Former Apple CEO John Sculley says he never fired co-founder Steve Jobs

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  • Reply 101 of 122
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by SolipsismX View Post


    You're also discounting all the artificial satellites that we use every single day? None of that is possible without computers.



    We are very specifically talking about connected personal computers and the individual, and how it will change our lives. We're not talking about computer systems costing hundreds of millions of dollars.



    If you want to talk about that, then it's a different conversation, and it hardens back to the days before printing, with the extremely rare and expensive handmade manuscript.



    So in a sense, mainframes can be likened to the days before the dissemination of information through society. That's because without personal computers and the Internet, all they would be used for would be major scientific projects, the military, and large governmental work. It wouldn't affect us as consumers of information, or as communicators at all.
  • Reply 102 of 122
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by SolipsismX View Post


    Not on a horse. Have acknowledged it. I've also acknowledged how other inventions build upon other inventions which makes saying the wheel is an inferior invention to printing a foolish stance. I clearly stated that don't hold any one of these inventions to be better or worse than the other. I also stated that the computer age has changed the world though I keep getting told "This will be debated forever." when the proof is all around us.



    Nobody said that the wheel was an "inferior invention." If you must respond to something I wrote, please respond to something I actually wrote.



    Thank you.
  • Reply 103 of 122
    solipsismxsolipsismx Posts: 19,566member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by melgross View Post


    We are very specifically talking about connected personal computers and the individual, and how it will change our lives. We're not talking about computer systems costing hundreds of millions of dollars.



    If you want to talk about that, then it's a different conversation, and it hardens back to the days before printing, with the extremely rare and expensive handmade manuscript.



    So in a sense, mainframes can be likened to the days before the dissemination of information through society. That's because without personal computers and the Internet, all they would be used for would be major scientific projects, the military, and large governmental work. It wouldn't affect us as consumers of information, or as communicators at all.



    Networked computers. With a qualifier on that in the initial post I considered all networked computers. It's easy to say networked PC networked personal computer or simply personal computer. That is not what was said.



    I'm still not seeing how 1) Steve Jobs didn't affect the world, 2) networked computers, PCs, or any combination of those terms, didn't affect the world, or 3) how the printing press can be deemed unarguably better than the wheel or networked computers.
  • Reply 104 of 122
    solipsismxsolipsismx Posts: 19,566member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Dr Millmoss View Post


    Nobody said that the wheel was an "inferior invention." If you must respond to something I wrote, please respond to something I actually wrote.



    Thank you.



    Your comment "Even the invention of the wheel arguably isn't as singular in importance [as the printing press]" clearly states the wheel is inferior to the printing press.



    Whether there was any wheel used directly with the first printing press I guarantee there were wheels used in other aspects associated with it.
  • Reply 105 of 122
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by SolipsismX View Post


    Not on a horse. Have acknowledged it. I've also acknowledged how other inventions build upon other inventions which makes saying the wheel is an inferior invention to printing a foolish stance. I clearly stated that don't hold any one of these inventions to be better or worse than the other. I also stated that the computer age has changed the world though I keep getting told "This will be debated forever." when the proof is all around us.



    Not exactly. There were several major inventions through the ages that made us what we are. The most important technical invention was fire, of course. But the spear, the bow and arrow, the stone cutters before even fire, those are all extremely important. We can add the wheel to that, though with a number of major societies, such as those in the mid and southern America's, civilizations grew up to be pretty sophisticated without it.



    The written language, after the spoken language, was arguably the MOST important invention of them all, and preceded all the rest. Without spoken language, communication, other than in the most primitive fashion, would be impossible.



    So where would you like to begin?



    What will be debated forever is whether you contention, which is what I gather from your written words here, is that computers are more important than the printing press was.



    Both have ushered in new ages. Which was more important in the long run will be subject to debate. The problem is that later inventions, no matter how important they may be, are almost always dependent on earlier ones. Remember the "on the shoulders of giants" remark.
  • Reply 106 of 122
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by SolipsismX View Post


    Networked computers. With a qualifier on that in the initial post I considered all networked computers. It's easy to say networked PC networked personal computer or simply personal computer. That is not what was said.



    I'm still not seeing how 1) Steve Jobs didn't affect the world, 2) networked computers, PCs, or any combination of those terms, didn't affect the world, or 3) how the printing press can be deemed unarguably better than the wheel or networked computers.



    I prefer the term "connected". Networked is so much more limited a concept. People connect, they don't network, even though that term has become popular. I think as people connecting over their computers, such as we are doing. We aren't networking.
  • Reply 107 of 122
    solipsismxsolipsismx Posts: 19,566member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by melgross View Post


    Not exactly. There were several major inventions through the ages that made us what we are. The most important technical invention was fire, of course. But the spear, the bow and arrow, the stone cutters before even fire, those are all extremely important. We can add the wheel to that, though with a number of major societies, such as those in the mid and southern America's, civilizations grew up to be pretty sophisticated without it.



    The written language, after the spoken language, was arguably the MOST important invention of them all, and preceded all the rest. Without spoken language, communication, other than in the most primitive fashion, would be impossible.



    So where would you like to begin?



