Steve Jobs Biography

chrisone

This book came out today, did anyone buy it?

I just bought it off amazon. With shipping it came out to $21.87 Not bad for 600+ pages.

http://www.amazon.com/Steve-Jobs-Walter-Isaacson/dp/1451648537/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1319519074&sr=8-1

UnixGuy

I thought of buying it, but you know what ? I read (and still) reading enough Steve job on linked in and on some other websites, I'm not interested anymore...

jibbajabba

Got the Audiobook .. but I am already bored of the hype without even starting listening ...

Everyone

Nope, won't buy it either. In a few years if I happen to see it at the local Public Library, I may get it from the Library.

I did watch the 60 minutes special on Sunday though, came across it by accident. It was pretty interesting.

it_consultant

I am much more interested in the brilliant engineer who came up with the iPod (it wasn't Jobs), the Xerox geniuses that developed the mouse, the guy(s) who invented the CCD sensor, whoever at Microsoft developed MS-CHAPv2, etc. We are celebrating a man who didn't actually invent or engineer anything. Tell me about the folks who developed ethernet signaling for heaven's sake.

mattlee09

chrisone wrote: »

This book came out today, did anyone buy it?

I just bought it off amazon. With shipping it came out to $21.87 Not bad for 600+ pages.
http://www.amazon.com/Steve-Jobs-Walter-Isaacson/dp/1451648537/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1319519074&sr=8-1

Yikes! Dude, Prime is soooo worth it, lol.

I pre-ordered late on Saturday - got a shipping notification yesterday and should be here Wednesday. I'm pretty pumped.

wrwarwick

it_consultant wrote: »

I am much more interested in the brilliant engineer who came up with the iPod (it wasn't Jobs), the Xerox geniuses that developed the mouse, the guy(s) who invented the CCD sensor, whoever at Microsoft developed MS-CHAPv2, etc. We are celebrating a man who didn't actually invent or engineer anything. Tell me about the folks who developed ethernet signaling for heaven's sake.

I agree with this. Jobs was more of a masterful Sales man, imo. I think he was great for the industry but he didn't reinvent the wheel or anything.

I really dislike some of the comments that he apparently made about how Android stole everything from iOS. Everyone "borrows" from everyone; I guess the Apple "fanboy," "Jobs is God," attitude is just really annoying.

qcomer

I agree with both of you. I rather hear about someone who did something.The argument about android stealing is completely invalid sticking.g point. Notification bar? Android had it first.They all take ideas from another. It doesn't matter who did it first.

UnixGuy

But he has 313 Patents, but it seems he was involved more in the design....

Quoting the article:

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.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/26/technology/apple-patents-show-steve-jobss-attention-to-design.html?_r=2

it_consultant

Yeah, his patents for the iPad and iPhone are very vague. They state things like "7 inch tablet computing device" as opposed to how the device was actually manufactured or any of the actual technology that is found in the devices. I am sure, with some digging, you can find the technical patents that apple employees hold.

UnixGuy

I really thought that he was the brains behind the i(pod/phone/pad)...I'm surprised. Wow, some fake hype around this guy....Did he actually do anything technical at all ?

it_consultant wrote: »

Yeah, his patents for the iPad and iPhone are very vague. They state things like "7 inch tablet computing device" as opposed to how the device was actually manufactured or any of the actual technology that is found in the devices. I am sure, with some digging, you can find the technical patents that apple employees hold.

it_consultant

UnixGuy wrote: »

I really thought that he was the brains behind the i(pod/phone/pad)...I'm surprised. Wow, some fake hype around this guy....Did he actually do anything technical at all ?

No, not really. He never has, as far as I can tell. I read a story a while back about the brain behind the iPod, you know, the thing that rescued apple from obscurity. Essentially Jobs bought the patent and technology and hired the guy to develop it for Apple. This link is old but relevant.

History of the iPod

UnixGuy

wow, I didn't know that ! I reckon many people like me think that Steve Jobs was the brain behind it.

+rep for the info!

it_consultant wrote: »

No, not really. He never has, as far as I can tell. I read a story a while back about the brain behind the iPod, you know, the thing that rescued apple from obscurity. Essentially Jobs bought the patent and technology and hired the guy to develop it for Apple. This link is old but relevant.

