
Steve Jobs: Out for Revenge (1989) - indigodaddy
https://www.nytimes.com/1989/08/06/magazine/steve-jobs-out-for-revenge.html
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simonh
This had me smiling: ”...it employs Unix, an aging but powerful basic software
system”.

At that time Unix was 20 years old, now it's 50 years old.

Well still be running Unix, or its clones for trademark purposes, in a hundred
years. Maybe several hundred. I wonder what other operating systems are likely
to have that sort of longevity.

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pegasus
No way will we use Unix in 100 years. Either we will have regressed back to
stone age by then or we will have moved on to a stage we can barely imagine,
quasi-stagnating for a whole century is just not how humanity rolls, i'm
afraid.

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simonh
Which is the biggest difference in the way the developed world works and what
it's like to live in it. The difference between now and 1969, or the
difference between 1969 and 1919? In both cases it's a 50 year delta.

I don't mind betting that the world of 2069 will look a lot more like 2019
than 2019 looks like 1969.

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tommit
Interesting. I don't think I would take that bet. Historically, it's always
taken fewer and fewer years for really "radical shifts", for lack of a better
word, to happen.

Imagine sending someone from the 1200's to the 1500's. They would probably
have less of a shock than the guy sent from the 1900's to today, in terms of
how much around them has changed, even though they have traveled more years
ahead.

It's something I read in an article at some point, but couldn't find it just
now from a quick google search. I feel like it makes sense though. With the
pace we're inventing things at, Clarke's 3rd law will kick into effect more
frequently: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from
magic."

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simonh
I think most of the low hanging fruit from the rapid technological advances in
the 20th century have now been picked. Jet aircraft, ground vehicles,
helicopters, space rockets, computers. I don't see anything fundamentally
revolutionising those in the next generation. Hand computers took their own
sweet time to come, but now we have them. I think it's all incremental from
now on.

Technological advances are never exponential forever. They always follow an S
curve and all our technologies are at the top of the S and levelling off. Many
of them actually started levelling off decades ago, such as air travel and
ground vehicles. Electric cars are substitution not revolution. Reusable
rockets are going to get pretty cool though.

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tommit
Yes! I remember reading an article about the S-curve that each new paradigm
brings with it. I would agree that we're closing in on the upper part of the S
with regards to the internet and personal computing.

But in my opinion that in no way means we will stagnate now. Bar from anything
devastating happening, I would assume one is right in looking at the past to
assume future development, albeit in a field that's not yet quite apparent.
There is no reason to assume there isn't the next S waiting for us at the end
of this one, even if you and I cannot really picture it just yet.

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blinkingled
Interesting Alan Kay quote FTA -

> ''If you look at it from the front, it's fantastic. If you look at it from
> the back, it stinks. Steve doesn't think systems at all . . . about
> connectivity, about the ability to link up to a larger world.''

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mattl
Which is funny because it had Ethernet from the start and we know about timbl
and www.

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CrazyStat
Note the Alan Kay quote is about the Macintosh, not NeXT.

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mattl
Oh.

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gbourne
INteresting quote from Alan Kay: 'If you look at it [and Apple] from the
front, it's fantastic. If you look at it from the back, it stinks. Steve
doesn't think systems at all . . . about connectivity, about the ability to
link up to a larger world.'

He has a point.

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classified
Had the concept existed back then, that headline would be called clickbait.

Other than that, these were exciting times for computer users. One could
expect good and interesting things from progress and only the sky seemed the
limit.

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woliveirajr
> "to combine pre-existing sections of instructions, or ''objects,'' to create
> the programs they need - an innovative technique known in the industry as
> ''object-oriented programming.'' "

Not only this article is clickbait in its title, but also some serious
marketing-all-way-down. Technical decisions being sold as consumer benefits,
as if the end-consumers would deal directly with OOP.

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eloisant
It makes sense when you realize that OOP was seen as a revolutionary solution
for all problems. So you use it in marketing lingo.

Just like deep learning today.

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HocusLocus
Form over function.

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brians
Pity about the headline. There’s not a word in the text about revenge or about
Jobs’ feelings about Sculley at all—though those are well detailed elsewhere.

