[Swordmaker]

And so his accomplishments are so great that you can't name one of them?

I guess i'll just have to put him in the "Bill Gates" category of "Genius".

Depending on who you listen to, the number of industries Steve Jobs changed fundamentally ranged from THREE to SIX. Some doing the counting just did not know about all of the impacts Steve Jobs had on some industries. One of the funny things is that the lists vary between those who make them.

Here's a list of the six industries Steve Jobs revolutionized.

• Personal Computers — Twice
• Digital publishing & Typesetting.
• Digital Animation & the Digital Movie Industry
• Digital Music & the Music Industry
• Cellular Smartphones & Mobile Computing
• Tablet computing & Education with Digital Text books.

Computers, animation, music, movies, phones, the mobile web, tablets, yesterday someone suggested to me that Jobs deserved very little credit for changing these industries. In the sense that this person meant, he was right. Jobs didn’t really invent anything that we know him for. He never really took a completely original concept and personally brought it into existence and popularity purely through his own blood, sweat and tears. This picture of innovation is a novel one, but it doesn’t describe one of our generation’s most successful visionaries in the least.

Instead, Steve Jobs was a man with arguably more unique talents. People with ideas are a dime a dozen and the nerds to build the ideas are graduating with fancy degrees faster than we can find jobs for them. However, people that can truly take an honest look into an industry and identify what it’s lacking and what customers would truly go crazy for, then make that vision a reality, are a rare breed. Jobs performed this task better than anyone else I can name.

Everyone knew computers were the future. Steve Jobs put them in people’s living rooms. Everyone knew computer graphics were amazing, Jobs guided the people who made them the standard for animated films. Everyone knew that the world was going digital, Steve Jobs realized that the music industry’s answer to this trend was coming up short and needed to be rethought. Everyone already had a cell phone with a web browser, Steve Jobs oversaw a project that brought the two together like never before. Looking at any one of these stories, you could say that Jobs was merely in the right place at the right time. However, together they reveal a pattern and indeed tell a story. Pointless and unquestioning Apple worship aside, forgetting all the legend and lore surrounding Jobs, a simple look at the facts and how many industry-rocking projects he can stamp his name on reveal that the man is no fortunate receiver of profound luck, he was truly an incredibly talented individual with a propensity to revolutionize that which he touched — Source: "5 Industries that Steve Jobs helped change forever" —Joshua Johnson, August 26, 2011

In addition, Forbes Magazine, in October 10, 2011, reported that Edmunds.com had concluded that Steve Jobs was also responsible for a sea change in Automobile in-car entertainment.

How Steve Jobs Changed The Auto Industry

By Joann Muller

Apple CEO Steve Jobs didn’t just change the computer and entertainment industries. He also had a huge influence on automobiles. People now see their cars as an extension of their living rooms.

Here’s an excerpt from an article by Edmunds.com Senior Technology Editor Doug Newcomb:

Perhaps no external devices — or one company — have had as much impact on car infotainment as Apple’s iPod and iPhone. The iPod literally made CDs obsolete when it debuted a decade ago, and it soon became the default device for carrying music into the car. So much so that “iPod integration” became a focus for almost every automaker and an important part of the car lexicon.

More recently with the iPhone, Apple once again changed the rules of the in-car infotainment game. A $2,000 in-dash navigation system? Why would drivers need that when they have a navigation app on their iPhone. And we’re just starting to see the impact that apps, which Apple almost singlehandedly popularized, is having on automakers and their electronics strategy. And the Apple iPad is now putting the nail in the coffin of expensive rear-entertainment systems.

It’s been said that Apple could give a damn about the car, and automakers and suppliers have related stories about how difficult it can be to work with the Apple crew in Cupertino, California. Following the lead of the icon that ran the company over its heady past decade, Apple did what it wanted to do, the rest of the world be damned.

Then there is the MUSIC INDUSTRY. . . which honored Steve Jobs by awarding him a Grammy:

Steve Jobs Wins Grammy Award Posthumously

Thursday, December 22, 2011
By OP Editor

The Recording Academy: Steve Jobs and Apple changed the music industry, with Apple continuing to lead the way with new technology.

Steve Jobs wins Posthumous Grammy Award

Steve Jobs is one of this year’s GRAMMY Trustees Award honoree, which recognizes “outstanding contributions to the industry in a nonperforming capacity”:

“As former CEO and co-founder of Apple, Steve Jobs helped create products and technology that transformed the way we consume music, TV, movies, and books. A creative visionary, Jobs’ innovations such as the iPod and its counterpart, the online iTunes store, revolutionized the industry and how music was distributed and purchased. In 2002 Apple Computer Inc. was a recipient of a Technical GRAMMY Award for contributions of outstanding technical significance to the recording field. The company continues to lead the way with new technology and in-demand products such as the iPhone and iPad.”

Other Grammy Trustees Award honorees are Jazz musician Dave Bartholomew and Rudy Van Gelder, an American recording engineer specializing in jazz. 54th Annual GRAMMY Awards is taking place on Feb. 12, 2012

Besides music industry with iPod, Steve Jobs also changed computing, telephony, publishing, and animated film industries. And due to iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, the former Apple CEO was also recognized as most influential person in gaming history.

