Who the hell is Steve Jobs?
this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2025
1428 points (99.8% liked)
Greentext
5503 readers
1852 users here now
This is a place to share greentexts and witness the confounding life of Anon. If you're new to the Greentext community, think of it as a sort of zoo with Anon as the main attraction.
Be warned:
- Anon is often crazy.
- Anon is often depressed.
- Anon frequently shares thoughts that are immature, offensive, or incomprehensible.
If you find yourself getting angry (or god forbid, agreeing) with something Anon has said, you might be doing it wrong.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
He might've been a marketing genius
Oncology... not so much
Where is the "genius"?
Steve Jobs did actually have multiple operations
I was reading an interesting article the other day about how after World War II people were obviously opposed to populism, and by the '80s and certainly the '90s people that were born after the war had lost the awareness of the danger that hero worship creates.
At the same time, many organizations including government organizations had failed to update themselves over the years, so people romanticized the idea of someone walking in and magically making the correct snap judgments that would remedy the situation. This was so pervasive in the business world I think in part because it allowed corporate executives to justify f****** over ordinary employees. If the company makes or breaks because of one person at the top, who cares if you're paying people minimum wage and they can't even afford to pay for dental care or a car.
What amazed me is how long that vision of Steve Jobs stuck around. Even in recent years people have been praising him, but if you think of the value in his company, it's mostly a load of s***. Those phones and computers are incredibly overpriced, and they have so many bad aspects, especially lock-in, which most people intuitively understand these days. And still we have Apple addicts.
I'm not an Apple fan, I never liked the way he dictated form and function and told everyone to fuck off about their feelings. Now that said, his leadership did bring some things to market that would not have grown organically, for better or for worse.
The competition had to contend with good phone battery life, unibody laptops with high DPI screens, and large touchpads with physical feedback. Left to their own devices, these companies would have just kept regurgitating/iterating the same cheap designs they had made for decades.
He wasn't magic; if he had any superpower, it was attracting and retaining talent.
Jobs created toxic work environments. That’s nothing to envy. Nothing to replicate. But we’re in a capitalist society so fuck your feelings.
Jobs created toxic work environments.
...and so did Linus Torvalds*
he's certainly not the embodiment of capitalism. But I absolutely have a huge amount of respect for Torvalds, even if I don't approve of his way of interpersonal/professional style.
(I used to run Arch btw [but I run Debian now].)
*He's supposedly taken steps in the right direction here and has made improvements.
That’s nothing to envy.
I don't think that word, or anything like it appeared in my statement.
An apple a day keeps the doctor away
true, with just an apple a day only the forensic pathologist will show up
If you don't have anything funny to say, then don't say anything at all
Steve jobs ain't a genius. He was just a good salesman.
The sales people almost always end up doing well in companies. And then when they get high up in the company they only value others ability to make sales and work for bonuses. As time goes on a company's e-suite gets more and more saturated with charismatic dummies who will do anything for a buck, leaving less room for good administrators and engineers.
load more comments
(1 replies)
view more: next ›