My mom sometimes talks about how she felt when John Lennon died, and I always sort of scoffed at the notion of being overwhelmed by the death of a celebrity stranger.
I understood what she meant when Steve Jobs died - I was really overwhelmed, I think because I derived such a big part of my life, livelihood, and identity from iOS over the last 3-4 years.
I know exactly what you mean. iOS and the App Store gave me a chance to write and sell software that I wouldn't have had otherwise. I launched my first app in my final year of high school and because of the opportunities the platform provided I was able to:
- quit my part-time job
- decide to turn down a University offer (which I didn't really want to take but without any other real option I would have anyway)
- run my own business for the last 3.5 years
- spend 6 months in Canada
If it weren't for iOS and the App Store I would have went to University (something I really didn't want to do) and I would still have another year before graduating (not to mention the loans I would have to take out). Instead I've lived abroad, experienced running a business and had a lot of fun.
> overwhelmed by the death of a celebrity stranger
Jobs, like Lennon, was not just a celebrity. Both stood for what they believed and, by doing so, inspired countless others to do better. I know working with him was impossibly painful, but I wouldn't have thought twice at the possibility.
For some, that may sound masochistic, but, when my muscles hurt after a workout, I remind myself the next time I'll be running longer and faster. The people who work at Apple touch the lives of countless others and their quest for merging technology and art inspires us.
I don't think I would have been the same engineer I am now had I not used an Apple II+ as my first computer and had I not opened the case and been struck by its absolute elegance - if you are reading this, thanks, Woz, for being our profession's Mozart.
When I go over a post I made here (doing it right now, and there are few things humbler, in the literary sense, than a discussion board post), rephrasing everything until I'm happy with it, I feel satisfied you'll read something much better than what I would be able to do in a couple seconds, even if you miss the cut/copy/paste/type action.
The Apple II looked like a piece of grey plastic to me. So did the NES, but at least it was a lot more fun than the Apple II. Steve Jobs: the man who made purchasing consumer electronics a revolutionary act.
It depends on when you were born. If your first contact with the II was in the mid-90's, I would understand someone finding it underwhelming. It's also an understandable feeling if you were never curious enough to peek under the easily removable hood.
If, however, you compared it to its contemporaries, the S-100 machines with serial terminals, the TRS-80 and the PET, "revolutionary" would be the only possible word.
And, if you had the curiosity to peek under the hood of a II after taking a look inside an IMSAI, you'd understand what an elegant electronic design looks like. Every time I think that the computer in front of me is a not significantly evolved descendant of the original IBM PC, I despair a little. This triumph of the mediocre is not what I studied for.
> I don't think I would have been the same engineer I am now had I not used an Apple II+ as my first computer and had I not opened the case and been struck by its absolute elegance - if you are reading this, thanks, Woz, for being our profession's Mozart.
Could be, but considering s/he has them in a list, I took it to mean that it was three independent clauses that s/he derived from iOS. If the identity was derived from the first two, I would expect it to be phrased differently.
For me, last year was a one two punch. Two people I paid a lot of attention to both passed within the span of a few months. First Jack Layton and then Steve Jobs. Jobs' death I knew was coming, but still struck me. While Layton's death ruined my day (as it wasn't immediately obvious that he would pass). I completely understand the feeling.
It isn't his business accumen or presentation skills that people miss. It is his ability to inspire people to do better. His passion for doing something amazing.
In many ways John Lennon was the same. Read a biography of him and listen to outtakes from Beatles recordings to see what I mean.
Imagine if we all had that kind of passion and devotion to being and creating the best. Imagine if we all created such amazing things that Steve Jobs and John Lennon looked... normal.
Or going to the bathroom, driving their cars, sleeping... For example, I've only seen the Godfather once. My electric toothbrush, on the other hand? I use that every day! Take that Coppola!
