Steve Jobs in Kyoto | Hacker News Reader

Steve Jobs in Kyoto

www3.nhk.or.jp

418 pointsDanielleMolloy142 comments

If you go through the entire article, you'll find a link to a documentary that just came out about SJ's love of Japanese art.

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/special/episode/202101020...

Here’s a YouTube link:

https://youtu.be/1HUUTzGDGVA

It's funny to see this. In the past year or so I became very familiar with Hasui's works and now have more than a dozen prints of prints of his work on my walls. Several ones the same as what Jobs chose though perhaps that part is uninteresting since there's only about 100 to begin with I think. When I saw the scene of Bill's mother's house, two of the three she had on her wall were on my wall and visible as I watched this.

Would love to get real prints one day but I'm happy with my replicas too. I suspect I'll never afford the real things. I've been somewhat tempted to learn a little about woodblock carving myself and perhaps make something more fun and modern with it.

Thanks, I had seen this one too (had even tried sharing it with HN in a parallel submission). It is made with a lot of care and tactfulness, and is one of the best documentaries about Steve Jobs I know.

Little warning: It totally brought me to tears. I knew he liked Japanese aesthetics, but wasn't aware it meant so much for him.

The Ryokan that they mention he always stayed at is apparently very good: https://www.annees-de-pelerinage.com/tawaraya-ryokan-review-...

"Concierge service at the breakfast table is good, but the story goes on. On my way out one of the porters silently approached me and said: “Schwarze-sama, we checked the weather forecast and there will be rain this evening. So here is an umbrella to take along. Also, we took the liberty of reserving a table at that restaurant you wanted to go. Oh and last thing: here is a city plan for you where we already detailed down the way to Fushimi Inari.” It goes without saying that the guy responsible for my shoes already set out my hiking shoes and not one of my city or evening shoes. Even he knew of my plans."

That article is a bit silly. While I'm sure it's nice, this is not one of the high-end ryokans in Kyoto, and by no means is it "the best hotel in Japan" (I lived in Kyoto, and have been there many times). Reading the reviews, it mainly sounds small and difficult to book, and it has a cult reputation.

I was actually a little surprised Jobs stayed there, given that there are really high-end places where dignitaries and utra-rich people tend to stay. This particular place is not in a fancy or scenic area, though it is in a very convenient location, very near Teramachi, Sanjo, Kiyamachi, etc. Many of the elite ryokans are further out in more scenic areas (in Arashiyama, for example).

The service standard in Japan is quite high, so pretty much any mid-range ryokan will provide an umbrella or making reservations for you. And if you're an internationally famous billionaire...

Having lived in Japan for a year and reading the review of the service, it reminds me how funny it is to read foreigners reviews of Japanese customer service describing it as miraculous when Japanese would consider it standard and adequate. Truly a special culture and country, the rest of humanity could learn a lot about humility and service from Japan.

Yes, definitely. Travel blogs about Japan (travel blogs in general?) are usually pretty cringey for exactly that reason. It takes some time and experience to know what is unique about a culture, and what is simply the normal service/tourist mode of interaction.

I try not to judge, since I'm sure that I had the same experience the first time, and it's part of what makes it fun to travel there. But I'm also not really reacting to the sincerity of the authors' amazement, as much as their lack of self-awareness when writing things like "this is the best hotel in Japan", when their sample size is clearly pretty small.

Oh it is assuredly not the best hotel in Kyoto, or even the nicest staff. Still, I don't doubt the service was so much better than they've experienced everywhere else in the world that they statistically just assumed it must also be exceptional by Japanese standards as well.

As an interesting aside, I met a few western youngsters working in the hotel industry in Japan and they were very nice and their Japanese was very good, but they said they constantly seemed to not meet the standards their managers expected of them.

The quality of service you can get at the average 7-11 there feels almost comparable to dining at a five star restaurant in NYC, and going to an average quality hotel can feel like you're a guest at the Ritz Carlton. It's because Japanese have no shame in providing excellent service to others. I feel in the US it is considered as if one is admitting they are beneath another if they provide that kind of service, maybe that's why we have a tipping culture as well, to assuage the feeling of shame that comes with service in the US. A pity the nation has a culture like that, being of service to others is something that should be considered noble and aspirational.

What makes you think SJ would appreciate what the ultra-billionaire appreciates, though? :)

Indeed, not all billionaires appreciate the same things.

I’m sure Steve Jobs stayed at the highest end spots elsewhere on the planet. It mentions in the article that this place is right near his favourite soba.

The soba place is good.

