Jobs' New Bio

So Steve Jobs biography is going on sale next week, shortly after California is announcing a state holiday in his honor, Steve Jobs Day. And part of it strikes me as painfully ironic.

For those that follow the industry, Steve Jobs has been blatant about intellectual theft even until recently (the iPhone name, icon interface, touchscreen design, and other aspects were stolen from other companies primarily Cisco, Nokia, and HTC... remember the eerily similar HTC Touch or the LG Prada that released before the iPhone?).

He has even admitted it proudly:
http://gizmodo.com/5483914/steve-job...-artists-steal
Yet in his bio he's said this about Google chairman Eric Schmidt "stealing":
And this is based off the idea that Android is a ripoff of iOS because it uses an icon interface, one that Steve Jobs himself "borrowed". Yet, he's also always been big on parroting that he's patenting everything, and using the largest corporate legal team to defend them (even for vague patents on products they have no plans to bring to market, stifling innovation).

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-20...all-bio-shows/

It may be unpopular, but I just don't understand why as soon as someone passes we have to pretend they were saints and glorify them even going so far as to mark a holiday in their name. Similar thing happened with Michael Jackson, where first most agreed he was kindof a ego-maniacal weirdo that surrounded himself with golden paintings and statues of himself and a childish playground mansion that ran out of a hospital with a bloody baby which he dangled precariously out of a window while suspected of pedophilia, but upon his passing he was just "The King".

IMO, people should be remembered as they were, the good and the bad.

Definitely, and its silly to expect perfection from anyone, but with the holiday and my Mac friends more or less treating him like a deity got to be a bit much for me.

At least Bill Gates has been very involved in charity work (not that I would want a holiday for him either), whereas Steve Jobs never gave a penny except a little a long while back to promote vegetarianism (something he believed could even cure cancer). Founder of the Stanford Social Innovation Review in fact called Apple one of "America's Least Philanthropic Companies." Jobs had terminated all of Apple's long-standing corporate philanthropy programs within weeks after returning to Apple in 1997, citing the need to cut costs until profitability rebounded. But the programs have never been restored despite massive profitability, both personally and of the company. Especially sad were the rash of suicides at Foxconn plants where the Apple products were made in China, due to abhorrent conditions and feeling of hopelessness of those that felt trapped in the factories (where they permanently lived and left only on Sundays) which Steve Jobs could not have been ignorant of and is shameful considering the company has more cash stockpiles than the United States treasury.

Back to the original hypocrisy, here's what Andy Hertzfeld, one of the original computer scientists on the Apple Macintosh development team (although now working for Google), wrote about Steve and stealing ideas:

"If you tell him (Steve Jobs) a new idea, he'll usually tell you that he thinks it's stupid.

But then, if he actually likes it, exactly one week later, he'll come back to you and propose your idea to you, as if he thought of it."

You are right, that is a personal thing, but some did argue that investors/stockholders had a right to know, and those that did know should not have been allowed to continue trading shares in secret. And at Stanford he did sell a fiction in a speech that simply wasn't true... but that is exactly what Steve Jobs was, a brilliant salesman that could sell anything, the way that Tiger Woods is a brilliant golfer, but beyond that far from perfect to be naming a holiday after. My coworker here for example not only changed his wallpaper to a black and white picture of Steve, put a framed picture of him at his cubicle, but also sent an email out to the whole department asking for those that wanted to meet at 6PM after work to celebrate him. Just doesn't make sense to me, as by most accounts he wasn't a nice or altruistic guy (heck, who lets their biological daughter be fed on welfare until court ordered to support her?) and by most accounts was rather stubborn, arrogant, and condescending... so hundreds of shrines around the world are a bit much.

http://money.cnn.com/2008/03/02/news...une/index4.htm

Certainly, I am jealous of his wealth and success, who wouldn't be? I'd wager you'd probably enjoy having the money, success, and fame of George W Bush or Chris Brown.

Respect for the specific talents of a celebrity are one thing. But if you believe jealousy is the reason that some people think its silly to raise individuals like Justin Bieber or Steve Jobs to Sainthood or Jesus Christ levels of religious devotion to have candle vigils and name a holiday after, well, certainly everyone is entitled to their opinion. I won't be praying to any celebrity shrines in my own home though.

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

Interesting thing too that is developing is "brand identity", where people actually consider themselves part of what is in actuality merely a large for profit corporation, due to clever marketing.

http://articles.cnn.com/2011-05-19/t...ins?_s=PM:TECH

According to the CNN article, they admitted to knowing and trading. Two top dog lawyers said that as long as he remained in capacity to function, it wasn't illegal and privacy considerations could be defended in court against disclosure and insider trading legal concerns.

