Steve Jobs has resigned from his leadership position at Apple. He is unable to fulfill his obligations to the company.
Very sad day. He is 56 years old.
The headlines say he remade industries. The articles talk about how he gave consumers what they wanted. But he famously didn’t give consumers what they wanted. He imagined what they might enjoy wanting and then he gave it to them. Yes, he remade industries. But he did more than that. He changed the way we interact with information and music, the way we consume information and music, and the way we create it. It is hard to think of anyone who changed the fabric of so many lives in such a positive way. I say that as I write these words on a MacBook Pro, listening to Irish music via iTunes, my iPhone in my pocket. And of course his influence extends beyond the Apple products created under his leadership. Those products influenced the products of Apple’s competitors.
His success illustrates the sterility of the mainstream approach in economics to corporate strategy and the theory of the firm. The theory of the firm in neoclassical theory focuses on how much the firm should produce and optimal capacity. Game theory looks at strategic issues arising under various payoffs. Neither approach captures the nature of innovation, the trial and error risk-taking of the visionary entrepreneur or the power of creative destruction to enrich our lives. These ideas are at the heart of the Austrian approach to the firm, an approach that has made even less headway in mainstream academic circles than Austrian business cycle theory. I don’t know much about it other than its flavor. I’m going to read some more.
I hope Steve Jobs can overcome this latest health setback. In the meanwhile, thank you, Steve.
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I’m going to read some more.
Suggestions?
On entrepreneurship: Kirzner is a good place to start.
On capital structure, of course, there’s always Hayek’s “Prices and Production” and so forth. But I’m reading “Capital in Disequilibrium” by Peter Lewin right now and that’s a very nice survey of the older literature together with an update and further development of the theory. Available here: http://mises.org/resources/6644/Capital-in-Disequilibrium
I got a lot of value out of Israel Kirzner’s old FEE lecture on competition and entrepreneurship. http://www.fee.org/media/competition-and-entrepreneurship/
JJOXMAN, Thank you for posting the link. Good stuff. Enjoyed reading it very much.
Peter Klein has a new book, The Capitalist and the Entrepreneur, Essays on Organizations and Markets
http://mises.org/store/Product.aspx?ProductId=10373&utm_source=Resources
Thomas Edison and maybe The Richard Sears of Sears, Roebuck & Company
Voltaire and Steve Jobs.
Two of your best, professor.
Great stuff.
Thanks, SD. The Voltaire post was Don’s. But glad you liked both of them.
I pray that he’s not seriously ill again or still. I wish him the best. The man has been one of the greatest visionaries of the last century. A true classic story. One of the two geniuses who started Apple computer in a garage. And I can think of no other company that has been driven so clearly by the will of a single man. He started the company, was ousted, then brought back to save it years later when it was in trouble. And to say he did a remarkable job would be an understatement.
I hope that he has cast a long shadow over the rest of the organization and groomed those below him well. I like to think of Steve Jobs as the Jonas Salk of computing.
When many firms get a lead on their competitors they often rest on their laurels or go on coasting for a while, only to lose that lead soon after. But not Steve Jobs since his return, once they get a lead on a competitor, they just keep the gas pedal mashed to the floor. And consumers are the ultimate winners.
You said “…he famously didn’t give consumers what they wanted. He imagined what they might enjoy wanting and then he gave it to them.” NPR says politicians should do the same thing. Would you agree?
Perhaps “offered it to them” instead of “gave it to them” would have been better. In either case, politicians would neither offer nor give; in that case the wording would be “imagine what they might enjoy and then FORCE it on them (whether they actually liked it or not).”
Take out the word “enjoy” since we know politicians are the only ones enjoying their handiwork.
“Imagine what they might NEED (like a child who must endure bitter medicine) and then FORCE it on them (whether it actually benefits them or not).”
There are a couple of problems with drawing this parallel. Frank33328 has addressed this a bit, I will also take a stab.
First, when politicians ever talk about “giving” something to someone, it must involve forcibly taking something from someone else in order to support their “generosity.”
Second, as Frank33328 pointed out, with politicians it is more often a matter of what they want to force us to do (or not do) rather than a voluntary arrangement.
