Steve Jobs Honored On New 2026 US Coin Celebrating Innovation (nerds.xyz) 79
BrianFagioli writes: The United States Mint is honoring Steve Jobs and Apple with a new coin for 2026. Part of the American Innovation $1 Coin Program, California's entry depicts a young Jobs seated before rolling northern California hills, accompanied by the words "Make Something Wonderful." The reflective design, created by Elana Hagler and sculpted by Phebe Hemphill, captures how Jobs's surroundings and vision shaped Apple's mission to make technology feel intuitive and human.
The 2026 series also celebrates Dr. Norman Borlaug for Iowa, the Cray-1 supercomputer for Wisconsin, and mobile refrigeration for Minnesota. The obverse of all coins features the Statue of Liberty and a special Liberty Bell mark commemorating the nation's Semiquincentennial. The Steve Jobs coin stands out as one of the few times the U.S. Mint has recognized a modern tech innovator, and some collectors are already calling it one of the most exciting releases in years.
The 2026 series also celebrates Dr. Norman Borlaug for Iowa, the Cray-1 supercomputer for Wisconsin, and mobile refrigeration for Minnesota. The obverse of all coins features the Statue of Liberty and a special Liberty Bell mark commemorating the nation's Semiquincentennial. The Steve Jobs coin stands out as one of the few times the U.S. Mint has recognized a modern tech innovator, and some collectors are already calling it one of the most exciting releases in years.
Really should be honoring Woz Instead! (Score:5, Insightful)
They really should be honoring Steve Wozniak instead. He's the one that did the work, did the innovation, made a floppy disk drive work for a price lower than anyone else could imagine by innovating. He's the one who did the designs and made it all possible. But Jobs was more visible and knew how to capture headlines.
Seriously, Jobs and Apple would have been NOTHING without Woz doing the kind of stuff he can do.
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Real gilded age stuff there.
I'm especially bitter having found out just how great the Apple II GS actually is and how jobs buried it. Seriously go look up the port of Rastan to it. The GS could outperform an Amiga.
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I kind of get why it was buried, it came out a full two and a half years after the Macintosh was released, and basically three and a half years after the Lisa, which was itself arguably the same development track as the later Macintosh. It was also given a skinned GUI that looked a lot like the Macintosh Finder. There had also been several product iterations beyond the original Lisa and Macintosh that added external hard disk support and other useful features.
The only places I've seen Apple IIGS computers
Re:Really should be honoring Woz Instead! (Score:4, Interesting)
We saw the same sort of thing when Jobs returned to Apple and brought the legacy of NeXT with him, but because computer hardware had managed to become a lot more commoditized, general purpose, it was not as much a hardware issue as a software/OS issue. They maintained a virtual machine environment to run classic System within OSX to again allow those with investments in software for System to be able to continue using it (and to allow it to be used when there wasn't a version written for OSX specifically yet) but they certainly weren't looking to perpetuate the original Macintosh line once the models running OSX had supplanted them.
Everyone always forgets about the Carbon API.
There was a way for several years that app developers could target Carbon for their MacOS 9.x apps, and they would magically get OS X features when OS X became a shipping thing. It was an absolutely brilliant transition strategy - I believe when they introduced Carbon, they said "all future life on MacOS will be based on Carbon" which wasn't exactly true when they launched the OS X native "Cocoa" libraries, but they pulled off one of the easiest transitions between two fundamentally different operating systems, and the only people that really had a problem were QuarkXPress customers because Quark decided to be assholes about it and try to squeeze another $800/seat out of people for a new version of XPress where the only thing they did was run it through a compiler targeting Carbon. Just like they did when PowerPC came around and they charged $800/seat for a PowerPC native version of the same Quark XPress 4 with absolutely no additional features.
As it turns out, there's a reason why the publishing industry was more than happy to shitcan that company in favor of Adobe InDesign.
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As it turns out, there's a reason why the publishing industry was more than happy to shitcan that company in favor of Adobe InDesign.
