RIP Steve Jobs

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  • motown67motown67 4,513 Posts
    They had these bad boys at my middle school in my computer class



    This was the first computer my mom owned, which then became mine as a hand-me-down. This is what got me through high school



    My first laptop computer which is still sitting in my closet right now



    What I have now



    It's crazy that I can look at these pictures and remember so much about when I had them

  • AlmondAlmond 1,427 Posts
    I remember using Macs when I was really little in elementary school in Sunnyvale back when we lived in the Bay Area. The rainbow apple logo brings back childhood computer lab memories.

  • AlmondAlmond 1,427 Posts
    FrankieMeltzer said:
    Almond said:
    I remember using Macs when I was really little in elementary school in Sunnyvale back when we lived in the Bay Area. The rainbow apple logo brings back childhood computer lab memories.

    Fuck.

    I'm OLD.

    Hey, Rock, are there tricks on how to deal with this geezer shit or should I just keep on ignoring it?

    We had an edge in technology when living in the Bay since Steve Jobs was our neighbor in Palo Alto.

    When we moved, I had to learn how to use an abacus to do math.

  • AserAser 2,351 Posts
    He might've been a dick, he might've been a control freak, but he wouldn't have made such a lasting imprint on society without being so. RIP.

    Apple II was my first computer experience too, my pops had one. I'm dating myself......

  • eliseelise 3,252 Posts
    motown67 said:
    They had these bad boys at my middle school in my computer class



    This was the first computer my mom owned, which then became mine as a hand-me-down. This is what got me through high school



    My first laptop computer which is still sitting in my closet right now



    What I have now



    It's crazy that I can look at these pictures and remember so much about when I had them

    I'm right with you. It's so crazy how fast it happened, too. Incredible.

  • motown67motown67 4,513 Posts
    It wasn't just the fact that you were in Sunnyvale that your school had Apples. That was one of their early marketing plans to get as many of their computers into schools as possible and win the kids over, and then their parents to gain market share. My school out in Pinole had nothing but Apples as well.

  • motown67motown67 4,513 Posts
    motown67 said:
    It wasn't just the fact that you were in Sunnyvale that your school had Apples. That was one of their early marketing plans to get as many of their computers into schools as possible and win the kids over, and then their parents to gain market share. My school out in El Sobrante had nothing but Apples as well.

  • AlmondAlmond 1,427 Posts
    motown67 said:
    It wasn't just the fact that you were in Sunnyvale that your school had Apples. That was one of their early marketing plans to get as many of their computers into schools as possible and win the kids over, and then their parents to gain market share. My school out in Pinole had nothing but Apples as well.

    Thanks for sharing that, I honestly can't remember much and only know they were Apples since I remember the old logo. I suppose that since the simple logo itself makes me think back to childhood experiences which I rarely recall, the company has indeed left an impression on me though I personally haven't purchased any of their products. Like JP stated earlier, I found the news to be strangely affecting.

  • http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/10/05/business/20111005jobs-life-timeline.html

    Check out the bottom left hand picture for Jan 16, 1993. Pretty funny.

  • JimsterJimster Cruffiton.etsy.com 6,955 Posts
    RIP Steve. But, please, easy with the "Visionary" plaudits. The ideas were not his. He did not invent the II (that was Woz), or the Mac (that was Jeff Raskin). Jobs was good at saying "I invented that." and bullying teams to breaking point. The shareholders loved him.

    http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jef_Raskin#MacUser_interview_.282004.29
    What I proposed was a computer that would be easy to use, mix text and graphics, and sell for about $1,000. Steve Jobs said that it was a crazy idea, that it would never sell, and we didn't want anything like it. He tried to shoot the project down.

    Jobs took over. He simply came in and said, "I'm taking over Macintosh hardware; you can have software and publications." ... And then a few months later Jobs said, "I'm taking over software; you can have publications." So I said, "You can have publications too," and left. That was in May of 1982. He and Markkula said, "Please don't leave. Give us another month and we'll make you an offer you can't refuse." So I gave Apple a month; they made me an offer, and I refused.

