Is he actually though? He was really wealthy, and sold a lot of mobile devices.
He was fanboyed over by a lot of mobile device enthusiasts.
Of note outside of this - he was a horrible person to work with, and died in large part of lala land medical thinking.
Is this what an important historical figure is these days?
Historical figures are typically more than just grease in the profit engine of a multinational.
This is... nothing short of outrageous haha.
1. Thinking people will be reading about jobs in 100 years, like we read about Galileo now?
2. Thinking you're not a fanboy, after saying this.
Beyond hilarious.
> I'm just saying that whether we like him or not, Steve Jobs matters
Steve jobs really, _really_ doesn't matter. His death has had essentially zero impact on the broader world. In the world closer to him, it made some people sad, probably many more quite happy, and caused some wealth transfers. The company he ran continues to run in about the same arc you'd have expected it to. Even the stock market doesn't really care he's missing. It took a week or two for stock to recover and grow.
Also, I also wasn't talking about the legacy of the company he founded, or about the fact that Tim Cook managed to create more shareholder value than he did.
I was only thinking about the influence he had, and keeps having, on tech products and companies today.
His influence on modern technology is almost all flash and no substance. All you need to do to confirm that is look at how technology has stagnated over the past 10 years. The 70s gave us C, the 80s gave us affordable home computers, the 90s gave us desktop metaphors and friendly computers, and the 2000s gave us... the iPhone? The 2010s is even more ephemeral, as his 'legacy' has mostly just encouraged other companies to build their own walled gardens and enforce insane monetization strategies. Bud Tribble said it best: Steve Jobs' greatest attribute was creating a reality distortion field. His demeanor was what made people see the iPod as more than a hard drive with a clickwheel strapped to it, or the Magic Mouse as a legitimate replacement for a traditional pointing device (history knows how that one turned out).
Maybe it sounds like I'm being rough on the guy, but it's hard to deny that the majority of his life was dependent on hyperbole and marketing magic. His 'Disneyfication' of the consumer technology is made out to be a lot more sophisticated than it really is. Apple is barely able to hold on to that facade these days as regulators and antitrust organizations start to press them.
He created the worlds most profitable company. That deserves some attention.
If we demand perfection of role models; then we won't get any. That is why we have them, to some extent - to learn what flaws are safe to ignore as we strive to make the world better.
Wow amazing. What a role model?
This is the kind of statement I'd expect to hear at one of those libertarian meets where they threaten you with toaster licenses.
Publicly funded research and individual effort aren't very powerful either, basically the best an individual can do is make an interesting observation that sets a corporation up to actually run with the idea.
As I noted in another comment, he was probably quite an asshole. And that is unfortunately a trait that has been true of countless major figures throughout all of history. Being an asshole is a rather orthogonal consideration.
It’s also remarkable, whether you like him or not, that he took a company on the brink of bankruptcy, and that was so trivial as to hardly matter anymore, and built a foundation that made it the first trillion dollar company in the world. Say what you want, but he was quite a remarkable businessman.
By the way he sold iPhones, not generic mobile devices. :)
2. iphones are the epitome of generic mobile devices, and have been since their second gen. That's an accomplishment in and of its self - but doesn't make what I said very wrong.