
Stephen Wolfram on Steve Jobs: A Few Memories - robertbud1
http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2011/10/steve-jobs-a-few-memories/
======
steveb
NeXT sold maybe 50,000 systems in 5 years, less than the number of PCs that a
typical large company has stuffed in cubicles.

And from that small install base, emerged the first Web browser, Doom, and
Mathematica.

They were amazing, if flawed products. Every system came with Mathematica, a
full dictionary and the complete works of Shakespeare.

I remember having to go use Windows NT after NeXT failed in the market. And I
remember, ten years later, holding the first iPhone in my hand and knowing
where it came from.

~~~
dman
Is that you Steve Ballmer?

~~~
daeken
How is this a constructive comment? For that matter, how does that even
remotely follow? This comment baffles me on so many levels.

~~~
hugh3
_For that matter, how does that even remotely follow?_

I can only assume it was based on the fact that the OP is called "steveb". A
brief look at his profile, however, is sufficient to satisfy me that this is
not, in fact, Steve Ballmer.

------
SkyMarshal
I think he really nails the reason that so many people love Jobs:

 _"In my life, I have had the good fortune to interact with all sorts of
talented people. To me, Steve Jobs stands out most for his clarity of thought.
Over and over again he took complex situations, understood their essence, and
used that understanding to make a bold definitive move, often in a completely
unexpected direction.

I myself have spent much of my life—in science and in technology—trying to
work in somewhat similar ways. And trying to build the very best possible
things I can.

Yet looking at the practical world of technology and business there are
certainly times when it has not been obvious that any of this is a good
strategy. Indeed, sometimes it looks as if all that clarity, understanding,
quality and new ideas aren’t really the point—and that the winners are those
with quite different interests.

So for me—and our company—it has been immensely inspiring to watch Steve
Jobs’s—and Apple’s—amazing success in recent years. It validates so many of
the principles that I have long believed in. And encourages me to pursue them
with even greater vigor."_

------
dy
I grew up in Champaign, IL, where Wolfram is based and Steven Wolfram had a
reputation for being difficult and an introvert - but the more I read or see
about him, the more I find him inspiring and quite brilliant.

His story was also touching because it shows how Steve Jobs was able to touch
people's lives in significant ways even through the briefest of interactions.

I'm not surprised there is such "cult" behavior behind Apple - if there was
ever a cult leader I would want to believe in, it would be Steve.

~~~
alecbenzer
mostly irrelevant, but were your parents grad students/professors? I'm a
freshmen at uiuc right now (and I intern at wolfram actually), I like finding
out about the area (and people who live[d] here)

~~~
dy
My mother was a professor of MIS there.

Congrats on attending UIUC, I really loved the school and got a lot out of
going there. Is Wolfram still on Neil St? I loved that amongst the car
dealerships and Meijers was this mecca of mathematics and technology.

In terms of things to do:

\- I highly recommend you join the Engineering Freshman Committee and the EOH
group, I was the chair of that group and we were given $2000 to do whatever we
want (we built a lightbulb unscrewing robot to compete at EOH). It was
definitely one of the best experiences of my life ($2k in college seemed like
an infinite pool of money).

\- Start poking around Beckman Center, I did lots of interesting research
there and it still puts out some really cool stuff that freshman can get
involved with.

\- If you can get a car and need to impress a date, Curtis Orchard is really
pretty right now.

\- I loved the 318/319 courses and wish I had taken it earlier, when I was
there Garland and Hart were there and I wish I had a chance to take more
classes in that track.

Best of luck!

~~~
alecbenzer
The building? Yeah, it's on Neil. I found it kind of funny too - it's just of
tucked away in between a McDonald's and a Walmart (I also find it amusing how
you can see a six story building from so far away - I'm from around New York)

Honestly I have mixed feelings about the school. There's stuff to like but I
feel out of place a lot of the time. I've been a combination of blue and busy
lately, but I should probably check out Beckman and NCSA and some other stuff.

No car and no dates as of late. :P

318 (I think it's 418 now, with Hart this semester) seems cool.

~~~
dy
Yeah if you're from Manhattan it's going to be an adjustment - I'm in
Manhattan now and haven't been back since I graduated (my mom moved to NC).
Here's a few things I wish I had done differently:

1\. Don't skimp on where you live (live in a good place in a great location
like right above Murphy's). The rent seems like a lot when you're a student,
but in hindsight it's the best deal you'll ever get. Don't live far away from
north campus to save money.

2\. The ACM at UIUC is pretty amazing, they have a secret lab underneath DCL
where they have every thing you could ever want to build a robot, hack on
Arduino (I think I salvaged a HP oscilloscope).

3\. If you're looking for some more money - there are a lot of companies out
by Assembly Hall (motorola etc). Good jobs/pay, really painful to get to.

College is definitely an adjustment but I found my groups I enjoyed hacking
with, going to Brothers' with, going to Murphy's with and got a lot out of the
experience.

~~~
alecbenzer
I'm from right outside New York in New Jersey, so I'm used to suburban areas,
I'm just also used to being near a big city.

1\. Being OOS, money is slightly more of an issue to me, so saving money to
live somewhat further way seems like exactly something I may need to end up
doing, but I'll see if the difference really matters.

2\. I should really start hanging out in the acm office more...might fix
(mitigate) some of the problems I have with the school.

3\. Well, like I mentioned, I'm at wolfram right now, with pretty decent pay,
so I think I'm sticking with that for a while.

