The real problem, to me, isn't that Cook sold out Jobs; he sold out his customers, by the increasing rents extracted by the App Store and the services division in general. I'm a long time Apple user, and the idea that ads have any place in my computers is appalling, but now they're in Maps, and they're in the OS as non-dismissible upsells, and I mean, Windows is right over there, all of this is unnecessary strategy taxation on what Apple does well (hardware and software).
That was always the strategy, the whole apple ecosystem was always obtuse and closed off from compatibility with the rest of the computing world just to maximize rents. If they could, they would ship an apple version of the internet only available to apple devices.
This is true and I don’t know why it’s downvoted. IBM was notoriously obsessed with lock-in, they just bungled it with the IBM PC because they needed to move fast because they didn’t want it to slip away from them. So, they used off the shelf components that anyone else could buy.
The lenient contract with Microsoft and the unexpected to them ruling on reverse engineering the BIOS sealed their fate.
But no company wants to compete in a commodity, they all want to be monopolies. All the Unix vendors tried to be common enough to be a selling point but idiosyncratic enough to lock in their clients.
Apple isn’t nefarious… they are the default.
Now, if we want to support their ambitions with our wallets is another question
That isn't true. The original Apple Store proposal by Bertrand Serlet is available and it is pretty clearly driven by the need to polish the user experience of installing and managing applications. Being able to charge a significant premium was just a part of the picture and originally considered to be required to pay for the associated infrastructure of reviews and such.
I am not even talking about the apple store, i am talking about printers, cables and file systems in the 90s. Since the beginning of the company everything they made did not work with stuff from other manufacturers on purpose.
I think it's important to remind ourselves that the responsibility doesn't lie with the one individual. Even the visit to the WH dinner - it is the company, Apple, via various structures committed to doing those things with various VPs and staff onboard brainstorming and supporting along the way.
So "John" may bring some nuances but let's not be under the illusion that a huge corporation like Apple would suddenly bounce off to a different track.
> I think it's important to remind ourselves that the responsibility doesn't lie with the one individual.
No, the responsibility lies with the culture of growth at all costs. Margins and revenues must continue to increase, whatever else happens.
If you want to blame someone, blame whoever decided it was a great idea to pay executives in stock/stock options. That's what incentivises this kind of behaviour.
As an aside, it's amusing to me that Apple ran so hard on privacy with (apparently) the explicit intention of creating a market for their ad products.
> blame whoever decided it was a great idea to pay executives in stock/stock options
Yes, I do agree that extreme forms of capitalism are responsible for ruining practically every aspect of modern tech.
> Apple ran so hard on privacy with (apparently) the explicit intention of creating a market for their ad products
Indeed. It wasn't obvious at the time, but with hindsight we can see that the push for privacy was only in areas where Apple wanted to counter Meta/competitors or gain advantage in specific verticals. It was never "user focused".
If the linux community could focus and organize its efforts it could actually offer an alternative that would reapply pressure that the tech industry has been working hard to lift from itself through creeping encirclement and enclosure, i.e., the Enclosure Acts. People sometimes lament things like how the Europeans stole the land of the indigenous tribes in what would become America or throughout he colonialism in Europe, but what is often overlooked is that this process of taking public lands and giving them to private people was done to the indigenous Europeans long before America was even discovered and colonialism was even engaged in, starting in the 12th century in the UK for example.
What the tech companies have been doing to the internet since about the early aughts has been no different, they've been using the same kind of enclosure strategy to limit and parcel out and divide up the internet among the ruling psychopaths.
What Apple is doing is really just a symptom of a malaise with the economy in general, that in the last 25 years the business model of everything that possibly can be pushed that way has changed to: Rent Seeking.
In the economics textbook sense of the word. You will own nothing and rent forever. You will not have control over your own data or devices. Having that control is a threat to someone's revenue model for getting you to pay for monthly subscriptions to things and services.
Microsoft's new user out of box experience for Windows 11 is also a fine example of this.
Imagine where we would be at right now if the Windows Phone had been a wild success and the Microsoft App Store on the Windows Phone was also a wild success. You think the fees and commissions charged and terms/conditions for app publishers would be much different?
That is not the economics textbook sense of the phrase.
The first sentence from the wikipedia article seems good to me: "R-seeking is the act of growing one's existing wealth by manipulating public policy or economic conditions without creating new wealth."
Running an app store that takes some huge % off the top just for distributing a piece of software would meet this definition:
"Rent-seeking middlemen: These actors insert themselves into a transaction by force, law, or monopoly control. They do not make the trade easier or better. They just demand a toll or fee because they control access."
