quote:The company didn't specify the cause of his death. Mr. Jobs had battled pancreatic cancer and several years ago received a liver transplant.In August, Mr. Jobs stepped down as CEO, handing the reins to Tim Cook.
Posted by Derrell (Member # 6062) on :
Oops. Goodbye, Steve.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
Cause of death was likely complications of liver failure. As I can recall, he never fully recovered from the course of treatment for his pancreatic cancer. He had been expected to pass very soon, even several months ago.
He is being lauded as the nikola tesla, or the Henry Ford of his time. I don't think that's much of a stretch. His influence is present in many aspects of our daily lives.
Posted by rollainm (Member # 8318) on :
It's like he hung on just long enough to see Apple unveil his last major contribution. That's pretty darn cool, I think.
Great man. He'll be missed.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
Jobs always seem to describe himself as more of a conceptual man, who was equally gifted at getting the best minds of any field together and crafting miracles.
Posted by Aros (Member # 4873) on :
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: Cause of death was likely complications of liver failure. As I can recall, he never fully recovered from the course of treatment for his pancreatic cancer. He had been expected to pass very soon, even several months ago.
He is being lauded as the nikola tesla, or the Henry Ford of his time. I don't think that's much of a stretch. His influence is present in many aspects of our daily lives.
No disrespect to the dead, but puh-lease. Alexander Graham Bell would be a (huge) reach. But Tesla? Ford? Why not Einstein?
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
*shrug* I don't think the comparison is meant so much for the fundamental scientific or industrial discoveries/innovations, but rather for the change made in the world. How many of us would have palm-sized, powerful, durable lightweight computers that we took everywhere without Jobs?
Perhaps someone else would've stepped in, and the enormous silhoutte of the iPhone (and its competitors) would've still existed anyway, but perhaps not.
Posted by capaxinfiniti (Member # 12181) on :
quote:Originally posted by Aros: ]No disrespect to the dead, but puh-lease. Alexander Graham Bell would be a (huge) reach. But Tesla? Ford? Why not Einstein?
I totally agree. There are other who rank higher in the fields of computers and technology who would be considered the Fords and Teslas, not Jobs.
Posted by Raymond Arnold (Member # 11712) on :
Most of the stuff Apple produces is a polished version of something that already existed. I'm not sure how much credit to assign Jobs in terms of how much that polish and promotion helped make the future happen faster. But I certainly am glad that I get to carry my tricorder around.
Posted by Aros (Member # 4873) on :
He ran a top-notch staff that were able to make several "next step" intuitive leaps, beating the competition by several years. He made a lot of money by focusing on the middle market segment, rather than the early adopters (techies).
He had vision, I'll give him that. I'd put him in the same league as Dyson and Branson . . . maybe even with Lord British.
I fear that Apple is going to have a hard time without him. They'll focus on existing products -- something that Apple's business model's never been good at. A few generations in, the competition is always able to exceed them. But for that brief window, they sure do shine.
Posted by pooka (Member # 5003) on :
I thought the Apple Newton was pretty innovative when it came out.
Though I guess on closer inspection that was during Jobs' hiatus from Apple.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
He will be missed.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
quote:Originally posted by Raymond Arnold: Most of the stuff Apple produces is a polished version of something that already existed.
So maybe Edison as opposed to Tesla.
Posted by Tuukka (Member # 12124) on :
Jobs wasn't a "true" technical innovator, as he generally picked up stuff that had already been developed by others. But he had a great instinct for the mass market, and he knew what new innovations would attract the average person.
Jobs was crucial in bringing the graphical user interface, the mouse, the touchpad, and many others innovations to mainstream. Without him, maybe those things would have become the standards anyway - But then again, maybe not.
Jobs had his own particular version of genius. His gift was in understanding how humans and computers can communicate better. The user interfaces he developed were easier to approach, and more intuitive. His way of branding computers (including iPhone) made those products more approachable to mainstream. And they weren't named with serial letters like XZYC-3-XT, but instead they had REAL names that were easy to remember.
Products like iPhone and iPad are easy to use, and easy to understand. Which is a major breakthrough to most people, because most people have never quite understood computers. If anything, they have feared computers, and they have even actively tried to avoid them.
It's hard to compare Jobs to other innovators, because his field of expertise was quite unique, and in a way it has no precedent in history. But considering that he was a guy who over the decades established a much stronger overall connection between humans and computers, his cultural influence was massive.
[ October 06, 2011, 03:52 AM: Message edited by: Tuukka ]
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Raymond Arnold: Most of the stuff Apple produces is a polished version of something that already existed. I'm not sure how much credit to assign Jobs in terms of how much that polish and promotion helped make the future happen faster. But I certainly am glad that I get to carry my tricorder around.
I've found that the majority of those we class as the "great inventors," are really just those individuals who were able to bring an idea all the way from conception to marketplace, with style. Henry Ford didn't invent the car, nor did he invent the assembly line. He just did it in a way that captured people's imaginations. Henry Ford's version of a car- of the whole experience of buying, and owning, and using a car- is the experience we have even today. What had been a horseless carriage- or some sort of machine with an abstruse application, became intuitive- it became something everyone understood at sight. And even though the Model-T had its (notorious) problems, that marked the difference between the car as a novel idea, and as a reality that you could summon without thinking.
Jobs had a particular knack for recognizing that his competition, as Douglas Adams used to write about, were always modeling their latest innovations on digitizing reproducing things that already existed. To HP or IBM in the 1970's, a home computer was a typewriter attached to a television set. It was an expensive way of doing things we already could do more easily, for less money.
Steve Jobs created products that had their own internal logic- that functioned as themselves, and not as a digitized, next generation version of something that already existed. People made fun of apple for claiming to "invent," the mobile phone. But for nearly 20 years, the mobile phone existed on the market as either a future age version of a wall-phone, or a tiny version of a desktop computer. Designing and implementing something that felt like an entirely new category of device was what Jobs did. And you can see the results- phones are now used in entirely new ways because of the influence of his designs. As are music players, as are computers.
quote: Jobs was crucial in bringing the graphical user interface, the mouse, the touchpad, and many others innovations to mainstream. Without him, maybe those things would have become the standards anyway - But then again, maybe not.
