Steve Jobs's $450 eyeglasses a hot seller following death - Page 2

Yeah, it was a bit "okay, we get it' at times. Probably could of saved 50 pages or so. The Disney/Pixar segment was great. Eisner and Katzenberg are not known as easy foes and giving them the finger is pretty impressive. I think it was shrewd business no doubt, but not sure the amount of balls it took since after the success of Toy Story he knew the value of what he had. If Disney wasn't the distributor they could of easily been replaced with another studio. Losing the Toy Story characters would of been an emotional and minor financial blow, but not like Pixar hasn't been doing just fine with or without the remainder of the trilogy.

The reality distortion field references are a bit lame as well. Usually its just called a forceful personality and nothing new about managers setting tighter deadlines that would seem realistic at first glance. Its more a testament to his team then anything Jobs himself did that they were able to meet them. Many people perform under pressure and applying that doesn't require distorting reality in any way. I wonder how many stories of engineering failures and deadlines not met were left out because it didn't fit the narrative?

After the move by St Croix, I refuse to believe any company that claims to be Steve's brand unless I heard his voice say it while I see his lips move

I think they are buying them to look like Steve.

WHAT IS UNHEALTHY ABOUT BUYING A PAIR OF GLASSES TO LOOK A LITTLE LIKE SOMEONE ELSE?

Does it add to your cholesterol? Increase your risk of pancreatic cancer?

Someone like yourself looking down your snooty nose does not impact that person's heath, so don't say that one please.

We all do it. Why do you keep calling it unhealthy? What exactly is unhealthy about buying a pair of glasses also owned by someone you know and admire? I daresay you probably factored in the popularity of the style of glasses you own, did you not?

Not in the least. If I did, apparently I'd own a pair of Steve's choice of frames!

Like most normal people I buy based on what is flattering to my physical features and my personality, not the guy who made my phone or wrote a song I liked.

And what tells you how a pair of glasses flatter your personality? Is there something about a round frame that says hippie? Is there something about square lenses that says hipster chick? No, you take your cues from what others in society do, and thus, a trend.

Stop denying the obvious.

Will someone please explain how ANY justification for a choice of glasses (aside from the wrong prescription) can be unhealthy? Besides you wanting to be a busybody of course.

They read his biography. They concluded that Steve was a visionary. Then they asked themselves the question, what enhances ones vision? The answer was, depending on which country they lived in, a pair of glasses (spectacles or vision enhancers). Give these people a break.

We all have style that identifies as part of a group, even when one is rebelling. It rarely, if ever, is focused on one person. A trend by its nature requires more then one person. There is a difference between a trend and a cult of celebrity. Stop being so dense.

To be a busybody one would have to care. I don't care beyond finding celebrity worship an interesting discussion, which for many, this is obviously a case of no matter how heavy you lay on the bold. We can go around in circles all you want and bold all you want, but you either aren't going to get it or not agree so I'll save us from ourselves and cut off wasting time going around and round in circles.


good one.

He was referring to mental health. It is not a good sign to be obsessed with a celebrity's appearance, although it may be a perfectly natural thing depending on your age. If you choose the glasses because of who else wore them, then you maybe are acting obsessively. You may want to discuss that with someone close to you and potentially seek help.

Thank you. In my tired state I didn't even catch the reference to physical health and figure out thats where the disconnect may be. A succinct and spot on response/summary.

Bah. Such a small thing, blown up so big. People buy Air Jordans hoping to be like Mike. People cut their hair like Paul (or was it John) in the 60s.

Buying a pair of glasses is not obsession. Jesus christ.

Obviously I knew it was mental health we were talking about. But can you really, with a straight face, say that buying a pair of glasses like Steve had would make you worry over someone's mental health? In that case, I know someone who is crazy. And it's not the buyers of the GLASSES. Sheesh.

Gee, did you see that 25 year old stammer for words? Maybe he has Alzheimer's disease coming on? Did you notice that sneeze? Could be bird flu! These people are SICK! Better medicate them asap! Do you guys work for Pfizer or what?

I think I'll get a bad haircut and not shave for a week so I look more like Steve. I could stand to lose a few pounds too.

In and of itself, no. But depending on the person, it could be indicative of larger problems.

You may be better served by a less black and white, all or nothing view of the world.. it leads you to drastically misinterpret or exaggerate what people are actually saying.

You're sick and should be institutionalized!

I know what you're saying. You're saying that someone buying a pair of fricking glasses because Steve Jobs wore them could be an ominous sign of mental illness. And you're NUTS for thinking that.

Now if you're saying that if Charles Manson is buying glasses that Steve Jobs wore, Charles Manson might have a mental illness, then I think you need to decide if you're just talking to hear yourself talk.

Oh, and welcome to Appleinsider!

You are certainly not the first person to suggest that. Sorry I forgot the /s tag.

I was joking One of the other guys on this thread may have said that seriously after your dangerous and subversive haircut idea, but not me.

