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Comment by jameskilton | Hacker News Reader

You can probably point to a lot of quality failings at Apple as starting with Steve Job's death. Apparently he failed to teach and instill a culture of high quality and instead just focused on micro-managing everything himself. Steve Jobs may go down as both the best and worst CEO Apple ever had.

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Not true at all. Look up the story of Apple University. Jobs can't run Apple from his grave. He tried his best to leave Apple with the right culture and leadership in his view. And for the most part, Apple has done really well since he passed. No one is going to get 100% of things right 100% of the time, and Jobs is no different; things would have inevitably gone wrong under his leadership, too.

Exactly this—a particular anecdote from the biography describes his motivation. Apparently when the HP Touchpad failed, Steve Jobs viewed it as a tragedy more than a triumph:

> "Hewlett and Packard built a great company, and they thought they had left it in good hands, but now it's being dismembered and destroyed. It's tragic. I hope I've left a stronger legacy so that will never happen at Apple."

In creating Apple University he was really trying to instill a legacy that would outlast him. That said, when pulling out the "Steve Jobs never would have let this happen" card, it's also important to remember that MobileMe happened on Steve's watch, as did the iPod HiFi.

I still have a working HiFi in my home gym. It’s a solid piece of engineering, especially for its time. I don’t know why people love to hate it so much.

I feel like sentiment toward the iPod HiFi is less "hate" and more "why does this exist". It was a perfectly solid piece of hardware, but Apple tried to enter a market that was already saturated (iPod docks) with a far more expensive product that didn't offer any significant advantages.

It was one of the very few that didn’t suck, IMO. That’s why I bought it. And IIRC it wasn’t the most expensive option.

As did the first implementation of apple maps

Welcome to Hacker News, where next-generation bots wish to be like their elitist closed-source masters.

Jobs screwed up plenty of times. Look at the whole history of NeXT Computer for example. Software so far ahead of everything else at the time, but totally screwed up getting it into the market.

How was NeXT a failure when it was acquired by Apple and is the basis of macOS, iOS, watchOS, and tvOS? It's currently running on over one billion devices.

One thing I feel nearly certain is that had Steve Jobs been alive, Apple would have never under any circumstances released a flagship phone and a flagship laptop simultaneously that, out of the box, had no way of connecting to each other. I still can't believe that happened.

I don't see why. The Power Mac G5 still came with ADC for a year after they switched all their displays to DVI. (And the ADC-DVI adapter was $149.) Admittedly they weren't released simultaneously.

I disagree completely. By the time they shipped with incompatible cables / ports, wireless backup with iCloud, wireless sync with iTunes (who even "syncs" at all anymore...), and even wireless deployment and debugging had all been implemented.

Steve wouldn't have wanted you to connect your phone to your computer in the first place. That's why iTunes got wireless sync back before everything was in the cloud. The only really remaining piece was developers needing to plug in for deployment and debugging, but who cares - they're developers, they'll manage.

And now even that's solved!

Yet, so many people plug their phone into their computer for the simple reason of charging it. Now perhaps wireless charging is coming, but the Apple cable fiasco sure inconvenienced anyone with that habit.

Why do you want to connect your phone to your laptop?

Transfering files (mp3, photos, random stuff I am transfering between laptops, esp. when not connected to the internet) and charging.

Related: the Steve Jobs Roll Your Own Calculator Construction Set (https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Calculator_Const...)

I dunno, Apple’s has some pretty terrible CEOs. Jobs might have been a dreadful micromanager and possibly a bit of an arse, but he did disrupt at least four major industries and lay the foundation for the most valuable public company ever.

Whereas Sculley, Spindler and Amelio were a parade of failure from start to finish.

"but of an arse" is pretty generous for behavior that would cost him his job today.

I doubt very much he would have lost his job today for any of his behavior.

Look at what the U.S. President has and continues to do, and he still has his job, and a much more important and public one too.

Politics aside, Jobs' turnaround of Apple into the most valuable company in the world (for awhile, recently) would have ensured he remained at the helm for as long as he wanted.

What behavior are you talking about that would cost him that position today? Jobs wasn't physically assaulting employees. It isn't illegal to be mean or rude to people. At worst it might cost Apple a few workplace lawsuits/settlements.

The stock options backdating scandal forced out two members of Apple's executive team, and got them indicted: https://www.sec.gov/news/press/2007/2007-70.htm

The no-poaching collusion between Apple et al probably cost Apple a nine-figure sum to settle (I'm not sure what the exact breakdown between the defendants was): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

Both of these were quite serious issues, in my opinion.

Sculley saved Apple from an immature Steve Jobs. As late as 1994, Apple was still the number one computer seller.

Comparatively I think we could safely say that Microsoft transition from a retiring Bill Gates to Steve Ballmer didn’t go as smoothly as what happened at Apple.

I think what really hurts Apple is the lack of the “reality distortion field” at keynotes and media events.

Those set the tone for products and the company with users and Apple hasn’t been nearly as effective at this without him.

Apple's revenues, profits, and market cap have increased dramatically since 2011. How else do you measure effectiveness?

How much of that is due to inertia ?

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