Has anyone ever been as prophetic as Steve Jobs?

[Mixolydian]

He was a shitty human being

A lot of the people who changed the world were shitty human beings.

 

[chimaxi83]

If you had a valid argument, I'd love to hear it. Using a PC to manage music is just backwards and archaic. If I want to hear music on my home stereo system, I use my iPad to easily select the song and streaming it bit for bit using my AppleTV and AirPlay. No PC involved.



Dude, seriously, I'm not sure what kind of junk phones your using, but playing music on a modern day smartphone uses VERY little battery. Secondly, a tech savvy person would know they don't need to use the touch functions on the phones when driving. I just sit in my car, start it and it automatically picks up my phones (still in my pocket) and plays music from my car's sound system. I can then use the controls on the steering wheels to advance or replay tracks. I can also use voice commands to play a specific song.

Like I said, I think the less tech savvy people are the ones doing things backwards.

I'm not an Apple fan, but you can't really argue against any of this.

 

[JackBurton]

Turning this thread negative, Apple is doomed without Jobs.

Although I can't say Apple is "doomed," it certainly will not be the same without Steve. Steve Jobs WAS Apple. This is a new Apple, and I'm not so sure about its future. Hopefully Jony Ive will continue with where Steve left off.

 

[phucheneh]

If you had a valid argument, I'd love to hear it. Using a PC to manage music is just backwards and archaic. If I want to hear music on my home stereo system, I use my iPad to easily select the song and streaming it bit for bit using my AppleTV and AirPlay. No PC involved.



Dude, seriously, I'm not sure what kind of junk phones your using, but playing music on a modern day smartphone uses VERY little battery. Secondly, a tech savvy person would know they don't need to use the touch functions on the phones when driving. I just sit in my car, start it and it automatically picks up my phones (still in my pocket) and plays music from my car's sound system. I can then use the controls on the steering wheels to advance or replay tracks. I can also use voice commands to play a specific song.

Like I said, I think the less tech savvy people are the ones doing things backwards.

This is another interesting line of thought to me. See, to me, 'tech savvy' was always in being the 'tweaker' type. The end goal was never to make everything as easy as possible. It was just to dick around with gadgets and have fun with the things that you could do, because you could do them.

Somehow, that has evolved into 'tech savvy' meaning that you are good as maximizing the ease-of-use functionality of various devices.

That's like saying, 'hey, my next door neighbor is outside rejetting the carb on the car that he built from the ground up, LOL, what a moron. I am clearly the 'car guy' because I make optimal use of my Toyota Camry's fuel injection.'

Or thinking that a musician is backwards and 'not savvy' because he rebuilds tube amps and fabs his own guitar pedals. 'LOL, dude, just get Amplitube.'

 

[William Gaatjes]

Wrong. The reason Steve was able to do the things he did WAS because he was so technical. Was he the MOST technical? No. That's why he pulled in Wozniak. Wozniak was extremely technical, but he didn't have the vision Steve had. Steve just point them in the direction and the more technical people put the pieces together. But make no mistake, Steve was the one with the vision.

I doubt Steve Jobs came singlehandedly with all the ideas and did all the work himself. He guarded the development process closely, i will give you that. He was also a manager type guy next to being technical. He let his staff do the work and find solutions. Sometimes he would agree and sometimes he would not. Back to the drawing board it would be then.

 

[JackBurton]

You missed my point. I hated the motherfucker. He was a shitty human being and I didn't think anything he did was worth a damn.

But in hindsight, I have come to accept that he did lead a 'revolution' in certain areas. It wasn't about doing anything first. It was about convincing people that they had to jump on board with the technological revolution that was created by being told that they were going to miss the technological revolution that they themselves created out of fear for missing the technological revolution.

IT'S SO SIMPLE. :awe:

WTF does that have to do with anything? It surely doesn't give you the right to try and re-write history. John D Rockerfeller was probably one of the most if not THE most RUTHLESS businessmen in history, however I'm not going to try and discredit him for the thing he accomplished. The man was an AMAZING businessman and changed the world. It's as simple as that, despite what I think of him as a person.

Steve Jobs turned a disjointed and boring as hell technical landscape into something exciting and innovative. I thank Steve for making tech fun again.

 

[JackBurton]

I doubt Steve Jobs came singlehandedly with all the ideas and did all the work himself. He guarded the development process closely, i will give you that. He was also a manager type guy next to being technical. He let his staff do the work and find solutions. Sometimes he would agree and sometimes he would not. Back to the drawing board it would be then.

