At the end of the book it felt like he rode on the successes of other geniuses like Steve Wozniak, Jonathan Ive and many others. His biggest advantage seems to have be, that he was with Steve Wozniak when Apple 1 and 2 were made.
After that it was riding on others success and building cult of personality around him.
Walter Isaacson sort of ruined it.
EDIT: I should be clear that I thoroughly admire Steve Wozniak (one of my first heroes), Jony Ive, and Jef Raskin.
Maybe iWoz is more sympathetic towards Jobs (even if it narrates a deception of Woz by Jobs)
Because it shows Jobs getting free chips for Woz, getting deals, etc, it shows a more 'powerless' side of Jobs.
I'm generally fairly negative about him because 1. I have a natural aversion to cults of personality and all that goes with them and 2. the Apple vision of the world is about consumer products. I think this is exactly the wrong direction for all of society (producer products are the future), and I worry that if they ever 'won' or even came as close to winning as Microsoft did for a while that there would be no place for me in such a world. No plausible endgame for Apple is good for me (although they've done a lot of good in breaking the stranglehold of windows and making the concept of other OS more mainstream).
There's a little bit of 3. too, which is that most of what I've read of him makes him come across as a bit of a nightmare as a person.
Anyway, this article felt very real, and just talked about a guy with passion who left the CEO hat at the door. That would be a guy I could potentially respect.
I think iMovie and the iMac DV phase was a period where Apple actually aspired to this, though. They obsessed over making the best possible computers and software for people to make great home movies, just as they were obsessing over Final Cut and the Power Mac for the professional market. The Mac used to have a reputation as the platform for creative people in all fields, and the "think different" campaign was an effort to reinforce that.
Unfortunately, most people don't want to be creative and Apple had an opportunity to pursue the consumer market. They still try, with Garageband and iPhoto and iMovie, but it's less of a focus.
In one sense, Apple has encourage people to be producers by making it easier to produce financially-viable software. Are you comparing Apple's vision with Microsoft's, or do you have something else in mind?
But producers produce products for consumers to consume. You can't just eliminate the consumer side of the equation. Without one there isn't the other.
Not necessarily. You can be a producer for yourself. I think the GP is arguing that technologies like 3D printing and practices like home gardening will flourish in the near future. Rather than buy stuff per se, people will buy equipment and tools that allow them to produce for themselves the stuff they would have bought.
> that he was with Steve Wozniak when Apple 1 and 2
> were made
Based on my personal experience with 'Jobsian' types, I have found this to be true as well. I've met many people who were brilliant at things, but under these types, even those with less brilliance often performed better. Anecdotal evidence, true, but still. My point is that it is fine to acknowledge their genius AND that he might have played a more important role than just money/power.
I get that feeling a lot from research, concepts, and so on. I end up building the products I want to use, and it turns out that's a really good way to build something people like.
The way you word it makes it sound like it's all about selling things to other people — where I really believe that Steve Jobs under Apple and NeXT was designing the computers, devices and software that he personally wanted to exist. Selling them was a way to continue to fund that process.
What he was in reality I have no clue of.