I personally find that sort of treatment kinda irritating. Perhaps I am just too English about it, but please mind their own business. Even the guy handling your shoes knows about what you are doing with your day? Your total itinerary that someone else planned for you? No thank you.

What if actually I just wanted to do my own thing and the shoe guy got it wrong? Now everyone is embarrassed while they go get your tatty shoes and cancel restaurant reservations because you just wanted to go to Starbucks and do some email today.

If I had asked for those things then 110% yes, I love that decent service. But if it is all assumption...? then please leave me alone and don't think you know what I want. Kthx bai

You would have asked for them. That's the point of those kinds of services: you decide on our plans and leave the arrangements to someone else.

For what it's worth, I've stopped at B&Bs in Peak District (England) where you tell them which tor you wish to hike and you're provided with a map and packed lunch.

From what he wrote, it sounds like he discussed his plans for the day with the breakfast butler, and they were able to infer based on his discussed plans what he would need (including a map with the route that they talked about marked). I also don't like to be bothered, but that would be fine enough by me.

Actually this is kinda standard in Japanese ryokans. Many places offer umbrella/rain boots for rent, and hotel staffs marking pathways on their giveaway map is common. Now, it's possible that they might have went an extra mile for a clueless (as they thought) foreigner, but I find this kind of thing a little too nosy. This probably explains why many Japanese people prefer a more businesslike Western hotel today, and ryokans are more or less for foreign tourists.

Ryokan are certainly not just for 'foreign tourists' - many have a very limited interest in serving international customers and do not making booking or staying there easy for non-Japanese speakers. They're mostly dedicated to serving Japanese nationals seeking a relaxing domestic trip for a special occasion.

That said, the Japanese 'business hotel' is really a thing of beauty. They have everything a traveller truly needs, and nothing they don't. Half the time, you don't even need to speak to a human being to do predictable traveller things like check in, check out, or order breakfast. Even the most dirt cheap business hotel in Japan seems to have a shockingly large (by western standards) set of in-room amenities, and though almost trashy, the fact that you can self-serve a beer/highball/sake from the vending machine placed on every other floor for a mere ~120 yen is a nice departure from the egregiously overpriced hotel bar drinks you will find in western-style hotel bars.

I was amazed by service in Ryokan too - by the time we checked in our suitcases were in our rooms. By the time we had breakfast (with lady getting on her knees and explaining everything) our futons were done (we felt a bit embarrassed leaving mess and personal items everywhere).

Ryokan is one of the best experiences in travel!

The Ryokan futon we got in Kinosaki are the best ones I've ever slept in, super comfy! :)

And of course they magically spawned in our rooms after we returned from our last tour of the towns famous onsen for that day, perfect! :)

Just like regular hotels, there are plenty of good and bad Ryokan, I've been many times very inconvenienced by bad Ryokan staff too.

Apple during Steve Jobs era felt very much as his interpretation of Japanese Culture and Zen Buddhism. Everything from Product Design to Apple Store and Services. The only thing that Japanese dont get ( and they somehow still dont ) is Software.

Tim Cook first visit to Japan was in 2016 for business reasons. So I am going to say he has very little understanding of Japanese Zen culture, everything Steve took and put it into Apple.

Very unfortunate Tim Cook's Apple is nothing like Steve Jobs' Apple. It tuns out "Taste" and "Editor" is such a rare and unique skill set.

Japanese Software development it's a weird beast.

On one side you have people that managed to squeeze the last bit of clock cycles and memory in video games in the 90s, without losing sight of the creativity and human interaction. And that's rare, usually, people and teams are great in the technical space, or great on the abstract emotional one, but not both. A lot of them are a masterclass in UX that need not tutorials for complex topics.

On the other hand, most of the Apps outside entertainment are only made by and for the Japanese market. I can not recall many recent names outside of LINE in the software field (and after WhatsApp added stickers... begun to fade away in the west; Today, I know more that use WeChat / Signal than LINE).

But I don't think this it's a problem of lack of great developers or education (A lot of great CS papers, frameworks, and libraries are created by Japanese devs).

My bet on the problem is in how businesses work in Japan. - They put a lot of effort into weird metrics hyper-focused on the local market - A hierarchy that puts a lot of weight on tradition and forms, rather than results (ie "appear productive" doing a lot of office hours).

In defense of Japan, I would say that most industries outside of IT in the west, work kinda the same (MBAs for CTOs, etc).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRON_project could have been...

If it hadn't been vetoed/sabotaged...

Agree on every point. I have written something about the Japanese working culture on HN but I couldn't find it. The one I could find [1] was on the lack of A64FX outside Japan.