Monopoly app store enforced on devices by firmware/operating system lockout inserting yourself as the only middleman to distribute things meets the definition.
I think the iconic rent seeking is the distributors of goods and services in Japan. They don’t add value but you cannot buy directly from the mfg. Same could be said of resellers in the US when they have exclusive distribution rights to another company’s products and services.
> For example, just recently, Apple deployed its formidable multi-billion-user global cloud infrastructure in service of… promoting the Brad Pitt Formula 1 movie. People were, understandably, a bit disconcerted to see their wallet payment app sending them promotional messages about a film, and Apple undoubtedly screwed up in polluting a functional messaging channel about transactions with a commercial message, but hey — this is a clear sign Apple knows it’s got the power to drop a note directly into millions of people’s pockets.
> I’m not an uncritical Steve Jobs fan. I know, from having worked closely with people who worked directly for Jobs for many years, that he could be a mercurial, and brutish, boss.
That's a pretty big euphemism for Steve Jobs being a piece of shit. What I've realized throughout the years of working is that being able to work as a team is almost more important than your technical capacity. You can always become better in your field, but becoming a better human is a lot harder.
I've repeatedly said here on HN that Steve Jobs was king of the assholes and a huge piece of shit, and been soundly flamed for it. A vast amount of first hand anecdotes of him being an asshole exist and are likely not fabrications by the people reporting them. And yet people think he's some sort of god like figure because apple made cool products.
As a counter point some very boring individuals who are not jerks nor capable of forming a cult of personality have invented singularly iconic and widespread products which achieved great market share. One example would be Eugene Stoner and his design for the AR-15/M16.
Yeah but I would not say the products Stone invented are the same kind of, and I quote, “iconic”, as the products that Jobs invented. They’re just in totally different universes.
It's the implication that success excuses it that sucks. The fans don't care how their status symbols came about - only that they have them. The illusion is presented that without him we'd all be using MS-DOS to this day.
He was a huge piece of shit. Yet, when I lived in Silicon Valley, I saw parents scrambing to get a house in the right district so their kid could go to Homestead High and have a shot of "being like Steve Jobs." They want their kids to be deadbeat dads who die in their 50s?
That phrase gets bandied about quite casually in my experience. Usually is an ironic light joke about somebody in your peer group on talking to other people or near your peer group.
As such, it's been sort of semantically watered down quite a lot in our popular cult.
> No one has been remembered for being extra nice alone.
That might depend on how strict "alone" is. (Perhaps by definition, only having a singular exceptional trait makes it challenging to be renown.) For example, might Fred Rogers count? Or Dolly Parton who, though remembered for many things, has kindness as a core part of her legacy.
I think many people are remembered for being kind, but only by those who knew them very well, such as family and friends.
Well, depending on how you define success, I'd say Trump is successful getting elected as POTUS twice. He sure is a brilliant man to be revered, and the people complaining about his allegations are surely losers... (sarcasm to be certain)
I grew up in a one-highschool Texas town, a notorious football powerhouse. The brainwashing we received as players was incredible, and we were definitely respected members of our community (e.g. newspaper would interview us; girls; getting away with murder).
The football t-shirts we were given for dailywear said something to the effect of "loved by few, feared by some, respected by ALL" – and I just can't help but feel this message was terrible advice for [our] young impressionable minds.
We probably deserved it, when playing more-modest football programs, when the opposing team changed their objective from scoring points to breaking our ankles (literally).
----
All to say, I have several brothers, two of whom are experts in their respective fields (engineering and law), with decades (each) of practice and expertise:
they come off immediately as know-it-all assholes (to most people; to me, occassionally) simply because their levels of expertise come with the sacrifice of social niceties (not always, but often).
[within their circles, however, they are respected as gods]
----
But to offer from their perspective (as a stupider brother of these two): most people my two "asshole" brothers deal with actually are quite stupid [relatively]; they are having to deal with us "morons" on an hourly basis [†]
Once you get past the outer asshole wrapper, these are the people that are driving our societies (for better or worse) "forwards" – do not forget this – they are assholes because they care so much about their work/goals [∑]
[†] remember the Carlin joke: think of the average person, and realize that half of people are dumber that that || to true geniuses (which I am not, but two brothers are) we are all "fucking idiots, most of the time" (to paraphrase their amalgamation)
I don't think intelligence entitles anyone to being an arsehole thought it might sometimes be frustrating. Lets say we make AIs that are more intelligent than us in the end - do we want them being arseholes to us just to achieve some new technology or dream that they have? Perhaps we would be just as happy without scalable fonts on our computers or phones that we can doom-scroll on and don't need to be whipped into achieving them?
