On the seventh anniversary of Steve Jobs' death, we give you 7 times he served humanity and acted as an example to others Seven years ago on this day, Steve Jobs, the cofounder of Apple and a man held up as one of the most remarkable innovators of modern times, died at his home in Silicon Valley, aged 56. To commemorate the day, this morning Apple CEO Tim Cook posted a picture of Jobs in his prime with the simple message: "Steve showed me – and …
The satire wasn't too obscure for him; he just did what most people on the internet do - He read the headline, got hit on the jaw by his knee flying upwards, and commented with a puzzled and angry and outraged disbelief that anyone else could think other than he does. I do it all the time so I know!
"read the headline, got hit on the jaw by his knee flying upwards"
etc.
yeah I got hooked on that headline, after which I scanned the bullet points before starting to read, and THEN saw all of the snark I would've replied with in comments [and then some]. Everyone who knows anything about Steve Jobs knows he was NO saint, but hey, that's why the article [and it's baiting headline] was so much fun!
Wow! Does a Reg article actually need a big bold headline "WARNING: SATIRE AHEAD" to avoid being misconstrued?
I thought that the simple fact that a piece appears in the Reg would be warning enough for most readers - finding a non-satirical piece is the real challenge!
>I guess the satire was a little too obscure for some people.
There is something profoundly weird when a satirical comment about a satirical article is hammered with down votes. Selective sense of satire? Or people belatedly seeing the light, after the author gives a huuuge hint??
Look up "hagiography" in the dictionary and this article will be the definition.
hamartography is more like it.
He said what everyone else was thinking regards Adobe Flash, called it out for what it was (and still is). 'Utter shite', bug-ridden code that shouldn't be on any device. Adobe Flash just acts as an attack vector for malicious code today and not much else.
He deserves praise for that, he could have easily kept quiet, the typical Microsoft way/approach.
Cook, while competent at manipulating the supply chain, is an evangelical salesman who doesn't know when to shut-up with the self-belief, Jobs treated Apple with scepticism, like a customer should/would.
You might not like his products/lockdown of Apple products, but the way he approached Apple as a growing business, was pretty clever.
The 'Product DNA' that launched the iPod range, is exactly the same 8 years on. In 2010 press/competitors talked about an "iPhone/iPod/iPad Killer" competitor devices. Apple's DNA strategy then was the same as now, i.e a 6 colour release of the iPhone XR, like iPod nanos, back in the day.
"He said what everyone else was thinking regards Adobe Flash, called it out for what it was (and still is). 'Utter shite', bug-ridden code that shouldn't be on any device. Adobe Flash just acts as an attack vector for malicious code today and not much else."
Not quite everyone, sadly. Microsoft were and are so impressed that they've made it a standard part of Windows. Says it all, really...
He said what everyone else was thinking regards Adobe Flash, called it out for what it was (and still is). 'Utter shite', bug-ridden code that shouldn't be on any device.
He had no idea about the quality of the code – any why should he when he wasn't a programmer – but he was worried that the ubiquity of Flash would give Adobe power in the digital media market and he wanted to cut them out. So he pushed engineers to make Webkit good enough for the App Store and I-Tunes and joined the relevant patent pools. As soon as this particular mission was accomplished work on Webkit was essentially dropped until the notch arrived and non-Apple software got frozen out of the hardware acceleration on the mobile devices.
It's not April 1st, is it?
Look up "hagiography" in the dictionary and this article will be the definition.
"Nothing goes over my head! My reflexes are too fast; I would catch it!" -- Drax
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwiah5GB4vbdAhXydN8KHeXlB8kQjRx6BAgBEAU&url=https%3A%2F%2Ftenor.com%2Fview%2Fdrax-the-destroyer-dave-bautista-metaphor-guardians-of-the-galaxy-over-my-head-gif-3613490&psig=AOvVaw2yuPcRbpxa-g26PoLcFaZY&ust=1539085389794735
Indeed. That title has been given to Elon Musk by the hordes of Tesla Disciples. If you thought that Apple Fanbois were/are bad, then 'you ain't seen nothing yet'.
Just wait until the sacred Model 3 comes to the UK. They will be out in force making sure that all petrol/diesel engined car drivers know who is the superior being.
