How Steve Jobs' Legacy Has Changed

On the anniversary of Steve Jobs' death, reader SternisheFan sends in a story from CNN about how the Apple co-founder's legacy has changed since then. "... in the 12 months since, as high-profile books have probed Jobs' life and career, that reputation has evolved somewhat. Nobody has questioned Jobs' seismic impact on computing and our communication culture. But as writers have documented Jobs' often callous, controlling personality, a fuller portrait of the mercurial Apple CEO has emerged. 'Everyone knows that Steve had his "rough" side. That's partially because he really did have a rough side and partially because the rough Steve was a better news story than the human Steve,' said Ken Segall, author of Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple's Success.' ... In Steve Jobs, Isaacson crafted a compelling narrative of how Jobs' co-founded Apple with Steve Wozniak, got pushed out of the struggling company a decade later and then returned in the late 1990s to begin one of the most triumphant second acts in the annals of American business. But he also spent many pages chronicling the arrogant, cruel behavior of a complicated figure who could inspire people one minute and demean them the next. According to the book, Jobs would often berate employees whose work he didn't like. He was notoriously difficult to please and viewed people and products in black and white terms. They were either brilliant or 'sh-t.' 'Among Apple employees, I'd say his reputation hasn't changed one bit. If anything, it's probably grown because they've realized how central his contributions were,' Lashinsky said. 'History tends to forgive people's foibles and recognize their accomplishments. When Jobs died, he was compared to Edison and Henry Ford and to Disney. I don't know what his place will be in history 30, 40, 50 years from now. And one year is certainly not enough time (to judge).'" Apple has posted a tribute video on their homepage today.

Comments

A year already?

[SirGarlon]

Since Steve Jobs has been in the headlines every freaking day since he died, I would never have guess it happened a whole year ago.

Re:A year already?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since Steve Jobs has been in the headlines every freaking day since he died, I would never have guess it happened a whole year ago.

in our society we glorify sociopathic assholes who only care about making money and enforcing their narcissistic vision.

Re:A year already?

[am 2k]

in our society we glorify sociopathic assholes who only care about making money and enforcing their narcissistic vision.

In Isaacson's book, there's a chapter on how Jobs told Larry Ellison to stop caring so much about making money, and thinking more about the products. I don't think making money was his driving force. I definitely won't argue about the other two characteristics you've described, though :)

Re:A year already?

[Valor958]

I certainly don't like Apple, and didn't like Jobs... but I completely understand why he did what he did, and the vision he had. He gave an interview on NPR I listened to, where he basically laid it all out. He was emulating his father and ideals he and his father shared. Make everything come together and function together. The walled garden approach the Apple embodies has it's ups and downs like any other business model. The major flaw, imho, is their approach and implementation. Jobs was a severely flawed person, and in a seat of power to make his flaws more glaringly apparent, with fuel for the fire.
I say let the man rest in peace, and let Apple go where it may. Apple will NEVER advance if they keep trying to emulate Jobs. Jobs was not Apple, and Apple can and will survive without him. But now, they have the opportunity to change.

Re:A year already?

[am 2k]

Apple will NEVER advance if they keep trying to emulate Jobs. Jobs was not Apple, and Apple can and will survive without him. But now, they have the opportunity to change.

While I agree with you, the last time Apple tried to change post-Jobs, it went horribly wrong. There's a huge difference when career managers are in the driver's seat, compared to the ones that founded the company and defined its core values. I think Steve Jobs wanted to avoid that when he nurtured his successors (Tim Cook & Jony Ive) early, but that also means they're probably reluctant to change too much of his success strategy. We'll see how long they will be in control, but I'm afraid of what will come afterwards.

Re:A year already?

[TheLink]

I've said it before but I'll say it again: Steve Jobs was an asshole. But one with taste. Many people can emulate the assholeness (and do) but they have no sense of taste.

You can scream at the chefs and cooks in the kitchen as much as you like but if you have no sense of taste your restaurant isn't going to do well. But if you have a sense of taste, when you scream at them because something isn't great deep down everybody knows you are right and so even though the screaming isn't pleasant (or maybe even necessary) a fair number will accept it. And if you have an exquisite sense of taste, when you go "This is Insanely Great", they know you are right too, and it feels like a real achievement and affirmation.

I personally believe there is no need to be an asshole to get people to do great work. But you really do need to know what is good and what is crap.

Last sentence

[Anonymous Coward]

"And one year is certainly not enough time (to judge)."

So what's the point of this article then?

Re:Last sentence

[dkleinsc]

So what's the point of this article then?

pageviews and ad revenue, I presume.

