Steve Jobs Remembered on 14th Anniversary of His Death (macrumors.com) 103
Steve Jobs died 14 years ago. But the blog Cult of Mac remembers that "Jobs himself was not sentimental."
When he left Apple in the mid-1980s, he didn't even clear out his office. That meant personal mementos like his first Apple stock certificate, which had hung on his office wall, got tossed in the trash. Shortly after returning to Apple in the late 1990s, he gave the company's historical archive to Stanford University Libraries. The stash included records that Apple management kept since the mid-1980s. The reason Apple handed over this historical treasure trove? Jobs didn't want the company to fixate on the past...
All of which goes some way to saying why it was so heartening that Steve Jobs' death received so much attention. He wasn't the richest technology CEO to die. But the reaction showed that his life — faults and all — meant a lot to a great number of people. Jobs helped create products people cared about, and in turn they cared about him.
The site Mac Rumors remembered Sunday that Jobs "died just one day after Apple unveiled the iPhone 4S and Siri." Six years later, Apple CEO Tim Cook reflected on Jobs while opening Apple's first-ever event at Steve Jobs Theater in 2017. "There is not a day that goes by that we don't think about him."
And Sunday Cook posted this remembrance of Steve Jobs. "Steve saw the future as a bright and boundless place, lit the path forward, and inspired us to follow.
"We miss you, my friend."
All of which goes some way to saying why it was so heartening that Steve Jobs' death received so much attention. He wasn't the richest technology CEO to die. But the reaction showed that his life — faults and all — meant a lot to a great number of people. Jobs helped create products people cared about, and in turn they cared about him.
The site Mac Rumors remembered Sunday that Jobs "died just one day after Apple unveiled the iPhone 4S and Siri." Six years later, Apple CEO Tim Cook reflected on Jobs while opening Apple's first-ever event at Steve Jobs Theater in 2017. "There is not a day that goes by that we don't think about him."
And Sunday Cook posted this remembrance of Steve Jobs. "Steve saw the future as a bright and boundless place, lit the path forward, and inspired us to follow.
"We miss you, my friend."
He might still be alive (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Jobs was just a salesman, a very good ruthless salesman, but just a salesman. Woz was the actual original technical brains behind the outfit. I get the feeling Jobs and science only had a nodding aquaintance.
Re: He might still be alive (Score:2)
Re:He might still be alive (Score:5, Interesting)
Ultimately, through failures, he learned how to be successful CEO. He turned around apple at the request of board member Woolard in '97 after the board canned Gil Amelio. He didn't want to go back to Apple as he was CEO of Pixar at that time. He killed the Newton to get engineering focus on better tech, namely iPad and iPhone, imac, MacBooks etc. The i prefix came about because Jobs was interim titled CEO at the time.
Jobs did a lot for the microcomputer world. he was not at easygoing person for sure but his internal struggles gave him the ability to focus intensely and drive himself and others to peak performance.
To the glib first poster - I hope you never have a terminal cancer diagnosis. Devastating news. Even educated, well-off people may turn away from traditional therapy because it can't keep up with rapidly advancing metastasis. Says a lot about the world that this is still true.
Re: (Score:1)
To the glib first poster - I hope you never have a terminal cancer diagnosis. Devastating news. Even educated, well-off people may turn away from traditional therapy because it can't keep up with rapidly advancing metastasis. Says a lot about the world that this is still true.
Could not agree with this more -- modern cancer treatment, chemo and radiotherapy, are really rough for a small survival rate. His last years were probably more comfortable then they could have been because he avoided these things, at the cost of shortening his life. Horrible to have to make that decision (eyes open or not...)
Re: (Score:2)
He didn't look "comfortable" given the state he looked before he died. And I have experience in my family of the wreck chemo can make of someone, it gave her an extra 5 years of life which she and us were very grateful for.
Re:He might still be alive (Score:5, Informative)
Jobs committed suicide-by-woo. He didn't "turn away from traditional therapy because it can't keep up with rapidly advancing metastasis", he turned away from treatment for a perfectly treatable form of cancer for nine months to try things like a vegan diet, acupuncture and herbal remedies, and that killed him.