My hypothetical argument (based on forty years with these two humans) is: the opposite would be worse (for these rare mental powerhouses "to not care," to not produce).
The bigger concern I have in a world of genAI-overlords is that too many-competing producers will result in a humancattle "tragedy of the commons," where too many competing goals overwhelm the limits of actual humanity.
#They'reMadeOutOfWeights
----
I am an identical twin with one of these entities, yet am (probably) among the laziest people I've ever met (not that I can't/don't/&haven't worked), but I prefer to do literally nothing (hobbies, only).
I spent 11 years at Apple and attended many meetings with SJ. It was amazing to see how quickly he could understand a problem while, at the same time, being brutally harsh about why it hadn't already been solved. No one but Steve would have been allowed to consistently act that way towards coworkers.
Steve showed a generation of CEOs that being an asshole was a viable strategy.
> What I've realized throughout the years of working is that being able to work as a team is almost more important than your technical capacity. You can always become better in your field, but becoming a better human is a lot harder.
Is this a true realization though? Lots of people are very nice, but Jobs got a shit ton done that was truly remarkable.
So many things that could be said about this. For one -- I truly enjoyed the accidental repetition in the article that marked the effort as likely not aided too much by AI.
But I couldn't help, most of the way through it, to crystalize the respone, "How did we get the idea Tim Cook was chosen because he was likely to be much like Steve Jobs?" Honestly, having watched the Steve Jobs commencement address several times, I kept going back to his declaration that "Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new."
Is this the bit where he talks about Steve Jobs getting onto several states' organ-transplant registries (simultaneously) so he could eventually "cut the line," using trafficked Tennessee bodyparts, to get his replacement liver installed?
> most of the things people attribute to him seem like guesses about a guy who was very hard to predict and often inconsistent.
The author is doing the same. Personal background has minimal impact in these kind of decisions.
Policy is about what happens to other people for politicians (and billionaires).
It made sense for apple to suck up, in order to avoid vindictiveness and extract benefits.
If they get super lucky, the tide turns and they keep going as if nothing happended a couple of trillion dollars richer.
If they are less lucky things get more authoritarian, they keep most of their autonomy extract more benefits, and dear leader keeps their balls in a small box on his desk.
If they get unlucky, the mercurial dear leader decides he is done with them, and their companies get broken up at best, or they fall out of windows down the road.
We have seen the last scenario play out in Russia, and the second one play out in China.
Taking a stand and calling out what's happening might be the decent thing to do, but gets them nothing.
This of course only applies to billionaires running huge companies, everyone else is pretty much better of making a stand.
> "just one generation after IBM had sold its mainframe computers to the Nazis, when that company provided the numbers that would be inked onto the wrists of the prisoners held in concentration camps"
IBM was selling mainframe computers before 1945? That's impressive, since ENIAC, the supposed first general purpose computer, was invented in that year
However, there is very good evidence that IBM did sell calculation and bookkeeping hardware to Nazi Germany, and that the Nazis used it to organize the Holocaust:
John Ternus has been CEO of Apple for about six hours (Pacific Time / California time zone). I have optimism. The head of hardware took over. If anyone is a product person, it might be the guy making their hardware shine.
Where Apple has been falling down is software. Vertical integration of hardware and software is their bread and butter, so I have to think he appreciates the software layer in ways that Cook (a business guy) is unable to appreciate. Wow, I really hope so. This could be a nice resurgence of quality coming up. I really hope I'm right.
I mean, a guy with an engineering degree is gonna be in charge. That's not Steve, who didn't earn a degree but had a deep product sense. But it's very different from Tim, who has no computer-nerd inside.
Crazy to talk about selling out when the real selling out isnt to the American government, but to the Chinese Communist government. Plenty of Aplle photops with actual dictators.
hot take: tim cook could sell out apple only because google sold out android. it's like everybody is selling each other and their grandmas out these days.
Agreed. Same thing on desktop: Apple is pulling Windows-style stuff like putting ads in the OS and forcibly bundling software (just try deleting News.app on MacOS) only because Windows has meanwhile reached even lower lows.
Steve’s main claim to fame was Apple 2.0 when he brought the company back from the brink of bankruptcy. He had almost no choice but to take radical bet-the-farm bets as the status quo was the company goes bankrupt.
