He died way too young (1955-2011). Without him, who knows what I’d be writing this on?
The tribute at Wired.
The tribute at Apple.
His commencement address at Stanford in 2005: “How to live before you die.” He’d been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer two years before (his eight-year post-diagnosis survival is astounding), and surely had intimations of mortality.
“Sometimes life is going to hit you in the head with a brick. You’ve got to keep going.”
I should have realized that you were an Apple man.
As is PZ, by the way. Sad to see.
Much work to do to teach the skeptic community about open source philosophy.
What is this philosophy? Are you talking about RMS who thinks that people who have a different opinion to his are morally inferior? If you want to give away software, fine; I’ve done so myself. If you want to use free software, fine; I’ve done so myself. But if someone wants to sell software, and someone else wants to buy it, just leave them alone. Don’t call them morally inferior beings as RMS does.
I’ve used VMS for decades; that’s a real OS on a real computer. (Not as popular as it once was? Maybe. Compare popular music today to popular music 35 years ago. Nuff said. Progress is not always positive.) Unix? If a student could write something comparable to the kernel in a summer, then the bar cannot have been too high.
I have had, until today, zero experience with Apple. Will I buy an iPod? No. I might buy an MP3 player at some point, but won’t be buying music from iTunes and another model is probably better for me than an iPod. An iPhone? No; I like a mobile phone which does one thing (telephony) well. A Macbook? Maybe, if I ever need a laptop (certainly I wouldn’t go the Windows or Linux route). A PowerMac or whatever the full-size ones are called? Probably not, unless VMS is no longer viable and Apple still is. But I bought my wife an iPad as a present, since it fills a niche very well. It seems that all the other Apple products fill their niches very well (or even created them), it’s just that they aren’t niches I need. Yes, I’m a command-line type who writes code, but for someone who is a computer user and not a programmer or manager as well, the Apple concept—simple and working well—has a lot going for it. If you don’t like it, don’t buy it, but please get rid of the idea that people who don’t use open-source software are some sort of idiots.
Steve Jobs and his beliefs in Woo as cancer treatment…
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2008/03/woo_for_cancer_say_it_aint_so_steve.php
I think when you have little hope it is probably worth trying anything that might work, but any remission in such circumstances would possibly be down to chance rather than anything else.
Eschewing the only scientifically proven modality (surgery) for diet woo for nine months probably signed Steve’s death certificate. He had a rare, treatable form of pancreatic cancer that was caught early.
Makes his death doubly sad :/
when you near your death it takes exceptionally strong mind to not fall into “woo” domain and hope for a miricale
my mom exhibited just that when she got glioblastoma and had a short period of clear mind after an operation
this only shows that Steve wah a human like all of us
Yeah. Dawkins said (in jest?) he wants his death on video, so that there will be no deathbed conversion rumors.
thanks for posting that; I had forgotten about it.
Yeah, Steve embraced woo and Buddhism and other things you may find disgustingly irrational. But we are bigger than our tight rationality. The biggest follow dreams, create, inspire, love and fill the world with their inconsistencies.
Thanx Steve for your unique mix. May the most rational of us even begin to approach you.
On Twitter, David Allen Green said, “Wasn’t he also was a deeply unpleasant bully? And does being a ‘visionary’ make that all ok?”
I replied, “No, it wouldn’t make it OK. But being a bully wouldn’t make him less of a visionary or less important.”
We, of all people, shouldn’t be afraid of criticising our those we admire, but neither should we lose sight of why we admire them in the first place, why others should admire them, whether it’s Jobs or Darwin or Newton (who was way out there with the religious and alchemical woo).
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admiration is great but feeling anything less than equal to anyone is detrimental
calling someone genius puts him into the “special” category and any sort of “specialnesss” of individuals and people is not supported by science
the minds that you call “genius” had all the inputs of all the people around them who you probably will not call “genius”
without all those inputs they would not be what they were
trully smart people are exceptionally humble too because they know about lack of specialness and want to spread it to others – they will discorage others to treat them”special” and will act as one of many
“bullying” is not something that goes together with being humble
Who called Jobs “genius”? No-one here.
(In any case, others with all those inputs of all the people around them didn’t do the things Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Jobs, etc. did. Having the insight and vision to take that input and fashion it into something novel and important seems like something special to me.)
Not all smart people are great (& vv).
“Greatness is embodied in how you affect people, not necessarily who you are. Jobs’s impact was – and will continue to be – great,” as one of my IT industry colleagues said today.
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Oh, Ben just did. :-/
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And I’ll stand by the accolade.
If Jobs isn’t deserving of it, who is?
Cheers,
b&
I’d say Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman are way more deserving.
+1
Cheers,
Norm.
shouldn’t be afraid of criticising our those we admire, but neither should we lose sight of why we admire them in the first place
perhaps though, we should be careful to determine exactly why it is we admire someone to begin with.
