Jobs was no Edison or Einstein. Hopper, Ritchie, Turing, and even Gates contributed more to our collective future...
They were able to find success across multiple products through superior business skills and by sticking to their insight.
Finally, they each lived in a time where a new technology was coming to the masses, and they the business leaders bringing this to them. Due to their methods, the masses really appreciated them for what they did.
This is forgivable, but please note that he was talking about contribution to society, not "wow factor".
I am saying it is not on the same order of magnitude as fucking electric lighting.
Why must this be difficult?
If its not effective for all, forever, its just a blip on the time line. A thousand years from now we will remember Einstein.
Jobs? Not so much...
In Ghana, more than 60% of people have a mobile phone, but that wouldn't be possible if the development of the hardware (both for the actual devices and the network infrastructure) hadn't been made cheap by years of development paid by the rich countries.
At a new location, can they identify the correct wireless network to use, and enter the password?
Or do they just use an easy subset of what the ipad offers? We don't go "Wow! the toy piano is easy enough for a toddler to use!" and gush over it, because we know the toddler isn't using the piano like some virtuoso.
Turing, not by a long shot. In 200 years we'll still be talking about Turing machines and decidability. I don't think you can say the same for any of Edisons or Job's ventures.
Computers are very hard to use for people outside of our bubble. Changing that is a major contribution to society and far more than a "wow factor". Seeing disabled people use an iPad is an amazing site.
I'm not interested in ranking ligt bulbs vs iPads, it servers no real purpose. And I'm not particularly interested in having a discussion with an asshole, but I wanted to point out how absurd it is to call something that opens doors for so many people as merely a "wow factor". You are not likely in a position to understand much beyond your own narcissism.
Yes, I have an android phone and my wife has an iPhone. My 1 year old can navigate between apps, find the app she is looking for, and use them without assistance on any IOS device. She can't do the same on an android device.
Had Microsoft never existed, 8-bit home computers would have used another version of BASIC. There were a couple floating around (you can play with them with an Atari or BBC emulator). Had Microsoft never existed, IBM would have adopted CP/M as its OS and PC clones would have been built around it (and would be more diverse because CP/M was much more portable than MS-DOS), but I doubt they'd be as common as they are today. We would probably have a much more diverse hardware environment (think Amiga, Archimedes, Transputer), which could have created a cross-platform standard for software, most likely based on POSIX and X. Apple would still have launched the Lisa, and the Mac and they'd be successful. The web would be born anyway and so would be free and open source software (but there would probably be much less incentive to use it).
It's a horrible thing to say, but had Bill Gates decided to be a banker or a lawyer, the world would be a much better place. He would still be rich (because he was born that way).
Paul Allen would still have made his name in tech, possibly with MITS. Ballmer would have graduated from Stanford.
And, BTW, he didn't invent this idea of amassing vast resources with shady deals and then becoming a philanthropist and redeem himself with this. Andrew Carnegie did it first.