Re:Last sentence

[bhagwad]

I think 30-40 years later history will in fact judge him poorly compared to Edison and Ford. I mean refining a smartphone design is one thing. But do we really want to compare it with the world changing achievements of mass vehicular transport and light bulbs and DC current.

Let's get some perspective huh?

Re:Last sentence

[kthreadd]

And flame wars!

Re:Last sentence

[serviscope_minor]

your life has been irrevocably changed along with the majority (50.4%) of the United States population.

Um, you are aware that Apple didn't actually invent the smartphone? They produced a particularly well refined model of smartphone, but the term smartphone itself wasn't even new when the iPhone came out.

To have a nice car analogy. Ferarri make very nice cars (if you like that wort of thing). However, if Ferrari fans were like Apple fans, most of them would claim that Ferarri invented the fast car, the car, the steering wheel, the idea of gears and all sorts of other things.

Naturally, noone is silly enough to make the claim about Ferarri. But id doesn't detract from the vehicles they make. However, Apple fans seem to insist the same for Apple products.

Just the other day, I was arguing with a chap here who claimed Apple invented the thin light laptop. I pointed to the X505, which debuted many years before the Air. The response was ah but it's not the same because (a) it's black and (b) didn't have a trackpad. So, therefore Apple invented the thin light laptop.

You, apparently feel the same about smartphones.

If you suggest that Apple made computing mobile to any previous user of a PalmPilot, Sharp Zaurus, Nokia N95, hell or TRS 80 for that matter, not to mention a thousand other plaftorms, you will be mocked for your ignorance.

You may at this point claim you're referring to the masses (you weren't), but what has that got to do with me or many of the people here. We were using portable computing devices before and we will keep using them. Apple has had no bearing on my life in this regard.

Re:Last sentence

[bfandreas]

Why should Jobs be remembered in 50 years? I mean, the world has forgotten Thomas Watson even tho there were two of them.
This jobsian cult of personality is something that absolutely eludes me.
And yet, at this very moment, somewhere somebody is building a shrine to Jobs using the traditional building materials. Mashed potatoes and your own eyebrows.
Madness. Translucent computers and phones you can operate by licking them. Madness, I tell you!

Re:Last sentence

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if Samsung's CEO will give himself pancreatic cancer, and make sure his tombstone has rounded corners /too soon?

Re:Last sentence

[bhagwad]

No they weren't. Check out the history of the light bulb. The carbon filament pioneered by Edison was able to give out the correct amounts of light without melting it and he was able to create the necessary vacuum that enabled it to function. Before that, light bulbs were just not usable.

Edison's fight light bulb test lasted for 13.5 hrs - an immensely large amount of time (in those days) that only increased as he perfected his design.

Sorry, but there's no comparing this true functional achievement with prettifying smartphones.

Re:Last sentence

[the_B0fh]

They didn't invent the smartphone. They invented a good and usable one.

There's a reason why v0.1 of Android looked like the blackberry, and just about every single smartphone on the market looks like the iPhone now rather than the blackberry.

Re:Last sentence

[Dixie_Flatline]

It's not the re-invention of the smartphone that was Jobs' greatest contribution to the market, it was creating a phone that was designed the way he wanted (and the way consumers wanted) and then forcing the telecom industry to use his phone, and not dictate terms back to him.

The reason why smartphones stagnated and were such a small niche before the iPhone wasn't purely on the basis of usability, it was also because telcos like calling the shots and bending you over.

If you don't like that Steve Jobs was, by all accounts, a bit off his nut, just remember that it was THAT personality that turned the tables on the music and telecom industries. You can hate Jobs, but you can't help but admire someone that forged the way in making the technology that we want available to us. Perhaps it was bound to happen, but I bet it happened faster because of him.

I loathe telecom companies, and the established music industry isn't far behind. Anyone that can wedge themselves in there and start breaking down their control is good in my books.

If you don't care about people

[davide marney]

You can get a lot done in this world if you don't care about people and give yourself free reign to push, abuse, over-praise, or cajole them to get where you want them to go. Its too bad you have to be horrible person to bring out the best in people.

Re:If you don't care about people

[BasilBrush]

I never met, let alone worked for Steve Jobs, but I did have a teacher that outsiders might have described like this:

"But he also spent many pages chronicling the arrogant, cruel behavior of a complicated figure who could inspire people one minute and demean them the next. According to the book, Jobs would often berate employees whose work he didn't like. He was notoriously difficult to please and viewed people and products in black and white terms. They were either brilliant or 'sh-t.'"

