Steve Jobs : Visionary or not?

[sonofsanta]

I am by no means an Apple fan - anything but, tbh, and I find it a little hypocritical that a company famous for an anti-establishment advert (the 1984 one) has grown into the most controlling technology empire of the modern day - as bad, if not worse than, Microsoft of ten years ago.

 

I've not, and likely never will, own an Apple product. They are not for me.

 

But a visionary? Oh lords yes. No, he didn't design the iPod entirely on his own, nor the iPhone, nor anything else - let us not forget that the genius at the heart of Apple's genesis was Woz, after all. But Jobs always had a vision, and always pushed for that vision. His defining characteristic, above all else, was his stubborn control and drive over Every. Little. Detail. Possibly apocryphal, but afaik iPods are slightly louder than other portable music players - because Jobs was slightly deaf so requested it be boosted.

 

He wasn't Edison, firing ideas off randomly, spotting the simple solution to problems everyone else had long accepted. He was Steve Jobs, and he saw technology from the consumer's point of view, saw how they needed it packaging, and what they would demand, and he delivered it without compromise. For every product, he had a vision and he followed it through; what else do you need to define a visionary?

 

Everything floating around now is overblown hyperbole, but it always is - from Amy Winehouse through Michael Jackson to Princess Diana, the recently deceased are forgiven all sins and praised above all others. It will settle down in time to more reasonable opinions on both sides, because right now it is too emotional for everyone - for the fans, because someone they admired has left us, and for the detractors, because they can see other people sanctifying a man who was flawed, and are riled by the whitewashing going on. So getting angry at each other and drawing up lines in the sand is pointless - in a week, we'll all be more reasonable people, and that will be the time to discuss it, instead of shout about it all.

 

(sorry, that went a bit off topic... had avoided the other thread up till now, for obvious reasons)

[LeMarchand]

it is a lie to say that we would not have had smartphones WITHOUT Apple.

 

Oh , yes: Smartphone article @ Wikipedia

 

Yet through superlative marketing, the average punter thinks that any smartphone must be an iPhone, and that they need an iPad.

 

I keep getting the most technologically inept/ignorant members of staff suggesting that their laptop is replaced by an iPad, the mother-in-law has bought one (but hasn't quite worked out what she's going to use it for - or even how to use it) and Mme LeMarchand's girls both have iPhones that they use solely as phones/music players/for Angry Birds, but wouldn't dream of getting a cheaper phone that could do all that as "it wouldn't be as good as an iPhone".

 

The over-dominance of Apple in certain areas means that other manufacturers rarely get the publicity and certainly not the 3rd-party support (try getting a non-iDevice dock).

 

Whilst "visionary" may well fit, there's other descriptions that I'd offer - but as, unfortunately, even Edugeek isn't immune to the ridiculous "shared grief" thing that seems to be increasingly common these days, I'll refrain for fear of upsetting those wishing to mourn.

Edited October 7, 2011 by LeMarchand
Typo

[mthomas08]

Brilliant. You've taken comparing a fashion designer against a leader through a world war. That said, I wouldn't call Churchill a visionary either.

Kind of thinking the same, I wouldnt make him sound like Jesus either. He said the right things and lead our country during war which is by far more important than leading a company in creating fancy gadgets from ideas that already exist. Lets face it most people form companies for cash, if it wasnt a money driven world would Apple still exist?

Visionary is a word used too often, even Churchill had a vision - to win the war - does that make him a visionary?...

[Domino]

Steve Jobs helped build Pixar with vision, cash - NDTVGadgets.com

 

$50 million of his own money to keep a company going in an industry that no-one else believed in, computer animated films.

 

Now one of the biggest studios going. Seems fairly visionary.....

[deceptivex]

His success is born out of the fact that Apple let him do what he wanted, how he wanted, without any politics. Any artist or person good at product design like he was could achieve exactly the same thing if you have a board of directors and an entire company willing to let you interfere and micro-manage every last detail.

 

Sadly people in other companies don't get that opportunity. He knew marketing mattered, he knew secrecy mattered and he knew aesthetics mattered, he was a magician and Apple bent over backwards to let him do exactly as he pleased because that was there last chance. Thank god they chose someone so adept at what he did.

 

The actual technology isn't worth bragging about though (iPod and original iPhone aside), it's got a 70% margin on it and as we get further on they are struggling to revolutionize in the same way.