Are there other stories of people who had one fortune and went on to make
another? With $100M, it would be pretty tempting to go back to the fruit
commune.

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drawkbox
Jobs didn't have anything personal against Sculley most likely, but it was
revenge on the takeover from product/engineering/creative people to
sales/marketing/MBA control at Apple. [1]

Steve Jobs knew the problem when the product people get driven out from the
decision making, the coup d'état from the value creators to the value
extractors.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AxZofbMGpM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AxZofbMGpM)

~~~
scarface74
Well, looking at the history of Jobs in particular before he came back to
Apple, I would say just the opposite.

The Lisa, Apple ///, original Mac, and the NeXT were all failures because they
didn’t get the importance of actually creating products that people wanted.
Engineers seldom understand the needs of the broader market. The “Engineers”
also gave you great stuff in the mid 90s like PowerTalk, QuickDraw GX,
OpenDoc, and other products that no one wanted.

As far as creative people - letting them take over gets you the trash can Mac
Pro, iOS 7, and the MacBook keyboard.

Engineers are infamous for not wanting to deal with pesky things like
customers and usually don’t care whether their designs can lead to products
that can be produced at scale. Apple would still be floundering without the
“MBA types” like Cook who got operations under control and Schiller who was
over marketing.

Scully - the “sugar water salesman” - saved Apple the first time around after
the missteps of Jobs.

Even today you can look at Google to see what happens when you have great
engineers but no leadership. They are still an ad business despite years of
trying to diversify.

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socialdemocrat
Kind of an attempt of rewrite of history there. Sure Steve Jobs did many
stupid things and had to temper himself. But let us not forget that after he
left Apple was on a never ending downward slope. It was when Steve Jobs came
back and put product designers in the drivers seat that Apple actually became
one of the worlds most valuable companies.

I have seen this over and over again. Where I am from an Apple reseller was
first started by enthusiasts and made it big until MBA types took over only
caring about the short term bottom line. They killed the company because
customers stopped having faith in the sales people having their interests at
heart. It was all about selling you maximum amount of stuff.

They got kicked to the curb by a new upstart mac reseller where the owners
really cared about the product and customers enjoying their Mac experience,
not just getting money.

The problem with the MBA style guys is that don't really see the value of
anything. They just see money. That can only take you so far.

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JoshTko
Tim Cook has an MBA, would you say his actions demonstrate a pattern of short
term bottom line focus?

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scarface74
There have been a few execution failures like the MacBook keyboards and the
trash can Mac Pro. But Apple will still stick to something long term even if
it isn’t an immediate success.

The AppleTV would have been cancelled years ago by any other company. For a
tech company to invest billions on creating content like AppleTV+ is something
that most non entertainment companies wouldn’t even try.

The Apple Watch has seen dramatic continuous improvement over years and the
iPad didn’t come into own until 2015 with both the pro models and iOS
improvements. It was just a big iPhone during the first three years.

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Wowfunhappy
I have no comment on your larger argument but this feels like a weird point to
make:

> The AppleTV would have been cancelled years ago by any other company.

If the AppleTV didn't exist, what would that change? AppleTV+ (the service)
does not need AppleTV (the hardware) in order to exist, nor do I think one
benefits the other.

Apple is primarily using iPhones and iPads to push AppleTV+. The service is
also available on non-Apple hardware, such as smart TV's.

> For a tech company to invest billions on creating content like AppleTV+ is
> something that most non entertainment companies wouldn’t even try.

Amazon? Netflix?

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scarface74
Netflix was in the business of sending video to people’s home. Sending video
electronically was a natural evolution. They didn’t have a choice but to
create their own videos or they would both be beholden to studios and be a
commodity.

The Apple TV was introduced in 2006. They kept pursuing it for over a decade
and it still hasn’t gotten that much traction.

The difference is that all of the other hardware choices are slow, ad ridden
(Roku has hard coded buttons on their remotes that go to the highest bidder)
and privacy invasive.

They also have another avenue to push Apple Arcade. The AppleTV is much better
integrated with Apple’s other offerings from the phone to the watch to the
HomePods.

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