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Comment by wmf | Hacker News Reader

I tune out at this "what Steve Jobs would have done" talk. A thing needs to stand on its own without borrowing Steve Jobs (or Jeff Dean as I saw someone do the other day).

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Pretty much, we don't know what Steve would have done and even if we did, there is no guarantee that it was a good idea. When he had hits, it was brilliant but there were many stinkers as well.

I suspect if Steve was doing a new internet it would be a walled garden like the App store, so a worse internet that favors him. As Woz said, Jobs just wanted to have a business and be rich, didn't really matter what the business was. Any illusion of a greater good was always a calculated bet in getting more users.

Job's did some great things for the industry, I also call him the architect of the locked down digital jails we are inhabiting. But we shouldn't put him up as some perfect beacon of the industry.

I get that, but a lot of design decisions today are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_by_committee

For something so complex like a PC or desktop experience, having a bunch of oppositional goals (like ad pop ups) do not serve the user well enough. Often times a committee releases a product, but there is no real consensus or accessibility in mind.

That sounds like a false dichotomy. You want opinionated software? Great, so do I. Design the software, own your decisions yourself, and explain your thinking without shortcuts.

Also, steve jobs made utterly stupid decisions in a lot of areas. If you're trying to revolutionize something, try not to use someone who was clearly flawed in many aspects. Otherwise it sounds like you're just building a facade.

Yes, and Seward also made a Folly. I suppose he missed out on some things, but his success rate at predicting features that are now standard was higher than most in that era.

Yeah, reading his biography was interesting. He had the problem of tech not quite being where he wanted it to be over and over. But eventually things really hit.

I mean can't get a more incestous tech cliche! There is a world out there too folks.

The VC Approved™ Software Validation Lifecycle:

            →  What would Steve Jobs do?  \
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  What would Steve Jobs do?    What would Steve Jobs do?
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          \  What would Steve Jobs do?  ←

You're listening to WWSJD, the Los Altos FM station where Apple pilgrims tune in to the station that Steve Jobs did!

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