I think about that sometimes. How things might have gone if he hadn't been the one to steal those innovations from Xerox. But I do think that a GUI would still have to have become the standard. I just can't imagine how personal computing could have expanded without it.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote: *shrug* I don't think the comparison is meant so much for the fundamental scientific or industrial discoveries/innovations, but rather for the change made in the world. How many of us would have palm-sized, powerful, durable lightweight computers that we took everywhere without Jobs?
QFT.
No matter what qualms you have with the idea of Steve Jobs as "inventor," his life had a profound impact on our daily lives- with this as just a latest end result of his work. And the nature of that work is hardly as important as you'd think. He didn't engineer microchips or do much programming. But he made it all work together- and he convinced millions and millions of people that his way of doing things, his image of how the simplest thing should be done, was the best way. People trusted him, and his legacy is what he sold to them.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by capaxinfiniti:
quote:Originally posted by Aros: ]No disrespect to the dead, but puh-lease. Alexander Graham Bell would be a (huge) reach. But Tesla? Ford? Why not Einstein?
I totally agree. There are other who rank higher in the fields of computers and technology who would be considered the Fords and Teslas, not Jobs.
And history has forgotten those people who ranked higher than Ford and Tesla in terms of mechanical genius, but who nevertheless made themselves forgettable. History won't remember more than 5 names from the computer revolution, but Jobs will be one of them. I think there's good reason for that.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:I think there's good reason for that.
Self-promotion?
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
How cynical! Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
But in a sense- yes. A devotion to image that extended to all facets of life.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
As a techie, I have somewhat conflicted feelings about Jobs. The man was personally a bit of a tyrant and was certainly not an "inventor" in the traditional sense of the word; he did, however, have a good eye for minimalist design in a field not generally known for its design, and by embracing design over function -- and ease of function over power or flexibility of functions -- he was able to meld the computer and gadget markets. It's hard to not be cynical about the way Apple made a habit of releasing a stripped-down version of something that already existed, then add one new feature a year -- again, usually a feature that already existed in competing products -- as an "upgrade" that would require purchasing a whole new thing. But it's inarguable that this approach managed to attract and eventually train consumers who were otherwise overwhelmed by the options of the marketplace, and that absolutely key to the success of this approach was Jobs' absolute commitment to things just looking and feeling as intuitive as possible, especially in their first generation.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
A million workers at Foxconn salute thee.
Posted by advice for robots (Member # 2544) on :
He had a vision of cool that no other innovators could catch up to. I think he was right--consumers didn't know what they wanted until they had it in their hands.
Adios, Steve. Posted by AchillesHeel (Member # 11736) on :
quote:Originally posted by capaxinfiniti:
quote:Originally posted by Aros: ]No disrespect to the dead, but puh-lease. Alexander Graham Bell would be a (huge) reach. But Tesla? Ford? Why not Einstein?
I totally agree. There are other who rank higher in the fields of computers and technology who would be considered the Fords and Teslas, not Jobs.
Such as who ever or what ever team created the flash drive technology, they changed the foreseeable future of all technology and what we could use it for. Jobs always struck me as a businessman rather than a technology professional, just like Gates he knew what to do with other peoples work and sometimes that is even more impressive.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
Thought of this article
quote:Some of the most revolutionary new ideas come from spotting something old to leave out rather than thinking of something new to put in. The Sony Walkman, for instance, added nothing significantly new to the cassette player, it just left out the amplifier and speakers, thus creating a whole new way of listening to music and a whole new industry. Sony's new Handycam rather brilliantly leaves out the zoom function on the grounds that all a zoom does is cost money, add a lot of bulk and render every amateur video ever made unwatchable. (They might, while they're following this line of thought, consider marketing a record-only video player, and video companies might consider releasing movies that are actually recorded in fast forward mode.) The RISC chip works by the brilliant, life-enhancing principle of getting on with the easy stuff and leaving out all the difficult bits for someone else to deal with. (I know it's a little more complicated than that, but you have to admit, it's a damned attractive idea). A well-made dry martini works by the brilliant, life-enhancing principle of leaving out the martini.
I think the comparison with Ford is pretty reasonable. Ford didn't invent anything significant. His genius was in making a mass marketable product, very much like Steve Jobs.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
Since they are discontinuing the Ipod classic, I've wondered if I should pick one up and preserve it. I think the device will be pretty iconic down the road.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: I think the comparison with Ford is pretty reasonable. Ford didn't invent anything significant. His genius was in making a mass marketable product, very much like Steve Jobs.
Well, if you get anywhere near specifics, the comparison doesn't hold up at all.
Apple products are way too expensive. Ford's whole point was to sell everything as cheaply as possible so everyone could afford one. I can't think of a single Apple product out there that doesn't have a much cheaper competitor that does virtually the same thing. It's almost entirely about style. Ford was more about production and didn't give a damn what it looked like, Jobs was more about aesthetics and charging as much as humanly possible.
Plus, you know, Ford basically invented the modern assembly line. He certainly didn't invent the car or the engine, but he made mass production possible. Everyone wanted a car. No one knew they wanted half the stuff Apple sells until Apple tells them they want it.
Edit to add: Yeah, I basically agree with rivka's article.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
Honestly, I haven't thought too deeply about this, but most of Apple's impact over the last decade or so seems to me to be in the "giving affluent people cooler toys to play with" than anything fundamentally transforming the world we live in or making it a better place to live.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
Trivia: Apparently, a worker for Ford in 1914 could buy a Model T for four months pay. A Foxconn worker in 2011 can buy an iPhone for two months pay.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Plus, you know, Ford basically invented the modern assembly line.
But that's just it. Ford didn't invent the assembly line. Adam Smith discussed the assembly line in the Wealth of Nations over a hundred years before Ford. Ford made the assembly line work for the manufacture of cars -- he didn't invent it.
quote:Everyone wanted a car.
I'm pretty sure there is some pretty serious revisionism going on with this statement. I think its safe to say that everyone wanted fast and convenient transportation. I doubt many wanted a personal motor car until after they'd seen a few. In 1900, is was visionary to imagine that everyone would want a personal motor vehicle in much the same way that it was visionary in 1976 to imagine that everyone would want a home computer.
