He is not God; he was, though, an icon.
He stood for a lot of things. Also, many identified with him.
When he passed, we were reminded that the greatest among us (the richest, most creative, most successful) are subject to death just like everyone else.
It shocked a lot of people who don’t have a biblical foundation.
For sure.
And yet, it is impossible to count the number of lives his life blessed.
I’ve read a few things about Jobs just now. It is interesting the change in tech stuff that he helped bring about. Even though I don’t use it!
I don’t mourn him, and I think the writer is half-way right on this public mourning stuff. Although the difference between Jobs and this Shuttleworth guy - it sounded like Shuttleworth had made his impact on the world. Whereas who knows what Jobs might have come up with next.
But as one poster said - the ipod, etc. may be the next decade’s 8-track.
I won't shed any tears when "Hamilton Nolan" dies.
Generally speaking, Ayn Rand was wrong about everything, but reading something like this makes me think she had a point.
People are mourning someone who was a part of their lives, of their youth, somebody who made the world a better and a more interesting place.
Maybe the tributes can get a tiny bit excessive, but you shouldn't have to lay down your life for some cause to receive some gratitude when you die.
Living, working, achieving something -- even when you get a lot of money for it -- can also be reason for appreciation.
Ping
No, Jobs wasn’t God, not even close. However, he will go down in history as one of the most prominent individuals of his generation. He has changed the way we use music and had a huge impact on the way we use the cell phone. Unless you only use a trackpad, he is responsible for the way most of us interact with our computers. He is responsible for the mouse.
Gawker says that people should not be mourning Steve Jobs so strongly. He was just a “middle aged CEO” who doesn’t really deserve such empathy...
The author of this article is just another vulgar, envious critic longing for some cheap attention. What a pity.
I sometimes go on a rant about the public reaction (that is STILL going on)to Michael Jackson’s death, and the passing of Dr. Michael DeBakey. The latter invented and pioneered more technologies and techniques that lengthened people’s lives for decades, allowing them and their families more time together. He got maybe a paragraph in the ‘big’ papers.
So...another Gawker article meant to troll one group or another, LOL. We really should come up with a conservative version of Gawker, because when you think about it, it’d be pretty easy money.
There is no need to join but there is also no need to scoff. Let it go.
So why does Jobs’ passing inspire such an outpouring of grief? and such vehement opposition thereto?
nut ping
Steve Jobs was a high-end toymaker. Though what I do admire about him is that he was unwittingly a Randian archetype worshiped by people who despise Ayn Rand’s philosophies.
Came across this on another forum:
‘Steve Jobs never invented the Ipod - this chap did:
Quote:
http://www.kanekramer.com/default.htm
Quote:
Kane Kramer is a serial inventor. His inventions include the technology behind the MP3 player and Monicall. He was the first to conceive the idea of downloading music, data and video down telephone lines in 1979 when he was 23 and patented it with James Campbell who was 21. Together they went on to pioneer digital recording and built the world’s first solid state digital recorder/players.
Apple didn’t invent the first digital music player:
Quote:
The SaeHan Information Systems MPMan, which debuted in Asia in March 1998, was the first mass-produced portable solid state digital audio player.
The South Korean device was first imported for sale in North America by Michael Robertson’s Z Company[1] in mid-1998. Around the same time, Eiger Labs, Inc. imported and rebranded the player in two models, the Eiger MPMan F10, and Eiger MPMan F20.
The Eiger MPMan F10 was a very basic unit and wasn’t user expandable, though owners could upgrade the memory from 32MB to 64MB by sending the player back to Eiger Labs with a check for $69 + $7.95 shipping. Measuring at 91 mm tall by 70 mm wide by 16.5 mm thick and weighing a little over 2 oz, it was very compact.
The Eiger MPMan F20 was a similar model that used 3.3v SmartMedia cards for expansion, and ran on a single AA battery, instead of rechargeable NiMH batteries.
The Iphone wasn’t invented by Apple neither. Been around in the 1990s.
Quote:
The first smartphone was the IBM Simon; it was designed in 1992 and shown as a concept product that year at COMDEX, the computer industry trade show held in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was released to the public in 1993 and sold by BellSouth. Besides being a mobile phone, it also contained a calendar, address book, world clock, calculator, note pad, e-mail client, the ability to send and receive faxes, and games. It had no physical buttons, instead customers used a touchscreen to select telephone numbers with a finger or create facsimiles and memos with an optional stylus. Text was entered with a unique on-screen “predictive” keyboard. By today’s standards, the Simon would be a fairly low-end product, lacking a camera and the ability to download third-party applications. However, its feature set at the time was highly advanced.
The Nokia Communicator line was the first of Nokia’s smartphones starting with the Nokia 9000, released in 1996. This distinctive palmtop computer style smartphone was the result of a collaborative effort of an early successful and costly personal digital assistant (PDA) by Hewlett-Packard combined with Nokia’s bestselling phone around that time, and early prototype models had the two devices fixed via a hinge. The communicators are characterized by clamshell design, with a feature phone display, keyboard and user interface on top of the phone, and a physical QWERTY keyboard, high-resolution display of at least 640x200 pixels and PDA user interface under the door. The software was based on the GEOS V3.0 operating system, featuring email communication and text-based web browsing. In 1998, it was followed by Nokia 9110, and in 2000 by Nokia 9110i, with improved web browsing capability.
In 1997 the term ‘smartphone’ was used for the first time when Ericsson unveiled the concept phone GS88, the first device labelled as ‘smartphone’.
Jobs and Apple didn’t invent the PC mouse:
Quote:
The trackball was invented by Tom Cranston, Fred Longstaff and Kenyon Taylor working on the Royal Canadian Navy’s DATAR project in 1952. It used a standard Canadian five-pin bowling ball. It was not patented, as it was a secret military project.
Independently, Douglas Engelbart at the Stanford Research Institute invented the first mouse prototype in 1963,[4] with the assistance of his colleague Bill English. They christened the device the mouse as early models had a cord attached to the rear part of the device looking like a tail and generally resembling the common mouse. Engelbart never received any royalties for it, as his patent ran out before it became widely used in personal computers.
The invention of the mouse was just a small part of Engelbart’s much larger project, aimed at augmenting human intellect.
Apple and Jobs didn’t invent touch screen technology used by smartphones and Ipads:
Quote:
The first touch screen was a capacitive touch screen developed by E.A. Johnson at the Royal Radar Establishment, Malvern, UK. The inventor briefly described his work in a short article published in 1965 and then more fully - along with photographs and diagrams - in an article published in 1967.
So he wasn’t that much of a visionary after all.’