[pazra]

All pretty trivial stuff compared to the massive positive impact the products he oversaw and introduced to the world have had. Mac and iPhone literally changed the world as we know it.

Without him, home computing would be very different today. His insistence on focusing on usability and bringing in the best of the liberal arts into a very science-centric domain was his genius.

[drzaiusapelord]

I'd rather live in a world where 'poaching' agreements between employers didn't exist and factory jobs were better but we had to use a phone with buttons. I think if we had to choose, the corrupt baby boomer CEO stuff Jobs represented would be eliminated even if that meant a slightly less optimal computing experience. I won't even go into how Apple is less a computer company than a media consumption machine company, but that's an argument for another day.

I also will argue that Jobs gets credited for a non-sensical 'he's the liberal arts genius who showed us usability' argument, when in reality usability is an ancient field and, arguably, the most usable desktop was unsexy Microsoft's NT desktop which is still very usable and refined today. You can put a random grandparent in front of an NT4 machine today and have then be productive near instantly. Meanwhile, the very same grandparent is overwhelmed with apps, pop-ups, swipes, privacy agreements, notifications, etc on the more 'usable' mobile device.

Jobs deserves credit for his achievements, but if you let me trade Jobs for a better world for the actual working stiffs who bust their ass 50-70 hours a week in this industry, absolutely, I would make that trade in a heartbeat. I don't care about the cost to quarterly projections or other CEO chest-thumping. Jobs, regardless of his intentions, represents the classic heartless CEO in many respects and made almost no effort to fix these things. I hope today's SV leaders have more progressive views about work/life balance. I'd love to bury the baby boomer workaholic nonsense and factories full of suicidal people with Jobs. I hope society can progress past the 'worship our CEOs' stage.

[kutkloon7]

I agree, but I think someone's actions on a personal and moral level should be more important factors for adoration than how successful he is.