I think Jobs himself proved that software isn't art, and "hackers" are not artistes. I submit the following conjecture: The complaints about the app store approval process would be nothing compared to the shitstorm if Apple started blocking songs and films from iTunes. Remember, Jobs is the one who, if he had gotten his way, would make all software go through a central committee before you could use it. ¡Viva la Revolución! Also, eff the Beatles. Put on some Wilson Pickett or Motown, or your pick of their better contemporaries.
You have no idea why he says that, why must you be a complete asshole? He might be some sort of evangelist, or a guy who got some claim to fame through iOS or spends 10h/days working with or on it (the case seems to be the later). If what you do is part of your identity, the ecosystem you do it on also is.
I had the exact same thought when I read that, won't lie about it. But that doesn't mean you need to say it out loud. Substitute anything for "iOS/Apple" in that line, even something really dumb (say, um, "4Chan"), and it's still a dick thing to say.
I said I had the same thought, but in this particular case, that's my problem for opening a thread about Steve Jobs died a year ago, what'd you expect if not people sharing how big of an influence on their lives that man has been?
Some things need to be said, though the wording the poster chose was very poor. Something more beneficial to conversation like "I don't think that iOS would ever qualify as a cornerstone of my life. Why does it for you?" would've been a better move.
As for your other point, though--picking 4chan as a an example of a dumb life influence is not something I'd agree with. 4chan is a fairly unmoderated environment, whereas iOS is famous for being a heavily-managed walled garden.
I, for one, would rather list 4chan than iOS, if for no other reason than growing up in the technological equivalent of the burbs isn't something I'd be proud of.
> Something more beneficial to conversation like "I don't think that iOS would ever qualify as a cornerstone of my life. Why does it for you?" would've been a better move.
Nice. I tried a few formulations in my head, but none of them sounded very respectful, so I posted nothing. You give a good example of what someone just told me recently, that a phrasing criticism as a question helps avoid conflict.
And you're right about the 4chan thing, I should've said "something that many consider really dumb" because indeed I don't believe it's always a "dumb" influence (though it can often be so). I would raise an eyebrow at someone naming it as their most important formative influence, though. Unless their name is moot, maybe :)
It's funny to see this as I (and I suspect probably many others) felt compelled to take a screenshot when this happened, because it was so bizarre to see the front page consist of a single story - http://dl.dropbox.com/u/140966/hn_jobs.png
He very much was "just a businessman". An effective one, perhaps, and one who lucked into a new market, perhaps, but he was indeed very much a businessman.
He wasn't an engineer of any outstanding merit--see how he tried to nix expansion slots on the old Apples, or the Atari debacle, or other such things.
Moreover, he's done nothing but create lasting damage as a role model for future CEOs (have you ever dealt with a CEO doing something stupid because "Steve was right"?) and foster a culture of isolation and consumerism in technology. Apple v. Samsung is rubbish, and the petulant Android vendetta is hardly something we should celebrate.
And rightly so. If your reaction to his death here was to go into flag-mode and just not let the front page be filled for one day with a story that so clearly affected the community, then I've got no problems with your flag rights being taken away.
It's an odd reaction that's honestly somewhat puzzling.
So every time someone important in the tech world dies its ok that the front page is filled with the same story but different from sources? I don't see why one can't be enough and still have some other topics. There are many stories that clearly affect the community, but you don't see them take up all 30 spots. It's not like the story wouldn't be #1 or go unnoticed.
Though the mass flagging was of course unnecessary, it's not like mods didn't see that every single post was the same thing.
It could be because 99% of the stories were just spammy little tech rags like TechCrunch and the rest of AOL's content farm spewing out as much as they could to cash in on it.
Jobs wasn't a hacker; I don't think he ever saw or portrayed himself as one of us. The appliances he was best known for were (and are) more and more actively hostile to hackers. I don't revel in his absence but it did dial back the biggest current threat to the independence of our profession.