Steve provided the vision and relied on the technical people to figure out a way to accomplish it. It was really that simple.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Jobs knew how to market and not get caught up in corporatethink. He also (mostly) was able to look at things from a consumer perspective and work from that. I find it astounding that so many can't separate themselves from the process and give what consumers will adopt vs the clueless MS model. It's not that Jobs was so good but his competition kept shooting itself in the foot with alarming regularity. Unfortunately Apple is now on the other side and innovative thinking is secondary to litigation to prevent what it did itself.

 

[Rakehellion]

The necroing of the thread with his almost-corpse pictures got me back to thinking about how weird and creepy this guy's impact on the world really is.

I've accepted that his smartphones and tablets were indeed 'revolutionary,' 'game-changing,' 'paradigm-shifting,' whatever...

...but it was only for one reason. Because he said so. There was nothing special. He just said 'this will change the world,' and people went out and bought stuff, so as to not miss this world change that they themselves created by buying the product.

Same thing with the whole 'it's so easy to use' jazz. Fuck, I still can't use an iProduct. It is not intuitive to me, whatsoever. Whatever the function of that one lone button is supposed to be, it is never what I am wanting or expecting it to be. I think it was just 'easy enough' to use, in a way that was simply different, but no better than, its competitors. BUT, people were told...'it's so easy'...so they figured it out.

It's a fascinating study in human behavior, I think. I wonder if a revolutionary leader has ever popped up in an otherwise-peaceful country and said 'the government is being overturned! RIGHT NOW!' and it caused people to all of a sudden take up arms and go murder their government officials...

Maybe that's the trick to fixing the US. We don't need 'hope and change that we can believe in' or whatever that crap tagline was. We need 'CHANGE THAT IS DEFINITELY HAPPENING RIGHT THE FUCK NOW, SO YOU BETTER TAKE PART IN IT IMMEDIATELY OR YOU WILL BE UNCOOL!' Bam, instant revolution.

Because nerds only care about tech specs. He created the whole user experience.

 

[William Gaatjes]

Steve provided the vision and relied on the technical people to figure out a way to accomplish it. It was really that simple.

We both agree on the same thing.
I have read the book and seen the documentaries.
I assume you did too ?

 

[William Gaatjes]

Whenever my boss is turning into an Apple salesman again, i always tell him to get his black sweater because he is preaching the "book of Jobs" again. :biggrin:

 

[JackBurton]

This is another interesting line of thought to me. See, to me, 'tech savvy' was always in being the 'tweaker' type. The end goal was never to make everything as easy as possible. It was just to dick around with gadgets and have fun with the things that you could do, because you could do them.

Somehow, that has evolved into 'tech savvy' meaning that you are good as maximizing the ease-of-use functionality of various devices.

That's like saying, 'hey, my next door neighbor is outside rejetting the carb on the car that he built from the ground up, LOL, what a moron. I am clearly the 'car guy' because I make optimal use of my Toyota Camry's fuel injection.'

Or thinking that a musician is backwards and 'not savvy' because he rebuilds tube amps and fabs his own guitar pedals. 'LOL, dude, just get Amplitube.'

Tech savvy to me means understanding the process well enough to streamline the process to reach your end goal. For instance, why do things manually when I can write a script to automate the process. Are you going to argue automating a process is not "tech savvy." I'd argue someone that is doing things manually is not as tech savvy as the person that has the skills to see a bigger picture and can automate the process to allow for more time to do other things...like automate other processes.

 

[Rakehellion]

I doubt Steve Jobs came singlehandedly with all the ideas and did all the work himself.

Well, no. He provided direction and the thousands of engineers working for him did the hard work.
It's like people giving Obama credit for everything the government does. That ain't how it works.


But what makes Steve Jobs a household name moreso than other CEOs is that he made himself a public figure thanks to his moving speeches. hen he talked, people listened.

 

[JackBurton]

We both agree on the same thing.
I have read the book and seen the documentaries.
I assume you did too ?

Yes. But more importantly I followed Apple's rise and fall and rise again very closely as it happened. And I will tell you, I was a PC guy to the bone while most of these historic events were playing out.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

Visionary does not equal prophetic nor, is it revolutionary.

 

[Rakehellion]

Visionary does not equal prophetic nor, is it revolutionary.

See, this is what nerds do. They argue over semantics while completely missing the point.

When Steve Jobs said his products were "magical" he didn't literally mean he was summoning arcane supernatural forces to power the iPod. It's just something you say to get people excited. Everyone but engineers understands this.

