Not costing lives. But saving lifetimes across a population.

"So if you make it boot ten seconds faster, you've saved a dozen lives."

That's emotional blackmail. The implication is failing to do that will cost a dozen lives. It's also incorrect. Making it boot ten seconds faster saves zero lives.

I don't know how to understand it for you.

You could make claims like that about anything. You could equally claim "Have a nice day" is a threatening remark.

You have to be spectactularly stupid to think that not making software faster is going to cost people their life.

But it could, across a population, cost entire lifetimes worth of time.

So yes, it's important to consider your software's cost to humanity.

The issue here is that you're rejecting a clear explanation of your externalities.

Stop rationalising the externalisation of your costs; they still exist even if you don't enjoy being confronted with it.

> The issue here is that you're rejecting a clear explanation of your externalities.

No, the issue here is Jobs making a legitimate point in the most emotionally manipulative way he could think of.

Honestly I couldn't possibly disagree more.

Pointing out that you're stepping on toes is not emotional blackmail.

Emotional blackmail is either direct:

“If you hang out with your buddies tonight, I will pack my bags and leave you.”

or indirect:

“I don't even spend time with my friends because I want to spend more time with you."

What Jobs is doing is pointing out a fact.

That it hurts you this much informs me more of your developmental attitude than it does about Jobs being an asshole. Which he was, but not for this.

I'll go out on a limb and suggest the clever people at Apple were aware making ill-performing operating system software isn't going to literally kill people.

Of course. I'm not asserting otherwise. I'm also not disagreeing with the underlying point. What I'm disagreeing with is engaging in highly manipulative emotional language -- which isn't even technically correct -- to make it.

I can easily imagine a situation where life support hardware needs to reboot, and taking too long to do so would be life threatening.

Wasting people's time. That's a good enough reason.

Sure, I agree. I just take issue with the framing. It's highly manipulative.

What is a life if not time well spent?