I grew up with Steve Jobs. I was in grad school when we got the first “Next” machine.
yeah… great idea, put a machine on the market that everyone has to learn how to program before you can really do much with it.
it was a wonderful thing for us geeks, not so much for the general market.
the only thing admirable about his decision-making, was that he was often willing to risk his own cash to try and get what he thought were good ideas to market, Pixar coming readily to mind.
he was as wrong as often as he was right, frankly.
but he did have guts.
Re NeXT. His intent there wasn’t to create another machine for the general market. (Perhaps there was a “non-compete” clause when he left Apple?)
And it was a very successful thing for geeks. Arguably, we wouldn’t have the Web as we know it today otherwise.
(Btw, Tim Bernard-Lee’s NeXT Cube, on which he “invented the Web”, is on display in the Science Museum, London.)
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A wonderful contribution to humanity.
I’m writing this on a Mac.
I’m reading this on a Mac.
I would prefer a Linux world!
Well, at least Mac OS X and iOS are Unix under the hood.
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ditto…
brand loyalty is just so cute.
You know it isn’t about brand loyalty but rather about a tool performing its functions well and without a lot of unexpected & unwelcome obstacles. I used to get called regularly by my daughter with problems related to her Windows XP laptop & endless grief connecting to printers or this & that driver etc. Since she got her MacBook Pro 3 years ago, I have had maybe one call for help. Her computer just does what she needs it to do.
If you like overclocking & simply playing with your tools, a PC is going to be more fun (secret handshakes & all), but if you actually have work to do & want to spend more time on the actual content of your work – get a Mac.
I think Jobs understood this in a way that MicroSoft still doesn’t.
-evan
Then there’re those things that Mac OS X just blows Windows out of the water in, like graphic design. Typography on a Mac looks like what you’d see in a quality publication, within the limits of the resolution of your display. Typography on Windows looks like a shitty dot matrix printer from the 80s, just at a higher resolution.
And this is running a dual-monitor system, Windows 7 in a full-screen virtual machine; there’s simply no excuse.
There’s a reason the art departments of major companies are almost always Mac-only, even if they’re nothing more than tiny islands of Macs in a sea of Windows. And it has nothing to do with elite latte-sipping turtleneck-clad snobs.
Cheers,
b&
+1
“Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of someone else’s thinking.”
Words to cherish.
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PS. Written on an iMac.
In fact, this entire mac loyalty thing is EXACTLY what is encompassed by the the words sentiment you quoted.
you’re living with the results of someone else’s thinking.
irony.
Believe me, my preference for Mac over Windows is quite rational, not dogmatic. I use both daily, and, yes, Windows does some things better, but I know hour by hour which provides the better UX.
Brand loyalty isn’t “cute” when it’s earned.
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RIP Steve Jobs? I hope you’re not suggesting that there is any other way to “rest”….
If Jerry had said, “passed away”, would you be worried that he suggested another place into which we pass when we die? – It’s just a locution, man.
Hey, Steve. No doubt future giants will inevitably stand on your shoulders. The world couldn’t possibly thank you enough.
And his funeral will be picked by the Westboro Baptist Church.
picketed*
Is that because they use the King James version of DOS on their PC’s?
-evan
no, it’s because Jobs was a Buddhist.
Few people have had as much of an impact on the world, most of it for the better.
I wonder how much of his past few years have been devoted to Apple’s future rather than its present. It will be interesting to see if they remain the design powerhouse they have been. We’ll know if they come out of left field with something that redefines an industry, or creates a new one afresh….
b&
“Few people have had as much of an impact on the world, most of it for the better.” – I would await the judgement of time on that…!
I second the waiting time for the verdict on the Steve Job’s legacy
“Few people have had as much of an impact on the world, most of it for the better.”
oh, you’re FUCKING kidding me.
*shakes head sadly*
No, I’m not. He’s the Henry Ford of the Information Age.
Of the several billion people alive today, and of the billions others who’ve lived in the past few millennia, the fraction of those who’ve been as influential as Jobs is, with rounding, 0.00%. And Jobs directed the making of useful tools and fun toys, thereby making the world a better place.
Was he the greatest, n’est plus ultra, whatever? No. Of course not. But he was in rarefied company, indeed.
Cheers,
b&
He’s the Henry Ford of the Information Age.
go read the wired article on him.
count the number of things directly attributed to Steve Jobs.
you really want to make that comparison?
again, I laugh at how easily people make heroes.
Jobs isn’t even in the top 100 contenders for having an impact on the 20th century, or the 21st, for that matter.
get grip, people.
I know the man just died, but REALLY.
this nonstop fanboydom is just amazingly… shallow!