(Substituting student for employee, and work for product. And note this was a teacher of adults, not children.)

The outsider would be wrong in thinking that the teacher didn't care about his students - he wanted the best for them. It's that he taught Via Negativa, a pedagogical technique more common in continental Europe. That the way to get people to produce the best, original work is to heavily criticise that which is not good or average or unoriginal. Those without talent will fall by the wayside, but those with talent end up producing their best work.

Those who have never experienced it, or who fell by the wayside, won't understand the rewards of working under this technique. But the proof is in the results.

Jobs himself could not be reached for comment

[Anonymous Coward]

Since we couldn't find the road to Hell with our iPhone 5.

Re:well sometimes customers are dumb

[geogob]

These kinds of comments make me sad. Obviously, the apple product have no appeal for you. You fail to see the interest in them, which is ok. But you also fail to understand others might have other views, other needs, other interests and different values. You fail to see that you fail to see. You believe your view is the only view; a sort of anti-fanboy.

Although you are correct on many points - and I would understand anyone saying "these products are not for me" based on these points - you wave a positions as bad, if not worse, than those "fanboy" you cry about. You have the right to your view. But believing a large consumer group is misled based on your personal view is so arrogant. It makes me sad.

Move along

[damaki]

Jobs has been dead for a year and I don't care. His being dead was news, but this is no news and totally uninteresting.
Has any new line of text popped up in his biography? No.

Jobs' abrasiveness at work wasn't the problem

[crazyjj]

It was his complete sociopathic disregard for even those in his non-work life that was the problem. This was a guy who tried to deny his daughter's paternity, had an almost pathological hatred of charity (even ending all of Apple's charitable programs when he came back in the 90's), and routinely screwed over even friends and family for money.

His problem wasn't that he was demanding or brutally honest at work. I can respect that. His problem is that he was a complete and total heartless asshole in every aspect of his life. And, if Marley was right, I imagine he's wearing a very ponderous chain indeed right now, made of tons of electronic junk that will be forgotten within a matter of years.

Re:Jobs' abrasiveness at work wasn't the problem

[interkin3tic]

This was a guy who tried to deny his daughter's paternity, had an almost pathological hatred of charity (even ending all of Apple's charitable programs when he came back in the 90's), and routinely screwed over even friends and family for money.

And Henry Ford was an anti-semite, Walt Disney was at least accused of being one too. Edison was a bigger jerk. He even electrocuted an elephant in an effort to spread FUD about the competition. A public legacy often ignores some very glaring faults: society is fairly willing to forgive and forget the details. After all, we're not remembering those people so much as we are remembering what they did for us.

That said, the culture on the internet is more cynical than people are talking around the watercooler. If this discussion right here is any indication, Jobs may have come a little too late for his personal foibles to be similarly forgotten. In fact, thanks to The Oatmeal, there seems to be some going back and adding those negative details into Edison's legacy.

Re:Pointless article but...

[crazyjj]

The Commodore 64 and Jack Tramiel will be remembered for making the computer cheap enough to turn the masses into geeks.

FTFY

Edison, Ford and Disney eh?

[SmallFurryCreature]

Gosh, I happen to like the program QI and Edison I learned from that program was a thief. Jeremy Clackson described Ford as someone about who nothing good could be said with Ford being an outright nazi and Disney is not much better.

If that is supposed to be Jobs GOOD legacy bit, I hate to see what his BAD legacy is going to look like.

The real legacy of these people is now after all that they didn't real do what they did, that what they did had already been done and that their personalities sucked.

Jobs didn't invent the smartphone, he didn't invent the computer and if he had never been, tech would still have happened just with different logo's. There is a lesson in there, humanity is more then just a handful of names. And our advances happened at multiple times in multiple locations, it doesn't depend on ONE person. The one person type people are the ones who like to think in thousand year empires. I actually find it quite comforting that if X didn't introduce the phone, Y would have. I don't need fake heroes to look up to. Jobs was a prick and his legacy will either be that he made such a terror of himself that Apple failed immediately without him OR he made such a terror and when he died Apple did just fine without him.

Either ending, he is still a prick. And what did it all get him? An early grave. If you wonder why I hate him? He sought out alternative medicine at the end, lending credibility to that evil which has seen the death of many.

It's LONG been clear what Jobs was, good AND bad

[DavidinAla]

It surprises me that some people act shocked to find out about the negative parts of Steve Jobs' personality. Anybody who was even halfway paying attention for the past few decades knew about his dark sides. It's very common, of course, for great achievers to come with strong negatives, so it was no surprise. But even if you didn't understand that it's true in general, the specifics have been out there about Jobs for many, many years. He was a visionary genius (even if a lot of technical-minded people still don't understand that), but he was also very cruel, selfish and overbearing at times. The truth has been very clear for a long time. Those trying to make him just a hero OR just a villain are off track. He was far too complicated for either of those roles.

