Steve Jobs
 

Although I knew his end was near, it was still a shock to hear he's gone. I wasn't a die hard mac or iPhone person, but there was never any doubt of his genius or his impact on so many parts of our lives.

Steve Jobs, you will be greatly missed. :respect:

Yeah Jobs did an awesome job in changing the world as we know it. I prefer th Droid as I have one and is better than the IPhone IMO. The only Apple product I own is the IPod Touch and I like it. It's mostly my home Computer and I am using the site on my IPod touch as of this Moment.

Jobs didn't change a damned thing. He never had an original idea in his life. Everything he produced was copied from a previous product.

I don't know about that, Jobs was brilliant. The Iphone and the Ipad are technological marvels that have incredible appeal to the public and made Apple extremely wealthy. I think it was Jobs leadership that was the basis of Apple's success. It remains to be seen if apple can continue it's innovative leadership now that he is gone. :respect:

I'm no fan of Jobs as a person, but your claim is simply untrue.

The iphone is a copy of RIM's blackberry which existed years before the iphone. The ipad is a copy of a product that Microsoft produced in the 90's. Microsoft's version didn't sell because there wasn't the telecommunications infrastructure back then to support it.

He certainly didn't come up with the idea of a personal computer nor was he the first to make one. He didn't come up with the idea of a GUI, although his version was the first user friendly one.

You are thinking too narrowly, my friend. Again, I'm no fan of Jobs as a person. But under his leadership, Apple innovated in remarkable ways. The devices Apple produced are not always completely original (cf. the MPG player), but the design of them changes the way users interact with technology. Consider the iPod, as one example. It is a seamless mix of a device and a service (iTunes) that has rarely been achieved in the history of technology. Jobs directed that effort, and deserves credit for how it changed the world.

The iPod is copy of Sony's MP3 player. iTunes wasn't the first online music file sharing service. Jobs' effort is that he produced the hardware, software, and enduser product in one company instead of several separate companies.

I am not a fan of Apple products, but I think you are being rather harsh on Jobs. All innovators base their achievements on the accomplishments of others. Our good friend Bill Gates used the CPM operating system as a basis for the IBM PC operating system.
Even Einstein could not have come up with his revolutionary theories without the knowledge gained from physicists and mathematicians before him. Also, how did your Scottish buddy, Higgs come up with the Higgs boson? He just didn't create it out of thin air.
By the way, you are very well informed on technology, are you in the field? :respect:

The iPod as a complete product, seamlessly integrating the device, technology, and service, is so advanced compared to the Sony product that it cannot even be compared. If you are judging innovation on the basis of who is first to create something that is narrowly defined, you may be correct. But ascribing innovation in that way would negate some of the world?s greatest advances.

Someone at our university asked me what I thought of Steve Jobs. I replied that ?he made technology fun.? His contribution was as a marketing genius not a technologist. Recall that it was Steve Wozniak who was in fact the ?brains? behind the original Apple computer. From all accounts I?ve ever read, ?Woz? didn?t have a clue what to do with the thing. Jobs said: ?let?s sell it.? The rest is history? :cool:

Yes, Apparently Wozniak also "invented" the spreadsheet, one of the most useful aspects of computer technology.

I think Jobs main contribution was to create 'accessible' technology. That is to say, he tried to make easy interfaces that anticipated the needs of a novice user.

For a more tech heavy person, it's actually a bit of a pain, because it takes more effect to get to the 'guts' of configurations. E.g. I don't want IPhoto to always pop up when I insert a memory card, but it takes a devil of a long time to figure out how to disable this 'feature' on a Mac.

I know a lot of people idolize him - I can't quite get worked up to that level, but to each his or her own opinion. I won't demonize him either.

The adulation for Jobs, since his death, has gone overboard. Some people are crediting him with inventing products that were invented by someone else. I did not say that Jobs was not innovative. All I said was that he didn?t have an original idea. Everything created by Apple was done by somebody else first.

I did not compare Sony?s product to the iPod. I merely said that Sony was the first company to introduce a portable digital music player. The idea for a portable music player comes from portable cassette players that various electronics manufacturers started introducing in the 1960?s. So the modern MP3 player and iPod roots can be traced back to a previous product that does not look anything like the modern product. So I did not negate innovation with my statement. I just pointed out that the iPod was not first.

Exactly that, he was good at marketing and not at inventing new product

I appreciate your clarification, my friend, but as your initial post quoted above indicates, you stated that he "didn't change a damned thing." That is an ?ber-narrow view of what innovation means. The list of Apple products produced under Jobs' leadership that changed the way in which the world views and uses technology is lengthy and impressive. Even people who don't like Apple products cannot deny the influence of things like making the USB a mass-used thing, broadening how GUI is used, etc., etc., etc. -- unless they simply want to pretend that some things just never happened. ;)

Ah the mighty USB. Greatest thing to happen to computers.

Yes, my very first sentence was too harsh.

I do not use any of his products but he was an inspiring man, a pure genius of our generation.