History of the iPod

chrisone

He was the man with the vision and an inspiration. That is why i ordered the book, not to read up on how he or anyone else designed the IPAD, IPOD, and any other device. That would be boring....

effekted

it_consultant wrote: »

I am much more interested in the brilliant engineer who came up with the iPod (it wasn't Jobs), the Xerox geniuses that developed the mouse, the guy(s) who invented the CCD sensor, whoever at Microsoft developed MS-CHAPv2, etc. We are celebrating a man who didn't actually invent or engineer anything. Tell me about the folks who developed ethernet signaling for heaven's sake.

I remember seeing an article on Digg about how there were no stories or headlines regarding Dennis Ritchie's death but no matter where you looked you saw a story on Steve Job's death. Yes, Steve was superb with his sales pitches and vision for technology but without Dennis Ritchie there's no telling how technology (including Apple) would look.

Dennis Ritchie, Co-creator of C and Unix, Dies - Technology Review for people who do not know who Dennis Ritchie is.

wrwarwick

effekted wrote: »

I remember seeing an article on Digg about how there were no stories or headlines regarding Dennis Ritchie's death but no matter where you looked you saw a story on Steve Job's death. Yes, Steve was superb with his sales pitches and vision for technology but without Dennis Ritchie there's no telling how technology (including Apple) would look.

Dennis Ritchie, Co-creator of C and Unix, Dies - Technology Review for people who do not know who Dennis Ritchie is.

I said the same thing when I heard that Dennis Ritchie had died. It could very easily be argued that he had a much greater impact on technology than Jobs. It was sad - I learned of the death on a small article on HuffPo. I guess that's what happens when you attain the status that Jobs did.

Forsaken_GA

UnixGuy wrote: »

I really thought that he was the brains behind the i(pod/phone/pad)...I'm surprised. Wow, some fake hype around this guy....Did he actually do anything technical at all ?

Don't sell him short. He may not have designed individual circuits, or written any code, but he was a driving force. Being able to bring an idea to market and sell it takes a skilled individual. Putting together a product people want to buy is not easy. This kind of stuff doesn't happen by accident. Steve's particular gift was in designing and bringing to market products that people didn't know they wanted until they existed.

If you think being a taskmaster who has exacting standards is not a good thing when it comes to product development, I suspect you haven't worked in enough environments where homebrew products are made and used. If our devs, or their managers, had an iota of the drive and perfectionist tendancies that Jobs had, we wouldn't greet the announcement of new product lines or new software releases with agonized groans.

UnixGuy

No I'm not under selling, I just thought he was the technical inventor of those devices.

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

Don't sell him short. He may not have designed individual circuits, or written any code, but he was a driving force. Being able to bring an idea to market and sell it takes a skilled individual. Putting together a product people want to buy is not easy. This kind of stuff doesn't happen by accident. Steve's particular gift was in designing and bringing to market products that people didn't know they wanted until they existed.

If you think being a taskmaster who has exacting standards is not a good thing when it comes to product development, I suspect you haven't worked in enough environments where homebrew products are made and used. If our devs, or their managers, had an iota of the drive and perfectionist tendancies that Jobs had, we wouldn't greet the announcement of new product lines or new software releases with agonized groans.

UnixGuy

I agree, but this is life. The average Joe doesn't know what C/UNIX is, but they know the iphone and they like it.

effekted wrote: »

I remember seeing an article on Digg about how there were no stories or headlines regarding Dennis Ritchie's death but no matter where you looked you saw a story on Steve Job's death. Yes, Steve was superb with his sales pitches and vision for technology but without Dennis Ritchie there's no telling how technology (including Apple) would look.

Dennis Ritchie, Co-creator of C and Unix, Dies - Technology Review for people who do not know who Dennis Ritchie is.

TheShadow

UnixGuy wrote: »

I agree, but this is life. The average Joe doesn't know what C/UNIX is, but they know the iphone and they like it.

Add John McCarthy to the list of people that classically trained computer science majors remember but most say "who dat". We owe AI to him and the roots of Apples new 4s software gimmick.

Creator Of Lisp, John McCarthy, Dead At 84 | TechCrunch

tpatt100

it_consultant wrote: »

No, not really. He never has, as far as I can tell. I read a story a while back about the brain behind the iPod, you know, the thing that rescued apple from obscurity. Essentially Jobs bought the patent and technology and hired the guy to develop it for Apple. This link is old but relevant.

History of the iPod

And smart people are smart enough to know which people to surround himself with. People keep forgetting about that. Bill Gates might have dropped out of college but he was smart enough to surround himself with plenty of people with the know how to create ideas he might have had.

