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The Cult of Elon Musk Shines With Steve Jobs' Aura
HughPickens.com writes Alan Boyle writes that over the years, Elon Musk's showmanship, straight-ahead smarts and far-out ideas have earned him a following that spans the geek spectrum — to the point that some observers see glimmers of the aura that once surrounded Apple's Steve Jobs. "To me, it feels like he's the most obvious inheritor of Steve Jobs' mantle," says Ashlee Vance, who's writing a biography of Musk that at one time had the working title The Iron Man. "Obviously, Steve Jobs' products changed the world ... [But] if Elon's right about all these things that he's after, his products should ultimately be more meaningful than what Jobs came up with. He's the guy doing the most concrete stuff about global warming." So what is Musk's vision? What motivates Musk at the deepest level? "It's his Mars thing," says Vance. Inspired in part by the novels of Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein, Musk has come around to the view that humanity's long-term future depends on extending its reach beyond Earth, starting with colonies on Mars. Other notables like physicist Stephen Hawking have laid out similar scenarios — but Musk is actually doing something to turn those interplanetary dreams into a reality. Vance thinks that Musk is on the verge of breaking out from geek guru status to a level of mass-market recognition that's truly on a par with the late Steve Jobs. Additions to the Tesla automotive line, plus the multibillion-dollar promise of Tesla's battery-producing "gigafactory" in Nevada, could push Musk over the edge. "Tesla, as a brand, really does seem to have captured the public's imagination. ... All of a sudden he's got a hip product that looks great, and it's creating jobs. The next level feels like it's got to be that third-generation, blockbuster mainstream product. The story is not done."
In OK with this, especially since the major difference between the two is that Musk is actually innovating, instead of just making great packaging and hype.
I was always under the impression that the movie version of Tony Stark was based on Larry Ellison. Since when did Elon Musk become Iron Man?
Top Gear reviews his car, it breaks, they tow it back, find it blew a fuse, do some more tests, it flattens its battery. He does misdirections and deceptions, e.g. complaining that it didn't need to be towed back, which was false, (how could they know the fault could be fixed on the track when the cause of the fault wasn't known).
NYT reviews it, gives a basically correct article, his response was to seize on minor detail and portray the reviewer as a liar.
He fails to deliver his rockets on time, costing NASA tens of millions, and he does a verbal attack on NASA.
Face it, he's a little shit who covers his mistakes and his products weaknesses with astroturf and false PR.
I'm all looking around for the cologne advertisement.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I think it's actually Obama who's done the most on climate change concretely. He signed into law new fuel economy standards that will double the fuel called me a new vehicles. Elon musk is selling a couple thousand cars a year, well Obama standards will affect millions of cars every year.
Elon Musk is basically set up to be a supervillain... probably Hugo Drax.
They did? I sort of thought he just "invented" slightly tweaked things that already existed and respectively made the second most popular version of them, and then the most popular version of them.
At least with the computer you could say that he was the co-designer of the modern computer, designer because neither of them invented the idea just popularised and commercialised on the idea. But I am not sure that the Apple computer really had that much sway on the idea of what the PC is/was.
And while he was the leader in mp3 players and then smartphones, I am not sure that his designs were anything other that high-quality copies of what others had already done well before him. If Jobs was a leader in anything it was of aesthetic design and branding. Musk is the new Jobs, but he seems to be doing a better job of actually leading the pack instead of just following.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
... Elon Musk isn't a marketing savant (fraud) and actually has some high god damn education in science and engineering and knows his shit unlike Jobs.
Elon Musk is the marketing/charisma of Steve Jobs [without being a douchebag], and the technical prowess of the not so often talked about Steve Wozniak who deserves more rep than Jobs.
None of his current enterprises has ever made a dime, nor do they have immediate prospects to do so.
If SpaceX's production costs for Falcon 9 actually are what he says that they are, they have a prospect of making a profit with the sales they have already booked. It hasn't made a profit yet, in that it hasn't paid back the initial investment costs, but the numbers look good.
