Since so many other people are writing about Steve Jobs on the occasion of his death, I may as well, too. For a good round-up of media reaction see Barry Ritholtz.
My father and my father-in-law both died of cancer of the pancreas so I’m pretty well aware of its deadliness. I have been astonished that Steve Jobs lived with it for as long as he did. One more extraordinary thing about an extraordinary man.
Since being diagnosed in 2003, Steve Jobs brought the iPhone and the iPad, both best in class products, to market. That would be astonishing enough on its own but to do it while being deathly ill is unique.
Somebody put out a calculation that the iOS ecosystem’s operating income (iPhone + iPad) is bigger than Microsoft’s. We should all remember that he was doing this feat with only one hand. The other hand was busy running Pixar, an extraordinary accomplishment by itself.
Do you remember when selling Wang word processors was a desirable job?
Not only that I remember when Wang word processor salesmen were elite—mostly ex-IBMers.
I’ll call this hand. I did word processing on a Data General.
He’s one of the few great men I’ve observed in my 57 years. Not a nice man, especially, but a transformative genius with few peers. In the middle of the worst downturn since the Great Depression his stores were full, his movies were great and profitable, and he couldn’t make things as fast as he could sell them.
Before Jobs computers were ugly, utilitarian boxes that could only be operated by geeks. After Jobs they were works of art that did everything you wanted them to do, effortlessly. I can’t think of another public figure who changed my life so profoundly.
From The Onion:
Let’s not overstate Jobs influence on motion pictures. He bought Pixar off George Lucas. It was a hardware company. That didn’t work out so well. One of the employees started showinig off some of his creative work, and they started getting some commercial work. Even then they were just scrapping by. Jobs broke Pixar up, getting rid of the hardware stuff, and almost sold the remainder of the company. He kept it when they found out Disney would distribute Toy Story. Incidentally, many of the creative folk were ex-Disney, refugees from the days after Walt and before Eisner. Pixar as a MOVIE STUDIO is successful because of the highly creative people that work there, not because of the computer millionaire (that was then, before he upgraded) that bought the company back when, or the corporate wonks that own the company now.
This was a wave Jobs rode, not one he created.
What operating system?
You win. I don’t remember . It was about 1984.
The first computer I owned was an Apple IIe. Or the one in the Museum of Modern Art, whatever.
The salesman wore Le Must de Cartier.
Although I share Reynold’s sentiment on Jobs’ creative talents, I wonder how people are reconciling their adulation with him, and his business practices, which are undeniably capitalist in nature, including outsourcing to the hilt.
Convenient selectivity, perhaps?
Probably Eclipse AOS. Once upon a time in the mists of the distant past I was an authority on operating systems. I used to give expert testimony, etc. Back in the 70s I designed operating systems.
Yo? A writer I like is Tracy Kidder. He wrote “Soul of a New Machine,” about the drive to produce a 64-bit machine.
And where in the hell were you when I was taking physics at Reed?
I like capitalists, Drew, I just want them to pay a slightly higher tax rate.
I like capitalists also, especially ones that create jobs rather than destroy them and our economy.
Steve
That was 32-bit machine being developed — the Eclipse MV/8000.
“I like capitalists, Drew, I just want them to pay a slightly higher tax rate.”
Care to be specific?
I could resist it no longer. Yesterday, I went onto the Apple website and ordered an iPad 2. It will be the first Apple product I’ve ever owned. Strange as it may sound, I feel a strong need to have a piece of Jobs’ creative genius around me.
From a business standpoint, what impresses me the most about his accomplishment is that he showed that, if you produce a superior product, it can be highly successful even though it’s proprietary (as opposed to “open”). Meanwhile, Sun Microsystems — the first and loudest proponent of “open systems” — survives only as a stepchild of Oracle. I was directly involved in the “proprietary” vs. “open” wars of the late ’80s and early ’90s. I am gladdened to see that Apple, under Jobs’ leadership, stayed with a proprietary business model and is the most highly-valued (by stock market capitalization) company in the world. Had he followed the conventional wisdom after his return to Apple, this most certainly wouldn’t be the case.
When I was a Wall Street analyst, I met the CEOs of many technology companies. The only one who came anywhere near to possessing Jobs’ combination of genius and charisma was Robert Noyce, the founder of Intel. He, too, died a premature death (around 20-25 years ago).
Unfortunately, I never met Jobs. My iPad 2 is as close as I’ll ever come.
On another subject, it’s really a small world. When I started on Wall Street, the first company I followed was Data General. The executives I remember are CEO Edson de Castro and Marketing VP Herb Richmond. For about a decade, they were Digital Equipment’s principal competitor.
Dave, are you sure that you did word processing on a DG machine? If you did, you were one of the few! That was Wang’s bailiwick.
Just to see DG’s name is like a walk down memory lane for me. I really am getting old — if 65 counts as old.
Actually, it was a user manual for a telephone company program, so it didn’t need to look like typical business communication. Even so, I eventually rewrote it with an early IBM PC.
Yes, indeed! I designed a word processor for the DG back in the 70s. Also, I met Ed de Castro a couple of times.
Dave,
What is the probability that in 2011 two blogfriends would both have met Edson de Castro?
You and I have overcome great odds.
Here is the other side of Steve Jobs coin —-> What everyone is too polite to say about Steve Jobs
As much as Jobs was a hero to some, inspirational to others, he also had a shadow side, which was less than admirable for an icon of his size. There are numerous accounts of harsh treatment to employees — he almost seems like a bi-polar type of personality. There is no record of any cheritable giving, despite his mega-billions. And, lastly and probably the most surprising to me, was the child labor in China that was linked to the manufacturing of his product line.
OT- You have not done health care for a while Dave. I missed this when I was on vacation this summer. It surprised me quite a bit. I assumed that the institution of Medicare would have caused a real bump in health care spending.
http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/most-important-chart-in-health-policy/#comments
Steve
I seem to remember seeing RDOS run two sessions, one of which was WordPerfect, back around 1980 or so. Business BASIC could support around 25 terminals at once, but I think that the WordPerfect could only support one at a time.
jan-
I know. Odd and selective worship.
Odd and selective worship.
not odd at all. he made people look cool. therefore HE was cool and admirable. nothing else matters to SWPL folk.