On Steve Jobs’s passing | Hacker News Reader

On Steve Jobs’s passing

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12 pointssoparlaaurie6 comments

It's a pity that the following paragraph was included:

  The velvet glove over Jobs’s iron fist was thinner that 
  second time around; like most people who attract a cult 
  following, he became increasingly convinced of his own 
  infallibility. It was an error that eventually killed him; 
  the kind of pancreatic cancer he had was essentially 
  curable with early surgical intervention, but Jobs 
  insisted on treating it with “alternative medicine” that  
  didn’t work.

No need to bring up the manner of Jobs' death, or speculate on what he did and did not do and its influence on the outcome. Better to stick to the core argument about the closed Apple world and the open source alternative.

A man died, but the core Apple idea (of a closely tied and controlled software/hardware combination) did not. Focus on that.

From his own declarations, he did have surgical intervention.

He probably chose alternative medicine over chemotherapy, a procedure which is known to have awful side-effects. It's also a dangerous procedure that can cause problems to other parts of your body. It is also less effective for pancreatic cancer - and the pancreas is a highly sensitive organ anyway, as in, with too much chemotherapy you'll probably die faster of pancreatitis caused by chemo, rather than cancer.

That's why I don't like ad-hominems (even though I'm also guilty of it from time to time); it's much better to attack ideas and their implementations, rather than the person.

This article isn't very insightful it's just rehashing the old tale that often the first group to invent something isn't always the first group to refine it in a way that makes it ultimately successful on a wide scale.

The author's argument is that the tendency to assign historical credit for the invention to whom ever made the invention a success is some how an injustice. The magic of Apple has never been their claims of pure invention but the ability to take very raw technology and make it into something that people actually want to use and can afford.

He is not arguing against it. He is arguing that Steve has caused harm to the computing culture by creating a walled garden. Eric is arguing against Steve's doublespeak which was evident from the start of his carrier. On one hand he was projecting himself as a liberator. On the other hand he was fighting nails and teeth against putting extra ports in the original Apple created by Woz. Eventually he succeeded during his second stint.

He was a wonderful designer and marketer but portraying him as if he was Christ is not right too. Eric is not denying his marketing skill or design sense. He is trying to break the aura of cult created around Apple so that future of computing can be opened a little bit.

Even if Apple never said they invented the personal computer, or the portable/digital music device, a majority of people do say that - and I think that's also Apple's fault, as they never give enough credit to the things they copy.

Your argument also rehashes the argument that polishing a product and distributing it to the masses is just as important as inventing it. Which is true, but that wasn't the point.

I don't know why people keep bringing up this "alternative medicine" thing, claiming he could just have had surgery and been cured.

The details of his illness and his treatment were, quite rightly, private.

Unless somebody links to a video of the man himself stating that he deliberately chose to not have surgery and partake in alternative medicine instead, then anyone claiming so has no credibility.

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