So it really is very strange indeed. I guess there is also a language barrier which stop them from global reach.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23370702

> The only thing that Japanese dont get ( and they somehow still dont ) is Software.

Desktop software? Because video games show otherwise.

Yes, Desktop or mostly System Software and UI. And Gaming seems to shows they are perfectly capable of it. I dont know why. You could easily point out lots of industry standard software from US, Germany or UK. Even Australia for something like BlackMagic. But I cant think of one from Japan.

> The only thing that Japanese dont get ( and they somehow still dont ) is Software.

cough Ruby cough

> Oshima says he would even jokingly ask Jobs to name one of Apple's products 'Hiro.'

That's not a bad alternative to 'Siri'

Fun fact: In Japanese there is no "Si" sound and the closest is "Shi", so "Siri" is pronounced "Shiri". You know what else is pronounced "Shiri" in Japanese? Buttocks (尻).

Totally irrelevant, but a related fact in this vein: I recently learned "尻" via WaniKani (a popular SRS system to help learn kanji), and the mnemonic they used to help you remember the reading of this kanji/vocabulary (お尻) is now inspired on Apple's Siri:

https://www.wanikani.com/kanji/%E5%B0%BB

> Now that you have nine flags inside your butt, you have to get them out. But, you don't know how to. So you ask Siri (しり — shi-ri), "how do I get nine flags out of my butt?"

(Note: The kanji is composed of the radicals "nine" and "flag", which is how they get to "nine flags".)

(Note: WaniKani's mnemonics are very often somewhat non-sensical slightly entertaining stories in the same style as this one. Very normal.)

No: 尸, the radical of 尻 doesn't mean "flag" -- it means "corpse". Notice that many of the characters with the 尸 radical refer to defilement, excrement or death.

Wanikani's "radical" names often don't map directly to the actual meaning. They are just used for mnemonics. This happens most when the "radical" isn't a common/official character in Japanese on it's own right, like 尸.

I don't entirely agree with that system, so I often look up the individual radical meanings anyway and add a synonym, but that's Wanikani's method.

If you want to look at it that way, "Shiri" can also refer to 知り which is the noun form or the stem of the -masu form of the verb 知る ("Shiru") generally meaning to know.

Interesting! 'Shir' means lion in Farsi, 'sheer' means milk so Shiri would mean 'you're a lion'

If you use a hard r 'Siri' translates to "garlic-i" or "you're a garlic"

While it is probably unrelated coincidence, Steve Jobs was one of the largest Disney shareholders and they would have been early on the production of Big Hero 6—whose main character is named Hiro—when Jobs passed away.

In the mobile industry at the very beginning of the introduction of iPhone/android devices, we referred to “feature” phones (e.g Symbian), “smartphones” (e.g Android and windows phone)and “super phones” or “the hero device” which was exclusively the iPhone. I always thought Hero was an odd reference, but maybe there is a connection to Oshima’s request.

> "I told him it would be impossible to enter but he said he might have a way," says Oshima. "He called his secretary in the US and ten minutes later, I got a call from the Nomura headquarters saying that we had a reservation for a personal viewing the following day."

My favorite casual Apple flex like this is the aerial screensaver on the Apple TV that was very obviously shot in 120fps in 4 or 8K (the published video is 4K) from a drone flying over an active LAX. (The drone's flight paths appear to be restricted to over the passenger terminal and taxiways, but still.)

Most people would miss the significance, but very few organizations on Earth would be authorized to get such footage.

I thought most of those overhead shots were composited 3D + Footage.

Not real live footage.

I'm having a difficulty fathoming (or believing) how this anecdote would be possible. When Steve Jobs' secretary picked up the phone, was it working hours? Brushing that aside, how could the secretary have called Nomura headquarters, reach the person who can grant access to the site, then have that person call the chauffeur within 10 minutes?

His personal secretarial staff was probably at least 5-10 people in total, with three shifts. Just having a megayacht[3] in a different time zone (e.g. in Europe) means you have to have three shift coverage to do management logistics for fueling/supply/HR/etc as it moves around between ports. They would already have his chauffeur’s number, and would be able to provide it to the people at the site (to enable a jp-jp conversation without sleepy California translators in the loop).

The personal (not even professional) staff of people that rich/busy are frequently larger than most small startups. If you add in managing their security detail, that of their family members, travel, yachts, 3-10 different residential properties, all the associated vendors, et c, it adds up fast. It’s a full time job for at least a half-dozen people if you have enough property and helicopters.