The huge difference with private businesses and visionaries like Steve Jobs is that they are fundamentally making a guess about what they think people want. They are only rewarded if they guess right and we, as consumers, are typically not stuck with what they’ve offered for long if they guessed wrong. Contrast this with the mechanisms of government and politics and surely you can see the fundamental difference.
Apple, a maker of overpriced electronic products since 1977, did nothing for me, but they also did nothing TO me. I’m happy Dr. Roberts is pleased with their products. I’m even more please that he had a choice. Governments give me no choice — they take them away.
Define “overpriced’. People were standing in line to buy the new iPad. I’d say that counts as underpriced, wouldn’t you?
Heh .. touche, I definitely meant “more expensive than their competitors for similar/identical/inferior (tech wise) products”. Thanks for catching me on that.
Each person defines “overpriced” on his own…so if he didn’t buy one, it was overpriced for him.
Ah, but Jobs had to deal with a marketplace where consumers could ignore his innovations. Politicians need not respond to such silly feedback mechanisms.
Well I was listening to Russ Roberts on the Diane Rehm show this morning and he criticized Barack Obama for essentially sitting back and letting Congress come up with a deal on raising the debt ceiling. So in light of Obama’s ineffective presidency I think the NPR article makes some valid points. The “signal” from the voters is often noisy and contradictory. A skilled politician has to exercise leadership. That’s his job, almost by definition. If the ideas are good enough, the voters will follow.
This us silly, a CEO can order everyone to follow his vision whereas a president cannot. Voters will not necessarily follow a good idea since they have no clue of what’s going on. That’s why we are in the place we are now. If voters had any clue they wouldn’t change the government every 2 years insuring that problems are never actually solved.
You grossly overestimate the power of the CEO and underestimate the power of the politician.
As a customer: the CEO of GM has not had the power to force me to buy a single GM car in a great many years.
As an employee: the CEO of my company can exercise the power you suggest but only to the point where I quit and find other employment. I a free to pursue a better option at any time.
As a stock holder: the CEO must continually convince me that my investment is safe or I will move it.
Yes, we can and do vote politicians out of office and yes the politician must convince other politicians to follow their ideas but once implemented, their world is law (literally). I cannot stop buying, quit or dump stock.
I am always blown away by the stories of Apple and Microsoft.
at the beginning of the last decade, microsoft was criticized for exercising “monopoly powers” and they became tied up in anti-trust regulation. The critics said they kept the competition out.
At that same time, Apple was written off for naught in the computer industry. Microsoft was declared the winner of the market. Aside from their personal computer business, Apple came up with the iPod. I remember walking through the student union building while in college at that time and seeing an ad for the iPod. I didnt get it. To me, one of the pleasures of buying a CD was being able to open up the insert, read it, and look at the artwork. I didnt understand the iPod because you cannot do that with digital music. But it was only two or three years after my initial rejection of this product when I first bought one and understood why it was revolutionary.
So I find it funny. People said microsoft was unbeatable. They said they were a monopoly and were unfair in their business practices. People lost interest in Apple. But 10 years later, the fortunes of Apple are much brighter than Microsoft. Microsoft was so entrenched in their product line that they totally missed the boat when the market changed. Their mobile products have failed to gain traction and their consumer PCs continue to loose market share to apple. Their back-end business software is also loosing market share as cloud computing becomes more popular. In my opinion, their only product that is still superior and continues to dominate is Microsoft Office.
It demonstrates how beautiful capitalism and the free market are. The story of Apple and Microsoft completely collapses the argument that so called monopolies can only be checked by government intervention.
While Microsoft concentrated on getting the PC to work, the two Steves of Apple concentrated on how they should work. As a result, their products had a intuitive aspect that Microsoft lacked. This was combined with a obsessively elegant industrial design, which makes the Apple brand stand out.
Apple nearly went under when the visionary Jobs was forced out and replaced with Pepsi marketing VP John Sculley, who neither understood the vision or the product. Sculley shipped Steve Wozniak Newton before they got the kinks out and cost the company dearly, but created the PDA market which lead to the I pod and phone. Total mismanagement of their software development finaly caused the end of Sculley. Jobs started NExT and bought Pixar from Lucas. When he was brought back to Apple, he brought the NExT unix operating system with him, which became OS X. Can you imagine the meeting when the search committee came in to tell the board that the best guy for the job is the one you fired? The same thing happened at Disney animation with Lasseter from Pixar. They must of gotten along well, both driven perfectionists with vision. That is’ what it takes to be a entrepreneur.