I don't understand why we're saddled with a few hundred people who conspired to kick this community in the nuts for a day and a night as some kind of self-flagellating tribute, but I don't consider them my peers. If I were pg for a day I'd stop counting votes from anyone who upvoted three dozen clones of the same wire story with almost no accompanying discussion.
They are not even the same story? A lot of them are different takes on one event. Sure some of them are repeats, but its not like the stories are all links to 15 aggregators that point back to the same story.
I guess I always thought flagging was for inappropriate material, scams and obviously false things. Do most people use flagging as a downvote substitute for stories?
They really were mostly the same story, or repeats of the same handful of "takes" on it. There were a number of more original posts (that often still repeated the same obituary data as everyone else), but they did not feature on the front page.
It'd have been really nice if the HN votes would have caused one or two generic stories and otherwise the really unique takes on it to rise to the top, but the HN voting system + crowd isn't capable of making such a selection. Indeed you'd need a downvote button, or at least some way of flagging what you consider to be near-duplicates. Reddit does this very well (both because of their system and their crowd), none of the programming/tech subreddits (that I saw) were dominated to exclusion of nearly any other news topic to the extent HN was, that day.
> I guess I always thought flagging was for inappropriate material, scams and obviously false things. Do most people use flagging as a downvote substitute for stories?
That's a bit of a false dichotomy, IMO. What is a downvote for? You downvote inappropriate material, scams, obviously false things, duplicates and low-quality content. Preferably you do not downvote things just for disagreeing with them (just like nobody upvotes things just for agreeing with them, right?).
So in this case, the guy considered all those stories about the same topic (with really minor variations in their "take" on it), to be near-duplicates and flagged them. Now, we don't know what happens to flagged posts really, so at this point anything could have happened: Maybe it flooded some sort of for-manual-review moderation queue which annoyed the mods, or maybe they did understand the reason for the flagging but decided that "NO. HN needs to mourn and the front page will be our shrine!" and bumped up some more Steve stories. The latter is not completely unlikely (even though it probably just were normal user votes), we all have seen stories that appeared or disappeared from the front page that couldn't have been caused by regular votes. So yes, the moderators could have er, moderated things a bit so we'd see one or two generic news stories from quality sources about Steve's death (rightly featuring at the very top), but bumped all other stories that did not offer a significantly different take on the news to the second page, in favour of more original content (which might have also been about Steve, if that really was the only thing people could write and think of that day, as long as it was something worth clicking).
Sounds like the correct decision. I'm sure the mods noticed that the front was covered with Steve Jobs stories and would have taken action without your spam if they had a problem with it.
Maybe, maybe not. They got rid of my 'flag' button when I wrote that I flag global warming stories as being off topic, a position I still maintain: very few people here know much about the actual science, so it mostly ends up being a debate ranging between people convinced that it's all a communist plot to interfere with the Free Market to those who'd like to shut down all industrial activity, and everything between; argued mostly out of people's beliefs and ideology, and changing no one's opinions.
> argued mostly out of people's beliefs and ideology, and changing no one's opinions.
With that criterion, we should also flag posts about Apple's patent lawsuits and appstore exclusion disputes :)
Nah, but I get your point. I'm really not interested in the average HNer's position on the global warming debate either. Mostly because the few people that actually are very knowledgeable on the topic (there must be a few) won't get the spotlight they deserve (again, criticism of HN's voting system, but it really sucks for cases like these).
And of course it's not really a typical "core" topic for HN. But actually quite many posts are not "typical" in the way you'd expect, as long as they provide ground for a fruitful and interesting discussion. Which global warming discussions indeed often do not.
When news broke about his passing, I started putting together a small archive of stories about him. I continue to update it when I come across new stuff.
My friend's done the same thing over at http://idiari.es. Going over the posts there reminded me how vast his range was — from architecture to tech to HR, he had insights in almost every area.