Did you catch that last one???

How about Smartphones and mobile computing?

How Steve Jobs changed everything, and what we’ll miss without him" Digital Trends, by Jeffrey Van Camp, October 7, 2011

. . .

Reimagining the phone and freeing the app

As often seems to be the case, when I first heard about the iPhone, it didn’t seem revolutionary at all. “It’s just an iPod Touch with a cellular signal,” I thought. My view was shortsighted, and I quickly snapped in line. With the iPhone, Apple debuted the first truly user-friendly smartphone, and with the App Store, it unshackled the process of buying content from the hands of the wireless carriers, which were abusing both consumers and developers of content. Before the iPhone, feature phones and smartphones had app stores that reached only 200 to 500 apps deep. Users had a difficult time finding, installing, and using apps because wireless carriers controlled distribution on their own Internet portals.

Wireless carriers controlled everything:

• Carriers took between 40 to 60 percent of revenue from developers up front

• Carriers overcharged for apps ($5.99 to $12.99 was regular)

• Carriers made apps into subscriptions (charging users $2.99-$4.99 per month without any plan to add new content)

• Carriers controlled the placement of apps (no app could sell unless it was in the “Featured” category of a store)

• Carriers would reject apps from developers after they had spent thousands on developing and porting to hundreds of handsets

• Carriers would cut apps from the store quickly if sales weren’t up to par

• Carriers would reject apps that didn’t have brand potential

• Porting companies would charge tens of thousands of dollars to port an app to thousands of handsets

I saw this ugly system work up close when I worked as an app evaluator at a company that mediated between carriers and app developers. The carriers saw us as a place to put smaller developers that they didn’t want to work with directly, and developers saw us as a hinderence to reaching the carriers.

Life isn’t always great as a middle man. Thanks to the iPhone, the mobile content industry doesn’t need middle men anymore. Anyone with an idea can develop and publish an app on the App Store or on any of the blossoming competing stores like the Android Market. And because Apple pushed apps, the number of people who download apps has gone from about 5 percent to 95 percent (or more).

[DiogenesLamp]

Jobs didn’t really invent anything that we know him for. He never really took a completely original concept and personally brought it into existence and popularity purely through his own blood, sweat and tears. This picture of innovation is a novel one, but it doesn’t describe one of our generation’s most successful visionaries in the least.

Instead, Steve Jobs was a man with arguably more unique talents. People with ideas are a dime a dozen and the nerds to build the ideas are graduating with fancy degrees faster than we can find jobs for them. However, people that can truly take an honest look into an industry and identify what it’s lacking and what customers would truly go crazy for, then make that vision a reality, are a rare breed. Jobs performed this task better than anyone else I can name.

It is this point right here that is the crux of the issue for me. How do you quantify this? What *IS* this quality?

How can you tell if he was the driving force behind any of this rather than the Chance Gardner that happen to be at the right place at the right time?

Take the Apple 2 for example. That is the product that launched the Apple empire. What was Jobs contribution to it? Without Wozniak to create such a wonderful design, where would Jobs be?

Perhaps his talent is pushing others to do great work? Perhaps he is inspirational to the people with whom he worked and somehow egged them on to do better than they would have done by themselves? Perhaps he was a sort of natural leader that people instinctively wanted to please.

I don't know. That is the picture that people present of him, but it occurs to me that he was also uniquely put into such a position where he could influence things. Who else gets launched to the CEO of a well to do corporation by what was ostensibly the work of his partner, and then has the means to sit around and think about how to make more money in the then very young computer industry? It seems like a bird's nest on the ground, where in every direction you turn there is money to be made. Who was *NOT* making money in the business at that time?

It is possible that many of the directions he pushed apple were more or less inevitable, and something that would have evolved out of the process at some point anyway.

Were they inevitable? To me they seem more evolutionary than revolutionary. Did he speed things up? Maybe. I don't know.

That is precisely the problem with figuring him out. His contributions are not something you can precisely put a finger on. They don't have clear demarcation lines. There doesn't seem much where you can say "See this? This right here? That was Jobs. No one else would have come up with this. "

My recollection is that his "NeXT" company didn't do so well under his leadership. He had the capital, he had the talent, but it just didn't gel for some reason. If he was the magic ingredient, why couldn't he replicate the success that Apple had? Eventually Apple bought it and solved all the company's problems.

So Apple was doing badly for awhile without him? Yeah, but having a couple of bad CEOs that didn't know how to make money is not proof that he was the only person who could turn the company around. Their fundamentals were good, and perhaps other people could have done as well, but they just didn't hire a decent one. That happens in a lot of industries. Technology advances were coming that would work in their favor.

I honestly do not know what to make of him, but he is certainly hyped a lot. Perhaps it is true, but I am distrustful of simply accepting when people tell me a man is a "Genius" yet I can't see any demonstrable signs of it for myself.

Last time the nation fell for that "Genius" line we got this guy, who is anything but.

But I am going to give more consideration to what you have told me, and i'm going to read up on the topic some more. Perhaps I will end up agreeing with you.