One thing that does bother me a little is that all the successes of SpaceX get attributed to Elon Musk. They have a lot of hard working, very smart and creative people working for Space X, who have their accomplishments left in shadow because of the blinding glow of Musk's personal aura. It's not all Elon Musk!
Electric cars were one of the FIRST automobiles. It wasn't until gasoline was able to be produced in greater quantities and cheaper because of "cracking" that the internal combustion engine took off.
Musk is not an innovator. He is taking advantage of the latest battery technology (developed by others) and trying to produce an electric car - which has been attempted on an off for almost 180 years.
Musk is a promotor just like Jobs.
http://www.latimes.com/busines...
His 2010 cameo in Iron Man 2 didn't hurt either, and neither did the use of SpaceX for filming of some scenes.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ve...
It also helps that unlike Ellison his products are both physical and have direct practicality for most of the population so he is more easily associated with the inventor aspect of Tony Stark persona.
Signature red color of his space-age car is another bonus.
And so is the whole "rocket man" thing.
In comparison, Ellison is more like Tony Stark BEFORE Iron Man.
Yachting billionaire who collects cars, jets, islands and women and has a million dollar entertainment system which uses a swimming pool as a subwoofer, while his "charity" donations seem mostly to revolve around lawsuits.
As for comparison to Steve Jobs...
As the Iron Man 2 article above stated, Steve Jobs has "always been less Iron Man, more Willy Wonka".
Who, while espousing such lines as "Do you want to sell sugared water for the rest of your life? Or do you want to come with me and change the world?" ended up selling overpriced toys.
While Musk actually seems to be trying to actively fulfill the second part of that quote.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Musk is way better in this area. Most of Job's worshipers are those who buy apple products. One only need to read articles about Musk to become his worshiper
is what all the boys are wearing.
I mean, we got a planet we have not yet burnt into the ground to work with. Mars is a much worse starting point than Earth. And if we burn Mars through in the two centuries of industrialization it took us to start the downfall of Earth, what then? Interstellar colonialization happens in time frames that are much longer than how long we apparently plan our Earth to last.
Really, even if interstellar colonialization and a burnt planet strategy is going to be a thing, we still have to make Earth last hundreds of thousands of postindustrial years to make that fly as a concept.
Don't idolize a celebrity businessman, athlete, entertainer, or politician, they'll end up disappointing you every time.
Musk is more the Antithesis of Jobs
http://www.teslamotors.com/blo...
This! It's the dirty capitalists in Detroit (and worldwide) who have made cars more fuel efficient and reduced the carbon footprint significantly. The politicians have done nothing but lie and steal to get more power.
Musk invented nothing.
And your slight and anger just shows that there is a cult around Musk - irrational emotonal outbursts are a sure sign of a cultist.
"Oh my god! Someone criticized my HERO! Time for a flaming!"
Here is what _I_ consider to be an innovator.
Musk is just a salesmen.
Unlike that showman Jobs who, as mentioned, just put the useful stuff in a pretty package and ended up turning it and a logo into a cult, The Woz actually did the real work, at least in the beginning, and he still is doing so today, yet still always in the background.
Musk is Woz with charisma and business sense, or being like Jobs or Ellison with morals.
Nor is Elon (yet?) a cult or fashion icon: his companies are not selling overpriced junk that people buy just because his name or his companies' name on them.
(Digression: just looked at Ellison's picture on Wikipedia--he looks like a Hollyweird version of the Devil himself!)
Oh, and I see the Obama cult also made an appearance in this section. How insulting it must be to Elon to be compared to Two-Face!
Fuel economy standards were fixed for 25 years, and the average fuel economy remained constant. Companies design to the standard.
Quite so. Companies don't compete on fuel economy and fuel economy is usually about 20th on the list of things car buyers actually care about. So unless the government forces their hand either directly through mandated standards or indirectly through gasoline taxes, car companies are going to meet the fuel economy standards and not much more. I fully expect our current fuel standards to not be updated for another 20-30 years regardless of what might be actually achievable.