As a consumer, I’m thankful to Apple for all the wondrous technologies they has given the world.
As a software developer, not so much. Their approach to creating new technology has always been a top-down. Instead of adopting open source and respecting emergent order like Google does, they’ve always adopted a policy of ridiculously restrictive and proprietary technology. From a developer’s perspective, their technologies are black boxes that require an Apple-branded key to unlock.
I believe that if they had been less proprietary in their way of developing technology, they would be an even more successful company than they already are.
Thankfully, we have choice. I bought my first computer in 1982. I’ve always viewed them as appliances, tools, a means not an end. Some people enjoy tearing down and rebuilding cars. Me, I just want to put my key in the ignition and go to the store. Strip away all the mythology, what has evolved is a choice for people who want to put the key in the car and go to the store (Apple) and people who want to replace their two barrel Rochester carb with a four barrel Holley, glass packs and a new rear axle ratio. (all the rest)
For good or ill, Apple chose to maintain control over the software and hardware as the means to providing that user experience. I wonder if anyone, even Steve Jobs, realized how important maintaining that control would become to achieving integration across multiple types of devices?
In a lot of ways I’d agree with you, but there are quite a few Apple restrictions that do not add to the user experience.
I understand why Apple might want to have control over hardware, and it’s a very reasonable way of operating. Having to deal with less devices means a slimmer operating system and a more stable system. That’s fine.
But their decision to ban Adobe’s Flash-to-ObjectiveC converter, their use of proprietary accessories when they aren’t really necessary (e.g. They could’ve let iPhones and iPods be charged by a standard USB cable the same way most devices on the market are), and even when it comes to hardware, the way they change the Device ID’s on different components to make them “unique.”
e.g: Your iMac might come with a 500GB Seagate drive. It is not a piece of hardware created by Apple, it was created by Seagate, yet if you buy the exact same Seagate drive (let’s say the original goes bad) on Newegg or Ebay, it won’t work with you iMac. Why? There is no risk of incompatibility issues since it is the same harddrive, but since Apple uses their own ID’s for all of their hardware, OSX won’t recognize the Newegg Seagate drive just because it was bought from Newegg and not Apple.
There’s more reasons. But overall I do agree. There is nothing inherently wrong with having more control over hardware, and most of my complains are fairly nuanced and are not the type of issues most casual consumers care about. Since I’m not being forced to use Apple, it’s okay that they charge high prices for their hardware and have those types of restrictions. I just think they’d do better if they didn’t.
Please forgive me for all the typos in my post above. I typed it pretty fast and didn’t double check for any errors.
It’s not just about ‘tearing down and building’, there are issues of functionality and control-freakery. Apple leaves functionality out of their products not to make things simpler and better for the consumer but rather worse for the customer and better for Apple. For example, a ‘microsd’ memory slot is standard equipment on non Apple phones and tablets, but not on iPhones and iPads. Why? So Apple can charge a premium for the 32 and 64G iPhones and iPads. And I object, also, to Apple limiting app sales to their own store (and their well-known rejection of apps that compete with their own). I was appalled, too, by a demand for a 30% cut of every ebook Amazon sold through their Kindle app (based on the notion that Apple owns the ‘ecosystem’ and everything that happens on it–can you imagine the outcry if Microsoft had locked Windows down to a single distribution channel and then tried to demand 30% of everything sold in the Windows ‘ecosystem’?)
Guys, I do not mean to be the Scrooge here, and throw cold water on this love fest with Steve Jobs. I do agree that the history of Apple, and Steve Jobs’ history in particular, is a truly remarkable story. Indeed.
But…so are many other stories. Thomas Edison comes to mind. And many others. The History Channel showed a program yesterday called “101 Gadgets that Changed the World” (http://www.history.com/shows/101-gadgets-that-changed-the-world). Yes, Jobs’ innovations were remarkable, but he is not the only one, nor will he be the last one. There will be others,
promise.
