Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Jamie H]

Steve Jobs was great at polishing products and marketing/'branding' his products to be extremely desirable regardless of its performance next to another that performed every bit as good.

Yeah that sums it up. His genius was really in marketing, not in inventing.

[Jamie H]

Steve Jobs was great at polishing products and marketing/'branding' his products to be extremely desirable regardless of its performance next to another that performed every bit as good.

Yeah that sums it up. His genius was really in marketing, not in inventing.

That being said, Edison is accused of stealing a lot of his ideas from Nikola Tesla. For example, it is said that Tesla invented AC power, which is the way that all power gets to your house. The DC power Edison used could only travel about a mile and was very dangerous to use.

Most times the history books fail to get the whole story. Those who promote themselves the best usually end up with all the credit.

[WM Wolverine]

He was great at innovation too, someone at Apple made Jobs & Apple billions with the iphone (which was revolutionary), which imo is mostly just a combination of various technologies (phone, web browser/computer, GPS, digital media player, PDA, portable gaming device) in one package.

[whodean]

Steve Jobs personally held 313 patents, far and away more than any other CEO, he was a revolutionary marketing AND inventive genius.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/26/technology/apple-patents-show-steve-jobss-attention-to-design.html?_r=1

Mr. Jobs appears as the principal inventor or as one inventor among several on 313 Apple patents. Most are design patents that cover the look and feel of a product, rather than utility patents, which may cover a technical innovation like a software algorithm or computer chip.

Still, the number of patents is far larger than those granted to most other technology company chiefs, including those whose technical breakthroughs and inventions were instrumental to their companies’ success. Only nine Microsoft patents carry the name of Bill Gates, a co-founder of the company who was its chief executive for more than two decades before stepping down in 2000. And little more than a dozen Google patents carry the names of the co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, according to a search of the United States Patent and Trademark Office Web site.

“That’s Steve,” said Mitchell Kapor, a veteran Silicon Valley technologist and investor who founded the Lotus Development Corporation in 1982. “He has an eye and a genius for design that cuts across disciplines. He was never formally schooled, but he has always had that sensibility.”

[Jamie H]

Hello, the guy in charge can force his name to be added to any patent his company creates, especially if he is an egomaniac.

Patents mean nothing. Hell even I have my name on a tech patent. They hand those things out like candy. Of course, my bosses name is on the patent too even though he had nothing to do with it. Like I said, the guy in charge can put his name on anything.

[whodean]

Apple holds thousands of patents, your logic doesn't hold water.

Do you have any proof or is it just blind irrationality? Jobs was a genius.

[Jamie H]

A genius at getting people to grossly overpay for mediocre stuff that looked pretty, yes. Like I said, the guy was a master of marketing. Jobs was style over substance, and his stuff appealed to people who are always looking to prove to everyone else how much "better" they are. Same people who think having a crazy-expensive car makes you awesome. If you view your technology devices as status symbols, then yeah, you probably think Jobs is a genius. If you actually use them to get large amounts of work done (and aren't in graphical design) then you probably feel a bit differently.

There was a day when Apple was actually about having the best tech (back in the 80's), but those days ended a long long time ago. Jobs figured out that he didn't need to create the best tech, and actually, doing so was too costly and difficult. He figured out it was much easier to convince people that they were inferior if they didn't own HIS tech, regardless of how good/bad/mediocre it was.

[Jamie H]

You're also talking about a man who fathered a child and then spent the next two years in court denying paternity (including signing a sworn statement that he was unable to father children), letting his child spend the entire time on welfare despite his millions. All to avoid paying child support.

The man was a first-class asshole.

[Dr. Strangelove]

The article does mention that the vast majority of patents Steve Jobs held were design patents, rather than technology patents. Meaning, he owned the patent on how things looked. I would guess most of his tech patents were from the 80's, not his second stint at Apple.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/07/technology/steve-jobs-defended-his-work-with-a-barbed-tongue.html

[whodean]

It is telling that Jamie has to resort to personal attacks instead of fact.

Jobs was a genius.

Cancer sucks.

[Rocky Bleier]

Where did he ignore fact?

[whodean]

I asked him "Do you have any proof or is it just blind irrationality?" and he posted about Jobs being a bad daddy.

I don't care if he was a "good person", my statement was that he was a genius...he was and the world is a much different, much better place today for him.

I'm not going to go any further into this, but Jamie has blind hated for all things Apple.

[Dr. Strangelove]

The world is a better place thanks to Steve Jobs in the same sense that the world's a better place thanks to John D. Rockefeller.

The guy brought you cool gadgets and phones with shiny buttons. People act like he cured cancer fer crissakes.

[Hannibal]

Jobs might have been a complete asshole (I've heard that from more people than Jamie), but that's just the way life is. Sometimes, successful businessmen are just miserable human beings.

A genius at getting people to grossly overpay for mediocre stuff that looked pretty, yes. Like I said, the guy was a master of marketing. Jobs was style over substance, and his stuff appealed to people who are always looking to prove to everyone else how much "better" they are. Same people who think having a crazy-expensive car makes you awesome. If you view your technology devices as status symbols, then yeah, you probably think Jobs is a genius. If you actually use them to get large amounts of work done (and aren't in graphical design) then you probably feel a bit differently.

Unfortunately, that pretty much defines most of technology for the past decade. I mean -- look at this last generation of video gaming. The most successful console (the Wii) is a total piece of shit that is basically 2001 technology married with the Eye Toy. The most impactful "advancements" in video gaming the past six years are shitty motion controls, achievement [html][/html]points, and insanely overpriced ripoff downloadable content.

[Dr. Strangelove]

It seems like Jobs' main contribution to humanity was taking several pre-existing technologies and combining them into one gadget that could do it all. I don't see how that's genius and revolutionary on the order of an Edison. And as noted, Edison was ruthless about putting down the competition. Gates has been labeled as ruthless but for whatever reason, Jobs escapes that tag.

He was a brilliant marketer and knew how to pitch an endless parade of slight upgrades and modifications and could convince you that you were a failure as a person if you got left behind. And a cultish following ate up every word he spoke.