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Topic: Steve Jobs Passes Away (Read 6451 times) previous topic - next topic
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Steve Jobs Passes Away

I'm sure everybody know by know, but yesterday, after struggling with cancer for years, at the age of 56(!) Steve Jobs passed away.

He was the person that made the iPods ubiquitous, and with them, the AAC format.

http://www.apple.com/stevejobs/

I would surely miss him.

RIP/QEPD.

Steve Jobs Passes Away

Reply #1
Stay hungry, stay foolish... Goodbye, Steve.

Steve Jobs Passes Away

Reply #2
I don't see the big deal.
some famous person died, big whoop. 

Steve Jobs Passes Away

Reply #3
Every day important and merited people die - most of them ain't celebrities. I don't think this is subject to the HA news.

Steve Jobs Passes Away

Reply #4
Sure important people die all the time, but how many of them had as much impact in the world of digital audio as Steve?

Steve Jobs Passes Away

Reply #5
Steve Jobs was a manager. He lead a company that developed successful products. Those products surely had some impact to the world of digital audio - although one could argue that if there hadn't been an iPod there would have been other, similar successful products for the same purpose.

Dont get me wrong: I don't want to vilify Jobs' merits. I'm just a little bit annoyed by that kind of quasi-religious cult around his persona - do we really need a Saint of computer consumerism?

Steve Jobs Passes Away

Reply #6
Agree with Northpack, the head-figure thing and the brand-specific tensions I've always observed was only somewhat entertaining before it became fanatically argumentative and downright vicious retaliation and counter-retaliation. I don't recall the head figure of Sony being worshiped for the Walkman in the 80's, which was just as significant for portable, personal entertainment.
"Something bothering you, Mister Spock?"

Steve Jobs Passes Away

Reply #7
I want to add one point to northpacks comment:

before anybody is able to hold an iPhone or an iPod (or an android device) in his hands it has to be produced by workers under the worst conditions. That could give everybody the hint that it is all about business. No more and nothing else! I am disgusted with that wonderful digital world!

Steve Jobs Passes Away

Reply #8
Yep, Apple were no different (absurd working conditions and regulations causing such high rates of suicide amongst workers in China that they were then forbidden to commit suicide) and, for all I know, were probably about as good at feigning ethicality as they were at painting themselves as environmental saviours.

Even if you are sufficiently into computing, digital audio, etc., he was hardly the singular pioneer that some people seem to be saying he was.

Like everyone else, I think it’s never good when anyone dies, and I specifically felt bad when I saw how a picture of Steve and saw how ill he looked. But it’s all being overblown, like everything that has anything to do with celebrities and/or brand-mysticism.

Steve Jobs Passes Away

Reply #9
Apple could have kept much of their production in the US and continued to make a profit.

Steve Jobs has been a lot of things to a lot of people but he was no patriot to his country.  While this wasn't his duty, nor was striving to at least appear to give a shit about basic human rights, I'd like to think he could have been a bit more idealistic in this regard.  These are qualities I would like to see in those to whom homage is paid as heroes.  To me he was a successful capitalistic businessman; he was an icon, no question.  I'll go farther and say he was probably a good guy, seeing that I have no reason to think he ever did anything personally wrong to his friends or family.  I just feel that people should not wear blinders when looking back on these things, not when there may be a bigger lesson to be learned.  I will not be one of the ones masturbating about how awesome he was.

Perhaps my standards are too high, but just as well.  I am clearly no saint nor am I particularly religious, but having absolutely no qualms throwing stones at glass houses, please allow me to leave my post with a quote from the book of Matthew, as well as a question to ponder.

"...Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."

Would the man those attribute lord and savior approve of the work of Steve Jobs?

Out of respect for those who would hold these things sacred, I do not assume to know the answer with any certainty.

Steve Jobs Passes Away

Reply #10
I'll preface this post by saying that I have never owned a single Apple product in my life, aside from installing iTunes a couple times to try it out (and whatever I might get from our local orchard  ), and I largely dislike Apple's business practices and the culture around their products.

That said, Steve Jobs was quite literally a cultural icon.  The fact that you are reading this on a graphical user interface was due to either his work or his influence (i.e. his competitors).  That could have been it for him, and his name faded into the background, not unlike his predecessor Dennis Ritchie, who also passed recently, known only for developing C and Unix, both things that have influenced programming languages and operating systems (including OSX), or his contemporary Steve Wozniak, for whom few can describe the work he's done since Apple and few can say that his work since then has been revolutionary.

When I started University over 13 years ago, a computer science student doing work on an Apple computer was considered strange at best and frequently looked down upon.  Unix and Linux were the preferred choice, with Windows being a distant second.  Apples were largely the domain of the humanities majors who thought that Windows was either too complex, didn't work well, or preferred the way the iMac looked (with its different colors).  That changed with OSX, which was a direct Steve Jobs innovation, courtesy of his work with NeXT.  That innovation was the start of a series of revolutions to different industries.