How very Christian... or zen Buddhist, whatever, heh. Point was that most can be jealous of someone's bigger boat, better body (Brad Pitt... nuff said), prettier spouse etc without holding it against them, and I would argue its perfectly natural and healthy.

That doesn't mean that anyone that thinks its silly to elevate someone to sainthood that was clearly FAR from a saint is just bitterly jealous as you imply.

So you agree then that the candle vigils, shrines, and a holiday in his honor amongst other things are justified?

Don't you feel that glorification of Steve Jobs into hero like status is a disservice to the REAL heroes out there? Does anyone know who Dakota Meyer is?

So you agree that its nonsense... that was the only reason the "warts" were pointed out. If it weren't for the crazy amount of worship and the new California holiday, no one would bring any of it up. Make sense?

I disagree...

It won't let me edit the post to add, so more hypocrisy has been revealed in his bio.

I'm not sure this will be huge a surprise to anyone, but Jobs talked smack on Intel for years...right up until the day before Apple switched to Intel processors.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-20...-inflexibility

Those in the industry know this "reality distortion effect" started w/ the 68000. Motorola was falling ever further behind, and yet he complains that Intel is slow... And in true Steve Jobs fashion, rather than simply admit that he made a mistake, he switches to Power PC, and proceeds to grossly exaggerate the performance (a bogus single Photoshop benchmark that used a filter optimized for Power PC). As its clear that the performance gap has become so huge that even he can't dupe the public any longer, they FINALLY switch to Intel chips. But it was clever marketing, you have to give them that. Being on different hardware made it easier to sell some of the less technical on the "embellishments" of the truth though, since a regular consumer couldn't compare the machines 1:1. Same thing was done with the iPhone, where rather than call it the Samsung Cortex-A8 S5PC110 chip that it is and is in various other devices, it was called the Apple A4, unique in the world, when the A4 is merely Samsung's chip with a few features removed (IOW cheapened). And for one of the most inflexible companies in the world to call Intel of all people inflexible... wow, kettle black? So aggravating for technophiles.

Another interesting tidbit released is that Steve Jobs hated license plates.

There is a loophole in California state law that says you can't be fined for running without plates if the vehicle is less than six months old.

So, Steve Jobs would buy a brand new silver Mercedes SL55 AMG, around $155K IIRC, every six months.

And it wasn't so that no one could recognize him, as he would always get an identical vehicle every time and is even easier to spot as the only SL55 AMG, already a rare car, without license plates.

Meanwhile, the Chinese factory where the iPhone and iPad are made, were getting up to 11 suicides a year due to abhorrent working conditions and feeling of hopelessness.

Steve Jobs didn't intervene as their sole client, and their solution was to install safety nets around the entire building to catch their fall, despite 3500% profitability increase since April 2003. Aint no trickle-down economics here!

 

Is Tiger Woods a genius because he is beyond doubt one of if not the best golfer in the world?  Is Billy Mays a genius because he was able to market products on TV unlike anyone else?   Same for Michael Jackson or Shaquille O'Neal?  Brilliant at what they do, and artists in that respect, sure, but genius?   Shaq probably gets help having his shoes tied.   Are we sure its not a matter of perception like in this IMO sad survey:

 

What has Steve Jobs done for gaming?   Too. Much.  Kool-Aid.

 

So another release from Jobs biography is a rip on Bill Gates:

 

While it is not wrong that Bill Gates has never personally invented anything, and instead has had a general vision for his company and managed a network of people that was able to transform computing on the planet with to this date over a 90% marketshare (pretty dominating), if one takes a step back and thinks about it... hold on... what did Steve Jobs ever invent?   The iPod?  Nope.   The iPhone?  Nope.  The iMac?  Nope.   Those ideas were all conceived by other people in the company and designed by several key industrial designers and software developers.   And this is again coming from Steve Jobs, that in his own words admitted that he steals other people's ideas, as well as first hand accounts from very high ranking employees in on even the first Mac design saying that Steve takes credit for his employee's work.

 

And if we're going to rip on Bill Gates, yes, he was no angel either.... but lets compare and contrast:

 

But who was it  that entered a pact to donate his riches after his passing has stepped down as CEO to devote himself entirely to charity work and improving the world?   Ste... oh, no, that was Bill Gates.   And who  vowed to use his $40 billion to crush Android and Google, disavowed parental responsibility until court ordered of his daughter and let her live off welfare, has been heralded by the New York Times as "America's least philanthropic company" since being head by Steve, and looked the other way as employees in his Apple iPhone/iPad factory were committing suicide in droves despite having accumulated massive personal wealth and more wealth for the company than the United States Treasury?   Oh, that was Steve Jobs.