It's weird that the reason wasn't that Quark was shit. Quark's interface has always been pathetically inscrutable while Pagemaker's (and subsequently, InDesign's) were immediately approachable and logical. You didn't have to do hard work of memorizing counterintuitive locations to find functionality, because everything was (and is) laid out logically.
I go back to fairly olden times with Pagemaker (back to Aldus in fact) and continued to take a peek at Quark every once in a while, only to find out that it wa
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I had a GS. For the time, it was truly fantastic. I still have it buried in storage somewhere, but the sound chip quit working a while back.
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That's too bad it had an absolutely amazing sound chip. There really wasn't anything else like it on the market for quite a while. Especially at that price point. I think it was one of the first wave table devices.
Yup. And I had a working copy of the multi-track music program that utilized it to its full potential. I spent a lot of nights with sheet music programming in songs in full digital orchestration. Glorious. I mean, looking back it sounded like digital ass, but at the time it was super impressive.
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The Apple II GS came out in September 1986 [wikipedia.org].
Steve Jobs was fired from Apple in 1985 [wikipedia.org].
You don't know what the fuck you're talking about.
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It's generally agreed that jobs set the price of the 2gs way too high unnecessarily high even because he wanted to get in on the Macintosh project.
The damage he did sabotaged the entire project and it wouldn't surprise me if that's partially why he fell out with apple. If you actively sabotage an entire product line for your company that's not going to go over well. Even if it turns out long term to make you super ric
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Hmm, not sure it could out perform an Amiga. Rastan was recently ported to the Amiga and it looks significantly better than the Apple II GS port.
Amiga: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Apple II GS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Smoother and no screen tearing when scrolling. I think the Amiga port is 32 colours, or it might be 16 similar to the Apple port, but with extra background gradient colours. Sound is a lot better to.
My understanding of the Apple II GS hardware is that it doesn't have a blitter or
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You're correct that Woz is brilliant, and did brilliant things, but it's completely incorrect to discount what Jobs did.
But what did he do that actually counts as innovation? What new did he bring into the world?
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Which was what without Woz?
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No, but now you're shifting the goalposts on what it means to innovate from starting a company to growing an already established company (and after the period of its fastest growth*). The simple fact is that neither running a company, nor indeed starting a company is any significant form of "innovation". People do it all the time. With the filing fee and a little paperwork, I could do it right now and be CEO and chairman of the board in several business days. Calling someone an innovator because they starte
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You're correct that Woz is brilliant, and did brilliant things, but it's completely incorrect to discount what Jobs did.
But what did he do that actually counts as innovation? What new did he bring into the world?
Some of his logic designs were amazing. I was learning digital logic when I got my //e and started studying schematics. (The //e was a generation removed, but had some features from the ][ series and I studied those as well.) For one example, the ][ disk drive. Just as a quick and simple example, he had a 7400 chip needed and used 1 ro 2 of the NAND gates on it. He used the other gates as amplifiers from the disk signal. Not something that was at all standard at that time (don't know if it is now). That's t
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Sorry, are you talking about Woz, or Jobs as the subject there? The accomplishments you're talking about sound like Wozniak, not Jobs. I think you might have misread that the subject of my question about "what new did he bring into the world?" was referring to Jobs.
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Ah - yes, I did misread it. Jobs did push people and created the Reality Distortion Field, but he could not have gotten much going without Woz.
And, yes, I was talking about Woz' accomplishments.
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My fault. I usually make sure that I at least name the subject once in reply posts rather than just using pronouns, but I failed to do that. Especially bad when I was replying to a quote of a line that mentioned both Jobs and Woz and pretty much left it to context from prior posts to determine which I was selecting as the subject. Sorry about that.
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For example, Apple floundered when Jobs left, and came roaring back when he returned, and Woz never worked on the iPhone, which was revolutionary
This is a big one. While Apple was well into recovery from their 90's low point when the iPhone came out it was hardly the brand that it is today. The iPhone put the Apple brand in half the world's pockets after all.
