Jobs Never Coded. Did He Get Too Much Credit? | Hacker News Reader

Jobs Never Coded. Did He Get Too Much Credit?

simplifilm.com

9 pointssimplimedia10 comments

I think Jobs could have made the iPhone without Ive, but not the reverse. It may not have been the same or as good, but Jobs would have found a way.

That isn't to say Ive isn't a genius.

Agreed. The other side of the count that most forget is that while Jobs was the guy who thought up and curated a lot of the great thinking that happened at Apple, He was also the guy that killed a lot of really good ideas/active projects that were not the absolute best of what Apple was producing in their respective timeframes (See: Newton, Pippen, Quicktake, OS9). This is a huge part of what made him a great innovator. Many companies don't have a "Jobs" to curate their ideas so they spend/waste a lot of money testing their ideas out in and on the public. (See: Dell Jukebox, Netbooks, HP TX2000).

Many great generals who've won hundereds of battles never fired a shot in the battles they've won.(After the medieval times maybe. Don't quote me Alexander leading the charge amongst cavalries)

I am not a big fan of Jobs, but even to me the correct way to sell the book is probably not to discredit Jobs, but to credit Ives. Designing iPhone, iPad, iPod and etc. is by itself an incredible feat; discrediting Jobs is simply uncalled for.

Sure - did we discredit him? Is sharing credit with one guy discrediting another?

When you say "he never coded", that's obviously meant to imply something, perhaps to lessen his contributions in some way especially in a forum of coders. What does it have to do with this film at all? Jony Ive didn't write a single line of code either. And Steve Jobs did a lot of design.

Why not just focus on the people you want to cover, without asking the unnecessary question "Did Steve Jobs get too much credit?"

Look, a product guy is nontechnical and often gets credit for greenlighing a solution he'd never have thought of. Was Jobs the ultimate product guy?

Well, many people seem to just view Steve Jobs as a "product guy" that simply greenlighted or nixed products, and that's certainly discrediting him and what he did.

Again, could you explain why you chose that headline? Perhaps because it would grab attention?

For me, all it did was turn me off your book.

What's next, some other people writing a book about Scott Forstall or Bertrand Serlet, saying "Jony Ive never coded. Did we give credit to the wrong guy?"

I know this is about Ives' contributions; but when I think about the credit given to Jobs, I tend to think of it more as Dennis Ritchie and Jobs being the modern day Tesla and Edison.

Every band needs a great front wo/man, even if they didn't write any of the songs.

Yes.

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