I think this is getting ridiculous, everything Steve Jobs did or said is getting blown out of proportions.
Yeah, it was nice of him to let this guy take the device to his friend, but let's not make him a saint or martyr or what not. Don't forget the poor bastards in China living on the edge of humanity to make the said devices..
"Don't forget the poor bastards in China living on the edge of humanity" - to be honest, people earn as much per hour in the Foxconn factory as somebody earning minimum wage in my country(Poland) does. And that's within EU, with living costs much higher than in China. Yet nobody talks about "living on the edge of humanity".
True - their wages keep increasing which is good, but think 2-3 years ago, they were probably much smaller. Think also of the work conditions, there's no "EU regulations" there...
You are probably much better off in Poland.
Oh yeah, absolutely. My point is, that when people in the US/UK read an article about workers in the Foxconn factory they feel sorry for people there, for earning "just" $3/hour. Well, I know people here who earn exactly that much or even less, and that's before taxes. And we're not Saudi Arabia either, our petrol is ~$8 per US Gallon, and people need to drive places to work. I know people who spend half of their daily wage just on transportation. So if they work 8 hours per day they work for 4 just to be there,without any profit.
It is explicit western policy to use cheap eastern labor:
"The cost [...] has been evaluated, taking into account realistic labor prices in different countries. The total cost is X (with a western equivalent value of Y) [where Y>X]
This. Looking at this as a skeptic Apple user i cant help but think WTF ? Steve Jobs writes OK in an email and the worshippers go "OMG, HES SUCH A LEGEND, JUST 2 LETTERS".
Except it wasn't just two letters, given how ballistic they went when the iPhone got leaked allowing him to carry the iPad with him was actually a significant risk.
Steve Jobs was an arsehole. But the brevity of that message does not make it any less special to the one receiving it.
As someone who has had carry privileges for pre-release iOS devices, I can tell you that the rules are extremely strict, and breaking them generally results in being fired.
As i understand it the guy was already allowed to carry the ipad around with him and given the fact that Jobs suffered from a similar illness i dont think it was such a big deal to him a couple of days before offical launch.
I totally agree. But this got me thinking - this behavior occurs frequently in how we react to celebrities and leaders. As a species we seem to be wired to make gods of people we admire. Anything they touch or utter then becomes sacred and revered.
The number of Apple fanboys on this website is extremely surprising, considering that Apple's attitude & products go against every true hacker's values and culture.
Considering the culture of Apple, and how big of an issue this would be if it got out, this is huge.
The poor bastards in China can choose to do something else. They are grown adults who can make their own life decisions. It's literally a thousand times safer than the fishermen and loggers here in the west.
"The poor bastards in China can choose to do something else."
Thats not really true, China is not the US. Most of these workers have no other choice as to nearly work themselves to death to be able to support their families outside of the big cities. Its not really Apples problem though, as some other company would take their spot if they were not doing it, but that doesnt make it a good thing.
It's a fact that no one forces a Chinese person to work at Foxconn. It's also a fact that many jobs like logging and fishing in the west are much much higher in fatalities each year. It's also a fact that dentists have a much much higher suicide rate than Foxconn employees, almost 7 times more from the numbers I was playing with last year.
The situation in China isn't good, but it is what it is, and it's not Apples fault. And it most certainly isn't Jobs fault. Just about everything you consume is made in factories in China, but I only see this when Apple is in the conversation. It's simply illogical.
bs. This makes it sound like these companies like Apple are harming the Chinese. I came from a developing country and I can tell you right now many people have to do much worse jobs to carve out some food for themselves and many others die from the lack of it. The moment you pull out jobs made possible by Apple and the likes, many will suffer.
On a related note I did quite like the email replies that Steve Jobs would write when he was still around. I started to collect them at one point in a web site.
At the time it felt like an interesting meme but over time I began to really feel the philosophy of the man and Apple not having previously been a fan of Apple.
To me the interpretation was that Steve always was product focused and wanted to put out the best user experience possible. I began to appreciate this customer focused approach. So I can see why he said 'OK'.
This is the minimal response I would expect from anybody in the company. We shouldn't applaud this behavior as some kind of exemplary gift from the corporation.
Why? Because it normalizes the chain-of-command, rules-are-rules way that we typically see. It makes it seem OK that someone wouldn't grant this request.
It's not an employee's 'opinion' based on an emotional decision on whether they can share something with an individual that has cost millions (billions?) to produce.
Steve Jobs was an amazing person, but who cares that he let someone show somebody an iPad?
Basically, this story boils down to: "Billionaire CEO lets employee talk about work with a friend." Not really some super amazing thing, unless you are just honored and in awe that Steve Jobs momentarily knew who you were.
What did his billionaire status have to do with anything?
I know why you said it of course, that kind of wealth has a stigma these days. And what could be more obnoxious than a billionaire CEO!
