The Full Walter Isaacson/Steve Jobs Interview From 60 Minutes
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macrumors.com
One: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jqSK8Qv4ZY&feature=chann... Two: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXcfDN6L9d8&feature=chann...
I haven't read the book yet so he maybe he does and there are some obvious answers (like "that was a mistake and part of why I later rejected my wealth") but that question really should have been asked.
* Mao and Jesus not included. Go crazy with that, Apple haters.
I think Woz summarized it best: "Jobs is a complex person and being manipulative is just the darker facet of the traits that make him successful"
Not to go all Most Interesting Man in the World on this tangent but I don't buy many biographies but when I do it's for Steve Jobs.* I imagine many people are doing the same and I think the meta idea of how many copies it will sell will be interesting (not shockingly high because I mean who reads anymore) but 5+ million by xmas might be possible I'd guess. I also wonder how many ipad owners broke their Kindle lock in and bought it on iTunes.
* Technically I guess I also bought Marcus Allen Super Raider when I was 9 or 10 years old in the mid 80s. Here's hoping this is half as good as Marcus Allen Super Raider was to me when I was 9 or 10.
* The Kindle book costs nearly as much as the hardcover. Too much.
* I suspect most of the salient, "juicy" bits will be coming out over the next few weeks, and most of the general outline is already widely known.
This seems like such a silly straw man argument and I'm so surprised every time I hear someone make it earnestly. I'm sure Steve stole a cookie when he was 5 years old too, that doesn't mean his whole life was a scheme to acquire cookies.
I am reading Anthony Kiedes's autobiography in which he states that he ripped off so many people in his past (mainly drug related) and then later went back to right his wrong. So if anything this could have been an avenue and opportunity for Steve to say "ya know what, I did screw Woz over and we agreed on XYZ"
Furthermore, you are simply assuming and drawing ill-informed conclusions. The OP is basically asking that this question be raised, regardless of whether he is insinuating it's truth. It's disingenuous to make conclusions like "it's not about the money" when there are sources that state otherwise.
If you had actually read my comment you might have seen where I said maybe the answer was "that was a mistake and part of why I later blah blah" which isn't so different from your shocking idea.
If anything, hackers are more likely than most to respond negatively to Steve's recent approach toward mobile platforms and use of IP in business... which are the sorts of alienating decisions a technical co-founder can make.
If by "hackers" you meant "people who want to make product(s) for a startup and learned a few things about code to hack out a prototype," you might be more on-target.
This is why I predicated my post on the definition of "hacker." If we're going with the 2011, mainstream meaning of the word, where CEOs can be hackers because they help create amazing technology, then I have no input. Go ahead and hack your life, make some awesome music by hacking your violin, hack whatever you like.
When I say, "From scratch", I mean, I designed it (Z80 based) laid out the printed circuit board, exposed it, etched it, populated it, debugged it, and then I did it all over again to get a video board to connect the computer to a TV set. Then, after all of that, I taught myself Z80 assembly in order to get a minimal ROM OS on it.
I soon decided that software was a lot easier to debug than hardware, and that startups were a lot more fun than big companies.
I've learned a great many disciplines and how to hack them, from economics and investing, to marketing and business, as well, as physics, electronics, materials science, metal working, and of course, every bit of software I could learn.
As a political rebel, someone who took LSD when he was young in order to hack his mind, and a full fledged engineer, startup junkie and capitalist... Steve Jobs is, in fact, my hero.
In fact, I think he's the greatest hero this country as had in my lifetime, bar none.
Being a hacker isn't about sitting in a basement making code that nobody will ever use. Or at least, that's not the only way to be a hacker.
Good engineering means solving problems, and the problems that separate Apple products from the abject crap that everybody else puts out, are as worthy of hacker's efforts as any other engineering problems.
In fact, I question the engineering expertise of anyone who pooh-poohs apple's products. I find the tendency here on HN for people to pretend like Apple isn't innovative to be a sure sign that those posters are really not actually hackers. Because hackers know how hard it is, to not only make something work, but make it work well, and make it work well in a way that is really usable.
Frankly, if Steve Jobs is not one of your heroes, you're not a hacker in my book.
I predicated my post on the meaning of the word "hacker." My parents are hackers by your definition and I only made it halfway through your post. In which case I have no disagreement because we're talking about different things - I made sure to say that in my original post.
This is just childish posturing on your part, since you're not an engineer. Your idea of a hacker is someone who jailbreaks their phone or installs linux on their PC and thinks they are "elite".
My idea of a hacker is someone who spends their lives designing and building hardware or software and has significant technological skills.
Your "hackers" hate Apple because Apple doesn't compete at the low end of the market selling cheap gadgets, and since your "hackers" have day jobs at retail establishments, they can't afford Apple gear.
My hackers recognize the significant engineering effort that it takes to make what Apple does look easy.
Your "hackers" hate ability and think too much is being made of Steve Jobs, because anti-capitalism has somehow become cool on a sight ostensibly about people who want to start star ups.
