Goodspeed Steve

[Vampyre]

As I opened my Mac this morning, I saw the announcement of the death of Steve Jobs... That's a terrible loss for the geek inside us as he revolutionized the way we deal with technology everyday. Anybody know what an iPod is, or an iPhone, or a Macintosh... Or even more recently, he created the iPad, now known as the tablet PC...

As Arcen is porting its game to the mac, I felt it would be nice having a simple topic to express ourselves... And for those who do not know who Steve Jobs is, he is the Bill Gates for the Mac...

[x4000]

Steve definitely had quite a legacy.  There were a lot of great writeups about him just a bit ago when he stepped down as CEO of Apple, and then not even a month later here he is dead.  I suppose that means he somewhat knew what was coming, but it's really a shame.  It's one of the few times when I agree with someone being called a "visionary."

[Vampyre]

What is incredible is the respect the guy give... Even for those economists... I just went to see the actions price for Apple today... Surprisingly, Apple is at 0,00% of progression today. It seems that in his memory, the economists just froze their financial stuff today. That's the first time I see that in economy.

I call that respect. That's what the man deserve.

[Echo35]

Or even more recently, he created the iPad, now known as the tablet PC...

Tablet PCs existed as far back as 2003. Jobs' legacy isn't creating technology, he never really did that. His legacy is in introducing design and aesthetics into technology, and making it enough of a common thing that everybody could use it. There were smart phones 10 years ago, but they weren't nearly as powerful and cutting edge until the iPhone nudged them along.

[chemical_art]

I want to like the guy.

But his ego and management style really turned me off. The image and audience he created for apple didn't help me like him either.

But even I concede he was good at getting those products out the door. And I like how his products were later copied and repackaged in a way by other companies that I could in turn love.

[Cyborg]

What was the visionary part? That he made technology feel like shopping at Old Navy? I didn't like his management, products, or pretty much anything that he did. I think a lot of the adulation is because he is dead. When celebrities die, the ball-washing commences. The guy was the king of outsourcing, creating walled gardens where you had to have approval to sell your software each and every time, openly excluded products  in order to advance his own agenda (did anyone hear the joke about his defibrillator failing because it ran flash?)...I could go on.

Unless anyone was writing him Christmas cards beforehand, I don't understand why you miss *him.*

[x4000]

There's a lot I didn't like about him.  A great many things on your list there.  However, I feel that he was a visionary because he had the ability to "see through" complexity and create something beautiful and relatively simpler.  A lot of good innovations came out of that guy's brain, for a long period of time -- he earned some respect.  I would never have wanted to work with him, and I hate the walled garden aspects of Apple, but I'm glad he was out there in the world doing his work because a fair amount of good came from it.  I think everyone was saying more or less the same sorts of stuff about him a month ago when he stepped down as CEO; I don't think he's getting any better treatment because he's dead.

[Cyborg]

Can you name one innovation that he came up with( in other words, not Wozniak)?

[x4000]

I really don't want to get into a big debate about it -- and obviously anything I can say is hearsay.  But I've read plenty of stories about him coming in and violently shredding designs to create something that was much more appropriately simple.  iMovie or iDVD or whatever it was called.  All I know is that Woz has been gone for quite some time, and Apple has been churning out products that are really something under Jobs -- I've always been an Apple detractor, but I got an iPhone 3GS a few years ago, and then got an iPhone 4 when that came out.  Brilliant phones from top to bottom.  I got a Mac laptop when I was going to port Tidalis to AI War, even though I have always hated Mac computers in general, and I have to say this has been my favorite laptop ever for a laundry list of reasons.  Mostly due to the design of things like the touchpad, both in software and hardware.

Etc.  Can I prove those things came from Jobs himself?  No.  Do I care to? No.  But he's widely given credit for these things, and the products they put out -- some of them, anyway -- are big moon steps ahead of their competitors.  I prefer windows, and I prefer PCs, but I wish more of the innovations from my little mac laptop would make it over to that side sooner.

[Cyborg]

Okay. So at the very least, we can give him a passing grade for releasing.. pleasing?... products under his reign as CEO( After getting fired for quite a long spell).

I don't want to debate either, I merely want to call to question the media-induced hypnosis that we're supposed to feel like we lost some kind of technological genius, when there is no evidence at all that he created the products people love. As far as I'm concerned, he's given credit for the work of his engineers and his former best friend.

It's like everyone is expected to feel bad, when in fact I'm feeling hopeful because we might get somebody that doesn't run the place with what amounts to an Iron Curtain.

Doesn't it irk you even in the slightest that people buy that crap because "it's pretty?" Did those Apple commercials showing Apple users wearing a scarf make you throw up even a little bit? As if we are all walking around bookstores feeling left behind because we don't have a lit up fruit logo on our laptop. It has gotten so bad that we have celebrities, TV shows and movies showing off their Macintosh laptop, not because they know a damn thing about anything technological, but because the expectation is that it's stylish. They may even be getting paid to do that. I don't want my media modeling my computer like some kind of techno lingerie. And if you give credit to Steve Jobs for those products, you're going to have to give credit for that whole marketing scheme. Visionary marketing. Old Navy meets computers. That is my frustration. No debate.