There's no evidence Jobs coveted being a billionaire, he didn't make an effort to show off his extreme wealth, and he didn't go out of his way to brag about it.
Why is mentioning someone's wealth a trigger for you?
So we can't call someone a billionaire once they have a billion dollars, but instead we have to wait until they covet billionaire status and make an effort to show off extreme wealth?
I really don't see what your point is, beyond "Hey! Unfair to billionaire to state their approximate wealth level!"
I think SJ found it natural to just say "OK" because he thought that the person mailing him knew him enough and was mature enough to just need that permission.
As someone outside of Apple, the few times I got replies from SJ were of similar brevity, aside from one, which was a vegan cake that used apple sauce instead of eggs along with directions. I wish I had kept it longer, knowing his fate.
Right, every time I emailed him, he'd reply within minutes. Always just a couple of words, but the questions lended themselves for that. In person, he was a lot more chatty. For instance, I met him at MacWorld Expo SF in January of 1999, we discussed the merits of the hocket puck mouse for over ten minutes.
What are the merits? This isn't a troll, I'm interested, because I can't stand it (or most Asple mice for that matter). Their trackpads on the other hand... Every iteration blows the old one away and I love them.
It's funny. I've never understood the hatred of the hockey puck mouse, I always loved mine.
I think the answer was in how you held it. I held it very lightly with the tips of my fingers and so could throw it around with real speed and accuracy. I thought it's shape made it far more manoeuvrable. Because it had a chord I never had any problems with orientation either. I liked it's solidity too.
For a long time I assumed that the criticisms came from people who had either never used it (or had used it very briefly at a reseller's). I still believe this to a certain degree. There was a lot of irrational and ill-informed Apple bashing at the time and, to me, this was just one of the anti-Apple style-over-substance mantras.
My dislike was due to its odd shape in my hand - my hands are quite large. It was so small and I struggled to click with accuracy too.
I also dislike the current cordless one too - people I work with leave the mouse in all sorts of strange places and almost always I seem to start driving it upside down. And the lack of proper scroll wheel is infuriating when trying to scroll through a CT scan or MRI - using the fantastic DICOM/image viewer Osirix and trying to scroll 1 image either way is quite tricky.
Steve Jobs explained to me that it was ergonomically superior to mice on which you rest your entire hand. The ‘Apple USB mouse’ was meant to be used without putting your hand down at all. That way, you wouldn't put pressure on your wrist and you wouldn't hold your mouse in the same position for too long.
At the time, the iMac had been out for 5 months (the first Mac that came with the Apple USB mouse). So SJ had received plenty of responses about it already, and no doubt he knew what the press had written about it. To me, he said “They'll get used to it, this is a better mouse.” As we talked, I started to believe it, and by the end of our conversation, I was convinced that yes, this is revolutionary and necessary. (I was 18 years old at the time, I had recently moved to the US, and MacWorld Expo was the biggest event I had ever been.) A year later, Apple replaced the model with the more conventional ‘Apple Pro mouse’.
I once wrote an email to Jobs at 8am on a lark and got a reply within 30 minutes. It seemed like if he was using his iPad and wanted to respond, he did so immediately.
The only reason this story is remarkable is because Steve Jobs was a jerk all of the time, so exceptions and exhibitions of humanity seem special. Really, I'd see him as a cool guy if he were always like this. Not that him being an ass in any way devalues his abilities. It is what it is.
I personally think writing just "OK" does not make him less of a jerk. Seriously! This guys friend is terminally ill and he does not have a few nice words to spare? Just "OK"???
""Except he was already allowed to carry it. He was just not allowed to show it to anyone."
Assuming that's the case then he could have weighed the possible downside (almost nil) to showing the device to someone on their deathbed (with nobody else in the room of course) vs. the risk in asking Steve for permission and the potential repercussions of doing that. [1] Almost daring him to either not respond or to say "no" instead of "ok". I suspect there is more here than meets the eye. [2]
[1] Certainly a risk greater than showing the device to someone on their death bed.
[2] Shows the level of brainwashing more or less like asking the Priest, Minister or Rabbi for a pass on a ritual that has been drilled into your head. After all only you yourself know you have committed the transgression.
Not necessarily, I am pretty sure that prototype iPads had location logging enabled and if he just took it out to a different city there would be questions asked. If he had an email from Steve himself, he had an excuse.
Did your dying friend really had to see an iPad? I mean, in her last moments, who cares about a bigger iPhone? I'm not trolling, I'm myself a tech enthusiast, and I'm not quite sure I'd expect from a friend to come tell me goodbye and show me his "latest toy he's been working on lately".
I resent that my time as a functioning nexus of memory and intellect is limited by biology. It is the future I miss the most. The things I will never live to see.