Steve Jobs had islet cell neuroendocrine tumor. It's much less aggressive than normal pancreatic adenocarcinoma. The five-year survival rate is 95% with surgical intervention. Jobs was specifically told that he had one of the 5% of pancreatic cancers "that can be cured", and there was no evidence at the time of his diagnosis that it had spread. Jobs instead turned to woo. Eight months later, there was signs on CT scans that his cancer had grown and possibly spread, and then he finally underwent surgery, it was confirmed that there were now secondary tumors on his liver. His odds of a five-year survival at this point were now 23%. And he did not roll that 23%.
Jobs himself regretted his decision to delay conventional medical intervention.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
None of the woo "hurt him in terms of accelerating cancer". The problem is that he did that instead of actual treatment, and let a highly treatable cancer turn into a nearly-untreatable one.
Re: He might still be alive (Score:3)
Iâ(TM)m no fan of Steve Jobs the human being, or Steve Jobs the manager of people, but he did have a keen eye for ideas and designs. He identified how to succeed for NeXT, Pixar, and Apple. He was booted from Apple because he was getting in his own way, but by the time he returned he was in peak form. He was a horrible person and father, and no business success can change that, but credit where credit is due: he could see consumer needs and wants and get out in front of them.
Re: (Score:2)
he did have a keen eye for ideas and designs.
That's because it is his successes that are remembered, not his failures: it would seem that the iPhone went ahead despite his strenuous opposition.
Re: He might still be alive (Score:2)
If he had remained opposed to it and had not ultimately been won over it would never have existed. He listened to the team working on it and was clearly convinced at some point.
Re: (Score:1)
Edward Bernays and Joseph Goebbels would have worshiped at Jobs feet. The man was amazing, he managed to convince millions of people that a computer with inadequate hardware and a crippled operating system that could only run 10% of the programs available was not only worth triple the price but even make them sleep in lines overnight to buy it. Thank all the gods he never worked for the War Department.
Re: (Score:2)
Jobs was a businessman, but he had a tech background - he worked at Atari, for example.
Woz was the technical genius of the couple, but Jobs himself was just your average engineer.
What made Apple though, was the realization that Woz+Jobs was more than the sum of their parts. Jobs by himself wouldn't amount to much. Woz by himself as well - he'd probably still be at HP today if Jobs didn't convince him to leave and work on Apple.
It was Jobs' ability to see practical uses for the stuff Woz managed to build tha
Re:He might still be alive (Score:4, Interesting)
When you mentioned "third partner" who cashed out early, I thought for a minute you were going to be talking about Ronald Wayne [wikipedia.org] - what a life of bad decisions he made ;)
For those not familiar:
He got 10% of the original Apple stock (drew the first Apple Logo, made the partnership documents, wrote the Apple I manual, etc).
Twelve days later, he sold it for $800.
Okay, but he could still try to claim rights in court... nah, a year later he signed a contract with the company to forfeit any potential future claims against the company for $1500.
Okay, well, it's not like he had an opportunity to rethink... nah, Jobs and Wozniak spent two years trying to get him back, to no avail.
Okay, but he still had, like memorabilia he could hawk from the early days, like his signed contract. Nah, he sold that for $500 in 2016.
And that contract went on later to be sold for $1,6 million.
Okay, well, I'm sure he went on to do great things... nah, he ended up running a tiny postage stamp shop.
Which he ended up having to move into his Florida home because of repeated break-ins.
Which he then had to sell after an inside-job heist bankrupted him.
Imagining new realities... (Score:2)
There are a lot of social truths that are subject to manipulation, and I think the "reality distortion field" goes beyond dismissing Jobs as "just a salesman". Mostly I think you should sell what the customer needs, but there are times when the customers don't yet know what they need.
I think the jury is still out on whether we need smartphones as much as we think we do. But funny anecdote from my ongoing battle with Rakuten Mobile. I used to hope for RM's success, but now I'm reduced to hoping that "There's
Re: (Score:2)
He was a salesman. But one of the few who understood that selling a product begins in the design phase. Most new tech products are a solution in search of a person who believes they have a problem. Most of the Apple products during his time were designed with the person in mind so they immediately see the need when they see the product. That's good marketing.
