Apple Founder Steve Jobs Passes Away at 56

@Xtrminatr said:

@awe_stuck: you know who helped save apple? bill gates.

I like Bill Gates. I remember him buying stock when the company was going down the toilet. You know who made a ton of money off Apple? Bill Gates.

That's really shitty... :(

I hope there is someone out there to fill his shoes. Not at apple, but as the next technology visionary / enthusiast.

Hear he was an extremely kind man. It's good to be rich and well liked. RiP

@awe_stuck said:

@Frostwolf:

You agree he isnt a genius. OMG

@Jeaz said:

@allworkandlowpay said:

@awe_stuck said:

Windows is due to the Apple operating system. WHY ARE THERE SOO MANY NOOBS ON GIANTBOMB. Look up some history.

Apple invented the Ipod, Tablets, the home PC. What more do you want Steve did half of the inventions and ideas at Apple. You think Wozniak could have fixed Apple and made it one of the largest and profitable companies in the World? Leopard is recognized as a real OS - this is probably due to Jobs. Then theres how Apple hires, they have some intuitive methods of finding the best people (not talking about the store).

If it wasnt for Jobs we wouldnt have Android. I wouldnt be saving up money to buy an ASUS Transformer. To overlook his achievements is like saying I could have made a company filing bankruptcy make billions every year and come out with billion dollar profitable inventions (3g, 3gs, 4g). Ya, I bet...

He will be missed by all the Apple haters (myself included).

Ugh. Let's go down the line here.

Apple didn't invent the mp3 player, it already existed. What they did was simplify its core design, re-brand it, and made it an iPod.

Apple didn't invent tablets, it already existed well before, what they did was simplify its core design, re-brand it, and made it into an iPad.

Apple did not invent the home PC, the home PC already existed before Apple even was a thought. Companies like IBM, CTC, MITS, etc, were already making portable computers. Apple invented the Apple home computer, which, like most of Apples products, relied heavily on the focus of ease of usability, simplicity in its core design, and weight on its brand.

There is no doubt of Jobs success as a brilliant team leader and businessman, there is no doubt that it was his and his teams work that made the Apple brand not just a company identifier, but a cultural, social identifier, but he was not the epic inventor you seem to want to remember him as.

Jobs' true legacy isn't that he invented anything revolutionary (he didn't,) it's that he was able to make something that functions the same as a $800 HP computer, slap a glossy finish and a logo on it, and be able to efficiently sell it off for almost 200x the price.

Ok, lets go down the line here.

When Apple released the first iPod, most MP3 players were around 128 or 256MB, those that weren't, were like Creative's Jukebox which was as big as a CD-player. First iPod was as big as most other MP3 players, that were 126-256MB, yet held 5GB. The 2nd iPod had a touch wheel instead of mechanical, it also came with iTunes which I've heard have sold a song or two. To just say they simplified the core design is just to simplify the truth.

Tablets has been around for quite a few years, or rather, Windows XP tablet OS had. IBM, HP and later Dell all tried with making touch-screens and tablets. But they were still PCs and big as one. To compare an iPad with them is just, well, wrong. They are nothing of the same and how has the competition acted post-iPad - stuck with the old PC way or tried to copy? So again, to say they simply simplified a product is to simplify the truth.

As for the Home PC. Well, it wasn't nearly as commercially successful, especially the Lisa and Apple III, were failures, but the first Macintosh were still the first PC to really make use of the mouse and a graphical UI with that.

So wether Apple invented anything new or not maybe a bit subjective. Sure, there were products called tablets before the iPad, but they were thick as a brick, heavy and lacked multi-touch. And how does it look today?

Sure, there were smartphones before the iPhone but they all had small screens and qwerty keyboards. And how does it look today?

So, did they invent anything revolutionary? Well, they sure as hell revolutionized a lot.

K Lets go down the line here. Touch phones and software have been revolutionized by one company - Apple. Lead by one man - Steve Jobs.

A man who by accounts was a genius. He saved Apple. He didnt do that by being retarded. He designed the products they sold - Ipod, Ipad, Iphone. The software is made by people that work for apple, the hardware inside is made by their engineers, he just didnt sit their and be like lets take this and this and stick em together like a sandwich. He specifically told them what he wanted, and when they had problems explained how to do it better. This man is a genius. Geniuses will tell you he is smarter them. You guys millionaires, you guys billionaires? Bill Gates had family pushing him along, Jobs had a garage and a best friend who was also a genius. Any guy who can sit in a high school class and teach himself C programming is not an average person. Try self teaching C to yourself, and saying I could do that. I doubt you could.

First, was that even English? you need to calm down and re-post this rationally, your fanboyism is getting butt-hurt of something. "Geniuses will tell you he is smarter them." lol.

