Steve Jobs emails himself (2010)

By way of cost-benefit analysis, I'd say that erring on the side of pontification, over-intellectualization and navel gazing, while pretty crass, is far preferable to the alternative. The sheer power of what has been invented, for good or ill means that we can really never be too careful or introspective about it.

To be even more specific: given the fact that energy prices rising 10x in a matter of months is now a reality, isn't the kind of introspection in Steve's email precisely the kind of thing we'd hope more of our CEO's were concerned about? Seems to me that our reliance on outside systems for our survival is a super relevant concern to anyone who's paying attention.

No judgement, its impossibly difficult but it just seems like an incredibly painful existence and it feels like that relationship might be the biggest opportunity to have a direct influence on the future most (some) of us get.

But according to that punk'd biopic it seems like he got things on track near the end so hopefully it was all good.

> Sent from my iPad

If we're talking about the technical and design merits of Apple devices anyways. Not the status symbol aspects.

But it was Woz who was the true hardware/software talent; he spent his childhood designing processors that he didn't have the money to build. He was fascinated with circuits & electronics & processors.

Steve worked at Atari but got Woz in to do the circuit for breakout, Steve had no idea how it worked and couldn't have done it himself. When Atari paid for the work he shafted Woz by giving him a _much_ smaller amount than half of what he received.

Steve's skills mostly seem to have settled in the management/figurehead role. People say that he had excellent vision for design but realistically I think he had skills in none of the areas that he hired people to do and that his major skill was as company head, tying everything and everyone together into a cohesive unit.

He was very demanding and threw tantrums, but that's still human; however episodes like when Woz left Apple to go and invent the universal remote, he sent a prototype to Jobs and Jobs smashed it against the wall in a rage. Dude had power trip/anger issues to the max.

We can't forget that Microsoft/Bill Gates bailed Apple out at one point, too. I'd say this is likely a failing of their market at the time; Apple's market of doe eyed "it just works" fans didn't exist/wasn't large enough at that point in time. Nowadays, they don't have anything to worry about.

I, Woz; Steve Wozniak's autobiography is a great read for a bit more info into Jobs. He tells it like it was, though maybe slightly muted due to the fact that the two were still friends. The official Jobs bio is just revisionist prose.

So, empirically it seems like there’s something Jobs brought to these relationships, something pretty important. But it’s hard to describe. Perhaps that is one reason people are still talking about him a decade later.

The irony of always being the person you would lose your temper at.

> I am realistic about it never being likely to happen

That's not realistic. You can change that. It takes effort.

Unless you mean you are realistic that you will never put in the honest effort to change that.

Edit: This sounds harsh, but I'm being serious.

Perhaps it could do the same for you.

He lists the shoulders he had to stand on. The iPad was a creature of his vision. If anything, it's a cheeky sign off.

Fuck Jobs worship.

He DID CREATE a ton of shit that the world doesnt need in the environment and by claiming that appl is some beacon of the most amazing design - nope. If appl was the bastion for thought on product design, I wouldnt have ~20 broken iphones, some of which went through many screens, nor would I have a fuck-ton-pil of shitty designed cables that cost $30 a piece, or a lot more of lame chinese knock-offs that they tried to block the device from recognizing, nor would there be a trillion tons of defunct plastic phone cases all over the world...

Your company is THE REASON SUICIDE NETS EXIST at foxcon

jony is a guy who literally removed any sort of lanyard hook from the phone -- when literally every phone in asia at the time of the iphone launch had one, AND there was an entire market for lanyard styles and accessories - because the lanyard "interfered with his vision" -- which CLEARLY his vision was FUCK TON of broken screens for appl profit.

If you dont know the history.... fuck that.

Should I fucking go on?

They are an environmental psychopath trying to punch you in the face with pollution and telling you to love them and give them money.

(the tech is not the question, its their response to the tech's impact (FFS I had a recalled macbook explode into fire in my bed and they refused to honor the FUCKING RECALL)

This almost sounds like a Buddhist vow.

I'm sure they weren't pure evil either but sometimes people deserve the label.

This statement is a truism; it's valid for every person, and it doesn't contain any information.

Based on the information publicly available, my assessment is that he had a narcissistic personality disorder. People with such illness are certainly not in the ballpark of mass murders, but they're definitely very damaging to other people, and they are generally labelled as "bad people". What saves Steve Jobs in the eyes of the public is that he had, without any doubt, exceptional talents.

Since he's dead (and he hasn't been diagnosed by a specialist), there will never be certainty, however.

Not the lightest of shades though, to many people?

I'm sure there is good in Alex Jones. It is very well buried if so, but it probably does exist. I still feel justified in never wanting to interact with him and wishing the rest of the world didn't have to either.

While we shouldn't be completely dogmatic and only consider someone's bad points¹, and I wouldn't say that Jobs was at all actively evil², the fact that someone isn't the blackest-of-black pantomime evil, or the gaudiest-of-gaudy moustache-twirling pantomime evil, doesn't mean we can't discuss their bad points. It might actually help other arseholes who don't realise that they are being a problem, if they see the discussion and think “hang on, I do that, maybe I'm upsetting people too, perhaps I should try a different tack”.

----

[1] or conversely only their good points: Churchill was undoubtably what we needed as a prime minister during and in the run up to war, a good family man by most accounts, supported some good social reforms, ete., but he also had some questionable views on race (less so by the standards of the time than now, but still), supported the use of chemical weapons, and so forth,

[2] just a bit of an arsehole by many accounts, and presided over a company that at the time³ benefited from what we now call modern slavery

[3] and to this day doesn't have a clean record on that count

“Of human beings, none are good but all are sacred.”

That's why binary is a good thing.

In layman's logic, someone who's already committed something bad in the past are likely to commit it again. Based on that logic, it's not completely unreasonable to use a critical point of someone's history to define that individual.

Of course it might be unfair, but the cost of error testing can be high, and your empathy might be exploited. Plus, if someone indeed did something wrong in their past, maybe they're the one who should put in the effort to redeem themselves.

That said, while I think it's not fair to judge someone based on few decisions they've made, I also don't blame labelers when they have good reasons.

Younger folks don’t remember that world. I wonder who of their heroes today will be the monsters of tomorrow.

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

(and definitely not religious flamewar tangents, which this already crosses into)