Do like Steve Jobs did : Don't follow your Passion

[sgd]

The evidence don't support 1) he was lucky 2) one hit wonder. The fairy tale is people don't understand the complexity of the things he created. iPhone was a mini miracle if you had followed the process.

what evidence can you provide to show that iphone was of his design? He didn't design it, his creative engineers did, all he did was play the role of a critic and later his marketing teams took over. And that's all jobs ever did in Apple in the 70's and in the 90's. He was a critic for product design, he was never satisfied and they all slogged to please him resulting in budget overruns in Lisa and the Mac. When he came back in the 90's he lined up all his design teams and gave them a lecture saying all their products lacked sex appeal and sent them back to the drawing board. Job role was never more than design critic.

After the hugely successful Apple computer in the 70's by then Apple was a big company they had the financial resources to hire other talent to build other things even without Wozniak but the seed that started it was Wozniak. No Wozniak means no apple computer means no money so if that is not being in right place at the right time then what is? If you say it was not luck then can you explain what was jobs contribution to Apple computer initial success at that time of his being college dropout without background in business and engineering?

[specuvestor]

Put it this way:

1) Without Jobs will there be Apple just with Wozniak? Wozniak was not a business man. He's a nice chap.
2) Without Jobs now will we expect better Apple products since he is nothing but a critic?

I agree the effort was teamwork but he provided the vision and direction. That's very important when u see asian tech products are focused on functions rather than usability. The original concept was to build the iPad first but he agreed iPhone had a bigger market. Like I said he was too perfectionist in the past, but when he returned he teamed with Microsoft for an equity stake. He wouldn't have done that in the past.

If he was a useless armchair critic then I dont know how these products came to be, or why Apple products are lagging now, or almost died when he was not at the helm. That's the anecdotal evidence which everyone in the tech industry can see. Like I said in my first post he was not a nice guy to work with, but objectivity dictates that we give credit where it is due. He doesn't just criticise... he does have input on gorilla glass, liquid metal or even capacitive touch, and of course on the interface and physical appearance. What his engineers said was impossible, he tried to find out more. When people failed on digital music, he stepped over the bodies and made iPod and iTune for $0.99. That's another mini miracle which I have no idea why the studios would agree.

There are Apple haters and Apple lovers... I am neither. I had followed Apple for the past 25 years but the iphone was the first Apple product that I actually bought. I can give you many reasons and critique on why Apple failed and may fail again in next 20 years, but net net I give credit to this man, who wanted to make a difference. He made an impact on PC, digital music, CGI movies and even gaming... very hard to attribute all to luck. I was hoping he would fulfill the techie dream of cloud computing but iCloud remained unfulfilled. His mistake is that he built a model that was unsustainable without a visionary leader yet chose the COO to lead. Big mistake.

[Thriftville]

Great to see so many good postings!

I think the author is just trying to remind us, that we need to be practical at times. Jobs' initial passion was art, but not IT. he went into IT for practical reason. Luckily, he found a new passion there.

[specuvestor]

I think the author is barking up the wrong tree. It is important to know the guy and his history rather than try to be different, for the sake of being different, and write a sensational article to the contrary.

I read an article not long ago that Buffett outperformance is due to his higher beta. These authors probably graduated from the same school.

[opmi]

哗众取宠, 博出位。

[sgd]

World wrong about Steve Jobs "over glorified"


Wozniak Says `Lot of Things Wrong' With Jobs Movie
http://www.bloomberg.com/video/wozniak-s...dCJmQ.html

[rogerwilco]

Steve Jobs still winning new patents
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505124_162-5...w-patents/
By ERIK SHERMAN / MONEYWATCH/ August 13, 2013, 12:59 PM

(MoneyWatch) Oracle (ORCL) CEO Larry Ellison this week extolled the late Steve Jobs as "our Edison" and an "incredible inventor," suggesting that Apple (AAPL) may never recover from its co-founder's 2011 death.

Although many people have been involved with Apple's product development over the years, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office records underscore just how important Jobs was to innovation at the company: He is listed on many Apple patents as one of the inventors. And now that he's gone, the number of applications that could turn into granted patents -- and hit products -- is dwindling.

According to USPTO records, Jobs appears as an inventor on 402 patents held by Apple. The most recent one was granted just today, a design patent for an ornamental building panel (for a store, not an iPhone, iPad or other product).

The earliest Apple patent crediting Jobs as an inventor dates to 1980 and is for an ornamental design of a computer. The overwhelming majority of patents Jobs was involved with were design patents, which focus on the physical look of products, although he also contributed to interface designs.

