I was sorry to hear this morning that Steve Jobs has died. I think he is a man who changed the world significantly, particularly in terms of how human beings and computers interact. Most of what has gotten better about computers since 1980 or so has been the ease and intuitiveness of using them, and Apple is responsible for a lot of that. Apple makes elegant machines that are pleasant to use and allow you to do good work on them. The iPod also substantially changed how people experience music, and brought a great deal of enjoyment to millions of people.
I hope computers and electronics in general continue to develop in that direction, though perhaps with less of the obsessive controlling quality that has also been part of the Apple philosophy.
I know very little about Steve Jobs as a man, but I appreciate the work he did and regret that he died so young.
http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/activate/2011/09/201194144739197637.html
More than anyone else, Steve Jobs shaped modern technology—and modern life
Steve Jobs leaves behind a mixed legacy. He certainly did a lot to contribute to our modern world.
In terms of technology, I think a lot of the very early work he did at popularizing computers influenced my life more profoundly than his later work. My family’s first computer (the first computer I ever used) was an Apple IIe in 1984.
As one of the world’s wealthiest people, however, his lack of philanthropy can be seen as troubling. Although I believe his money is/was his to do with what he pleases, more admirably people like Bill Gates have realized that dynastic and vastly disparate wealth is far less valuable than charity.
I’ve already gone over how we’d all be staring at nothing more than a blinking green “C:>_” right now if it weren’t for Apple introducing the point-and-click computer, the mouse, micro floppy discs, Firewire and the touch-screen interface. Heck, if it weren’t for Apple, you certainly wouldn’t be reading this on your smart phone at work right now.
Another mixed legacy is his management style. It seems that he was quite effective at getting things done and inspiring new ideas and products; it also seems that it was at a cost in his personal relations. He seems like a complex person.
STEVE JOBS was an enemy of nostalgia
By MIKE DAISEY
Published: October 6, 2011
“We can admire the design perfection and business acumen while acknowledging the truth: with Apple’s immense resources at his command he could have revolutionized the industry to make devices more humanely and more openly, and chose not to. If we view him unsparingly, without nostalgia, we would see a great man whose genius in design, showmanship and stewardship of the tech world will not be seen again in our lifetime. We would also see a man who in the end failed to “think different,” in the deepest way, about the human needs of both his users and his workers.
It’s a high bar, but Mr. Jobs always believed passionately in brutal honesty, and the truth is rarely kind. With his death, the serious work to do the things he has failed to do will fall to all of us: the rebels, the misfits, the crazy ones who think they can change the world.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/06/opinion/jobs-looked-to-the-future.html?_r=3
Steve Jobs dies and folks get all teary-eyed. What the fuck?
He was a C.E.O. His job, like all captains of commerce, was to
prise money from us and put it into his shareholders pockets.
Sure, he made sure the products worked fairly well and looked
real good. But come on, why the sentimentality? What, exactly,
is your connection to him?
Apple CEO Tim Cook announced that in 2012 the company will release the Steve Jobs 2, an updated version of the revolutionary Apple founder featuring a richer, deeper voice and a sleek new white turtleneck.
Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has died.
As Chicago Mayor Harold Washington said of the corrupt former Mayor Daley, “I’m not glad he’s dead, but I’m glad he’s gone.” Nobody deserves to have to die – not Jobs, not Mr. Bill, not even people guilty of bigger evils than theirs. But we all deserve the end of Jobs’ malign influence on people’s computing.
Unfortunately, that influence continues despite his absence. We can only hope his successors, as they attempt to carry on his legacy, will be less effective.
One thing he wasn’t, though, was perfect. Indeed there were things Jobs did while at Apple that were deeply disturbing. Rude, dismissive, hostile, spiteful: Apple employees—the ones not bound by confidentiality agreements—have had a different story to tell over the years about Jobs and the bullying, manipulation and fear that followed him around Apple. Jobs contributed to global problems, too. Apple’s success has been built literally on the backs of Chinese workers, many of them children and all of them enduring long shifts and the specter of brutal penalties for mistakes. And, for all his talk of enabling individual expression, Jobs imposed paranoid rules that centralized control of who could say what on his devices and in his company.
Relevant
The Steve Jobs who founded Apple as an anarchic company promoting the message of freedom, whose first projects with Stephen Wozniak were pirate boxes and computers with open schematics, would be taken aback by the future that Apple is forging. Today there is no tech company that looks more like the Big Brother from Apple’s iconic 1984 commercial than Apple itself, a testament to how quickly power can corrupt.
Harvard Cancer Expert: Steve Jobs Probably Doomed Himself With Alternative Medicine
Steve Jobs had a mild form of cancer that is not usually fatal, but seems to have ushered along his own death by delaying conventional treatment in favor of alternative remedies, a Harvard Medical School researcher and faculty member says. Jobs’s intractability, so often his greatest asset, may have been his undoing.
“Let me cut to the chase: Mr. Jobs allegedly chose to undergo all sorts of alternative treatment options before opting for conventional medicine,” Ramzi Amri wrote in an extraordinarily detailed post to Quora, an online Q&A forum popular among Silicon Valley executives. “Given the circumstances, it seems sound to assume that Mr. Jobs’ choice for alternative medicine has eventually led to an unnecessarily early death.”
Amri went on to say that, even after entering conventional medical care, the Apple CEO seemed to eschew the most practical forms of treatment. Addressing the period when Jobs began to visibly shed weight, Amri wrote, “it seems that even during this recurrent phase, Mr. Jobs opted to dedicate his time to Apple as the disease progressed, instead of opting for chemotherapy or any other conventional treatment.”
Many mainstream media, including CNN, stated that Mr. Jobs might have spent as long as two years without proper (conventional) treatment.
While Mr. Jobs was trying all sorts of alternative mumbo-jumbo I won’t even bother to go through as their failure is now sadly irrefutably proven, his tumor grew, and grew, and grew…
* Jobs waited so long before seeking normal treatment that he had to undergo a Whipple procedure, losing his pancreas and whole duodenum in 2004. This was the first alarming sign that his disease had progressed beyond a compact primary to at least a tumor so large his Pancreas and duodenum could not be saved.
* Jobs seemingly waited long enough for the disease revealed to have spread extensively to his liver. The only reason he’d have a transplant after a GEP-NET would be that the tumor invaded all major parts of the liver, which takes a considerable amount of time. Years, in most neuroendocrine tumors. It could be that this happened before his diagnosis, but the risk grows exponentially with time.
* We then saw the tumor slowly draining the life out him. It was a horrible thing to see him lose weight and slowly turn into a skin and bones form of himself.
Yet it seems that even during this recurrent phase, Mr. Jobs opted to dedicate his time to Apple as the disease progressed, instead of opting for chemotherapy or any other conventional treatment.