Well, I guess it depends on what your criteria are, “Top 100” lists are so subjective. Look at this one from Time: No Jobs… but… Oprah? Bruno Mars? Srsly‽
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It can easily be argued that Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs has been one of the most intellectually corruptive agents in this country.
Each of his digital “advances” has operated to effectively sub-speciate us, dumbing us down by channeling what might otherwise be the higher-order thinking and learning inherent in our uniquely human deliberative capability into, instead, “entertainment” and “being on stage.” We are an overpopulated nation of ignorant and arrogant inept people. The worst is yet to come.
Perry Bezanis
San Pedro
Eh, quite the opposite.
Apple products are all about getting out of the way of the user so the user can just bloody use the soddin’ thing.
If the reason you bought the computer is to craft a poster, why the fuck should you waste your time typing arcane commands to configure a printer? If you’re trying to balance your checkbook, why should you have to worry about allocating disk space? If you want to send a note to Grandma about the day at the park, what’s the point of loading the network stack?
Jobs’s genius lay in stripping away all the meaningless knobs and switches that the engineers left exposed for no good reason.
Remember, any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. The Space Shuttle cockpit is a nightmare of interface design; what it really should be is a pleasantly decorated cabin with a voice interface that lets you tell it where you’d like to go to. From there it should all “just work.”
Cheers,
b&
Yes! For Jobs, it was all about user experience.
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If it’s so easy to argue that, why haven’t you?
You’ve made a bold claim there — do you have the evidence to back it up?
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i reposted the letter to the editors of LA Times by Perry Bezanis
so the argumentation was not originally developed by me
it seems to me that argumentation is all in the letter: the one that points out to the process of channelling “deliberative capability” into “entertaiment”: moving pictures, non stop visual stimulation that makes people addicted to being on-line and “connected” all the time and robs them of an opportunity to ponder what it is they just learned if anything
i do not hold Steve Jobs personally accountable for dumbing down the population.
After all he, like all of us, was just a peg in the ‘American free-enterprise, capitalist democracy and the right to make as much money as you can and spend it any way you choose’.
If he were “genius” he would have pointed out that the system is the single agency of greatest per capita resource/environment destruction and waste in the history of man
Instead he just did what he did: simply speeded up the system towards its inevitable collapse – nothing “genius” here – we all do the same simply by living 🙂
It wasn’t at all clear that you were posting someone else’s letter. Using blockquote, or quotation marks, or even clearly saying so would’ve helped. A link would be nice as well.
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” . . . non stop visual stimulation that makes people addicted to being on-line and “connected” all the time and robs them of an opportunity to ponder what it is they just learned if anything.”
Do people have any individual responsibility for their addictions?
It’s the Roman “bread and circuses” again.
i do not hold Steve Jobs personally accountable for dumbing down the population.
you started by saying:
It can easily be argued that Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs
seems if you don’t actually hold that view, you were arguing for it nonetheless.
whether or not technology advances have dumbed us down is a completely tangential argument to what Jobs has accomplished as a person.
While I don’t agree with many here that what Jobs has accomplished is really all that fantastic (aside from working with Woz in the beginning of apple), I don’t think that trying to attach a debate about the ills of technology is likely a productive discussion for a thread serving as a review of the man’s accomplishments, or lack thereof.
Bought my first Mac in ’86 or ’87. About 2 hours later, it was obsolete.
That’s always been the story in the Apple community.
Insanely great.
You apparently have never owned a PC where it’s obsolete *before* you buy it.
I’ve had both systems & still do. The Macs I have owned retain their ability to be quite useful for a longer period of time than any of my PC’s ever did.
-evan
About 2 hours later, it was obsolete.
so you immediately traded it in on a new model?
no?
huh.
I guess we have different definitions of the word “obsolete”.
Jeepers, are you cranky.
It’s my understanding that oncologists now talk about two forms of pancreatic cancer, one that has a short survival time and another, that is rarer, that has much longer survival.
Is survival time proportional to money spent on the cure?
Jobs had the rarer form – islet cell neuroendocrine tumor. This has a much better prognosis compared to the more common adenocarcinoma of the pancreas.
The standard treatment is immediate surgery to remove as much of the tumor as possible.
Jobs, unfortunately, delayed surgery for about nine months while he tried ‘alternative’ therapies. It is questionable whether this delay allowed the tumor to spread beyond its initial location and therefore some malignant cells were missed by the surgery.
So what he really died of was stupidity apparently. Sad, very sad.
Forgot to say, typed on a MacBook. Also have an iPhone 4.
“RIP”
“Thanx Steve for your unique mix. May the most rational of us even begin to approach you.”
“Hey, Steve. No doubt future giants will inevitably stand on your shoulders. The world couldn’t possibly thank you enough.”
Who are we addressing here, a dead person?
