Today Is Steve Jobs' 58th Birthday

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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Steve Jobs, the iconic front man and product innovator for Apple would have been 58 years old today. He is the holder or co-inventor of over 300 US patents and changed the face of technology even though he never had any formal technology training. Love him or hate him, he was definitely a defining influence on the computing, mobile applications and portable music platforms.
 
MajorDomo said:
Steve Jobs, the iconic front man and product innovator for Apple would have been 58 years old today. He is the holder or co-inventor of over 300 US patents and changed the face of technology even though he never had any formal technology training. Love him or hate him, he was definitely a defining influence on the computing, mobile applications and portable music platforms.
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Where is Steve to make the Steve Jobs birthday post? I much prefer his apple hate posts to your more gentile posts about a guy loved/hated in the tech field. I guess I'll stir the pot in traditional [H] forum fashion

RIP patent troll King Jobs!
 
who cares? I never understood the point of caring that dead celebrity X is Y years on Z day.
 
Although I don't share the vitriol that many people feel for Mr Jobs and I actually do think his marketing and presentation skills are notable ... I also don't understand the fascination with celebrating people's birthdays after their death unless they are REALLY REALLY famous (Lincoln, Washington, JC, the Buddha, the Mahatma, Newton, da Vinci, etc) ;)
 
kbrickley said:
... I also don't understand the fascination with celebrating people's birthdays after their death unless they are REALLY REALLY famous (Lincoln, Washington, JC, the Buddha, the Mahatma, Newton, da Vinci, etc) ;)
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Appreciate the sentiment. ;)
 
No it's not his birthday -- he's dead, he doesn't get one anymore.

If he happens to rise up in some zombie apocalypse... we can give him a new "birthday" but for the time being he's worm food. And worm food doesn't have birthdays.

Yeah he "would have" been 58 - had he listened to modern medicine and not that hippy feel good nature crap. Worked out pretty well for you didn't it steve?
 
collegeboy69us said:
No it's not his birthday -- he's dead, he doesn't get one anymore.

If he happens to rise up in some zombie apocalypse... we can give him a new "birthday" but for the time being he's worm food. And worm food doesn't have birthdays.

Yeah he "would have" been 58 - had he listened to modern medicine and not that hippy feel good nature crap. Worked out pretty well for you didn't it steve?
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I love it when I click comments and my sentiments have already been echoed
 
I hate Apple as much as the next guy but even I have to admit if it weren't for him, I doubt I'd have this bad ass Note 2 smart phone. Until the iPhone, the only people that had "smart phones" were real estate agents with their BlackBerry.
 
As with most businessmen, he'll just be a footnote in the history books. Give it time, you'll see. Someone else new will steal the scene and people from this decade won't seem quite as innovative as tomorrow's: "today's business leaders." Who were the innovative leaders 30 years ago? How many can you count?
 
Parmenides said:
As with most businessmen, he'll just be a footnote in the history books. Give it time, you'll see. Someone else new will steal the scene and people from this decade won't seem quite as innovative as tomorrow's: "today's business leaders." Who were the innovative leaders 30 years ago? How many can you count?
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What I find interesting is that the one thing he was actually good at is the one thing that business doesn't seem to copy well from him ... his presentation skills ... now every new product launch has an Apple style launch and they still can't figure out how to do a good presentation of it (even Apple has lost that ability now that Jobs is gone) ...

I think business books will remember him for two things ... his presentation skills and his ability to figure out what consumers will buy before they figure it out for themselves ... considering how poor the majority of product presentations and CEO presentations are I am surprised we haven't seen improvements in that area yet

That said, he is no Abraham Lincoln or Mahatma Gandhi and I don't think the interest in his birthday will last over time ... where we will still celebrate the Mahatma a century from now ;)
 
kbrickley said:
What I find interesting is that the one thing he was actually good at is the one thing that business doesn't seem to copy well from him ... his presentation skills ... now every new product launch has an Apple style launch and they still can't figure out how to do a good presentation of it (even Apple has lost that ability now that Jobs is gone) ...

I think business books will remember him for two things ... his presentation skills and his ability to figure out what consumers will buy before they figure it out for themselves ... considering how poor the majority of product presentations and CEO presentations are I am surprised we haven't seen improvements in that area yet

That said, he is no Abraham Lincoln or Mahatma Gandhi and I don't think the interest in his birthday will last over time ... where we will still celebrate the Mahatma a century from now ;)
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Well, I think there were a lot of people who could anticipate the market. The majority of the successful business people could anticipate the market before it came upon them. The rest where just good at stealing ideas and work. And presentation skills, I doubt he was the only one who was good. Having presentation skills that interests investors is an age old skill. And no one remembers anyone with those skills.
 
Jobs I think had a great attention to detail and understood that things needed to look good, work well and together and be relatively simple to use. Apple revolutionized the computing industry with products that it did not invent and had been long existed but Jobs and Apple refined them and made them sexy and simple. That's way he is considered as tech genius by so many.

It is sad though that a man with so much wealth and creativity and relatively young decided that his genius also extended to medicine. He'd be alive today and kicking if he'd simply listen to his doctors. What a shame.
 
MacLeod said:
I hate Apple as much as the next guy but even I have to admit if it weren't for him, I doubt I'd have this bad ass Note 2 smart phone. Until the iPhone, the only people that had "smart phones" were real estate agents with their BlackBerry.
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Exactly. Without his competition the smart phones of today would be much less everything than then are now. Even though I don't like apple products much,the competition they brought helped us consumers.

But yeah- he is dead. No more birthdays for him.
 