My Grandmother's father bought the first motor car in her small town in about 1920 and it enjoyed the same sort of novelty/luxury status that a home computer did in 1980.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:But that's just it. Ford didn't invent the assembly line. Adam Smith discussed the assembly line in the Wealth of Nations over a hundred years before Ford. Ford made the assembly line work for the manufacture of cars -- he didn't invent it.
So some day when a crack team of physicists invent a working time machine, credit should really go to the science fiction writer who first conceptualized it? Snazzy.
Frederick Winslow Taylor gets a hell of a lot more credit than Adam Smith in that regard, but even he didn't really INVENT it.
Ford actually created it. It's one thing to talk about jet packs and rocket cars, it's another to actually make them a reality. Ford made this fanciful notion of an assembly line into a reality. No one had really done it before. No one had attempted mass production on that scale.
quote:I'm pretty sure there is some pretty serious revisionism going on with this statement.
By the time Ford actually started pumping them out? No, that's not revisionism. Perhaps everyone, (as in everything, universal statements are treacherous aren't they?), is strong, but pretty much everyone? Yep. 1900 is too early a starting point, Model T's didn't roll off the assembly line for almost another decade.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
Adam Smith was just discussing assembly lines that already existed as examples. Ford shouldn't get the credit for inventing something that already existed a hundred years before him. The pin assembly line already existed, then.
He should get the credit for perfecting the details of the assembly line so that it could be applied with great efficiency to just about anything with parts. Nobody had made assembly lines into a formal system until him. There had been some ad hoc and organically appearing assembly lines for certain products that were especially easy to divide up labor for, though.
Posted by AchillesHeel (Member # 11736) on :
Henry Ford changed how North American society operated on a daily basis, not by influencing the competitors but by opening his product to much wider clientele. There are businesses that could never had been started if the founder didn't have a vehicle to make deliveries himself, families that never would have been if a young person with a car didn't relocate.
Apple has not changed how people live, advancing technology has but the ipod did not do what the model-T did.
Posted by Dobbie (Member # 3881) on :
quote:Apple has not changed how people live, advancing technology has but the ipod did not do what the model-T did.
You are looking at the wrong thing. Steve Jobs most important contribution was the graphical user interface. Steve Jobs and Apple are to the GUI what Ford was to the assembly line. The GUI is what has made computer technology accessible to the average man.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by AchillesHeel: Henry Ford changed how North American society operated on a daily basis, not by influencing the competitors but by opening his product to much wider clientele. There are businesses that could never had been started if the founder didn't have a vehicle to make deliveries himself, families that never would have been if a young person with a car didn't relocate.
You a greatly over estimating the importance of the personal car and ignoring the many negative effects its had on our society.
Young people were moving away from home and migrating into the western frontier for centuries before the car became available. Dairies and vegetable farmers were delivering they goods to markets long before their were private cars. Private cars changed the way we live, but the change is less dramatic than you are imagining.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
Disagree. And if we're going to start interjecting value arguments into this, that changes somewhat doesn't it? Certainly Carnegie and Rockefeller had plenty of negative history.
But I don't think he's really overstating how important cars were. They fundamentally changed American life.
Posted by AchillesHeel (Member # 11736) on :
Now Andrew Carnegie, there is a man who helped change the world. Higher education is the building block of the modern world and first world status, his libraries provided the basic education necessary for so many in poor rural areas, its amazing how many are still in use today.
Posted by capaxinfiniti (Member # 12181) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: You are looking at the wrong thing. Steve Jobs most important contribution was the graphical user interface. Steve Jobs and Apple are to the GUI what Ford was to the assembly line. The GUI is what has made computer technology accessible to the average man.
quote:The GUI was first developed at Xerox PARC by Alan Kay, Larry Tesler, Dan Ingalls and a number of other researchers. It used windows, icons, and menus to support commands such as opening files, deleting files, moving files, etc. In 1974, work began at PARC on Gypsy, the first bitmap What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) cut & paste editor. In 1975, Xerox engineers demonstrated a Graphical User Interface "including icons and the first use of pop-up menus"
It had been developled, and was being further developed, when Jobs got the idea from Xerox. He basically told his team, "Xerox has this great idea and I wan't to make it cheaper." He was more business and marketing savvy than he was truly inventive and innovative.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
If you'll look at your quote from Rabbit, you'll see she wasn't saying Jobs invented the GUI unless she was saying Ford invented the assembly line.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Originally posted by AchillesHeel: Now Andrew Carnegie, there is a man who helped change the world. Higher education is the building block of the modern world and first world status, his libraries provided the basic education necessary for so many in poor rural areas, its amazing how many are still in use today.
I'm not a big fan of Carnegie, for a lot of reasons. Perhaps the biggest is two-fold: He built the libraries but never bought the books for them. And he never gave his workers either the time or the wages necessary to actually have time to read those books. Bah.
On the other hand, I begrudgingly acknowledge that perhaps even greater than his direct funding of library construction was the fact that, for lack of a better phrasing, he made libraries cool, and a cause celebre. The American Library Association barely even existed before he started building libraries, at which point America's elite entered into a competition to out donate each other. The result was a massive influx in unheard of numbers of donations for libraries. He didn't do it all himself, but was an absolutely vital catalyst for the modern American library system.
Posted by capaxinfiniti (Member # 12181) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: If you'll look at your quote from Rabbit, you'll see she wasn't saying Jobs invented the GUI unless she was saying Ford invented the assembly line.
I believe I know what she was saying and I felt some history on the subject would be useful in identifying Apple's significance in this aspect of computing. Apple's contribution to a graphical user interface was it's marketing of a relatively cheap mouse, only one aspect of the overall GUI experience. Icons, windows, popups, all those were copied wholesale.
No one was doing what Ford was doing, on the same scale, at the same time whereas Jobs and Apple were only one of a half-dozen teams and groups which were already pushing the technology forward. The industry was heading that way already. It was inevitable.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Tasteless sure, but more importantly, not funny. It reads like someone who reads the onion, and thinks that kind of writing is easy... cause you know, they just mock stuff.
There's a kernal of a good idea there. This is just a crappy execution.
The onion, incidentally, did it better- and not just because the title is more reverent of Jobs. They saw the easy "iCasket" joke, and didn't lead with that, because they're more clever.