They’d also have private, direct numbers for a whole lot of extremely well-connected people who make it their business to pick up the phone when the three comma club calls them. He was running one of the largest and most important companies in the US at that time (separately from the fact that his personal fortune was immense), which means his staff would likely have access to many in government, military, diplomats, et c.

Recall that Apple built a special spy iPod firmware for a classified project for the DOE to do espionage[1]. Google’s LSE used to park and fill up their private (not Google - personal) jet at Moffet, a military airfield next to the Googleplex. (They even got the reduced, government-internal-only tax subsidized price for jet fuel.[2]) They’re connected.

The CEO of Apple (or Google, or Microsoft, et c) can, presumably, if necessary, speak to the POTUS same-day. Pulling some diplomatic strings to get a garden tour is entirely within the realm of believable.

Billionaires inhabit a different world.

[1]: https://tidbits.com/2020/08/17/the-case-of-the-top-secret-ip...

[2]: https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2013/12/13/inspector-gen...

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_(yacht)

Yeah, this is very much in line with [1] (see Access under $1billion section):

> Access. You now can just ask your staff to contact anyone and you will get a call back. [..] Within 60 minutes, we had a call back. I was in B1's home talking to him the next day.

Truly amazing how the top 0.0001% operates.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/2s9u0s/what_do_i...

Working hours wouldn't matter. Steve was a very well connected CEO and probably better connected than most re: Japan. Canon was a significant partner with and investor in NeXT, for example. So it's not a stretch to imagine he knew connected people over there. All his secretaries probably needed to do was get in touch with the staff (more likely, the personal secretaries) of no more than a few of his contacts within a couple of degrees of someone high up at Nomura and say 'Steve needs a favor'. Someone knew someone and so on... and it's done.

I always tell new founders to treat Executive Assistants as more important than the VC or exec they’re talking to. The elite ones all somehow know each other and talk. One particular EA that managed a billionaires life (he was on my board) and I became very close friends, she’s retired now, but there’s not a single powerful person she hasn’t managed to get me a meeting with, within a few days

If you’re ever in Kyoto set aside a whole day for the train museum. It’s absolutely through the roof train paradise.

Yeah, that what we did in 2017 - the fabulous Kyoto train station, Aquarium and mainly the fantastic train museum! :)

Missed all the temples and shrines though. :P

Excellent museum indeed. The kids love it too. And there's so much to see you can go several times to cover everything.

Kyoto and the ryokan experience is incredible. I will go for the rest of my life.

I lived in Japan for three years and would always prefer a (classy) hotel. As would most Japanese.

It’s a really neat experience but I wouldn’t go it again for more than a night. I hit my head on many doorways and am certain that if I’d stayed longer I would have eventually fallen through a wall.

Same here. Plus my knees were complaining about all the sleeping, eating, and sitting on the floor.

Fixed that for you:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ry%C5%8Dan-ji/@35.0343654,...

I was also thinking about a drone view or simply scaling the walls or trees nearby to try to get a full view of all 15 stones. Unfortunately the Google Maps image is quite low resolution and I can't achieve enlightenment.

I will admit, my very strong urge to find a workaround here has led me to do a lot of reflection on myself, and on tech more generally.

Too bad he couldn’t have gotten his tour guide and friend in too:

> When they returned, an interpreter was waiting for Jobs. Oshima waited outside in the car.

> "When he came back out an hour later, he told me: 'I would like to have a garden like that.'"

Too bad he couldn't or too bad he didn't...

We don’t fraternise with the help, darling

Interesting, I was just finishing his biography and it was repeatedly mentioned how he was inspired by his trips to Kyoto and the Japanese Zen mindset in general. Also, his daughter and his son also wanted to visit Kyoto when Jobs asked them to pick a location upon graduation for the very same reasons.

Personally, I loved Kyoto when I was in Japan for a week. It carries in itself an air of calm and serenity wherever you go. I remember I was walking around the homes and alleys outside of Fushimi Inari and it was as magical as the shrine itself.

I agree with the late Steve; Kyoto is sublime.

> Ohnishi started Jobs off with flounder sushi, then squid and shrimp...he served toro, the fatty part of tuna

Was Steve Jobs not a vegetarian?

I remember reading somewhere that he was urged by his doctor to eat meat after his illness. And his family gave up being vegan as well.

Pescetarian, last time I checked Wikipedia. A Ctrl+F no longer yields this info, however, so I might be misremembering.

He kept switching between all-fruit, vegan and pescetarian diets. His autobiography goes into it quite a bit.

