Comment by zoky | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zoky | Hacker News Reader

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> Remember NeXT?

You mean the basis for Mac OS X?

> Remember he got kicked out of Apple?

You mean by John Sculley, who basically nobody remembers as having been associated with Apple? And then how Steve Jobs came back to Apple and led it through most of its golden years?

> Remember the G4 Cube?

You mean the spiritual predecessor to not only the Mac Mini, but the Intel NUC and other small form factor computing platforms? A platform that only suffered from the failing of being before its time, rather than a fundamental design flaw?

> Remember MobileMe?

The service that eventually transmogrified into iCloud, which, if not a driving force, can hardly be considered a minor player on the Internet today, if for no other reason than the number of @icloud.com email addresses?

> Remember Ping?

No, I honestly don't, but hey, not every idea can be a winner. At least Steve Jobs' bad ideas failed quietly. Compare and contrast to some of Elongated Muskrat's more… questionable business decisions, like buying Twitter for $420.69 per share just for the lulz.

>You mean the basis for Mac OS X?

I mean the company and OS that failed to leave to Jobs expectations, company pivoted to sell the OS on PCs, failed on that too, and was only spared bunkruptcy because Apple was desperate for an OS and Jobs.

The rest is meaningless retorts in the same vain, when all of the above are failed projects associated with Jobs, just like Musk has his own, which was the point.

You’re kind of undercutting your point by saying “Apple was desperate for an OS and Jobs.” In other words, firing Jobs was Apple’s fault, not Jobs’. Steve Jobs was exactly what Apple needed and would go on to provide exactly what they needed, only Apple under Sculley was too short-sighted to see that. If anything, getting fired from Apple was ultimately a triumph for Steve Jobs, given the benefit of hindsight.

My point is that when you put Musk among the pantheon of Silicon Valley CEOs, he doesn’t especially stand out for anything except being lucky. Compare him to Bill Gates, who, for better or for worse, revolutionized computing? Or Larry Ellison, who has somehow despite the odds miraculously managed to keep Oracle afloat and somewhat relevant for decades—no mean feat indeed?

Elon seems to be little more than a charming, lucky idiot. Make no mistake, charm and luck will take you far, but only so far. Sooner or later, one or the other will run out, and for Elon, it seems like he has depleted both resources at this point.

Elon depleted his 'charm' a long, long time ago.

Yes. When he voiced opinions that some people disagree with.

No, much earlier than that.

Opinions like calling a selfless diver risking his life to perform a Hail Mary rescue a pedophile yeah

> Elon seems to be little more than a charming, lucky idiot

This is selling him too short. He's also a sort of cult leader, one who keeps an eye out for who his next population of acolytes will be.

> Or Larry Ellison, who has somehow despite the odds miraculously managed to keep Oracle afloat and somewhat relevant for decades—no mean feat indeed?

I'm not sure how one can consider Larry Ellison more savvy and impactful than Musk.

Steve Jobs single handidly killed Apple's presence in the early PC market by taking his project (handling the development and launch of the first Macintosh) and commandeering it into a monster project.

What was meant to be an affordable alternative to the Apple II, became under Job's supervision a method to take control of the Apple line of computers. He ended up making a less feature-rich Apple II, which rivaled it in price, killing the idea that the computer could compete with other cheaper computers on the market.

All to stroke his own ego.

I don’t get it. Are you saying the Macintosh was a failure for Apple? Or was Jobs right, whatever his motivations may have been?

Yes, it was a disappointment. It lacked color (something the Apple II already had), had buggy software, and all at a price that rivaled the Apple II.

$1,298 for the Apple II $2,495 for the Macintosh

It completely destroyed the progress they'd made. Jobs took this project opportunistically at a time when Steve Wozniak was recovering from a plane crash. If he'd approached the project more strategically, it could have positioned Apple to take a place in the market share of cheaper PC's of the time.

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