Posted by Dan_Frank (Member # 8488) on :
Tasteless sure, but more importantly, not funny. It reads like someone who reads the onion, and thinks that kind of writing is easy... cause you know, they just mock stuff.
There's a kernal of a good idea there. This is just a crappy execution.
The onion, incidentally, did it better- and not just because the title is more reverent of Jobs. They saw the easy "iCasket" joke, and didn't lead with that, because they're more clever.
Agreed.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Jobs didn't invent the GUI.
I never said he did. I said he was to the GUI what Ford was to the assembly line and Ford did not invent the assembly line.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
Nor the automobile.
I see a lot of these objections to people praising Jobs as essentially responding to claims about him that are not being made- or rather, responding to certain readings of those claims that can be dismissed as factually inaccurate. So "he brought the mouse/digital music library/GUI/tablet computer/personal computer/word processor/smart phone et all, to the masses with style and clarity," is interpreted to mean he invented (ie: originated) any or all of these things. A claim that is easily debunked because it isn't true.
He was an inventor, sure, but rare is the inventor who doesn't start with a machine, a device, a process or a model that already *does* something, and changes it in ways that distinguish it from what came before.
For instance: it's not really a surprise that even Alexander Graham Bell himself envisioned no practical commercial use for the telephone, and that it took *decades* before an industrial designer named Henry Dreyfus came up with the G-type handset for Western Electric. People had been using telephones for 30 years before Dreyfus (despite executives laughing at the design), came up with the idea of having the microphone and speaker in the same housing, separated from a portable or mounted receiver. The next time you make the pinky and thumb "telephone" hand signal, remember that it took somebody month of thought and care to come up with that design. And here's the thing- it wasn't *his* invention. But he designed the first widespread model, and he convinced WE that it would work, and the model 302 telephone and its successor designs were ubiquitous in households around the world for 70 years. If you're over 20 years old, you've probably used one. If you're older than 40, you've probably used one of the original units at one time or another. I have used one.
Inventor can be reduced to a nonsense word- and i can be used to describe anyone. What matters is that a person had an impact on the world around him, that we can measure very clearly, that would not have been there if he had never lived. I think we are on solid ground saying that were it not for Steve Jobs, more than any other person, our lives on a daily basis would be far different- and I think the aesthetic and the marketing and consumer approach he used will continue to have a profound effect on the relationship between computers and people into the future.
So, that's my defense of the statement. I class Steve Jobs with Nikola Tesla, Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, but not with Bach, Einstein, Newton, Mozart, Michaelangelo, or Shakespeare. He was not a pure artist, or a pure scientist as these latter people were. He was in between- he consciously worked to reshape the world around him, and employed any and all means available to him to do so. As he said in the 1980's- the personal computer was his revolution. He saw that it mattered more than protests, more than charity, and more than money, and that the world would be changed by the tools available to it. That placed in the hands of those who saw the world of the future as a shinier version of today, computers were nothing that didn't already exist- and they would change nothing because they would be built to serve the needs of today. He wanted new needs, and a new future, and I think that's exactly what he created.
Posted by Jeff C. (Member # 12496) on :
quote:I class Steve Jobs with Nikola Tesla, Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, but not with Bach, Einstein, Newton, Mozart, Michaelangelo, or Shakespeare.
Actually, Shakespeare stole almost everything he wrote. The only original play he actually penned was the last one he wrote: The Tempest. Everything else was stolen, either from other authors or from real events that were happening. His dialogue wasn't even written by him, but by the actors themselves. All Shakespeare did was explain what he wanted them to say, and over the years the actors started writing it all down. Eventually we gathered up the best versions of each script and compiled the plays ourselves. I suppose you could say his sonnets were original, but that's hardly what he's known for.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
I read quite a few "who really wrote Shakespeare" theories, but never that one. Everyone knows Shakespeare based most of his plays on historical or literary sources -- that simply isn't equivalent to stealing. And the claim that he didn't even write the dialogue goes far beyond anything consistent with the evidence. If you are going to make that kind of outrageous claim, you better have some pretty serious data to back it up. Otherwise, its just one more crack pot conspiracy theory.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
Well said Orincoro.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
But with the PC and the GUI, Jobs was just one of the many people who were trying to bring them to market. He certainly doesn't stand alone in these things and Microsoft was really the one who brought them to the masses.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
There's also the question of what you consider "the masses."
Posted by capaxinfiniti (Member # 12181) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit:
quote:Jobs didn't invent the GUI.
I never said he did. I said he was to the GUI what Ford was to the assembly line and Ford did not invent the assembly line.
I gathered that much. But I think you were overstating his significance in the development of the GUI.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
How old are you cap and when was the first time you used a computer?
Posted by Jeff C. (Member # 12496) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: I read quite a few "who really wrote Shakespeare" theories, but never that one. Everyone knows Shakespeare based most of his plays on historical or literary sources -- that simply isn't equivalent to stealing. And the claim that he didn't even write the dialogue goes far beyond anything consistent with the evidence. If you are going to make that kind of outrageous claim, you better have some pretty serious data to back it up. Otherwise, its just one more crack pot conspiracy theory.
Well this was something I was taught in a university Shakespeare class, so I kind of assumed it was pretty accurate.
But anyway, here's a quote about the quantos (early prints of the plays):
quote:Why are the quartos important? None of Shakespeare’s manuscripts survives, so the printed texts of his plays are our only source for what he originally wrote. The quarto editions are the texts closest to Shakespeare’s time. Some are thought to preserve either his working drafts (his foul papers) or his fair copies. Others are thought to record versions remembered by actors who performed the plays, providing information about staging practices in Shakespeare’s day.
The original prints we have of these quantos aren't exactly precise. Some are copies, written from memory by various people who saw the plays, including the actors, while a select few are thought to be written by Shakespeare. That's not saying that he didn't originally write them, back when he was coming up with the stories, but many of those early versions are not what we have in print today.
As for his stealing a great deal of what he wrote, I was talking more to the extent of his ideas, characters, and plots. For example, Hamlet was taken from a Danish story. His "histories" are obviously meant to dramatize real life events, copying names and plots that were actually happening or had already happened, but his comedies and dramas were also derrived from other sources as well. There's nothing wrong with that. There are no original stories. Saying Shakespeare stole his ideas is like saying Orson Scott Card got the idea for The Worthing Saga's Empire from Asimov's Foundation series. It's just something that happens in literature.