It's important to know what companies can achieve so you don't make impossible goals, but standards drive change.
Nothing in even the most absurd proposal for CAFE standards was technologically impossible and it is unlikely that it was economically impossible either despite protests from certain groups. We have the technology TODAY to make cars that get well over 100mpg or the electric equivalent. They would be quite different from what we are accustomed to seeing on the road but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. (Tesla is a good example) Any automotive engineer (and I am one) who tells you doubling average fuel economy in passenger cars is impossible is either lying or badly misinformed. Modern engines are far more efficient than those from 30 years ago but we've increased the horsepower so much that the net result is (almost) no change in fuel economy.
The cult of Elon Musk is not even remotely close to as devoted as the cult of Ron Paul. When Musk's followers declare their willingness to trumpet very average "accomplishments" as being earth-shattering - and to lay down their own lives to further his ambitions - then he will have an impressive modern cult. Until then he's just a rookie.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Musk is already far beyond Jobs for one simple reason: Jobs methods were EVIL: [1] Walled garden (a business strategy that's made me vow since 1982 to never use an Apple product), [2] overpriced, underpowered crap products that lure rubes in with pretty packaging, [3] vicious control freak personality-- see emails about non-talent-poaching deals, [4] suspicious jump to the top of liver transplant list in a state he'd never set foot in before, following earlier refusal of standard medical treatment. Not to mention personally ripping off Woz in the early days of their partnership.
Yes, Jobs was a major, visionary business leader who helped a lot of Americans get rich-- but partially through immoral means. Musk shows you can accomplish the same things without being evil.
Of countries all the time. The moon landing, which was the result of Cold War posturing was nonetheless directed as a result of the Kennedy administration. The Manhattan project was created and allowed to go forward by FDR.
And with President Obama he directed his administration to push fuel efficiency standards when he came into office.
Now while you may not want to give "politicians" credit for scientific and engineering discoveries, it remains true in the US as it is in all countries, that if they refuse to allow engineers and scientists funding or legislation to pursue their goals their ability to bring their discoveries to fruition will be significantly hampered.
So while Musk giving the world overpriced electric cars that have limited range, take over an hour to charge and are largely a status symbol among the rich is nice, he's not the reason electric cars will ultimately become mainstream.
It'll be because of political decisions made by politicians allowing research into them to flourish.
I'm sure you are aware, the Tony Stark persona was originally based on Howard Hughes, and since fundamentally the "movie version" is based on the comic book version, the movie version is also based on Howard Hughes.
They did? I sort of thought he just "invented" slightly tweaked things that already existed and respectively made the second most popular version of them, and then the most popular version of them.
Without getting too hyperbolic about it, yes you could say Apple's products have changed the world. I'm old enough to remember the world before Apple computers. Yes they really did change things. EVERY PC, smartphone, tablet computer, and MP3 player you buy today was influenced in demonstrable ways by Apple. While we shouldn't overstate the importance of that, we should shouldn't understate it either.
As an aside, you keep saying "he" as if Steve Jobs was personally responsible for them. He was the leader of the company that did these things. He gets a lot of credit but let's keep the credit to what he actually did shall we?
At least with the computer you could say that he was the co-designer of the modern computer, designer because neither of them invented the idea just popularised and commercialised on the idea.
You're going to find that very few ideas are truly original. That doesn't make turning them into a commercial success any less impressive. I'm not sure you appreciate how rare a success like Apple is. Steve Jobs genius (if that is the appropriate word) was in his business acumen and apparently his design chops. Those are important things and he used them as well as anyone I've ever seen. He had a vision and he got people to buy into it. That's what effective leaders do.
And while he was the leader in mp3 players and then smartphones, I am not sure that his designs were anything other that high-quality copies of what others had already done well before him.
