End of story. Before continuing celebrating Jobs, ask yourself a question, do you want to promote that kind of behavior in the Valley?
"What Steve does on the good side — like the music scenario [in which] we didn't bring just a music device called the iPod, we brought a whole music system: a store that sells it, a computer that manages and organizes it. And an iPod is just a satellite to your computer. Plug it in and it works. You don't have to do anything. You've got to admire Steve for that kind of thinking. Nobody's perfect. [Everybody is] going to have cases where they did something bad to somebody, said something nasty to them and maybe regret it later."
Specifically:
"[Everybody is] going to have cases where they did something bad to somebody, said something nasty to them and maybe regret it later."
I think that's a more enlightened point of view.
Source: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/steve-wozniak-on-...
But my point was different. We just can't afford to celebrate lies. It is very very very harmful.
There's a vast difference between what you call "celebrating lies", and celebrating the life and work of a man who, while every bit as human as anyone else and with feet of clay to match, was nevertheless possessed of the sort of visionary genius which comes along perhaps half a dozen times in a generation. Certainly Steve Jobs could be, and was, a real revolving bastard from time to time. But so can everyone; people are complicated and they don't always behave in ways which others regard as preferable, sensible, or nice. If you're going to require sainthood as a prerequisite for honoring the accomplishments of a historical figure, I suppose that's your prerogative, but I suspect you'll find it a lonely stance to take, and I think it's strange you should utter it in the same breath as a word like "enlightened". Have you heard the one about the blind men and the elephant?
As for the specific event in question (the Atari money), do we know what Steve did with the extra money? Seems to me, maybe he really did need it (for rent/food/etc.) and was too ashamed to ask Woz for the extra. Maybe he figured he would re-invest it, and that it was easier to do behind Woz's back than to try and explain his plans.
Steve was no saint, but in my experience he was generally a nice guy. He also thought he knew better than everyone else, and so it would not be unusual for him to leave out explanations, make snap judgements, and be rather brusque in general (when dealing with business decisions). Why should he have to explain himself when he was obviously right?
I'm sure it didn't help that the world so often (especially toward the end) only reinforced the notion that he knew better than everyone else...
So, if someone else did it too, it's somehow not that bad?
Great world to live in.
> I think that's a more enlightened point of view.
This kind of argument is weak. It's just a bland kind of truism that everyone can agree with that is unrelated to the original argument - when someone says that some one is a bad person, there is an implicit comparison to most people, ie the "badness" of a person is a relative one. Then bringing up some kind of absolute quality - perfection - is just trying to distract from the original argument.
At the very least Steve Jobs was an intensely interesting person. I don’t think characterising him as a bad person makes much sense. This is such a simple-minded worldview.
Maybe you could say that ipods with itunes is simpler than dragging and dropping like that. Though I don't see much of a diffrerence; drag and drop is a common action in Windows and the like. In order to selectively add files to your ipod you'd need to learn to drag and drop... in iTunes.
iTunes is an okay-to-annoying program, at least on Windows. I've bought music on itunes that I have to "enable" on every new PC I might use. The last time I tried it dodn't even work. I ve bought an audio book that I have never been allowed to even play! iTunes can't (or couldn't) even compete with pirated media, not by a long shot.
\* let's say when mp3 players had a capacity that actually made them worthile, maybe as small a capacity as 256MB, or 512 and more.
When I got the first iPod, I also had a Creative Nomad player that had a little more storage and a search function. However, the iPod on the other hand had Firewire rather than USB 1.1, making it a painless process to add and remove songs right before you go somewhere, rather than a hours long process you had to plan in advance. Even more importantly the scroll wheel on ball bearings with made it feasible to fly through a tree of artists and albums with thousands of audio tracks.
The shift in convenience was on the level of shifting from a phonograph to a cassette tape, except that records are more convenient in some situations.
It doesn't seem like a big deal now, but in 2001 it was a very big deal.
The thing Apple did with the iPod was offer a seamless end-to-end user experience, to allow "normal" people to buy a song and have it appear on their devices legally, simply, and at a reasonable price. This involved software, UI design, hardware design, negotiating compromises with the RIAA (e.g. iPods did not simply act as a file system to prevent casual piracy while not seriously inconveniencing users). This combination of software, hardware, design, and legal wrangling was not replicated by anyone, even approximately, for several years (Sony and Microsoft eventually managed to get something vaguely comparable, but it was too little too late.)
