Wolfram Language

Massive in the sense of "co-founded the world's largest and most profitable technology company and later turned it around from the brink of death."

Ask yourself how many technologies we have today because of Apple, and how many innovations those technologies and products drive. Heck, you don't even have to compile a list, because I can prove my case with a single example: if it was not for Steve Jobs, Wozniak would have remained at HP for the rest of his career.

Which is exactly what I discussed. Again, you seem to think that only lower component parts are technology (e.g the CPU itself). And you think that building a product that utilises disparate component parts (and needs tons of other engineering decisions besides) is not "creation of technology". I believe this is wrong.

>If this distinction were not important, anyone who acquired a computer could claim to be its creator. If this distinction were not important, someone who put a computer in a box would be equal to someone who invented binary arithmetic.

Apple is not a company who "acquires computers". It designs and builds them, including solving tons of engineering problems in the process. That it doesn't (usually) build the low level component parts its beside the point. Technology is modular.

I also pointed out, which you conventiently sidestepped, that Apple also creates their very own products, from designing logic boards and dedicated processsing units, to software such as Logic, FCPX, iWork etc. They don't just buy some Intel cpus, some Samsung disks and some X brand memory, slap it together and call it a day.

>It means someone else had the education and creativity to invent something for Steve Jobs to sell, to call "fantastic" to crowds of eager consumers, to import into his reality distortion field. The same reality distortion field that makes you think selling equals creating.

You continue to use the word selling, as if the products appeared by magic or trucks, and Jobs just had to sell them. You forgot the part were Apple, the company he run, isn't Best Buy (a seller), but the actual creator of the products it sells.

Jobs didn't just sell stuff. That would be Jeff Bezos, or the Walmart guy. He was the CEO, and quite the micromanaging product manager in the company (actually, companies) that also designed and build those products.

He was the CEO of a tech company. Not the CEO of a reseller chain. And, yes, he wasn't an engineer himself. Technology, as available to the people, is not created by engineers alone, especially in the form of final products.

And engineers don't just work in isolation and deliver their stuff ready for manufacture to some sales guy. They take directions, advice, suggested changes to how stuff works, etc, from a product manager guy -- and Jobs was very much hands on with such things. For the mere selling of stuff, Apple had Cook and top level retail managers on board.

After all, you sure know that Steve Jobs had got the "Vollum Award for Distinguished Accomplishment in Science and Technology, Oregon's most prestigious academic honor"? How come they didn't just give him the "sales" award? Perhaps they see the bigger picture and understand that accomplishing stuff in technology is not just about the guy in the lab?

I know what you're painting the "those non-engineering higher-ups take the praise for our engineering work" angle, but I don't consider it accurate. It belittles the contribution of higher level execs to see them as mere "sales" guys. Of course, it's all to common a point of view in lab guys.

His insight was powerful, but like Steve Jobs, having an idea is one thing, proving it mathematically and experimentally takes considerably more work than one individual can possibly do in a lifetime.

While the achievement of individuals of that sort is significant, it's very easy to ignore the less visible people that were hugely significant in the formulation of these ideas.

Your own argument is working against you here. Was Steve Jobs "iterating" when he created NeXT? The iMac? When he defined what the iPod was? Or the iPhone?

I think you seriously under-estimate how difficult it is to have a vision for a type of technology and work relentlessly towards that goal over a span of decades. That's not a bus-driver following a pre-defined route, that's someone charting their own course, one that, in the case of Steve Jobs, broke tons of rules and challenged convention every step of the way.

Just as relativity is "obvious" now, to be taken for granted, so is the iPhone, yet both of those things completely transformed their respective worlds.