The company and the marketing agency that claim this display is a "tribute" to Steve Jobs are being deceitful. This is not a tribute. It's advertising, intended to promote sales of the product. The display appears at a commercial trade event - not some memorial location. Clearly, it's designed as an implied celebrity endorsement for the product. The simple act of purchasing a product does not - in itself - confer rights to claim that the buyer has endorsed it. Does this company have any documentation that Steve Jobs - when he was living - or his estate agreed to such an endorsement? Doubtful, especially in light of how the headline is phrased. Without specific permission, there's every reason for this company to be required to cease and desist. Furthermore, money damages may be warranted, not only as punishment for misappropriation of someone else's property, but to deter other companies from taking commercial advantage of Steve Jobs's name or likeness.

Would Lunor have dared to use a photo of Steve Jobs and the tagline on its website - "The Glasses of Steve Jobs" - while he was still alive? That's when to ask the question: "What would Steve have done?"

or john lennon

Round rimless <> round with metal rims.

Personally I wouldn't pay $450 for any pair of frame especially rimless ones like that. If you lightly mishandle mostly glasses they can be bent back into shape. Rimless ones tend to snap off where they are screwed directly into the lenses.

Would you pay $450 for square rims with round edges that were also dull heads-up displays? Give it time...

Ah, irony.

Broken image and the website is "Stuff I Stole From The Internet."

Image isn't working? Here's the original page I hotlinked it from.

•

http://stuffistolefromtheinternet.co...round-glasses/

Those guys should be more individual and stop copying others. I think it might be a sign that Seth MacFarlane might have some serious mental problems. Notice that I said MIGHT. I'm not saying that he does, just that he might. Stop looking at the world in such a black and white way. MIGHT. Someone should look into it probably. Definitely.

I have no doubt on the accuracy of the information, but lives are long and books are short so you have to focus on an unbiased range of events and there was a lot of repetition in making a certain point, which I felt came across as biased, especially given Isaacson's attitude in interviews.


True, that goes back to the point about profiteering, there was obviously a pressure to release this book almost as soon as Jobs died, which I find distasteful.


In interviews, he makes himself out to be a great author who has covered Einstein and Benjamin Franklin and he was asked by Jobs to do his biography and he said he thought that Jobs perhaps considered himself to be in league with his other subjects and made it clear he didn't think so. To me that suggests he is arrogant about his own writing skills and dismissive of Jobs when in fact Isaacson is merely someone who documents other people's achievements.


Yeah, that's a fair point but they are a distribution channel so they probably wouldn't hold it back out of respect.


Exactly and I agree with what you said, there's clearly an upside and I feel that should have been made clearer in the biography. People might say you can achieve the same things without being a dick but there aren't too many examples. Bill Gates certainly isn't an example because Microsoft still has no taste, even after they've been shown what good taste looks like. As Steve said, how dumb do you have to be that you still can't do it right when it's sitting in front of you.

When people notice art or innovation, it's because there's been a disruption from the expected. It takes a disruptive force to make that happen. Buying a pair of glasses or reading stories of emotional tantrums don't improve the understanding of that process.

I bet only a small percentage of people will be able to pull off wearing those frames.

I don't think its anything that Steve wouldn't of done to be honest as long as the product was finished properly and ready to go. He was a capitalist even if money wasn't his primary driver. He created mega-buzz and cashed in on it. His death created mega-buzz and it was cashed in on for his official biography. Its not like some a**hole company that claims he wore their turtlenecks when he never did. It was very much an endorsed product. What good would of holding onto it and waiting a few more months done or changed?


I haven't read any of his work besides the Jobs biography, but if that is reflective of the rest of the body of his work I'm not really sure I see the attraction that Steve did. It's a bit droll and repetitive. It was a easy-breezy read that probably could of been at least 100 pages shorter, or 100 pages more engaging then 93 pages of the term "reality distortion field". Like pretty much everybody on the face of the earth, he probably thinks he is smarter then he really is, but he very well may be a lot smarter then others to begin with... he is at least more successful.

In the interviews he merely said to give it another 10-20 years for Steve to retire to write it. He always came across as dismissive of the timing, not the subject. Maybe you encountered a different bit of press he did, but not the impression I got in anything I've seen him on radio/tv wise.



I think the book made pretty clear the two sides of the technological divide the two of them fell on. Bill hasn't really been involved in Microsoft in close to a decade. Chairman seems much more in title only. I can't even remember when he's really discussed Microsoft in a present tense. He is off saving the world and good for him. He brings a big brain and a big wallet to tackle massive development problems. Steve Ballmer sure as hell isn't concerned with anything other then probably figuring out how to stop sweating so much. He brings the angry to the table without the brains or intuition to back it up.

I'm not sure Microsoft could really win one way or another. As a software supplier they are relying on shitty, crappy, plastic casings that Dell, HP and whoever is left are building to run it or if they start building their own its going to take awhile to get right and they'd just be ridiculed for copying Apple's approach.

The Windows Phone operating system was a small step to engaging UI from a design perspective that I'm sure the bureaucracy of Microsoft bastardized tremendously a long the way. Its not for me and needs plenty of refinements, but at least the company is making some steps in the right direction, no matter how miniscule. I imagine the company has plenty of great and intuitive, simple thinkers... but I imagine they are also focus grouping their products to death as well.