Tim Cook inherited a company on an upward trajectory and kept it going. His core job was don’t $&@? it up, and at that he was very successful. Was Apple potentially less innovative during his tenure? Yeah probably, but it was stable and grew massively under his oversight, which was the job. Most shareholders that held their stock after Steve left are very happy with their returns since then.
He was correct that changing hand positions had a positive effect and a minor imposition. If they had recalled the phones I wouldn't have sent mine back the iPhone 4 was great and I was a satisfied customer. This was a long time ago and it is probably time to move on.
That article and your memory glosses over the fact that Apple redesigned the antenna to fix the actual problem in later devices - the antenna was changed in the Verizon iPhone 4 (which came out later), as well as the iPhone 4S and all subsequent models.
This is a great read. It accurately describes both the personality differences between Cook and Jobs but also the core of moral leadership. "Here is an idea: Apple could, rather than creating golden bribes for child sexual predators, actually send a message to its users explaining that it would like to continue providing value to its customers, and ask those customers for help making that case to their elected officials."
> Steve Jobs was, amongst many other things, the biological son of an unmarried Syrian immigrant who was in the United States on a student visa, and he grew up to be a person who had a really good sense of when to say “fuck you" to the man.
What an odd statement. Steve Jobs didn't know his biological parents until he was well into adulthood. And if you're going to bring up his biological father, who he wanted little to do with, why ignore his biological mother, Joanne Carole Schieble?
According to the NY Times, "Steve Jobs developed a relationship with his biological mother, Joanne Schieble [Simpson], while firmly declining a relationship with his biological father, Abdulfattah “John” Jandali."
Imagine thinking there is an option but to kiss the ring and still be allowed to play or that there are even two sides.
Imaging thinking it even matters what Tim cook or Trump do. Imagine thinking Tim Cook is anything but a stand in book keeper and stock promoter. Imagine thinking Trump is anything but a heel turn pro wrestler. Trump is bunkem for the masses and Tim Cook is irrelevant and a follower.
Steve was a an idea guy. Tim was a seeker of efficiencies and consensus -- boring and common.
I didn't buy one apple product during Tim's tenure but I still have my IIe and several old Macs converted to Linux.
Genius is often regarded as brutish or mean by lesser people. Your feelings on it do not matter.
The writer is juxta Steve’s bastard of a father’s status as a visa overstay to contrast with Trump’s policy vis a vis illegal immigration (which doesn’t differ much in practice from his lauded predecessors policies) yet Steve if not loathed his biological father in the least completely ignored his existence as much as he ignored the existence of his own bastard daughter.
Yes Tim is not Steve. We all knew that and know that, so? It’s still the company that most respects its users’ privacy, which isn’t saying much but it respects it more than other companies with foreigners at the helm such as Microsoft and Google. Not that I think they’d be different if run by American born leadership. Bill nor Eric would not be better. It’s the state of affairs in the world today.
Early Apple hardware was horrible and only for fanboys with a Steve Jobs messiah complex.
Tim Cook ordered the production of decent hardware and pretty impressive ARM processors.
Jobs is the son of an immigrant? So is Kash Patel.
I do find the submissiveness of tech CEOs towards Trump ridiculous, especially since they pretended to be woke under Biden. Now corporate fascism has been unmasked. Better don't forget if a Democrat wins in 2028 and the CEOs are "woke" again. But singling out Cook? Really?
Yes, Steve Jobs was such a fuck you to the establishment. He never had government contracts with NeXT. The article calls him a son of an immigrant five times as if that is a moral virtue for some reason. Dude was a pretty trash human being in reality but people keep seeing him as tech jesus. This article actually suggests Apple ask its customers to vote towards a particular political issue which is a hilarious take given Apple's size. They will not care if a Deamon from hell becomes the president, they will still negotiate and try to continue operations instead of becoming a political activist.
Author is projecting their own political outlook as the only correct one and is again turning Steve Jobs into tech jesus without acknowledging historical facts and realities of thing. Furthmore, Tim Cook deserves a lot of criticism but not having a spine cannot be one of them because his role isnt to rage against the machine.
"The Hidden Debt That Apple Owes to the CIA: Without CIA funding that helped keep NeXT afloat in the ’80s, Steve Jobs might not have made a triumphant return to Apple—and the iPhone might not have its foundational operating code."
> Furthmore, Tim Cook deserves a lot of criticism but not having a spine cannot be one of them because his role isnt to rage against the machine.