You can have a bunch of brilliant engineers all creating "stuff" but engineers still rely on somebody to coordinte the efforts to create something. Look at how many projects sit out there on the internet but nobody hears about it?

Turgon

Jobs made his mark not only on the industry but also people and careers. He was a demanding ass to work for by some accounts.

it_consultant

tpatt100 wrote: »

And smart people are smart enough to know which people to surround himself with. People keep forgetting about that. Bill Gates might have dropped out of college but he was smart enough to surround himself with plenty of people with the know how to create ideas he might have had.

You can have a bunch of brilliant engineers all creating "stuff" but engineers still rely on somebody to coordinte the efforts to create something. Look at how many projects sit out there on the internet but nobody hears about it?

People PERSONALLY credit him with these inventions. Guess what, it wasn't him. All of the breakthrough technologies he either bought or hired away. Then he told people that he wouldn't accept cheap manufacturing. I am not going to kick the man for being a great business man, but we have a habit of worshiping perceived capability as opposed to real achievement. Bill Gates put a PC on every desktop AND was a programmer. Hell, Windows, UNIX, and Linux are the only kernels of note in wide use. Notice who isn't in that list...Apple. They use Unix. I can promise you when Billy dies he won't be worshiped like Steve Jobs was/is.

It goes all the way back to the first Apple, which was not a Jobs invention, it was a Wozniak invention. I give him credit for being a great business man and seeing the internet based music and video business before anyone else did. I do not give him credit for being an engineering genius.

tpatt100

it_consultant wrote: »

People PERSONALLY credit him with these inventions. Guess what, it wasn't him. All of the breakthrough technologies he either bought or hired away. Then he told people that he wouldn't accept cheap manufacturing. I am not going to kick the man for being a great business man, but we have a habit of worshiping perceived capability as opposed to real achievement. Bill Gates put a PC on every desktop AND was a programmer. Hell, Windows, UNIX, and Linux are the only kernels of note in wide use. Notice who isn't in that list...Apple. They use Unix. I can promise you when Billy dies he won't be worshiped like Steve Jobs was/is.

It goes all the way back to the first Apple, which was not a Jobs invention, it was a Wozniak invention. I give him credit for being a great business man and seeing the internet based music and video business before anyone else did. I do not give him credit for being an engineering genius.

huh? Bill Gates I thought last code he ever worked on was for a graphing calculator? People mistakenly giving Jobs credit is a mistake but not the fault of Steve Jobs. Bill Gates BOUGHT the version of DOS that IBM used, he didnt create it. Apple put computers into homes and classrooms back when IBM said home computers were pointless, Bill Gates made them more affordable.

Bill Gates is not without fault, he made very, very anti competitive business decisions early on like Apple has been accused of doing. I mean the guy was testifying in front of Congress back in the Windows 9x days.

Steve Jobs was a tech at Atari, I am sure like Bill had more business sense than technical sense but I see no fault with that.

it_consultant

tpatt100 wrote: »

huh? Bill Gates I thought last code he ever worked on was for a graphing calculator? People mistakenly giving Jobs credit is a mistake but not the fault of Steve Jobs. Bill Gates BOUGHT the version of DOS that IBM used, he didnt create it. Apple put computers into homes and classrooms back when IBM said home computers were pointless, Bill Gates made them more affordable.

Bill Gates is not without fault, he made very, very anti competitive business decisions early on like Apple has been accused of doing. I mean the guy was testifying in front of Congress back in the Windows 9x days.

Steve Jobs was a tech at Atari, I am sure like Bill had more business sense than technical sense but I see no fault with that.

Bill Gates was and is, at his heart, a programmer. Jobs wasn't. Bill Gates did buy DOS but he made substantial revisions AND he had created an OS in MS' early days which went into kit and hobbyist computers. It is true, though, that by the time that MS created their own kernel he was way out of the programming and engineering loop.

The reality, as I see it, is that among the big companies (Cisco, Xerox, Apple, Amazon, Google, etc) a select few have actually developed standards based protocols and seriously changed the engineering behind the computer and network. Microsoft is one of them, Apple, best I can tell, isn't. They have taken what everyone else was already doing and put a really nice skin on it and nice software and charged an arm and a leg for them. Classic bandwagon economics.