    After he took over, Jobs came up with the story about the Mac project being a "pirate operation." We weren't trying to keep the project away from Apple, as he later said; we had very good ties with the rest of Apple. We were trying to keep the project away from Jobs' meddling. For the first two years, Jobs wanted to kill the project because he didn't understand what it was really all about.

    I was very much amused by the recent Newsweek article where he [Jobs] said, "I have a few good designs in me still." He never had any designs. He has not designed a single product. Woz (Steve Wozniak) designed the Apple II. Ken Rothmuller and others designed Lisa. My team and I designed the Macintosh. Wendell Sanders designed the Apple III. What did Jobs design? Nothing.

    We have a whole valley full of people talking UNIX versus MS-DOS. What do you need any of that for? Just throw it all out; get rid of all that nonsense. Maybe you need it for computer scientists, but for people who want to get something done, no. Do you need an operating system? No.

    Have you ever noticed that there are no Maytag user groups? Nobody needs a mutual support group to run a washing machine.

    I hate mice. The mouse involves you in arm motions that slow you down. I didn't want it on the Macintosh, but Jobs insisted. In those days, what he said went, good idea or not.

    It's absolutely ugly, but unfortunately quite true of the world today; the more money you make, the more people tend to listen to you. If you're not quoted in Fortune or Forbes or the Wall Street Journal, then nobody listens. If you say something that makes a lot of money, whether what you said is true or not, people listen.

    Icons, windows, mice, big operating systems, huge programs, integrated packages.... I would like to remind the world that just because two things are on the same menu doesn't mean they taste good together.

    R.I.P. Jeff

  • DORDOR Two Ron Toe 9,903 Posts
    Is it not "Jef"?

    In any case, I'm not sure how you can't call him a visionary. Not trying to split hairs here, but it's not the technical part that made him one. It was what he was able to do with the companies he headed.

    Just his history with Apple alone would have him on the same level as some of the greatest visionaries of the last 100 years. Let alone what he created with companies like Pixar or NeXT.

    Was he the best human on the planet? No, he had done some shitty things in his past. But there has never been anyone like him in recent history and I doubt there ever will be.

    IMO, Woz said it best. "People sometimes have goals in life. Steve Jobs exceeded every goal he ever set for himself."

  • JimsterJimster Cruffiton.etsy.com 6,955 Posts
    People think of apple now as Macs, ipods and iphones.

    None of which were Jobs' idea.

    Once Jef (yes, it was one f when he was alive) sent Jobs to PARC to see how Xerox were making better-funded progress with the ideas Raskin was trying to implement at apple (who were then chucking resources into the Lisa), Jobs got the message and took over.

    Raskin: The people in charge at Apple, and I think Jobs was one of them, were not visionaries. He's always been called a visionary, and I've never seen that, in all the years I worked there. Being a visionary is not what he's great at. Look at OS X, that Apple's coming out with: everybody who works on it says it's a throwback to the 1970s in terms of structure. It's UNIX, it's backwards.

    That's why we have the mouse. Jobs saw the mouse at Xerox PARC, and even though I'd done a lot of experiments-- we did a lot of research and experimentation on graphic input devices, joysticks and force input and motion input and all kinds of things-- I still have at home some of the devices I actually built to test different forms of input. Which is also something useful when people say, "I hear you weren't interested in graphics," I say, "Well, then why was I doing this intensive work on graphic input devices?" That was a lot of the stuff I did at Apple for a time. But Jobs saw the mouse, and said "Okay," and just dictated that it's going to be the mouse. That was it. The boss has spoken.

    That wasn't really a major problem-- as long we as had some graphic input device. Very often a good way to working with him is to present him a bunch of alternatives, all of which get your idea across; then he chooses one of them, and feels he's made this wonderful invention. It's just a way of handling bosses, and it's a standard procedure. They get to make a choice, but you've already made the basic choice, in this case that there'll be a graphic input device. He chooses which one, not realizing that the big choice was whether to have one or not.

    What apple did get right was the hardware - it looks the best and is well-made and their marketing. Jobs can take credit for this. I can't abide the software, in the way you can't just plug and play the ipod/phone storage as a usb drive and the daft way it forces you to have your own media library which won't let you freely copy content. I know there is plenty of third-party software to circumvent all this, but really, why do apple have to complicate it so?