The thing is, everyone tries to prop Shakespeare up to be some kind of diety figure in literature, but at the time, while he was fairly well known to some people, he wasn't anything close to the level he is now. In fact, he was writing all of his material just trying to survive. He was literally a struggling actor/playwrite in his own time, so naturally he's going to steal some of his work. You can't blame him for that. But you also can't say he was perfect, either. It wasn't really until the 19th and 20th century that he started getting read so widely and his plays taught in schools, anyway.
Regardless, my point originally was simply that Shakespeare wasn't as groundbreakingly original as a lot of people seem to think.
Posted by capaxinfiniti (Member # 12181) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: How old are you cap and when was the first time you used a computer?
How is that relevant to the subject? Is this discussion age-restricted?
Posted by AchillesHeel (Member # 11736) on :
Most here is, I still have no idea what the requisite age is but I believe it to be over thirty.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by capaxinfiniti:
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: How old are you cap and when was the first time you used a computer?
How is that relevant to the subject? Is this discussion age-restricted?
The discussion is certainly not age-restricted but age is unquestionably relevant to the discussion. Unless I'm mistaken, we are discussing whether or not Steve Job's (and GUIs) have had a significant impact on society. Whether or not you've personally experienced that change is relevant.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
I don't think anyone is denying that GUIs have had a significant impact on society.
I don't see the relevance of how old people are either. I found that off putting and inappropriate, actually.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
Jeff C., If this is what was actually taught in your University Shakespeare course, your professor was considerably outside the mainstream of Shakespeare criticism.
Going from "many of his early versions aren't what we have in print today." to "His dialogue wasn't even written by him, but by the actors themselves." is an enormous leap. I don't think anyone is going to object to the former, but the latter is a very radical position.
I've took a course in the history of Shakespearean criticism and based on what I read, I don't believe that Shakespeare has only become revered in the last two centuries. There is a very extensive record of discussion and criticism of Shakespeare's work since the 17th century. Shakespeare was never noted for his innovative creative plots so pointing out that they weren't innovative doesn't detract a bit from his stature.
Posted by Raymond Arnold (Member # 11712) on :
Speaking as a young person, I think it's relevant whether you experienced change. I'm not old enough to have experienced the biggest changes, but the rise of smart phones, the internet and social media have been significant in my lifetime. (Not listing things Jobs did, just ways technology changed in the last 20 years.
In other news... aww. Seriously? Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: I don't think anyone is denying that GUIs have had a significant impact on society.
I don't see the relevance of how old people are either. I found that off putting and inappropriate, actually.
Meh!! Be put off if you choose to be. There are discussions where age and experience do matter. When discussing the impact of cars on daily life, I appreciate the opinions of my grandparents who actually lived through that period and experienced the change more than I do the opinion of a 20 year old history student.
If you were using computers back in the 70s and 80s, you are a lot less likely to point to the iPod and the iPhone as Steve Jobs biggest contributions than if you are 20 years old.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
quote:If you were using computers back in the 70s and 80s, you are a lot less likely to point to the iPod and the iPhone as Steve Jobs biggest contributions than if you are 20 years old.
I was using computers in the 80s. I don't think anyone is disputing the personal computer revolution. What we're arguing is that Steve Jobs was not a lone visionary on par with Henry Ford, etc., nor was he the key force in bringing personal computing to most people.
Posted by Aros (Member # 4873) on :
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro:
So, that's my defense of the statement. I class Steve Jobs with Nikola Tesla, Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, but not with Bach, Einstein, Newton, Mozart, Michaelangelo, or Shakespeare.
Okay, my initial problem (and thus the beginning of the dissent) was the inclusion of Tesla. Tesla should most certainly be in the second category, as a "pure" scientist. His science was practical (as opposed to Einstein), but that doesn't detract from his genius
Why would you classify Jobs with Ford and Edison? Is it that he led drastic, incremental changes to products that changed the human experience for common people? Along this line of thinking, I could agree to some extent, but there would be a few other names I'd put forward first. Jobs wouldn't be in the top 5. I might put him in the top 10 or 20.
As a business major, however, I'd certainly classify Jobs in the top 5 when it came to charismatic leadership. Heck, he was practically the poster-boy for it.
[ October 07, 2011, 01:24 PM: Message edited by: Aros ]
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
Age is a double-sided thing though.
Let's go with the car example, a particular set of grandparents may very well have experienced the changes in, say, the US. But without any study or interest, they may not necessarily have experienced the changes in other areas of the world of the time. Formal study may fill in these gaps.
A younger person may also have experienced (or study) the impact of cars in a much more immediate and accelerated way in either recent India or China. Many grandparents wouldn't be able to or want to access the tools that would allow them to share these experiences either.
So it's hard to say.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mucus: Age is a double-sided thing though.
Let's go with the car example, a particular set of grandparents may very well have experienced the changes in, say, the US. But without any study or interest, they may not necessarily have experienced the changes in other areas of the world of the time. Formal study may fill in these gaps.
A younger person may also have experienced (or study) the impact of cars in a much more immediate and accelerated way in either recent India or China. Many grandparents wouldn't be able to or want to access the tools that would allow them to share these experiences either.
So it's hard to say.
I never claimed that age was the only factor that mattered, just that it was "a" relevant factor in the discussion.
At this point in time, its pretty difficult for anyone (regardless of age) to divorce their opinion of Steve Jobs from their opinion of Apple in general, and Apple has been a pretty polarizing company for at least 25 years.
Posted by advice for robots (Member # 2544) on :
Also, whether you tend to be an early adopter of technology or not, and how wealthy and "into it" your parents were. With a few exceptions, I tend to be a late, late adopter, mainly because I can never justify dropping hundreds or thousands of dollars on technology I can't yet see the need for. My parents are the same way. They've never had the money for those things and never fit in to pop culture enough to want them immediately, even just to keep up with the Jones. I lived the big sea changes of the 80s vicariously through my friends whose parents battled in line on Black Fridays for the latest and greatest for their kids. I wasn't even online until the mid-90s when I went to college. Technology has changed my life, and Steve Jobs influenced it for sure, but on a different timeline than that of many other more affluent gen-xers.
