I was present at the visit and demo, and it was the work of my group and myself that Steve saw, yet the Quora question is the first time that anyone has asked me what happened. (Worth pondering that interesting fact!)
That really is interesting. I am surprised Michael Hiltzik never asked about it during the research for Dealers of Lightning. Given its length that book probably tries to cover too much ground, but it's interesting that they never had that conversation. (IIRC the author quotes Adele Goldberg in that chapter)
Yes. That's exactly how he came to that conclusion.
Alan Kay scanned the room, noted some of the the greatest minds and contributors of early personal computers, took one look at Steve Jobs and assessed he wasn't the smartest person in the room because he was a business person.
It had nothing to do with his youth, lack of accomplishments, insight, ability to articulate himself at that age, etc. etc. etc. It also had nothing to do with the caliber of people they were hiring at Xerox, many who came from SRI and who had helped realize Doug Engelbart's vision.
How do you presume to know all this? This is the kind of made up BS that pollutes any attempt to get at what is going on. What is your motivation for such pronouncements?
:) I'm sorry. I thought the sarcasm was dripping when I wrote this. It was my attempt to cut through the nonsense of his conclusion and to highlight that when Steve was visiting PARC, maybe the reason he wasn't "top gun" was because he was in the presence of some true giants at the time.
Also interesting is how Kay dismisses Job's objections as being motivated by needing to put someone down.
I can as easily see them being constructive usability criticisms: details that the engineers steeped in developing it missed, but concrete things that would stop actual customer adoption.
> Also interesting is how Kay dismisses Job's objections as being motivated by needing to put someone down.
You realize that's a thing, right? People do that on both a conscious and subconscious level. Some people actively play those manipulation games, especially creative sales people. Some people merely benefit from that tactic without fully appreciating that they're doing it.
I wasn't there, so I can't weigh in. It could be that Kay was projecting, and it could be that Kay is a perceptive person and was merely recognizing a young cocky kid using an old power tactic.
You folks are missing some easily found and verified knowledge. For example, I knew Steve very well after this while I was Chief Scientist at Atari, and he hired me as an Apple Fellow in 1984. I was the person who took Steve to the group in Marin County who became Pixar. Steve used to send me "things" (like the iPad before it came out) for my opinion.
I'm simply "reporting Steve".
I realize that. Thanks for the condescension. But, you realize that people aren't motivated by just one thing, right? Even if they are business people, right?
Anyway, knowing what we know about Job's obsession with getting things right (as he saw it), you do think that his sniping at specific look and feel issues was just to put the engineers down?
To me, it's a more cohesive picture if I interpret his actions as being motivated by obsession to UX/asking more of engineers ( I know these guys weren't working for him).
Hi -- making up coherent stories is not a good way to find out what is going on. In this case, there is a lot of background information that could help to create a more supported opinion. (Humans can't help having opinions but we should put the unsupported ones in limbo at the very least.)
> I realize that. Thanks for the condescension. But, you realize that people aren't motivated by just one thing, right? Even if they are business people, right?
I'm still not sure you do realize it. People are motivated by a lot of things, and sometimes people are willing to do dirty, shitty, manipulative tactics to get what they want.
One person said Jobs was as focused as a monk, but without the empathy. But that's one person, right?
> you do think that his sniping at specific look and feel issues was just to put the engineers down?
Funny you mention that. You know when he called up Bob Belleville from Xerox, he told him his work was shit and everything he had done was meaningless and that he should work for him. Do you think he was "obsessed with getting things right" and simply being critical, or does it sound like someone who is feeling out an engineer's low self-esteem much in the same way a pimp feels out a prospective ho?
You still don't think Jobs was above putting down the Xerox engineers to elevate himself and denigrate their own self-esteem?
He lied to Woz about money is his first business dealing and took credit for his work. He made sport of humiliating a prospective employees by asking if he was a virgin and then humiliating him in front of other people.
You may not realize it, but putting people down is a tactic actually works on some people. Some people have a capacity to insult people and make those people love them. I know, because I've worked with a number of these guys. They're usually in sales, and they're usually pretty good at it.
Jobs was a lot of things, and it could very easily argued he had an incredible capacity to be cruel, callous, petty and manipulative, especially in his younger days. I'm sure he could be a great guy too, but it's clear he also had a capacity to be a giant flaming asshole.
It sounds like you tend to give people the benefit of the doubt. That's not a bad thing, but sometimes you have to recognize that some people simply don't mind manipulating people. Does that round out your cohesive picture?
> But, as you said, neither of us were there.
Sure, but you're the only one who's discounting the account of the person who was there just because it doesn't fit your cohesive picture.
We weren't "engineers" at Parc, but a combination of many talents (check out the actual histories of the place -- why waste time speculating when there is much you could learn?)
I went with the "engineers" label in response to the "business people" label by parent. I like neither when ascribing intents to actions.
Anyway, I like to give benefit of doubt when attributing intent to people's actions. As evidenced by the responses, seems like I'm off the mark here. Over and out :)
First, it’s worth understanding that many people (perhaps even a thousand or more) had seen live demos of the Alto and Smalltalk before Steve. This is because Steve showed up in 1979, and the Alto and Smalltalk had been running for 6 years (starting in the first half of 1973), and we were a relatively open lab for visiting colleagues and other interested people (like Herbie Hancock and Al Gore).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEz08IlcNMg