> His autobiography

s/auto// very unfortunately!

Isaacson may have done the best job possible under the circumstances (authorized and rushed to publication), but I was disappointed.

Becoming Steve Jobs was a better book from what I recall. No talking to Steve, but gave a more fair look at much of the business stuff he was involved in. I liked it more.

I really liked Small Fry.

It’s written by his daughter and it’s more about her life and their relationship than his, but I think that’s the reason it’s really good.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/08/lisa-brennan-jobs-sm...

I have to assume their shared love of Japan is one of the reasons Jobs and Larry Ellison were so close.

Kyoto is such an amazing place, truly unique. I have been there 3 times and i think i must have seen and experienced only 5% of it.

I wonder if the Nomura Villa is ever open for public viewing?

The villa's homepage has an information page for public viewings, but states that "currently" there are none planned, and as far as I can tell that was written in 2008.

http://hekiunsou.jp

It always frustrates me when techies have an irreverence for Steve Jobs, or let his brashness overshadow the value he bestowed upon the world.

Jobs was once asked what distinguishes the ordinary from the great, and he said it boils down to "taste". he also described his job as being "an editor".

instead of adding more and more, he decided what to sacrifice and what to focus on making great. that's a rare quality, especially in tech.

Appreciate your frustration, but you should appreciate something else in turn: Steve Jobs was an asshole to many, many people for many, many years -- and "Steve stories" abound among the veterans in our industry. Speaking personally, my own introduction to Jobs was being at a friend's house as a kid, and overhearing her father being absolutely screamed at by someone on a speaker phone in his office. I looked at her, alarmed -- and she explained that this was just Steve Jobs, and that Jobs screamed at her father frequently. Her father, it must be said, is Fred Ebrahimi, then CEO of Quark.[0] It took me many years to appreciate that he was likely being screamed at by Jobs -- who was then CEO of NeXT -- because Jobs desperately needed software for the NeXT Cube, and that QuarkXpress was high on the list. (And as relayed in Randall Stross's book on Jobs at NeXT[1], he in fact did much worse than scream at Ebrahimi, stooping to belittle him based on his national origin.)

So yes, I'm afraid you are just going to have to be frustrated; Jobs was -- to put it generously -- complicated: his vision is rightfully lauded, but his conduct should broadly not serve as a model.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark_(company)

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/226316.Steve_Jobs_the_Ne...

I know I’ll get downvoted, but who cares. I know that’s callous but people have too much an aversion of getting yelled at by their bosses nowadays. That’s ego and vanity.

I regret I have but one downvote to give; not only is it wrong (and ineffective!) to yell at one's employees, that's also not what happened here: Ebrahimi was the CEO or a partner that Jobs sorely needed, not a report. As it happened, Quark didn't port their software -- and NeXT suffered as a result.

Getting yelled at is not a tragedy. I find it hard to believe that Jobs used racism. He wasn’t a stupid man. The people who worked at NeXT did fine. The people at Quark, not so sure.

Overt acknowledgement of workplace power dynamics are verboten. Yet those dynamics remain. It’s this ugly thing everyone skirts around, and the problem is it makes things even uglier. People acting strange at work and playing politics. What’s sad is people accept that as normal

The asshole yelling is the one with the ego and vanity problem.

How can Jobs go to Japanese Zen temples which teach the exact opposite of being a total asshole and yelling at everyone? It's incongruous, he just comes across as entitled and unnecessarily mean in these stories. He could've gotten the same amount out of people by sternly asking, not screaming and demeaning.

He was entitled. I’m sure he did a bit of both asking and screaming.

Your response is sad.

Why? Would you rather know where you stand or have your boss put on on a performance improvement plan and marginalize you until you quit? Which is worse?

Who says you have to be belittled and yelled at to know where you stand and what you could do to perform better?

Nobody is saying that, the point is that what Jobs did is no worse than the everyday corporate passive aggressive manipulative stuff that nobody bothers to comment on.

Eh, I disagree. It's not like the anger didn't come with firings. In terms of things I'd like to get - I'd prefer someone doesn't yell and belittle me. If they want to do some corporate jargon speak to say, "you're gonna be fired in 4 weeks and this PIP is really just a formality" then I prefer that over yelling and belittling and then the firing happens anyway.

It's a false dichotomy anyway. Steve could've been a nice person but instead he was an asshole. You're just letting him get away with it because someone else does bad things too. It's like comparing different forms of beheading - end of the day someones head comes off and I'm just saying... it's ALSO an option to not.