Touch phones and some software has become popular due to the very smart and aggressive brand marketing and industrial design work by Steve Jobs team. That makes him a very shrewd and successful businessman, but not a genius. Albert Einstein and Nicola Tesla were geniuses, Jobs was not.

Also, you contradicted yourself. You said he designed the products they sold, but if the software wasn't made by him, and the hardware wasn't made by him, then didn't he essentially just put two things together and say "go make it work." --- and what problems needed to be explained? Almost everything past the year 1986 that Steve Jobs was in charge was utilized technology and software mechanics that were almost decades old. He didn't invent the smart phone, hell the smart phone existed in 1994. He just said "let's put our operating system on the phone, and make it shiny."

@Lucidlife said:

@Razputin: The iPhone and iPad have changed MOBILE gaming a bit. That's it. But let's not act as though it's affected the overall gaming industry because that just isn't true.

@allworkandlowpay said:

@awe_stuck said:

@Frostwolf:

You agree he isnt a genius. OMG

@Jeaz said:

@allworkandlowpay said:

@awe_stuck said:

Windows is due to the Apple operating system. WHY ARE THERE SOO MANY NOOBS ON GIANTBOMB. Look up some history.

Apple invented the Ipod, Tablets, the home PC. What more do you want Steve did half of the inventions and ideas at Apple. You think Wozniak could have fixed Apple and made it one of the largest and profitable companies in the World? Leopard is recognized as a real OS - this is probably due to Jobs. Then theres how Apple hires, they have some intuitive methods of finding the best people (not talking about the store).

If it wasnt for Jobs we wouldnt have Android. I wouldnt be saving up money to buy an ASUS Transformer. To overlook his achievements is like saying I could have made a company filing bankruptcy make billions every year and come out with billion dollar profitable inventions (3g, 3gs, 4g). Ya, I bet...

He will be missed by all the Apple haters (myself included).

Ugh. Let's go down the line here.

Apple didn't invent the mp3 player, it already existed. What they did was simplify its core design, re-brand it, and made it an iPod.

Apple didn't invent tablets, it already existed well before, what they did was simplify its core design, re-brand it, and made it into an iPad.

Apple did not invent the home PC, the home PC already existed before Apple even was a thought. Companies like IBM, CTC, MITS, etc, were already making portable computers. Apple invented the Apple home computer, which, like most of Apples products, relied heavily on the focus of ease of usability, simplicity in its core design, and weight on its brand.

There is no doubt of Jobs success as a brilliant team leader and businessman, there is no doubt that it was his and his teams work that made the Apple brand not just a company identifier, but a cultural, social identifier, but he was not the epic inventor you seem to want to remember him as.

Jobs' true legacy isn't that he invented anything revolutionary (he didn't,) it's that he was able to make something that functions the same as a $800 HP computer, slap a glossy finish and a logo on it, and be able to efficiently sell it off for almost 200x the price.

Ok, lets go down the line here.

When Apple released the first iPod, most MP3 players were around 128 or 256MB, those that weren't, were like Creative's Jukebox which was as big as a CD-player. First iPod was as big as most other MP3 players, that were 126-256MB, yet held 5GB. The 2nd iPod had a touch wheel instead of mechanical, it also came with iTunes which I've heard have sold a song or two. To just say they simplified the core design is just to simplify the truth.

Tablets has been around for quite a few years, or rather, Windows XP tablet OS had. IBM, HP and later Dell all tried with making touch-screens and tablets. But they were still PCs and big as one. To compare an iPad with them is just, well, wrong. They are nothing of the same and how has the competition acted post-iPad - stuck with the old PC way or tried to copy? So again, to say they simply simplified a product is to simplify the truth.

As for the Home PC. Well, it wasn't nearly as commercially successful, especially the Lisa and Apple III, were failures, but the first Macintosh were still the first PC to really make use of the mouse and a graphical UI with that.

So wether Apple invented anything new or not maybe a bit subjective. Sure, there were products called tablets before the iPad, but they were thick as a brick, heavy and lacked multi-touch. And how does it look today?

Sure, there were smartphones before the iPhone but they all had small screens and qwerty keyboards. And how does it look today?

So, did they invent anything revolutionary? Well, they sure as hell revolutionized a lot.

K Lets go down the line here. Touch phones and software have been revolutionized by one company - Apple. Lead by one man - Steve Jobs.

