We don’t often cover technology on the Tracker, and we rarely cover the kinds of things that made Steve Jobs famous, such as the Macintosh, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad. All the same, I found myself devouring much of the coverage in the wake of his death, and I thought some of it was worth a mention here.
Jobs lived in some world of his own making that involved not only technical innovation, vision, and and an iron hand, but also a brilliant business and marketing sense. If he’s to be compared to Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, it should be not only by virtue of his innovations and vision, but also by virtue of his command of business and marketing. Jobs never seemed to be especially fond of accumulating cash, but he did say that he wanted to make money so he and his team could continue to do the things they loved.
Henry Ford and Thomas Edison shared that mix of business acumen and technical innovation, and both reshaped our world in their day, too. Will Pixar, the iPhone, the iMac, and the rest of the iProducts have the same impact over time as Edison’s light bulb? Will his manufacturing genius reshape the world the way Ford’s invention of mass production did? Was the Apple II the computer equivalent of the Model T? We won’t know for a while. But for now, in a nod to Jobs, let’s say yes. Let’s just give him that until we know better.
My favorite story was a personal reminiscence by Walt Mossberg, the personal tech columnist at the Wall Street Journal. Mossberg, who reviewed Apple products–and not always favorably–recalled the Sunday night calls he would get from Jobs, who would complain about some of Mossberg’s reviews. But some of the calls were about much more than complaints, Mossberg writes. “They turned into marathon, 90-minute, wide-ranging, off-the-record discussions that revealed to me the stunning breadth of the man. One minute he’d be talking about sweeping ideas for the digital revolution. The next about why Apple’s current products were awful, and how a color, or angle, or curve, or icon was embarrassing.”
John Markoff did a nice job of reviewing Jobs’s career in a very long obit in The New York Times, in which he noted that Jobs was a child of the 60s, taking inspiration from such things as The Whole Earth Catalog and experiences with LSD which, Jobs said, was one of the two or three most important things he had done in his life.
Steven Levy, writing in Wired, took a kind of geek love approach (appropriate for Wired) which also did a fine job of reviewing Jobs’s life and career, with a slightly different emphasis than Markoff’s piece. Levy makes a good case for why Jobs should be seen as a superb businessman as well as a technology innovator. And make sure you watch the video atop Levy’s piece.
There are many, many more, and I’ll leave you to Google them; let me know in the comments what you like.
Me, I’m signing off to watch Toy Story.
– Paul Raeburn
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