No that the people who made these comments are necessarily atheists, but is anyone else miffed when atheists say “RIP”, “Thanks for everything”, “We will miss you”, or “You will be missed” in posts, tweets, etc when a famous person dies?
How about “He/she will be missed” or “I will miss him/her”? If there is no afterlife, then the only ones who will see your message are the living; why not address them instead?
Instead thanking an unthinking universe for such a great visionary, let’s be glad we live in a world in which such a visionary was able to thrive, and let’s strive to make sure the world (or at least our corner of it) always stays fit for visionaries and free thinkers.
It’s just a rhetorical form.
Like when the DJ on the radio says, “See you tomorrow!”
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Perhaps so, but the DJ isn’t saying that in a world where most people believe the DJ can actually see them through the radio, thus helping to reinforce that delusion.
It’s rhetoric that I think anyone who doesn’t believe in an afterlife and cares about how what they say is perceived should try to improve upon.
God! You’re right!
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No.
Should we also stop saying “bless you” when someone sneezes? Come on.
Let’s start saying “Bless you!” when someone coughs or hiccups, among other bodily ablutions, eh?
I’ve always preferred “gesundheit” myself.
which, translated, simply means “good health [to you]”
>Should we also stop saying “bless you” when
>someone sneezes? Come on.
I always say “Blessings of a non-religious nature be upon you”.
Cheers,
Norm.
PS. Hope block uoting worked …
No. I use those expressions myself. It doesn’t make much sense either for a Christian to say “RIP” if you really think about it. Are souls in Heaven supposed to have some sort of tension? If not, how could they find peace? And souls in Hell have no chance of finding any peace. I prefer to think of RIP as meaning that the memory you and I have of that person will be fond or kind and not sullied and their legacy continue to be enjoyed by the living.
Do you just use the RIP or also the You will be missed, thanks for everything type comments as well?
In regards to the heaven-hell thing, there’s the idea that you are hoping they ended up in the right place and don’t forget about purgatory.
A PC. Like me. (Also dominated by another monopolist, Bill Gates.) I don’t go to worship this easily.
Ah, but what would a PC be like without the Mac to emulate (in a non-technical sense!)?
The Windows GUI owes — and continues to owe — a lot to Steve.
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…who stole it from Xerox in the first place.
Also note that before the first Mac was released, Microsoft was heavily involved in Mac app development and usability testing, and had considerable input into the final UI design.
Important as Jobs was, it’s not like he invented all this stuff single-handed. He too stood on the shoulders of giants.
In many ways, I think the PC would have ended up being fairly similar even without apple. Remember, Apple (mostly) didn’t invent, they refined. Further, as influential as Jobs was, I think people give him a bit too much credit. He wasn’t a designer, he was a very strong businessman who pushed people to get things done, which is different.
Anyway, in terms of UI design, in recent years, I think Apple has become pretty conservative and frankly boring compared to MS (metro UI, wp7, win8).
“He wasn’t a designer, he was a very strong businessman who pushed people to get things done, which is different.”
Quite so. That’s in line with Horace Dediu’s points below. Jobs had a talent for that that others lack.
Oh, and an exciting UI is not necessarily a good UI!
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“Oh, and an exciting UI is not necessarily a good UI!”
For me, an interface can’t be exciting if it’s impractical, ugly, or just bad. So if you’re referring to microsoft’s metro, then it’s not just exciting, it’s good design. It’s all about typography, minimalism, ease of use, and performance (in contrast to clutter, glossy effects, lame animations, cheap mimicry of real objects in digital form, among many other things that are very common on today’s operating systems).
The Windows GUI owes — and continues to owe — a lot to Steve.
nope.
the windows 3.1 interfaced owed a bit to the design engineers Jobs paid to design the mac interface.
past that?
it’s all marketing research.
“it’s all marketing research”? Nope.
See Horace Dediu (below), points 1, 4, 7 & 8.
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So sad to hear of Steve’s passing. His impact will be felt by generations. We’ve got a nice convo going on over here http://www.facebook.com/bluewheelmedia. Remembering Steve and all his contributions to the world.
A tribute here at Why Evolution Is True seems appropriate.
Apple, under Steve Jobs, was the only major computer enterprise to embrace Evolution: OS X is built around a Darwin core.
I thought it was built around BSD.
oh, that’s right, if you rename something then you own it.
no?
OK, to be technically fair, Darwin included more than just BSD, but that was the core of the core, so to speak.
In case anyone here hasn’t yet seen it, here’s Woz talking about Steve. It’s so very sad & sweet: “Wozniak Tearfully Remembers His Friend Steve Jobs”
Will Wozniak be justly remembered?
probably not.
he never cared as much about the limelight as Jobs did.
Horace Dediu of Asymco has some interesting comments:
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