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The iPhone put the Apple brand in half the world's pockets after all.
I would say that the iPod did that at least a few years before.
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As another poster pointed out, the iPod put Apple products in many, many pockets before the iPhone. Either way though this is still conflating business success with innovation. What was the actual innovation that can be attributed to Jobs? Certainly not digital music players or smartphones. Both of those pre-dated Apple's versions (even if they had not, why would Jobs get the innovation credit for them?). You used the word "brand" in two of your three sentences, so clearly you understand that his success wa
Re:Really should be honoring Woz Instead! (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree completely. Woz did the work, but without Jobs, there wouldn't have been an Apple II+ in my living room when I was in second grade. And that completely changed my life.
I want two coins.
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Bingo, really the both of them should be on the coin. It was the partnership that made it magic neither of them would have made it as far without the other.
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Oh, yeah... two sides of the same coin. It would have been perfect.
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> I want two coins.
Did you mean to write: "I want a two-dollar coin" with Woz on it?
(Context [hackaday.com])
Re:Really should be honoring Woz Instead! (Score:5, Informative)
Woz isn't eligible:
(E) PROHIBITION ON CERTAIN REPRESENTATIONS.â"No
head and shoulders portrait or bust of any person and
no portrait of a living person may be included in the
design of any coin issued under this subsection.
Woz is happily not dead yet.
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Just plant a Venezuelan boat license on him.
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(E) PROHIBITION ON CERTAIN REPRESENTATIONS. "No head and shoulders portrait or bust of any person and no portrait of a living person may be included in the design of any coin issued under this subsection.
And then there's this: $1 Trump coin draft is ‘real,’ US Treasurer says [cnn.com] (article includes a mock-up, with his "fight fight fight" pose on the reverse)
A portrait of President Donald Trump may be featured on a commemorative $1 coin issued by the United States Mint in honor of America’s 250th birthday in 2026, according to first drafts of the images confirmed by the US Treasury.
Apparently, they're looking for loopholes or other ways to circumvent the statue you cited. (sigh)
The side portrait of Trump is featured on the front side of the coin, not the reverse, appearing to get around the law. The reverse still features Trump, but it’s unclear if the image would be a violation of the law. The reverse side still features Trump, but the Butler image falls outside of the direct language “head and shoulders portrait or bust.”
Re: Really should be honoring Woz Instead! (Score:2)
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Plus Jobs was little more than a used-car salesman.
Hmmm...
That's being a little bit harsh.
He sold *new* cars! ;)
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$1 coin (Score:2)
Re: $1 coin (Score:2)
Slop (Score:2)
https://www.coinnews.net/2025/... [coinnews.net]
What a waste of metal.
Re: Slop (Score:2)
And from a distance it looks like he has super saggy man boobs down to his belt
I guess it's fitting for these times (Score:5, Insightful)
"Steve Jobs initially denied paternity of his daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs, for several years, even after a court-ordered DNA test confirmed he was her father."
Not to mention being the worst person in the world to work for ( until Musk came along ).
Re:I guess it's fitting for these times (Score:5, Funny)
The coin should show his Mercedes in a handicapped spot.
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The coin should show his Mercedes in a handicapped spot.
Jobs was parking only one Mercedes in one handicapped spot at a time. Mark Zuckerberg or Sam Altman parking all the Mercedes, everywhere, all the time.
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I guess a coin for being a nasty cunt is fitting for these times.
Guessing you mean this [cnn.com]? :-)
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I guess a coin for being a nasty cunt is fitting for these times.
It is fitting for all times, as A LOT of historical figures were nasty. The "my feelings are hurt" was not even a consideration for wast majority of human history. Do you think Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar or Isaac Newton or Christopher Columbus were nice people?
