you'd be affected by Jobs' death and find it sadder than the random death of another public figure or even something like a natural disaster that killed thousands of people that you've never met. But, once again, it's not people like you that annoyed me today. It's the chick whose daddy bought her an iPad that thinks Steve Jobs is personally responsible for everything that is good about today's technology. He did a lot of amazing things, fine. People are still being annoying as hell about it.

[speedz99]

vbnautilus, on Thursday, October 6th, 2011, 10:00 AM, said:

This are excerpts from a great interview he did with playboy in 1985

Heh, after accusing me of being stuck in sound bytes from 1998.

vbnautilus, on Thursday, October 6th, 2011, 10:00 AM, said:

First, for the damned charity thing:PB: What does the money actually mean to you? Jobs: I still don’t understand it. It’s a large responsibility to have more than you can spend in your lifetime–and I feel I have to spend it. If you die, you certainly don’t want to leave a large amount to your children. It will just ruin their lives. And if you die without kids, it will all go to the Government. Almost everyone would think that he could invest the money back into humanity in a much more astute way than the Government could. The challenges are to figure out how to live with it and to reinvest it back into the world, which means either giving it away or using it to express your concerns or values. PB: So what do you do? Jobs: That’s a part of my life that I like to keep private. When I have some time, I’m going to start a public foundation. I do some things privately now. PB: You could spend all of your time disbursing your money. Jobs: Oh, you have to. I’m convinced that to give away a dollar effectively is harder than to make a dollar.

25 years later, we're still not sure if he ever did anything to ensure his billions of dollars were used well. Although, to be fair, I bet he spent a portion of his last months doing just that. But that's just conjecture. And you realize he didn't really say anything in that excerpt, right? Ok, maybe he said that he's not sure what to do with all of his money. What does that prove about anything?

vbnautilus, on Thursday, October 6th, 2011, 10:00 AM, said:

On apple's motivation:

Not sure what you're trying to prove here. They focused on making a great product. It was very smart and worked out tremendously. He touted his design and trashed his competition. He was a great businessman, there have been many great businessmen. His products happen to affect your life more than others. La de freakin' da. I don't give a shit, be sad he died, but I'm not convinced he's as much of a hero as you think he is.Edit: Yes, I'm exaggerating a bit in terms of his involvement in bringing us the PC as we know it today. He was a big deal, and I'm glad he did what he did. People are still being annoying about it.

[Dread Aidan]

speedz99, on Thursday, October 6th, 2011, 11:03 AM, said:

With the hopes of changing the world for the better!

"Disney's CEO Michael Isner had difficulty reaching an agreement with Steve Jobs. By the time Isner left Disney in 2005, Jobs was ready to resume negotiations.One of Jobs' demands was to switch Pixar's film release schedule to the summer from the winter. That would allow Pixar movies to make more money in theaters during the summer and on DVDs during the Holidays."

[vbnautilus]

speedz99, on Thursday, October 6th, 2011, 11:03 AM, said:

You can't be giving him sole credit for the above, can you?

He was absolutely responsible for that.

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Man are you reaching. Please don't tell me that pulling Apple's philanthropy program and never reinstating it wasn't a hugely dick move that showed he cares more about his company's bottom line than things like helping other humans. Actually, please, make that argument, because it'll be complete bullshit. Building a business empire does NOT prove that someone is trying to change the world for the better. It proves they're smart, driven, and pretty badass.

Nah you're still missing the crux of what he did. Nobody said that "building a business empire" proves something. There are plenty of evil business empires and even more neutral ones. The point is that he created something in order to change the world, and that was the best contribution this guy could make with his life. oh, oh! this reminds me of the perfect jobs quote for this. Steve convinced John Sculley to leave Pepsi to come to apple by asking him:Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?

[speedz99]

vbnautilus, on Thursday, October 6th, 2011, 10:16 AM, said:

He was absolutely responsible for that.

Well then he's a bigger deal than I thought.

vbnautilus, on Thursday, October 6th, 2011, 10:16 AM, said:

Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?

Add "awesome salesman" to the list.

[Dread Aidan]

vbnautilus, on Thursday, October 6th, 2011, 11:16 AM, said:

Steve convinced John Sculley to leave Pepsi to come to apple by asking him:Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?

brvheart, on Thursday, September 29th, 2011, 12:50 PM, said:

Eyeroll, vb, eyeroll.

[qyayqi]

i thought a stevejob was getting a handjob but her convincing you it was really a blowjob.

[Dread Aidan]

Q wins.

[speedz99]

At least we can all agree that this is awesome.

qyayqi, on Thursday, October 6th, 2011, 10:25 AM, said:

i thought a stevejob was getting a handjob but her convincing you it was really a blowjob.

That's good stuff.

[Dread Aidan]

speedz99, on Thursday, October 6th, 2011, 11:29 AM, said:

At least we can all agree that this is awesome.

"God created the iPhone."

[speedz99]

Fine...when god dies, I'll be ok with people being upset on facebook.

[Dread Aidan]

speedz99, on Thursday, October 6th, 2011, 11:33 AM, said:

Fine...when god dies, I'll be ok with people being upset on facebook.

Says the guy who killed god ~2000 years ago.

[speedz99]

Dread Aidan, on Thursday, October 6th, 2011, 10:34 AM, said:

Says the guy who killed god ~2000 years ago.

That's a bit myopic, isn't it?No, I'm not sure what that means. Myopic, that is. Ok, it means "short sighted".FYI, your edification on the Pixar stuff just made me look smart in a conversation. Thanks.

[iZuma]

no, no I don't think it did that

[speedz99]

I don't live in the south.