Isn't Cook the guy who literally gave a gold statue to a sitting US president? I probably couldn't come up with a more spineless move even if I tried. Doesn't require a "rage against the machine" mindset to not intentionally go out of your way to participate in open and public corruption of politicians. Or am I remembering the wrong person here?
Look, I hate Trump as much as the next guy, but Cook's job, being the CEO, is playing politics. It is literally part of the job. Making sure your company is not going to get legislated out of existence is one of the things you must do as CEO.
I would not want that job. As a matter of fact, as I started up the ladder in the company I was working for I realized that politics (internal and external) are a big part of the job and I was just not suited nor qualified for it, so I quit. But that is what CEO's must do if they want their company to be successful.
And honestly, these things should be deeply insulting to anyone with half a neuron. FIFA's Peace Prize, for example; a toddler is capable of seeing through that.
No that was indeed Tim Cook (though it was 24 karat gold plaque not a statue).
Whatever his legacy is, that's a thing people are going to remember him for, Bending the knee to a President who should never have been President in the first place.
Moreover Steve did not recognize nor ever speak of his bastard father. Similarly to how he hardly recognized his own bastard daughter. Steve only spoke of his adoptive parents.
2025. He’s right, Tim Cook is a coward and no better than the rest of the oligarchs who kissed the ring and played the game.
But Anil also falls into this trap of believing the myth of Jobs over who he actually was. Steve Jobs was a Silicon Valley capitalist who took parts the hippie counterculture ethos and baked it into an image that sold well to consumers. He was not some revolutionary, he just successfully used the language of revolution to sell a better product than his competitors.
Apple has not had an SVP of Industrial Design for 7 years, since Jony Ive left. This is why every phone is a copy of the last and there is no real product innovation anywhere
Industrial Designer here and I believe Ive became too influential in areas. I believe a boring and consistent form factor is better than new models every year. This is what killed the USA auto-industry. Personally the iPhone 4 was a great form factor and I was glad for the reversion to that design. Minor tweaks and scaling for size is really all that is needed.
they've started to get a big bulge on the top-left of the device and no longer sit flat on a table. Oh and they popularized silicon cases that dont go in or out of pockets.
> big bulge on the top-left of the device and no longer sit flat on a table
Fucking hate this trend so much. My Pixel 8 is an absolute dogshit phone compared to my Pixel 2 for the same reason. Phones are giant now, impossible to use with one hand anymore, and slide off of fucking everything because they don't lie flat, and are uncomfortable to hold with how top-heavy they are too. I wish phone design would have stagnated, about 10 years ago. A phone's form factor did not need innovating! It was already perfect!
Depends what they're used for, if it's for lightweight-demands mobile communications and simple tasks then I'd definitely agree. However the phone has become the personal computer for many and covers a broad range of tasks, let alone before you consider demanding users.
If you've got one device for all your computing then you want something more capable, I think there's more scope for variation is when it's in conjunction with another device, mobile plus your choice of watch/tablet/laptop/desktop/etc. that doesn't necessarily have to be on your person or quickly accessible, task dependent.
That said one could argue that phones are now "solved" and the idea of iterating and changing just for the sake of changing is unwelcome. Much like laptops?
I don't want my next phone to be something I need to figure out all over again. I want the buttons in the same place, the OS to work the same way..
My phone is just another thing in my daily life like my car or my coffee machine. The less I have to think about any of those things - vs. just using them and getting on with my day - the happier I am.
A phone can only get so big, and there's only so many viable shapes and form factors. I don't know what more innovation anybody expects in a rectangular tablet form factor that can still fit into pockets and purposes. Folding phones are expensive and a gimmick so far and have not achieved much market share.
There's advances to be had in cameras, battery life and other tech inside the rectangular slab, but in terms of innovating on the form factor, the practical reality of what people want to hold and put in their pockets will dictate the maximum size and form factor.
Tbh I want my 3GS form factor back. That design was the "right" one imho, and we lost it due to market pressure for bigger screens and better cameras, when what we needed to do was keep the utility but largely stay off our screens.
But they do keep evolving the iPhone and its functionality. You need taste and a great sense of user experience to do it well. Apple also sells more things than juts iPhones.
Wrong. Steve would have charged you for everything he thought they deserved, but he'd never allow ads in Apple Maps.
["We like our own stickers better."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COAOknlfMgI)
The lenient contract with Microsoft and the unexpected to them ruling on reverse engineering the BIOS sealed their fate.
But no company wants to compete in a commodity, they all want to be monopolies. All the Unix vendors tried to be common enough to be a selling point but idiosyncratic enough to lock in their clients.
