So long Steve ..

[Peter Korsten]

Jay, you managed to either completely ignore or completely misinterpret the
essence of my e-mail. Still, let me try to address your points.

2011/10/7 Jay Vaughan <jayv at synth.net>

> > Put it this way. Andy linked a video of jobs in 2005, at Stanford. Jobs
> > basically said that if it weren't for him taking calligraphy classes,
> > computers wouldn't have had proper typefaces. So much for modesty.
>
> Umm .. he's not saying that.  He's saying that what he learned from
> calligraphy, he applied to the aesthetics of computers .. and that aesthetic
> drover forward the adoption of design technology throughout the whole realm
> of software.
>

(Somehow, I managed to click EXACTLY on the following quote in the video.
Scary.)

"If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on that
calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful
typography that they do."

There's the word "might", sure. We all know what he meant.

In fact, hardly anyone gave a shit about proper font rendering on PC's
> before the Mac came along and dominated desktop publishing and the printing
> industries.  This is a demonstrable fact.
>

There wasn't even a graphical user interface for MS-DOS at the time, so this
issue is a moot point.

I've heard people credit him with inventing the graphical user interface,
and the portable MP3 player. What he was very good at was (after 19997 at
least) was to take an existing idea and make it wildly popular, in a way
that I don't think anybody else has managed.


> Your knowledge is hindered.  An absence of data is not a fact.  We don't
> know if he donated to charity as Steve Jobs, or anonymously - could be he
> made the (wise) decision not to associate his philanthropy with his external
> personal image and other corporate activities.  We don't know. Yet.
>

Jobs didn't strike me as the sort of person to let this go unnoticed. Ayrton
Senna let it go unnoticed, but he was quite a different person.


> Apple matches staff donations to charity up to $10,000.  I don't think many
> other companies do that.
>

Mine does. The scheme works a bit differently, and the amounts will never
reach $10,000, but the combined employee contributions are matched.


> > Their track record for care about the environment is nothing to write
> > home about either.
>
> [citation required]
>

http://www.greenmyapple.org/


>  Jobs has made technology approachable for a lot more people than Gates
> has.  You can't tell me that Grandma can handle Win8 Tablet anywhere nearly
> as well as she can handle iOS4.
>

And here's where you so clearly demonstrate that you don't understand my
point. "What has Gates done for me?" Well, he saved countless children from
certain death. "Yeah, but what has he done for ME?"

We're talking about providing medicine, to stop children dying from stupid
diseases on the one hand, and having rich, clueless people use technology
more easily. Can people in developing countries afford Apple stuff? No, of
course not.

I'm not saying that everybody should do the same thing as Gates. I'm also
not saying that Jobs was a bad person because he didn't: heck, what have I
done lately for people in developing countries? My last donation to that
effect must have been after the 2006 tsunami.

What I'm saying is that the general attitude towards both Gates and Jobs is
based on a "me, me, me" disposition, and this is list is no exception, with
plenty of people ready to criticise the governments or the big faceless
corporations, but not themselves.

Because in my mind, you just cannot argue that usability of (entertainment)
technology is more important than trying to save people's lives.

- Peter
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