

ESR On Steve Jobs’s passing - TomasSedovic
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=3790

======
grkhetan
ESR: I dont think Steve Jobs has ever claimed he/Apple “invented” the PC,
Smartphone, AppStore, iTunes, iPad , etc. Steve Jobs was not an inventor. He
“popularized” the technology to the masses — and thats what causes the
technology to make an impact. If Xerox invented the GUI, but they sold a
couple of computers using it, which flopped, and also had on some terminals
for controlling their printers, thats it. The technology was going in waste.
Steve recognized the technology had potential to be used for personal
computers for everybody, developed the technology a lot, and marketed a
computer that a lot of people bought or atleast was noticed enough for the
mass-marketer Windows to copy it and spread it further. I think Steve played a
very very key role here in popularizing the GUI and developing the GUI. The
PC’s that were sold were better because of it. Similar in the iPhone — I have
never used the Dagger or whatever it was — but most people I know havent heard
of it, or used it. It would have remained a model, which a few people used —
what impact would have. It is the typically fallacy of scientists that they
recognize “invention” as being the most valuable activity — but they forget
that unless the invention is used by the masses, it could be limited to none
or very little impact on the world. I dont know how the UI of the hiptop was —
but the iPhone was the first smartphone to be really easy-to-use and powerful
in surfing the internet, and brought in popular use of multi-touch
touchscreens (they were not invented in the iPhone, but were hardly in use
before it). It also brought a popular App Store to the market. Thats where in
lies the contribution of the iPhone. Thats why all the smartphones borrowed a
lot of ideas from the iphone over the next years — including your favorite
android — (please dont deny, ask Andy Rubin) — and all the smartphones that
are available in the market are better off because of it. Also it popularized
smartphone and made it accessible to the masses — earlier smartphones were so
clumsy to use, they were used only by a few. Today they are popular with
everybody, and have apps that can do powerful stuff — which wouldnt have been
there without the iphone. Taking a single minded view that just because Apple
controls the app store (but keeps safari uncontrolled), it is bad is almost
childish in my opinion. Most people who use the phone dont want the fear of
downloading apps from an app store like the Android market where nobody has
checked the app out before you, and has routinely malicious software. Claiming
that Steve Jobs made locked-in products, so he did more harm than good — is
craziness. I have lost all faith in your judgement reading this article. He
did not hypnotize anybody. He marketed the products. If people who bought it
first wouldnt have liked it, it would have never become popular. But the fact
is, they liked it. Millions of people liked the iphone. And thats why Android
is also as good as it is today…. iPhone made the average smartphone available
in the market “Smart”, and hundreds of millions of smartphone users today are
better off because of it.

------
tzs
My comment on another forum where ESR's post was discussed (complete with
inadvertent but funny typo), which explains why I think ESR (and RMS) just
don't get it:

James Gosling has an interesting take on Jobs being a "control freak":

    
    
        He was famously difficult to work for and
        unrelentingly demanding of perfection. I
        interviewed for jobs with him 3 times: once before
        he was fired, once at NeXT and once after he
        returned. Each was a long lunch at The Good Earth.
        Each was a wonderful, intriguing conversation, but
        I left each thinking, ‘No, I can’t work for
        this man: he’s mad!’ That visionary madness
        drove him and his company with a tremendous force.
        He was personally not an engineer or a designer,
        but he had a tremendous sense for excellence. Many
        companies use ‘focus groups’ to help them
        refine products, but not Apple: they just had
        Steve. He was often criticized for being a
        ‘control freak,’ but that was all in pursuit
        of excellence: anything out of his control was out
        of his ability to improve.  He didn’t just have
        a sense for Apple’s products, he had a sense for
        Apple’s customers and what would delight them.
        As much as he was devoted to Apple, he was more
        devoted to Apple’s customers. One of the biggest
        drivers of Apple’s success in recent years is
        the delight their customers feel in every part of
        the process, even something as simple as opening a
        box is thought through carefully. Every detail
        matters.
    
    

The thing that really stood out in the giant collection of comments that have
been published about Jobs over the last 3 days by almost everyone of any
importance in the tech world is how many of these people were positively
influenced by him.

This includes some of Jobs and Apple's strongest competitors--for instance
when Larry Page took over as Google CEO in April, he says that Jobs reached
out to give him advice and knowledge to be CEO even though Jobs was very sick
by then. Note that this is well after Apple and Google had become fierce
rivals in mobile.

That's how things work in Silicon Valley. Companies can be bitter rivals, but
the people that run them can be friends and help each other. Business and
people are separate.

What I find sad about the comments of RMS and ESR is that they are so one
dimensional. They view people like they are in comic books--they must either
be heroes who are good all the time, or villains who constantly plot evil from
their secret volcano lair while stoking a cat. Real life humans aren't like
that.

------
pohl
What would be the more effective way to get people to give two shits about
needing a special tool to open the computer case sold by vendor A?

Choice #1: strike a PR blow against vendor A by railing against them at every
opportunity.

Choice #2: labor to improve the user experience available from the freetard
universe, thereby neutralizing vendor A's relative advantage so that not
having to go buy a Torx T15 driver becomes an important differentiator.

(posted from my beloved linux machine)

~~~
flarg
Choice #3: you do choice #2 yourself, you moaning Linux user

~~~
pohl
My choice of late has been OSX and iOS, actually. I was just on Linux at the
moment. I'm not moaning about Linux. I'm suggesting ESR's actions are
unaligned with his goals. My actions are perfectly aligned with mine.

