RIP Steve Jobs

[Downriviera]

Love my Apple products.

[Moderator's Note: This thread has been moved from Non-Detroit to the Discuss Detroit. Even though it is technically non-Detroit, the passing of a genius of this magnitude who, like our Henry Ford, not just made wonderful things but has transformed society and, by extension, Detroit transcends such restrictions. Indeed, I seriously doubt if DetroitYES would have arisen without his influence.]

[jcole]

A visionary and a true entrepreneur. He will live on in his creations

[vetalalumni]

Steve Jobs left an indelible mark on how our world perceives technology.

[Zacha341]

Wow! I recall my sitting down to my first Apple Mac! See links below re. Steve Jobs and Apple Inc.:

http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/05/us/obi...ss_igoogle_cnn

Steve Jobs left us with talismans of his talent

http://www.freep.com/article/2011100...ans-his-talent

Obama, Gates, Zuckerberg react to Steve Jobs Death with video....

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/...7950PN20111006

http://www.reuters.com/video/2011/10...eoId=222278240

[Lowell]

Unfathomable genius. The Henry Ford of the information age, minus all the ugliness. Someone who didn't just make great things but someone who transformed society while remaining a good human being.

His mouse driven GUI [graphic user interface] operating system first lured me into the computer world and DetroitYES was birthed on his computers. When he left Apple it declined and I left it too. Since he came back so have I as I now post from my MacAir and iPhone.

This from his famous Stanford commencement speech demonstrates the incredible depth of this man.

When I was 17 I read a quote that went something like "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right."

It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "no" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important thing I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life, because almost everything--all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure--these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

[Det_ard]

A 1%'er with no public record of charitable giving. His fortune was amassed at low long-term capital gains rates. His global corporation mocks us with $30 billion in cash on hand and rapacious profit margins while employing low-paid Asian wage-slaves to perform his outsourced manufacturing instead of using US workers. He created virtual monopolies and charged accordingly [[compare the cost of SD memory to his upcharge for memory in an iPhone or iPad). He put profit ahead of people via dictatorial control over his App Store and operating systems.

[Lowell]

^Perhaps you should contact his family and offer to give a eulogy at his memorial service.

[MikeyinBrooklyn]

I am more a pc guy than a mac guy, but I can appreciate how his ideas about technology integration has led to great leaps for how our society works. I also appreciate how he didn't give up. Remember, by the 90's, Apple was a has-been company, nearly dissappearing a couple of times. But he kept focusing on innovation, and he made high-tech very accessible to the mainstream, both in terms of ease of use and in price [[the IMac was a cheaper computer, by far, than a PC was at the time).

With regards to Det ard's ridiculous [[literally worthy of ridicule) comment above, I feel sorry for your complete lack of perspective. A person's worth is not measured in dollars. Millions [[maybe billions) of people literally live better lives due to him. Not just his tens of thousands of well paid employees, but the people who can perform more tasks, more easily and affordably, because of his technology. He has helped to make communication, commerce, entertainment, and information more readily available to everyone. As for his contributions to charity, you have no ability whatsoever to know [[nor do I) what he's done for charity. But wrap your brain around this: a person can do wonderful things for other people while getting rich. Steve Jobs did. Whatever money he ever had, he deserved every penny.

[surenowinlife]

I second that!

[professorscott]

Mr. Jobs' genius was that of an architect: finding pleasing forms that would evoke positive reactions from people. The technology in Apple's products is generally superior to anything else out there - and that's not even the best thing about them! The best thing is how simple they are; how much attention was paid to form and what a user actually would need.

The original Macintosh reminds me for some reason of the guitar work of Yngwie Malmsteen. Not very many people own Mr. Malmsteen's recordings, but nearly every important rock guitarist has been influenced by his work. The Macintosh was the same - many more people owned PC clones than Macs, but all later computers were heavily influenced by the Macintosh.

And Apple has continued to pioneer, throughout the decades, leading so many changes in how we do things that it's difficult to get our arms around all of it. What your cell phone can do, how you obtain recorded music, all affected by Mr. Jobs' vision.

Truly a remarkable life. I hope, somehow, that Apple can continue to innovate or that some other company, probably one we've never heard of, can take over the reigns of this paradigm-pushing work. Someone like Mr. Jobs comes around only very rarely.

[mwilbert]

Jobs was an unusually visionary businessman. If all he had accomplished was to create Pixar, he would have been a significant force in the entertainment world, but of course that isn't the case.

In my view, despite the fact that it has a large number of fans, Apple is a pretty unpleasant company with a lot of dubious business practices that have harmed a lot of people, but while that may put a bit of a tarnish on his long-term reputation, it doesn't really diminish the scale of Jobs' accomplishments or the importance of the products he helped create.

[iheartthed]

Steve Jobs was cool and all but has that dude ever even been to Detroit before?