[Disease]

And feel free to question what I think a visionary is, I'm allowed to have a different idea and viewpoint to others

 

Not when apple is concerned by the looks of it, unless you proclaim Jobs to be the greatest visonary the world has ever seen and the second coming of Jesus Christ you are just dumb. I will tell you what is dumb, is the Princess Diana type out pouring for a man who was at the end of the day a businessman. And I doubt if Jobs was responsible for the marketing of the IPhone and IPad as someone said earlier, that would be down to the Apple Marketing Team.

 

Jobs may have had a few ideas 20/30 years ago but as everyone knows when your company becomes global the only real decisons CEO's make is to where they are playing golf this afternoon.

 

Anyone see all those idiots holding IPads with the candle app as a vigil, lol.

[mthomas08]

Steve Jobs helped build Pixar with vision, cash - NDTVGadgets.com

 

$50 million of his own money to keep a company going in an industry that no-one else believed in, computer animated films.

 

Now one of the biggest studios going. Seems fairly visionary.....

 

After reading that it looks like all he did was inject cash in to an idea that already existed. Again not really his vision but throwing money in to something that was a good idea. If its classed as Visionary to throw money to someone elses idea I will accept that.

I feel the right term is he is brilliant at spotting talent - perhaps the IT world of Simon Cowell? I guess he too is visionary.

[GrumbleDook]

I love the way people tend to focus on the more recent products that Apple have made and Jobs was part of getting out to the public.

 

Let's go all the way back to the start.

 

Would Woz have made the Apple II and would it have been the game changer it was? I don't think so, and from what I remember of Woz's biography, Woz said that Steve was the driver of thinking big and making it the success it was.

 

When we think about the argument about the use of mice ... we all know that Steve was not the creator, or even the Apple engineer who went with him, but he was the drive ... he had the vision about how important it would be (and so we get into the argument about a one-button mouse and why it did or didn't work).

 

We can talk about polishing excrement ... but the mouse was not excrement and he made sure it was well polished well.

 

I'm looking forward to reading his biography (planned Xmas present so it will be some time) but from reading Woz's and Robert X Cringely's Accidental Empires I have to say yes, he was a visionary ... a tarnished one perhaps, but still with vision and drive.

[SYNACK]

His vision was one of changing the world with game changing devices that were high quality and worked end to end. Look at most companies. Their goal is to shift boxes. HP/Compaq when they just did PC boxes? They just sold grey boxes. Acer? Same. Samsung? Same, but in many many industries.

 

Steve Jobs set up Apple in a very different way, with a very clear goal - to produce systems that people would use and love to use. He succeeded in that.

 

He was not doing it for free and was quite happy to reove others from their rightful places shareing the proceeds so I think that the altruistic view is a little - to use your words - childish. He was selling something different though, he was selling an experience rather than technology which is why they could get away with and even focus on locking people away from the the full potential of their devices rather than opening it up. Other tech companies are generally actually tech companies who's aim was the ability of the hardware sometimes without consideration to the rather large limitations of their userbase.

 

Visionary, no. Not in the technological or actual development sence along the lines of real gae changing thinkers like Newton, Einstein etc. Possibly in the sence of the guy who made the first dictionary or a fashion designer.

 

The large contention I have with the visionary tag is that it is diluting the word which is used to describe people who make real epic differences.

 

It has been said about certain ideas that it is not a case of a person inventing them but a set of circumstances and ideas at the time leading to it happening. This is why certain breakthroughs in science happen simultaniously with several scientists working on them at once.

 

All the components exist to create it, and someone will, its just a case of who gets there first or in tech, who gets it marketed first. This was the very foundation of Microsoft with Gates's smarmy little game with DOS and this holding of certain bits of a market with ideas and tech revised or plucked from engineers working with/for him. The industry is no longer about the best solution rather the most popular and this long term is more harful than helpful.

 

Would tech be different without him? Yes.

 

Would it not exist without him? Doubtful.

 

 

As I said in the other thread, it is sad for him, his family and friends but casting him as the saviour of the universe is a bit much and is disrespectful in its own way.

[localzuk]

Jobs may have had a few ideas 20/30 years ago but as everyone knows when your company becomes global the only real decisons CEO's make is to where they are playing golf this afternoon.

