pulse Report This Comment Date: October 06, 2011 12:25AM
Rarely a more polarising character or company comes out as Steve Jobs and
Apple.
Love or loathe the products and the company, its business practises or the man
himself, you've gotta give credit where it's due. In the past decade, Jobs has
shaped the technology world in his image.
It remains to be seen what will happen to Apple in the coming years, but one
thing is for sure - they will never be the same company without him as with
him
Steve Jobs: 1955 - 2011
pulse Report This Comment Date: October 06, 2011 09:11AM
Yeah, fair call - I'd do it for Bill Gates, Linux Torvalds or probably even
Larry Ellison. Michael Dell can suck it.
woberto Report This Comment Date: October 06, 2011 11:13AM
Yawn.
Here´s ten things you didn´t know about Steve Jobs, by James Altucher;
1) Nature versus Nurture. His sister is Mona Simpson but he didn't know it until
he was an adult. Mona Simpson was one of my favorite novelists from the late
80s. Her first novel, Anywhere but Here, was about her relationship with her
parents. Which, ironically, were Steve Jobs' parents. But since Steve Jobs was
adopted (see below), they didn't know they were brother-sister until the 90s
when he tracked her down. It's proof (to an extent) of the nature versus nurture
argument. Two kids, without knowing they were brother and sister, both having a
unique sensibility of life on this planet to become among the best artists in
the world in completely different endeavors. And, to me it was great that I was
a fan of both without realizing (even before they realized) that they were
related.
2) His father's name is Abdulfattah Jandali. If you had to ask me what Steve
Jobs' father's name was I never in one zillion years would've guessed that and
that Steve Jobs biologically was half Syrian Muslim. For some reason I thought
he was Jewish. Maybe it's because I wanted to be him so I projected my own
background onto him. His parents were two graduate students who I guess weren't
sure if they were ready for a kid so put him up for adoption and then a few
years later had another kid (see above). So I didn't know he was adopted. The
one requirement his biological parents had was that he be adopted by two
college-educated people. But the couple that adopted him lied at first and
turned out not to be college educated (the mom was not a high school graduate),
so the deal almost fell through until they promised to send Steve to college. A
promise they couldn't keep (see below). So despite many layers of lies and
promises broken, it all worked out in the end. People can save a lot of hassle
by not having such high expectations and overly ambitious worries in the first
place.
3) He made the game "Breakout." If there was one thing I loved almost
as much as the games on the Apple II+, it was playing Breakout on my
first-generation Atari (I can't remember, was that the Atari 2600?). And then
Breakout on every version of my Blackberry since 2000. If he had never done
anything else in life and I had met him and he said, "I'm the guy who made
Breakout," I would've said, "you are the greatest genius of the past
100 years." Funny how things turn out. He went on from Atari to form Apple.
Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari, went to form the greatest restaurant chain in
the history of mankind: Chuck E. Cheese.
4) He denied paternity on his first child, claiming he was sterile. The mother
had to initially raise the kid using welfare checks. I have no judgment on this
at all. Raising kids is hard. And when you have a kid you feel like this
enormous energy and creativity you have for the world is going to get
misdirected into a... little baby (Jobs' parents must've felt that way as well.
Like father, like son). Heck, I originally wanted my first kid to be aborted.
But people change, mature, grow up. Eventually Jobs became a good father. And
that's what counts in the end. Much worse if it was the reverse. I didn't know
this either: that the Lisa computer (the "Apple III"
was named after this first child.
5) He's a pescetarian. In other words, he eats fish but no other meat. And he
eats anything else a vegetarian eats (including eggs and dairy). I think from
now on I'm going to be a pescetarian, just because Steve Jobs is one. Except
when I'm in Argentina. In Argentina you have to eat steak. Ted Danson and Mary
Tyler Moore consider themselves pescetarians. Somehow, even the world
"pescetarian" seems like it was invented in California.
