Steve Jobs, 1955-2011

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• warren oates says:

  October 5, 2011 at 9:59 pm

  Here’s to an old-fashioned American busi­ness­man, a maker of good and use­ful stuff, a cre­at­ive vis­ion­ary, a task-master and Zen per­fec­tion­ist whose motiv­a­tions were always well bey­ond mak­ing the most money (which is, para­dox­ic­ally, part of why he made so much money). Would that our coun­try had a few more Jobs-types and a few less soul­less Wall Street money mover arounders.

• David Ehrenstein says:

  October 6, 2011 at 9:05 am

  What “use­ful stuff”? We are a nation of cats – eas­ily dis­trac­ted by bright shiny objects. But unlike cats (who once fooled are twice shy) we go back again and again and again to buy a “New Improved” ver­sion of the bright shiny object year after year.
  And we line up to so so like fuck­ing lemmings!!!!!

• Evelyn Roak says:

  October 6, 2011 at 10:11 am

  Mr. Ehrenstein, no one with that intro on their webpage should be allowed to cri­ti­cize oth­ers for any­thing con­cern­ing technology.

• robhumanick says:

  October 6, 2011 at 10:55 am

  Re: cats and lem­mings. Not me! I bought all 2 cell phones I’ve owned in my life four years apart, and will con­tin­ue to use the new­est one until it too is on its last leg. I love tech­no­logy, but com­pared to the people you describe (which is accur­ate), I’m a fuck­ing luddite.

• David Ehrenstein says:

  October 6, 2011 at 11:45 am

  The oper­at­ive term is “allowed”
  http://fablog.ehrensteinland.com/2011/10/06/fait-diver-blow-jobs/

• Frank McDevitt says:

  October 6, 2011 at 12:18 pm

  Dear Mr. Ehrenstein,
  One exclam­a­tion point is enough.
  Yours in Christ,
  Everyone.

• Oliver_C says:

  October 6, 2011 at 1:00 pm

  Mr Ehrenstein, I’m going to demon­strate my non-feline abil­ity to res­ist shiny new treats by refus­ing to click on any of your links, ever. How about that?

• David Ehrenstein says:

  October 6, 2011 at 1:35 pm

  Isn’t ignor­ance bliss­ful Oliver?

• David Ehrenstein says:

  October 6, 2011 at 1:40 pm

  I’m not a fan of flesh-eating zom­bies, Frank.

• MW says:

  October 6, 2011 at 2:15 pm

  David has a point, but it would abso­lutely ridicu­lous to dis­miss the pos­it­ive impact of Steve Jobs on that point alone.
  For starters, Steve spent his entire career open­ing up home com­put­ing to every­one, not just engin­eers. Even when per­son­al com­puters took off in the early ’80s, what the pub­lic got out of them and who could use them was much more lim­ited than what it is today. Steve argu­ably had the biggest role in chan­ging that, with some decept­ively small ideas.
  Some people in the industry ridiculed the idea of a point-and-click device like a mouse, and oth­er com­pet­it­ors wer­en’t quick to adopt it for that reas­on. Now look at every com­puter you use today. You don’t have to type in any code or learn any pro­gram­ming. Even my tech­no­phobic grand­moth­er was able to learn how to use a com­puter. And even if you’re not a Mac per­son, the whole concept of Windows is based on that innovation.
  And look again at the film industry, and not just Pixar. Even when Avid became the industry stand­ard, for the most part, it was still con­fined to pro­fes­sion­al edit­ing suites and pro­hib­it­ively expens­ive for any­one to cut their own film with it, doc­u­ment­ary film­makers included. The rel­at­ive afford­ab­il­ity of Final Cut Pro (i.e. sev­er­al hun­dred dol­lars for soft­ware that could be used by mul­tiple people on any decent home com­puter) changed that. People talk about digit­al cam­er­as chan­ging the game, mak­ing it easi­er and more afford­able to film doc­u­ment­ar­ies, but hav­ing post-production pro­grams like FCP was just as important.
  Sure, there are fan­at­ics with money to burn who buy every shiny new addi­tion to Apple’s product line, but this is a small por­tion of the pop­u­la­tion. And FWIW, I don’t own an iPhone, but the advances of that tech­no­logy alone changed the cap­ab­il­it­ies of ANY phone, includ­ing the one I got which was FREE with my plan (being able to make and take a phone call isn’t a lux­ury) – it’s not an Apple product but it sure tries to be like one, and it’s all the bet­ter for it.

• warren oates says:

  October 6, 2011 at 3:07 pm

  “What use­ful stuff?”
  Wow, sorry I kind of halfway defen­ded D.E. in the oth­er thread. How about everything MW says above, plus, I dunno, the basic paradigm of most ever GUI we all use every­day, includ­ing but not strictly lim­ited to the read­able and human­ized fonts in which we’re presently com­mu­nic­at­ing. I’m sure you can find Jobs’ Standford address else­where, but just read the story of his con­tri­bu­tion to com­puter typefaces below and tell me he has­n’t pos­it­ively affected us all:
  http://gointothestory.blcklst.com/2011/10/r‑i-p-steve-jobs-1955–2011.html

• Oliver_C says:

  October 6, 2011 at 3:15 pm

  Funniest thing is, I don’t have a *single* Apple con­sumer product in my house, save for ‘The Incredibles’ on DVD (if that counts), and I don’t even feel the need to set up a blog self-righteously point­ing that out.
  As Kryten from ‘Red Dwarf’ once said: “Engage smug mode!”

• LondonLee says:

  October 6, 2011 at 6:43 pm

  point-and-click device like a mouse
  The idea of which he “stole” from a Xerox R&D lab. To be fair, Xerox did­n’t know what they had and did­n’t care too much that he bor­rowed the idea and Jobs was smart enough to see its poten­tial which is a tal­ent in and of itself. IBM were in the same deni­al at the time over the whole notion that any­body would want a com­puter in their house.

• MW says:

  October 7, 2011 at 11:09 am

  Technological innov­a­tion always involves some form of “theft” (this is true of just about every great inven­tion) – Xerox def­in­itely developed it first, but it’s doubt­ful they’d ever find a way to make it viable in their own cre­ations. Jobs and Apple were really the first to make it suc­cess­fully hap­pen (qual­i­fic­a­tion to come) in a home computer.
  To take it one step fur­ther, after a spec­tac­u­lar unveil­ing and an ini­tial burst of sales, the first Macintosh turned into a flop. Microsoft’s Windows was really what pop­ular­ized the graph­ic­al inter­face concept for every­one. But Xerox, Jobs and Microsoft all deserve props.

• MW says:

  October 7, 2011 at 11:12 am

  Instead of “it’s doubt­ful they’d ever find a way to make it viable in their own cre­ations,” I should really say it’s doubt­ful they would’ve suc­cess­fully brought the concept to home com­put­ing on their own.

• devis says:

  October 11, 2011 at 9:37 am

  He was more than just a tech geni­us, He was a busi­ness geni­us. He cre­ated a cus­tom­er need for a product and had the mono­poly of supply
  RIP