Steve Jobs Biography

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

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it_consultant

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.

I don't think you get the point, everyone credits Jobs for inventing things that he didn't. Not even close, his patents are almost a joke. I won't say he wasn't a good business man or didn't see the potential for digital music and the web a way no one else did. I will say we hold him a bit too high. I was bothered by this before he died, it has just gotten a lot worse since then.

Take Amazon.com, they were the reason why Borders went out of business is because of Amazon. B&N now sells more electronic books than traditional books because of Amazon. Best Buy has seen a huge part of its market eaten up by Amazon. How many companies use Amazon as a back end of their e-commerce operations? How many servers are hosted in Amazon's cloud? Jeff Bezos, ever heard of him? Amazon is easily as important to the tech revolution as Apple is and we don't kiss Jeff Bezos' like we do to Steve Jobs.

Amazon, the Company That Ate the World - Businessweek

I have a general axe to grind with our culture in this regard anyway. We hero worship Jobs and ignore the actual inventor the iPod. It should be the other way around. We have gotten to the point where we are worshiping the pitch man instead of the men who actually did it.

SteveLord

Follow up book "How Steve Jobs revolutionized the biography industry!"

chrisone

Or "Why I dislike Steve Jobs Legacy"

written by your average joe lol

MrRyte

it_consultant wrote: »

I have a general axe to grind with our culture in this regard anyway. We hero worship Jobs and ignore the actual inventor the iPod. It should be the other way around. We have gotten to the point where we are worshiping the pitch man instead of the men who actually did it.

I agree that the person who invented the iPod should be given more credit. But I doubt that the iPod would have been such a hit without Jobs' ability to take it from concept to market. As for the top man getting all the praise; that's how it's always been. We give credit to the CEO, chairman, President or some high-ranking official for the labors of their subordinates. But we also deride the same person if things don't go well also (I'm willing to bet that Jobs has had more than his share of mockery for some of Apple's missteps)

chrisone

I dont know the full story yet, but i doubt one guy invented the ipod "technically speaking" When you say such a thing you are insinuating one person designed the case, the glass, the communication equipment, the sound equipment, the electronic board, the material in plastics, etc etc. We all know separate companies with teams of people provided many components to the device. It was Steve Jobs who had a dream and said, "you know what i think Apple should build an iPod player" or "I feel an iPAD tablet can sell and there is a market for it"

Jobs was the man with a dream to foresee that such devices exists. You can get almost anyone to do the technical work, that's the easy part.

tpatt100

chrisone wrote: »

Or "Why I dislike Steve Jobs Legacy"

written by your average joe lol

Or "Hating Micro$oft is so 90's Apple is where its at".

Forsaken_GA

it_consultant wrote: »

I don't think you get the point, everyone credits Jobs for inventing things that he didn't.

No, I get your point. I simply disagree with it. There is a difference.

Steve had the idea of what an mp3 player should be like. And he horsewhipped his company into making it. And it took off like a rocket. Nothing else from the time period was even remotely close to what the ipod and itunes were capable of. Keep in mind the ipod wasn't the entirety of it. The apple music store, and being able to buy music cheaply and get it onto a portable device easily was a big freaking deal ten years ago. We take that kind of thing for granted now, and you can largely thank Apple for that.

Same thing with the iPhone. We have smartphones, and RIM rules the market... and then Jobs horsewhips Apple into his vision of what a smartphone should be like, and it's the most expensive phone in the world. He's smart enough to get a major carrier to subsidize it, which not only defrays the cost, but virtually guarantees it gets a serious marketing push from both ends, since the major carrier now has a significant interest in seeing this product succeed. And then add in the concept of an App Store, an all in one clearing house where people can go to find things, essentially iTunes for apps. Then what happens? Everyone else follows suit.

Then we get the same thing all over again with the iPad. For years no one made any kind of serious push into tablet computing. Then Apple brings out the iPad. Once again, we have people lined up, record sales and product shortages for the first few months, and the industry starts to follow suit with folks trying to play catch up to Apple.

So I don't really care if Steve 'invented' the entirety of the device itself, he most certainly invented the product, and invented an entire lifestyle surrounding the product. If you can't respect that, you're not even close to being objective. You're certainly entitled to your opinion that we hold him too high, and I agree that there are some elements of hero worship involved, but he really did change the face of our digital lives. Whether you use Apple products or not, I guarantee you that the products you use have been influenced by Apple in one form or another. Steve's reach was indeed long.

Take Amazon.com, they were the reason why Borders went out of business is because of Amazon. B&N now sells more electronic books than traditional books because of Amazon. Best Buy has seen a huge part of its market eaten up by Amazon. How many companies use Amazon as a back end of their e-commerce operations? How many servers are hosted in Amazon's cloud? Jeff Bezos, ever heard of him? Amazon is easily as important to the tech revolution as Apple is and we don't kiss Jeff Bezos' like we do to Steve Jobs.

Totally separate ball game, but I agree with you, Bezos deserves alot of credit. He accomplished alot of what Steve did. The Kindle was a bold, bold invention when it was first unveiled, and it had it's own apple-cult like following as well. EC2 is also another bold initiative, and is doing to web hosting and colo providers what amazons book store did to brick and mortars.

The difference is that alot of what Bezos does is not as in the public eye as Apple. Amazon is just another web site to buy stuff off of. You don't really think about it unless you're going to buy something. The general public at large doesn't give a rat ass about cloud providers, they're not into that technical stuff.

Apple products? Every day thing. So while the CEO of XYZ Tech might know what Amazon EC2 is for, the local Waffle House cook probably doesn't have a clue.

I can guarantee you that they both know what an iPhone is, though.

Bezos is just as revolutionary in his industry as Jobs was in his, but you have to consider the average audience. And to add insult to injury, I have to wonder how many of those Amazon customers are reading Kindle eBooks they bough from Amazon on their iPad's

tpatt100

You know with all this talk of an "Apple TV" I wonder if the internet will explode with nerd rage cries of "Apple didn't invent the TV"

mattlee09

tpatt100 wrote: »

You know with all this talk of an "Apple TV" I wonder if the internet will explode with nerd rage cries of "Apple didn't invent the TV"

Here's to reinventing the TV. At least the experience of "consuming content through a screen". I like how devices and mediums aren't so black and white anymore. If Apple plans to do with a TV what they did with iPod/iPhone/iTunes...I can't imagine what we'll see in the next few years.

Forsaken_GA

mattlee09 wrote: »

Here's to reinventing the TV. At least the experience of "consuming content through a screen". I like how devices and mediums aren't so black and white anymore. If Apple plans to do with a TV what they did with iPod/iPhone/iTunes...I can't imagine what we'll see in the next few years.

I don't know if they'll go into that market. The first incarnation of Apple TV wasn't that great. It was basically just a box that had some of your itunes stuff on it and played it back on the TV. The product was so heavily tied to itunes that it wasn't quite as useful unless you liked spending alot of money.

The 2nd gen took the hard drive away, and it's basically just an aggregation point for getting media from your other devices onto a tv screen. Cool in some cases, but still limited in application.

If Apple can get the manufacturers to buy into AirPlay licensing widespread, *that* will be some cool crap. Pulling up a youtube video on my iphone and then pushing it to any tv I want would be pretty sweet.