As for Russ Roberts’ comments on how innovation is factored into econ theory, is this not the type of innovation (externalities, spillovers) that the Endogenous Growth Theory captures? I have no idea about the Austrian approach (it is not taught in mainstream econ depts), but it seems to me that this type of innovations (an externality or a “public good”) fit into the new growth theory. I agree, this is more macro stuff; at the micro level, I am not familiar with the literature.
I don’t quite see the “externality” or public good connection with Apple. Am I missing something?
R&D, innovation, invention, are usually considered a positive externality; the definition of a public good is that it is a purposely produced positive externality. Apple, and so many other companies, engage in innovation and invention, and produce positive externalities. They innovate and invent gadgets that people discover that they want, and other companies follow suit. Such companies need not invent the gadget, they just follow. Yes, there are patents that protect, etc, but still, the externality is there.
Like Mel Brooks as Louis 16th said, “It’s good to be the king.” Being a peasant, not so much.
———————————————————–
Workers in China’s Apple factories forced to sign ‘no suicide’ pledge
http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2011-05-02/news/29496258_1_foxconn-scholars-against-corporate-misbehaviour-factories
Yes, workers have it very hard in countries where the government dominates the economy.
I would like to make the case that the IT boom, the tech revolution, or whatever one would like to call it, are the direct result of our losing all those manufacturing jobs to China.
I wish him to get well, if possible. I’d be very sorry to see him go.
Steve Jobs has been indeed a seminal force in the IT and consumer electronics industries. Not for the obvious reasons though.
As a person who profoundly dislikes iTunes, owns no iPod or iPhone and refuses to be boxed into the polished and friendly – albeit expensive and highly restrictive Apple universe, I believe that Steve’s genius was not in inventing something amazing from a technical or usability point of view, but in a profound and miraculous understanding of the human psyche.
Steve Jobs grasped that humans are irrational beings that purchase illogically expensive things based almost alone on how they make them feel. Hence no effort was spared into the premium looks of their products, smart advertising which clearly delimited the cool people from the rest, and near-ubiquous product placement to the point where almost every computer in a movie is a Mac of some sort.
It worked like nothing before. Hats off to Steve, who made billions from sheer human silliness. Get well soon!
+1
I’m no fan of Apple. But you said exactly what I’ve been thinking for a long time.
And they accuse Apple customers of being smug!
They are not smug, they are cool
I used to think the same thing, then I used OSX and discovered that a commercial operating system doesn’t *have* to be purposefully designed to infuriate the user and become slower and slower over time.
When I used OSX I discovered a commercial operating system purposfully designed to be different from Windows. Unfortunately Windows, after many iterations, got very good at usability, and when “be different” is the only mantra the result is, in your words, infuriating.
Everything from starting an application to maximising a window, sharing a drive or getting the most from your screen space is worse on OSX. In fact I cannot think of anything that OSX does better compared to Windows.
#1 – OS X never slows down over time, Windows does. This is an objective fact.
#2 – OS X has certain major features Windows still lacks. F.e., virtual desktops.
As a BSD unix derivative, OSX is arguably, in many important ways, much older than Windows.
Gotta agree with you to an extent here. With that said, I don’t wish his ailment on anyone, but I don’t feel the need to fellate the guy either.
A point I made a few weeks ago was that companies like Apple did not create demand. They created desire for their products. Demand is the ability to afford things; desire is what will ultimately be purchased.
The demand for Apple products was created by savings generated in other markets and other things, except if a direct savings for an existing thing could be realized by changing to an Apple product. There is a difference between creating the desire for an Iphone and creating the wealth to afford one.
The cute little Apple products didn’t create wealth as much as they are the result of it.
“It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”
Steve Jobs
BusinessWeek, 1998
“Neither approach captures the nature of innovation, the trial and error risk-taking of the visionary entrepreneur or the power of creative destruction to enrich our lives. These ideas are at the heart of the Austrian approach to the firm, an approach that has made even less headway in mainstream academic circles than Austrian business cycle theory.”
I don’t think that is true. That is pretty much the core of any MBA or management or strategy or technology course in just about any university. Its not “Austrian” in nature or origin. Its pretty self-evident in any “school of management”.