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He wasn't all that innovative either. As Jobs himself said, "good artists copy, great artists steal". Most of the stuff he did existed before he did it, he just made it shiny and hyped it up.
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https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/03/06/artists-steal/
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It should show Jobs holding a liver over his head, since he manipulated the liver transplant network to get a liver and jump ahead of others that did not have money.
JoshK.
Yeah, maybe, but... (Score:4, Informative)
Apple is a fashion company, producing pretty, disposable products and expecting fans to buy new ones regularly.
They have no respect for backward compatibility, changing processors and operating systems frequently.
They oppose right to repair and use every dirty trick in the book to make their devices unrepairable.
Even when states pass right to repair laws, they are masters at malicious compliance.
I do admit that mixed in with all of the evil crap, there is a bit of innovation, but on balance, they are evil.
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And the recruiting collusion (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation is a 2010 United States Department of Justice (DOJ) antitrust action and a 2013 civil class action against several Silicon Valley companies for alleged "no cold call" and no-poaching agreements which restrained the recruitment of high-tech employees.
The defendants were high-technology companies Adobe, Apple Inc., Google, Intel, Intuit, Pixar, Lucasfilm and eBay, each of which was headquartered in Silicon Valley, in the southern San Fra
Make it a squircle! (Score:2)
Please! Is there any rule that the coin has to be round?
We have dodecagonal coins here, but I'm not aware of anyone doing a squircle coin before.
If I had one of those Jobs coins... (Score:5, Insightful)
To pay a fitting tribute to the man, I'd drop the coin into a dish of acid, but then instead of saving it while there was plenty of time left, I'd leave it to be slowly eaten away while occasionally dropping in healing herbs and drops of organic fruit juices, and then only try to rescue it once it was far too late
Jobs was amazing (Score:2)
As a marketer. He repackaged other people's tech and sold the hell out of it. As such, it's totally appropriate to honor him in this age of disinformation.
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As a marketer. He repackaged other people's tech and sold the hell out of it.
Sure that is exactly what he did, but do you actually work with engineers? Engineers are terrible at connecting technology with people. We are the ones who spend 2 years learning about the intricacies of the 12000 page Bluetooth spec, and then design the control panel for it with EVERY feature option, because, well, what if someone needs to use that thing on page 3943. The result is technology that nobody can use - not even the same engineer - because six months later they've forgotten what half the stuff d
Collect the whole set! (Score:2)
Forthcoming coins will include Larry Ellison, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and Larry Page.
Amaze your friends! Leave a legacy for your children!
Register today to buy the whole set! *
* You must provide all of your social media passwords to register.
If Trump Sees this headline... (Score:2)
There'll be a coin with his face on it immediately!
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Given the requirements to be featured on such a coin, I certainly hope so.
Let's commend more bad guys (Score:2)
It's just a matter of time until President Pedophile insists on a coin to honor Timothy McVeigh.
(No, Jobs isn't in that league, but he's a lot better known for the regression of the iPhone than the progression of NeXT.)
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Apple II, Mac, etc: write software to do anything you want to. Sell it, directly to your customers, if you want. Oh, you're just a user? No problem, just access the Free Market. It's your PC, to do as its user wishes.
iPhone: use the app store to access this approved list of software which does what WE want. Want something else? Go fuck yourself; this computer isn't yours. It is important that we all remain the same, and only do what nanny wants. (Oh, and if you do sell, and we deign to approve your softwar
really nailed the likeness (Score:2)
Invest in this memecoin! (Score:2)
From what I have learned these coins probably sell for something like $13. But if they are in high demand, it's possible they will wind up costing a lot more.
Which is pretty fitting for how a lot of people see Apple
Untold innovation! (Score:2)
His greatest innovation was his approach to cancer treatment. I didn't say it was effective but it was innovative. :)
Marketing victims (Score:2)
Jobs innovated jack shiat.
His contribution was rehashing the ingenuity of others, slathering in marketing BS and punting it to status-seeking mouth-breathers.