I don't think he was evil. So far as we know he didn't run underage sex trafficking rings, or flood US cities with crack.
I think he was complicated and damaged and did some evil things to people close to him. But he also had some exceptional talents, and he facilitated a lot of developments that probably wouldn't have happened without him.
Those don't necessarily cancel out, but it's reasonable to wonder where tech would have gone if he was still alive.
Yes, I too really miss how he talked police into raiding peoples homes, humiliated Apple staff, screwed over his friends, refused to acknowledge his daughter, downplayed the suicides in Apple factories, commited fraud, refused to get himself treated for his cancer and lied about it, routinely parked in the spot meant for handicapped...
I could go on but I think you get the picture. That he was worshipped is an absolute shame, he was not an asshole, but way worse. He was evil. He was the dark side of capitalism.
I find this take on Jobs fascinating because even though all your criticisms of Jobs are perhaps exaggerated in some respects they're all based in fact, but the conclusions you draw from them are outrageously false.
While all of those things were harmful and some even despicable I think evil is going way too far. A lot of people on the internet get frothing mad about this stuff, while the interviews I've read or seen with many of the actual people involved such as Woz, his daughter, ex-employees, etc put these issues in a much more forgiving and nuanced context. None of the people who actually worked with him or new him that I've seen had said he was evil, so excuse me if I don't take the word of random internet person on that.
>He was the dark side of capitalism
What the heck has any of that got to do with capitalism? Seriously. Would a Chinese or Russian Communist Steve Jobs have been a shining beacon of charity and humility? What does that even mean? Without capitalism he'd still have been a bit of an arse, but then we wouldn't have had GUI interfaces and modern smartphones until years later, and probably not as good ones either. We'd have had committee designed, party-approved People's Phones scheduled into a 5 year plan or something. But I don't really see how thats got to do with anything.
I attribute the fact that many people praise and almost worship him to capitalism. There are many elements that I somehow link with capitalism as well: Forcing people to overwork, harshly firing people for minor flaws, taking credit for things you didn't do, ridiculous overpricing, 'being creative' with paperwork, using factories with bad conditions for workers, etc. Of course these things are in no way exclusive to capitalistic countries.
Of course I am exaggerating and I don't know him. I have read his biography, some internet articles, and watched some documentaries, and this is the general picture I got. He seems to be a very charming guy when he needs you (e.g. you are his superior, or a skilled co-worker like Woz), but shits on you when he's your boss (e.g. fires you in the elevator).
I think that the reason I get so upset whenever somebody praises Jobs, is because I often see this type of persons getting a lot of success at the expense of people with a 'weaker' personality (like myself). I like Steve Wozniak a lot better and think that his personality shines through his actions. Wozniak was a teacher, financed a big festival, and tried to connect with Russia. This is in a sharp contract with Jobs and I can't stand people when they praise Jobs but don't know the guy who single-handedly built the first Apple computer.
No question Woz was a nicer guy, and he was cheated by Jobs, but without Jobs there's no way he'd be a millionaire today. Steve Jobs is one of the reasons we need employment laws and such though.
> There are many elements that I somehow link with capitalism as well:
I will absolutely accept that many alternatives to capitalism claim explicitly to solve these problems, but it seems like a very solidly demonstrated fact that none of the ones that have yet been tried actually do, and many of them exacerbated these and other problems by orders of magnitude.
Capitalism is about empowering individuals by granting them ownership rights and not reserving that right exclusively for the state, the Party, the sovereign or a religious authority, but anybody. To me Capitalism is about individual rights, it's just that some of those individuals form companies worth Billions of dollars employing hundreds of thousands of people and some don't.
All pretty trivial stuff compared to the massive positive impact the products he oversaw and introduced to the world have had. Mac and iPhone literally changed the world as we know it.
Without him, home computing would be very different today. His insistence on focusing on usability and bringing in the best of the liberal arts into a very science-centric domain was his genius.
I'd rather live in a world where 'poaching' agreements between employers didn't exist and factory jobs were better but we had to use a phone with buttons. I think if we had to choose, the corrupt baby boomer CEO stuff Jobs represented would be eliminated even if that meant a slightly less optimal computing experience. I won't even go into how Apple is less a computer company than a media consumption machine company, but that's an argument for another day.
I also will argue that Jobs gets credited for a non-sensical 'he's the liberal arts genius who showed us usability' argument, when in reality usability is an ancient field and, arguably, the most usable desktop was unsexy Microsoft's NT desktop which is still very usable and refined today. You can put a random grandparent in front of an NT4 machine today and have then be productive near instantly. Meanwhile, the very same grandparent is overwhelmed with apps, pop-ups, swipes, privacy agreements, notifications, etc on the more 'usable' mobile device.
Jobs deserves credit for his achievements, but if you let me trade Jobs for a better world for the actual working stiffs who bust their ass 50-70 hours a week in this industry, absolutely, I would make that trade in a heartbeat. I don't care about the cost to quarterly projections or other CEO chest-thumping. Jobs, regardless of his intentions, represents the classic heartless CEO in many respects and made almost no effort to fix these things. I hope today's SV leaders have more progressive views about work/life balance. I'd love to bury the baby boomer workaholic nonsense and factories full of suicidal people with Jobs. I hope society can progress past the 'worship our CEOs' stage.