Now “economics” programs may not capture this, but that doesn’t mean others don’t.
I think what he meant was that the Austrian method particularly emphasizes the roll of the entrepreneur in anticipating the future wants of the consumers, whereas other programs and schools of thought might not as much.
In such a spirit, Mises gave definition to the term ‘entrepreneur’ as follows: “someone who profits on the difference between what is and what can be.”
I don’t think the MBA programs quite match that reflective and philosophical approach.
Oh please. Now the “Austrians” invented the concept of entrepreneurship too. Spin it any way you want, this is a self-evident concept in any business “school of thought” (cause they ain’t all that different, really)
This…”other schools of thought might not as much”…is based on what?
“I don’t think the MBA programs quite match that reflective and philosophical approach.”
I don’t think its a very reflective, or philosophical approach to say that entrepreneurs profit by fulfilling unmet needs. It doesn’t add or go beyond anything other people have said on the subject. In this day and age, there’s about 10 models by different people which show precisely this connection between innovation, entrepreneurs, profit, needs, and the evolutionary process that goes into fulfilling those needs. You can’t escape out of an MBA program, or a technology program, without encountering all 10 of these at various points.
Maybe when Mises was writing, it was a novel idea. But there’s no excuse for thinking that people today aren’t familiar with these notions, because they are not limited to “Austrian” thinking, nor are they derived of it.
Don’t yell at me. Russ Roberts said it in the main post of this thread. I was just trying to clarify what he meant, since it came off in a way that could be misunderstood.
One thing is for sure, and that is most of the MBA platforms don’t specialize in Austrian economics, which is entirely based upon consumer perspective, and therefore consumer sovereignty. Keynesian economics is based upon many contradicting producer perspectives, all of which can be reduced to economic fallacies.
Please read Russ’s post and reply to him. I would not have worded it the same way he did. I was just trying to defend his reasoning.
It’s also hardly taught that all goods and services in the entire economy compete against each other. Further, courses on econometrics disregard the roll of the consumer, as the director of all economic action. The business firm is essentially taught to subordinate the future wants of the consumer to historical patterns of past behavior.
The Austrian school would never teach half the crap in the MBA programs because it deviates from the premise that the entrepreneurs must predict future wants of the consumer accurately if they intend to survive.
That said, I still agree with your comments. The Austrians didn’t invent the concepts you mentioned.
I’m sorry I wasn’t “yelling” at anyone. Anyway, I still disagree with what you have said. I disagree because your assumptions are, simply, not true.
I don’t disagree that what the “Austrian” school says, is true. But it is a basic tenant of all schools of business strategy. I’d venture to say that the “Austrian” approach is basic and superficial. In its day and age it may have been novel, but today its basic tenants are accepted facts. There’s no “school” of economics or management out there that disagrees on any of these concepts. But many go beyond and deeper…because “predicting future behavior” is not only hard, but often impossible. Since “Austrian economics” provides little more than a scratch on the surface as far as competitive strategies go, then I can’t really see how it would “improve” over what’s been developed since the days of Mises (which were, a long time ago)
Its not possible these days to get through an MBA program without having read at least one of Clayton Christensen’s books…or the Blue Ocean Strategy book, or any other one of the dozens of other books which take precisely this approach (heck, even before the days of Porter, these concepts were self-evident)…not to mention likely at least 1-2 cases in every MBA class which focus precisely on this.
A) It is not true that only “Austrian” economics focuses on the consumer perspective. The entire point of every MBA program is to appease the consumer.
B) It is not true that other schools of thought are retroactive and focus on meeting consumer demand based on past behavior. The entire focus of any business program is to steer clear of predicting future behavior based on past behavior.
C) It is not true that what is taught in business programs “deviates” from the “Austrian” approach of “predicting future wants”. Thats the point of every competitive model and theory out there.
With regard to marketing and courses on business strategy I can hardly disagree with you, but I was writing about economics courses, and regarding that, you don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t even know what I mean when I describe the Austrian theory as one built on a logic using the perspective of the consumer, as opposed to producers, or to the needs of society, etc. If you did, you wouldn’t be claiming that all the MBA economic programs are compatible with Austrian economics or have surpassed it, when it simply isn’t true.
