Steve Jobs
Spot the odd one out: Franklin, Einstein, da Vinci, Kissinger, Jobs. (Trick question! there's two odds out: the first three had huge positive effects on science and society; while Jobs' and Kissinger's impact on the world is respectively "eh?" and "catastrophic".)
I don't really understand what people see in Jobs, "the most beloved billionaire". He was a turd to just about everyone he met from the age of about 12.
Some of those people happened to be brilliant, and responded fairly well to being treated like dirt. How much credit does this omnidickery deserve? (I've been told I'm missing the value of management skills, gumption, motivational speaking. OK, then be clear it was this and not innovation, not engineering, not design. Kottke: "Between Woz and Jobs, Woz was the innovator, the inventor. Steve Jobs was the marketing person.". Also the thief.)
In the absence of Jobs, it's hard to see it taking much longer than a couple of years for someone to introduce nice personal computers, computer fonts, portable MP3, heartfelt CGI, or omnisurveillance bricks. And maybe those others wouldn't charge through the nose. Catch the ring of pure mania here:
I suppose the evidence in favour of him being talented (and not just being lucky and dominating some talented people) is the string of successes (Apple, NeXT, Pixar, Apple). Not a huge sample size, but big in context.
I now have lots of questions, none of which Isaacson raises or settles. (In this regard it's much shallower than either his Einstein or Kissinger books.):
* Could we have gotten the expensive gizmos without all the abuse?
* What was the net effect of his life?
Millions of pretty objects
minus abandoning a child
minus hundreds of petty sneers and little brutalities
minus 30 suicides ...
I don't see how to do this. People like Design, sure, but how much?
* His personal philosophy seems straightforwardly terrible, all the worst of kneejerk Sixties exoticism. Intuition over reason ("more powerful than intellect"), AND will over sympathy, AND nature over science, AND post-truth ("[Jobs'] reality distortion field was a confounding melange of charismatic rhetoric, indomitable will, and eagerness to bend any fact to fit the purpose at hand.") What's the point of being a 'spiritual being' if you're still a dick afterward?
* Macs are highly underpowered for their price. In theory, this represents a grave loss of consumer surplus; that is, it loses the point of an economy. But I can't just say that, because people queue up for this stuff. Either they're all exquisite aesthetes who gain surplus by looking at their device during those long extra minutes it takes to finish processing, or the social cachet compensates. I don't have a clear idea of how to judge surplus when computers are not about computing.
* Your view of Gates vs Jobs is very telling. One is uncool and compromising, but has saved many millions of lives; the other is cool and uncompromising, but, after reading Isaacson, it would not surprise me to hear that none of Jobs' $3.3bn went on philanthropy (it might have been anonymous).
* Do we need reality distorters? Must we be led into greatness by visionary liars and rogues? (Musk has a bit of this too.)
Wasn't sure what to rate the book, since it is mostly clear about a dubious subject. Isaacson often stumbles into the Distortion Field
but a bit less than usual.
I don't really understand what people see in Jobs, "the most beloved billionaire". He was a turd to just about everyone he met from the age of about 12.
in the middle of seventh grade he gave his parents an ultimatum. 'I insisted they put me in a different school'. Financially this was a tough demand; his parent were barely making ends meet, but by this point there was little doubt that they would eventually bend to his will. 'When they resisted, I told them I would just quit going to school if I had to go back...'
Some of those people happened to be brilliant, and responded fairly well to being treated like dirt. How much credit does this omnidickery deserve? (I've been told I'm missing the value of management skills, gumption, motivational speaking. OK, then be clear it was this and not innovation, not engineering, not design. Kottke: "Between Woz and Jobs, Woz was the innovator, the inventor. Steve Jobs was the marketing person.". Also the thief.)
In the absence of Jobs, it's hard to see it taking much longer than a couple of years for someone to introduce nice personal computers, computer fonts, portable MP3, heartfelt CGI, or omnisurveillance bricks. And maybe those others wouldn't charge through the nose. Catch the ring of pure mania here:
'If I had never dropped in on that single [calligraphy] course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them.
I suppose the evidence in favour of him being talented (and not just being lucky and dominating some talented people) is the string of successes (Apple, NeXT, Pixar, Apple). Not a huge sample size, but big in context.
I now have lots of questions, none of which Isaacson raises or settles. (In this regard it's much shallower than either his Einstein or Kissinger books.):
* Could we have gotten the expensive gizmos without all the abuse?
* What was the net effect of his life?
Millions of pretty objects
minus abandoning a child
minus hundreds of petty sneers and little brutalities
minus 30 suicides ...
I don't see how to do this. People like Design, sure, but how much?
* His personal philosophy seems straightforwardly terrible, all the worst of kneejerk Sixties exoticism. Intuition over reason ("more powerful than intellect"), AND will over sympathy, AND nature over science, AND post-truth ("[Jobs'] reality distortion field was a confounding melange of charismatic rhetoric, indomitable will, and eagerness to bend any fact to fit the purpose at hand.") What's the point of being a 'spiritual being' if you're still a dick afterward?
* Macs are highly underpowered for their price. In theory, this represents a grave loss of consumer surplus; that is, it loses the point of an economy. But I can't just say that, because people queue up for this stuff. Either they're all exquisite aesthetes who gain surplus by looking at their device during those long extra minutes it takes to finish processing, or the social cachet compensates. I don't have a clear idea of how to judge surplus when computers are not about computing.
* Your view of Gates vs Jobs is very telling. One is uncool and compromising, but has saved many millions of lives; the other is cool and uncompromising, but, after reading Isaacson, it would not surprise me to hear that none of Jobs' $3.3bn went on philanthropy (it might have been anonymous).
* Do we need reality distorters? Must we be led into greatness by visionary liars and rogues? (Musk has a bit of this too.)
"If you act like you can do something, then it will work. I told him 'Pretend to be completely in control and people will assume that you are."Sure is no way that attitude could ever do any harm. I suppose I should just be grateful he stayed out of politics.
Wasn't sure what to rate the book, since it is mostly clear about a dubious subject. Isaacson often stumbles into the Distortion Field
"'I think I might have headed to New York if I didn't go to college', [Jobs] recalled, musing on how different his world - and perhaps all of ours - might have been..."
but a bit less than usual.