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Comment by jonnathanson | Hacker News Reader

"Believe it or not, Jobs had empathy for what the user truly needed, which gave him a killer sense of taste. I feel that's lacking here."

Yes. It's often said that Steve Jobs was an asshole, but that he was an asshole for the right reasons. He was the guy in the room who cared more than anyone else. He wanted everyone else to give as much of a shit as he did, even when it came to seemingly tiny details.

I don't mean to paint a rosy, revisionist, hagiographic coat over his entire legacy, because plenty of his actions burned people in horrible ways. But when he was being micromanager-in-chief, he was usually doing it for a reason.

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Dude straight up stole money from the guy who made his life possible (Steve Wosniak). Tell me the right reason for that?

He obviously wanted the Woz to care about money as much as he did. You see his generosity of spirit now?

I admire Jobs for his drive and his vision and his ability to get the best work out of amazing folks but his methods were often terribly inhuman when you really look at them.

He was the idea guy.

And we all know here how much an idea is worth.

In Apple's case - about $200BN or more. Anyone could build an iPhone. The proliferation of other platforms (Android, Windows, Ubuntu, ...) proves it. However, nobody but Steve was thinking out of the box at that time. It was just an idea (with a brilliant execution, admittedly).

First touchscreen phone was the LG Prada, not the iPhone, fyi.

And it was an amazing phone executed so well that they couldn't keep it on the shelves. /s

Seriously. Are you that dense?

Are you? Where was the thinking outside the box exactly?

There are no prizes for doing it first time. But there are prizes for doing it correctly.

Modern design with multitouch and capacitive screen, perhaps. First touchscreen phone was the IBM Simon in the mid-90s, and my Kyocera 6035 was one of many Palm/phone hybrids that predated LG by years. There were also Symbian and Windows Mobile PDA/phones.

I give more credit to Jonathan Ive on restoring Apple's place in the industry than Jobs.

As I said, "plenty of his actions burned people in horrible ways." There is no excuse for that, nor did I suggest there was. I made a pretty decent effort in the second paragraph to caveat what I'd said in the first. Steve Jobs was no saint, and he certainly doesn't get a pass for how he treated Woz (and many, many others).

(Also with a disclaimer that Steve was no saint)

Wozniak was happy to tinker and "just be an engineer at HP". Jobs pushed him to create something that could be marketed and made Woz rich.

What? He made the apple I by himself with no prodding from Steve Jobs. He was showing other people how they could make their own, and Steve convinced him to sell it. Jobs may have made him rich, I don't know how that absolves him of being an amoral thief when they weren't. I don't know that making Wozniak rich really made him any happier anyway.

You complained about Jobs stealing money from Woz. It's true, and it was a slimy move. I'm simply pointing out that the thousands of dollars stolen were monetarily ameliorated by the wealth created by Apple Computer.

And Apple computer wouldn't have happened without Jobs. Get past your hatred of the man as a person -- he was a driving force and made shit happen. Art != Artist.

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