Re:This sentence tells me a lot about Jobs.

[garcia]

Black and white thinking is the thinking of someone who's in adolescence or an alcoholic.

The irony in your statement is astounding.

Check the market share

[sjbe]

Even in the US, the Apple II seemed to have occupied the same niche as Britain's BBC Micro - a "respectable" computer for the slightly-to-very wealthy, and agencies like schools answerable to the political elite.

Nope. Apple II computers were in pretty much every school you cared to walk into during the 1980s at least in the US. In fact we still had Apple II computers in schools well into the 1990s. As a result Apple was often the first choice (budget permitting) of computer for people at home along for middle class (and up) families along with the cheaper C64. The IBM PC and clones were the dominant force from about 1984-5 onward along with the Mac to a much lesser extent. By 1988 the Apple II and C64 were in low single digit market share.

The computers that built the revolution were the Commodore 64, Atari X[LE], the Sinclair Spectrum, et al. Those were the machines you'd find if you skydived into a random neighborhood and broke into the first house you saw. Those were the computers we used.

Aside from the C64 the market share numbers say otherwise. The Sinclair, and Atari computers barely made a dent and never got above 5% market share combined. The Apple II got up to between 10-15% market share and stayed there until about 1985 when the Mac was introduced.

I'm not dissing Jobs here but I think Apple's contribution to the revolution is severely overrated.

No, it probably isn't. Many of the things you take for granted these days were really made mainstream by Apple. (note I didn't say invented, just made mainstream) That's not to diminish the contributions of others, Apple certainly didn't do it all themselves by any means. But Apple played a key role in the way things actually played out. I'd say that the contributions of others might be underrated but I can't really say that Apple's contributions are overrated.

But it's also obvious that without Apple, the revolution would have happened anyway.

Yes it would have. And it would have been different. But that does not diminish the role that Apple played in what actually did happen.

Re:We will forget him.

[CanHasDIY]

Henry Ford wasn't an elitist?

Dunno; here's what I do know about Ford:

- he popularized the semi-automated assembly line, a technology which allowed mass production to significantly decrease the cost of durable goods.
- he pretty much 'invented' the 40-hour work week; prior to Ford, most industry occupations were 12-16 hours a day, 6 or 7 days a week.
- He insisted on paying his employees well, citing that well paid workers are happy workers who both work harder, and purchase the products they themselves built, a win-win for Ford.

In spite of all his faults, Henry Ford was a true visionary deserving of the praise he receives; Jobs, on the other hand, was less a visionary and more a brilliant marketing guy... which is probably a feat all its own, but personally I don't hold marketing monkeys in very high regard.

Re:Good News Apple Fans!

[siride]

Catching and receiving are the same thing.

Re:What do you think Edison and Ford did?

[VGPowerlord]

Ford did not invent the Automobille. What they did was popularize these technologies by refining them and making them more practical, and yes, marketing them.

Ford didn't invent the automobile, he created the modern factory that uses assembly lines, which drove production costs way down. We still use these to produce all sorts of manufactured goods over a century later, albeit with significantly more automation.

To make this more on topic: iPhones and the like are produced in factories that use these ideas.

His role as a studio head

[Animats]

Everybody seems to miss this, but many of Jobs' successes were because he was a movie studio head. He was also CEO of Pixar.

Jobs didn't really run Pixar; Lassiter did. Jobs had the sense to leave the moviemakers alone. But being a studio head gave him enormous clout in Hollywood. This is what make the iTunes store possible.

A successful music-delivery service required deals with the music industry. Others, notably Napster, had tried to put deals together, without success. But Jobs had a big advantage.

Hollywood is very hierarchical. At the top of the hierarchy are studio heads. Everybody in Hollywood will take a call from a studio head. Including the music industry, which is outranked by the film industry. Jobs was in a position to call up the heads of record labels and talk to them as an equal, if not a superior.

When iTunes started, Apple was nowhere; under 10% market share in computers and unknown in consumer electronics. It wasn't Apple's clout that made iTunes happen. It was Jobs' status as head of Pixar.

Everything since then has been a logical extension of Apple's entry into the entertainment industry. The iPod provided a smaller unit for delivering iTunes content. The iPhone added features in the iPod form factor. Movies, then apps, were fitted into the distribution chain designed for music.