Comment by diego_moita | Hacker News Reader

Comment by diego_moita | Hacker News Reader

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My point is:

* He didn't create the Apple II, Wozniak did.

* He didn't create the mouse, GUI and Ethernet, the guys at Xerox's Palo Alto research centre did it.

* He didn't really create Pixar, bought it from George Lucas. His idea and project was to have the company to make and sell hardware for CG, because that was the only thing he had ever done at Apple & Next. The movie production was an offshot from the demos and the business of creating intros for television shows.

* He didn't create the iPhone. In fact Apple's engineers had to pressure him for years before he accepted. What got him accepting the idea was the fiasco on having iTunes into a Nokia phone.

* He didn't invent the Appstore. In fact he only accepted the idea of people making apps to the iPhone because 6 months after release the sales were collapsing.

Apple was and still is a very smart company. I concede that he was good at surrounding himself with smart people, and taking merit for what those people did.

There's a big difference between "this person was a con-man, never actually did any of the things they claimed, and was outright lying in order to present a marketable persona" and "this person is commonly given more credit in the creation of some things than they deserve, but they were closely involved with all those things, and were unquestionably a major figure in their field, regardless of the extra hype that has attached to them (even if they may have encouraged some of that extra hype)".

Steve Jobs was not a con-man. In fact, to the best of my knowledge, he never claimed personal credit for the things you're saying he didn't do; those were things that were attributed to him by others.

Well, I think Diego’s point was that he knew how to create and utilise a powerful “reality distortion field” such that, without claiming direct creation over any of the vast classics that Apple created, he gained the status and fame of someone who seemed to have done so.

Trying to support someone’s point that’s literally unfounded seems odd in a discussion about “reality distortion fields.”

People also assumed Bill Gates created DOS because they are misinformed, no reality distortion field required.

I'm not a huge fan of Jobs, but recognizing a good idea even belatedly and green lighting it, not to mention selling it, is worth a lot.

And hiring people who can bring them to you is worth even more, especially if you're able to hear them when they keep insisting.

How do we even know it was belatedly?

Something a lot of engineers fail to realize is that a successful product is not just about technology, it is about timing, cost, ecosystem, market.

Who's to say Jobs didn't think the iPhone was not a good idea, but shouldn't be done earlier? The iPhone 10-15 years before the iPhone was the Newton.

I was thinking of the PARC demo, where he famously said, "my guys were bugging me to go see this."

Seems like another case of technology existing ahead of other conditions required to successfully bring it to market.

Create is a somewhat loaded term because no one person creates things of this scale. A better way of looking at it might be:

The Apple II would likely not have been successful without both Wozniak and Jobs.

Would the iPhone have come to fruition without Job's leadership, vision, and design + negotiation skills?

Not in the hands of Scully or Amelio.

Yeah, I think you have it.

Folks, especially humans for some reason, want to pin things on single individuals rather than groups. Even though our society and it's grand accomplishments are things that typically only groups can accomplish.

Even a person building "alone" is building something on the backs of those who came before them.

But that desire to name a single person as the "creator" leads to a lot of strife.

Without Jobs,

* Woz would have remained an obscure engineer working at HP

* Apple would never have happened

* The Mac would have never existed

* Pixar would have vanished without a trace

* Apple would have gone bankrupt in 1999

* OSX would never have existed

If Jobs didn’t return in 1996—

* Apple would still be wasting its time marketing 420 SKUs of beige Macintosh, along with its panoply of zero-value-add peripherals

* Apple would never have tried to make an iPod, which was, for Apple, an insanely out-of-left-field hobby project driven by Jobs

* Without the iPod, there would be no iTunes Store, which near-single-handedly pulled the music industry into its post-Napster era

* There would be no iPad, a project inspired by Jobs’ personal reaction to a dinner with Gates

* There would be no iPhone, a project spun off from iPad development and fast-tracked for earlier release

* If Apple ever did develop a phone or tablet, it probably would have been based on NewtonOS and fail to crack 1% market share

* Android would have stayed on course to be a competitor to the Blackberry

In everything I've seen, Jobs doesn't say things like "I created xxx," it always seems to be "We created xxx."

The iPhone and the Apple Newton before it, was stuck with a stylus. Jobs wouldn't release an iPhone that relied upon a stylus.

Multi-touch displays was the key technology Steve Jobs needed to greenlight the iPhone.

Steve was completely invested in electing products that generated an experience the customer valued. This didn't always line up with the technical merits of the product. He subordinated the company to that goal, including holding releases back to hit a specific timing.

Steve said he did this strategy because he had the scar tissue to prove that making an amazing piece of tech and trying to market it, never worked for him.

He didn't create tech. He created relationships to the customer that made Apple billions.

"I concede that he was good at surrounding himself with smart people"

Plus, he had to make the decision ultimately.

That's way way way way way way more important than I think most people realize.

Leaders lead talented people into a position where their talents have higher impact.

I'd actually argue that the engineering is the easy part and doing everything else right, to keep the company going and engineers employed, is the hard part.

And I don't believe he ever claimed to have.

He was however the catalyst that allowed many smart and dedicated engineers to develop the things they did. Giving them drive and direction, money and resources to play with and develop the toys of their dreams. I love the folklore.org website that talks a lot about this.

This means he does not fit in your list of fraudster and hucksters.

People use products, not abstract technology.

You missed the biggest one though - Apple, the company. Which was his creation.

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