President Obama on Steve Jobs: "He Changed the Way Each of Us Sees the World"

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/10/05/president-obama-passing-steve-jobs-he-changed-way-each-us-sees-world

by hornokplease • 15 years ago

479 60 15 years ago

coderdude• 15 years ago

You know you're a big deal when the president of the United States makes a statement about your death just hours after the news breaks.

pwelch• 15 years ago

Can't agree more.

rphlx2• 15 years ago

It saddens me that the engineers and workers who actually designed and built the stuff will die unknown. Just reinforces that fame, popularity, charisma, self-promotion, wealth, and the ability to "manage" trump deep technical abilities.

kamechan2• 15 years ago

https://twitter.com/cperciva/status/121744770480615425

a retweet (not me). but, it struck a chord with me.

evgen• 15 years ago

Without the assistance of a person (or people) with all of those other characteristics, deep technical abilities accomplish nothing. If it were not for Steve the engineers and workers who actually designed and built the stuff would still have died unknown and they would have also probably died without having anything of significance to point to and say "I helped create that."

anactofgod• 15 years ago

This is an appropriate topic for HN, since it has to do with roles & responsibilities w/i a company. So, let's try to correct some misconceptions.

Steve Jobs was the CEO of Apple. And...

“A CEO does only three things. Sets the overall vision and strategy of the company and communicates it to all stakeholders. Recruits, hires, and retains the very best talent for the company. Makes sure there is always enough cash in the bank.” (from Fred Wilson, Venture Capitalist icon, requoting something he was taught early in his professional career)

Jobs showed that he was able to do all three of these things extremely well, arguably better any other CEO of our time. He did communicate a vision and strategy [#1], and he used that vision and strategy to recruit the very best talent for Apple [#2], people better than Jobs himself was at getting done what needed to be done (i.e., the people you lament "will die unknown"). His ability to do both those things - and to make sure that everyone performed and delivered in line with the vision [#!, again] - is why Apple is projected to have $90+BILLION in cash reserves at the end of the year [#3], climbed from $10/share to $400/share, and is the highest valued tech company in the world.

Remember, too that history reinforces that technical ability minus a clear vision and strong leadership doesn't produce Mac OS X/iOS, MacBook Airs, iPods, iPhones or iPads. They produce Pink/Taligent, 20th Anniversary Macs, Newtons, MacTVs and Pippins. And a company that loses its leadership position, is valued at $10/share, and comes within sight of bankruptcy.

partition2• 15 years ago

I agree that this is suboptimal. But it's true that you need both business and technical skills to get something out the door competently. And for these engineers and workers, the feeling of fulfillment that they have working for Steve is real and satisfies what I believe to be an actual human need: to feel competent and useful.

I just wish there was some other way to go about things than for, basically, impressionable technical types to be manipulated into doing work for narcissists.

Maybe the problem is, again, education. School generally doesn't prepare you to be a good salesman, which is unfortunate because that's the only kind of skill you need to actually get ahead in the real world.

nupark2• 15 years ago

As one of those former engineers at Apple, I can say definitively that Steve deserves it. Without him, we'd never have had the canvas on which to paint.

He made our contributions possible.

gospelwut• 15 years ago

I'm not a Mac person myself, but I do respect their design philosophy in the sense you don't have to do wild new things -- just standard things really well. So, by proxy I respect their engineers quite a bit. My only beef, really, was with their marketing department and some of their draconian business decisions.

bennesvig• 15 years ago

Steve didn't manage, he led. Big difference.

bodyfour• 15 years ago

Also, if your obituary is simultaneously all 25 top stories on HN.

scarmig• 15 years ago

Top 33, by my count.

abbasmehdi• 15 years ago

"And there may be no greater tribute to Steve’s success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented." <--- This is most telling.

badclient• 15 years ago

Not to be a douche(I shed some tears upon hearing the news and remain a tad shocked), but the accuracy of the above statement by Obama is very questionable IMO. Vast majority of the world still doesn't own an Apple device, I'd argue. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

That said, I did hear the news from my iPhone. And this comment? It's also coming from the same thing.

shantanubala• 15 years ago

"much of the world" not "most of the world"

It's a subtle difference in wording, but the meaning is very different.

snippyhollow• 15 years ago

It's not only about Apple products, it's about personal computers, or large touch-screen based smartphones. Without the (first) Macintosh, the PC ecosystem would be different.

r0s4• 15 years ago

That's a bit hyperbolic.

Cushman4• 15 years ago

No it isn't. It's 100% true.

If we can't honestly appreciate the incredible magnitude of the effect this man had on our world today of all days, when will we be able to?

r0s4• 15 years ago

Why do you(or the president) think exaggerating his accomplishments is warranted or even tasteful?

It's not 100% true, I know plenty of people with no apple devices, who don't care at all about apple or it's products.

Personality cults like this are embarrassing, and a major weakness for critical thinking. Celebrate the man for what he did, not some deified hero icon.

hackinthebochs2• 15 years ago

I'm gonna have to agree and say that the hyperbole about what this man accomplished is over-the-top. He didn't change the world in any meaningful way. He made great products, and that's about as far as his influence extends to the world.

The guy who invented the toilet "changed the world". Mark Zuckerburg has changed the world far more than Steve Jobs. Sometimes people need a reality check.

InclinedPlane• 15 years ago

It's all too easy to play up the impact that artists, politicians, and speakers have, we see them foisting their worldview on the Universe and begging people to accept it and to be changed by it. But artisans and industrialists can have just as much if not greater impact. Steve Jobs invented, perfected, and helped popularized devices, services, and ideas that affected many, many people's lives and livelihoods. Unimaginable amounts of art has been made using the tools that he had a very large hand in, and that barely touches the impact he has had on the world. He wasn't a saint, he wasn't a poet, but he touched and changed an unimaginable number of lives, for that he deserves respect.

r0s4• 15 years ago

Respect is honoring his accomplishments, inflating them is disrespectful.

channelmeter• 15 years ago

http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/comment//2011/10/03a11...

Cushman4• 15 years ago

Chills.

bitstream• 15 years ago

Very apt.

There is an easter-egg from this 'Think Different' campaign in OSX. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_Different#Mac_OS_X

kenferry• 15 years ago

If you look super carefully at the book emoji on the iPhone, same deal.

kamechan2• 15 years ago

"Steve was among the greatest of American innovators - brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it."

"think differently" <-- i wonder if this was intentional.

mirkules• 15 years ago

I thought the same. Nice homage, to be sure.

Florin_Andrei• 15 years ago

Intentional, no doubt.

As was the next allusion to "change".

maratd• 15 years ago

Mr. Jobs was an amazing person. I sincerely hope the President is mourning his loss. Unfortunately, his prior statements make me wonder whether he truly understood what Mr. Jobs added to our culture through the inventions he helped pioneer.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/7...

danssig• 15 years ago

Is the Telegraph one of those rags that tries to be controversial just to get views? I was (before today) under the impression that they were a reputable paper but they also had to take some shots at Jobs' personal live in his Obituary. What Steve did in his personal life is none of our business. Maybe he did treat someone in his life poorly. That might mean I wouldn't have wanted to be his personal friend, but it doesn't change the fact that Steve literally changed the world.

yesreally• 15 years ago

And yet, he uses a Blackberry.

President Obama on Steve Jobs: "He Changed the Way Each of Us Sees the World"

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