[Islandman]

http://www.mlive.com/auto/index.ssf/...on_auto_i.html

http://www.thedetroitbureau.com/2011...n-for-detroit/

[mikefmich]

A 1%'er with no public record of charitable giving. His fortune was amassed at low long-term capital gains rates. His global corporation mocks us with $30 billion in cash on hand and rapacious profit margins while employing low-paid Asian wage-slaves to perform his outsourced manufacturing instead of using US workers. He created virtual monopolies and charged accordingly [[compare the cost of SD memory to his upcharge for memory in an iPhone or iPad). He put profit ahead of people via dictatorial control over his App Store and operating systems.

While I may have similar sentiments about Mr. Jobs, this is a RIP thread.

Kinda akin to visiting the funeral home, and pissing in front of his casket, ya think?

[English]

About his morality, virtue, or charity, I have no comment.

But he was our era's Thomas Edison. He will be missed. Time will tell if Apple stays on top. Many techies were disappointed this week by the iPhone 5 rumors.

[FlyingJ]

Steve Jobs was cool and all but has that dude ever even been to Detroit before?

That's silly, MLK Jr. only made one visit to King County, WA & they "re-named" the County after him, & yes, they pay his family a 'licensing fee' out of public funds...
http://www.kingcounty.gov/operations...ackground.aspx

[ddaydetroit]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...BjPL_blog.html

[Matt The Deuce]

Det-ard - didn't buy the stock huh?

[3WC]

There is an excellent, multi-page obituary in today's WSJ worth reading. His early years at Apple were not at all smooth and he was thrown out of the company in the early years. At one point the company was almost under financially when he went hat-in-hand to Bill Gates [[a technical archenemy) and obtained a capital infusion from Microsoft which permitted the company to survive. It was only in 2000 after he returned to Apple that the magic commenced.

[Papasito]

APPLE TAX

Here's an excerpt from the Microsoft e-mail:

You've heard from us in the past about the value of Windows laptops in contrast with the high Apple Tax premiums on Apple's latest line of MacBooks. As we look deeper into the Apple Tax, there is a clear and daunting premium associated with owning any Mac, including desktop machines.

Apple has made no effort to change this. They continue to impose the Apple Tax on consumers even in the midst of a very challenging recession. Windows PCs continue to offer a wide variety of choice in both price and spec that are designed to fit the needs of different budgets and lifestyles.
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/conte...o_you_pay.html

Not paying his "fair share" ???

. For example, in 2010, Apple Inc. [[AAPL) reported that it has over $30 billion in cash maintained overseas. Apple partially earned this money from international sales, but largely by holding various intellectual property patents within foreign holding company subsidiaries so that the cash leaves the U.S. as a tax-deductible business expense.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/2639...-rate-than-you

Another greedy dirty rotten Capitalist tax evading monster....?

[iheartthed]

That's silly, MLK Jr. only made one visit to King County, WA & they "re-named" the County after him, & yes, they pay his family a 'licensing fee' out of public funds...
http://www.kingcounty.gov/operations...ackground.aspx

Good for them. That has nothing to do with whether Steve Jobs is a "Detroit issue". Apple doesn't even have a store in Detroit...

[jcole]

Good for them. That has nothing to do with whether Steve Jobs is a "Detroit issue". Apple doesn't even have a store in Detroit...

Lowell moved this thread over from Non Detroit, and it's his board, so take it up with him

[iheartthed]

Lowell moved this thread over from Non Detroit, and it's his board, so take it up with him

I know, I read the note. I'm just voicing my opinion.

[ColonelMack]

Det_ard makes valid points. Jobs should be honored as a brilliant innovator, industrialist and leader. However it should not be lost that there is no evidence whatsoever that the man had any heart-- at least in regards to charitable giving.

He should be honored for his accomplishments, but not canonized.

[Wesley Mouch]

In his obituary of Mr. Jobs on The [[NY) Times’s Web site, John Markoff quoted him as explaining his aversion to market research this way: “It’s not the consumers’ job to know what they want.” In other words, while Mr. Jobs tried to understand the problems that technology could solve for his buyer, he wasn’t going to rely on the buyer to demand specific solutions, just so he could avoid ever having to take a risk. This is what’s commonly known as leading.
<snip>
And no politician wants to really innovate without focus groups, to make a sustained argument for any solution that might entail risk or imagination. Our parties are less like Apple and more like General Motors, churning out this year’s streamlined model of the same cars it was asking you to buy 20 years ago. Even the circuitry of the democracy remains essentially unchanged; a nation of voters who can find their cars and pay their mortgages online still can’t envision the day when they can cast their votes from an iPad.

Jobs was clearly a great leader -- we could use more of that.

The quote above shows how leadship affects Detroit, and how the world still see us. [[full article: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2...cians-dont/?hp)

To the complainers about his lack of charitable contributions, don't judge so quickly, nor judge so narrowly. Just because someone doesn't do what you want, doesn't mean they aren't contributing in other ways.

I'm donning my black turtleneck now. RIP