Re: He might still be alive (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Both would have failed in the market if Jobs remained in charge. Jobs didn't even want the iPhone and refused to increase its size, either the iPhone or Jobs were going to die, fortunately it was Jobs.
But at least you dropped that stupid word like Doctorow wanted you to, right?
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I won't say it about the Mac but it definitely applies to the iPhone: it came pre-enshittified and Jobs was definitely personally responsible it. The iPhone was a terrible regression in the history of PCs, where we somehow went from personal computer revolution of the 1970s back to the IBM-decides-what-you-run of the 1960s.
It would have been good for Jobs to have left the computer world a decade earlier than he did. He
I will never forgive him (Score:2)
For firing the Woz and canceling the IIgs line
Did they remember what a cunt he was? (Score:5, Informative)
Deadbeat dad, horrible boss, ripped off his "friends", and then in a final act of bastardry, bought a house in a state with a shorter waiting list for transplants after basically guaranteeing he was going to die soon by delaying treating his cancer. Someone else would've got a lot more out of that transplanted organ. Rot in hell, Steve.
Re: (Score:2)
Can't agree with that last part but I would assume he'll be having an interesting time in purgatory.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Re: (Score:3)
Psychopath CEO.
Name another highly successful CEO who doesn’t exhibit this very trait more often than people realize.
I’ll give you a hint. This is going to be hard.
No wonder Woz doesn't want anything to do with these people.
It’s also no wonder why every shareholder wanted everything to do with those people.
Re: (Score:2)
The fact that other CEOs exhibit psychopath tendencies is not relevant. This discussion is about Steve Jobs and what a terrible human being is was.
But to name a good CEO, I"d go with the guy who runs Arizona Ice Tea.
Re: (Score:2)
The fact that other CEOs exhibit psychopath tendencies is not relevant. This discussion is about Steve Jobs and what a terrible human being is was.
I’d say this has far more to do with Steve Jobs and what a CEO he had to be. Ruthless. Much like damn near every other highly successful CEO in a cutthroat market. The fact that he was a CEO and acted that way in business is perfectly relevant. If he acted that way 100% of the time, his wife would have likely left him. We find this instead:
After his passing, his widow Laurene inherited billions of dollars of stock in Apple and The Walt Disney Company, but she isn't planning to pass it on to any of her late husband's children.
Is she also a “deadbeat” Mom for not showering the children with his wealth? No, of course not.
But to name a good CEO, I"d go with the guy who runs Arizona Ice Tea.
Thats an awfully short list you’ve got there.
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry, didn't realize you wanted a list of EVERY CEO who isn't a bad person. I'll do better to live up to your impossible standards next time.
To be fair... (Score:2)
... to build a successful business in the western capilalist system requires a certain amount of ruthlessness, treading on others and using your friends efforts to get yourself ahead. I'm not apologising for the guy, he was an unpleasent dick, but if he hadn't been Apple might never have existed.
Re: (Score:2)
This is not true, the "western capilalist system" is ruthless because it rewards these types of people. It is because we tolerate and reward these types of people that ruthlessness is intrinsic. You have cause and effect backward.
And what is good about the "western capilalist system" anyway? Isn't modern society suffering under its "ruthlessness"? Maybe what you mean is that you need people like Jobs to destroy the lives of children so that you can live a better life?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This is not true, the "western capilalist system" is ruthless because it rewards these types of people. It is because we tolerate and reward these types of people that ruthlessness is intrinsic. You have cause and effect backward.
Capitalism often imitates nature. Survival of the fittest combined with a need for ruthless behavior because of endless competition. You seem to fail to understand how Capitalism needs to behave in order to survive when competition becomes cutthroat.
Should certain activities under Capitalism be legal? Hell no. Not saying it’s perfect by any means, but below is the reason why we stick to it.