I'm not a usability person, never claimed to be. I am a user who is sharing his experience with using ipods. In order to empathize with other people's experience I need to hear them first.
I feel like I'm being painted like "oh look, another tasteless nerd who doesn't _get_ the benefit of UX that comes in another flavour than a virtual terminal". I have never, ever touched a terminal unless I absolutely have to, right up until about my second year as a programmer, which learnt as an adult. I still think that things like terminals are overrated as far as streamlined work flow goes.
> The thing Apple did with the iPod was offer a seamless end-to-end user experience, to allow "normal" people to buy a song and have it appear on their devices legally, simply, and at a reasonable price. This involved software, UI design, hardware design, negotiating compromises with the RIAA (e.g. iPods did not simply act as a file system to prevent casual piracy while not seriously inconveniencing users). This combination of software, hardware, design, and legal wrangling was not replicated by anyone, even approximately, for several years (Sony and Microsoft eventually managed to get something vaguely comparable, but it was too little too late.)
I haven't had the impression that ipods were such a revolution. Maybe it has to do with where I live.
I'll concede that the ipod was clearly simpler for people who thought dragging and dropping to a USB like thing was intimidating, and at the same time couldn't/wouldn't/had moral qualms about pirating music. I reckon ripping CDs was not a viable option for most people. I think I've only tried to do that once or twice myself.
I'm actually traditionally a Windows guy and scoff/roll my eyes at a lot of Apple stuff, but it's pretty undeniable that they've created some amazing, bar-raising products. They've done this by enforcing an uncompromising UX-first philosophy that covers all aspects of product design.
I gave concrete examples of the usability of the ipod. I would like it if people argued against those points, rather than some smartass, sarcastic response like the grandparent.
Just as terse, no sarcasm.
I don't see how it saves time when it necessitates you to follow up with a wordy response - if you were after saving time, you wouldn't even have responded to my response. But I guess this is yet another case of me not _getting_ something.
You won't necessarily agree with those reasons -- I certainly wouldn't want everything to work like iTunes or my iPhone in general -- but you will understand why your limited perspective on UX doesn't catch on like Jobs's philosophy did.
And it's not a bad thing, it's part of the "whole truth" about someone and about how you need to be in order to succeed. And the fact that you need to be like that is not something that one should "sweep under the rug" or present as a "minor part of an otherwise great personality", because it does show you something: that at some level something is very wrong with the system and as much as we like to believe otherwise, fairness and success are a bit like having the cake and eating it too ...something that rarely happens.
So to be a great businessman, I just have to lie to people that help me, right?
I suppose it would revolve around what people think "success" is - if it means lying to others and abandonment of morals for personal gain, then that's a very sad definition of "success".
Woz probably didn't became upset about it because by the time he found out about that little incident, he was in some kind of "managing" position himself, and "playing the same game" but in his advantage now, and he was there because of the other decisions that Jobs made, so...
Basically what at the small "garage business" is called "being a liar" is what at the bigger levels is called "the rules of the game". And yes, you're no longer a "liar" and no longer breaking the rules, but simply because the rules are bent the way you need them to be bent.
The only alternative would be to have only fully transparent employee owned companies... and we all know this is not how our current flavor of capitalism works :)
EDIT - TL;DR: it's basically the same "bad" deal one gets in any employee <-> employer relationship, just that they didn't have this explicit relationship
It is pretty safe to assume that Steve Wozniak was not pulling the same types of shenanigans. And, it's really too bad if the story serves to normalize such behavior.
Second, it isn't a story about managers providing no value compared to less well paid engineers, it is a brilliant engineer letting something despicable pass because his partner brought so many non engineering assets to the table.
I think people should flee any company where there are dishonest managers who provide no value. It isn't uncommon to see companies that start out with comparable products, design and engineering talent diverge because one has a terrible management team.
At least in 2000+ years we got to the level of social/human evolution where "the stuff" keeps flowing :)
Haha strange human race
https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Wozniak+jobs#!/all/forever/0/Wozni...
Maybe we can find a better way rather than create a throwaway account and rehashing the same thread?