Steve Jobs

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In a way, I feel as though he is marginally related to Computers, Math, Science, and Technology, but a good place than any other I suppose! (But also DER!! of course he is related to computers- the Mac and etc)

I've been listening to the audiobook "Steve Jobs" by Walter Isaacson, and it is interesting in that it tells a lot about an "iconic" figure in pop-culture. However, I am beginning to more seriously question his status as the impetuous and mercurial "genius" that "revolutionized" the realms of the personal computer and computer design/engineering. This may stem from my lack of familiarity with the professional minutia of the field, but to me it seems that he was simply a great marketer and very good at spinning hype and selling his brand, all the while being particularly acrimonious and contentious towards his peers and industrial competitors.

My main qualm is that he didn't really invent anything in particular, but instead was just insistent about how his product came across.
However, people like Steve Wozniak who did most of the heavy lifting in the engineering department get much less acclaim and don't really have movies or books produced about them.

I always said that Steve Jobs was overrated. Steve Jobs and Dennis Ritchie died one week apart, but Ritchie has been totally overlooked by the media. I'm still sure that most people don't know who Dennis Ritchie was and how important his deeds were for us. He is one of the many deserving much more credit than Jobs.

I think even Wozniak has a few books, though he is usually a supporting character in the biographical films.

It seems like Steve Jobs played a critical role as a visionary and executive, but he is more like the equivalent of a Movie Director or a Military General. In both cases, you need leaders with at least enough technical skill to understand what is possible to achieve with the tools at hand or especially be a step ahead of the competition. A film director should understand Cinematography, but his camera man probably understands it even better as he is a specialist. Same for the FX crew.

I suppose Jobs deserves credit for being a competent leader, even if he was sometimes obsessive to the point of being a jackass, but you have a point that he gets some undeserved technical credit.

I am a purist, Dennis Richie has done more for computer science than most of the rest put together.

Steve jobs made a cake out of the knowledge of others and iced it with his crappy consumerism

Richie and Thomson certainly deserve much credit for today's computers. As does pretty much anyone who worked at PARC during the crucial period when everything from laser printers to ethernet to VLSI were invented & perfected into practical things that do stuff (& I suppose, Bell Labs & Lincoln Labs & BBN). But they also were part of an incremental process of advancement; before C (or B) there was BCPL. Steve Wozniac was & is a brilliant engineer with a truly wonderful sense of aesthetics. People like Jobs, Gates, Metcalfe, on the other hand I tend to equate to IBM's Thomas J. Watson Jr.; truly skilled managers & salesmen who enabled the engineers to create super brilliant things by selling the brilliant things they'd created prior. It's a symbiosis really, & an unavoidable part of capitalism.

In my opinion Steve Jobs was a visionary and perfectionist, like Walt Disney, who could visualise the types of products and services that people wanted (powerful computers that work seemlessly, downloaded music easy to play and carry with you, touch screen phones you keep in your pocket that perform every day functions) and then was able to inspire the technicians around him to build the products that met his vision and serve the public.

Steve Jobs is an overrated nut job. He is praised by brainless sheep as being the god of all gods. It makes me sick at how much Steve Jobs is praised, there are more people in this world that have done far greater things than SJ has!