Apple isn’t nefarious… they are the default.
Now, if we want to support their ambitions with our wallets is another question
Basically what Apple News is, they don’t have a web or Android client.
There are news+ articles available to Apple subscribers. This is hardly “the internet”. This is analogous to premium memberships on websites.
Nor is it required that an app developer make an app for every platform. Microsoft doesn’t make office for Linux.
I think it's important to remind ourselves that the responsibility doesn't lie with the one individual. Even the visit to the WH dinner - it is the company, Apple, via various structures committed to doing those things with various VPs and staff onboard brainstorming and supporting along the way.
So "John" may bring some nuances but let's not be under the illusion that a huge corporation like Apple would suddenly bounce off to a different track.
No, the responsibility lies with the culture of growth at all costs. Margins and revenues must continue to increase, whatever else happens.
If you want to blame someone, blame whoever decided it was a great idea to pay executives in stock/stock options. That's what incentivises this kind of behaviour.
As an aside, it's amusing to me that Apple ran so hard on privacy with (apparently) the explicit intention of creating a market for their ad products.
Yes, I do agree that extreme forms of capitalism are responsible for ruining practically every aspect of modern tech.
> Apple ran so hard on privacy with (apparently) the explicit intention of creating a market for their ad products
Indeed. It wasn't obvious at the time, but with hindsight we can see that the push for privacy was only in areas where Apple wanted to counter Meta/competitors or gain advantage in specific verticals. It was never "user focused".
What the tech companies have been doing to the internet since about the early aughts has been no different, they've been using the same kind of enclosure strategy to limit and parcel out and divide up the internet among the ruling psychopaths.
In the economics textbook sense of the word. You will own nothing and rent forever. You will not have control over your own data or devices. Having that control is a threat to someone's revenue model for getting you to pay for monthly subscriptions to things and services.
Microsoft's new user out of box experience for Windows 11 is also a fine example of this.
Imagine where we would be at right now if the Windows Phone had been a wild success and the Microsoft App Store on the Windows Phone was also a wild success. You think the fees and commissions charged and terms/conditions for app publishers would be much different?
The first sentence from the wikipedia article seems good to me: "R-seeking is the act of growing one's existing wealth by manipulating public policy or economic conditions without creating new wealth."
"Rent-seeking middlemen: These actors insert themselves into a transaction by force, law, or monopoly control. They do not make the trade easier or better. They just demand a toll or fee because they control access."
Monopoly app store enforced on devices by firmware/operating system lockout inserting yourself as the only middleman to distribute things meets the definition.
google "economics rent seeking app store"
> For example, just recently, Apple deployed its formidable multi-billion-user global cloud infrastructure in service of… promoting the Brad Pitt Formula 1 movie. People were, understandably, a bit disconcerted to see their wallet payment app sending them promotional messages about a film, and Apple undoubtedly screwed up in polluting a functional messaging channel about transactions with a commercial message, but hey — this is a clear sign Apple knows it’s got the power to drop a note directly into millions of people’s pockets.
Judge the man on what he was. And he was those things brilliantly.
That's a pretty big euphemism for Steve Jobs being a piece of shit. What I've realized throughout the years of working is that being able to work as a team is almost more important than your technical capacity. You can always become better in your field, but becoming a better human is a lot harder.
Jobs revolutionized music and computing.
If anything he was one of the few hard a-holes that managed to channel that to productive purposes
Being a jerk is easy. Being a jerk that still keeps people motivated it really hard.
Kubrick was known for that as well.
Like, maybe find a better example?
That phrase gets bandied about quite casually in my experience. Usually is an ironic light joke about somebody in your peer group on talking to other people or near your peer group.
As such, it's been sort of semantically watered down quite a lot in our popular cult.
But it's perfect for people like Steve Jobs.
Only total losers whine about such silly things in successful people...
That might depend on how strict "alone" is. (Perhaps by definition, only having a singular exceptional trait makes it challenging to be renown.) For example, might Fred Rogers count? Or Dolly Parton who, though remembered for many things, has kindness as a core part of her legacy.
I think many people are remembered for being kind, but only by those who knew them very well, such as family and friends.
RIP Dolly
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[meme:bobbyHILL@classroom_window.jpeg] "Thanks to Dolly, these kids can read, and they are very upset..."
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Long live the Queen['s Imagination Libraries]!
The football t-shirts we were given for dailywear said something to the effect of "loved by few, feared by some, respected by ALL" – and I just can't help but feel this message was terrible advice for [our] young impressionable minds.