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
quote:What matters is that a person had an impact on the world around him, that we can measure very clearly, that would not have been there if he had never lived. I think we are on solid ground saying that were it not for Steve Jobs, more than any other person, our lives on a daily basis would be far different.
I don't really believe Jobs was particularly crucial to societal transformations related to personal computing and other technology. If Apple hadn't pushed the mouse and GUI with personal computers, it would have happened pretty soon anyway, I think. It was the power of the technology, not the company first pushing to market (or it's CEO), that was transformative.
The same thing applies to smartphones.
I credit him with being remarkably skilled at identifying and exploiting the market for such things. I think that's a worthy legacy. It's a rare and impressive thing.
However, I frankly think it's ridiculous to assume that had he never lived, modern life would be vastly different. Maybe (though not certainly) people would be somewhat less enamored of their gadgets, but substantially similar gadgets would still exist and still improve people's lives in the same way.
Not to mention saying he had MORE influence than any other person on the shape of our lives.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:His dialogue wasn't even written by him, but by the actors themselves.
How many people were "online" before the mid-nineties?
I was an engineering graduate student in the late 80s so I had e-mail access through bitnet but that only connected me to a few other people who were also scientists or engineers in academia. During that time period, there were bulletin boards through services like Genie and AOL but there were all closed networks and very small by today's standard. The world wide web didn't even exist until the early 90s and it didn't become public until 1996.
Outside University campuses, very few people were "online" before the mid-90s.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
quote:Actually, Shakespeare stole almost everything he wrote. The only original play he actually penned was the last one he wrote: The Tempest. Everything else was stolen, either from other authors or from real events that were happening. His dialogue wasn't even written by him, but by the actors themselves. All Shakespeare did was explain what he wanted them to say, and over the years the actors started writing it all down. Eventually we gathered up the best versions of each script and compiled the plays ourselves. I suppose you could say his sonnets were original, but that's hardly what he's known for.
Yeah, that's just wrong. While he routinely ripped plots from other sources (like everybody), his dialogue was his. Not that actors had no input in the dialogue they said, but they definitely said the specific words he told them to say (unless they fumbled). The versions we have were in part cribbed from what actors and audience members remembered, but that isn't because the lines were decided by the actors on stage, it was because the final version of the plays frequently weren't available as performed -- even the "final draft" would have many lines edited as the play was being rehearsed, on the individual actor's copy, and not in a central place. There were probably also multiple versions performed of some of the plays, and the versions we have tend to synthesize across them. The reason for this? Jonson was in the middle of inventing the practice of publishing plays for general consumption as a matter of course.
He was considered one of the period's greatest playwrights by the other great playwrights of the period. Jonson and Marlowe (and others) were constantly measuring themselves against Shakespeare, as Shakespeare was measuring himself against them. His plays were some of the most popular as well, and with people of all walks of life, from sovereigns to beggars.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:I don't really believe Jobs was particularly crucial to societal transformations related to personal computing and other technology. If Apple hadn't pushed the mouse and GUI with personal computers, it would have happened pretty soon anyway, I think. It was the power of the technology, not the company first pushing to market (or it's CEO), that was transformative.
I think the same thing can be said about just about any influential person. Assembly line manufacturing would almost certainly have happened even without Henry Ford. The airplane would have happened without the Wright Brothers (in fact it did, almost simultaneously in Japan).
There are good reasons that many things have been invented or discovered nearly simultaneously by different groups. Most progress is incremental and most inventors made incremental improvements over existing ideas which someone was bound to make at just about that time because the state of knowledge and technology had arrived.
There are very very few people in the world whose impact has been so revolutionary that without them, it would never have happened. That doesn't mean that the actual individual who did it, does not deserve credit.
Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
quote:Originally posted by scifibum: I don't really believe Jobs was particularly crucial to societal transformations related to personal computing and other technology. If Apple hadn't pushed the mouse and GUI with personal computers, it would have happened pretty soon anyway, I think. It was the power of the technology, not the company first pushing to market (or it's CEO), that was transformative.
The same thing applies to smartphones.
His attention to detail in user experience was fairly unique. Ever seen a screenshot of an early Android build, from before the iPhone launch? It looks like a contemporaneous BlackBerry. If not for the iPhone, I think smartphone users would still be stuck not too far from the original BlackBerry paradigm -- an utterly hideous user experience in comparison to what we have today. Symbian and Windows Mobile might still be going concerns. Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit:
quote:I don't really believe Jobs was particularly crucial to societal transformations related to personal computing and other technology. If Apple hadn't pushed the mouse and GUI with personal computers, it would have happened pretty soon anyway, I think. It was the power of the technology, not the company first pushing to market (or it's CEO), that was transformative.
I think the same thing can be said about just about any influential person. Assembly line manufacturing would almost certainly have happened even without Henry Ford. The airplane would have happened without the Wright Brothers (in fact it did, almost simultaneously in Japan).
There are good reasons that many things have been invented or discovered nearly simultaneously by different groups. Most progress is incremental and most inventors made incremental improvements over existing ideas which someone was bound to make at just about that time because the state of knowledge and technology had arrived.
There are very very few people in the world whose impact has been so revolutionary that without them, it would never have happened. That doesn't mean that the actual individual who did it, does not deserve credit.
Right, but what we're talking about is Steve Jobs seeing a bunch of stuff at SPARC, realizing that they would work really well in a home market, and deciding to hire people to build computers that incorporated them, just like several other people did at around the same time.
Removing him from the situation would take out one of the biggest players, but other people were doing almost the same thing he was doing and, in the grand scheme of things, Microsoft was really the company that succeeded in finally really getting the PC and GUI based operating systems to the average consumer.
As has been acknowledged, he had a very large impact on the personal computing revolution, but trying to cast him as a Ford or whomever is overstating both what he actually did and his impact.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
quote:Originally posted by twinky:
quote:Originally posted by scifibum: I don't really believe Jobs was particularly crucial to societal transformations related to personal computing and other technology. If Apple hadn't pushed the mouse and GUI with personal computers, it would have happened pretty soon anyway, I think. It was the power of the technology, not the company first pushing to market (or it's CEO), that was transformative.
