[PLUG-TALK] Dennis Ritchie vs. Steve Jobs

Ronald Chmara ronabop at gmail.com
Tue Oct 25 00:14:14 UTC 2011


On Mon, Oct 24, 2011 at 10:51 AM, Patrick "Finn" Robins
<13.finn at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 24, 2011 at 12:15, MJang <mike at linuxexam.com> wrote:
>> <snip>
>> Nevertheless, as much as I celebrate Ritchie's life, I
>> think without Jobs, we as geeks would still be "uncool," and have to
>> effectively live on the periphery of society.
>>
> I have seen this sentiment a lot as of late, I have to finally ask … in what
> way has Jobs or Apple ever made cooler to be a geek? I wonder if I am
> operating from a different definition of geek or am simply not seeing
> someting that Jobs did.

My take:
He/they married art, and computing, and consumer electronics. An
interesting interview on the topic (among others):
http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-20124778-248/isaacson-jobs-was-eager-to-talk-exercise-no-control-q-a/

In short, they made computers and geekiness cool in the same way that
flashy sports cars made driving (and drivers) cool... sure "it's just
a car", but it's also a thing a beauty, a status symbol, a form of
entertainment, a fashion item, and the people who have mastery over
them have social value because of it. Jobs and Apple wren't the first,
or only, companies to do this, but Apple has done it consistently
enough, and long enough, to be remembered for it, with their products
aimed at consumer price points. For comparison, many SGI boxen were
often things of beauty, but too pricey. Sony had a great product in
the Walkman and (to some extent) the discman, but most later (mp3)
music players were lame, or ugly, or lacked capacity until the iPod
series. Lots of companies got laptops to market before Apple, but
Apple shipped a status symbol (with accompanying campaign) that
happened to be a computer. There was huge competition in the
smartphone market, but Apple sold a shiny status symbol that played
games, movies, surfed web pages, and, oh yeah, made phone calls. They
took this formula, and relentlessly repeated it...

An interesting point made in the article is Jobs' Next experience,
where his aesthetic indulgences were unrestrained, which ultimately
damaged much of their product, because you can, indeed, make something
"too cool".

-Ronabop



More information about the PLUG-talk mailing list