A Look Back At the Career of Steve Jobs

Zothecula writes with a rather extensive piece in Gizmag about Steve Jobs's various business endeavors. From the article: "Revered by many, hated by some, but respected by most, the indisputable fact remains that Steve Jobs is the most successful business leader of his generation and quite possibly of all time. The numbers are impressive in themselves but the most remarkable aspect of his success is how it was achieved. Though he remains at Apple, the end of his tenure as CEO is the end of an era and an opportunity to try and grasp just exactly what it is he did and what lessons there are for all of us 'trying to make a dent in the universe.'"

Comments

Biggest tight wad of all time

[dave562]

http://news.change.org/stories/the-600-billion-challenge-time-for-steve-jobs-to-start-donating

You can't take it with you Steve.

Re:Biggest tight wad of all time

[roman_mir]

. It is a very progressive tax in t

- so because you think it is "progressive", somehow this implies it's not theft? AFAIC "progressive" literally means theft.

There is another huge problem with this type of tax of-course - to be paid, holdings must be liquidated. So in case of Jobs this would literally mean that his shares would have to be sold off, it's a forced sell off, the prices would go down by a large amount, and I imagine that the biggest proponent of wealth tax - Buffet, would come in and feast on this sale. It's his business after all, to buy businesses sold on fire sales due to inheritance tax.

Should a man not be able to leave the money he made over the course of his life to his family? If you believe that, then you obviously are not on the same frequency as I am, because I believe in private property. Of-course this is none of my business, what Jobs does, but the principle of the thing matters.

Do you also believe that money would be better spent by government, rather than by private business? That is just sick, and I gave my answer to a similar question here.

Re:Biggest tight wad of all time

[roman_mir]

The correct fix to the money in political speech of-course is to stop government from dictating to the businesses, from counterfeiting fiat, setting interest rates, starting illegal wars, etc. That's the way to get money out of the political process - don't let the government do anything that deals with wealth redistribution and there will be no reason to give money to government if you just want your specific business agenda to be subsidized and competition destroyed.

As long as government regulates/taxes/subsidizes business, basically controls outcomes in business, some of that business will be government.

Re:Biggest tight wad of all time

[roman_mir]

You didn't take my answer seriously I suppose, because I understand political progressivism, specifically where it concerns economics, and I see it literally as theft. What does it have to do with American History of the 20th century classes? My conclusion is based on understanding this movement, not on any kind of misunderstanding.

Theodore Roosevelt, Wilson, FDR and LBJ are noted Progressives.

- precisely. Thieves and political hacks.

I believe that the Estate Tax system, even if the Bush cuts are repealed, will not lead to all of an estate's wealth going to the government, at the same time with an Estate Tax, it does not create a noble class of ultra wealthy land owners. I don't see government spending and welfare as an evil.

- why do you think it is wrong for me to disagree on these points? I cannot be pro-estate tax or pro-government spending. I see government spending as the actual key problem, which creates the poverty, doesn't remove it.

Poverty, AFAIC, is created by government spending (and regulating/taxing/subsidizing) and wealth is created by the private sector investment. Government is not (or shouldn't be) here to invest. It's here with a specific spending function - protect liberties. That's all that all of the government must be concerned with.

You see, people left other countries and they came to America and they created a system, a government, which recognized that the most important thing in this life for anybody is their personal individual liberties, and that was the single purpose of having a government - having a government to occupy the government void, which must be filled in by something, and if you must have this void filled in, you better fill it in with something that helps you and doesn't hurt you.

At least in USA government's only function is supposed to be protection of liberties and all other rights, and government is supposed to be there to limit your rights, which are not given to you by the government. The rights that you have are intrinsic and you set up the government only with one clear cut purpose - protect those rights and liberties.

I see any form of welfare by government spending as evil, as it is a way to take over people's liberties, and that's not what the government was authorized to do.

The tax rates of WWII era were high, but nobody paid them, because nobody paid themselves those salaries. People wrote every spending off the company and it was easy, there were no computer records. Effective income tax rate in USA never went over 18% anyway.

As to lowest unemployment past WWII, well of-course, government finally stopped spending after the war was over and it allowed the depression to stop and since 1947 there was growth helped by USA's virtual monopoly on labor (on production, because USA had intact infrastructure and others didn't).

There will be many comments here, that will be personal in nature, I will not bother responding. So if you keep it civil I will, but again, I obviously see any type of 'progressive' attitude towards economics as theft.

Ten Times

[ericdano]

Ten Times the man Bill Gates is. Bill Gates is now trying to buy his way to people liking him.

Steve Jobs legacy

[Wyatt Earp]

He, along with Larry Ellison set the douchebag CEO bar very high.

You really have no idea what you are talking about

[mjwx]

Apple has generally been a good corporate citizen in terms of supporting open standards where they have no value-added differentiation--that's about all you could hope for out of a business

That's an odd way of writing "Apple have generally tried to push their proprietary standards above open standards and even when they used the same standards as everyone else they made proprietary plugs so they would not work with off the shelf components from other manufacturers without having to buy an expensive converter".

For years they pushed AppleTalk over TCP/IP, even after OS X.
Firewire over USB.
They have a custom Dport connector (proprietary connector on open standard)
iWhatever has a proprietary USB connector.

Apple's been actively rejecting the standards other people use, open or otherwise. There is no HDMI on Mac products, No VGA ports (every projector has a VGA port, mac users just couldn't connect to them without headaches), tried forcing ZipDisks when everyone was using floppy disks, 2007 Macs still did not have +/- DVD writers (they choked on -R blank DVD's) and just this year, Apple have made the hard drives in 2011 Imacs non-upgradable.

Firewire is a standard, so is Thunderbolt

Firewire and Thunderbolt are not open standards, they are proprietary and Apple charge a fee for their use. That's why everyone uses USB and the laptop I just bought does not have a IEEE 1394 connector. If you want to legally sell something with an Ipod connector (I.E. a car stereo or Ipod dock), you need to pay Apple a licensing fee. So not open, in fact, that's almost as far from open as you can get.

I think you need to start taking your medication again, you're clearly seeing things that aren't there.

Re:Vision

[mjwx]

Regardless of what you think of Mr. Jobs' company's products, you must admit the man had an almost unparalleled vision for the future.

A world where everyone was the same, did the same things with the same devices. Where the ability to make your own decisions on what you did with your devices was removed and placed with a gatekeeper. Where you were told from people higher then you what was and wasn't allowed. A world where individuality and independent thought are shunned and one must love the company, any disagreement is violently quashed.

Steve Jobs didn't dream that future up, but I do have to give him credit for merging the worst ideas of Huxley's Brave New World and Orwell's Nineteen Eightey-Four into one giant nightmare.