We probably deserved it, when playing more-modest football programs, when the opposing team changed their objective from scoring points to breaking our ankles (literally).
----
All to say, I have several brothers, two of whom are experts in their respective fields (engineering and law), with decades (each) of practice and expertise:
they come off immediately as know-it-all assholes (to most people; to me, occassionally) simply because their levels of expertise come with the sacrifice of social niceties (not always, but often).
[within their circles, however, they are respected as gods]
----
But to offer from their perspective (as a stupider brother of these two): most people my two "asshole" brothers deal with actually are quite stupid [relatively]; they are having to deal with us "morons" on an hourly basis [†]
Once you get past the outer asshole wrapper, these are the people that are driving our societies (for better or worse) "forwards" – do not forget this – they are assholes because they care so much about their work/goals [∑]
[†] remember the Carlin joke: think of the average person, and realize that half of people are dumber that that || to true geniuses (which I am not, but two brothers are) we are all "fucking idiots, most of the time" (to paraphrase their amalgamation)
[∑] e.g: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%27s_law> [tl;dr: half the work is performed by the sqrt(#people)]
My hypothetical argument (based on forty years with these two humans) is: the opposite would be worse (for these rare mental powerhouses "to not care," to not produce).
The bigger concern I have in a world of genAI-overlords is that too many-competing producers will result in a humancattle "tragedy of the commons," where too many competing goals overwhelm the limits of actual humanity.
#They'reMadeOutOfWeights
----
I am an identical twin with one of these entities, yet am (probably) among the laziest people I've ever met (not that I can't/don't/&haven't worked), but I prefer to do literally nothing (hobbies, only).
Steve showed a generation of CEOs that being an asshole was a viable strategy.
Is this a true realization though? Lots of people are very nice, but Jobs got a shit ton done that was truly remarkable.
But I couldn't help, most of the way through it, to crystalize the respone, "How did we get the idea Tim Cook was chosen because he was likely to be much like Steve Jobs?" Honestly, having watched the Steve Jobs commencement address several times, I kept going back to his declaration that "Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3s-qZsjK8I
The author is doing the same. Personal background has minimal impact in these kind of decisions.
Policy is about what happens to other people for politicians (and billionaires).
It made sense for apple to suck up, in order to avoid vindictiveness and extract benefits.
If they get super lucky, the tide turns and they keep going as if nothing happended a couple of trillion dollars richer.
If they are less lucky things get more authoritarian, they keep most of their autonomy extract more benefits, and dear leader keeps their balls in a small box on his desk.
If they get unlucky, the mercurial dear leader decides he is done with them, and their companies get broken up at best, or they fall out of windows down the road.
We have seen the last scenario play out in Russia, and the second one play out in China.
Taking a stand and calling out what's happening might be the decent thing to do, but gets them nothing.
This of course only applies to billionaires running huge companies, everyone else is pretty much better of making a stand.
> There's no point in having fuck-you money in the bank if you never say "fuck you"!
IBM was selling mainframe computers before 1945? That's impressive, since ENIAC, the supposed first general purpose computer, was invented in that year
However, there is very good evidence that IBM did sell calculation and bookkeeping hardware to Nazi Germany, and that the Nazis used it to organize the Holocaust:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
Where Apple has been falling down is software. Vertical integration of hardware and software is their bread and butter, so I have to think he appreciates the software layer in ways that Cook (a business guy) is unable to appreciate. Wow, I really hope so. This could be a nice resurgence of quality coming up. I really hope I'm right.
I mean, a guy with an engineering degree is gonna be in charge. That's not Steve, who didn't earn a degree but had a deep product sense. But it's very different from Tim, who has no computer-nerd inside.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/23/opinion/apple-tim-cook-ou...
Absolutely right.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM
Steve’s main claim to fame was Apple 2.0 when he brought the company back from the brink of bankruptcy. He had almost no choice but to take radical bet-the-farm bets as the status quo was the company goes bankrupt.
Tim Cook inherited a company on an upward trajectory and kept it going. His core job was don’t $&@? it up, and at that he was very successful. Was Apple potentially less innovative during his tenure? Yeah probably, but it was stable and grew massively under his oversight, which was the job. Most shareholders that held their stock after Steve left are very happy with their returns since then.
https://news.macgasm.net/iphone-news/how-apple-fixed-antenna...
What an odd statement. Steve Jobs didn't know his biological parents until he was well into adulthood. And if you're going to bring up his biological father, who he wanted little to do with, why ignore his biological mother, Joanne Carole Schieble?