Wow. Time certainly does fly. I remember browsing Twitter that afternoon, outside my office, having a smoke. All of the sudden, I just see Steve Jobs everywhere in my timeline. Texts starting coming in. It was a sad moment. Like him or hate him, he gave himself to the craft, sought perfection, never gave up. RIP to one of the greatest innovators of our time.
No, Steve Jobs' death was only the second worst launch day ever.
The last tech startup I was involved in (I'm really dating myself here ... ) me and the CEO went to make our first pitch on September 12th, 2001.
I still have a box of business cards kicking around describing me as "CTO, zHosting Ltd". They'd make great roach papers if I could smoke (asthma: nature's way of reminding you to "just say no").
(We buried the company at a crossroads with a mouthful of garlic two weeks later. If we'd just been a month faster things could have been very different ...)
My favourite is the novelist Chris Cleave had his first book "Incendiary" (about a terrorist bomb attack on London) released on the same day as the 7/7 London bombings.
The publisher pulled all advertising and all copies were hidden at the back of book shops as a mark of respect / so as not to be seen to be trying to profit from such an event / out of general decency.
Donnie Darko opened the month after 9/11, and many theaters refused to show it due to its depiction of a plane crashing. Didn't go positive in the box office likely as a result.
Absolutely excellent cult film for anyone interested.
I keep listening to this audio of a talk Steve Jobs gave to an audience in Aspen back in 1983 and I believe everything he said in that talk was exactly what Apple became years later. I can't help but wonder how he nailed it so perfectly (well except for the time frame which was a bit longer, 20+ instead of 10-15 years, but still).
To get a sense of clarity of his vision, read Jobs's 1985 Playboy Interview where he predicts the future before setting out to spend the rest of his life to invent it.
Soo.. can some of the older people around here tell me why this interview by a freelance writer for the Playboy is better and more comprehensive than everything I've read in a month? Just what exactly happened to journalism?
First of all Playboy been as controversial as it was invested a lot in interviews just to show that it wasn’t another porn magazine. They managed to take interviews from people who are generally considered inaccessible.
Second although Jobs was known to be whim back in 1985 he wasn’t as successful as it was when he died so my guess is that the interviewer wouldn’t have any problem to push him a bit and make the best out of an interview. Years later people seemed to be frightened of the idea asking him the wrong question.
Lastly, in 1985 Jobs was like thirty years younger than when he died. He would be burning to express his thoughts and his vision of the future. Plus he was still the underdog back then, there were some huge corporations around and Apple compared to them was nothing.
HN has many links to various forms of blogs. Some of those pretend to be journalistic, and might even have real trained experienced journalists doing the writing. But they use page views and clicks as metrics, and so link bait reigns. They want comments, and they use controversialist hyperbole to get those comments.
This is another reason I want micro-payments for any article I read - content producers will realise that I value good journalism enough to actually pay for it.
Longform is an excellent source of better journalism.
Although I generally dislike Apple I felt sad that day. Jobs was by any measure a giant of our industry. Even if you didn't like him as a person, and many don't, his passion inspired a whole generation.
But then why do you feel the need to post that? Do you often randomly walk up to groups of people and tell them you don't care about what they are discussing?
So comment threads on HN are now private discussions one has to be invited to?
Like the original commenter I am also tired of the celebrity worship that goes on here (and pretty much everywhere else). Yes, the man died. So do millions of others every day.
i genuinely believe that the efforts and work that Late Steve Jobs did, brought a revolution in that industry and touched the hearts of millions and millions of people. and i believe this is the reason y we all cant ignore the fact of his greatness
It's scary too. No matter how we spend our time, every single second is marching us towards our death, maybe even sooner (56?). The only consolation we can have is if we ever did something that we are proud of. That's why my greatest regrets come from wasting time.
I understood what she meant when Steve Jobs died - I was really overwhelmed, I think because I derived such a big part of my life, livelihood, and identity from iOS over the last 3-4 years.