It seems like nobody has a clue why Steve Jobs is important. The movies hint at it, but they don't hammer it home.
Steve Jobs is the reason we became computer users. Computers as we know them were invented during WWII and for almost 40 years they were only used by the government, banks, corporations, universities, etc. The idea of a person owning and using their own computer was like someone owning their own atom smasher, or sky crane, or bulldozer or whatever- Some people might think it would be neat to own one, but if they did what would they actually do with it? Nothing. Computers' only purpose was to either crunch large amounts of numbers or store vast quantities of data. They didn't do anything that a regular citizen would need to do. The conventional wisdom was that one day computers would be in the home, but they'd be embedded and mostly invisible, controlling the thermostat, automatically turning lights on and off and whatnot.
When the first personal computers hit the market in 1975, they were kits. You got a box of parts that you had to assemble yourself- you had to know how to solder, you had to be able to connect the power supply to the circuit board without frying it. There were only a handful of people on the planet who could do this stuff, hardcore techie nerd types. These guys bought and assembled their own personal computers, which then did nothing useful. They didn't care. These were people for whom the purpose of using a computer was that they would get to use a computer.
Wozniak built his own personal computer from scratch, and it was far better than any retail personal computer kit on the market. He showed it off at the Homebrew Computer Club at Standford, and everyone who saw it wanted one of their own. He offered to make them for people, all they had to do was pay the cost of the parts. Jobs convinced him that they should go into business selling them, and that was how the Apple I came into existence. It wasn't even a kit, all you got was the circuit board and it was on you to build a case and everything else. Even so, they managed to sell 100 of them.
This is where Steve Jobs changed the world:
Jobs theorized that for every one person who was willing and able to put their own computer together properly, there were 1000 people who would love to own a computer if all they had to do was plug it in and turn it on. People who were more interested in messing around with programming than tinkering with hardware. So he and Woz came up with the Apple II. For the first year or two, the Apple II didn't do a lot. It was an amazing tool that still didn't have an actual purpose yet. Then in 1979 came VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program. Soon after that, IBM noticed that a lot of their long time customers had Apple IIs on their desks instead of IBM mainframe terminals. Which was what lead to IBM making their own PC to compete with the Apple II. And the rest is history.
If not for Jobs, who knows for how many more years the "personal computer industry" would have continued to cater only to a small handful of hardcore hobbyists? If not for Jobs, Woz's legacy would be a handful of dead circuit boards collecting dust in the backs of garages for the last 40 years. I don't give a squirt of piss about the Mac, the iMac, the iPod or the iPhone. Those are all footnotes compared to Jobs putting computers in the hands of the world. Of course you can speculate that if Jobs hadn't done it someone else would have eventually. Doesn't matter. Jobs was the one who actually did it.
So yeah, I think they should make as many movies as it takes for them to make that clear to all of the sneering ignorant turds who say "Pfft, Steve Jobs, so overrated. He never even invented anything himself."
P.S. I don't own a single Apple product. I rock an HP PC and an Android.
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Mod_Mark
8 years ago
From Wiki: "Three machines, the Apple II, PET 2001 and TRS-80 were all released in 1977". These were not kits, they were functional personal computers.
I would use care when calling other ignorant turds.
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Druffmaul
8 years ago
The Apple II was released first and had, oh, about a hundred thousand times more impact than the other two, which soon became forgotten footnotes in the grand scheme of the PC industry. Nice try.
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Mod_Mark
8 years ago
The fact that two other personal computer were released in 1977 answer your question of "If not for Jobs, who knows for how many more years the "personal computer industry"
And that answer would be zero.
The true game changer for the PC was the arrival of low cost microprocessors, the 6502 which is still being used today.
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Druffmaul
8 years ago
The creation of the PC was enabled by the Intel 8080 in 1974. But being a small cheap chip didn't do anyone any good as long as it was being used in build-it-yourself kits and prebuilt machines that were pieces of junk. Nothing would have happened without a kick ass machine to carry it forward. That was the Apple II.
I just read up on the history of the PET. Its existence can more or less be credited to Jobs.
In September 1976 Peddle got a demonstration of Jobs and Wozniak's Apple II prototype, when Jobs was offering to sell it to Commodore, but Commodore considered Jobs' offer too expensive. Tramiel demanded that Peddle, Bill Seiler, and John Feagans create a computer in time for the June 1977 Consumer Electronics Show, and gave them six months to do it.
It looks like the guy behind the TRS-80 had a similar idea ("Too many people can't solder") but the fact is Jobs beat him to it with a far better product. The PC industry was a direct result of the Apple II, the TRS-80 had jack diddly to do with it. People were either embarrassed to own one, or too clueless about computers to know they should be embarrassed.
Granted, I wasn't aware other pre-built machines existed so close to the Apple II hitting the market. Fine. Doesn't detract one bit from why Jobs is important.
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Mod_Mark
8 years ago
No doubt that Woz and Jobs were key to the PC industry but claiming "Steve Jobs changed the world" gives him too much credit. After all, it was Woz who designed and built the Apple II, Jobs was just salesman at that point.
Ironically, Jobs wanted a "TRS-80" type of machine, a closed architecture. It was the expansion slots which made the Apple II a superior design, Woz did not give into Jobs on that point.
Claiming that TRS-80 owners were "embarrassed to own one, or too clueless" is pure speculation on your part. All the early PC were quite limited, once again it was the expansion slots on the Apple II which were critical.
The 6502 cost ~$25 which was far less than the 8080 or 6800. Without a cheap CPU there would be no PC revolution. I give Chuck Peddle more credit than Jobs.
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Druffmaul
8 years ago
Well, it works both ways. Woz had zero ambition to create a retail personal computer, that was all Jobs pushing him to do it. Woz designed the guts of the Apple II, but he never would have done so if not for Jobs. I don't deny that Woz deserves a lot of the credit too. But let's face it, there are probably thousands of homegrown self-made tech savants like Woz throughout history who never made a name for themselves because they didn't have a Steve Jobs to partner up with.
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Mod_Mark
8 years ago
Understood, I may be one of those rare engineer who has a high respect for marketing. But a well engineered product can overcome poor marketing, rarely is the opposite true.
I have far more respect for Jobs on what he did when he returned to Apple. Finally the technology advanced to a point where he could implement his vision of sleek designs and closed architecture. A LCD iMac with a built in motherboard was a beautiful design.
Apple's dominance of the music player (iPod) and cell phones with the iPhone was simply brilliant.
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Druffmaul
8 years ago
We definitely understand each other I think, glad we could be civil about this. =)
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