According to the NY Times, "Steve Jobs developed a relationship with his biological mother, Joanne Schieble [Simpson], while firmly declining a relationship with his biological father, Abdulfattah “John” Jandali."
https://archive.nytimes.com/bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/2...
Imaging thinking it even matters what Tim cook or Trump do. Imagine thinking Tim Cook is anything but a stand in book keeper and stock promoter. Imagine thinking Trump is anything but a heel turn pro wrestler. Trump is bunkem for the masses and Tim Cook is irrelevant and a follower.
Steve was a an idea guy. Tim was a seeker of efficiencies and consensus -- boring and common.
I didn't buy one apple product during Tim's tenure but I still have my IIe and several old Macs converted to Linux.
Genius is often regarded as brutish or mean by lesser people. Your feelings on it do not matter.
Yes Tim is not Steve. We all knew that and know that, so? It’s still the company that most respects its users’ privacy, which isn’t saying much but it respects it more than other companies with foreigners at the helm such as Microsoft and Google. Not that I think they’d be different if run by American born leadership. Bill nor Eric would not be better. It’s the state of affairs in the world today.
Tim Cook ordered the production of decent hardware and pretty impressive ARM processors.
Jobs is the son of an immigrant? So is Kash Patel.
I do find the submissiveness of tech CEOs towards Trump ridiculous, especially since they pretended to be woke under Biden. Now corporate fascism has been unmasked. Better don't forget if a Democrat wins in 2028 and the CEOs are "woke" again. But singling out Cook? Really?
Author is projecting their own political outlook as the only correct one and is again turning Steve Jobs into tech jesus without acknowledging historical facts and realities of thing. Furthmore, Tim Cook deserves a lot of criticism but not having a spine cannot be one of them because his role isnt to rage against the machine.
https://www.wsj.com/tech/steve-jobs-apple-next-cia-161b65f9
"The Hidden Debt That Apple Owes to the CIA: Without CIA funding that helped keep NeXT afloat in the ’80s, Steve Jobs might not have made a triumphant return to Apple—and the iPhone might not have its foundational operating code."
Isn't Cook the guy who literally gave a gold statue to a sitting US president? I probably couldn't come up with a more spineless move even if I tried. Doesn't require a "rage against the machine" mindset to not intentionally go out of your way to participate in open and public corruption of politicians. Or am I remembering the wrong person here?
I would not want that job. As a matter of fact, as I started up the ladder in the company I was working for I realized that politics (internal and external) are a big part of the job and I was just not suited nor qualified for it, so I quit. But that is what CEO's must do if they want their company to be successful.
No that was indeed Tim Cook (though it was 24 karat gold plaque not a statue).
Whatever his legacy is, that's a thing people are going to remember him for, Bending the knee to a President who should never have been President in the first place.
But Anil also falls into this trap of believing the myth of Jobs over who he actually was. Steve Jobs was a Silicon Valley capitalist who took parts the hippie counterculture ethos and baked it into an image that sold well to consumers. He was not some revolutionary, he just successfully used the language of revolution to sell a better product than his competitors.
I'm inclined to see Apple Silicon as fairly innovative.
I wouldn't say they're an exact copy...
very much so -- same for UI components, which they keep changing for no good reason except to feel "fresh and new"
Fucking hate this trend so much. My Pixel 8 is an absolute dogshit phone compared to my Pixel 2 for the same reason. Phones are giant now, impossible to use with one hand anymore, and slide off of fucking everything because they don't lie flat, and are uncomfortable to hold with how top-heavy they are too. I wish phone design would have stagnated, about 10 years ago. A phone's form factor did not need innovating! It was already perfect!
If you've got one device for all your computing then you want something more capable, I think there's more scope for variation is when it's in conjunction with another device, mobile plus your choice of watch/tablet/laptop/desktop/etc. that doesn't necessarily have to be on your person or quickly accessible, task dependent.
I don't want my next phone to be something I need to figure out all over again. I want the buttons in the same place, the OS to work the same way..
My phone is just another thing in my daily life like my car or my coffee machine. The less I have to think about any of those things - vs. just using them and getting on with my day - the happier I am.
There's advances to be had in cameras, battery life and other tech inside the rectangular slab, but in terms of innovating on the form factor, the practical reality of what people want to hold and put in their pockets will dictate the maximum size and form factor.
not one?
Ive has been working at other stuff, like building a Ferrari that looks more like a giant RC car