The same thing applies to smartphones.
His attention to detail in user experience was fairly unique. Ever seen a screenshot of an early Android build, from before the iPhone launch? It looks like a contemporaneous BlackBerry. If not for the iPhone, I think smartphone users would still be stuck not too far from the original BlackBerry paradigm -- an utterly hideous user experience in comparison to what we have today. Symbian and Windows Mobile might still be going concerns.
I completely agree with this. Without Steve Jobs, I think we be quite a bit behind where we are now in terms of hand held computing. The great focus put into user experience coupled with the genius of marketing it that he brought to Apple products were singular accomplishments.
Posted by shadowland (Member # 12366) on :
Another major impact he had relating to the interface of phones is with touchscreens. There was quite a bit of criticism regarding the idea of a phone without a physical keyboard. Without the iPhone's success, I'm not sure there would be so many smart phones without keyboards today, which means that the concept and implementation of the touch interface may very possibly have been nowhere near where it is at today.
Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
Yep.
Posted by Jeff C. (Member # 12496) on :
quote:Originally posted by fugu13:
quote:Actually, Shakespeare stole almost everything he wrote. The only original play he actually penned was the last one he wrote: The Tempest. Everything else was stolen, either from other authors or from real events that were happening. His dialogue wasn't even written by him, but by the actors themselves. All Shakespeare did was explain what he wanted them to say, and over the years the actors started writing it all down. Eventually we gathered up the best versions of each script and compiled the plays ourselves. I suppose you could say his sonnets were original, but that's hardly what he's known for.
Yeah, that's just wrong. While he routinely ripped plots from other sources (like everybody), his dialogue was his. Not that actors had no input in the dialogue they said, but they definitely said the specific words he told them to say (unless they fumbled). The versions we have were in part cribbed from what actors and audience members remembered, but that isn't because the lines were decided by the actors on stage, it was because the final version of the plays frequently weren't available as performed -- even the "final draft" would have many lines edited as the play was being rehearsed, on the individual actor's copy, and not in a central place. There were probably also multiple versions performed of some of the plays, and the versions we have tend to synthesize across them. The reason for this? Jonson was in the middle of inventing the practice of publishing plays for general consumption as a matter of course.
He was considered one of the period's greatest playwrights by the other great playwrights of the period. Jonson and Marlowe (and others) were constantly measuring themselves against Shakespeare, as Shakespeare was measuring himself against them. His plays were some of the most popular as well, and with people of all walks of life, from sovereigns to beggars.
Well regardless, my main point was that he wasn't as original as he seemed (like Tesla, Bach, and the other examples previously used), which is what this entire discussion is mostly about (regarding Steve Jobs). It was why I pointed Shakespeare out in the first place. My professor may or may not have been correct in her assertion about the dialogue (it doesn't really matter in the long run), but I agree with what she said about the plots being ripped from other sources. And like I said before, stealing isn't a big deal. Everyone does it. But Shakespeare being innovative, that's the problem.
Posted by advice for robots (Member # 2544) on :
quote:Originally posted by shadowland: Another major impact he had relating to the interface of phones is with touchscreens. There was quite a bit of criticism regarding the idea of a phone without a physical keyboard. Without the iPhone's success, I'm not sure there would be so many smart phones without keyboards today, which means that the concept and implementation of the touch interface may very possibly have been nowhere near where it is at today.
I agree. My feeling before 2007 was that touch screens were still years away. I believe they still would be without Jobs' push to get the iPhone developed. For that alone, Steve Jobs is totally awesome. Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
quote:Well regardless, my main point was that he wasn't as original as he seemed (like Tesla, Bach, and the other examples previously used), which is what this entire discussion is mostly about (regarding Steve Jobs). It was why I pointed Shakespeare out in the first place. My professor may or may not have been correct in her assertion about the dialogue (it doesn't really matter in the long run), but I agree with what she said about the plots being ripped from other sources. And like I said before, stealing isn't a big deal. Everyone does it. But Shakespeare being innovative, that's the problem.
Methinks the word innovative does not mean what you think it means. Shakespeare coined numerous words and phrases that are in use today, I suspect more than any other single person contributed to the English language. And, as is noted, innovation has always involved building on what came before. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Jeff C.:
quote:I class Steve Jobs with Nikola Tesla, Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, but not with Bach, Einstein, Newton, Mozart, Michaelangelo, or Shakespeare.
Actually, Shakespeare stole almost everything he wrote. The only original play he actually penned was the last one he wrote: The Tempest. Everything else was stolen, either from other authors or from real events that were happening. His dialogue wasn't even written by him, but by the actors themselves. All Shakespeare did was explain what he wanted them to say, and over the years the actors started writing it all down. Eventually we gathered up the best versions of each script and compiled the plays ourselves. I suppose you could say his sonnets were original, but that's hardly what he's known for.
You have been misinformed. I'm not even going to get into this.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Removing him from the situation would take out one of the biggest players, but other people were doing almost the same thing he was doing and, in the grand scheme of things, Microsoft was really the company that succeeded in finally really getting the PC and GUI based operating systems to the average consumer.
I think its highly doubtful that Microsoft would ever have developed windows if it had not been for the Mac. It took Microsoft 6.5 years (an eternity in the computer industry) after the Mac to produce an actually usable version of Windows.
I guess we can speculate on the issue until we turn blue since no one will ever know what would have happened with out Steve Jobs, but that really doesn't distinguish him from other innovators -- particularly Ford. There were over 400 automobile manufacturers in the US alone in 1920. The automobile would have taken over with or without Ford. It would likely have taken longer for the car to become affordable to the common man in the US, but its pretty hard to imagine that it would not have happened. In fact, it (innovative production of an inexpensive car for the masses) has happened nearly independently numerous times in different parts of the world -- most recently with Tata motors in India.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:You have been misinformed. I'm not even going to get into this.
Too late. You just did.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
Haha, touché. I meant, not going to countenance the idea with a detailed response. "get into" as in, "delve."
Posted by capaxinfiniti (Member # 12181) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: I think its highly doubtful that Microsoft would ever have developed windows if it had not been for the Mac.