 

Yeah, this line on its own proves you don't really know anything about Jobs and how he ran Apple. He was not just a figurehead. He was involved in decisions from the bottom to the top. There's even an example I read a couple of years ago where he was making decisions about what food was available in the canteens, as the food had an effect on the quality of work etc... He was well known for managing every tiny detail.

[MK-2]

The problem with using the word visionary, by its very definition, is that every CEO of every company could be classed as a visionary. They all look to the future with imagination and wisdom.

We in our jobs look ahead in terms of ICT and how it could be used creatively and innovatively. So we are looking to the future with imagination and also with the wisdom our experiences have given us. Does that make everyone here a visionary in the same sense?

 

What then separates one of us being a visionary from Steve Jobs? Scale? Celebrity? Wealth?

[Hightower]

I suppose it comes down to one's own take on the word vision. I wouldn't try to deny that Jobs had vision to push forward and make a success of things, but I don't class this CEO of a tech company to be visionary. Yes, it might make lives easier, and on the other side it might get pied piper followers, but unless he's truly changing the world for the better, for the future, can he be classed as a true visionary? My opinion is no, even if it's purely based on the sole fact that the changes he's brought aren't for the better (for example, having people throw money away on an iPad they don't even know what to do with is one example, posted earlier in this thread). Edited October 7, 2011 by Hightower

[MK-2]

Yeah, this line on its own proves you don't really know anything about Jobs and how he ran Apple. He was not just a figurehead. He was involved in decisions from the bottom to the top. There's even an example I read a couple of years ago where he was making decisions about what food was available in the canteens, as the food had an effect on the quality of work etc... He was well known for managing every tiny detail.

 

Apple was also known as not a very happy place to work under him, as the working environment was much like the OS; locked down so tightly and only certain things allowed.

But that's besides the point of this discussion

[localzuk]

So Hightower you don't think Jobs changed the future for the better, by pushing forward with the Apple II? Or for pushing forward with the GUI Mac OS, or the mouse? Don't focus on his new stuff alone, look at his entire life and career.

 

His work and vision shaped the computer industry as it exists today.

[SYNACK]

When we think about the argument about the use of mice ... we all know that Steve was not the creator, or even the Apple engineer who went with him, but he was the drive ... he had the vision about how important it would be (and so we get into the argument about a one-button mouse and why it did or didn't work).

 

Your mixing it up a little I think, the visionary was the guy at Xerox that made it and showed it working in a basic GUI. Apple implemented it. Apple Mouse - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Sure it was a good bet, and also being in the right place at the right time to see it for the step it was.

[deceptivex]

We in our jobs look ahead in terms of ICT and how it could be used creatively and innovatively.

 

I think that's a bold claim. There are millions and millions working in IT, and nowhere near enough have the business sense or the concept over technical details way of thinking that is critical. In fact, most of the people I've met in IT usually are just pushing for the next OS upgrade or whatnot just "because".

 

Then again, I could have simply met a lot of IT techies and not enough IT Professionals.

[aerospacemango]

Apple was also known as not a very happy place to work under him, as the working environment was much like the OS; locked down so tightly and only certain things allowed.

But that's besides the point of this discussion

 

But is it "besides the point"?

 

Locked down so tightly and only certain things allowed

 

That sounds remarkable similar to the Foxconn manufacturing plant.....

 

Foxconn - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[localzuk]

Your mixing it up a little I think, the visionary was the guy at Xerox that made it and showed it working in a basic GUI. Apple implemented it. Apple Mouse - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Sure it was a good bet, and also being in the right place at the right time to see it for the step it was.

 

Xerox had no plans to market their mouse. They had no plans to market the Alto. They were not visionary by leaving their stuff in the lab. Apple took their idea, and turned it into a commercial success, changing the entire way computers were used by consumers.

 

If I invent a gadget that allows me to teleport around the world, and then stick it in a cupboard, i'm not a visionary. If someone comes along and sees that technology and turns it into something that changes the world, then they are a visionary.

[deceptivex]

But is it "besides the point"?

 

 

 

That sounds remarkable similar to the Foxconn manufacturing plant.....

 

Foxconn - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Add to the fact his lack of Charitable actions when compared to his peers, and the fact he was so bloody openly bitter against Microsoft right until the day he died and it paints a pretty negative picture of the man. Sort of like the kid at school who always shouted "That's my idea, you can't use it".