I don't get the impression that he's selecting details to make his own points about Steve's character, rather just reporting what happened and what people remember. We all remember the painful and obnoxious just as clearly or more clearly than we remember the good stuff. But the book is full of good stuff too. It isn't pointed at as: see, here's how we can judge him, but often: this is how it went because of how sentimental, romantic or passionate he was, or this is how he figured it out and played his hand. Mixed into the story usually is that he used his will like a weapon, which is where Isaacson may drop in "the RDF" as shorthand. Too frequently? I haven't been keeping track because I don't have an issue with his writing or his detail selection.



Since I'm so glad that they did push it out early so we could all jump on it, I can't join in your judgment here. It's amazing that they could do it, that book production has gotten so streamlined in recent years, and I wonder if Tim Cook (or Steve) might have said, hell yes, if you can pull it off, do it.

I know you weren't disputing this, only the timing, but all this assessment of his life is appropriate and therapeutic, I think. Helps get over the loss, and it is a huge loss to the world, and more than that, the book shows exactly how he lived on the crosscurrents of the time he found himself in. This is where the positive stuff comes in, it looks like Isaacson is saying ever so subtly.

Bill Gates, bless him, seems to have paid no attention to the so-called counterculture. Those who were attentive to the music, the drug mix, the indiscriminate liberation on many fronts, all saw it as something that could humanize the future, as did Jobs. He not only lived that out for himself, he created technology to carry the main themes forward for the next how many generations. To get down to specifics, the iPod was essentially designed for his Dylan collection, and Dylan was one cultural lightning rod for the new culture. (It was actually called it the Revolution at the time, not the "counterculture," which was Rozak's sociological term.)

So it's not easy to exaggerate Jobs's importance to us, and no amount of soul searching over him and how he did it is too much, in my opinion. Analysis isn't unhealthy, but hero-worship might be, and Isaacson did not write a book for hero worship. But it is a record of how the counterculture has somewhat prevailed in the end, which is now. What life could be more important than one that embodies that? And it can't be gone over enough or too soon.


I heard his Terry Gross and his Kai Ryssdal interviews, and missed any of that. Can you remember where you heard it?


Well said, but I think we're not paying enough attention to the good stuff about Steve in the book. There should be a website on the book, and a crowdsourced accounting of each page. I'm only half joking.

Edit: I see TheDisco has anticipated some points here, while I was stewing over it all.

I liked Jobs as much as any other Apple fan/Computer professional but I do find it unhealthy how people are this quick to mimic his style. Slightly "stalker-ish" if you ask me.

Though I've been wearing polo neck jumpers since I was about 12 years old, I guess that means I'm already half way there.

It would have made the publication sales stand more on its own merit rather than in light of the event, much like the sales of the glasses.


That's how I felt about it too. I guess it had to be this way but there's far too much content in there that's already been told. It's been fleshed out a bit but very repetitive writing style and not very engaging.


Yeah that's part of the problem I guess is that a lot of information will come from people who were in arguments and will mostly remember the arguments from 20 or more years ago as they would be the most memorable. I trust Wozniak's viewpoint as he is a great guy and he has some negative things to say too but you just have to watch his account here to see that he was still one of his closest friends:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dK_XEGrzHUo


I don't think people should have heroes at all, I think people should view everyone on the same level regardless of gender, race, age, wealth or intellect. Everyone has the same flaws and the same vulnerabilities and as is the nature of evolution, people should select and follow the successful paths that lead to happiness by observing the successes and failures of themselves and others. The book seems to miss out key elements that explain the journey.


I thought it was the 60 minutes interviews he compared him to his other subjects but he was on The Daily Show too so it might have been there, he's making the rounds. He does give Jobs some compliments but I never see him make them with a sense that he means it. He seems to be of the mindset that this guy was an asshole and has a list of stories to back it up and only seems to mildly acknowledge the good parts.

Steve Jobs spent over $50m of his own money on Pixar without which we might never have advanced CGI. There's no way you could tell way back then that this would be important but the vast majority of things we do now on computers use rasterised graphics with programmable shaders and they developed this over 30 years ago. While there was an admission that it was intended to be profitable, the descriptions of Jobs as a 'business leader' come across as empty. No businessman comes up with phrases like 'innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower', there's an insight and a passion that doesn't get covered. Emotional outbursts are described as child-like and frequent when they may have been months or years apart.

I don't want to be trying to defend a character I don't know but you only have to listen to any of the numerous interviews and presentations to see that there's something that Isaacson is missing out. It's sad that Jobs can't defend himself. Isaacson has his audience and because it's an approved biography, what he's saying goes. History is written by the survivors. Perhaps Steve Wozniak and others will comment on the book and like I say, I don't expect they will find fault with the accuracy but possibly the overall portrayal. After all you can take a set of facts and present them in such a way as to reach completely opposite impressions.

@Marvin, thanks for the considered reply. I'll be keeping this in mind as I finish the book.