And what is good about the "western capilalist system" anyway? Isn't modern society suffering under its "ruthlessness"?
100 million dead citizens lay at the feet of Communist Socialism. I’d say modern society has woken up
Re: (Score:2)
False choice, those are not the only 2 options.
Capitalism does not actually exist in nature, we made it up. If it's not giving us the outcomes we want then we can change the laws around it and have many, many, many times.
Re: (Score:2)
But it's still FAR better than anything else out there to choose from.....we've seen that vividly over history....
Re: (Score:2)
Absolutely just my point is there's this huge canyon of options between rampant capitalism that gives us outcomes we don't like and authoritarian communist dictatorships. Social market economy [wikipedia.org] as an example.
Re:To be fair... (Score:4, Insightful)
If you look at the happiest societies in the world they're all socialist. If you look at the most stable economies in the world the socialist Scandinavians are among them. If you look at the most miserable societies in the world capitalism is the cause of most of that misery.
This is the outcome you think is "FAR better than anything else out there"? I'd respectfully disagree.
Re: (Score:2)
"If you look at the happiest societies in the world they're all socialist"
The inhabitants of north korea would beg to differ.
Re: (Score:2)
Not sure if you're claiming that North Korea is among the happiest populations on the planet (they're not) or if you mistakenly think they're socialist (they're not). Try again?
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
"If you look at the happiest societies, theyâ(TM)re 90-95% comprised of a single ethnicity. In many cases, this means white."
And japanese. They took one look at multiculturalism and saw it for the bullshit it was. No problem with islamic terrorists there. Funny that.
Re: (Score:2)
I think Musk deserves the top prize for destroying the lives of children. Literally starving them to death.
However on your main theme, you didn't mention bribery of politicians to rig the rules in their favor and to legalize their earlier crimes. Bribery has been the top investment for some years based on RoI analyses.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Typed that on an iPhone, or Mac?
Re: (Score:2)
What about it? You think buying and iPhone or a Mac requires devoted tribalism? Or is that just a you problem?
Re: (Score:2)
You can tell it wasn't an iPhone by the way that the quote marks aren't messed up.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's perhaps comparatively minor compared to all that, but he started anti-consumer trends like non-replacable batteries and walled gardens too.
Re: Did they remember what a cunt he was? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Did they remember what a cunt he was? (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Even then though, Safari was crippled to limit what web apps could do.
Re: (Score:2)
And Safari was stolen from open source, where it had to be actively crippled to comply with Jobs walled garden.
Re: (Score:2)
Wow, what shallow horse shit. Jobs wanted no such thing, Jobs promoted "web apps" because he got called out in public for not supporting 3rd party app. And that was on a device that Jobs never wanted in the first place.
And walled gardens date back earlier than web browsers.
Re: (Score:3)
Walled gardens really started with the NES and its 10NES/CIC lockout system. Before that, game consoles (e.g. Atari 2600 VCS, Sega SG-1000, Nintendo Famicom) didn't have technical measures to restrict unlicensed software. Phones with walled gardens existed before the iPhone as well, e.g. the Qualcomm BREW platform, which was even more of a pain to develop and publish for. So I don't think you can really blame Jobs for walled gardens.
He definitely helped make non-replaceable batteries common though, start
Re: (Score:1)
"So I don't think you can really blame Jobs for walled gardens."
Yes you can, walled gardens are not merely about software publishing. Jobs forced non-standard SCSI parallel ports and networking on the earliest Macs, he did that because the Mac was always a walled garden. Steve Jobs was the king of the walled garden, the Apple II was quite the opposite.
Do people think history started in the 21st century? Hell, Jobs had already disowned family and fucked over his partners by then.
Re:Did they remember what a cunt he was? (Score:4, Informative)
Well firstly, SCSI was added to Macs after they kicked Jobs out of Apple. The Mac Plus was designed under Scully. But that aside, SCSI wasn't non-standard, it was a standard - it came from Shugart (which later became Seagate), not from Apple. And for better or worse, USB storage devices (both BOT and UAS) still use the SCSI command set.
