How Steve Jobs' Love of Simplicity Fueled A Design Revolution

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/How-Steve-Jobs-Love-of-Simplicity-Fueled-A-Design-Revolution-166251016.html

by webwanderings • 14 years ago

17 13 14 years ago

overbroad4• 14 years ago

How Dennis Ritchie's love of simplicity fueled everything that now matters in computing, including the operating systems and software Steve Jobs used to "fuel a design revolution".

Apple makes beautiful hardware, but does that amount to simplicity? If the focus is Apple software, maybe in 1977 it was simple, but today it is anything but simple. Restrictive? Yes. Simple? No.

When I want simplicity in software I look to New Jersey, not Cupertino.

nachteilig• 14 years ago

Can we please get over the (entirely reasonable) hurt feelings about Ritchie not getting the attention Jobs did?

Jobs certainly made a lot of contributions to his field, even if they were in a different area than Ritchie, and it doesn't advance the discourse to constantly yell "BUT THIS OTHER GUY!" whenever someone is memorializing Jobs.

SurfScore2• 14 years ago

Dennis Ritchie > Steve Jobs == Nikola Tesla > Thomas Edison

overbroad4• 14 years ago

No hurt feelings. No yelling. Here's my point: real simplicity is the stuff of Dennis Ritchie. Not Steve Jobs.

As I said, Apple makes beautiful hardware. And you could say they promote a certain "simplicity" of use. Maybe you could even call Apple hardware "simple". I don't know. It's an enclosure with a board inside. What I do know is that once you get to the software side, Jobs is not the guy who should get credit for "simplicity" of design. That guy should be Dennis Ritchie. Alas, many journalists will never know this and write about it, because they don't spend time learning C and UNIX (whereas they do spend time using learning and Apple products that are built with C and UNIX).

It is the simplicity Ritchie gave us, his design philosophy, that allows so much to be created, like the software that drives Apple products. Anyone can create simple things or complex things in software, but we all need to start with something simple in order to do the building. That something is not the work of Steve Jobs. It is the work of Dennis Ritchie and colleagues.

If the title did not use the word "simplicity" I would have no comment. Jobs is a hero of design. But simplicity, to me, is another matter. He is not the true source. Even the early Apple computers where the software was "simple" were not the work of Jobs, but of his co-founder, who is not longer part of Apple.

webwielder• 14 years ago

I think it's entirely reasonable that a consumer-centric tech visionary cut down in the prime of his career would get more attention than the death of a programmer-centric tech visionary whose major work occurred in the 60s and 70s.

mparlane• 14 years ago

How Google's Love of Simplicity Fueled A Web Design Revolution

How Steve Jobs' Love of Simplicity Fueled A Design Revolution

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