Wednesday, October 05, 2011

As a Mac guy; I pause


The American Ideal. Rest in peace.

25 comments:

DeltaBravo said...

As one of my offspring noted:  "It's amazing the difference one man can make."   He opened the world of communications to people who were previously unable.  He leaves a chasm.

John said...

Not a Mac guy myself, but I do recognize and appreciate the genius of the guy and his cohorts who brought us many wonderful devices and applications to do things we never even though to ask for.

Being somewhat techno-phobic, I will probably always be far behind the Mac crowd, but I know I benefit from it anyway.

His contributions and ideas compare with those of Morse, Bell, Marconi, Edison and Farnsworth-- combined.

ewok40k said...

Even more remarkable, as a PC man, I observed how much the PC evolved just to catch up with Apple, from DOS, thru several Windows incarnations, to modern ones. Wonders of free market rivalization!

LCDRLDO6440 said...

Only the good die young.  God Bless & RIP.

Surfcaster said...

The best Capitalist Totalitarian Visionary Hippie Dictator. Evah!

Outlaw Mike said...

Ditto what everyone said. RIP. Condolences. The American Ideal, absolutely.

UltimaRatioRegis said...

The really ironic thing is that Jobs is idolized by a large number of the Wall Street protestor crowd.  They see Apple as the anti-establishment company. 

However, Jobs was an Ubercapitalist whose innovation and success drove the market relentlessly.  He was a bit of a pr*ck as a boss, and hardly was an all-inclusive and sensitive soul.  He believed in "diversity" only if you were diverse of thought and talent.  If you were an idiot, he would fire you. 

Steve Jobs fits the very description of Public Enemy Number 1 to all those protesters.  Funny, that.

MR T's Haircut said...

He was adopted.  His Sister Lisa was adopted.  Their biological mother chose adoption instead of abortion.  A back story you wont hear on the lame stream news.

He was an Entrepenaur Extraordinaire...   he suffered adversity and overcame it.  He was a Carnegie of our times. 

God Speed Mr Jobs.

ewok40k said...

But he was the man that gave them I-pods/pads etc... so everything is forgiven :3

C-dore 14 said...

All it shows is their lack of historical perspective and their inability to research.

C-dore 14 said...

This morning NPR did a nice piece on Jobs comparing him with Edison in his impact on society and daily life.  (CNN also did a great piece that demonstrated this impact by running clips in chronological order of him rolling out various products).  Our first home computer was an Apple IIC and I remember staring at the green characters while typing my War College papers.  His products were elegant yet aimed for a non-tech savvy guy like me.  He will be missed. (Sent from my iMac).

DeltaBravo said...

You're so right, C-dore.  Just a few days ago I had my fall furnace check.  Up in the attic I watched the tech use his i-Phone to take a call from his boss, then as a mirror and a flashlight to see the inner workings and corners of the furnace.  Then he took some screen shots of serial numbers to check specs on the furnace requirements.  Then he used the volt check app to make sure the thing was putting out the proper amps in the electrical system.  He said it also had a stud finder on it he found helpful...  one amazing hand-held device that made his workday much simpler.  Thanks, Steve. 

Surfcaster said...

Absolutely - he is the diametric opposite of the free loving hippie open source movement that shuns pay for software and vigourously grills closed source software unless it gets him on more devices. DOJ should have sues Apple instead of M$. Jobs was about as closed source as you get. It helps makes for a better product when your talent can significantly cut "diversity" of software / developers / and hardware out of the mix.

Funny thing is, he did the same thing as many on the left: he kept his bastion of products and message in education from K-12 up through Univeristadt at the exclusion nearly of all others. He indoctrinated entire generations onto the MAC much as generations have been indoctrinated politically.

Kristen said...

Mr. T, what a beautiful comment.  Thank you.

Kristen said...

CDR, I love the picture that you used with your post.  What an iconic illustration of the American Dream, where a young man can go from tinkering in a garage to heading up one the largest companies in the world, in one short lifetime.

Byron said...

I had an Android phone...got ride of it. Bought an iPhone...love it, won't part with it save for an upgrade.

Casey Tompkins said...

Influence worked the other way as well, Ewok. Note that modern Macs use industry-standard PCI architecture, and the hardware is interchangable with Wintel machines. They're even using Intel CPUs these days. :)

Apple, however, still leads in terms of industrial design.

UltimaRatioRegis said...