Again, it isn't "he". It was Apple of which Steve Jobs was an important part. What Apple did was create the versions of those product categories that everyone else cribs off of. Do NOT underestimate the value and difficulty of that. Apple completely changed the game in smartphones. Same with the graphical interface. Same with the desktop laser printer. Where they've had the biggest effect is in software. The main thing that makes Apple products different and sets the apart is the software. (Mac hardware running Windows is no different than a Dell) You don't have to be an Apple fanboi (I'm certainly not) to appreciate what they've accomplished and the influence they've had.
I've often thought that fundamentally the world needs nasty little men. For example, I am not cut out to be a billionaire CEO "master of the universe" type. I'm too nice, not egotistical enough, and I like my family and private time. But the world needs Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Andrew Canarge and John Rockefeller's of the world. Yea, they do bad stuff, but they create big stuff also. And yes, they need to be smacked down from time to time.
You are right. It is not all musk. All of these companies count on top ppl. But, the original design of f9 was musk. Likewise, he is responsible for a number of manufacturing designs and innovations. Likewise, he has surrounded himself by engineers and in general, gotten rid of MBA's, who have become the bane of american businesses.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I agree, for all the praise people give him, all Jobs really did was be a guy that could get people to buy stuff.
If you think that is all he did then you really haven't bothered to look or are cherry picking facts. Yes he was an outstanding salesman but only someone with an ax to grind would pretend that there was nothing more to the man. Could I sum you up in one sentence? I doubt it. Let's not make more of the man than what he was but let's not make less either, ok?
He invented nothing, he treated his family and friends like shit, I'm not even going how he acted to his employees.
And what have you invented that we should all be impressed by? Steve Jobs has his name on 313 patents. How many do you have? Steve Jobs founded Apple, Next and turned Pixar into a powerhouse. How many successful businesses have you founded? Just because he was not really an engineer doesn't mean that he didn't create anything. Business is a team sport and there is no one who denies that he had a big role in the development of the Macintosh, iPhone, iPad, iPod, the desktop laser printer, the graphical user interface and more. He didn't do it himself and people shouldn't talk as if he did. But his contributions are undeniable.
Yes by all accounts he could be a colossal prick to other people. And yet a lot of people really liked him too. So perhaps the real story is a bit more complicated than you are insinuating? He could not have succeeded like he did if he was a d-bag to everyone around him all the time.
One thing that does bother me a little is that all the successes of any company get attributed to the CEO. They have a lot of hard working, very smart and creative people working for the company, who have their accomplishments left in shadow because of the the CEO being the public face of the company. It's not all The CEO!
FTFY. I mean, it isn't like Eric Schmidt wrote every line of Google, Gmail, and Youtube. Jeff Bezos didn't sit down and engineer the Kindle. And Steve Ballmer sure as fuck didn't build the XBox or write Office. Like it or not, these guys are the public faces of their companies, and in good times get all the credit and in bad times get all the blame.
Slow Down Cowboy! It's been 1 hour, 47 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
What's interesting is over the past 20 years OEMs made tremendous strides in efficiency, but instead of boosting MPGs they invested these gains into cars that were bigger and more powerful while meeting the same standards.
Exactly. And the reason is that people don't shop for cars primarily by fuel efficiency because they have no economic reason to do so. Gas is (relatively) cheap and people like big cars that go faster than necessary with lots of frivolous bells and whistles. Fuel economy is nice to have but generally considered as an afterthought.
Unless the government either mandates higher fuel economy standards or taxes gas prices until they are high enough to adjust buying behavior, then companies will build cars with the lowest possible fuel economy. We've seen this happen for the last 20 years. It's just an economic law of nature. Absent economic incentives people will do things that may not be in their own or in society's interest in the long run.
I'm as guilty as anyone else. I drive a pickup truck for practical reasons but even the most economical pickup available tops out at just under 30mpg highway (currently RAM 1500 Ecodiesel). I'd happily drive something with better fuel economy but nothing exists. I suppose I could make do with a different type of vehicle but I don't have any economic incentive to do so. So I don't.
Wrong, *standards* don't matter, the actual fuel economy of U.S. vehicles has risen year after year in the last 30+ years.
