Completely off topic (or is it?) I find myself being quickly turned off by all these blogposts which 'casually' mention Steve Jobs on every single occasion the author comes across. Taken individually, each of these articles (like this one) would have a prefectly defendable reason to mention it. I'm annoyed with the trend.
I have mentioned this issue before in other comments threads on HN. Am I the only one annoyed by that? Yes Steve Jobs was a beloved public figure and an outstanding entrepreneur, but mentioning his name ("casually") won't add value to just any blog post. Unless I'm reading something written by an official biographer, or any other expert on the matter, I don't like reading Jobs name in a completely unrelated articles.
So this is my plea for bloggers: Stop doing that. Stop mentionning 'tech startup' celebrities in your posts; in my view it dillutes your point instead of adding anything to it. For the record, I'm reacting to the mention of Jobs' name because it's the trend of the moment, just like Zuckerberg's was a few years back. It's the celeb name dropping that bothers me, not the work of Steve Jobs.
Also, I apologize for the harsh tone. I really enjoyed reading everything else in the article and felt that it presented a serious miscommunication issue between builders and sales people in an otherwise very straight-to-the point yet witty and amusing fashion. Good post!
I agree with the people that say that future generations will see Steve Jobs as revolutionary a businessman as Henry Ford. But this hagiography has got to stop.
Let's put things in perspective. Steve Jobs made really good products that sold at a high-margin and made a lot of money. But hang on -- another way to see it is he focused on the features customers really did care about: nice UX, beautiful cases -- and ignored the features they said they cared about but didn't really: processing power, durability. That's it. He found a management style that worked for him, and it's worth looking at how he did it, but Apple and Steve Jobs had a bunch of flaws which are worth looking at as well.
What annoys me is that people can see the awesome parts, or they can see the flaws, but few people manage to see both. Even people like Isaacson (his biographer) who note both these sides don't really analyse it in a deep way. It would be interesting to read the history books of a 100 years time to see how Steve Jobs has been remembered after his impact has been put into proper perspective.
(Though another thing that annoys me is when the top of HN comment threads become dominated by an off-topic discussion. Sorry swombat!)
I only ended up mentioning Steve Jobs because the Apple II came to mind as a piece of technology that was so awesome and beyond its time that it really ought to sell itself. It just so happens that Steve Jobs was the sales side of that business at the time (at least according to the biography).
I tremendously respect what Jobs achieved, but I don't think I'm putting him on a pedestal. Are you guys suggesting I should deliberately avoid using any of Apple's products or achievements as an example for anything because I might end up having to mention Jobs? That seems extreme, but it's the natural conclusion of your reaction...
Apple II came to mind as a piece of technology that was so awesome and beyond its time
Well... So the last man standing from the 8-bit days tells us (I mean Apple, not Jobs himself obv). But in truth, the C64 gave a lot more bang for the buck, esp. when you include the price of disk drives! And was just as hackable, etc. Similarly, the ST and Amiga were much more powerful and cheaper and more hackable than contemporary Macs. The Jackintosh was the first machine to deliver 1Mb of memory for under $1000. I just think we need to keep things in the proper perspective. Apple made and indeed makes some great products. But it's also true that they smothered technically superior but not as well commercially managed competitors. History is written by the winners.
Compare directly to the 64k IIe, then. $595 vs $1200, according to Wikipaedia.
Anyway, my point is not to take anything away from Apple or Jobs, but it's a stretch to say that they were so far ahead of everyone else. If you need a hero for rhetorical purposes, try Jack Tramiel :-)
But I don't care about what was going on 5 years later. My point is that when the Apple II came out (not the IIe or the Mac or any other Apple product) they were miles ahead everyone else, and it was a product that in theory could have sold itself, but still needed a kick-ass salesperson to get off the ground. What happened years later is totally irrelevant to this point.
Yep, fair point, your mentioning Steve Jobs made sense in the context of the article (good article by the way, I agree about engineers tending to undervalue decent sales guys). I don't know about babarock, but I was thinking more of the "10 business secrets of Steve Jobs" linkbaity articles you see floating around. Hence my pre-emptive apology for taking this comment thread off-topic. (I also think this is one issue with nested comments like this as opposed to traditional linear forums).
(IIRC the one time we spoke on Twitter I was also offering some vague criticism so I don't want you to think I'm some faceless internet critic. I'm actually a big fan of your blog).
Harsh considering one mention and this was in relation to an old Apple product, within context of the article. People write about Jobs too much (agreed) but this is more about mainstream familiarity than laziness.
I have mentioned this issue before in other comments threads on HN. Am I the only one annoyed by that? Yes Steve Jobs was a beloved public figure and an outstanding entrepreneur, but mentioning his name ("casually") won't add value to just any blog post. Unless I'm reading something written by an official biographer, or any other expert on the matter, I don't like reading Jobs name in a completely unrelated articles.
So this is my plea for bloggers: Stop doing that. Stop mentionning 'tech startup' celebrities in your posts; in my view it dillutes your point instead of adding anything to it. For the record, I'm reacting to the mention of Jobs' name because it's the trend of the moment, just like Zuckerberg's was a few years back. It's the celeb name dropping that bothers me, not the work of Steve Jobs.
Also, I apologize for the harsh tone. I really enjoyed reading everything else in the article and felt that it presented a serious miscommunication issue between builders and sales people in an otherwise very straight-to-the point yet witty and amusing fashion. Good post!