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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."
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.
I'm glad to see this comment was posted, and so early too. While Jobs can be credited with the work he's done, Musk is the one that, IMO, has already done far more in terms of technological advancements.
I'm glad to see this comment was posted, and so early too. While Jobs can be credited with the work others have done, Musk is the one that, IMO, has already done far more in terms of technological advancements.
Fixed that for you.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Oh so you can't be an innovator unless you completely invent every idea from scratch?
That's so novel, you should write a book!
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
The iPhone was a game changer in the market. You are right in that it wasn't a radical new design and more the result of a series of small improvements coupled with a drive for quality. Even so, all those improvements added up to the first smart phone that was actually easy to use. Back then, if you saw someone take out a smart phone at the bus stop, fiddle with it for a minute and then put it back, you could be sure it was an iPhone. Doing small tasks quickly simply wasn't practical on the other smart phones out there at the time.
I'm not sure to what extent Tesla innovated to create the cars they have, but certainly they made the first EV that people actually wanted to have for reasons other than it being an EV or hybrid. It was also one of the first mass market EVs that doesn't look like utter crap (the Honda Civic hybrid being the other one). Interestingly, some analysts suggested that Tesla should stick to supplying batteries and drive trains for other car makers... after having stood the EV market on its head. I for one hope that they'll continue to make cars, but the real test (and the tipping point) will be the moment they create a family EV in a mid-range price class.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Musk is basically the polar opposite of Jobs.
One delivers little with a lot of hype and the other delivers a lot with very little hype.
Actually, musk has contributed a great deal Tesla.
The same is true of spacex.
While jobs would pick winners, musk has worked to make the winning products.
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.
The iPhone was junk when it was released. There was nothing about the device itself that was really new, nothing that it could do which you couldn't do as well or better on another phone, it couldn't run any kind of non-Apple software (and still can't run anything which isn't expressly approved by Apple), and it cost six hundred dollars with contract.
What turned the iPhone into something important was not the revolutionary device, the device was not revolutionary, it was the widespread belief that this was something important. In other words, marketing. It was the belief that made sales and created the customer base, it was the belief that brought all those developers, and it was belief that made people put up with the idea of a completely closed ecosystem - the idea that it was okay to buy something which wouldn't really belong to you even after your purchase. Again, not a revolutionary idea, but something that Apple's extraordinary marketing power could make happen. That was the new thing, the game changer.
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.
The emphasis on typography that led to the Mac OS UI and to desktop publishing was an input of Jobs to the direction of the product.
Earlier than that, for all the slashdot hero worship of Woz, the Apple II wouldn't have been built had it not been for Jobs, and if it had it wouldn't have had a case, which means it wouldn't have been the breakthrough into offices that the Apple II was.
The idea that Jobs just picked products, rather than had a significant part in forming them is moronic.
The hype is the same with both. Mostly self sustaining and well earned.
And whilst the Tesla EV and SpaceX are important and exciting, bringing the GUI to the consumer has had more impact.
I don't get it. Why the downplaying of Jobs' achievements? Yes, yes, asshole, RDF, marketing, design, blah blah blah. Whatever.
1. Jobs led the team that developed the Macintosh: the first GUI-driven computer that had more than niche appeal. He changed the face of computing and everyone in the field furiously struggled to badly copy the Mac for the next decade or so. This made computing accessible to the masses, where previously the CLI had been a pretty big barrier for consumers.
2. He introduced the first MP3 player that actually worked well. Billions sold, total market domination etc.
3. He introduced the first smartphone that worked well. Billions sold, total market domination etc.
Do you get the pattern yet? Innovation is not just about designing hardware. Designing a comprehensible interface is a major achievement in its own right.
Jobs made computing accessible to the average man. If I were to exaggerate as much as the parent: Musk just makes cheap rockets and expensive cars.
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.