 

[Lonyo]

..

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

See, this is what nerds do. They argue over semantics while completely missing the point.

When Steve Jobs said his products were "magical" he didn't literally mean he was summoning arcane supernatural forces to power the iPod. It's just something you say to get people excited. Everyone but engineers understands this.

You would be exactly right if, we were discussing technology itself. However, the "point " is the effect his work had on people and society. Then, choosing the right words leads to greater understanding versus being technically correct. I would argue nerds care more about being technically correct than in communicating. I hope you don't miss this point.

 

[lxskllr]

Richard Stallman was actually prophetic, and not just making shiny baubles for people to buy.

 

[BUTCH1]

You missed my point. I hated the motherfucker. He was a shitty human being and I didn't think anything he did was worth a damn.

But in hindsight, I have come to accept that he did lead a 'revolution' in certain areas. It wasn't about doing anything first. It was about convincing people that they had to jump on board with the technological revolution that was created by being told that they were going to miss the technological revolution that they themselves created out of fear for missing the technological revolution.

IT'S SO SIMPLE. :awe:

I think "revolution" might be a tad on the high side, IMO what he (and Apple) accomplished was making using a high-tech device an easy, intuitive affair, I can't say for sure because I don't own any Apple products but I'm assuming that was the appeal. Way back when Windows 3.X was launched it was quickly adopted and loved by the masses despite being flawed, it did one very important thing, you no longer had to memorize command-line prompts that DOS required one to do for simple tasks like starting a program or moving a file. Yea, there were "shell" programs out that helped a lot but they were not an OS, just a convince. Proper due must be given to Apple as they were doing it first but with '80's computers being extremely expensive they lost out to Windows because it worked on any X86-based platform, not one. As far as the masses rising up, who knows, it might happen one day, right now $$ rules everything, politicians and the policies and laws they put in place are there to make sure that the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor. I'm not a wining "Lib-tard" type at all, I believe in self-sufficiency and self-responsibility but the distribution of wealth in the US has become staggeringly unfair IMO.

 

[Rakehellion]

You would be exactly right if, we were discussing technology itself. However, the "point " is the effect his work had on people and society. Then, choosing the right words leads to greater understanding versus being technically correct. I would argue nerds care more about being technically correct than in communicating. I hope you don't miss this point.

I am exactly right. Everone understood what was being communicated but you.

Your comment was about the equivalent of correcting a typo. Entirely meaningless to the matter at hand.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

I am exactly right. Everone understood what was being communicated but you.

Your comment was about the equivalent of correcting a typo. Entirely meaningless to the matter at hand.

I suggest you review the definitions of prophetic and revolutionary. Correcting and communicating ideas is more important than typos. Perhaps you could communicate why you think prophetic and revolutionary are apt?

 

[JackBurton]

You would be exactly right if, we were discussing technology itself. However, the "point " is the effect his work had on people and society. Then, choosing the right words leads to greater understanding versus being technically correct. I would argue nerds care more about being technically correct than in communicating. I hope you don't miss this point.

You wouldn't know a revolution if it slapped you in the face.

Shawn Fanning caused a revolution and single handedly shook up the music industry. Steve was revolutionary in that he was able to capitalize on the chaotic music landscape and created a business model for streaming music that got people to PAY for music when they were used to getting it for free. At the time, the RIAA was beside themselves and had no idea how to get things back under control. Even critics were saying, how do you created a business model to compete against "free?" Steve saw this and capitalized on it landings some AWESOME licensing deals with the recording industry which at any other time would have been unthinkable. We now have $.99 songs on demand instead of buying an entire album.

iMessage and FaceTime Audio are causing the same type of shake ups with the carriers. Not because VoIP is something new, but it is implemented in a way the user doesn't even know what is going on. It just works. and since it "just works" it is being used over the standard BS telecom voice & SMS models where you basically get screwed. You know those costly international plans? Those could potentially be done away with in the near future. Cisco was at the forefront of VoIP for landlines, Apple is now doing the same for the mobile side.

 

[Ronstang]

Steve Jobs was no prophet. He was a marketing genius who found a segment of the buying public stupid enough to buy things "his way" and not "their way" all the while paying too much and thinking they are somehow superior for being dumb.

 

[JackBurton]

Steve Jobs was no prophet. He was a marketing genius who found a segment of the buying public stupid enough to buy things "his way" and not "their way" all the while paying too much and thinking they are somehow superior for being dumb.

Common statement that comes out of the not so tech savvy crowd. Just something that is parroted from ignorance.