A man who by accounts was a genius. He saved Apple. He didnt do that by being retarded. He designed the products they sold - Ipod, Ipad, Iphone. The software is made by people that work for apple, the hardware inside is made by their engineers, he just didnt sit their and be like lets take this and this and stick em together like a sandwich. He specifically told them what he wanted, and when they had problems explained how to do it better. This man is a genius. Geniuses will tell you he is smarter them. You guys millionaires, you guys billionaires? Bill Gates had family pushing him along, Jobs had a garage and a best friend who was also a genius. Any guy who can sit in a high school class and teach himself C programming is not an average person. Try self teaching C to yourself, and saying I could do that. I doubt you could.

First, was that even English? you need to calm down and re-post this rationally, your fanboyism is getting butt-hurt of something. "Geniuses will tell you he is smarter them." lol.

Touch phones and some software has become popular due to the very smart and aggressive brand marketing and industrial design work by Steve Jobs team. That makes him a very shrewd and successful businessman, but not a genius. Albert Einstein and Nicola Tesla were geniuses, Jobs was not.

Also, you contradicted yourself. You said he designed the products they sold, but if the software wasn't made by him, and the hardware wasn't made by him, then didn't he essentially just put two things together and say "go make it work." --- and what problems needed to be explained? Almost everything past the year 1986 that Steve Jobs was in charge was utilized technology and software mechanics that were almost decades old. He didn't invent the smart phone, hell the smart phone existed in 1994. He just said "let's put our operating system on the phone, and make it shiny."

Nikola Tesla was a genuis among genuises.

I didnt contradict myself. If you knew anything about Apple he designed the format, the layout, the number of buttons, how the software interacted, why and what it did. A lot of the people who worked for him did the same thing, but Jobs was the person who controlled what actually got put into the devices, if they had an idea he'd okay it, or tweak it a bit as well. You obviously never watched a video about how something at Apple was designed. Why dont you learn how to google.

Smart advertising? Ya, that sells a product and gets awards. Buddy do yourself a favour and when you make fun of a guy who made billions lost it and made it back again. And, is respected by the entire world, and just dies of cancer. Dont dig a grave just beat yourself in the head.

He revolutionized touch phones and touch software. Didnt say smart phones. Seriously teach yourself C programming out of a book in a classroom without help and get back to me how non genius this guy was. Because any person with an IQ above 130 can you tell you he was a genius. Geniuses arent typically Einstein, or Tesla. Those are people with IQs 20 or 30 points above a genius. I'm sorry I have to explain this to you. I'm sure if this was real life I would say it really slow. A lot of revolutionary crap has been tech and software redesigned. Almost everything is built on a previous design (technology, code). Windows 7, new Intel cpus (i3, i5).

Oh, and to that other guy. Girls love playin Apple games. Thats a ton of new girl gamers, because Iphones and Droids have cool touch games.

This is going to get really interesting... Apple is a company which was strongly built on him as a "sort of" marketing manager. I remember last time he left apple...

wut

@GiantSplash: Not to mention how horribly he treated his employees and Woz. He was just a bad dude.

He was also pretty much just a figurehead for the company. He was a good business man, but he didn't do much on the technical side.

RIP

RIP

lol@ this thread, though.. the true assholes really coming out the woodwork with their alt accounts @GiantSplash:

@krabboss said:

@GiantSplash: Not to mention how horribly he treated his employees and Woz. He was just a bad dude.

He was also pretty much just a figurehead for the company. He was a good business man, but he didn't do much on the technical side.

I've read about Apple. I've watched their tech demos. I've talked to programmers who have friends that work at Apple. You guys are too lazy to google anything. Why dont you flunk out of high school. Apple is going to lose a lot of money now that he is gone. I'm buying a Droid tablet because I like them better. Nonetheless, Jobs is still a great man in a hundred years they will have a class talking about touch screens and software and his name will be remembered. I know Apple is horrible for the environment (they use toxic chemicals to manufacture at lower cost).

This is may be my last post on this. I hope he rests in peace.

That's a messy paragraph, man. You're jumping all over the place.

I don't particularly care if Apple loses a lot of money, but I can't see that being the case.

I have no idea what your decision to buy an Android tablet has to do with anything.

He wasn't a great man. Read folklore.org, http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/hackers/steve-wozniak/, any account of the way he treated his wife and daughter. Read about how he shut down all philanthropy funds at Apple when he was rehired. Steve Jobs has done a lot of awful, awful things in his life and not a lot of good things. He was a figurehead for Apple - nothing more. He did not make the great contributions to technology people keep saying he did.

What does he have to do with touchscreens?

@Jeaz said:

Ok, lets go down the line here.

When Apple released the first iPod, most MP3 players were around 128 or 256MB, those that weren't, were like Creative's Jukebox which was as big as a CD-player. First iPod was as big as most other MP3 players, that were 126-256MB, yet held 5GB. The 2nd iPod had a touch wheel instead of mechanical, it also came with iTunes which I've heard have sold a song or two. To just say they simplified the core design is just to simplify the truth.