I'm all for EV's but that Tesla crew are just wierd. I'll carry on driving my Zoe and ignore their 'That's a POS car' taunts they send in my direction.
Hopefully written with the same TIC attitude as the Steve Jobs article but I probably failed miserably.
I can't help thinking the anti-teslas ad anti-Elons are as rabid as the fanbois.
Seems to have created a partisan split that happens a lot. When something gets overly adored/hyped another group spring up to overly put it down, when the truth is somewhere in the middle or elements of both.
"Just wait until the sacred Model 3 comes to the UK. "
It won't because it can't.
You cannot open the rear doors on the Model 3 if you run out of power, so you are left trapped inside the car. Here it is a requirement that you be able to open the car doors in the even of an electrical failure.
Also the Model 3 seams to get damaged if you drive it during rain due to a design flaw. (search "model 3 bumper falls off").
Must be some other Steve Jobs your talking about.
The Steve Jobs i met in the 80s came towards me bare feet slapping on the sidewalk looking like a homeless guy in a sharp suit. I remember things like that mattered to him no animal product.
Very keen mind, and had a wonderful left-of-field outlook on life.
I found it quite amusing to see the same guy become this iphone guru.
Er, Most Revered Saint Jobs, not Steve Jobs.
It is irrelevant that he might've been good one day. Any criminal or other bad-behaving individual in this world might've been good in the past. What matters is his later positions and actions.
If we choose to judge apparently bad people based on their past good behavior, then criminals could well be forgiven by judges for being, one day, good members of society.
Anyhow, we shouldn't judge him ourselves, let's leave that to God. But we should definitely take his actions into consideration when we form our opinion of him, especially for people who, unlike yourself, did not meet him personally.
"It is irrelevant that he might've been good one day. Any criminal or other bad-behaving individual in this world might've been good in the past. What matters is his later positions and actions."
So all the bad things Bill Gates has done in the past are now irrelevant because he does so much charitable work with his money?
Good question.
Two answers are possible. One is based on a strictly material worldview, and the other is based on the view that the material world is not the end.
The first possible answer is that no, his present actions do not forgive his past ones. This is likely the view held by a court of law, for example. A court of law wouldn't give a damn if he repented or whether he feels guilty and is never going to repeat his bad actions. His "inside change" doesn't change anything on the material level. It doesn't "wipe away" his past actions.
The second answer is that yes, his present actions do forgive his past ones, because he has changed on the inside. His change on the inside means that he won't repeat his actions, and God would forgive him in exchange for his past misdeeds.
"The first possible answer is that no, his present actions do not forgive his past ones. This is likely the view held by a court of law, for example"
Actually in a court of law, most past actions (depending how far back) are proscribed by statute of limitations for pretty much everything except murder. So irrespective of present actions they're not too interested in the distant past.
"The first possible answer is that no, his present actions do not forgive his past ones."
This is my view. If you've done bad things in the past, those things are not erased or forgiven by doing good things later on. Future good works may (or may not) indicate that a person has learned their lesson and changed for the better. Even if when they do, however, the transformation from bad person to good person does not mean that the things done when they were bad people are forgiven.
To earn forgiveness requires something different than doing good works. It requires recognizing, admitting to, and apologizing for the bad things, in conjunction with doing what you can to repair the damage you've done and then never doing the bad things again.
RE: Being forgiven for past misdeeds by doing good deeds.
Nope, doesn't work that way. Your past misdeeds (sins) can only be washed away by God's grace. Not you, not Steve Jobs, not me, nobody deserves, or earns, their way into Heaven. You cannot "buy" your way into the afterlife by doing good deeds. That implies a contractual relationship...I do "this", and God does "that" in return, and now you control God. Only through Grace can you be saved. And for this, you THEN do good deeds, to show God how appreciative you are. As to whether Jobs is in Heaven, I have no idea, that's between Jobs and his Creator.
The good news: Everyone can be saved, they just have to accept Christ as their savior. That's it. No money, no deeds, no sacrifices, nothing else required. Simple, easy-peasy, but ridiculously hard for Man to accept as we always want to be in control, even of our gods.
no. i shared it because its one of those memories i had in life. It looms large because i had no real idea what to expect of him at the time. When i think of the name that image comes to mind. All i do know, having read these hundred or so posts is that the Steve Jobs i met bears little resemblance to the comments. Although some contain a germ of truth, It seems mostly rehashed word of mouth media opinions. Thats sad.
