[ChrisRR]

It always makes me sad that Wozniak, the real brains behind the operation get completely ignored in favour of Jobs who was just a salesman.

Similarly to Dennis Ritchie who worked on the C programming language and Unix, and dies a week after Jobs gets completely ignored and yet arguably has had more impact than someone who's just known for arguing about tech not being pretty enough

[jimbokun]

Not as famous as Jobs, but still well known and probably more beloved. Woz is kind of a living patron saint of engineers.

> someone who's just known for arguing about tech not being pretty enough

If you think that's all Jobs did, I don't know what to tell you.

He is in the running for most successful businessman in history.

[icedchai]

Young folks probably don't remember how close Apple was to dying in the late 90's. It was bad. Jobs is directly responsible for that huge turnaround.

[jeffalyanak]

Jony Ives and others like him saved Apple, not Jobs. Jobs was still making silly decisions that his team had to subvert or redirect in order to build the new, successful era of Apple.

[jimbokun]

Who identified Ive's importance and promoted him to such a key role in the company?

[danmg]

Jobs created the initial problem by undermining the Apple 2 GS.

[bitwize]

Jobs had a long-term vision in the future of Apple as a consumer electronics company, as opposed to a techie company. The explosive growth of Apple in the 2000s and 2010s would never have happened if Apple hadn't matured out of being the company that made the Apple II line.

[icedchai]

They explored some of this in the 90's with the Newton, Pippin, Macintosh TV, etc. None of that stuff was a resounding success. It was all too early.

[danmg]

Jobs is the one who killed the Newton when he returned.

Apple could have launched in iPhone like product years ahead of when they did if they kept that branch of the company afloat. That would have been a real 'visionary' move. Instead, they were forced to differentiate themselves in a crowded marketplace by emphasizing little design flourishes and style.

Job's only real contribution is managing to gaslight (a.k.a, his "reality distortion field") the entire industry into thinking he had any real insight or ability beyond that of a typical middle manager with a cluster-b personality disorder.

[danmg]

Computer companies getting into consumer electronics is a result of average consumers wanting devices that behave more like and interact with computers. It's not the result of some messianic insight that no other company had.

We can't speculate on what a Apple Prime would have done without Jobs. But we do know that his single mindedness about making arbitrary changes cost them several years in the 80s and led to the slump in to the 90s.

[icedchai]

I wanted a IIgs when I was younger, until someone told me about the Amiga. I also looked at the Atari ST. They were both cheaper and much more powerful. (I went with the Amiga. )

[danmg]

It was intentionally neutered so as to not complete with their "Flagship".

[icedchai]

You are right. The CPU speed was lame. They also dragged their feet giving the IIgs a decent OS. If they released a souped up IIgs (Apple IIx or whatever) back in 1984, do you think the Mac would even exist?

[guenthert]

If that is true, then I appreciate him more as business man and leader. The 2 GS was late to the game and a dead-end. In '83 us geeks would have killed for that machine, but in '87 after Atari ST and Amiga were released two years prior?

[danmg]

It was a dead end because it was intentionally made to be an inferior product.

[gota]

I recall folks around then asking me if 'we' (as in, computer science students) were having any kind of review of Jobs' contributions to the field in his memory

They were fans, so not pleased when I told them one could know every single thing there is to know about CS and never hear his name once

I'm not demeaning his achievements, but the general cultural view of Steve Jobs is of a technical and scientific genius that he was very likely not. Who knows? He might have been above average, even gifted, but there is not much to show for it

[englishrookie]

In Civilization 5, Steve Jobs was a "Great Merchant". This sparked some debate too, at the time. The game also had "Great Scientist", "Great Artist", "Great Engineer", and "Great Prophet". Given his huge following, I guess the latter would have been an appropriate category too.

[alexgmcm]

I agree that Jobs is overhyped, but his contributions via NeXT were pretty considerable, no?

I mean, the vision was for a powerful yet affordable computer for use in Higher Education. This seems like quite a noble goal given the technological limitations at the time.

[icedchai]

NeXT software was wonderful.

The hardware? Not so much. The other workstation vendors of the era (Sun, SGI, HP, DEC...) ran rings around NeXT. The 680x0 platform NeXT chose was approaching obsolescence by the early 90's.

[AgloeDreams]

I always felt the Next platform limitations is why he was paranoid about CPU architecture at Apple.

[langitbiru]

So sometimes I'm confused. Is Jobs a salesman or a product guy? We know the famous rant from Jobs about salesmen / marketing people ruining companies. Some people even refer Jobs as the great marketing guy.

[EricE]

Jobs was all of that and more. Modern personal computing wouldn't exist without his insistence at making "Computers for the rest of us". There were many quite pissed at Apple for selling pre-assembled, ready to use computers. It was thought that unless you could assemble your machine you didn't deserve it.

Heck you see a lot of that attitude today in many open source projects.

And that's just one way he pushed modern computing into what it is today. Did he perform every detail himself? Nope - that would be absurd. But he took things that until that time no one else correlated, and he correlated and pushed for them. Often with amazing presence. And it wasn't willy-nilly, either.

I mean just look at the way he handled this OpenDoc troll:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF-tKLISfPE

How many can compose themselves and deliver that kind of a response that quickly? Not many.

So yeah, those who try to dismiss Jobs as just a marketing or product guy are only displaying their profound ignorance. I don't think Jobs was perfect - far from it. But he certainly did make a dent in the universe, and many others too - perhaps it is a good thing that people like Jobs are pretty rare but there is no doubt we would all be a lot poorer if he hadn't existed.

[sukilot]

Do you think Woz (the real brains behind the operation) thinks Jobs was just a salesman?

[carldaddy]

Jobs and Wozniak were both masters of their own domain.

[EricE]

Exactly. Like many great teams they complemented each other beautifully - Apple would not have started without both of them bringing their strengths and playing them off each other.

Life is NOT a zero sum game.

Freaking cancel culture - no one is willing to expend any effort on nuance or deep thought. It's either yes/no, good/bad - zero room for discussions of the space between. How boring.

[techslave]

just? sales is the more important part of a for profit company you know.