[Discuss] (OT) Steve Jobs 1955-2011

[Rich Braun]

Jobs was certainly a controversial figure, and his business steamrolled a lot
of the smaller companies whose entrepreneurial initiatives could have gone
farther.  But I think I will remember him for challenging his rivals.  Some
things that are hard to deny:

* He showed that industrial design (form/fit/appearance) matters as much now
as it did in the age of Metropolis (a film dating to the 1920s).

* The process of getting the bits from the developers' fingertips onto the
screen of the end user was pretty much consistently /terrible/ on /all/ other
platforms until Jobs came along.  Just run it, damnit, and make it /work/. 
Ubuntu was the first rival to really get that message.

* Simplify, strip down, and eliminate cruft--users will show up in droves.

* The retail store isn't dead, if you play the PR right.

* 99% of users really don't give a crap about customizability.  They want
someone else to make things work. (Heads up to Linux developers:  yes, I do
want customizability, but if your app is going to drive any kind of revenue,
you need to make it work first and provide customizability as a barely-visible
option.)

A lot of conventional wisdom got turned on its head under Steve Jobs' watch,
especially the return engagement which brought us the iPhone and the spinoffs
which came in rapid-fire since.

I'm still embittered about the loss of my last data-center management job
which came on the heels of overwhelming demand for and lack of ability to
support an abrupt increase of Macintosh users at the company.  (In a few
months we went from about 3 Macs hidden away in a QA lab to over 2 dozen,
mostly on desks of the $200K/year executive class.  Apple's strategy for
LAN-wide support was basically to have them walk over to the CambridgeSide
Galleria's "Genius Bar" to fix whatever settings they hosed.  Executives with
signature authority kept buying Macs without coordinating purchasing with IT. 
That's what I endured and really thought sucked, but had absolutely no control
over; I'll wager Apple went from 4% to 8% of the PC industry by doing the same
thing to a gazillion other IT departments just like mine.  Ever tried to put a
few dozen, few hundred, few thousand Apple devices under central management?
;-)

So yeah, Jobs had an impact on all our lives:  for better or for worse.  I
think in the end it will be for the better, because of the clear and obvious
point that he made: The User Is Paramount.  Ignore that at your peril.

Footnote:  City Councilor Leland Cheung unveiled a series of "Hollywood Stars"
recognizing Jobs and 6 other engineering leaders in a Walk of Fame here in
Cambridge just 3 weeks ago.  Coincidentally, he showed up at a neighborhood
meeting I attended this evening:  I met him for the first time right at the
same moment Jobs' death was announced.  Like Jobs himself, Cheung is the son
of immigrants from another country, making a new life here in America.  I plan
to go take a look at the Jobs star tomorrow.

-rich