I can appreciate art, but I don't have even the slightest desire for my computer to look pretty. I want fast, compatible, transparent, capable. Pretty doesn't even make the top 100, and I'm skeptical of people that choose their technology like they would choose their living room curtains.

[x4000]

No disagreement here about the commercials showing apple stuff to be "hip."

I love the trackpad on my mac because it's the most functional one I've ever used, bar none.  I love the iPhone because I've used other phones and there hasn't been any favorable comparison I've seen.  They all feel laggy, unpolished, and less functional by comparison.  Some of the newer Android ones are supposed to be a lot better obviously, but I've not had my hands on them.

At any rate if you think I'm a member of the cult of Jobs, you're mistaken.  I'm under no illusions that the guy obviously had a hugely capable team.  But if you look at companies like, say, HP these days -- it's clear that leadership counts for more than a little.  And having seen a lot of companies in my past job and this one, I think that remains true.  Does the media over-sell Jobs himself?  Probably.  But man, Microsoft is just falling to pot without Gates -- of course it was already sliding while he was there, anyway.

I think the guy deserves some serious credit.  Not remotely as much as the cult of Jobs wants to give him, but maybe as much as some of the media gives him.  I didn't like many of his policies, and there's more than one reason we don't sell our games for iOS, but it's clear he was a talent.  Even if it's just a talent at picking the right engineers and motivating them, that's good enough.

[Cyborg]

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Defending-Lifes-Work-With-nytimes-2910052601.html?x=0

"“You’ve baked a really lovely cake,” he told one engineer, adding that the hapless fellow had used dog feces for frosting"

"Mr. Jobs’s self-confidence could sometimes be indistinguishable from arrogance and self-aggrandizement. At an Apple Halloween party during the wild early years, he reportedly came dressed as Jesus."

I thought I would add this one. I would agree about Microsoft, although in a way I think it's because now the consumer has more choice. Microsoft isn't the only game in town anymore. It's still the best choice if you want to be a gamer, though.

For everything else, I would choose Linux. Now that Apple uses an Intel architecture, that whole "Apple does graphics better" line is verifiably false.

I'm interested in how awesome your trackpad is. Do you have a link? I use one myself as a third-party product (it's the second mouse plugged in, as you may have seen in one of my defects). It's great for when I'm not gaming.

[x4000]

Yeah, I've already said I think the guy is not someone I could stand to be around.

I've never really understood the "Apple does graphics better" thing, either.  I much prefer it on windows -- having used versions on both OSes, I find that the ones on OSX tend to crash a LOT compared to the windows side.  Speaking here of Vue, Photoshop, and a few others.

This is the magic trackpad standalone: http://www.apple.com/magictrackpad/  It's the same as what I have, except mine is literally embedded in my laptop.  Having always hated PC trackpads, I found this one to work really well even for gaming.  And the gestures stuff actually works rather than being fiddly and broken like on most PC laptops.

[Nalgas]

I've never really understood the "Apple does graphics better" thing, either.  I much prefer it on windows -- having used versions on both OSes, I find that the ones on OSX tend to crash a LOT compared to the windows side.  Speaking here of Vue, Photoshop, and a few others.

There used to be some truth to it.  These days, Adobe seems to support the Windows version of stuff like Photoshop a lot better than the OS X version, but several years ago, it was the other way around.  On top of that, before the Intel switch (and before Intel finally got their act together again in general), there were some pretty nice things about the PowerPC CPUs available at the time for doing stuff like that.  The programs and plugins that took advantage of all the extra registers and SIMD stuff that for a long time didn't exist at all and then was relatively limited/non-standard on the x86 side made some stuff like that run very fast in the Mac versions at the time.

Of course, that's all been completely irrelevant for years, with everything using the same hardware these days, and it's even gone the other direction in some cases as new features sometimes get added to the Windows versions of things first.

[Echo35]

Of course, that's all been completely irrelevant for years, with everything using the same hardware these days, and it's even gone the other direction in some cases as new features sometimes get added to the Windows versions of things first.

http://www.xkcd.com/934/

I feel this is necessary right now.

And yes, I hate Apple, and just about everything they do (Blatantly overpriced junk with a worryingly cult like following). What I don't hate, is how they tend to spur on development of other things. I had a smartphone about 6 years ago, before the iPhone came out. It ran a stripped out version of Windows CE, was the size of a small brick, had a terrible battery, and looked ugly as crap. Then the iPhone came out. Now look at modern smart phones, like the Galaxy S II. Sleek, very powerful, well developed applications and well designed interfaces. Like I said before, earlier in the thread, tablet computers existed back in 2003, but nobody cared about them. Then the iPad came out, and now every computer manufacturer and then some are churning out all sorts of tablet computers. Apple sucks, but they are popular.