My hackers recognize the difficulty in making a dent in the universe with your startup, and applaud Steve Jobs as for doing so.
Steve Jobs' has hundreds of patents. I have a few. How many do you have?
Your being an electronics and software hacker is irrelevant to any argument.
> I guess, in your book, because Woz used drugs, he doesn't qualify as a hacker, eh?
This argument makes no sense. You used "hack" to describe the process of taking LSD, saying that taking LSD is sufficient to make you a hacker, which I pointed out means my technology-phobic parents are also hackers. I did not say taking LSD disqualifies you from being a hacker, merely that it is not sufficient.
> This is just childish posturing on your part, since you're not an engineer.
You should let my employer know! They're wasting money on me if I'm not actually an engineer!
I'm not even going to try to continue past this point.
The type of person he is calling a hero, someone like Dennis Ritchie, is someone who has created important algorithms or made advances in chip design. These technologies, Ritchie's in particular, are what make Apple products, and in Ritchie's case very near all other computer products, possible to build at all.
There is the Jobs type of innovation, where you integrate work in a useful and pleasing way. Then there is the academic version of innovation, where you are creating or extending the foundations of our collective knowledge. These are hardly comparable.
Many of us find the latter to be far more of a challenge than the former. That's not to say that doing the sort of work that Apple did was at all easy! But beyond such subjective opinions, the real discord that bothers some of us is that the academic type contributions are every bit as important as the contributions of Jobs, yet often go completely unnoticed, or worse, their successes are misattributed up the chain to people like Jobs.
These people deserve every bit as much praise, but usually get none. So Dennis Ritchie died recently. There were some mentions in the news. But by and large Jobs death is dominating the scene. Ritchie's work has arguably touched far more people. It's sad, but I suppose it's human nature to sing the praises of a few at the expense of the rest.
That said, Jobs was a hugely influential person as well and certainly deserves respect. We just need to remember that there are others that also deserve the same sort of respect. The quiet heros.
The need to diminish what he did as "integrating work in useful and pleasing ways" is either ignorance or dishonesty.
That's just silly. Whether you're a hacker or not depends on what you do, not who your heroes are. That's like saying Slash is not a real guitar player if he doesn't worship Jimi Hendrix.
In short, just the kind of posers who overwhelm hacker news.
Also, sorry, but you are just stupid for assuming that I am Marxist just because I criticized some businessman. I never even mentioned any charities. Go find somebody else to vent your frustration to.
They don't, and shouldn't be, if you're an entrepreneur. And I agree with you wholeheartedly that Jobs is an incredible hero for an entrepreneur.
Be honest, what % of HN readers actually know more about electronics than Steve Jobs did?
"I figured, this guy's gotta be cheap, man. He really doesn't have much skills at all," Alcorn remembers. "So I figured I'd hire him."
"Jobs never did a lick of engineering in his life. He had me snowed," Alcorn later recalled. "It took years before I figured out that he was getting Woz to 'come in the back door' and do all the work while he got the credit."
When Steve Wozniak is your co-founder, its not very hard to decide to just leave the engineering up to him and focus on the other aspects of the business.
But that doesn't mean he lacked practical knowledge. He certainly has garnered a lot of patents over the years for his inventions, many of which are technological.
Some will argue "but woz left!". Cofounders leaving is pretty common. It doesn't diminish their importance so much especially since part of what a tech cofounder can do is ensure the company can run without him.
Maybe building a frequency counter is something that your average non-technical teenager does these days - but I have to believe it was a little more rarified in 1971.
Just because Jobs wasn't as elite a hacker as Woz, doesn't classify him as non-technical.
Revering Jobs for what he did, does not in any way diminish the contributions of Woz or Dennis Ritchie or dozens of others.
Quite frankly I'm getting sick of these "rules" for what constitutes the best way to do something. Isn't that the manifesto of "hacking"...that there is no one way to do something? We all see countless articles on here "How to do this, How to do that". The fact is, all of these rules are just frameworks and how you implement them is up to you as a person. So my note for hackers is: your hero was passionate about what he wanted, that's a good co-founder
The recent story about PG and Dropbox said it best: "This is why one of our rules is that we’ll break any of our rules."
[1] - http://www.forbes.com/sites/bruceupbin/2011/10/18/paul-graha...
This could just be "engineer news", but it is "hacker news" because PG is celebrating those who took unconventional approaches.
That's what a hack is.
The problem is, when a site becomes mainstream popular it brings in a lot of people outside of its core demographic. In this case, there are a lot of people who are not engineers who think that engineering is cool, and want to think that they are elite.
And when someone is a poser, they know they don't measure up, so they try and define who the "legit" ones are.
You see this posturing among teenagers a lot. (maybe a lot of Hacker News visitors are just out of their teens?)
We specifically picked you out.
I could understand why he might not have given Wozniak the bonus - at least he gave half of the rest and may be he needed money badly. But the Kottke thing is just unexplainable. Wozniak finally ended up giving some of his options to many other neglected ones including Kottke.
The book is definitely worth a read just in case anyone was still on the fence.