[yyyppp]

That's such a disgruntled take. Having a "smart friend" was merely a nice advantage.

Jobs' strength was in how he saw the world. His intuition, ability to imagine the future, inspire others and execute on that vision. Marketing and communications skills then almost felt like a by-product of such rare personality traits. I suggest reading "Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products" or any interviews with Jony where he talks about the interactions they had with Steve.

The level of product and design thinking Steve and Jony had is so outside of some measurable 'data' that engineers often tend to underestimate its importance.

[stocknoob]

It makes me chuckle when people dismiss the industry-defining success of Apple as just marketing.

Gee, why don’t their competitors try that?

[dragonwriter]

It makes me chuckle when people dismiss the industry-defining success of Apple marketing.

[rowanG077]

It's not like marketing like Apple is easy. They build a brand over decades. You can't "just" copy that. Apples brand is absolutely the most valuable thing Apple has.

[stocknoob]

Agreed; that brand was reinforced by a stream of (generally) high-quality products.

[throwanem]

Wasn't Ive also the genius behind the Touch Bar, the butterfly keyboard, and USB-C ports for everything because of their beautiful symmetry? If we're talking about swings and misses, we should talk about those, too.

[sangnoir]

...and many generations of aesthetically pleasing but unusable mice, and the thermally-limited trash can Mac Pro.

[JKCalhoun]

Oh, I agree. Having a "smart friend" though is why we have Apple and not who-knows-what.

I was actually trying to make the point that he was exactly positioned because of his personality to find some level of greatness. That that greatness would end up being AAPL is, I claim, the "smart friend".

Jobs, for one, knew better to have smart friends, knew also how to push smart friends to do big things.

I am in no way trying to take Jobs down a notch.