Steve Jobs, February 24, 1955 - October 5, 2011

[Alpe d'Huez]

That poster really says a lot, paraphrasing the military adage paraphrased by Churchill, LBJ, etc. But people felt like they knew Jobs. Like he was on a shining kingdom on a hill near us, and made our lives better.

Commodore 64 user. Before that I took typing in school...

 

[Maxiton]

It's past my bedtime, but I wanted to post this link. It goes to an article that talks about something I've suspected: some of those qualities that made Steve Jobs successful may have been the very ones responsible for his death. For nine months after his cancer diagnosis, he avoided conventional treatment and tried to cure himself by changing his diet. Here's the link.

http://gawker.com/5849543/harvard-c...ably-doomed-himself-with-alternative-medicine

 

[Maxiton]

Getting back to what I said earlier about Jobs being a revolutionary at heart, there's a great article in this month's issue (October 11, 2011) of Rolling Stone, called "The Steve Jobs Nobody Knew." In it, Jobs recounts his first trip to India, where he had gone, in part, to study the teachings of guru Neem Karoli Baba, whose ideas had been popularized in the West by author Ram Das in a bestseller called Be Here Now.

"During [Jobs'] wanderings [in India], overcome by the widespread poverty and suffering he encountered, he was struck by an insight that would prove central to his own reinvention, a subtle but significant shift from the spiritual to the practical: 'It was one of the first times in my life I started thinking that maybe Thomas Edison did a lot more to improve the world than Karl Marx and Neem Karoli Baba put together.'"

A bit later, at the inception of Apple, a good friend of his asked him why he was starting a for-profit company. "'Remember in the Sixties, when people were raising their fists and saying, "Power to the people"?' Jobs told him. 'Well, that's what I'm doing at Apple. By building affordable personal computers and putting one on every desk, in every hand, I'm giving people power. They don't have to go through the high priests of mainframe - they can access information themselves. They can steal fire from the mountain. And this is going to inspire far more change than any non-profit.'"

EDIT: (In fairness, though, Jobs goes on to say that he doesn't "want to come across like someone who has statues of Mao in his front yard." And he adds that he is "very uncomfortable with these 'big picture' questions.")

I don't think it would be premature to say that Steve Jobs was right.

 

[Black-Balled]

Sorry if it is a repost...:

Steve Jobs - 1990 interview
I read a study that measured the efficiency of locomotion for
various species on the planet. The condor used the least energy to
move a kilometer. Humans came in with a rather unimpressive showing
about a third of the way down the list. ... then someone at
Scientific American had the insight to test the efficiency of
locomotion for a man on a bicycle, [who] blew the condor away.
That's what a computer is to me... the most remarkable tool that
we've ever come up with. It's the equivalent of a bicycle for our
minds.

 

[Spare Tyre]

And how much of your items are British made?

I wish people would get off it, you object at the conditions of people making these items (phones etc.) but I doubt you would pay the extra it would cost to make them in Britain, America etc.

Think of those who work long days in a toxic environment for peanuts next time you consider buying some trinket or gadget and perhaps you won't make the purchase. Especially when the profits on the item go towards making some bloke a billionaire. I DO pay the extra for Australian made or a Fair Trade product when choice exists and I think hard about whether it's necessary to buy or replace items when such an option isn't available.




Re Steve Jobs & the idolising of the man and his innovations .... I'm much more grateful to the person or people who developed the refrigerator or penicillin or antibiotics or the flush toilet or the washing machine.

 

[BroDeal]

Re Steve Jobs & the idolising of the man and his innovations .... I'm much more grateful to the person or people who developed the...flush toilet...

A man with the last name of Crapper is never going to attract as much popular attraction as a man named Jobs.

 

[Alpe d'Huez]

60-Minutes interviewed the man who is writing Jobs authorized biogarphy, and he noted on Jobs "one regret". That would be waiting seven months to have surgery, and as noted, trying to cure himself through diet, because of the type of cancer he had was not the most deadly kind. The author said macrobiotics, though I had heard he became a vegan a couple years back. Jobs apparently felt that opening him up for surgery was something akin to unholy, invasive, intrusive. Steve Croft asked how could someone so brilliant make such a stupid decision. I guess that's an answer we'll never know.

Several months later the cancer had spread to tissues around the pancreas, and the liver. And you can guess the rest from there. Sad, really.