Jobs had a weird obsession with not allowing internal expansion cards in the Mac. His justification was that if there was less variation in hardware, compatibility testing would be easier for software developers. But they never tried to restrict the software you could run on Macs.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Sun workstations also used a DB25 connector for SCSI. I have a pile of "lunchbox" SPARCstations in front of me (a literal pile - a SPARCclassic, a SPARCstation IPC and a SPARCstation IPX) with DB25 SCSI ports. They still work with standard SCSI devices.
Apple, Sun, etc. went with DB25 (rather than the 50 pin micro ribbon connector) to save space. It's kind of like how the IBM PC went with a DB25 connector for the Centronics printer port to save space, while the printers themselves used 36 pin micro ribbo
Re: (Score:2)
Back with the original Mac, Jobs wanted it to have zero expandability. The engineers had to sneak it in.
Jobs really popularized it though. The PC thrived on being an open platform, and most systems at least allowed third party apps if it was practical.
Jobs actually didn't invent the smartphone, he made a feature phone. The original iPhone didn't have third party apps, it was similar to other touch screen phones of the era. He resisted allowing third party apps until it became obvious that there was a lot of
Re: (Score:2)
My boss had the first cellular-equipped Compaq iPaq running Windows Embedded years before they shoved the iToy out the door. IMNSHO it was superior in almost every way, too bad Compaq was being run by an idiot and they missed the boat.
Re: (Score:2)
The iPaq line (as well as the Jornada line, various HTC phones, etc.) ran Windows CE, which later morphed into Windows Mobile. It's a completely different product to Windows Embedded, which was a cut-down version of Windows XP.
Re: (Score:2)
The 'walled garden' is from the mainframe world, good luck trying to run a program on a DEC that had been written on an IBM without a full recompile. Many entire programming languages, like RPG, would only run on a specific manufacturer's platform. It wasn't until the introduction of CP/M and later Windows that interoperability between different hardware platforms became a reality.
Re: (Score:2)
But you could compile and run any code you wanted on your mainframe. You didn't need to register for a developer account and get IBM (or DEC, or ICL, or Honeywell, or CDC, or whoever) to bless your software before you could run it. You could write your compiled code out to tape and run it on someone else's mainframe.
A "walled garden" isn't a platform that doesn't run a wide variety of software. It's a platform where the vendor controls what software can run.
By your definition, Linux is a walled garden, b
Re: (Score:2)
All that and more.
"He wasn't the richest technology CEO to die..."
Which as we all know, is the only measure of a man, right?
"But the reaction showed that his life — faults and all — meant a lot to a great number of people"
It meant suffering for a lot of them.
In life, Jobs was the hero to Gates's villain, yet while Jobs died spitting in his daughter's face and stealing organs from more willing people, Gates became the world's greatest philanthropist. Stop celebrating the life of one of the world
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, people seem to forget that this is also a guy who constantly parked in handicap spots even while he was perfectly healthy just because he thought that he was more important than everyone else and shouldn't have to walk as much. And when the started getting tickets for it, he would just lease a new car every few months just to he could drive around without a license plate. THAT is the Steve Jobs that people should remember before they start idolizing this asshole.
Re: (Score:1)
On the other hand...a nice way to 'hack' the system...
and today, when everyone at their goat has a handicapped tag drives up in a
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Did they remember what a cunt he was? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Deadbeat dad, horrible boss, ripped off his "friends", and then in a final act of bastardry, bought a house in a state with a shorter waiting list for transplants after basically guaranteeing he was going to die soon by delaying treating his cancer. Someone else would've got a lot more out of that transplanted organ. Rot in hell, Steve.
You forgot his fondness for handicapped spaces [edibleapple.com]. In the early 80's, an anonymous employee left a note on his windshield in an attempt to shame him for the practice. He responded with a Captain Queeg-like obsessive search for the employee. Thankfully, he never found the writer.
14 years already... (Score:5, Interesting)
Wow, he's been dead for 14 years and I still don't give a shit. He leaves behind a legacy of corporate greed and personal douchbaggery.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Try being a developer for the Apple ecosystem and tell me if you still respect them and believe that their business model is just having high markups on hardware.