The number of Jobs-contributed applications yet to finish review at the USPTO is now 34. The oldest of them goes back to Sept. 26, 2002, and is called "method and apparatus for use of rotational user inputs," in which "a rotational user action supplied by a user at a user input device is transformed into linear action with respect to a graphical user interface."

The most recent application was filed more than a year after Jobs died. Its name: "Dynamically Changing Appearances for User Interface Elements During Drag-and-Drop Operations." In other words, icons on a screen could change as you drag and drop them, depending on what you were doing.

Because patent applications are evaluated independently of the date their filed and not all are granted, it's impossible to tell at this point which patent will be Steve Jobs' last.

© 2013 CBS Interactive Inc.. All Rights Reserved.

---

http://qz.com/114009/apple-is-still-eati...s-patents/
ONE MORE THING
Apple is still eating out on Steve Jobs’s patents
By Tim Fernholz @timfernholz August 9, 2013

Apple just won another a battle in its ongoing war with Samsung over intellectual property, and this victory has Steve Jobs’s fingerprints all over it.
+
The US International Trade Commission announced (pdf) that it would bar Samsung from importing products that infringe on two of Apple’s patents, beginning in 60 days. It’s not clear yet whether Samsung will be able to work around the patents without difficulty or if the Obama administration will grant the company the same relief it gave to Apple in a similar situation.
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While we wait for more developments, Apple fans can appreciate that it was the so-called “Steve Jobs patent” that helped bring Samsung low. Patent no. 7,478,949—for a “touch screen device, method, and graphical user interface for determining commands by applying heuristics”—was one of the patents Samsung was found to be infringing. (The other concerns headphone jacks and isn’t attributed to Jobs.)
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Patent ’949′s association with Jobs is so strong in Apple’s eyes that it attempted to refer to it as the “Steve Jobs patent” in a case against Motorola before a judge forbid them from doing so, worried it would turn a technical case into a popularity contest. The patent essentially covers how the touchscreen on your iPhone or iPad interprets the various pokes, prods, and drags to which you subject it.

[Image: screen-shot-2013-08-09-at-3-11-02-pm.png?w=427&h=655]

You can imagine how a lot of different touchscreen devices might infringe on that, and so can Apple, which has deployed the patent in suits against Samsung and Motorola. But the US Patent Office suspects a case of patent creep: Late in 2012, it issued a preliminary notice invalidating the patent. At the time, IP analyst Florian Mueller suggested the ruling made sense because ’949 ”seeks to monopolize the right to solve a problem as opposed to a specific solution.”
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That ruling is not yet finalized—Apple is still appealing—but it would render much of today’s decision by the trade commission moot. And in any event, it does cast Jobs’s legendary hatred of patent trolls in a different light.

[sgd]

Jobs has 402 patents held by Apple. Well Sim Wong Hoo has 597 patents held by Creative why nobody bothers to mention it? sound card changed the world can we also say it was because of this technology behind the delivering of sound on computers which set the stage that later helped spin off recreational products like ipods and other hand held devices?

Why we don't hear anybody talking about Sim Wong Hoo or creative technology or their pioneering technology? So isn't it the case everybody bias and over glorifying Apple and Steve Jobs?

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parse...D2=&d=PTXT

[specuvestor]

Sim had been glorified 20 years ago. I was there when he had his shop opposite Parkway Parade, selling Chinese computer Cubic 99 and multimedia computer. He was the poster child of Singapore entrepenuerial drive but he hated it cause the Spore govt didn't help him when he was starting out and struggling.

Fact is he was a one trick pony on PC Sound, which in the first place was incredible that it lasted for so long. He was an innovator but bad consumer sales businessman ie his product should remain in the box. I think he is a great example for Singapore entrepenuers but to compare his record with Jobs is pretty meaningless. Bill Gates' impact and likely in time, Brin & Page's impact, would be more comparable.

Andway I'm done trying to put into perspective and set the record straight a dead man's contribution to tech and world at large. Forumers are free to read up and reach their own conclusion.

[rogerwilco]

sgd, i definitely agree that Steve Jobs won't be successful without the contribution of other talented people who work (or worked) together with him at Apple (Woz, Mike Markkula, Avi Tevanian, Jon Rubinstein, Andy Hertzfeld, Ron Johnson, Tony Fadell, Scott Forstall, Tim Cook, Jony Ive, etc) however I also agree with specuvestor that Jobs is a visionary and superbly talented leader who deserves admiration and without him Apple won't be the same.

Using an analogy, if we put Lionel Messi, Neymar, Gareth Bale, Iker Casillas, or other football superstars together in one team won't by itself make the team a winner (witness the example of Real Madrid's Los Galacticos). The team would still require a coach to lead them to victory.