Really? The facts say you are wrong. Average fuel economy barely budged between the early 1980s and 2007 when the new fuel economy standards were put in place. They started to creep up a bit in 2004 as fuel prices rose. After 2004 the average fuel economy has risen steadily due to a combination of higher fuel prices and increased mandated fuel standards. Now I'm no genius but I'm pretty sure that's a cause and effect relationship there. The fact that car companies are selling certain vehicles at a loss to ensure higher average fuel economy standards is proof positive that the standards are forcing the car companies to make more fuel efficient cars.
Obama's (actually Congress) new standards came from the auto industry, it is their roadmap.
The first increase in 2007 came under the Bush administration we've seen a steady increase in fuel economy since. In 2011 the Obama administration along with the major auto manufacturers came up with new CAFE standards that will take effect in 2017 and beyond.
Got any more unsupported "facts" you'd like to make up?
Steve Jobs revolutionized personal music players and smartphones. Elon Musk is revolutionizing energy production, battery technology, ground-based transportation, and space transportation. His goals are way more ambitious than any of the goals of Steve Jobs. And even though he has only achieved wide-scale success on one of those goals so far, producing a car that is safe, efficient, luxurious, and fast is much more difficult than doing the same for a phone. In that regard, Elon Musk has already surpassed Steve Jobs and he's only getting started.
No one here as of 13:11 EDT has mentioned exactly what Elon has innovated.
what has he done?
The way I see it is all of his worshippers have fallen for his hype and PR.
The engineers and scientists at SPace X are doing all the work and innovating. Musk just funneled in his PayPal money.
Tesla? BFD! Someone notices battery tech might be able to finally allow for a car with decent range and decides to raise money and start an electric car company.
Do not get me wrong. I think it's awesome that he is making electric cars cool and acceptable to gear heads and not just to Green and crunchy people.
But calling him an innovator? I don't think so.
Advancements not possible without a computer. But when the robots invent FTL, don't say you weren't warned !!!
Do people idolize Elon Musk for his intelligence or wealth and success? I think the answer is that he has attained wealth and success that most people can only dream about. You may call me a troll, but I think this cult of Elon Musk only exists because of his vast wealth. Americans tend to place a whole lot of value on success as being wealthy and famous so a lot undeserved praise gets heaped on these types. I would council that simply because someone is wealthy, it is dangerous to accord them more respect. I'm not saying that Musk doesn't deserve the respect, but do we accord him more respect due to his wealth?
...we'll point and laugh at prior generations' worship of men in the same way that point and laugh at theistic religious sorts today.
Musks 'Mars Vision' has human physiological limits that are unknown.
No one has proved that human eyes can survive the length of a space irradiated trip to Mars & back. All we know is lengthy stays in space degrade astronaut's eyes.
Do you really so very much enjoy sucking the dick of a dead man as all that? Wow.
Engineers reading Slashdot don't want to admit the truth: Jobs was a true visionary who directed his engineers into making great products.
Sorry, the truth hurts.
It's barely any Elon Musk. It's people who design and build things. It's people who did basic research ages ago.
Musk started one of the dirtiest companies in the history of the internet, uses that to build a niche car company and a space company that is busy reinventing stuff the US did 50 years ago (therefore without the cost of that basic research) and techies and hipsters worship him for reasons my thinking brain can't even begin to comprehend.
I'm glad you didn't mention iPad. Remember the expensive devices Microsoft was pushing in late 90th?
For me, and I'm pretty sure for most owners of the pocket PC's in early 2000-s transition from "Pocket PC" => "Pocket PC + Phone" was more than obvious.
The only thing that was missing, was cheap enough tech.
Apple was not the only company working on it.
Multi-touch => pitch to zoom and the likes is obvious too, we had that back in 90th.
Musk, however, managed to create electric car market, when car manufacturers were saying, nah, maybe a decade later.
You are right. It is not all musk. All of these companies count on top ppl.
But, the original design of f9 was musk.
Citation needed.