The Austrian economics is silent with regards to business strategy and marketing. They have been surpassed in other diciplines that they never addressed.
Don’t confuse the awareness of a consumer perspective in marketing strategies with an economic theory based on it. The Austrian school of economics invented it, for no better a term. Subjective use theories of value were developed by the Austrians. MBA programs that teach a similar version to Austrian theory do exist, perhaps right at GM, but Keynesian theory is not based on it and most college and Masters economics courses teach Keynesian policies. If you subscribe to any Keynesian theories, you reject the idea of consumer sovereignty and with it, the logic of the consumer perspective.
Russ was referring to what the roll of the entrepreneur was to the economy as a whole. His contention was that the Austrians descibed it the best, according to his opinion. You have gone off on an irrelevant tangent. The topic had nothing to do with the strategy of an entrepreneur. Rather, what function do they play without their necessarily knowing it. And since you have not read or studied what the Austrians had to say on that specific matter, you aren’t really in a position to comment.
“It’s also hardly taught that all goods and services in the entire economy compete against each other.”
Of course it is. Its taught in every economics class, for sure. Its also become a basic of every business class since Porter’s five forces in the 80s (and remains one of the cornerstones of every competitive theory since then)
To Invisible Backhand (ha, ha! so clever!)
If you think I will ever click on a link that says “scholars against corporate misbehavior” you must think I have a real self-esteem problem. Besides which, genius, the suicide rate in China is higher (in every factory) because of a number of factors (it’s China; economic downturn/insecurity; lack of personal freedom). In other words, some of Chinese life still resembles Cuba (where your scholars like to vacation), and not Hong Kong.
Check out what their parents and grandparents did during the glorious Cultural Revolution (applauded by the same scholars), including eating the bark off of the trees. Things are lot better, if you really care.
To Sym:
No serious person could look at Apple’s products and reduce them to slick design minus real value. Overpriced? I’m a school librarian and I can afford their products. Get a real job.
I can afford them too, but it’s easy to demonstrate that, for instance, a 27″ IMac is about twice as expensive compared to a pc built from similar components – I’d even throw in a more capable graphics card
The situation gets worse with higher end hardware, for example the Mac Pro, which commands a three-fold premium tipically. That’s a lot of cash for a pretty case.
Not saying they are uniformly overpriced though – the new Macbook Air is good value.
I went to compare the price of Dell’s 27″ Inspiron to the 27″ iMac…and Dell doesn’t make a 27″ Inspiron, and the CPU is slow. So I decided to compare to the Sony Vaio L Series…but they don’t make a 27″ Vaio, and the 24″ at $1999 costs the same as the 27″ iMac, but has a slower CPU. Of course, it’s got a touch screen, so it’s not apples-to-apples. The HP Omni series has a 21″ screen. I can’t find anyone who even *makes* a computer comparable to the 27″ iMac.
Dude…thats a desktop! Thats like…so…last century.
But as far as desktops are concerned, you can make a PC thats far more capable than that, for half the price. No doubt. And you still can’t run Excel without crashing on that iMac
Josh, I can put together a computer with the exact same specifications as the iMac 27″ for half the price. Using a better monitor (better as objectively measured in terms of contrast and color reproduction). I can do the same for a third of the price compared to a Mac Pro.
I know this because, same as you, I like the look of the Macs very much and I certainly considered buying a desktop computer from them. But I just cannot justify the 1000+ pounds premium.
When Apple was using Intel processors the case was made that you weren’t buying a PC, although what you were buying, in terms of performance, was significantly less than a PC – a fact that was painfully obvious with the A4 processor (the one in the Macs, not the iPhone) which was less than half as powerful as a modern x86 processor. Which is really why Apple switched.
So now they are really selling bog-standard PCs dressed up as Macs.
Correction: “Before Apple was using Intel processors…”
Russ you should really try to interview Steve Jobs in your podcast.
That would be amazing.
Hear, hear. Wouldn’t hurt to ask.
I think I tried once, but he has a lot of demands on his time…
Apple II (first popular PC), LaserWriter (first laser printer, forever changing graphic design), Mac (with first mass market graphical user interface), Pixar, iPod, iTunes (and store), iPhone, iPad… (And those don’t even include his immense aesthetic contributions.)