Well, yeah, except those word of mouth media opinions are also based on other actual encounters with the great one in elevators and offices and streets. Also based on encounters with the great ones semen and genes resulting in being born, an experience that also seems to have turned out a bit sad for his daughter; that on it's own is enough for me to proclaim Jobs an asshole of the first order. The only response triggered by your bare foot sidewalk slapping anecdote is he was a hebephrenic with enough resources to have helped himself be a better person - an opportunity he declined. I decline the opportunity to say anything nice about him. Not that he'd care.
Jobs never used the disabled parking spots at the Apple campus.
...they were too far from the main entrance, so the Beloved Leader parked blocking the "Fire Department Only" area instead, as that left just a short, straight walk into the atrium of IL1. Upside: the car was visible, so you'd know to be on the lookout; downside: if there'd been a fire, you'd have had a greater chance of dying.
I believe it was Pixar's disabled parking spots which were regularly abused, and this is referenced in a scene in "Toy Story 2" where the villain is seen driving across the road from his home to his store, and parking diagonally across the only two disabled parking bays...
Even though most of us are doing the sarcasm thing, you might want to look for a better word than hagiography. It's a bit niche, and while there is a bit of the (not to praise Caesar but to Bury him) cachet in the word, both phrases are cliche and leave the air of one who is trying to hard. I suggest as the easy substitute... Vitriol, as it is in keeping with the essential and vital spirit of El Reg.
Where other publications would shy from going out of their way to piss on a dead man's grave in public, this fine publication honors it's integrity by reminding us that wow, that guy could be a prick.
Besides, wouldn't want Tim Cook to reconsider that lifetime ban right, or even forget eventually? Those seats in the new theatre look terribly uncomfortable, and the catering is probably terrible right?
So Vitriol, it's shorter, sounds classy because it's British English, and it makes you feel hollow inside if you drink too much of it.
So Vitriol, it's shorter, sounds classy because it's British English, and it makes you feel hollow inside if you drink too much of it.
Vitriol I've always imagined in tastes like really, really oversteeped tea.
Still more popular than Vimto, maybe. Certainly more popular than Tizer.
Are you saying we shouldn't piss on a dead man's grave or that it's too soon to do so?
The article called it as it was. Is there anything misleading in it? Are there any factual inaccuracies?
The guy was a mean bastard who created some neat tech. But to get where he eventually reached he pissed on many people and the article simple makes sure people understand that.
A few publications* dares to say after the death of John McCain and all the saintly accolades praised upon him, that actually he had a pretty misogynist streak and maybe we need to ensure that history isn't re-written after someone's death.
*e.g. Why can't anyone be honest about John McCain's legacy?
The perfect is the enemy of the good.
If you insist on knocking people down just because they're popular, you risk lowering everyone to the same level. You miss the salient fact that some people really are a whole heap worse or better than others.
"The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones." I would rather have a world in which Trump had died and McCain and Jobs lived.
""The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones.""
You realise that this is intentional irony by Marcus Antonius and the audience is supposed to draw the exact opposite conclusion?
I suggest you read Macaulay's essay on Warren Hastings. He discusses the whole subject. He would have been the perfect person to write an obit of Jobs.
The perfect is the enemy of the good.If you insist on knocking people down just because they're popular, you risk lowering everyone to the same level. You miss the salient fact that some people really are a whole heap worse or better than others.
"The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones." I would rather have a world in which Trump had died and McCain and Jobs lived.
This is a tough post to rate. The first two paragraphs, taken together, rate a solid downvote, while the 3rd rates at least an equally solid upvote.
I'll solve the problem by rating it 1 pint.
"Where other publications would shy from going out of their way to piss on a dead man's grave in public, this fine publication honors it's integrity by reminding us that wow, that guy could be a prick."
Byron:
Posterity will ne'er survey/ a nobler grave than this./Here lie the bones of Castelreagh/ stop, traveller, and p**s.