> It's a false dichotomy anyway. Steve could've been a nice person but instead he was an asshole. You're just letting him get away with it because someone else does bad things too.

You won’t find anything in what I said that is related to this straw man. Nothing I said excuses his behavior.

It’s also absurd to suggest he got away with anything. He is well known as an ‘asshole’.

My point is that you and others who focus on Jobs are letting everyday passive aggressive corporate asshole behavior go unexamined just because the anger is hidden with a fake veneer of cordiality. Jobs is a scapegoat in this regard.

Steve was no worse than a passive aggressive middle manager. The difference was, he wasn’t fake. To put it another way - he would stab you in the front rather than the back.

If you are constantly yelling, you are either under too much stress or have unresolved psychological issues that requires medical assistance. Jobs probably had both but people did tolerate him because of the business/execution/ideas he had.

Either way, if you yell frequently, you need some assistance.

He set back wages for techies for years, and was a prick to his family & friends (disavowing his daughter, screwing Woz out of money). I don't care if he was the brightest guy on earth, or what "value" he bestowed on the world. He wasn't a good human being. Same goes for Gates.

I have never liked Jobs (or even Apple) - even more so after the cult following his death - but nevertheless I would not pretend to know him and to be able to pass a final judgment on him as a human being. Maybe he was an asshole? Maybe he treated people badly? Yet people still worked for him and respected him nonetheless. And if we ever were in his position, would we be worse or better? It's not something we can easily know or guess.

You have to take the good with the bad. Steve and Bill were able to accomplish what they did because of their unique personality quirks. Those same quirks make them not always compassionate or empathetic people. No one is perfect. Steve was who he was. A lot of people who were closest to him seemed very sad that he passed. He must have made a positive impression on them.

Sorry, but disavowing your daughter to not pay child support, or trying to recoup someones shares because they have cancer isn't a personality quirk.

Since it's important to be accurate when you're condemning someone -

Gates never tried to take back Paul Allen's shares. That isn't merely a bit of nuance. It never happened.

The only thing that ever happened was the infamous discussion between Gates and Ballmer, which Allen overheard. Gates offered to purchase the shares in 1983, which Allen rejected. Allen is quite clear about what happened in his book Idea Man.

A detestable conversation by Gates, certainly. And yet Allen checked out of Microsoft in 1982 and kept his enormous fortune from it and Gates never tried to take it from him.

Everyone on HN would spontaneously combust if they were judged by their worst thoughts or conversations, without exception.

They were discussing ways to dilute his shares. Bill tried to buy him out at a much reduced rate ($5 a share). When they went public a couple years later, the share price was $35 on the first day. Either way the whole thing was precipitated because he wasn't being as productive on account of having cancer. Bill likes to say that the relationship was repaired near the end of Paul's life, but at the same time, he wouldn't take or return a call from him when he was on his death bed, which they talk about in the mini-doc "Inside Bill's Brain".

Gates is borderline criminal

I'm sure some don't give Jobs the credit he's due, but I'd say it's far more common for people to have too much reverence for him. You yourself here have reduced his often outrageous and terrible behaviour simply as "brashness".

I think it's convenient to give a leader all of the credit for what is a massive effort by a massive organization.

I think it's convenient to say that a massive organization is doing well only because of that leader and not, at least occasionally, despite that leader.

Moreover, a lot of educated people understand that graphs have incredibly complex behavior and can't be well understood from the "first" node a stimulus enters through and yet we are quick to laud Jobs for all of the successes of his network; it's like this insane pyramid scheme of credit attribution.

Just because his positives were rare doesn't mean we should ignore the fact that he was a criminal swindler who conspired to cheat workers as his company as well as others out of billions of dollars of wages.

It's not like Apple or these other companies whose executives participated in the criminal conspiracy were struggling at the time, either. They could have paid the salaries required for retention. It was pure, unmitigated greed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

> The defendants are Adobe, Apple Inc., Google, Intel, Intuit, Pixar, Lucasfilm and eBay

Don't ever work for any of these firms, and remember that Schmidt and Jobs et al are thieves.

I wish I had known of this side of him when I visited Japan 3 years ago :/ Interesting article! Also, the documentary someone else linked below is good!

Jobs was vegan, is that right?

For the most part, but had a soft spot for sushi. I used to work in Infinite Loop and remember when Steve’s favourite sushi restaurant closed so the chef was hired to work in the canteen instead.

He was actually fruititarian, for most of his life.

He had a favorite sushi place in Palo Alto. Maybe a pescaterian?

Fuki?

Jinsho

Ahh the worse diet for the environment.