Parmenides said:
Well, I think there were a lot of people who could anticipate the market. The majority of the successful business people could anticipate the market before it came upon them. The rest where just good at stealing ideas and work. And presentation skills, I doubt he was the only one who was good. Having presentation skills that interests investors is an age old skill. And no one remembers anyone with those skills.
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Branson of Virgin is about the only eloquent presenter I have seen recently ... they haven't written all of those how to present like Steve Jobs books for nothing ... you don't see any how to present like Steve Balmer books :eek:
 
I'd say he will be remembered in a similar manner to Edison. Both were far more shrewd businessmen than anything else. They were charismatic and ruthless at destroying their competition. Or at least attempting to do so. And both were unashamed in copying and profiting off of it. And if you need proof just think of the names Westinghouse, Marconi, Kettering, and Tesla (and so many others of that era) and how many people know them versus Edison. Sure, it would be nice if the people who made our world would be remembered for bringing it to us, but the fact is that the celebrities and people with charisma and powerful salesmanship will be the ones remembered instead. Importantly, they are also the people who are seeking out to be remembered by using their creations and showing them off to the world in person, verus the ones who sit in a lab and couldn't care less about fame and instead focus on progress.
 
Don't know if this was posted to troll us or if OP really thinks this guy's birthday after his death should be celebrated... Steve Jobs was a greedy businessman and not a hero.
 
TheFlosser said:
Don't know if this was posted to troll us or if OP really thinks this guy's birthday after his death should be celebrated... Steve Jobs was a greedy businessman and not a hero.
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Well, those things aren't mutually exclusive ... we celebrate many businessmen (like Nobel, Getty, Rockefeller, Hearst, Edison, etc) ...

we will eventually celebrate Gates like we do Alfred Nobel, I think (in fact I would love to see Gates establish a prize similar to the Nobel prize after his death so his name will live forever ... but just focused on medicine and the sciences ... I think the Nobel prize has the humanities covered well already) ...

that said, I don't think Jobs is in their class ... the closest businessman to Jobs (as others have noted) is probably Edison ... and we don't usually celebrate Edison much beyond acknowledging his business achievements and tenaciousness ;)
 
blitzkommando said:
I'd say he will be remembered in a similar manner to Edison. Both were far more shrewd businessmen than anything else. They were charismatic and ruthless at destroying their competition. Or at least attempting to do so. And both were unashamed in copying and profiting off of it. And if you need proof just think of the names Westinghouse, Marconi, Kettering, and Tesla (and so many others of that era) and how many people know them versus Edison. Sure, it would be nice if the people who made our world would be remembered for bringing it to us, but the fact is that the celebrities and people with charisma and powerful salesmanship will be the ones remembered instead. Importantly, they are also the people who are seeking out to be remembered by using their creations and showing them off to the world in person, verus the ones who sit in a lab and couldn't care less about fame and instead focus on progress.
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Well, I think you have to be careful of denigrating the businessman who was a good salesman vs the creative types ... both are needed and in a capitalistic society like most of the world, both are avenues to success ...

who was more important, the creative type who invented what became instant Jello (and died without a fortune because he didn't know what to do with his idea) or the salesman who bought the idea from him and became a billionaire (because he did know how to use the idea) ;) ...

in a perfect world it is nice when both can succeed (like with Jobs and Wozniak) ... but it is not a necessity ... personally I don't think Jobs deserves these accolades yet ... we need to see how his company stands the test of time ... there is only one computer geek worthy of the pedestal right now, and that is Gates (also a brutally efficient businessman but now involved in charity) ... there is no other technical geek in Gate's class right now, in my opinion ;)
 
kbrickley said:
there is only one computer geek worthy of the pedestal right now, and that is Gates (also a brutally efficient businessman but now involved in charity) ... there is no other technical geek in Gate's class right now, in my opinion ;)
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I agree, but for the majority of people, Gates is a scumbag greedy asshole. The things Apple do and everyone say it's "clever business management", Microsoft tries to do a single one of them and suddenly the sky will fall and how come they're so greedy.
 
I'm sure all those chinese indentured servants that lept to their death in"not too bad" working conditions, are having a good time tearing him apart in hell.
 
I knew it had to be Al who posted this as soon as I read it. Steve would never post anything that was in a neutral or positive tone about Apple/Jobs. :)
 
JoeUser said:
Uhhhh...isn't he dead?
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Hence the phrase used "Would have been" as in, if he was still alive.

Also no one cares...Well I'm sure there are those in the Jobs family, and the few overly attached Apple fans, but that's pretty much it. I'm more concerned over the bland yet trying to be exciting iPad commercial I just saw.
 
awwww... baby is 696 months old *beams proudly*

anyways, RIP steve
 
kbrickley said:
Well, those things aren't mutually exclusive ... we celebrate many businessmen (like Nobel, Getty, Rockefeller, Hearst, Edison, etc) ...

we will eventually celebrate Gates like we do Alfred Nobel, I think (in fact I would love to see Gates establish a prize similar to the Nobel prize after his death so his name will live forever ... but just focused on medicine and the sciences ... I think the Nobel prize has the humanities covered well already) ...

that said, I don't think Jobs is in their class ... the closest businessman to Jobs (as others have noted) is probably Edison ... and we don't usually celebrate Edison much beyond acknowledging his business achievements and tenaciousness ;)
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You listed philanthropists and inventors... Jobs was neither of those.
 
Lol at people posting "Who cares" when obviously they care enough to take the time to post on a thread about Steve Jobs.

On the other hand, those who were treated like shit from Steve Jobs are probably having a would-be birthday blast.
 
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