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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.

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?

Without Steve Jobs, there NEVER would have been an Apple II. It's as simple as that, Diogenes. Steve Wozniak was happy to GIVE his computers away. He has stated that as a FACT. Steve Jobs pushed him to sell them. FACT.

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?

Because the people who were THERE, said it was him. . . he was the asshole who kept pushing them to do things they REALLY did not want to do!

You are completely MISCONSTRUING things to say that the "well to do corporation" was the work of his partner. Steve Wozniak was completely incapable of building a "well to do corporation" or even building the Apple II. Have you seen his products? They were bare circuit boards!

Wozniak wanted to sell the Apple I for about what they cost to make. . . to please his friends at the Home Brew Computer Club he and Jobs belonged to . . . and that was all. Woz really had no ambition to do more. It was Steve Jobs' vision that resulted in forming a business to build and manufacture them and sell them to retailers for a profit. If it had been up to Woz, Apple would never have existed. Once the Apple I was sold out, and the concept proved, there was a clamor for more but with more power. The Apple II needed to be a more polished effort.

To take a new product to quantity production outside a garage or even a storefront operation is an entirely DIFFERENT SKILL SET than what Steve Wozniak possessed. . . nor should he have been expected to have possessed such skills. Yes, he was a skilled and gifted amateur computer and circuit board designer and could get a computer down to as few components as possible. . . but he had NO IDEA about case design, manufacturing, or esthetics, accounting, or sales. NONE AT ALL. That was all pure Steve Jobs. . . and for him it was learning on the job. When he realized how much he didn't know, he brought in Mike Markula, who mentored him and became a partner as well. . . again, vision.

You really don't know what you are talking about on this, none at all. I have been a CEO. . . and I know that a self-trained engineer is never going to do any of that. Someone had to coordinate all of that and Steve Jobs did that until even that got beyond his skills and he brought someone in. Steve Wozniak did not see the reason for color. . . or a keyboard. . . he was happy with a computer you could program with jumpers and dip switches. It was Steve Jobs who told him they needed a computer for the "everyman" not just for computer club members, who Woz saw as their only potential customers. Again, the vision thing. It was Steve who convinced an unknown guy name Bill Gates to write a simple Basic for the Apple II. It was STEVE who insisted the Apple II had to have color output. . . Woz didn't really see the need. . . but Steve Jobs was foreseeing playing games on the computer in color.

You are right. YOU DON'T KNOW.

Steve Jobs was a polymath perfectionist. . . who would NOT let go. It was his VISION that built Apple. . . and changed SIX distinct industries as defined by the people IN those industries who interacted with him. . . and often FOUGHT with him and were frequently pissed off at him. . . but they still say he changed their industries for the better. Many of them did not like him. . . but they respected him. He got things done, on his terms, not theirs. Perhaps that was his true genius. He got what he wanted. He got what he went after. He KNEW what the public needed before the public knew they even wanted it. . . and went after providing it for them with a will. Jobs would not accept excuses for why something was not finished to his expectations. You either had it done, or you told him why you were making it better than he expected. Steve Jobs and Apple's mantra was to under promise and over deliver. . . and Apple has, for the most part, delivered on that.

Your recollection about NeXT is both correct and incorrect. He created the single most advanced computer of the day. . . and the single most advanced operating system. We know its descendant today as OS X. He made himself a Billionaire with NeXT and his investment in PiXAR. NeXT was Steve's baptism of fire that made him into the hardened business man he was when he returned to Apple. . . and negotiated the Lawsuit settlement with Microsoft that everyone today thinks was Microsoft bailing Apple out to the tune of $150 million. It was nothing of the kind, but rather the first of Steve Jobs coups, in which Jobs cleared the decks for Apple's future financed by Microsoft's paying royalties for infringing Apple patents and copyrights to the tune of at least a couple of billion dollars for the next five years. The $150 million was only the down payment.

As for hype. Hype is as hype does. . . we got Obama who was a fraud and incompetent who is in the process of bankrupting us.

Apple got Steve Jobs, who was anything but incompetent, who took a company with $2 billion dollars in liquid assets, who then cut product lines to the bone, introduced the single most successful computer in history, the iMac, and who then in ten short years took that company with a net worth of less than $10 billion and grew it into the single most valuable company in the world valued at almost $650 Billion, with $150 BILLION in CASH in the bank. . . more cash than the United States Treasury has on hand! A company that following his map now has $185 Billion in valuation after returning almost $300 Billion to its stockholders, a valuation greater than the next 3/4s of the New York Stock Exchange companies combined, a valuation greater than ALL the businesses in Russia, a valuation greater than 110 of the world's COUNTRIES combined, and revenues that in just one quarter eclipse what the company made in its entire first twenty years! Those are accomplishments of Steve Jobs. . . without even talking about what he did at NeXT, Pixar, Disney, or for the Music Industry, etc. . .

When a man performs as advertised, it really is not hype. Obama does not. Steve Jobs walked the walk.

And you say you think "someone else could have done just as well?" No, you are wrong! People are NOT cookie cutter cogs to be placed in machines to fulfill roles. It takes people with vision and a WILL to follow their vision to accomplish great things. Sometimes it takes an asshole who is a monomaniac perfectionist who knows how to say NO to things that sound like good ideas. Apple could have hired another MBA who, looking at the bottom line like he was taught in business school, borrowed money and run Apple into the ground, making more beige boxes. . . or taken the advice of sever consultants the board had hired and started making PC Clones under the Apple brand. . . and run the business into the ground. . . or the advice of other consultants and continued the Mac Clone market and cut prices to the bone. . . and licensed even more Mac Clones . . . and run Apple into bankruptcy as the clone business already was doing. Yeah, Diogenes just any old business person could have run it. . . like the previous successful sugar water salesmen and other CEOs who had been successful selling OTHER products were NOT successful leading Apple were NOT. Steve Jobs was unique.

As I told you, I've been a CEO. I've managed businesses. I still get paid for my business acumen. I've founded a few. I've founded and run a charity. People are not the same, and there are people who come along once in a generation or a century. Jobs was one of those. . . and we were lucky to have had him.

Was Steve Jobs a perfect human being? Not by a long shot. Would you want to be on the elevator as an Apple employee with him? Nope, that was a dangerous thing. You might not have a job after you rode four floors with him . . unless you could show him how you were benefiting Apple that day. Would you want to share a beer with him? Hell, I don't know. . . but I'd love to bounce ideas off of him. . . because he gave credit where credit was due. . . and if you had a great idea, he'd back you until it showed no promise or it worked. It may never make it into a product, but it might. . . but YOU had better argue strongly for it, not meekly. If you had a product he wanted for Apple, he'd buy it from you. He would not steal it. . . contrary to what some on here would claim. That's the purview of Microsoft's business practices. But he had little patience for incompetence. That's my take. As I said, Steve Jobs was a compulsive perfectionist. . . and it would not go out without his OK.

Ask yourself, how many other men have FOUR (or is it five, now) movies made about their lives within five years after their deaths. . . I don't think even JFK has had that many movies made so soon. . . Not to mention two or three DURING his life. . . with actors falling over themselves to play him? THAT is an iconic person. . . not a hyped fake.