Nicole

What set him apart was his drive to perfection and beautiful minimalist style. He managed to put these values first, and still make lots of money for his employees and share holders.

Many people would have told you this can never work: "You have to make the product cheap to make money". Well, Apple's competitors did, and we know how well Apple is doing today, financially.

It reminds me of the book I'm reading right now - "Driving Force", by Peter Schutz (Ex Porsche CEO). He said that when they surveyed their customers, they were told to make the product cheaper, and more reliable. Had they followed the customer feedback, we'd have gotten cheap and bullet proof 911s. Instead, they focused on how to delight the customer, and invented the convertible 911, 959, 964, and so on (while improving quality along the way).

"Delighting the customer" always seemed to be Steve Jobs' first priority.

Adamant1971

Well since I'm on the web reading about 928's, via my iPhone, via the airport extreme, and my wife is on her Mac book pro, my son on the iMac watching mighty machines earlier, my Mac pro is sitting in the basement updating, I can truly say thank you Steve Jobs.

RIP

Fogey1

Cheaper and more reliable? You really need to survey customers for that? I shoulda been a consultant.

That said, I take your point.

Jobs' commencement address to Stanford in 2005.
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/j...ad-061505.html

Bill Ball

This actually hurts. I had great admiration for Jobs going back to my earliest Apple, a model II, in 1977. Steve was only 21 at the time and made this machine with his buddy, The Woz, that did so many amazing things. I used it at home and at work. At work I used it to do ridiculously complex pharmacokinetic calculations using numerical analysis iterative methods to solve unresolvable equations that would have otherwise required a mainframe, with mathematical formulas that spread over pages. The fact that I was able to program it myself despite no computer training using BASIC was a breakthrough. The program was too large to load and run in my Apple II's 48K system memory, so I had to break it down into 4 sequential segments. The programs were stored and loaded via a common cassette tape recorder I bought from Radio Shack. It all worked rather well and lead to a paper I wrote that was published in the most prestigious clinical pharmacology journal. That primitive little Apple machine got a lot of use from me. Thank you, Steve. RIP.

The Woz & Jobs, then and more recently:

928mac

It is a great lost also because of what will never be created without him.
we''ll have to depend on Hans

ALKada

Apple will carry on but it's essence was and always will be Steve. No other CEO that I can think of has such a cult like following and respect. I can bet you will not see flowers and cards outside the Walmart. No disrespect to Walmart.
Being that he was a Buddhist, I will say rest in peace for now and see you in the next life. Thanks for changing the world.

hacker-pschorr

mickster

You have to like this story (click the link)--even if it was a Porsche 944:

http://technologizer.com/2011/10/06/...ott-a-porsche/

danglerb

Wow, did I learn to hate that cassette interface. Saved a program once I think three times on each side of a cassette and couldn't get any of them to load the next day. I did my work on a modified II (not e or +) that I still have, hooked up to a Printronix P300 $6k line printer due to the size of the ASM program I was working on.

I have huge respect for what Steve Jobs accomplished, but some of his choices really annoyed me at the time. Maybe its time I forgive over the pricing on the Mac IIx ram?

RIP Steve.

GlenL

Was the Mac more aerodynamic backwards?

And, yeah, as someone who used the first Mac it was buggy as hell. People forgive that and make comparisons but it would crash all the time. Even now Macs are overpriced but slick design and marketing will get people to buy. For being a genius, most of the "groundbreaking" Apple products were me-too products that trumped the originators.

That aside, I give him full credit for getting cool products into the marketplace. I know how impossibly hard it is to actually deliver a complex product for commercial sale. He was, apparently, a tyrant at the office. A tyrant with vision. Enjoy!

mickster

IIx that is obscure!

mickster

Glen, absolutely right, they were me-too products.

I have learned, in my short time on earth, that it is not about having the right idea, it's about having the right idea at the correct time.

This article (also from Harry at Technologizer) sums it up perfectly-he was the great reinventor:

http://www.time.com/time/business/ar...096251,00.html

Michael

rbrtmchl

Another link to a story supporting the 928 influence on Steve Jobs.

http://www.torquenews.com/1070/apple...d-look-porsche

RKD in OKC

Steve Jobs had the vision of what the customer needed, not what the customer wanted.
His focus was on aesthetics instead of price.
He challenged people to excellence with the idea that what they were doing would change the world.

jheis

I met Steve a number of times during his NeXT days - one of my clients produced his "keynote" dog and pony shows.

I've still got a working NeXT Cube and three working slabs - pretty impressive for ~20 year old computers, but everything on them was overbuilt mil. spec. Quality was job 1 at NeXT.

James