Make Something Wonderful: Steve Jobs in his own words
book.stevejobsarchive.comI've no strong opinions on Jobs, don't know much, but it is wonderful to see something like this echoed:
> There’s lots of ways to be, as a person. And some people express their deep appreciation in different ways. But one of the ways that I believe people express their appreciation to the rest of humanity is to make something wonderful and put it out there.
> And you never meet the people. You never shake their hands. You never hear their story or tell yours. But somehow, in the act of making something with a great deal of care and love, something’s transmitted there. And it’s a way of expressing to the rest of our species our deep appreciation. So we need to be true to who we are and remember what’s really important to us.
The world can feel superficial & shallow, results are so often murky. Being a person who gets themselves into a position where you can be making wonderful high-quality things, where you can invest care & end up with something robust & Real... it's a "sacrement" to being people, to goodness. It matters.
These kinds of lessons I feel like have to be learned really hard ways. Trying to find & calibrate your values is so hard. Packets of wisdom like this don't show up, don't have the apparent worth that experience latter makes one appreciate. It's nice to have a couple good waymarkers, good pointers, towards this value system I recognize out there.
As simple as it is, this idea manifests in even the alignment of the screws on an outlet cover being horizontal and aligned to each other instead of random wherever they end up.
It's about showing intention and thought through your work whatever that work may be.
It does stand in sharp contrast to the more personal and direct efforts one could make to show their appreciation to say, their family.
It's indirect & sometimes it fucks up, but I think one of the best gifts parents can give their children is by having love & cares of their own, beyond their children. Being the object of affection & appreciation is not going to teach you core lessons about what appreciation & dedication really are; the child is too inside the system. They need other examples of what commitment & caring are, they need examples of people entailing themselves to meaningful purposeful things.
Lisa may agree
Steve's a man child. Read the biography. He shouldn't be worshiped, he was just at the right place at the right time and cried to get his way.
I really wish the Hacker News Enhanced extension would add keyword story filtering. I'm tired of hearing about how Steve Jobs was a genius and I'm tired of hearing about how he was a loony dickhead. I'd love to go the rest of my life without ever hearing his name again. I was weary of Steve Jobs before he died and I'm weary of him now.
The book Becoming Steve Jobs is pretty good and it is a fair portrayal of him (or it seems that way to me). He is obviously amazingly talented, he also had a difficult personality. But he convinced lots of talented people to work for him and do great work under him (most have not gone on to anywhere near their past level of success after leaving Apple). In my experience, talented people have options and if they choose to work for a difficult boss it's generally because that boss has good traits as well.
Is quoting him worshipping now? I don't like him either but that doesn't mean everything he ever did or said is bad.
Best in class at marketing though. Half of my masters level marketing class was basically understanding how and why he was successful when competitors had similar/better products.
I read about half so far and it's damn interesting to get into his head and see how he changed over the years and how he didn't.
I think Rob Siltanen said it better:
“Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
The one thing you couldn't do was ignore Steve Jobs.
Jobs is in my opinion worshipped mostly by artistic types who don't grok much tech, and see in him the successful businessman who did not have to be a techie to sell. Which is exactly what he was, a salesman.
Make Something Wonderful – Steve Jobs in his own words - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35526648 - April 2023 (159 comments)
The Steve Jobs Archive - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32760695 - Sept 2022 (31 comments)
Apple gave its employees a hardcover version of that book, and they're being sold for stupid money on ebay to collectors/fans. ($200-1000+)
Apparently Disney and Pixar too. I know someone at Disney and they had a fairly large distribution for anyone who wanted one
Steve Jobs seems to be discussing the global manufacturing program adopted by Apple in this quote:
> "And you never meet the people. You never shake their hands. You never hear their story or tell yours. But somehow... something’s transmitted there."
While these numbers are not that widely reported in US media at present, in 2012 Apple was employing 47,000 workers domestically, but ~700,000 foreign subcontractors for the production of over 100 million phones, tablets and laptops. Source: Duhigg and Bradsher (2012)
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america-an...
The message seems to be, "We're going to maximize shareholder dividends and executive bonuses by replacing well-paid domestic manufacturing jobs with cheap sweatshop labor in other countries. Yes, this will reduce average wages across parts of the USA that once enjoyed middle-class prosperity, leading to increased homelessness and poverty, but our legal responsibility is to maximize shareholder profits and anyway, everyone else is doing it, so quit whining. It's not like you have to talk to the poors or the cheap sweatshop laborers, is it?"
Of course, socioeconomic conditions today are so bad that iPhone owners now have to negotiate sidewalks littered with tents and opiate addicts all across Apple's origin region in the California Bay Area. That's what neoliberal capitalist fundamentalism has created.
Tongue in cheek, but it would be extremely nice if you made something scrollable, too.
One way valves in nanotubes and nanopumps for wrestling mats on the floor and walls to remove pools and gobbs of human sweat and reduce the risks of spreading bacteria and fungi among athletes? Do 3M material sciengineering experts knowhow?