Seems fitting for Jobs.

That seems counter to my understanding of diets. Do you have any sources about this? I'd like to learn if I've been making misinformed decisions.

Many fish used for sushi, notably bluefin tuna (source of the ootoro tuna belly Jobs apparently loved), are not considered sustainable.

I didn't realize that this was actually real. I love fruit but I feel like all of the sugar would hurt me if it were the only thing that I ate.

Steve had a number of out there beliefs. At one point, before Co-founding Apple, Steve believed his fruit only diet would mean he no longer needed to shower, much to the dismay of his Atari coworkers. He also tried to fix his pancreatic cancer through diet.

I suspect he had many more out there beliefs, but was self aware enough to keep them to his self.

I wonder if that had anything to do with his pancreatic cancer

Likely. It probaby wasn't the only thing though. The high amounts of sugar, weird fasting habits, drug use, extreme stress he put himself in, and his arrogance in ignoring sound medical advice might have all helped do him in from what I gleaned from his biography. His pancreas could only take so much apparently.

I think the actor doing Jobs had some pancreatic problems related to eating like Jobs.

Don't quote me on that, please double check.

Ashton Kutcher landed in hospital after following Steve Jobs's fruitarian diet

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/jan/28/ashton-kutcher-...

there are "ethical" fruititarians, because fruits are gifts the plants offer up, but consuming a vegetable is eating the plant itself.

There are a lot of plants that you can eat a little part of, which then grows back, like the leaves on chard or lettuce plants. In our garden the chard plants produced for months.

In commercial farming, it's just cheaper to cut the entire plant off and clear the land for the next crop.

>He might have been aware of when his life would end, since he passed away just one year later," says Ohnishi. "Maybe that's why he chose not to write the whole sentence, and only the first three words."

This isnt a popular opinion since HN (and media) tends to deify Jobs, but people forget he died an ignorant death at his own hand. Jobs was diagnosed with a curable cancer and against all reason, he decided eating fruit would fix the problem.

The idea that Jobs had any deep philosophical ponderance of the human condition or introspection on his own mortality is comical.

Please don't post name-calling or flamebait comments to HN, nor take HN threads on generic flamewar tangents, which we don't want here:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> The idea that Jobs had any deep philosophical ponderance of the human condition or introspection on his own mortality is comical.

He was diagnosed with cancer in 2003 and goofed off avoiding treatment for several months.

This visit was in 2010, years later, after knowing his cancer was probably terminal for quite some time. I think 7 years of thinking about it, including writing about how not properly treating his cancer early was a grave mistake, might be enough to give one some "introspection on [his] own mortality".

Your sniping comment does not make much sense.

This is an extremely binary way of thinking

You're saying it has to be one or the other:

A) Against all reason, Jobs decided eating fruit would solve his curable cancer, or B) Jobs has some deep philosophical ponderance of the human condition or introspection on his own mortality

Why can't it be both? Humans are notoriously inconsistent

I’ve no idea whether or not it’s a popular opinion but seems wholly unnecessary to be posting it on this article unless you have some special insight on Jobs medical records other than public speculation.

I may be wrong but I don't think that HN deifies Steve Jobs. He has a reputation as a visionary but also as an asshole. He also is the anti-hacker and this is a website with "hacker" in its name. Apple makes perfect products, don't dare touch anything was the name of the game.

Hacker News absolutely deifies Steve Jobs. Maybe you're forgetting that YCombinator runs this whole gig.

Just read this page of comments, it’s pretty typical. Dozens of people saying he was a nutty asshole and dozens of people saying he was a complex visionary. That’s par for the course.

I'm no fan of Jobs. I think he achieved some notable but transient things, but I also think he was an egotist who treated many people badly.

> he died an ignorant death at his own hand

But I wonder why you say something so unkind? Is it not possible that he was, in the end, simply afraid and not able to fully face up to his mortality?

As for him possessing philosophical insight, I think that is more likely to be something attributed to him by those who (as you put it) deify him.

Curable is a bit of a stretch. More like "possibly not a death sentence, unlike other pancreatic cancers"

I have heard variations on this many times but never a definitive expert assertion of its truth rooted in confirmed facts. Did he forego cure, or was he merely quirky and uncured as two independent truths?

A bit of searching did not bring me complete clarity.

- https://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2011/10/24/steve-j...

- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4924574/

- https://www.livescience.com/16551-steve-jobs-alternative-med...

The undisputed fact of his liver transplant in TN suggests a sophisticated deployment of his considerable means to me. Given this it seems to me that he may have been as described above at the time of diagnosis but he probably was not by the time of transplantation.

