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Comment by ChrisMarshallNY | Hacker News Reader

The annoying thing, to me, is having Steve Jobs, in the same row as the convicted fraudsters.

I know that he's adding him, to compare against the fraudsters, but I'm not so sure the positioning is accidental.

For the record, I think that SJ was one of the most successful bulshitters that has ever walked the Earth. He could not only convince a room full of geologists that the world was flat, but also sell them all tickets on a boat ride to the edge.

It's just that he actually ended up (after numerous false starts), having an actual product. Several, in fact.

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> I have learned to be suspicious of the Steve Jobs pretender look through the years; it’s not a complete tell, but it should make you suspicious.

Totally agree with your comment, there are several images like this and that note should've been in one of the captions.

On a separate note, even Steve faked the 2007 iPhone demo [1]. It couldn't play entire songs or videos without crashing. It constantly crashed unless tasks were performed in a specific sequence. The team programmed the phone to display five bars, and brought in a portable cell tower, for the demo.

When the iPhone came out, all these bugs had been smoothed over, and the news of the demo didn't break until 2013. I guess that's the difference—people were using the iPhone, loving the screen and interface, and tolerating the flaws (no copy and paste!).

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/magazine/and-then-steve-s...

I suspect that you are replying to a different comment than mine, but I remember the iPhone 1.0 demo, and smelling strong bovine excrement.

But they were able to release something that ended up changing the world.

It’s always a bit jarring to watch pre-smartphone movies and TV shows.

These things have become ubiquitous.

I liked the “flick-pen,” from Geostorm, though.

That's right, my phone rarely crashes when I'm playing a song or video. I think it was a fantastic demo.

Crashing Happened a lot in demos back then, nowadays it's not so common.

OT but what a parochial NYT article:

> The 55 miles from Campbell to San Francisco make for one of the nicest commutes anywhere.

There are a thousand people every day who get the train from my little town into London. 80 miles. 125mph. Someone else does the driving. There's wifi and a power point and a refreshment trolley that will sell you a coffee. Watch a movie, read a book, browse HN or Reddit or whatever.

"Nicest commutes anywhere"? Least terrible car journeys in the US, perhaps.

I assume when people talk about Jobs bulshitting they’re more so referencing the earlier Lisa or NeXT eras

I guess you're one of the few people who know how to hold a phone.

GP refers to the controversy around how you should hold an iphone so it doesn't lose reception. First few versions had a receiving system which could be easily interfered with by not holding it right (shorting notches on the outer rim) if you were used to hold a phone at the top, i.e. palm at your ear (vs cheek). Jobs suggested to not do that.

Also, the "they're wearing a black t-shirt, therefore they're scammers!" line of reasoning utterly fails to be convincing.

They're wearing a black shirt because they're bullshitting people into believing they're the next SJ.

To me, that's reading way too much into it. Maybe it's fashion that Steve Jobs started, but maybe it's just a black shirt.

Elizabeth Holmes famously (infamously?) modeled herself on SJ.

I see no reason the others are not doing the same.

If you're going to be a fortune teller at a carnival, buy beaded curtains.

Looking the part is half of actually being the part.

The part is to be innovative and disruptive. Copying someone’s look is the opposite.

Copying the look of an innovative distruptor though

That's not the point - "they're wearing a black t-shirt, therefore they are a business genius" is the dangerous assumption.

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