We credit Jobs with all of these "inventions" which he didn't actually invent. He has become such an icon and apple fanboys are so blinded by their love of the product that we gloss over the fact that in a lot of ways Jobs was a terrible person AND not deserving of half the credit we give him. Bill Gates literally destroyed the competition, that is either anti-competitive or sound business practice depending on what side you are on. He also has give huge sums of money through his charity for things such as anti-malaria treatment and awareness and science/math education for underprivileged youth. Yet Bill does not have legions of devoted fanboys...

mattlee09

it_consultant wrote: »

We credit Jobs with all of these "inventions" which he didn't actually invent.

The mainstream public might, but that's what you get with consumerism and someone being the face of a company.

Personally, I give him little credit for those things specifically. The design, the manufacturing, maybe not even the ideas. But, as a product manager and leader, as a portrait of success, I idolize him.

I understand your frustration "blinded by their love of the product", but...that's what made him an icon. Presidents and Nobel Prize winners aren't necessarily saints either.

Forsaken_GA

it_consultant wrote: »

People PERSONALLY credit him with these inventions. Guess what, it wasn't him.

I don't really think you can make that argument, just because he didn't personally design or manufacture the components. He saw the product, and either hired the people or bought the companies or the components to make the product a reality. While the folks who came up with the individual pieces certainly deserve their credit, so does the man who connected the dots to put those pieces together, and then create more than one world wide phenomenon in the process. It's not just about good business sense, it's also about vision and leadership. You can have the greatest idea in the world, but if you don't have the vision, leadership, and business acumen to actually bring it to market, then your idea is worthless.

chrisone

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

It's not just about good business sense, it's also about vision and leadership. You can have the greatest idea in the world, but if you don't have the vision, leadership, and business acumen to actually bring it to market, then your idea is worthless.

I think its the young ones that don't understand this concept. A lot of people are quick to have a negative comment about Steve and say "NOOOO NOOOO! he didnt make it himself! hes a fraud!"

MrRyte

it_consultant wrote: »

They have taken what everyone else was already doing and put a really nice skin on it and nice software and charged an arm and a leg for them. Classic bandwagon economics.

Wrong or right; it worked.

Sometimes it's not the product; it's the marketing and perception of the product that determines its success. The IPod is a textbook example. Other companies had/have small portable MP3 players but thanks to brainwashing-forgive me; I mean aggressive marketing by Apple the IPod became the "it" MP3 player to have. And the fact that some car companies offered IPad integration with their OEM stereos only added to the IPod's popularity.

Heck, even some of the recent Apple commercials give the impression that it's "cool" and "hip" to own a Mac compared to a Windows PC. So as you can see; perception is everything in business.

Turgon

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

I don't really think you can make that argument, just because he didn't personally design or manufacture the components. He saw the product, and either hired the people or bought the companies or the components to make the product a reality. While the folks who came up with the individual pieces certainly deserve their credit, so does the man who connected the dots to put those pieces together, and then create more than one world wide phenomenon in the process. It's not just about good business sense, it's also about vision and leadership. You can have the greatest idea in the world, but if you don't have the vision, leadership, and business acumen to actually bring it to market, then your idea is worthless.

The old adage that 'nothing happens until someone sells something' springs to mind. You can have the best engineer on the planet inventing a world beating technology, but unless you put someone on that task to do that, or find someone who can do that, or steal it, and take that to market, the invention either doesn't happen or withers on the vine.

tpatt100

MrRyte wrote: »

Wrong or right; it worked. Sometimes it's not the product; it's the marketing and perception of the product that determines its success. The IPod is a textbook example. Other companies had/have small portable MP3 players but thanks to brainwashing-forgive me; I mean aggressive marketing by Apple the IPod became the "it" MP3 player to have. And the fact that some car companies offered IPad integration with their OEM stereos only added to the IPod's popularity. Heck, even some of the recent Apple commercials give the impression that it's "cool" and "hip" to own a Mac compared to a Windows PC. So as you can see; perception is everything in business.

The ipod ten year anniversary was this week and Leo on Twit podcast was talking about it. they brought out MP3 players from the same year and not much was similar to the ipod. ITunes was what made music organizing playlist creation easier for the average user. Then the itunes store with the ability to buy single songs was a big hit.It was pretty smart of Apple back then. I remember how every pc maker tried making cute gum drop type iCases when the fruit iMacs came out. And smart phones was thought of as primarily Blackberry which many thought of as just a business email device.