According to his biography, he did initially try to cure his cancer by going fruitarian. Obviously, the cancer got worse instead of better, and he ended up needing a transplant. I suspect (and I have nothing to go off of other than his biography) that he didn't actually completely expect the fruit diet to work, and may have simply believed that if it was his time to go, it was his time to go, but his wife may have eventually talked some sense into him.

In America, normal humans can only be on a transplant list for their home state, but a few states also accept out-of-state folks who can travel to the state within X hours. This was obviously designed for people who live right on the border in a neighboring state, but Jobs was able to use his private jet to argue that he should be on the transplant lists for basically every state that accepts out-of-state people.

The main point is that it's possible he took an organ from someone in TN, because he himself let his own cancer progress beyond the point of salvaging the organ.

Steve Jobs died from pancreatic cancer. He received a liver transplant, which is not related to that cancer.

His cancer was metastatic, meaning it spread to other parts of his body. That happens when a cancer is left untreated.

It also happens when a cancer is treated.

Other than the reason he needed a liver transplant was because of evidence that the cancer had spread to his liver but not elsewhere...

Not to be meta contrarian but I think everyone understands his pattern of arrogance got the best of him with that fruit based diet from a nutritionist scam.

The people that deify him mostly forget that actually running a company like him means requiring a bailout from your primary competitor, which means failure. edit: ok he wasn't there during that time period. A better example would be other areas of arrogance and not uplifting behavior.

> The people that deify him mostly forget that actually running a company like him means requiring a bailout from your primary competitor, which means failure.

There's plenty to criticize Jobs for, but this one doesn't make sense to me. Gates bailed out Apple in August 1997.

Jobs departed Apple in 1985 and returned when the NeXT acquisition in February 1997.

Do you think that the reason Apple sorely needed capital was primarily down to Jobs' decisions between February and August? Or was it some critical misstep in 1983-1984 manifesting 13 years later?

He wasn't even at Apple for the entire decade preceding that bailout. People probably 'forgot' because it's not true at all!

It's the exact opposite of the original comment... without Jobs and his engineering of the bailout from Gates, Apple would've definitely failed!

He was fantastic as a founder and loyal to his original company when the path of least resistance would've been totally different.

> He wasn't even at Apple for the entire decade preceding that bailout. People probably 'forgot' because it's not true at all!

Because he ran the company into the ground before and the board fired him

Also people are right when they claim that Jobs rise to fame wouldn't have happened without the DOJ going after Microsoft because the powers that be were disturbed by Gates 160B wealth back in 1999.

If the DOJ didn't go after Microsoft we now wouldn't have a 1400$ phone which you can't recharge while listening to music...Thank you Bill Clinton's DOJ!

United States of Microsoft would have been a really cool place to live considering they are the only company which engineered wealth redistribution as a service. By not pursuing individual user piracy they found a way to have Fortune 500 companies subsidize the kids and the geeks of this world who know where to find cracked Windows and Office.

EDIT: I will delete this comment when it reaches -5 score. Don't want to be shadowbanned, but the cult hivemind in here around people like Musk and Jobs is insufferable

why is it comical though? that man achieved a lot in his life and died on his own terms

Ridiculous - he absolutely did not die on his own terms. Once he was aware of his diagnosis there was no way for him to die on his own terms, he just died.

The only way you could possibly achieve the idea of "dying on your own terms" would be if you were in perfect health and then willingly decided to commit suicide.

Not only was the cancer he had easily treatable had he done what he needed to do when it was first discovered...

He also bought his way onto the top of a transplant list by buying a home in Tennessee... despite also knowing by this point that his cancer would be terminal and proper treatment would be too late.

It doesn't take much to see how Jobs was truly an astounding piece of shit.

FTA: "Jobs' autograph now adorns the wall of Sushiiwa. It comes with a message: "All good things", a shortened version of the saying "All good things must come to an end.""

> The idea that Jobs had any deep philosophical ponderance of the human condition or introspection on his own mortality is comical.

seriously, tell it brother! He wrote "All good things." to a tasting menu in a restaurant, because he liked the sushi, not because he was even pondering the "all good things must come to an end", which btw is hackneyed and wouldn't indicate ponderous thoughts anyway.

Elsewhere in an article it points out that in the middle of an omakase he asked to be served repeated toro's till he said "stop"... that is sooo removed from japanese culture or any sense of restraint or selflessness, as is his statement (FTA, my paraphrasal) on seeing a zen garden "I WANT THAT"

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