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I think you're missing his point. None of what you listed is what Steve Jobs made. He made Apple I, Apple II, MacIntosh, etc. He was talking about his legacy. And he was right about it.

I think if you had asked him specifically about software engineers working on underlying technology, he probably would have recognized that. After all, he was working on NeXT there, which was using that same technology.

This clip actually made me respect his intelligence more than I had prior.




NEXTSTEP (now OS X) is over 20 years old. I programmed for it and much about it is still the same under the hood.


I am reminded of this quote:

“This, milord, is my family’s axe. We have owned it for almost nine hundred years, see. Of course, sometimes it needed a new blade. And sometimes it has required a new handle, new designs on the metalwork, a little refreshing of the ornamentation . . . but is this not the nine-hundred-year-old axe of my family? And because it has changed gently over time, it is still a pretty good axe, y’know. ”

Written by Terry Prattchet, spoken by the Low King in The Fifth Elephant.

(quoted online from http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/terry%20prattchet)


What you’re describing is also known as Theseus’ Paradox, and has been with us for 2 millennia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus


My personal favourite instance of the trope is Trigger's Broom: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trigger_(Only_Fools_and_Horses)

Thanks for the link to something much, much older.


I believe the human body too, has a 100% complete turnover at the cellular level every 3 years. Not that all the cells are replaced all at once. ;)


But again, NeXTSTEP was not his product, the entire machine was.

So while part of the NeXT Cube or Pizza Box that were his products live on in today's Macs and iOS devices, nobody except "those rare geologists" is still using those workstations that were the result of his work.





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