[LiamH]

So Hightower you don't think Jobs changed the future for the better, by pushing forward with the Apple II? Or for pushing forward with the GUI Mac OS, or the mouse? Don't focus on his new stuff alone, look at his entire life and career.

 

His work and vision shaped the computer industry as it exists today.

 

To be fair:

Sinclair and commodores were mass produced for home use before the apple 2

wasn't it xerox that created the first GUI OS?

the mouse? xerox again wasn't it?

 

He took existing products, slapped a bit of gloss on, and marketed it very well, to the point where he could rip people off and form an almost cult like fan base.

 

I don't think a vision of marketing and making money would count as a "visionary" in my eyes, pretty sure Wayne Rooney visualizes winning every game by scoring goals..

 

I'm thankful for him taking existing products, marketing them well, and pushing other company's to make cheaper and better versions of them.

 

*braces for negrep*

[LosOjos]

I'm thankful for him taking existing products, marketing them well, and pushing other company's to make cheaper and better visions of them.

 

Exactly the point I think - if Xerox hadn't marketed the mouse and Steve Jobs hadn't seen it and implemented it in the Apple II, would anyone have done? We'll never know the answer, they probably would, but it could have been many years later, which could have meant a huge setback for the development of ICT.

 

Nobody knows what would have happened, but the fact is Steve Jobs did implement it, it was a success and it did change the game.

[witch]

Exactly the point I think - if Xerox hadn't marketed the mouse and Steve Jobs hadn't seen it and implemented it in the Apple II, would anyone have done? We'll never know the answer, they probably would, but it could have been many years later, which could have meant a huge setback for the development of ICT.

 

Nobody knows what would have happened, but the fact is Steve Jobs did implement it, it was a success and it did change the game.

He did, it was and it did. He had vision, and skill and marketing ability in spades...but a 'visionary'? Not in the world changing sense of the word, no. He did change some things and improve others, but a visionary is much much more than this. It is just hyperbole - as is the overhyped use of the word 'tragic'. Real tragedy is something far far greater than the sad, too-early death of a clever and innovative man.

Also, whilst we can be saddened by the death of someone we never met, we cannot really get emotional. All this ridiculous 'Princess Diana' stuff is weird, IMHO

[pcstru]

To be fair:

Sinclair and commodores were mass produced for home use before the apple 2

 

Say what?

 

Apple II - 1977

Comodore PET - 1977

 

Sinclair ZX80 - 1980

IBM PC - 1981

Comodore C64 - 1982

MSDOS - 1982

Apple Mac - 1984

 

And just to correct something else - the Apple II didn't have a mouse (it didn't have a GUI) - that came later on the Mackintosh (1984).

Edited October 7, 2011 by pcstru

[GrumbleDook]

Your mixing it up a little I think, the visionary was the guy at Xerox that made it and showed it working in a basic GUI. Apple implemented it. Apple Mouse - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Sure it was a good bet, and also being in the right place at the right time to see it for the step it was.

 

The guy at Xerox was a genius for having he idea and making it work in the first place ... in the same way Woz is a genius ... but to get it out there and used by everyone ... that takes some vision and drive. That is the big difference to me ... but that is linked to how I see a difference between genius and visionaries. I know not everyone takes the same point of view.

 

I could put it into context closer to home ... I'm a genius ... Dos_box is a visionary. I know my place

[LosOjos]

He did, it was and it did. He had vision, and skill and marketing ability in spades...but a 'visionary'? Not in the world changing sense of the word, no.

 

I believe that the mouse and GUI did change the world though, in a massive way. I also believe we have his business sense and marketing skills to thank for their success - it would have been easier to say "Oh, it'll never take off".

 

He did change some things and improve others, but a visionary is much much more than this.

 

Depends on your definition - by the dictionary definition he fits exactly, but if you're going to put emotional weight behind it based on the achievements of others then that changes things.

 

There will always be someone better, always someone worse; can't we judge someone on their own merits?

 

Real tragedy is something far far greater than the sad, too-early death of a clever and innovative man.

Also, whilst we can be saddened by the death of someone we never met, we cannot really get emotional. All this ridiculous 'Princess Diana' stuff is weird, IMHO

 

That I completely agree with, but again that's just the way the media works. If they didn't use grand, emotional words like "tragic" and "visionary", then the news would all be a bit dull wouldn't it?

 

"Steve Jobs dies age 56. It's sad."