  • SPlDEYSPlDEY Vegas 3,375 Posts
    J i m s t e r said:
    What apple did get right was the hardware - it looks the best and is well-made and their marketing. Jobs can take credit for this. I can't abide the software, in the way you can't just plug and play the ipod/phone storage as a usb drive and the daft way it forces you to have your own media library which won't let you freely copy content. I know there is plenty of third-party software to circumvent all this, but really, why do apple have to complicate it so?

    These are things I've been saying for a very long time. They won't listen to you. Unfortunately, there's always a brilliant guy behind a wealthy guy.

    Maybe a little early for dancing on the grave while the soil is still moist though.

    - spidey

  • DocMcCoyDocMcCoy "Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,917 Posts
    Music Week obit.

    "The death of Steve Jobs has been met with incredible shock and heartfelt tributes ??? a hugely private man whose work, whose thinking and whose vision has shaped countless parts of our lives.

    For the music industry in particular, he was unquestionably the most important figure of the past two decades. The shadow he casts is endless and his impact (driven by his passionate perfectionism) will be felt for many, many years to come.

    There is huge symbolism that his passing coincided with the 10th anniversary of the iPod. With this one device, he set in effect a rapid-fire process of development and innovation that changed the record business in more ways than it will every fully comprehend.

    From the off, naming his company Apple was an explicit nod to music and to his favourite band, The Beatles ??? a move that resulted in protracted legal battles but ended up in Jobs securing the global coup for iTunes to be the exclusive digital retailer of the band's music.

    Jobs always presented himself as a music fan ??? as obsessed with music as he was with technology. A powerful, game-changing combination that put his company light years ahead of the competition.

    He used many of his new product keynotes to drop references to the power of music as a cultural and political force as well as opportunities to talk about his favourite musicians. This was important in ensuring Apple focused on making digital music work.

    His relationship with the music business was not always a straightforward and comfortable one, but it is unimaginable what direction it would have taken today without his involvement. One thing is likely ??? it would be in much worse shape without him.

    In his last major keynote in June this year, Jobs's celebrated ???one more thing??? at the end was the unveiling of iTunes in the cloud and iTunes Match. While not a streaming service to compete with Spotify or Rhapsody, it indicated where Apple was moving with digital music next. And as it has shown time and again ??? iTunes, the iPod, App Store, the iPad ??? Apple provides the tipping point that pushes niche music services and platforms deep into the heart of the mainstream.

    He often argued that consumers didn???t know what they wanted until your showed it to them. This was something he achieved with enviable ease again, and again, and again.

    He proved, with the iTunes Store, that people would pay for music even though there were many ways for them to get the songs they wanted and not pay the creators. This was a philosophy he held dear ??? that quality (be it a piece of hardware or a song) deserved to be paid for so that creators could continue to create, to innovate and to change our culture for the better.

    The term ???genius??? has been devalued through overuse today, but Steve Jobs truly was a genius. He changed technology, he changed software and he changed the way art is created, distributed, sold and enjoyed.

    He even ??? with the lower-case ???i??? prefix ??? changed our very language.

    Seemingly simple and minimal, yet infinitely powerful ??? that will be his legacy."

  • RAJRAJ tenacious local 7,782 Posts
    Apple changed my life. RIP Steve Jobs.

  • Hotsauce84Hotsauce84 8,450 Posts
    marwal_bust said:
    Respect and rest to this incredible man.

    What bums me out here (like having open casket viewing) is that from CNN to WSJ to APPLE.COM to AP all pretty much 'seem' to have had the article, photo or whatever ready to go within 5 mins of the announcement (mixed judgement)...yea it's 2011 but transparent to me at least and just wish it was more organic. I know why this is, but I just want it to be not so calculated if that makes sense.

    STFU to myself and just comment on the loss, but.

    At 8p whatever time zone Florida is I learned of the news via Facebook. By 1a there was a USA Today outside my hotel room with the man on the front page. Crazy fast.