6) He doesn't give any money to charity. And when he became Apple's CEO he
stopped all of their philanthropic programs. He said, "wait until we are
profitable". Now they are profitable, and sitting on $40b cash, and still
not corporate philanthropy. I actually think Jobs is probably the most
charitable guy on the planet. Rather than focus on which mosquitoes to kill in
Africa (Bill Gates is already focusing on that), Jobs has put his energy into
massively improving quality of life with all of his inventions. People think
that entrepreneurs have to some day "give back". This is not true.
They already gave at the office. Look at the entire iPod/Mac/iPhone/Disney
ecosystem and ask how many lives have benefited directly (because they've been
hired) or indirectly (because they use the products to improve their quality of
life). As far as I know, Jobs has never even commented about his thoughts on
charity. Good for him. As one CEO of a (currently) Fortune 10 company once told
me when I had my hand out for a charitable website, "Screw
charity!"
7) He lied to Steve Wozniak. When they made Breakout for Atari, Wozniak and Jobs
were going to split the pay 50-50. Atari gave Jobs $5000 to do the job. He told
Wozniak he got $700 so Wozniak took home $350. Again, no judgment. Young people
do things. Show me someone who says he's been honest from the day he was born
and I'll show you a liar. It's by making mistakes, having fights, finding out
where your real boundaries in life are, that allow you to truly know where the
boundaries are.
8) He's a Zen Buddhist. He even thought about joining a monastery and becoming a
monk. His guru, a Zen monk, married him and his wife. When I was going through
some of my hardest times my only relief was sitting with a Zen group. Trying to
quiet the mind to deal with the onrush of non-stop pain that was trying to
invade there. The interesting thing about Jobs being a a Zen Buddhist is that
most people would think that serious Buddhism and being one of the wealthiest
people in the world come into conflict with each other. Isn't Buddhism about
non-attachment? Didn't Buddha himself leave his riches and family behind?
But the answer is "no". It's normal to pursue passions and outcomes,
but just not to become overly attached to those outcomes. Being happy regardless
of the outcome. A great story is the Zen master and his student walking by a
river. A prostitute was there and needed to be carried over the river. The Zen
master picked her up and carried her across the river and then put her down.
Then the master and student kept walking. A few hours later the student was so
agitated he finally had to ask, "Master, how could you touch and help that
prostitute! That's against what we believe in!" And the Master said,
"I left her by the river. Why are you still carrying her?"
9) He didn't go to college. I actually didn't know this initially. Bill Gates
and Mark Zuckerberg are the famous college dropouts that I knew about. But
apparently Steve Jobs went to Reed College for one semester and then dropped
out. I guess you don't need college to program computers, make computers, build
businesses, make movies, manage people, etc. (Of course, you can see all my
other posts on why kids should not go to college.)
10) Psychedelics. Steve Jobs used LSD at least once when he was younger. In
fact, he said about the experience, it was "one of the two or three most
important things I have done in my life." Apple's slogan for many years was
"Think Different". Maybe using a drug which tore him from the normal
frame of reference taught him how to look at problems from such a unique
perspective. I don't think LSD is for everyone, but when you combine it with the
innate genius the man had, plus the many ups and downs that he experienced, plus
the Zen Buddhism and all of the other things above, it's quite possible it all
adds up to the many inventions he's been able to produce.
fossil_digger Report This Comment Date: October 06, 2011 12:00PM
i wish i had thought of ripping off the open source community creating an O.S.
and marketing it @ 3 times the price of Winblows.
BlahX3 Report This Comment Date: October 06, 2011 03:56PM
I was never a big fan of Macs, it's just another computer to me. I kind of
liked the Next computers he made but still just another computer. I kind of wish
a lot of the old brands of computers like Commodore and Atari were still being
developed just to see what might have happened.
cfh4209 Report This Comment Date: October 09, 2011 08:16PM
Wow everybody thinks he changed things in the computer world.WRONG!!!! Wow
weve had mp3s Wow weve had mp3 players before him.And he didnt create the ipod
or the ipad.He just marketed all of that,he didnt do shit.Everybody thinks hes a
fucking god or something.LAME!!!!
pulse Report This Comment Date: June 24, 2016 01:10PM
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