The iPod was mentioned before, but I don't think much appreciation has been given to it here.  Before the iPod, the portable mp3 player was largely unimpressive.  It was not unlike the current digital picture frame market these days.  The iPod changed that industry culture so much that for many, the very word "iPod" is synonymous with portable mp3 player.  To provide another example, the concept or technology of putting an mp3 into an RSS feed is called Podcasting, named after said mp3 player.  Children and teenagers started asking for iPods for their birthday presents, something which was unheard of before for any computer gadget.  It is so ubiquitous now that it's difficult to find an mp3 player that can compare to it. Steve Jobs gave the order for the iPod and Apple now essentially owns the portable music player market.

iTunes should be mentioned at this point as well, since they went hand-in-hand with the iPod and is another area of revolution.  The idea of being able to buy mp3s (or any other digital music file) online was not new, but the idea skyrocketed with iTunes.  They're the biggest player in an industry that barely existed 10 years ago.

The iPhone originally made people think that Steve Jobs had lost his mind for giving this order.  Why would you want a phone on your mp3 player?  And why does it look like a PDA?  Again, before the iPhone, the closest equivalent were Palm devices used mostly by people who needed to keep notes, contacts, and sometimes email and documents on the go.  The rise in popularity of the smartphone largely started with the iPhone.  Now, it's difficult to go into mobile store and find non-smartphones.  Earlier this evening, I threw out a piece of junkmail from my mobile provider that offered me a $100 credit if I traded in my regular cell phone for a smartphone.  In short, Steve Jobs, by ordering Apple to make the iPhone, revolutionized the mobile industry.

Most recently, the iPad, when it came out, was sometimes referred to as the bigger version of the iPod touch.  But those who remember tablet PCs prior to iPod, know that this is another market sector that barely existed before Apple, courtesy of Steve Jobs, stepped in.

Now Steve Jobs, as pointed out, wasn't exactly a saint and had his fair share of failures as well.  There are plenty of horror stories from those who worked for him.  Jobs denied paternity of his own daughter for years (though he later accepted her and even paid for her to go to Harvard).  And from a business perspective, the Apple III, the Lisa, Pixar Image Computers, and NeXTCubes pretty much bombed in terms of sales (Pixar made up for it with their graphics division though).

I find it mildly amusing that people are criticizing Steve Jobs for his lack of philanthropy or the Foxconn factory conditions.  The reason he is being talked about is that his work has had a direct influence on first world culture in such a way that it is difficult to imagine what it would be like without it.  And that is a rare thing to say about any individual.

Steve Jobs Passes Away

Reply #11
I find it mildly amusing that people are criticizing Steve Jobs for his lack of philanthropy or the Foxconn factory conditions.  The reason he is being talked about is that his work has had a direct influence on first world culture in such a way that it is difficult to imagine what it would be like without it.  And that is a rare thing to say about any individual.
As greynol wrote: Steve Jobs was a capitalistic business man. The last thing i would do is to claim about a lack of philanthropy. From the point of view of a business man there is no reason to have problems with the situation in FoxxConn: it is part of business  to let worker work as long as possible and as cheap as possible. In that sense: he was a good businees man - good for apple, bad for the people in china, but not as bad as not being useful for the world market at all and starving from hunger. What a cynical economy system where exploitation is the condition to survive! Before a simple idea get some influence on "first world culture" (!) it has to be brought under a huge group of "first world people" that automatically means that they must be able to afford the products which is a matter of price which in turn has to be low. It is strange how people can think that having some ideas is a greater deed than having the worldwide power of a big company that has nothing to do with culture. It might be that you can't imagine what the world would be without the cultural influence of apple products - i however can imagine what the world could be if digital technology would not be on duty of profit. But for you that is probably a different topic.

(Sorry, my english is by far not good enough for such an earnest topic)

Steve Jobs Passes Away

Reply #12
It is strange how people can think that having some ideas is a greater deed than having the worldwide power of a big company that has nothing to do with culture. It might be that you can't imagine what the world would be without the cultural influence of apple products - i however can imagine what the world could be if digital technology would not be on duty of profit.

It really is a tangent from the topic, which is Steve Jobs.  It has been argued, and I tend to agree, that the most powerful thing in this world is an idea.  That doesn't mean that all ideas are powerful, but there have been several that have affected human life more than we can imagine.  In fact, I would argue that many of the famous scientists in history are known because of their "ideas."

It is very easy to point to Apple, and Steve Jobs, and question the business decisions that caused such problems.  And the fact is, you're right.  Enabling a company to abuse its workers is despicable.  But the frightening part is that Apple is just one of many.  Nearly all of the electronics you get and use are manufactured by some company in China.  And who knows how well they treat their workers. The fact that Apple was one of their clients probably shed more light onto the problem than anything else.

