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World Cup Memo Written By Steve Jobs Going Up For Auction
New submitter Dega704 writes with an excerpt from El Reg: "Before Steve Jobs came up with the iPhone or even the Apple II, he designed paddles for ball-flipping games at Atari where the scruffy 19-year-old was employed to improve game design. Sotheby's New York will auction off a document dating from Jobs's time there: a 1974 report that Jobs wrote for his boss suggesting ways to improve arcade game World Cup. According to Jobs' biography, his Atari days are most notable for his clashes with colleagues, who he considered to be 'dumb shits'. He was made to work night shifts there partly because he was in a phase of refusing to wash and so he apparently smelt bad, causing complaints from his co-workers. But Jobs obviously did some work at Atari too, with the document laying out his ideas for improving player experience. The typed four-page document includes three circuit designs in pencil and additional designs for the paddles and alignment of players defending a soccer goal."
Steve JOBS came up with the Apple II? I don't think so.
I'm going to be a billionaire!
He's venerated as a demi-god but like many high/over achievers he was also complete prick.
Sorry Steve.
What does a post about Steve Jobs have to do with geniuses?
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He employs them in his apple stores
I laughed, then I realized you might be serious... so I laughed harder.
Well, he may have come up with the design for the thing. After all, if a computer or a smartphone is simply a bunch of chips soldered, screwed or superglued together, then Apple would be selling iBoards and the iBerry Pi, instead of selling the iMac and the iPhone.
You may want to look up the definition of the word. It probably has many more meanings than you suspect.
P.S. - why are some people never happy unless they're ripping down someone else?
It's not about deriving pleasure from ripping people down. It's about treating pond scum like Thomas Edison or Steve Jobs like they did something good for society.
He was a user-interaction genius, not necessarily a technical genius. He knew what people would want without them first knowing they wanted it.
Table-ized A.I.
I thought it was going to be a memo about how to improve the snoozefest that is soccer/futbol.
Let's see...
Nope, still not worth watching.
I find it odd that, with his background is video games, the mac is not a more successful gaming platform.
To hear about a young man on a path to providing joy and happiness to millions, only to lose his way and become a business executive. Where did we fail you Steve. You clearly had the potential. Antisocial, poor hygiene, you had all the traits of a budding young geek. Then somewhere a terrible turn south. Perhaps we'll never know.
To see the same phenomena in a scientific genius just pick up any bio of Issac Newton, he was widely recognised in his own lifetime as genius of the highest caliber by the public, and a common arsehole by his collegues and relatives. "American idol" style fawning over an arsehole who happens to also be a genius is definitely not something new.
Like him or not
I don't go out of my way to read about Jobs, Woz, BillG, et al, but I I like Woz as a person from what I've seen of him, Jobs I'm still undecided. None of that detracts from their status as modern day geniuses.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Any game that ends in a 0-0 tie is not entertaining to watch
Not always, but it often is. It's not always about the score, or winners and losers but how the game is played.
No doubt though, you also only watch car racing for the crashes.
Let's assume for a moment that your claim that he has not accomplished anything in his life is correct. That would make his value to humanity practically zero. That puts him above those that have had negative net effects on humanity. I don't think it is unreasonable to say that Edison and Jobs fit into that category.
That said, Edison and Jobs being total cunts says nothing about whether or not they were actually geniuses.
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Generally only people who other people care about end up on magazine covers. Magazines don't make these people up. That's what Reality TV is for.
Seriously, though, unless you're reading the Entertainment/Tabloid rags, you're reading about people who attained notoriety independently of being on some cover because magazines are not going to be bought if there is a Nobody on the cover. Perhaps their achievements get blown out of proportion or amplified by later coverage, but in general there's a reason they are there and people are writing about them.
Note that Apple became the behemoth that it is now when Jobs came back. That's worthy of note. Perhaps he rode on others' shoulders while being a dick to them, but it is an open and valid question to ask whether those same people would have combined in the way they did to achieve without Jobs being there and being an asshole to them. I'd say its a safe bet he made things happen, even if he couldn't actually create the hardware himself like Woz might have been able to.
I mean, who would Woz be without Steve Jobs? A really good engineer that very few people had ever heard of. There are probably engineers who have 10x the considerable skill of a Woz who will never do shit with their ability because they couldn't find opportunities to make their stuff count. There are a lot of bullshit artists in the world, but few have the capability to actually turn that into something that delivers.
I don't particularly like the person I've read about, and don't think I would have liked him in person, but he was quite clever in his own right, and a genius in figuring out what was needed and assembling the right team to do it. That's possibly even rarer than technical genius..
If you look closely at the document, you can see where he erased "Wozniak" and wrote "Jobs"...
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.