What other business leader in history approaches the achievements of Steve Jobs?
One of the little discussed aspects of Apple’s success is that it hasn’t been due, to any significant degree, to becoming a federal government contractor. Apple under jobs has been the antithesis of GE under Welch.
Are you serious? Ok I’ll give you the iPhone and iPad, which are indeed revolutionary. The rest wasn’t new
The Apple II was the first popular mass market PC. Apple introduced the first laser printer, which did away with the existing tedious method of typesetting requiring specialized training. The Mac succeeded Lisa (from Apple) as the first consumer computers with graphical interfaces. The iPod was the first portable music device to which one could download music. iTunes was the first successful seller of downloadable music, and is now the biggest seller of music in the world.
I didn’t use the words “new” or “revolutionary,” though in some cases they apply. Jobs’ Apple made these things practical and affordable to millions, and that is what matters. They didn’t remain R&D curiosities.
One other important Jobs achievement that won’t get much mentions: he made sure that Apple provided first-rate customer support.
“The iPod was the first portable music device to which one could download music.”
No, it wasn’t. Several of my friends had MP3 music players for years before the iPod was invented. One such player was the famous Diamond Rio, which came to market in ’98.
“Apple introduced the first laser printer”
No, they didn’t. The laser printer was invented by Xerox. The first commercially available solution was produced by IBM. The first office laser printer was produced by Xerox. The first mass-market laser printer was the famous HP LaserJet (I had the pleasure of owning one).
The 1985 Playboy interview of Jobs:
http://www.txtpost.com/playboy-interview-steven-jobs/
Playboy: Those are arguments for computers in business and in schools, but what about the home?
Jobs: So far, that’s more of a conceptual market than a real market. The primary reasons to buy a computer for your home now are that you want to do some business work at home or you want to run educational software for yourself or your children. If you can’t justify buying a computer for one of those two reasons, the only other possible reason is that you just want to be computer literate. You know there’s something going on, you don’t exactly know what it is, so you want to learn. This will change: Computers will be essential in most homes.
Nice post, Russ! Steve Jobs did more for the consumer than any of the sterile corporations that constantly look to the federal government to bail them out of their latest follies in order to “save jobs.” They should learn (but they won’t) from Steve Jobs’ example by focusing on making consumers happy rather than their masters in Washington, DC.
http://thenextweb.com/apple/2011/08/25/apple-co-founder-steve-wozniak-steve-jobs-is-the-greatest-business-leader-of-our-time/
Despite times when Apple was in financial and structural turmoil, Wozniak believes Jobs’ speed of thought and endless drive helped the company move forward, believing that he may have adopted the ethos of the hard working, never failing Hank Reardon in Ayn Rand’s book Atlas Shrugged.
“Steve was very fast thinking and wanted to do things, I wanted to build things. I think Atlas Shrugged was one of his guides in life”
I have an iPhone and like it a lot.
Nevertheless, it doesn’t do some things that intuitively seem should be quite straightforward. E.g. I cannot directly use 3G/WiFi to download a Cafe Hayek podcast and save it to my iPhone. I can stream the podcast and listen to it, but that is not an option when the signal strength at my location is poor, or say, I am about board an airplane and wish to save a few podcasts to my phone to listen to during the flight. Drawbacks of such nature have prevented me from being fully satisfied with my iPhone experience.
Steve Jobs did 4 major things upon his comeback:
1. He created the Apple Store to create a unique retail experience.
2. He created iTunes for Windows along with the iPod so everyone could have access to the device, not just Mac owners.
3. The iPhone.
4. The iPad.
A good link I came across with this news about Mr. Jobs is his commencement address to the Stanford Class of 2005
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html
highly recommend..
Here’s an excerpt I liked…
“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
In the Seattle Times comes a Op/Ed titled: Steve Jobs and his insanely great lessons for the individual and society
As I read this paragraph
“That is a thought also for society. You cannot build the future with policy only — monetary policy, tax policy, regulatory policy, et cetera. Infrastructure may help — but a calligraphy class may help more. The economy is not a machine. It is organic. It is people, and the ideas that move them.” i couldn’t help but think Russ and John strike again.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/editorials/2016015834_edit26stevejobs.html