And Yeats on his own gravestone had inscribed:
Cast a cold eye
On life, on death
Horseman, pass by.
tl;dr de mortuis nil nisi bonum was written in a day when people were worried about the vengeful spirits of the dead or, more prosaically, their living relatives who took unkindly to people being reminded that uncle Julius was an utter bastard. Today we need to be grown up and face up to the reality that heroes are often anything but.
Today we need to be grown up and face up to the reality that heroes are often anything but
I'd suggest that the necessary drive and determination to achieve great things almost always means that the doer will be a ruthless bastard in aspects of their personality, and that will always spill over into other behaviours that they won't be lovingly remembered for.
If we're going to have a list of great leaders and high achievers who were all round nice guys or girls it'll be a bloody short list. Who can you think of that fits the bill?
The one thing Jobs remimds me is, "Don't be a sucker!".
He was a bastard, to his mates, to his family to his employees but not in a nasty, vicious way, in a "You need to learn life is shit and nothing comes for free, if you stay on the ball though then you will not get fleeced and things will be alright.".
Is that what he really intended when he did this?
And even worse, does that justify what he did to his daughter, an act that verges on criminally inhuman?
It seems like he's having revenge on her because he was an adopted son himself (who denied his biological paternity as well).
Does she deserve being deprived of at least a proper life without living on welfare where her daddy makes millions?
Does she deserve being abandoned, this having a large part of her child self effectively destroyed?
I don't know. My own father abandoned his wife and three tiny children to go smoke dope in a state with lax child- support enforcement. While it was no picnic from my side (including the growing up on welfare), I am rather glad to have been able to grow up without that particular role-model in my life.
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Reflecting back on what I read, I think that I need to downvote myself.
Too excessive and unfair on my part to wish that he burns without peace in his grave, especially that the man is dead, but that doesn't change anything from the fact that what he did was really, really unfair, unjust, and plain unacceptable towards his daughter.
Many people feel it's improper to speak ill of the dead, but I consider that an illogical and sentimental feeling that has no effect on my own ctions. I won't deliberately say something to hurt someone, but if I diss Jobs and someone feels distressed by it, then they have to accept the consequences of their beliefs. There's nothing sacred about an anniversary. Indeed, an anniversary, which puts the person back into our heads for a day, is a great time to comment on him. Sanctimonious po-faced 'respect' serves no truth.
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What a bunch of loonies.
Do they actually believe a couple of Fraternity level 'tossing in to the sea' ceremonies will lift him to Buddhahood or Godhood?
I'm sure even the Senate of Rome never really believed any of the ex Emperors were really raised to godhood, nor the Catholic church of a lot of those they Canonised.
A phrase springs to mind 'Oh Ho!, What are they up to, Ted?'
Exactly.
It becomes worse if you read the (paywalled) section of the article (described here: http://www.skeptophilia.com/2012/09/the-motive-fallacy-and-reincarnation-of.html), a Buddhist sect leader also claims that SJ is in a "tech nirvana", described as:
"After Steve Jobs passed away, he was reincarnated as a divine being with a special knowledge and appreciation for science and the arts.
Everything is high-tech, beautiful, and simple, exactly the way he likes it, and he is filled with great excitement and amazement."
And also from the article linked above:
"He then went on to say that Jobs now has a full head of hair, sleeps on a floating hover-bed, and if he wants to eat, one of twenty servants immediately brings him what he would like, and if he thinks about his favorite song, it starts playing."
"He then went on to say that Jobs now has a full head of hair, sleeps on a floating hover-bed, and if he wants to eat, one of twenty servants immediately brings him what he would like, and if he thinks about his favorite song, it starts playing."
The corollary to this is that this self-same Jobs Nirvana is the eternal hell that El Reg journalists go to where they have be Jobs servants for all eternity.
if he wants to eat, one of twenty servants immediately brings him what he would like, and if he thinks about his favorite song, it starts playing
Perhaps it's just me, but this sounds agonizingly awful. Every inclination immediately satisfied without effort? What a dreary and unrewarding existence that would be.
Of course, it's also completely incommensurate with the notion of nirvana, so the idiot that said it (in the article OP linked to) is obviously a cheap charlatan who's just peddling bullshit for attention. Still, if that's what the afterlife is like, I don't want any.
There goes your ticket to the press events, just when they were thinking of letting you back in. Really Reg, this was quite beyond your normal level of snark. And totally true.
