Fuck you apple

[Admiral Yi]

I think a good contrast and compare with Jobs would be Henry Ford.  The home computer industry before Jobs sold his first computer was about the same as the auto industry before Ford sold his first car.  What set Ford apart from people who built automobiles before him was that while they viewed autos as luxuries for the rich, he envisioned making them at a cost that the common man could afford.  I don't think that applies to Jobs--other people making personal computers at the time he started Apple already hoped to make home computers a mass-market item.  The difference between them and Jobs was that Jobs had the marketing acumen to pull it off.  If not for Ford, I think we wouldn't have an America where most have at least 1 car;   if not for Jobs, I think we'd still have an American where most homes have at least 1 computer, it just wouldn't have happened quite as fast (and only by a few years).

Not a good analogy IMO.  Ford's greatest claim to fame is applying the assembly line process to car manufacturing.

[Malthus]

Meh, seems a non-issue. Of course a brilliant popularizer is better known.

[dps]

I think a good contrast and compare with Jobs would be Henry Ford.  The home computer industry before Jobs sold his first computer was about the same as the auto industry before Ford sold his first car.  What set Ford apart from people who built automobiles before him was that while they viewed autos as luxuries for the rich, he envisioned making them at a cost that the common man could afford.  I don't think that applies to Jobs--other people making personal computers at the time he started Apple already hoped to make home computers a mass-market item.  The difference between them and Jobs was that Jobs had the marketing acumen to pull it off.  If not for Ford, I think we wouldn't have an America where most have at least 1 car;   if not for Jobs, I think we'd still have an American where most homes have at least 1 computer, it just wouldn't have happened quite as fast (and only by a few years).

Not a good analogy IMO.  Ford's greatest claim to fame is applying the assembly line process to car manufacturing.

It wasn't an analogy--it was a direct compare-and-contrast.

Edit:  and it wasn't about fame, either--it was about influence on people's daily lives.  I don't think anyone has argued that Ritchie is more famous than Jobs.

[garbon]

Meh, seems a non-issue. Of course a brilliant popularizer is better known.

But I don't think that anyone is arguing about that.

[Malthus]

Meh, seems a non-issue. Of course a brilliant popularizer is better known.

But I don't think that anyone is arguing about that.

WTF are they arguing about. Which is more "influential"? Which deserves to be better known?

The OP is essentially complaining that a brilliant popularizer is better known than a brilliant, but relatively publicity-shy, engineer and scientist. Which is approximately the equivalent of complaining that water is wet.

[grumbler]

The point that I was getting at is that Ritchie's product is far more removed from the end-user.  If you download a song, you're not using C.  You're using some process that can be traced back to C, but that's several layers removed from the end-user application.

I understand that, and don't disagree.  My point is simply that Ritchie's impact was greater even though, as you note, also more diffuse.

[PDH]

I wasn't arguing, I was trying to make this thread as lovely as Letwad's poetry thread.

[garbon]

Meh, seems a non-issue. Of course a brilliant popularizer is better known.

But I don't think that anyone is arguing about that.

WTF are they arguing about. Which is more "influential"? Which deserves to be better known?

The OP is essentially complaining that a brilliant popularizer is better known than a brilliant, but relatively publicity-shy, engineer and scientist. Which is approximately the equivalent of complaining that water is wet.

Jos is a twit though - so hardly surprising.  I believe they were talking about influential after DGul's unfortunate comment:

Another difference is that lots of people use Jobs's products.  The only people who use that other guy's products are programmers or very advanced users.

[Malthus]

I wasn't arguing, I was trying to make this thread as lovely as Letwad's poetry thread.

Unless this thread has Confederate soldiers in a bukkake party with My Little Pony, it will never rise to that level.

[Ed Anger]

I wasn't arguing, I was trying to make this thread as lovely as Letwad's poetry thread.

Unless this thread has Confederate soldiers in a bukkake party with My Little Pony, it will never rise to that level.

Jubal Early Fellates a Horse

Jubal Early was an aggressive general
Who was feeling quite feral
So he went to a farm of course
and fellated a horse

[Josquius]

My opinion is that if Ritchie hadn't been born some other language than C would have been the basis for some other similar operating system than Unix. What he did was great, good science and engineering, but that is all. There are many like him.

If Jobs hadn't been born there is a lot of things we wouldn't have had.

Right, because all those people who developed clever interfaces could never have done so without Steve Jobs to do it for them.

I can understand the argument of "IF not Ritchie, then someone else...". I cannot understand a rational argument that the very same would not apply to Jobs though. The market is pretty good at advancing good ideas to the front, especially when it comes to retail consumer products.

He was the CEO of two extremely successful companys (Apple which he co-founded, Pixar) and founded one moderately successful (Next). Those companys popularized many new things.

Name me ten equally or more successful business leaders that equalled his success in so many different fields.

Wait, what? Steve Jobs has a hand in Next? The clothes shop?

[citizen k]

Wait, what? Steve Jobs has a hand in Next? The clothes shop?

No.

[Josquius]

That was my way of saying 'what on Earth is Next?'

[DGuller]

That was my way of saying 'what on Earth is Next?'

You need to come up with a better way of saying things.

[Martinus]

I think the artist vs. scientist comparison works for Jobs and Ritchie.

It's like arguing who had a greater impact: Johann Guttenberg or William Shakespeare?

Without the printing press, most likely the ideas and works of Shakespeare would have not survived. And Shakespeare stole ideas, probably plagiarized some of his works, was by contemporary standards possibly a hack and outshone more talented contemporaries, like Marlowe. Yet, Shakespeare had a much greater direct impact on our culture - and you could argue that if Guttenberg was hit by a stray bullet at the age of 15, someone else would have eventually come up with a similar idea - would another Shakespeare arise if the original was killed is debatable however.

I guess we can agree that Ritchie (or Guttenberg) had a greater impact on science and technology, but Jobs (and Shakespeare) had a greater impact on culture.