To a source other than Elon Musk.
Have you got a lisp? Because "90th" sure sounds like one.
It's 'nineties' (90's) , not 'nineteeth' (90th) :-P
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
If Jobs had not helped make the iphone, I am sure someone else would have made something similar and just as good, and already were. I have doubts of someone would be doing electric cars and SpaceX, in quite the same way that Elon Musk is doing them.
Tesla cars are interesting, but their impact is currently limited. The cars are simply too expensive. We'll have to wait and see if the impact of Tesla can change the industry. Other Elon Musk endeavours are also too early to tell. SpaceX is already going to space, but as others have commented, low Earth orbit is not really space yet. This is the cosy neighbourhood of our home. Getting to Mars and beyond is currently nothing but a dream.
It is too early to compare Musk to Jobs. In spite of its many documented faults, Jobs had the drive to start and set Apple on the path to spark the personal computer revolution in the 1970s, particularly with the Apple ][. Recent Apple products are quite nice for some but this is the earlier feat that matters. Many other companies tried to do the same thing at the same time and did not meet the same success. The IBM PC was a late comer and got started after Apple and others had demonstrated that producing personal computers made business sense.
It's pretty ironic that you say Jobs made such a huge impact by bringing existing technology mainstream, and then decry Musk for bringing much more complex technology mainstream. Elon Musk is ushering in the era of the electric car after all others have failed. Tesla has done more for the acceptance of electric vehicles than any other company.
Jobs didn't create the modern personal computer. He, like Microsoft, built a huge business using Xerox's creative and technical advancement. He created a great *marketing* philosophy. He never really solved any technical problems though, nor did his company. There were also multiple touch screen phones before the iphone and it's easy to see the gradual transition of technology to what we have today with smartphones. Anybody who even remotely followed phone technology at all would've predicted something like the iphone, they just couldn't predict the exact time.
The electric car? Honestly I wouldn't have predicted them being viable in my lifetime.
Paypal? They're still dominating online payments. They'd been around for a long time before any viable competitors even emerged. In fact they started in 1998 and have only really had any competition to speak of in the last 2 years. As a comparison, the first iphone was released in 2007 and it's already been reached and surpassed by multiple companies, to the point that half the features shown for the iphone at the keynotes are just attempts to catch up to Samsung or Google features. Bigger screen? Yawn. Different keyboards? Interesting if it happened years ago. Multi-tasking? Only 5 years late.
Steve Jobs couldn't build a phone with a replaceable battery. Now, if Elon Musk could make a Tesla that could go 500 miles on a charge, he's be The Man!
Thank you, Xerox PARC, for bringing us the GUI...and the Mouse...and Ethernet...and Laser Printers...and TrueType fonts...and Instant Messaging...and E-mail...and Object Orented Programming...
P.S. Loving my Nissan Leaf
I would not for a second recommend that you drive one, but ye olde VW diesel golf-based pickup can do better.
The old Rabbit pickups are pretty hard to find in good shape since most have long since rusted away. They also don't have enough cab space for my particular needs - I need a crew/extended cab. There are some light pickups sold in Europe that have better fuel economy than anything available in the US but we seem to have an allergy to good fuel economy in a pickup on this side of the pond.
Guys, it's advancement of society based on our social judgement.
Gates, Jobs, Brin and Page and similar folks will be found by history to be the Henry Ford's of our time. Addressing problems of the many by bringing forward solutions of the affluent to everyone (e.g. bring access to the masses).
Musk, Bezos, maybe, just maybe Zuckerberg (or likely not) will be found by history to be the Howard Hughes and Disney's of our time. Addressing pure world problems by tackling it with new approaches (e.g. a new way of thinking).
Both groups, still, use disruption and innovation as their tool much like their fore-bearers.
I'm still waiting for the next Einstein--I'm yearning for a new way of thinking in these times, an unorthodox way.
Jobs took on the pc industry and lost. But helped introduce a lot of great technologies in the PC industry. They also got it started.
