Steve Jobs RIP 1955-2011

not trying to shit on anyone and it sucks that he died so young, but i guess i'm surprised at the outpouring?

also fuck u, jesse's sister-in-law

All arguments about "so what, someone you didn't know died" are perfectly rational, whether you're talking Lady Di or Steve Jobs (and I agree in general - cancer sucks but Steve Jobs dying doesn't make me feel anything) - but that's never going to change the way someone affected is going to feel, so it's kind of a dumb argument to get into. Let the people who do care do so in peace. Mourning death is better than celebrating death, at least.

Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs laid into teachers unions Friday at a Texas education reform conference, an Austin, Texas, newspaper reported, saying they're "what's wrong with our schools."

Teachers unions have traditionally represented one of Apple's most loyal group of customers and have largely stuck with the company since the days of the Apple IIe.

Unionization, said Jobs in reports filed by both the Associated Press and the Austin American-Statesman, was "off-the-charts crazy."

During a joint appearance with Michael Dell that was sponsored by the Texas Public Education Reform Foundation, Jobs took on the unions by first comparing schools to small businesses, and school principals to CEOs. He then asked rhetorically: "What kind of person could you get to run a small business if you told them that when they came in, they couldn't get rid of people that they thought weren't any good? Not really great ones, because if you're really smart, you go, 'I can't win.' "

He went on to say that "what is wrong with our schools in this nation is that they have become unionized in the worst possible way. This unionization and lifetime employment of K-12 teachers is off-the-charts crazy."

Jobs took on the unions by first comparing schools to small businesses, and school principals to CEOs.

This applies to private schools, certainly

steve jobs turned apple around by turning liberal humanism into a huge marketing gimmick and selling it to hipster college students. he disguised market relations as social relations and made dumb 20-somethings think that the role of seller/consumer is some kind of intimate social bond as long as the company has commercials that appeal to their generic liberalism. this is why a bunch of people are acting like when some CEO billionaire who sold them a product died it was like they lost a personal friend

^ masterpiece

andy ihnatko: http://www.suntimes.com/8057908-417/rip-steve-jobs-a-man-who-truly-changed-the-world.html

the difference is your dad was your dad, and steve jobs is a dude none of us knows who was a public figure

― k3vin k., Thursday, October 6, 2011 12:11 AM (20 seconds ago) Bookmark

I recognize that, and to be honest, I'm commenting on the larger phenomenon of people's habit of piping up with criticism of the dead all over ILX and elsewhere. I mean, when Amy Winehouse died, a couple of relatively "normal" friends said some heinous and petty stuff about her, and she certainly could never rise to the level nastiness of Steve Jobs (one friend justified his statement by saying that people should be sad about the bombing in Norway, not some drug addict's death). But that is not to say I'm not annoyed at that phenomenon ITT.

It comes down to wondering what people get out of announcing their disdain for a recently dead person, especially when others admire that person. And pulling out further, I guess I'm pondering the nature of trolling.

this is why a bunch of people are acting like when some CEO billionaire who sold them a product died it was like they lost a personal friend

I am ready to unfollow a laod of people on Twitter for doing p much exactly that AND buying black skivvies in his honour

don't do anything rash!

i'd guess they get at least as much out of it as someone who dutifully posts "RIP" - i don't necessarily have to agree with what the detractors say to not have a problem with them injecting some opposing viewpoints into the discussion, provided they're somewhat thoughtful. i don't see why those reactions are any less valid than anyone else's xxp

idk i think this dude was a terrible person who made the world a much worse place and 'the reaction' to his death is p off-putting to me, which i guess compels its own unpalatable counterreaction, not sure which response is the most 'legitimate'

n.e.way tamtam otm

I would actually like to see a spirited debate on whether Steve Jobs made the world better or if he made the world worse

he made the world easier to navigate

i'm certainly not glad this dude is dead and he was certainly some kind of genius but he was mostly good at making people feel good about buying his company's products and making people feel wrong about buying other products and turning apple cultists into an oprah's favorite things audience whenever a gadget appeared on the marketplace, but the worship of this particular man and his company was always a little weird to me.

ppl saying steve jobs changed the world and made it a better place are getting a little carried away imo, it's not like he occupied wall street or something.

it's not like he released NEVERMIND twenty years ago

he made the world small and portable

Yikes. apple.com is eery right now.

Was he present at the announcement of 4S and iOS5 yesterday? I thought he gave the presentation....if only there were a high-tech device that connected to an information network so I could find out....

I just wrote a bunch of shit then lost it because Safari's been acting weird since Lion. OH SHIT STEVE JOBS SUCKS. AND HE HATE THE UNIONS.

I don't give a fuck. Steve Jobs absolutely changed the world for the better. I live my life on, with and through technologies he is responsible for. No, he didn't insert the CPU into my motherboard personally and yes he stole the mouse (and UI) from Xerox Parc. You know what it was doing there? It was sitting on a computer that cost 9,000 dollars that nobody was ever going to buy, or even see, and if you did play with it, it didn't quite work right. He said "this is how computing is going to go" and he made it happen. What technologies he didn't invent, he borrowed, stole, bought, licensed or simply fostered the environment that allowed them to exist. Or he was the one with the balls to kill it off. All that is significant.