I might guess that the lack of historical perspective is brought to you by the NEA, teachers' unions, and public school indoctrination. 

The inability to research is really an unwillingness to do so.  After all, if anyone who disagrees with you is morally and intellectually inferior, then how could their opinions be valid?

MR T's Haircut said...

yes Ma'am .  Welcome.

xformed said...

I was enchanted by the ][+.  I got Uncle to buy two to then do manpower tracking and lecture slides (also bought two HP two pen plotters - beat waiting 6 months for CS draftsmans all the way over at NORVA).  Done in Apple Basic.  Used a ][e to create a CPM dBase II program management program to track my LOE and GTMO and OPPE preps.  Later as SWO, I set it up to track inport section watch quals and the "quality" (grading by pay grades in the section, not just raw bodies) of those in port teams.  Had a //c to do my thing at CDS32 as Material Officer.  Used ApppleWorks to track CASREP status/parts across the Atlantic, to the Med, to the IO, to Singapore, and back to the Med to bomb Khadffi in 86.  7 helo transfers for the staff (and a few across the piers extra bonus ones), with it in a cruise box.  Worked all the way through and home again for more service to me.  Bagged my Mac 512K shortly after, the Mac SE came with War College in Fall of 87.  A Mac II got within reach in Jan 88, when, after I scanned the Uniform Regs manual for all insignia, I colorized them with PixelPaint and sent business cards to CA on a 3.5" floppy.   Did maybe 50 some sets for various people (all services, but mostly USN) over the next few years, and had a master plan to take over that gig at all the exchange personal services counters, but the (now) ex would have had to reap the rewards....silly me, I thought she'd see a great idea, but, alas, it was my idea, not hers...As XO, took the SE aboard and used HyperCard to plot tides and currents in Charleston Harbor, so we could quickly determine when to ask for tugs with a few entries of that days reference data.  Drew out a graph and everything!  Used 4th Dimension to lay out a massive database structure to plan how to make the computer to take over all sorts of repetivie tracking and record keeping.  4 pages taped together on the ststeroom bulkhead.  Had a few of the crew add to the concept.  One module in particular was the one to handle the Whos trained to do what tasks (PQS at the core).   About that time the bonehead ADM in DC said "NO MACS!"  I wnet to the "dark side" (back to DOS) and developed TAMP (Training Administrative Management Program) using Borland's Paradox on a Z-248.  The overall design was from my bigger plan using 4th Dimension to visualize the connected, related databases.....a huge eye opener to me, coming from a linear programming background in Apple BASIC.

So, the Apple line had a big impact on the Fleet and a major school house (FCTCL) before computing was manstream.  I/we owe that to Steve and Steve and Mike Marluka and all those excellent type A people who have changed our lives....

How about that for some history?

xformed said...

After all, it was the overwhelming mass of Apple ][s that ushered in the age of personal computing......in all of those classrooms.  Shame they didn't make the "low cost Mac" we users railed about, would have been a shut out for the DOS dudes...

More of a shame I couldn't figure out why I should by some Apple stock for about $3-4/share in 1981-2....what a freaking doofus I am....

Surfcaster said...

On the II+ I played Choplifter and Load runner in FOUR Colors ;) !

Seriously - that is pretty cool in the early days of the personal computer. Interesting the Jobs had a major play in making that all happen as well as the major play today that allows you to do that on an app on your phone.

Casey Tompkins said...

Um, no. Apple started the movement, but IBM made it happen, the number of which brand computers in the classrom notwithstanding. In fact, Apple held a long dominance in schools which was not reflected in the rest of society. After the ][ series, it was pretty much downhill until the Mac, and even that was a flawed idea. Not one of Jobs' best implementations. Still, it was quantum leap forward.

Apple, alas, threw that advantage away, and their fortunes were trending strongly downward until Jobs return, after which he pushed the development of the NeXT OS for Apple, resulting in OS X and the modern Mac line.

... Which underlines his personal influence.

Anonymous said...

Feel free to develop your own apps, or submit for the Unix code base that creates MacOS X.  People don't understand open source development, and open systems. Indoctrinated?  Make a good product, people buy it.  Welcome to capitalism.

Anonymous said...

Exactly what I am attempting to do...

I am working with a code shop in India to build an app that takes advantage of my decades experience in the S&OP area of manufacturing - do we have enough inventory to meet our customer demand?

is it going to work?  I sure as hell hope so, but shame on me if I don not at least make the attempt...