Allow me to put it into a different perspective.  Do you think that Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, is equally to blame for these problems?  Hint: Guess who manufactures the Kindle? 

In short, the most of criticisms that people are making about Steve Jobs in relation to China, are really a symptom of a far bigger underlying problem that goes beyond the scope of what Steve Jobs has done.

Don't accuse me of not being able to imagine a world without the influence of Apple products, I have lived in that world once upon a time.  But much has changed since then, and there are millions of people working and living differently because of Apple's existence.  That is the mark of revolutionizing an industry or two.  Ask a musician some time if iTunes has changed the way they try to do business.  Ask a salesperson if the iPhone changed the way they work.

Steve Jobs Passes Away

Reply #13
Allow me to put it into a different perspective.  Do you think that Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, is equally to blame for these problems?

So this is now a contest?

If Jeff Bezos is placed on a pedestal and worshiped like a god I will be there to say the same thing.

In short, the most of criticisms that people are making about Steve Jobs in relation to China, are really a symptom of a far bigger underlying problem that goes beyond the scope of what Steve Jobs has done.

Conveniently ignoring this problem in order to talk about what a great person he was helps to solve this problem how?

Steve Jobs Passes Away

Reply #14
Greynol, I never said or intended it to be a "contest".  The point is that a full list of people who are just as responsible as Steve Jobs reads like a who's who list of the electronics industry.

In short, the most of criticisms that people are making about Steve Jobs in relation to China, are really a symptom of a far bigger underlying problem that goes beyond the scope of what Steve Jobs has done.

Conveniently ignoring this problem in order to talk about what a great person he was helps to solve this problem how?


It doesn't solve the problem one bit.  It's usually considered a courtesy and kindness to not speak ill of the recently deceased.
Plus, it just seems like an asshole thing to bring up.  When I die, I wouldn't want someone to say "Don't forget that most of his possessions supported poor worker conditions in China."
It's probably a true statement, but it says very little about what I've done and how I've lived.


Steve Jobs Passes Away

Reply #16
I won't be a guy who will talk bad about Steve Jobs. After all his activity brings some interesting results.
But I'm agree that  he was a 100% man of the business as it was already mention. 

Apple production is the result of concentration of many tech companies. It's hardly a breakthrough of one company, even less of one man.

Let's see:
1. CPUs - A4-A5 - it's not other thing but ARM Cortex microprocessor. ARM are owners of its design and Samsung fabricates it.
2. Displays - LG.
.... all hardware parts are made by different companies.
Software isn't really new concept.

Multimedia - AAC, H.264 etc - MPEG, ITU-T, Dolby, FhG and many others.

Apple is smart to combine, invest and use modern technologies in intelligent way while the other companies who hold the rights of their technologies.


And why does nobody talk about the death of Dennis Ritchie, true genius, the inventor of language C? His invention was way more important to modern tech world.

Steve Jobs Passes Away

Reply #17
Quote
It's usually considered a courtesy and kindness to not speak ill of the recently deceased.


He was a fucking capitalist businessmen - thats all. He is dead - so what.
He was about profit, thats it. He developed some products I never even have considered buying.

Capitalism is about creating a perceived need - that is what he was good at. Visionary my arse.

Steve Jobs Passes Away

Reply #18
It kinda kicked me in the guts, when I learned about the death of S.J. My dad died of cancer in January this year. He was 54. When seeing the pictures taken shortly before S.J.'s death, it reminded me all over again about the sickness, the pain, and death of my dad. This was one of the reasons why I didn't post an answer up till now. The only Apple product I own, is an iPod nano 2G, that I inherited from my dad. I can strangely relate to his death, since I experienced first hand, what his family experienced. When dying of cancer, you die in pain, and indignity. And to top that off, it's not like you're in agony for just a few hours or days, but years! The first year was horrible, because we didn't know what to expect from the next few years. The second year, my dad's health degraded faster and faster, the last six month of his life were horrible. Artificial anus, urinal catheter, running around with a bag of your own shit at the lower belly, and with a bag of piss on your left leg. He was barely able to stand up for more than a few hours a day. When seeing what happens with S.J. I reckon it was quite similar. Trust me, life is hell for so many reasons when dying of cancer.

Edit:

I talked about this with my mom last weekend. She told me the first thing that came to her mind when hearing the news, was my dad, his death and how we felt when he was dying. It's weird, when you experienced this kind of thing first hand. What came to my mind, though, is no matter how rich you are, or what kind of celebrity, you can't escape your fate. My dad and S.J. died of the same causes, and at nearly the same age. It's creepy to some extend. Suddenly you notice all those people around you dieing of cancer. It's like it's everywhere around you. Horrible.