On the other hand, the company did make many amazing things under his leadership and has made nothing revolutionary since. They are still living off Steve's legacy, and aren't brave enough to bring out even one truly new thing (which might cannibalise their existing business).
Yes, he was a total arsehole but he did bring us the Mac, the iPod, the iPhone and Toy Story. Not on his own, but none of these things would have happened without him.
Still, good article and it needs to be said.
Shows you that El Reg really sticks to their motto, "Biting the hand that feeds IT", doesn't it?
But a question is to be asked:
Do his material contributions "cancel out" his moral attitude (or rather, the lack of it)?
Or to give an inflated example that shows the dilemma more, let's say Nikola Tesla was in jail for a bunch of serious crimes. Is he entitled to an honorable mention post-mortem for his work, regardless of his "dark side"?
but none of these things would have happened without him.
It could be argued with equal facility that another genius might've come along and invented these same things, just in a different fashion.
Phones might've still retained buttons BlackBerry-style (and Android would've continued as planned originally, an OS for BlackBerry clones), or Microsoft could've possibly introduced Windows Mobile to the consumer market.
Or Steve Wozniak might've invented the Mac et al on his own.
Shows you that El Reg really sticks to their motto, "Biting the hand that feeds IT", doesn't it?
I thought the fruity ones refused to go near the Vulture Pond at feeding time these days?
Which, of course doesn't stop them taking a bite out of apple now and again.
And if some think attacking the (perhaps selective) memory of the late apple head honcho is in poor taste, remember Vultures are Carrion eaters.
"It could be argued with equal facility that another genius might've come along and invented these same things, just in a different fashion."
You mean those people that invented things and brought them to market 'before' apple 'claimed to have invented' them?
Like the first mp3 player in 1997... 4yrs before the ipod... or the first touch screen phones...some 4-5yrs before the iphone.
Apple 'invented' very little... they stole ideas with impunity and marketed them in such a way that people 'believe' they invented them... and then he cries foul when others release similar stolen ideas. Which makes me think... did he actually believe his own bullshit?
Steve Jobs wasn't a genius 'inventor, designer' or anything else... although... He was a genius at marketing bullshit and convincing people to follow him.
I know the fanbois are out in force on this article and down voting to oblivion anyone who dares to criticise their 'idol'.
So by all means go at it, but just know that it doesn't make you right, it just proves that you aren't capable of accepting criticism of a very flawed man who did more shitty things than good, who treated his own flesh and blood worse than the current US president does... because when you can say Trump behaves better than Jobs... WTF has this world come too.
He was a genius at marketing bullshit and convincing people to follow him.
I wish I could up-vote you more than once for this. Woz is the engineer¹. Ive is the designer. Jobs was the sales droid. It just happened to be a particularly persuasive sales droid with a built-in reality distortion field generator and zero scruples. Cook isn't quite the salesman Jobs was but all the hard, ground-breaking work has already been done. All Cook has to do now is whisper "new iPhone" to himself in an empty bar somewhere and the free marketing comes piling in.
¹ Actually, Woz is an über-geek, despite his Masonic connections. The epitome of non-greedy techie nice bloke with roots in the early phreaking and hacker culture and the naivete that usually accompanies those traits. Many of us can relate.
No, Apple did not invent that much. But they implemented in a way that made other's inventions useful, e.g. dtp and an mp3 player that people would buy, with huge capacity for the time.
And I doubt it would have happened without a visionary behind.
He was also a certified @rsehole, no doubt.
"Steve Jobs wasn't a genius 'inventor, designer' or anything else... although... He was a genius at marketing bullshit and convincing people to follow him."
I'd not go quite that far. Genius inventor? Probably not. Genius designer? Maybe. Marketing genius? Definitely.
He was very, very good at re-developing and re-packaging others inventions in a vastly improved way. I'm no fanboi and have never actually owned any Apple products, but on the whole, they look good and work well and are usually better than the originals incarnations or others current competition if you can stomach the price.
Yes, tablets, mp3 players and smartphones all existed before Apples products came along, but Jobs and Apple improved them considerably. There doesn't appear to have been anything new out of Apple for a many years though. Just step changes and incremental improvements. (note that I differentiated there. Not all changes are improvements.)