  • Hotsauce84Hotsauce84 8,450 Posts
    marwal_bust said:
    Respect and rest to this incredible man.

    What bums me out here (like having open casket viewing) is that from CNN to WSJ to APPLE.COM to AP all pretty much 'seem' to have had the article, photo or whatever ready to go within 5 mins of the announcement (mixed judgement)...yea it's 2011 but transparent to me at least and just wish it was more organic. I know why this is, but I just want it to be not so calculated if that makes sense.

    STFU to myself and just comment on the loss, but.

    At 8p whatever time zone Florida is I learned of the news via Facebook. By 1a there was a USA Today outside my hotel room with the man on the front page. Crazy fast.

  • kalakala 3,361 Posts
    I agree w/ what everyone has said R.I.P

    ALSO
    he amassed a 9 BILLION DOLLAR FORTUNE
    and he kept all of it to himself

  • JimsterJimster Cruffiton.etsy.com 6,955 Posts
    After completing high school in Cupertino, northern California, Jobs went north to study at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, but dropped out after a term. Returning to California, he took a job at Atari, the video games manufacturer, in order to save money for a "spiritual quest" to India. There he was converted to Zen Buddhism and vegetarianism and dabbled in hallucinogenic drugs.

    On his return to America Jobs resumed his work with Atari and was given the task of creating a more compact circuit board for the game Breakout. He had little interest in the intricacies of circuit board design and persuaded his 16-year old friend, Steve Wozniak, to do the job for him, offering to split any bonus fifty-fifty. Jobs was given $5,000 by a delighted Atari, but Wozniak only got $300, under the impression the payout was $600.

    Yay Buddhism.

    It's perhaps the greatest credit to Jobs' skills as a hypemeister that he's being portrayed as some iHova when he was basically a ruthless businessman. And also, I think Woz and Raskin deserve more shine in the mainstream.

  • FlomotionFlomotion 2,391 Posts
    DocMcCoy said:
    Music Week obit.

    "The death of Steve Jobs has been met with incredible shock and heartfelt tributes ??? a hugely private man whose work, whose thinking and whose vision has shaped countless parts of our lives.

    For the music industry in particular, he was unquestionably the most important figure of the past two decades. The shadow he casts is endless and his impact (driven by his passionate perfectionism) will be felt for many, many years to come.

    There is huge symbolism that his passing coincided with the 10th anniversary of the iPod. With this one device, he set in effect a rapid-fire process of development and innovation that changed the record business in more ways than it will every fully comprehend.

    From the off, naming his company Apple was an explicit nod to music and to his favourite band, The Beatles ??? a move that resulted in protracted legal battles but ended up in Jobs securing the global coup for iTunes to be the exclusive digital retailer of the band's music.

    Jobs always presented himself as a music fan ??? as obsessed with music as he was with technology. A powerful, game-changing combination that put his company light years ahead of the competition.

    He used many of his new product keynotes to drop references to the power of music as a cultural and political force as well as opportunities to talk about his favourite musicians. This was important in ensuring Apple focused on making digital music work.

    His relationship with the music business was not always a straightforward and comfortable one, but it is unimaginable what direction it would have taken today without his involvement. One thing is likely ??? it would be in much worse shape without him.

    In his last major keynote in June this year, Jobs's celebrated ???one more thing??? at the end was the unveiling of iTunes in the cloud and iTunes Match. While not a streaming service to compete with Spotify or Rhapsody, it indicated where Apple was moving with digital music next. And as it has shown time and again ??? iTunes, the iPod, App Store, the iPad ??? Apple provides the tipping point that pushes niche music services and platforms deep into the heart of the mainstream.

    He often argued that consumers didn???t know what they wanted until your showed it to them. This was something he achieved with enviable ease again, and again, and again.

    He proved, with the iTunes Store, that people would pay for music even though there were many ways for them to get the songs they wanted and not pay the creators. This was a philosophy he held dear ??? that quality (be it a piece of hardware or a song) deserved to be paid for so that creators could continue to create, to innovate and to change our culture for the better.

    The term ???genius??? has been devalued through overuse today, but Steve Jobs truly was a genius. He changed technology, he changed software and he changed the way art is created, distributed, sold and enjoyed.