What gives you that impression? Both Mac OS and Windows 1.0 were being developed simultaneously, meaning that even if Jobs/Apple/Macs never existed, Windows would have still made it to market. The competition was very healthy back. MS was, for example, continuing contratual negotiations with IBM. IBM had no interest in continuing to ship systems with command line interface operating systems. They too saw the future in a GUI.
quote:It took Microsoft 6.5 years (an eternity in the computer industry) after the Mac to produce an actually usable version of Windows.
I'm not sure what dates you're using so I don't know how you've arrived at the 6.5 figure but much of what was going on, development wise, at Apple and Microsoft (and a dozen other places like IBM, Atari..) was contemporaneous. I don't think Apple marketed a GUI OS much more that a year or so before Microsoft.
Posted by jebus202 (Member # 2524) on :
Steve Jobs will be remembered as he's currently represented. The truth of it will matter little in the Zeitgeist's impression.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by capaxinfiniti:
quote:It took Microsoft 6.5 years (an eternity in the computer industry) after the Mac to produce an actually usable version of Windows.
I'm not sure what dates you're using so I don't know how you've arrived at the 6.5 figure ...
Well, because of the "usable" stuck in there, you can play around with which version of Windows is considered usable. Which is reminiscent of the issue of what you consider "masses" in the debate on whether Jobs "brought X to the masses." Are we talking about who brought X from early adopters in the computer industry to early adopters in the upper classes? Are talking about who brought it to the middle class or who brought it to the poor?
I personally value developments like the rise of IBM clones and the ability (and indeed, under the table encouragement in some cases) to pirate Windows both in those early days and when it came to the Chinese market.
But without pinning down definitions and metrics, the argument is like fighting on quicksand.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:What gives you that impression? Both Mac OS and Windows 1.0 were being developed simultaneously, meaning that even if Jobs/Apple/Macs never existed, Windows would have still made it to market.
This is not strictly accurate. The development of the GUI used in the Mac started with the Apple Lisa, in 1978, three years before windows development started at Microsoft. The pre-release version of windows that was demonstrated in 1983, was so obviously ripped-off from the Mac OS that it had to be nearly completed redone before its release in 1985. Even then, Windows 1.0 was such a terrible program that it couldn't even compete with MS DOS, which remained the preferred operating system for IBM clones until the release of Windows 3.0 in 1990 (which is where I get my 6 years after the Mac).
Honestly, Microsoft has never been an innovative visionary company. They are very aggressive and know how make good business decisions, but they haven't introduced a truly innovative or visionary product in decades.
When was the last time you thought "Wow, this is really good!" about a Microsoft product? Was there ever a time?
Actually there was one for me. MS Word for Mac 5.1. That was 20 years ago and its been pretty steadily downhill since then.
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
I really like Windows 7, and I can't say I've ever really liked Mac OS. (and I've used 9 through 10.7). I mean, it's fine and certainly has some nice features (though I think 10.7 is a step backwards in terms of the GUI), but sometimes I get frustrated with Mac OS because it feels limiting to me. But it could just be that I've been raised on Windows machines and thus am more comfortable with them.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
quote:The development of the GUI used in the Mac started with the Apple Lisa, in 1978
That's not true. The Lisa was started in 1978. The GUI development started in 1980, after the demonstration by Xerox of their GUI in 1979.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:When was the last time you thought "Wow, this is really good!" about a Microsoft product? Was there ever a time?
Most recently, Microsoft Lync impressed me, especially once we finished connecting it to our PBX.
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
quote:Honestly, Microsoft has never been an innovative visionary company. They are very aggressive and know how make good business decisions, but they haven't introduced a truly innovative or visionary product in decades.
When was the last time you thought "Wow, this is really good!" about a Microsoft product? Was there ever a time?
To answer your question, pretty recently, and pretty often. They have some really excellent products. Some of them markedly outshine the closest competition.
I suspect that the things you are thinking of as "visionary" and "innovative" are probably a lot sexier than MS products. I'm not sure that consumer appeal is a fair standard by which to judge the amount of innovation happening, though.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
A few months ago, the Kinect wowed and spread really rapidly through the office.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
quote:In fact, he was writing all of his material just trying to survive. He was literally a struggling actor/playwrite in his own time, so naturally he's going to steal some of his work.
Shakespeare wasn't anything close to a struggling actor/playwright. He was very successful both on the stage and as a businessman. He owned a 10% interest in The Globe, for one thing. He was able to buy and later expand a very desirable estate in Stratford. He was not desperate for cash.
Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: When was the last time you thought "Wow, this is really good!" about a Microsoft product? Was there ever a time?
Surface.
Windows Phone 7, which presents a legitimate alternative to iOS-style app-grid interfaces.
Kinect is pretty cool, although I have no plans to buy one myself.
*
I like Windows 7, and for basic computing I like it as much as OS X, if not more. But the minute I need to get under the hood to change anything, it's back to Windows 95 nested property dialogs or obscure system services programs. Sometimes there are three or four ways to change something, with no clear indication of which one should be used or which ones are global. On the whole, I think the Control Panel is a mess compared to System Preferences.
Posted by Jake (Member # 206) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: When was the last time you thought "Wow, this is really good!" about a Microsoft product? Was there ever a time?
The last time? Probably when the Kinect came out a little more than a year ago. I was also impressed by Microsoft Surface when it came out in 2008.
[Edit - Beaten to the punch by multiple people!]
Posted by Nighthawk (Member # 4176) on :
quote:Originally posted by twinky:
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: When was the last time you thought "Wow, this is really good!" about a Microsoft product? Was there ever a time?
Surface.
Windows Phone 7, which presents a legitimate alternative to iOS-style app-grid interfaces.
Kinect is pretty cool, although I have no plans to buy one myself.
And the two million Microsoft Surface, Windows Phone 7 and Kinect users would probably agree with you... Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
Actually, Kinect hit 10 million way back in March -- doubling Microsoft's sales expectations within 5 months of its launch. Selling that many Kinects to an installed base of 55 million Xbox 360s is pretty impressive.
Actually, here's a great example of an amazing Microsoft product: Xbox Live. Six years after its launch, it's still unmatched by its competitors.
Posted by Nighthawk (Member # 4176) on :
I added Kinect to that list after the fact. I should have known that would hit such a number.
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