"Yes, tablets, mp3 players and smartphones all existed before Apples products came along, but Jobs and Apple improved them considerably. "
That's merely a matter of opinion, and I couldn't disagree more.
My cheap and ancient Sansa Clip MP3 player sounds significantly better than any iPod I've tried and I don't need a huge and awful piece of bloatware to operate it. My Blackberry smartphone is 8 years old now and still operates as my main business phone, three or four days minimum between charges. Tablets are all pretty dumb, but I remember using a Nokia one back in 2007 which ran proper Linux and didn't stop you getting at it either.
Apple certainly "dumbed down" each of those items considerably, but that's not an improvement to your average Reg reader.
History is full of bad people who in one way or the other had great ideas or made great products.
Still, we have to be able to separate them - in no way they can become "models" to be adored. Because history is also full of good people who did the same, so being an a*****e is not really required.
On the other hand, the company did make many amazing things under his leadership
Ah, yes, amazing items, shame a lot of them were the tech equivalent of one of those mousetrap stick of gum tricks.
I often thought about buying an Ipod, I was rather impressed by my brothers, until I saw itunes in action, that is.
What material contributions?
The Lisa / Mac a copy of the Xerox star enabled by falling cost of 68000 and RAM.
He killed the Newton (which was cursed by the excessive hype of the handwriting recognition, one of the first portable gadgets with ARM CPU).
Apple nearly went bust and was bailed out by MS.
The two big successes, iPod and iPhone were based on marketing / infrastructure, not innovation, as MP3 players already existed (the Album destroying 99c per track and iTunes made it succeed). The iPhone used bought in Fingerworks and Samsung innovative layer chip, SC6400 family (CPU, RAM, Flash chips in layers in one package). It succeeded mostly because of the carrier deals with big data cap. Till then you needed to be rich or business user to afford data.
The Lisa was a failure, and the Macintosh was pushed over the much more capable Apple IIGS. Jobs had Wozniak's IIGS deliberately crippled to make sure the Macintosh was more appealing in a bit of corporate dick swinging. The Mac wasn't even Jobs' idea - he happened upon it when it was a low key experiment and then used it to try and shore up his already shaky position in the company.
NeXT was a failure as well. Jobs' insistence on a perfect cube for the case of the original model went against engineering reality - a perfect cube has a very high failure rate when molded since it's difficult to get it out of the mold without cracking, so the NeXT factory was littered with broken cases. The software was too ambitious, and exceeded the capacity of available hard drives so they went with an unproven technology that ended up being unreliable.
And ended up being overpriced. The "away" trips found on YouTube are really interesting though. Especially when Joanna Hoffman calls out Steve on his "Relation Distortion" bullshit.
The funny thing with Steve Jobs is he appeared to just get lucky with most stuff. Most of the stuff he was involved with failed when you look into the history of it.
This is exactly the sort of thing that keeps us coming back here time and again. People who have received a humour bypass are going to be offended, usually because many a true word is spoken in jest.
For the intended audience, it is pitched perfectly and poor taste is infinitely preferable to none at all.
But look into the mirror - if your own life was put under a microscope, what would people find?
Also, he didn't write books to encourage people to follow his lifestyle, as other rich people have and continue to do so. He was probably aware of the fact that the planet is big enough to accommodate only a single person of his character.
At least, his kids seem to have turned out well, unlike other billionaire's kids.
He made sure the one and only authorized biography appeared after his death, so he wouldn't be bothered by the comments.
He's been dead for seven years.
It's easy to spit on a grave.
Let's give him some rest.
There has always been a very simple test on whether someone is actually a Valley / Industry insider as they claim. Their opinion of Steve Job. If they thought Jobs was a criminal psychopath, an utterly vicious vile nasty cruel excrescent excuse for a human being, that not only every unflattering story was true but had a few new ones to add of their own, then you knew they were actually an industry insider and knew what they were talking about.
Jobs "genius" was his utter contempt for people and laws and his complete willingness to break both. So he hung around long enough for the occasional piece of good luck to save his latest business fiasco. The three pieces of good luck being Mike Markkula, John Lasseter preventing Pixar being shutdown, and the intransigent stupidity of the carriers during the first decade of smart phones. Add to that systematic tax fraud on a massive scale and indirect employment of many many hundreds of thousands of workers in the most appalling cruel work conditions, often little better than slave labor, and you have the Jobs secret to business success.