Jobs took introduced the GUI that was largely ignored until Windows was popularized in the early 90s.
Jobs took on the music industry and unblocked the online music market.
Jobs took on the cellphone market and beat the incumbents.
He created the tablet market (even though MS created it first).
Musk revolutionized online Payments with PayPal.
Musk took on the Car industry and unblocked Electric Cars, something consumers want but Big Oil hates. Today everyone dreams of having an electric car.
Must took on the Energy market with SolarCity. Some success but nothing revolutionary.
Musk took on the entrenched, overpriced, bureaucratic, an dead US Space industry and brought it back to life. He's taken the lead in developing cheap alternatives to orbit.
Jobs ultimate success moment was the iPod / iTunes, the creation of a toy and fashion accessory. And its follow up toy/fashion accessory the iPhone and the iPad.
Musk may well be remembered as the guy that gave us electric cars and the guy that got us to Mars (TBD) and gave the little guy a key tool to start an online business (ie. the eBay killer app)
Touchscreen smartphones existed for years prior to even *rumors* of the iPhone's development. The key differences in the iPhone's user experience were:
Technologically: Multitouch, rather than stylus or fat-finger+buttons. The tech for capacitive multitouch screens already existed, but it wasn't being applied to any kind of even vaguely mass-market device. Styluses provide better precision and can be used with minimal disruption even on very small screens, but you need a place to stow them (you'll lose them anyway, though) and resistive touchscreens don't do multitouch so intuitive gestures aren't an option.
Design-wise: Consumer-oriented UI, rather than trying to maximize productivity. Earlier smartphones near-universally had physical keyboards or some form of stylus-driven text input. They could do email (much better than v1 iPhones, in most cases), schedule conference rooms (and track your meetings), maybe edit documents. The iPhone could watch YouTube videos (even today, that is most commonly not a productive use of time; back then it was nearly pure entertainment) and play music. The other smartphones could browse the web well enough to look up technical documents or download apps. The iPhone couldn't run third-party apps at all, but it could browse the web well enough to use Facebook.
I do not personally care for Apple's products (OS X is fine aside from some quirks which I dislike no more than I dislike the equivalent quirks in every other OS/desktop environment, but I don't care for iOS or for their hardware design, and yes I've used an awful lot of MacBook* machines from their earliest days to their latest releases). I am actively opposed to the direction they are trying to take the computer market, where lockdown and "controlling the user experience" are the orders of the day. However, I will neither attempt to paint their introduction of the iPhone as the business-as-usual progress of the smartphone world, nor let lie unchallenged your bullshit claims and implications that "prior to the iphone... 5 to 7 tiny buttons [were] all you [got] to control the device." or that earlier [smart]phones were "vastly limited in their capabilities and features."
Yes, the iPhone was a game-changer. However, it was not nearly so amazing as you seem to think (do you not remember how absurdly limited the early iPhones were? No apps, limited to EDGE speeds even though other smartphones already used 3G, not even a copy/paste capability). However, it was targeted on the mass market, advertised to that market, and showed the other manufacturers of high-end mobile phones that the time had come to release a smartphone for the masses. Apple rode the wave of their initial success with updates that addressed many of the weaknesses of the platform, and gained the early-mover advantage of this new wave of smartphones. It made them rich, and it's an unanswerable question what the world of smartphones would look like today without Apple except that it would probably be both different and smaller. I daresay it would not only exist, though, but that somebody else would have realized the huge, untapped market opportunity. Maybe it would have been Nokia (something Maemo-derived?), maybe RIM/Blackberry (BBM is hugely popular in many parts of the world, even now), maybe Palm (remember them?), maybe even Microsoft, maybe somebody we've never heard of at all!
So yeah, I give Apple (and Jobs) credit - both good and bad - for the direction the smartphone market has gone... but they didn't create that market, the iPhone wasn't better in every way than the phones that came before, and the things you say are either ignorant or revisionist. Yes, I used smartphones before the iPhone. They had many bad points, but none of the things you said accurately described those phones. The jump to the iPhone from what was already available at the time isn't nearly as big as you imagine, though it was undeniably very significant.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
...I'm all for the space exploration part. That's certainly cult worthy. Love SpaceX. I totally don't get the Tesla car cult though. The original cool car is gone, replaced with an ugly overpriced version now of dubious practicality.
