Hacker News Reader

Comment by doublerabbit | Hacker News Reader

> Steve Jobs would be rolling in his grave if he could see the software quality of the products that Apple releases today.

lol, nah he wouldn't. He would of upgraded his coffin to plush and got a big screen to watch the money roll in.

I recommend reading up on his 80/90's antics. All he cared about was money and that the world was crafted by him.

He was widely known for intense bullying, lacking empathy, and ruthless manipulation, combined with a "productive narcissism" that fueled his obsessive drive for perfection.

View on HN

> I recommend reading up on his 80/90's antics. All he cared about was money

Incorrect. Read the David Pogue Apple book. For example, after the iMac was released, the Apple board of directors offered Jobs a million shares and six million options if he switched from interim to permanent CEO. Jobs continued to refuse. “This is not about money. I have more money than I’ve ever wanted in my life.”

Most of Steve's wealth came from Pixar, which he ultimately sold to Disney, rather than from Apple.

Yes, and "his obsessive drive for perfection" as you put it is what would make him "rolling in his grave if he could see the software quality of the products that Apple releases today" as the parent put it.

Didn't he also say you are holding it wrong?

He famously shipped the original Macintosh with a keyboard without arrow keys to force buyers to use the mouse.

His vision of perfection didn't always match common sense. There are quite a few examples of this.

I always cringe a little when I read these "jobs would have rolled over in his grave" comments.

He would've not let the abysmal slop like iOS 26 UI to ship ever.

Some things he didn't appear to care much about, the polished UX was his schtick.

I am 100% sure that Steve Jobs could have shipped a broken Czech keyboard if that was in pursuit of some random abstract like purity or minimalism. "iOS keyboard has too many keys. Reduce keys make them larger. People should not use these obscure symbols anyway". (extrapolated from a couple of biographies and a couple of books on 1980s Apple I read, this is very consistent with his character).

As for iOS 26, no reasonable person would have let it ship. From one source (John Gruber -> "Bad Dye Job") the previous head of Apple's UI design team who lead the UI team was just not a UX designer, he was just a visual designer or something. I think it shows.

You are over-exaggerating.

As much of a snob that Jobs was it's nonsensical to say that he would've knowingly insisted on changes that locked users out from their devices. That's just nonsense. At the very least there would've been a prompt to change the password phrase or some such in upgrade. And if it did happen as an oversight, it would've been patched on the first report and some heads would've rolled.

But that's the difference. Jobs might've done something like this for a reason. That's not what happened here. He probably wouldn't have tolerated it as a bug.

Jobs was a perfectionist and a minimalist. Part of minimalism is that sometimes you delete marginal features (arrow keys) that you still end up wanting back.

If you never delete too many features, you aren’t deleting enough features.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com