Tablets has been around for quite a few years, or rather, Windows XP tablet OS had. IBM, HP and later Dell all tried with making touch-screens and tablets. But they were still PCs and big as one. To compare an iPad with them is just, well, wrong. They are nothing of the same and how has the competition acted post-iPad - stuck with the old PC way or tried to copy? So again, to say they simply simplified a product is to simplify the truth.

As for the Home PC. Well, it wasn't nearly as commercially successful, especially the Lisa and Apple III, were failures, but the first Macintosh were still the first PC to really make use of the mouse and a graphical UI with that.

So wether Apple invented anything new or not maybe a bit subjective. Sure, there were products called tablets before the iPad, but they were thick as a brick, heavy and lacked multi-touch. And how does it look today?

Sure, there were smartphones before the iPhone but they all had small screens and qwerty keyboards. And how does it look today?

So, did they invent anything revolutionary? Well, they sure as hell revolutionized a lot.

There were a couple compact MP3 players back in ~2000 that used HDDs, but they had a lot of problems. Apple did change the market here, for sure. We shouldn't attribute this success entirely (or even mostly) to Steve Jobs, however.

It's the same deal for tablets.

Computers had GUIs and mouse support before the Macintosh. Mouse support was a functioning thing since the 60s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiJA7_Sw9aM&list=FLDh2Vdss7I9N30YnglcaOaA&index=325. The computers made over at Xerox in the early 70s had GUIs and mouse support, starting off with the Xerox Alto. These computers were what inspired the original Macintosh and Windows. Really, it's mind boggling what the engineers at Xerox were capable of. Anyway, the thing that made the Macintosh popular was that it was relatively cheap (Steve Jobs did mark up the price though, against the wishes of most of the development team) and came packed with a lot of nice applications.

@krabboss said:

@GiantSplash: Not to mention how horribly he treated his employees and Woz. He was just a bad dude.

He was also pretty much just a figurehead for the company. He was a good business man, but he didn't do much on the technical side.

Uh, what? Do you even know what you're talking about? Steve Jobs was rather quite involved in every aspect of that company's output. He was micromanaging every little detail. He was probably OCD.

meh, I still don't like Apple products

RIP Steve Jobs.

Steve had such an amazing story and life, sad it ended so soon. peace

He was great on human rights!

@OnboardGrphx said:

We will all be long forgotten and this man will be remembered forever, especially the more advanced the world gets.

People can say whatever they want. But this is the truth!

I wish I could be written about in future history books.

R.I.P

i didn't know he had an awesome beard

respect++;

Watch Jobs answer audience questions in this video from WWDC 1997, not long after he returned to Apple.

Then tell me he wasn't incredibly dialed into every minute aspect of Apple's product strategy and engineering process. Then I'll tell you you're in willful denial of the evidence.

It's crazy to see him talking about cloud storage of important personal data more than a decade before it really started to become a reality in daily life.

@Majkiboy said:

@OnboardGrphx said:

We will all be long forgotten and this man will be remembered forever, especially the more advanced the world gets.

People can say whatever they want. But this is the truth!

I wish I could be written about in future history books.

you can.

It is very sad to see him go.

My only hope is that he gets treated like he treated others

I love how he left behind at least 4 years worth of product to keep apple from plummeting to Jobslessness. (see what I did there?)

@vCOOKIE_MONSTAv said:

@Majkiboy said:

@OnboardGrphx said:

We will all be long forgotten and this man will be remembered forever, especially the more advanced the world gets.

People can say whatever they want. But this is the truth!

I wish I could be written about in future history books.

you can.

through a big failure of any kind , you know the other end of the spectrum if you know what I mean . It's the easy way.

Not strictly an Apple fan (although I do love my iPod, fantastic piece of tech...) but the man did so much for technology. Take away that fact, he had a family and had a long battle with cancer - all my thoughts are with them at this time.

So it's sad to see someone so dedicated pass at such an early age.  I have the understanding that unlike his gen of other tech wizards, it was generally outside the realm of possibility that Jobs would go on to do other things with his time, and that's unfortunate.  I would have loved to see what philanthropic things he would do.  And now we'll never get to see that potentiality realized.  That's sad.

RIP Steve.

So this one definitely reached me a little later on when I was working on my first programming assignment. I couldn't get a Digital Pet program to properly accept non-integer input.

This man practically built half (if not more) of the design decisions popular in my computers to this day. RIP, Jobs.

You're the man Steve. You will be missed.

You made Pixar great. Rest in peace, big guy

Yep .. pity he was also a complete bastard but noone wants to mention that.

Yep .. pity he was also a complete bastard but noone wants to mention that.