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First - what did Steve Jobs directly invent? He has his names on several patents, but that is because he was the CEO of the company!

Will start our story with the Apple-1. Woz did all of the engineering, SJ was the business head. He didn’t invent it - Woz did.

Did SJ invent the Graphic Computer Interface? Nope - that was done at Xerox PARC. He hired technologists who ran with the idea, and created a low-cost implementation (which still cost to much to gather much market share) and marketed the MacIntosh.

His business life has been relatively free of interference of the Ritchie inheritance up to this point.. Apple DID have people trying to port Unix to the Macs...but SJ wasn’t at Apple at the time.

Next - he did Next... he paid technologists to invent the NextStep OS/Objective C - which is an improvement on SmallTalk. This flopped on the Market - again too expensive.
Note - Objective/C? This is where the Ritchie legacy intertwines with SJ.

IMAC - style points... and ONLY style points - who knew people wanted to by Blueberry colored computers?

iPod - re-invention of the Diamond RIO - stylishly... again style points with a better user interface that was a market success. He didn’t invent the MP3 player - he improved it...

iPad - not the first, second or third tablet...he added style to it AGAIN. The user experience is more polished here too.

Yet Ritchie’s inheritance has affected the REST of us much more directly. The internet RUNS on machines that are based on his ideas of how an OS should work, and the lowest layers are coded in C.

It can’t be cheap shots when we’re talking facts here. I’ve got NOTHING against SJ except that I’m glad I never worked for him directly - the stories around the valley about that are that it was often NOT a pleasant experience. I merely don’t idolize him.

He was a human being with lots of good points and bad points. I believe the underlying contribution of Mr. Ritchie FAR exceeds those of SJ though.

First - I’m not ashamed - the article is RIGHT ON! The article is mostly a listing of facts! I literally had this same discussion with a friend of mine yesterday - and I’ll be glad to take you down a similar set of reasoning..

You are unable to grasp the concept of same business different tasks. Jobs was not an engineer, never claimed to be. Engineers are notoriously bad visionaries. They tend to assume people know things they don't. They also tend to diminish those who can't do tasks they "should" know how to do. Take the early Linux systems. If you weren't a capable tech person, installing it was impossible. And the typical response from the Linux community was that if you couldn't install it, you shouldn't use it.

First - what did Steve Jobs directly invent? He has his names on several patents, but that is because he was the CEO of the company!

Are you CEO of a company? If it's so easy, why didn't YOU do it? I mean, Jobs started in a garage, he wasn't a silver spoon child. You have an engineer's mindset, that only engineering is a worthy task, everything else is fluff.

Will start our story with the Apple-1. Woz did all of the engineering, SJ was the business head. He didn’t invent it - Woz did.

Woz did it with Jobs' direction. You and I wouldn't be talking about Woz's work without Jobs.

Did SJ invent the Graphic Computer Interface? Nope - that was done at Xerox PARC. He hired technologists who ran with the idea, and created a low-cost implementation (which still cost to much to gather much market share) and marketed the MacIntosh.

You're right Jobs hired people, and directed the effort. Without Jobs, Gates would have grabbed more of the X system and turned it into an unrecognizable pile of goo.

Jobs was NOT AN ENGINEER... he was an idea man. He wasn't Edison, or Tesla, or Ritchie, he was the right guy, in the right place, at the right time. And, he was incredibly talented. If he wasn't, why didn't you do it? Or why don't you do it now? Make the new Apple?

I'll stop here, because if you can't grasp the difference between a visionary and an engineer, then your myopic view won't be broadened. By the way, I'm an engineering type, but I can appreciate the talents of those on the creative side.

His business life has been relatively free of interference of the Ritchie inheritance up to this point.. Apple DID have people trying to port Unix to the Macs...but SJ wasn’t at Apple at the time.

Apple didn't just "have people trying to port Unix to the Mac" -- it had A/UX, a full Unix implementation, from 1988 to 1995. Meanwhile, Jobs wasn't at Apple, but at NeXT, building another Unix-based OS.

IMAC - style points... and ONLY style points - who knew people wanted to by Blueberry colored computers?

What you dismiss as "style" is intelligent industrial design. Who knew people wanted a compact all-in-one computer, with a dizzying array of legacy ports replaced by USB? Who knew people wanted to plug in three cables, press the power button, and be online in ten minutes? The fact that people didn't want an ugly beige box under the desk was just a bonus.

iPod - re-invention of the Diamond RIO - stylishly... again style points with a better user interface that was a market success. He didn’t invent the MP3 player - he improved it...

So the difference between about 20 songs and about 1,000 is "style"? MP3 players before the iPod were basically a Sony Discman with memory cards replacing CDs. The iPod took it from a geek novelty to a compelling product -- your whole music collection (if only a pretty small one at first) in your pocket.

That's what other tech companies haven't seen until Apple has shown it to them, and what you're dismissing as "style." Apple makes products for people, not systems for end users, and that's a very real value proposition that doesn't appear on a spec sheet.