Be completely utterly and totally fucking Evil. And sell your products at a high markup to affluent middle class cretins who are more interested in class markers and conspicuous consumption and who fall for utterly hypocritical virtue signalling marketing campaigns. The bien pensant in its purest form.
I spent the day Jobs died outside a cafe in Palo Alto toasting with a friend the death of an utter worthless sad excuse for a human being. The only suitable way of marking his passing. A monster killed by his own overweening arrogance. So typical. And pure poetic justice.
Congratulations Kieren - Well Done!
Somehow, despite noticing both author and the sub-title "He was a Saint", I was seized by a terrible fear that it would be a puff-piece from a fan-bois, but as I read on, the truth slowly dawned and a smile spread across my face.
The anniversary of his death is a fine time to lampoon him - particularly as Apple are using it as an opportunity to indulge in deluded worship - so it's important that the truth doesn't disappear completely in the sea of sycophancy.
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> Lets also not forget the extreme lengths the tech companies have gone to make sure they pay as little tax as possible.
Good point. The article was just too full of Jobs' other saintly acts to find space to mention the way he personally forced €14bn in tax payments on an unwilling Irish Government. So concerned was he that this might look in some way unethical, and therefore might have ro be refused by the Irish Government, he went all the way to visit the European Commission to get their approval first.
I get that there's bitterness between Apple and The Reg but writing an article like this just looks childish. If you want to add credibility to your anti-Apple bias then insulting a dead man is probably not the way forward. Granted, much of what's written is true, but you'll also find similar (and worse) stories about other people in positions of power, in any sector.
At the end of the day Apple have achieved far more of significance to mankind than The Reg. People get shat upon in all walks of life - the sandwich you had for lunch might have salad in it picked by someone who was treated awfully. Do you stop to care about them?
It's selective bias. When Linus dies I can't see The Reg writing an equivalent article, and most people acknowledge he's a total bellend when it comes to how he treats others.
..even after the weekend :)
One thing I will say, I'm glad I didn't have to work for him as I'd truly have hated him, however, because I didn't and because I grew up in the very late 70s and 80s, these people have been part of my history. Seeing them on the news over the years etc, they became so recognisable. Jobs, Wozniak, Bill, Steve Ballmer etc. So although he was a true 2868 (look it up on a phone with letters to work out what that spells, starts with a c), I have a very weird "Its not the same without the old crew in place" feel.
Its hard to explain what I mean as I really disliked the man but maybe it's a nostalgia thing. I didn't know I wanted to do computing till I got into college. Now I do it as a job its my hobby too and I love looking at the past history. The early computing and he was a part of it, despite being an arsehole, I see Apple when I see him. I hated Apple back then, I still hate it now, but it doesn't feel the same Apple without his bullshit. Like Microsoft isn't the same without Bill Gates there.
One thing I thought he did right, assuming I read it correctly in his book, was when he came back to Apple. Getting rid of all the differently numbered systems. Like Apple Mac 1.23b, Apple Mac 1.30 (making up the names as can't remember them) and just sticking with 3-4 main areas.
Rambled on now. Probably not made any sense. Almost deleted this post like I did the other day. Sometimes I do ramble shit.
will probably be judged more kindly.
He is already, considered a saint of the sacrosaint up there with the great Juju up the mountain!
Nobody mentions he with Ballmer tried to pull the shares off his high-school-buddy co-founder, who was undergoing cancer treatment ... what a nice bunch, those two!
Everybody has forgotten he has repeatedly lied under oath in US courts
He has fired people just like Steve, like ... the real nice TOTAL CUNT way.
Worse, philanthropist ? You owe me a keyboard, sir! A serial liar vows to give away his cash, then increases his wealth by 50%. Says his foundation is doing good stuff ... fuck that, spreading licensing in agriculture ... use these seeds, you'll have to buy them each year at cut throat prices, no you cannot re-use your produce, you really have to buy them each year, if you don't you get a hefty fine and will have to pay the license for them anyway ... and Yes, I am Saint Gates of the great Juju up the mountain ...we have businesses to run in the states, you see ...
I call TOTAL piss-take BS!
I do hope you will do something similar when this other sociopath kicks a bucket ...
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