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spdy
_At the time, all sorts of people were telling me that I needed to put quotes
on the back cover of the book. So I asked Steve Jobs if he’d give me one.
Various questions came back. But eventually Steve said, “Isaac Newton didn’t
have back-cover quotes; why do you want them?”_

This tells so much about Jobs. Everybody is doing X but we do Y. Think
different.

~~~
metra
I can't help but think that maybe Jobs just didn't have a positive review of
the book. I've never read it but the most helpful reviews on Amazon are not
favorable.

[http://www.amazon.com/New-Kind-Science-Stephen-
Wolfram/dp/15...](http://www.amazon.com/New-Kind-Science-Stephen-
Wolfram/dp/1579550088)

~~~
pkamb
Same for Woz's book: _"I was a little disappointed — Steve Jobs had indicated
he'd write a foreword. But he'd never written a foreword before and I said,
"Just write what we were like back then."_

 _"We sent him the book and he said, "Oh, I saw some excerpts, and I'm going
to decline writing the foreword." I don't know why because I'm nice to him, so
there must have been something he didn't like."_

[http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/200...](http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2002929498_wozqa14.html)

------
6ren
> his theory for a name was to start from the generic term for something, then
> romanticize it. His favorite example at the time was Sony’s Trinitron.

This theory appeals to me, but the example doesn't seem to be an instance of
it. Neither trinity nor electron are generic names for TV (or for a tube).
Maybe the story got mixed up somewhere.

> The name Trinitron was derived from trinity, meaning the union of three, and
> tron from electron tube, after the way that the Trinitron combined the three
> separate electron guns of other CRT designs into one.
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinitron>

OTOH iPhone is a romanticisation of a generic term.

~~~
solutionyogi
Why not? He said that start from generic term for 'something', not necessarily
the product you are trying to name. So I think his theory holds. [And if you
think about it, the name 'Google' follows the same theory.]

~~~
scott_s
Metallica.

------
fragsworth
I have no respect for Stephen Wolfram. He is completely shameless. This
article made me more cynical about him than I ever have been.

I mean I went into this article assuming he'd talk a little about his products
because that's just how he is, but somehow he managed to work _every last one
of his god damned products in great detail_ into this "memorial" for Steve
Jobs. He manages to turn everything into a promotional piece for himself or
for his company's shit - even someone else's death. It is nauseating.

Just compare this to any other post about Steve from any other executive. It's
completely tasteless and inappropriate.

~~~
shin_lao
Exactly my thoughts.

TL;DR: "me, me, me, me, Steve Jobs, Mathematica, me, me, me, me, I can't
believe how awesome I am, Wolfram|Alpha".

~~~
bane
I wouldn't be surprised if he has a cellular automata that can write blog
posts given an input of a subject "Steve Jobs" and happens to churn out
shameless self promotion as a result.

------
aaronsw
The original (one-page) version of this is here:
[http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2011/10/steve-jobs-a-few-
memo...](http://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2011/10/steve-jobs-a-few-memories/)

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3079799>

------
jgh
I think this is more of a memory of Mathematica than Steve Jobs.

~~~
hugh3
Frequency analysis from textalyser.net:

i: 36

steve: 35

jobs: 20

mathematica: 20

So the good news is that Steve manages to _just_ pull ahead of Mathematica in
his own obituary.

~~~
tzs
That was not an obituary. It was Wolfram's recollection of his _personal_
interaction with Jobs. Since much of that interaction was over the development
and bundling of Mathematica, it is _expected_ that Mathematica would be
mentioned a lot.

------
chubot
This was surprisingly good -- I had no idea about these connections.

~~~
channelmeter
I've recently learned about a two other connections with Steve Job that friend
have had, albiet much smaller than you see written here. One was a friend
who's father was asked to make paintings for the Apple product rooms and
another who's uncle ran a bicycle shop in PA that Steve would frequent to.
Both said, just working with Steve made them want to improve in all aspects.

This just goes to show you why startup hubs matter so much.

------
cavilling_elite
I use Mathematica every day at work, I was not aware of the rich history
Wolfram had with Jobs.

------
steve8918
This is simply an amazing anecdote. I can't believe how far reaching Steve
Jobs has been in terms of his influence over technology, even down to the name
of Mathematica. Incredible.

------
jseliger
Is there someone keeping track of all the famous (or not famous) people
sharing their experiences with Jobs? I feel like every website I've visited
since the news hit features _someone_ writing something valuable, fascinating,
and interesting about him, and it would be nice if there was a central
clearinghouse for it—a recent Folklore.org, if you will.

------
pcj
_In my life, I have had the good fortune to interact with all sorts of
talented people. To me, Steve Jobs stands out most for his clarity of thought.
Over and over again he took complex situations, understood their essence, and
used that understanding to make a bold definitive move, often in a completely
unexpected direction._

So true.

------
chugger
_he was going out on a date that evening—and he hadn’t been on a date for a
long time. He explained that he’d just met the woman he was seeing a few days
earlier, and was very nervous about his date. The Steve Jobs—so confident as a
businessman and technologist—had melted away, and he was asking me—hardly a
noted known authority on such things—about his date._

rofl @ Steve Jobs asking Stephen Wolfram about dating.

~~~
shabble
"...and that was when I realised women were basically cellular automata - I
had discovered A New Kind Of Dating."

~~~
gfodor
Thanks for a much needed laugh amongst all these tributes.