I would be so pleased if, in my last moments, a friend gives me a glimpse of what's next. Even better if I am lucid enough to appreciate it. Cherry on top that a friend of MINE is involved in it and proud of it.
Actually, this is exactly trolling, and depressingly presumptuous and untrusting of you. She wasn't your friend, she was his friend. Quit optimizing stranger's lives.
Sounds like they knew each other from working at Adobe and perhaps they were really interested in this type of advancement. She may have been really interested in where computing for the consumer was heading and the iPad was more than a toy to him, he was probably working on it non-stop for a year or two.
Just think, instead of being your average tech consumer they are the type of people that built these devices and thus he felt she may have been glad to have a look at where things were before she left.
Its a nice gesture, "Look at this thing that no one even knows about yet".I thought it was a bit sweet.
There's something really awesome when you start reading something on the front page of HN and realize the blog post is from someone you know :) Good stuff, David!!!
It was interesting short story that put a tear in my eye (seriously) but since you knew Steve (even little bit), why did you put "SJ R.I.P." at the end?
Just to clarify to those who downvoted; Steve was a Buddhist. As you know, Buddhist underlying position on live after death is that it doesn't exist. After death you are simply being reborn. So Steve had nowhere to "rest in peace". He's alive again.
Was he really a Bhuddist? I never heard this then just after he died it started appearing in articles with the same sort of dubious quality as statements like 'Stanley Kubrick had a 200 IQ', 'Einstein was bad at maths in highschool.'
Honestly, I am not sure I like this story or hate it. I like that you shared it, but my reaction to Jobs only saying "OK", my read on that is that he was too busy to say much more and therefor a jerk or if he, in a Jobs-like minimalist way just though that in a serious situation like that, less is more and not much more needed to be said. Either way, thank you for sharing an interesting and thought provoking story.
Perhaps he believed that platitudes wouldn't have helped, but that giving the permission was enough (as it so obviously was for this person). I couldn't imagine it was a particularly easy request to receive and he could have just ignored it.
I've dealt with busy people. In person, 1-on-1, they're great, absolutely focussed on you. And I've received emails from them like this.
I concluded that it was not arrogance or a lack of empathy but rather that their time had gotten constrained. If they wanted to preserve themselves for other things than email, they HAD to email like this.
If I had received this reply, I would have been thrilled too. Probably more thrilled to receive some other comment, but I wouldn't have been miffed by the terseness.
While this reaction is definitely understandable, I think along similar lines of some others here that someone that busy just doesn't always have time for a verbose response. "OK" may have been exactly what he had time for, and if that were the case, I'd say his response was likely sent faster than it would have been if someone had asked him an interesting but less urgent message.
Of course, as with everyone else's opinions... this is 100% speculation.
I have the same like-or-hate reaction, though for a different reason: This sort of thing encourages the irrational hero worship that Jobs fostered while he was alive and that's only grown in some circles after his death. Yes, this story shows that he did something good for someone. Once. And I'm sure there are other similar anecdotes. But the takeaway here will not be "this is something that Steve Jobs did that was nice," it will be "OH WOW STEVE JOBS WAS A SAINT."
But the takeaway here will not be "this is something that Steve Jobs did that was nice," it will be "OH WOW STEVE JOBS WAS A SAINT."
And that, sir, is what we call the fundamental attribution error. But I feel it applies more to everyone than just Jobs. If you showcase a positive action, it'll be assumed as part of a personality. And I seriously doubt anyone would be spreading bad things about Steve Jobs, because he actually was very intelligent and all that lot. The only person I'm aware who was appreciated during life and hated afterwards is Edison, and that's only 100 years after the fact.
I'm more disturbed by the fascination that we as a species have with gadgets. I think that was a totally-chill-but-perhaps-not-especially-saintly thing for Steve to do.
> I'm more disturbed by the fascination that we as a species have with gadgets.
It has always been this way. Humans like physical objects. Maybe your particular love is art. My Grandmother's was salt and pepper shakers. Some people love bikes.
Things with motion or reactions tend to grab more attention. Computers were amazing in this regard. The iPad and other touch tablets really blow the doors off. Sit down and talk to a car or motorcycle guy/girl about the time they got it working when no one thought they could....
I'm actually quite happy with it. It drives those people to build better things or use them in ways others haven't thought of. It drives us.
// these days, Steve Jobs's response is probably the best I could do, anything added would just sound wrong
The iPad was a true innovation when it was released and even more so 3 months prior to its release.
To be able to experience a new invention so far before everyone else on that planet is a special experience. At least, I'd see it that way were I in her friend's shoes.
I'm obviously a bit simple if I'm willing to admit it - but I still feel like I'm in the future when I pull the iPad out the bookcase/bag/couch crack. It's a computer, its only a few mm thick, and its now!
Jobs didn't need to respond if he thought it was a waste of time and/or didn't care. He simply needed to give approval - not much else needed to be said.