    He even ??? with the lower-case ???i??? prefix ??? changed our very language.

    Seemingly simple and minimal, yet infinitely powerful ??? that will be his legacy."

    Good obit - a remarkable guy. They're wrong about the "i" thing, though. It was already an established trend with i / my / mi / u etc. Apple made it their own with a lot of heavy-handed IP litigation against smaller tech companies who used it well before they did.

  • JimsterJimster Cruffiton.etsy.com 6,955 Posts
    kala said:
    I agree w/ what everyone has said R.I.P

    ALSO
    he amassed a 9 BILLION DOLLAR FORTUNE
    and he kept all of it to himself

    Jobs was not a universally popular figure. He oozed arrogance, was vicious about business rivals, and in contrast to, say, Bill Gates, refused to have any truck with notions of corporate responsibility. He habitually parked his Mercedes in the disabled parking slot at Apple headquarters and one of his first acts on returning to the company in 1997 was to terminate all of its corporate philanthropy programmes.

    "NO MORE MR. NICE-GUY!"

  • rootlesscosmo said:
    http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/10/05/business/20111005jobs-life-timeline.html

    Check out the bottom left hand picture for Jan 16, 1993. Pretty funny.


    hilarious :comedy_gold:

  • Seriously profound contributions to the human race. I get so tired of IT bugging out on what he "stole," and what was "his." He may not have "invented" all of it, but it sure took one man with a vision to synthesize all of these ideas and implement it in a way that everyone could understand.

    My mom called me last night at 10 because she wanted to talk about his passing. She's a teacher, and she was talking about how his work changed her life and her students. That was seriously moving to me.

    Also, not to absolve the man of everything upon death- but, his not being a great philanthropist never bugged me. I never heard about his lavish lifestyle or how he was blowing money... Money just seemed like a (very) positive outgrowth of his work. He seemed more concerned with work than the money than it created, and that seemed to hold true for giving his money away as well. Not saying he wasn't an asshole at times, just saying I don't know that I care or that it effects anything for me.

    We throw the word "genius" around a lot, but RIP to an absolute genius.

    Also, this article apparently had a huge effect on he & Woz, and is great reading. About the 70's Phone Phreaks:

    http://www.lospadres.info/thorg/lbb.html

  • batmonbatmon 27,574 Posts
    Steve Jobs is my new MC name.

  • HorseleechHorseleech 3,830 Posts
    I'm at a loss to understand how many of the people cheering on the protesters in the Occupy thread are getting weepy for dude over here.

  • JimsterJimster Cruffiton.etsy.com 6,955 Posts
    gareth said:
    Seriously profound contributions to the human race.

    He didn't cure or invent anything, they sold shinier, more upmarket versions of things that were already selling to the masses, to the small percentage of the human race that could afford them. Simply that.

    My 2p.

  • J i m s t e r said:
    gareth said:
    Seriously profound contributions to the human race.

    He didn't cure or invent anything, they sold shinier, more upmarket versions of things that were already selling to the masses, to the small percentage of the human race that could afford them. Simply that.

    My 2p.

    Yawn. To quote a great poet, "he was the man for his time and place."

    I'll add- the Zune did not change the world.

  • gareth said:
    I'll add- the Zune did not change the world.

    Last time I checked neither did the iPod.

    Unless you consider getting people to buy things in a slightly different way "world changing"...

    He's changed shopping as we know it.

  • J i m s t e r said:
    gareth said:
    Seriously profound contributions to the human race.

    He didn't cure or invent anything, they sold shinier, more upmarket versions of things that were already selling to the masses, to the small percentage of the human race that could afford them. Simply that.

    My 2p.

    ^^^^truth. I didn't know that building a huge corporation could be a profound service to humanity until I came on Soulstrut today.

  • I think to argue that what he did merely changed commerce or were "shiny toys," is either ultra-naive, or merely ax-grinding.

    I brought this up earlier as my mother, a lifelong teacher, talked about the effect it had on her and her students. That is profound, that is universal, and that is a huge contribution to the human race whether you buy his products or own the stock.
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