I keep hearing about this "colony on Mars" stuff, but we don't need to go out of earth because there is not enough space for all the people, there is plenty of space to build more cities available. We need to do it because we need more natural resources, do Mars has arable fields and water for them? Oil? Gold, silver, iron, aluminum? Rare earth minerals?
To me asteroid mining seems far more interesting.
I must be completely out of touch but seems like Steve Jobs was quite a moron, I really don't think i'd want to be the guy labeled to take his mantle. I think we're tainting the Musk here a bit.
It is for the below reasons and more that I believe the comparison between Musk and Jobs is highly flawed.
1. Nothing Jobs did, nothing Apple put out changed the world, all of it was done before as well if not better than the Apple product.
2. Elon Musk is actually creating new things and cares a great deal about the future while Jobs apparently did not (Apple during Jobs' reign was named the least green company on earth)
3. Jobs took existing devices put them in a shiny package and did some amazing advertising while Musk is designing and building things that are really new and different and is adding as much tech as possible to them.
4. Jobs had 1 company Musk has 2 companies, is on the board of a third and last I knew he was considering starting another company.
5. Musk has already completely changed the prospect of purchasing online with Paypal, Jobs only ever had Apple.
LOL! Are you DELUSIONAL? Before Musk, yes, there were EVs, but (almost) nobody wanted them, most people thought they were nothing more than large golf karts with the same kind of acceleration... what he did was hone the entire concept... BORING? Are you DELUSIONAL? The Model S received the highest marks in the history of Consumer Reports... not just for EVs... not just for luxury cars... not just for sedans. Any 7-passenger SEDAN that can do 0-60 in 3.2 seconds... which is FASTER than a Porsche Panamera, and the majority of high - end sports cars... that can outrank ANY other cars in crash tests... that can be driven cross - country for free, for the life of the car... that is not boring, fella. That is nothing more than you looking at a zebra, and calling it a giraffe.
Musk has the full and complete support of every single person working for him, in ANY of the several gigantic companies he runs.
The same could never be said of those working for Jobs: they have been paid as close to minimum wage as he could manage, and those that I knew that worked for him always felt unappreciated.
I know lots of employees for Tesla, Solar City, and SpaceX, and none of them would ever want to work elsewhere.
Innovation? Musk designed a "skateboard" crammed with the best batteries he could find... that gave the car a "frunk" in front, and a trunk in back, and still has 7-passenger room for a full - out sports car. Ask any
driver just how "boring" a 0-60mph acceleration is.
Try to find any Tesla or SpaceX or Solar City employee who is trying to find employment elsewhere... compare that to the people working in Apple stores. Jobs was known as a taskmaster, and horrid to work for.
Sorry, I'm no fan of Jobs. Musk may not be perfect, but is head and shoulders over the ghastly ghost that was Mr. Jobs.
Bill Dale, Los Angeles
My grandmother was given a iPod. One of the ones with the "innovative" wheel. She never has learned how to use it. A year later my aunt gave her a Creative Zen. Though the Zen was something like 1/5th the size, my grandmother was able to use it no problem. Creative labs had the Jukebox and the Nomad before the iPod. The Nomad could play MP3s, FM radio and could record sound. Their products were easier to use, cheaper, more features and better built. They just didn't have the great marketing of Apple.
For phones you just have to look at Palm and Nokia. Both had touch phones with nice interfaces and more features before Apple. Actually Apple basically stole the Palm interface. Again, Apple had better marketing.
You look at the iPad. Many, many, many tablets came out before it. Though in this case it was the interface and marketing that made them come out on top.
What did Apple innovate on? Marketing. That or they think innovate means to take from other people, make it worse, but prettier.
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.