The Unexpected Patents of Steve Jobs

Harry writes "It's no surprise that Steve Jobs' name is among those credited in Apple's patents for MacBooks, iPods, and other iconic gadgets galore. But the man holds patents for packaging, a staircase, iPod cases, and several intriguing products that Apple hasn't built to date. They all add up to an interesting portrait of the world's most famous tech CEO."

Comments

Re:Don't Forget the Lanyard

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Probably a fair indication of what kind of leader you have on your hands ... definitely marketing/business for Gates.

Wait, what? Did I miss the irony?

You think Jobs contributed in any technical way to any Apple product? Heritic! May the Woz have mercy on your soul.

And a patent that references 47 other patents is far less impressive than vice-versa.

Re:Really? The *infamous*?

[Colonel Korn]

His philanthropic accomplishments are certainly praiseworthy, but it's worth remembering that his vast wealth was mainly accumulated with some really unpleasent business tactics.

See "A History of Anticompetitive Behavior and Consumer Harm"

http://www.ecis.eu/documents/Finalversion_Consumerchoicepaper.pdf
 

Jobs has led his company through fewer, but still not close to zero, unpleasant business tactics. On a personal note, he goes out of his way to make his employees unhappy. He's also fabulously wealthy, and he doesn't give significant money to charity, where Gates has so far given half of his wealth away. Gates seems like the rather bad for some other businesses and good for the people he's affected, where Jobs is moderately bad for other businesses (or perhaps much worse, considering the inability of other companies to produce make clones) and terrible for the people he directly affects.

Re:Don't Forget the Lanyard

[falcon5768]

While Jobs is certainly not technical minded, in terms of design he HAS been the main patent holder, and main developer on a lot of items. The iMac g4 in particular that the article cites was almost ALL Jobs, it was well known in the company he spend months working on the arm before handing it off to Ives and the Engineers to test and finalize.

Re:Don't Forget the Lanyard

[Anonymous Coward]

"You think Jobs contributed in any technical way to any Apple product?"

Actually, yes.

Jobs is nowhere near technically competent as Woz, but can hold his own. Probably better than most coders here. Woz would probably agree if asked.

I know in the project that ended up being OS X, he was one of five engineers developing the product and while his role was more along the lines of project manager, he would get his hands dirty occasionally and contribute code or fix others foul ups.

I know this goes against the heavily manicured image he likes to maintain...he wants to be seen as the inspiration and not the source, but he still has a lot of geek pride. Those that work closely with him know that he is as willing to tear a piece of hardware apart as look at it...or ask to see the source. Occasionally his 'revisions' are more zenlike reductions of the code (which goes along with the infamous ordering of the engineers to align resistors on the back of the iMac circuit board to be more aesthetic). Those not within his inner circle only get to see the superficial side of all of this.

Left anonymous for obvious reasons.

Re:Don't Forget the Lanyard

[Have Brain Will Rent]

Hmmm so my two patents on fire and the wheel aren't as impressive as your 47 patents on lanyards? OK, good to know. ;)

BTW speaking as someone whose work has received more than one patent I can tell you that someone's name being on a patent doesn't necessarily mean they contributed in any intellectual way. They may simply have provided money. I'm not dismissing the importance of money to a design coming into existence but I'm not so sure that anyone should be listed as an inventor if they didn't make an intellectual contribution to the design.

Re:Don't Forget the Lanyard

[je ne sais quoi]

According to this, Jobs does more than just act as cheerleader, at least while he was at NeXT:

Just as with the Macintosh, Jobs devoted most of his attention to the user interface and physical design of the case, probably because he wasn't a trained engineer. Jobs designed the Macintosh as a personal information appliance.

If you look at those patents in TFA, they're mostly related to design. It is not stretch of the imagination that Jobs actually designed the cases for those patents while working at Apple the second time.

Jobs might charm smart people, etc., but there is substantial evidence that Jobs does more than that. Yes, it actually looks like he works for a living sometimes.