Re: (Score:2)
So the introduction of Siri was 14 years ago yesterday, and it still hasn't gotten any better?
Overrated Sociopath ? (Score:4, Interesting)
The whip master of hand held content vending machine development, aided and abetted the madness of Social Media, carried to his death on the wings of hubris.
I know it's Monday morning and my cynicism is through the roof. Is Jobs celebrated because he was wealthy "visionary" and lead a big organisation? Hitler had those qualifications too.
Apple cofounder Steve Jobs was found dead... (Score:3)
Lol, 14 years ago I managed to get this story posted in the style of the old "Stephen King was found dead in his home today - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon" meme that used to be so popular here. Glad to know that even back then the editors didn't know the site and the memes popular on it.
https://slashdot.org/story/11/... [slashdot.org]
Goddamn I've been on this site for too long
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, that was a very old meme here on /. back in the day despite him being very much alive. Similar to the guy who would always get the first post reminding you to pay your $599 linux license fee to SCO you cock smoking teabagger, the GNAA trolls, and random goatse links that appeared in every comment section (These goatse links are why all links on slashdot comments have the domain next to them, decades later). This was back when the average slashdot story had hundreds of replies, instead of the few dozen
Re: (Score:2)
Enforcing a delay between people being able post another comment in the same story got rid of most of the spam.
Re: (Score:2)
I thought it was the new user block [slashdot.org] that did that, there was still a ton of spam with the delay because it took less time to sign up for a new account than it did to wait for the limit.....
Re: Apple cofounder Steve Jobs was found dead... (Score:1)
No, it didn't. Requiring accounts did. The posting delay is shorter on mobile and so it's largely irrelevant, and also bots don't care how long they have to wait to submit a form.
Re: (Score:2)
It's also a common meme on 4chan.
Our species is broken (Score:2, Informative)
We could recall to mind all those intellectual greats who actually added something of value to the future of the species:
Lodovico Ferrari
Frederic Lewy
Lars Onsager
Karl Menger
James H. Wilkinson
Karl Gordon Henize
Maurice Wilkins
William H. Dobelle
Instead here we are celebrating someone who made over-priced toys for bored monkeys with a desperate need to play status games.
Re:Our species is broken (Score:4, Insightful)
Not heard of a single one of them. Did you forget about Newton, Einsten, Darwin, Maxwell, Babbage, Hawking?
Re: (Score:2)
Did any of them die October 5th?
No? THen what's your point?
Re: (Score:3)
Stock Certificate not trashed (Score:5, Informative)
"Leaving without clearing out his office, CEO John Sculley ordered that Jobs’ possessions be disposed of if he wasn’t coming back to get them. Fortunately, the certificate was rescued by a smart (is there any other kind?) Apple employee, who held onto it for the next few decades."
It was offered for sale in 2016 for $195K. I suspect other personal items to be trashed were instead grabbed by employees.
Re: (Score:2)
Jobs for years claimed that he had invented all of that out of his infinite genius, while Gates openly admired the Xerox PARC crew and said that he was disappointed to not have been able to hire them at the time. Someone went looking for Gates' name in the visitor logs of PARC to see when he had been there, and there was Jobs' name as well. Oops.
SuperKendall, where are you? (Score:1)
Sad times at /. when we have a scheduled Steve Jobs circle jerk and SuperKendall cumstains are nowhere to be found.
Clipped from oftwominds at the time (Score:2)
Elegy on the Death of Steve Jobs*
Farewell Steve Jobs the charismatic preacher
Whose first vocation was perhaps Guyana
That sunlit clearing where the waiting crowd
Wept as they drank and died, and he died later.
But Woz and Sculley, illness, resurrection
The cheering lost familial annual crowds
Saved him from all that. Now that he has died
The Cupertino crowds that lined the streets
Through which his train with black clad mourners flowed
Could half not know they had been acolytes.
They strewed the road before him with
I remember him more often than that. (Score:2)
Such a Wise Monday (Score:1)
it works like magic (Score:1)