I learned how to type on an Apple IIe when the only other computer in my school was a Commodore Pet. I played with a Lisa in the electronics dept of Bambergers, then used MacPaint on the first Mac. It wasn't a Quantel Paintbox, but that's the point. I work and live in an industry that wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the choices he made and pushed with the Macintosh. He made all these decisions, and every one is laughed at and second-guessed, then everyone plays catch up, and goes ahead to doubt and second-guess his next choice, and he's right again, then everyone pretends it was always that way. Do you remove all the decisions he made from the industry, from technology, and assume things would have been changed for the better anyway? The technology was there and would still be here, it would just suck much more.

I'm sure he was an asshole and I know he did a lot of fucked up things in his life. But he also managed to change shit majorly.

And bullshit on anyone who thinks people who feel like I do feel so because we're 20-something sheep. I've felt this way since the fucking mac was invented and I was 10 years old.

one man's better is another man's worse

http://i.imgur.com/5kjVw.jpg

As I somewhat unpoetically said elsewhere:

A man who felt selling a bread slicer that wouldn't cut off your thumbs was a worthy proposition.

Was he present at the announcement of 4S and iOS5 yesterday?

Je55e you will love this: http://www.cultofmac.com/121223/steve-jobs-and-the-reserved-seat/

nice post, dan

http://boingboing.net/

neven mrgan: http://mrgan.tumblr.com/post/11090229578/steve

From Ihnatko's obit:

I think of the stories. Yes, the funny ones (grifting Woz out of his fair share of the fee Atari paid for creating the electronics for the “Breakout” game, parking in handicapped spots) but those are overcrowded by the stories I’ve heard about him from Apple employees who’ve worked with him directly.

http://www.boingboing.net

ah, i know what wordpress theme they're using

just changed my site to that theme (i can't be bothered to resize images etc - will do that some other time)

http://www.theoriginalsoundtrack.com

cool!

it's a neat theme

neven's tumblr post is worth reading btw

http://news.ycombinator.com/

to emphasize jobs' innovation and brilliance, and to de-emphasize his more indefensible business practices, serves - unwittingly - to justify what was done. the point is not that we must, in reflecting on the life of the deceased, condemn him in absentia. it is too late for that; it would be a useless scholarly exercise in morality. but the easy acceptance of moral failures and human consequence as a deplorable but necessary price to pay for progress is just as noxious

(not equating jobs w/ columbus, lol)

whoa electronics manufacturer uses questionable labor themoreyouknow.jpg

gotta do what you gotta do right

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/1/1144949_e32682edd3_b.jpg

agghh

heres a fun game:

1. pick up your closest piece of technology
2. see where it is made
3. hmmmmmmm

I have a locally grown organic smartphone

irl lol

like i get where people are at with this and whatever but a better place for railing against terrible labor practices would be a "company CEOS that made everything i own in my house RIP" thread

tell you what when Fjordsnor Ikea dies there will be HELL TO PAY

he died three days after he was taken out the store

short walt mossberg video at the end of this: http://allthingsd.com/20111005/the-steve-jobs-i-knew/

merlin mann has a little tribute page up: http://www.43folders.com/index.html

Damn. Says a lot about how much of the world he changed that BBC obit didn't even get round to mentioning Pixar, the company that swallowed Disney.

eric schmidt: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2011/10/05/eric-schmidt-on-steve-jobs’s-death/

panic: http://www.panic.com/

like i get where people are at with this and whatever but a better place for railing against terrible labor practices would be a "company CEOS that made everything i own in my house RIP" thread
― guh (jjjusten), Thursday, October 6, 2011 1:02 AM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark

i don't get how people decide this line of discussion is inappropriate here but appropriate there. as i said upthread, can't we acknowledge the guy's legacy with all its contradictions?

i like using my mac, just as i buy stuff from amazon -- and both corporations have some really dubious business practices that help to explain their huge market share and profits. i guess that makes me a hypocrite, but i do think it's important to acknowledge the way we are all implicated -- steve jobs way more than the rest of us -- in a globalized system by which we benefit from the exploited labor of others. indeed we are very likely both exploited ourselves and contributing to enterprises that exploit others.

i just find it helpful to recall this since the usual apple-related discourse is so heavy on themes of transcendent fusion between man and machine, sleek design, productivity, yadda yadda. i think PrincessTamTam has been impolitic in this thread but s/he is not altogether wrong when s/he writes, "he disguised market relations as social relations and made dumb 20-somethings think that the role of seller/consumer is some kind of intimate social bond as long as the company has commercials that appeal to their generic liberalism. this is why a bunch of people are acting like when some CEO billionaire who sold them a product died it was like they lost a personal friend."

that's not all that's at play. certainly some admire specific things jobs and the teams he assembled contributed to computing. but apple's appeal went far beyond this, and part of this is because of the company's ability to use marketing to obfuscate the relations underlying its increasing market position etc.

/marxism