    What will be debated forever is whether you contention, which is what I gather from your written words here, is that computers are more important than the printing press was.



    Both have ushered in new ages. Which was more important in the long run will be subject to debate. The problem is that later inventions, no matter how important they may be, are almost always dependent on earlier ones. Remember the "on the shoulders of giants" remark.



    1) You forgot agriculture and animal husbandry. Very important in to that list of early inventions that changed society.



    2) Again, my position is and always has been that 1) all these inventions are important, 2) you can't deem one invention more important without it subjective, and 3) The computer age and Steve Jobs have the changed the world and we don't need a thousand years of debate to know that its a fact when the change is around us every day.
  • Reply 108 of 122
    solipsismxsolipsismx Posts: 19,566member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by melgross View Post


    I prefer the term "connected". Networked is so much more limited a concept. People connect, they don't network, even though that term has become popular. I think as people connecting over their computers, such as we are doing. We aren't networking.



    network (n.) "net-like arrangement of threads, wires, etc.," 1550s, from net (n.) + work (n.). Extended sense of "any complex, interlocking system" is from 1839 (originally in reference to transport by rivers, canals, and railways). Meaning "broadcasting system of multiple transmitters" is from 1914; sense of "interconnected group of people" is from 1947. The verb, in reference to computers, is from 1972; in reference to persons, it is attested from 1980s.





    Be back later...
  • Reply 109 of 122
    Well, John, you have to face it : you will remain in history as the man who fired the greatest and more charismatic business man who ever existed ...
  • Reply 110 of 122
    flaneurflaneur Posts: 4,526member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by pondosinatra View Post


    Why I tend to not post on these forums anymore....



    Endless 'debates' between the usual suspects as to who is more correct about (usually) something vaguely related to the news story...



    The comic geek from the Simpsons dutifully hammering away on the keyboard to express his indignation comes to mind....



    So don't read them, if they're going over your head, oops, I mean if you're not interested.



    They tend to happen at the end of a thread, so you may be excused when you see them starting. I tend to find the debate interesting, in a tennis-match kind of way. May get back in myself, having caused the sticks to fall on the floor to begin with.
  • Reply 111 of 122
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by SolipsismX View Post


    Your comment "Even the invention of the wheel arguably isn't as singular in importance [as the printing press]" clearly states the wheel is inferior to the printing press.



    Whether there was any wheel used directly with the first printing press I guarantee there were wheels used in other aspects associated with it.



    No, it doesn't state that at all, clearly.
  • Reply 112 of 122
    flaneurflaneur Posts: 4,526member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by melgross View Post


    You simply can't attribute all of this to Jobs. You really can't! Even though he made major contributions, they all they were. He didn't invent the first 4004, 8008, and 8080 chips that lead to other companies producing microcomputer chips which led to the Altair 8080 and others, before App,e came on the scene. He also didn't invent the Internet, we have the department of defense to thank for that. He didn't invent Pagemaker, or the laser printer, or the 3.5" floppy, or the CD, etc.



    He did take advantage of some of that before others did. In doing so, he made plenty of mistakes along the way.



    The thing with Jobs, was that he had the smarts and determinations to correct most of his mistakes, and to hire brilliant people around him to do what he couldn't.



    But, let's not elevate him to a status he didn't have. In the end, that really just demeans what he did do.



    Which is why the better comparison is Jobs to Aldus Manutius, not Gutenberg, as I've said more than once here. Aldus made the book portable and attractive, and recruited the refugees from the fall of Byzantium, and/or a crew of Greek intellectuals he imported to Italy, to provide content for his saddlebag-sized, beautifully produced volumes. He was the engine of the Enlightenment's beginning, building on Gutenberg's "mainframe" books.



    He's hardly remembered. I only learned about him through Clay Shirky, via Elizabeth Eisenstein, who relied on Martin Lowry. Jobs may also be similarly disremembered, but that doesn't change the fact that he did the most to humanize the personal computer, make it attractive, and then make it really personal -- you keep it in your pants (Gruber) -- and really attractive.



    If we left these things to the Gutenbergs and Microsofts, there would be no revolution, or renaissance, until another Aldus or Jobs came along. Credit where credit is due. And don't forget the production designer, Jony Ive.



    Who was Aldus's? Those books were magnificent. That's the other thing Jobs and Ive did -- bring beauty back to technology. Absolutely crucial.



    Edit: Aldus is remembered by people more bookish than I've been in my life. I know an Aldine Bookstore in L.A. -- there must be many of those in the world -- and then there is Aldus Pagemaker, named after this founding typographer and publisher. He also invented italic typefaces.
  • Reply 113 of 122
    Sculley did do good things at Pepsi and made some very noted improvements in how they did business, but he was an incredibly poor choice and strategy for Apple by a board of buffoons. He skated along on previous work and eventually ran it right up to the iceberg and Amelio took it the rest of the way. Steve was not a pleasant guy to work for, being referred to as "The monster" when he left. But I think he was manically insane because he wanted Apple to be insanely great. And you go apeshit when your company is being dragged down a hole by it's employees. I think Sculley's backtracking is bullshit. He whined to the Board and got his way, and Apple took it in the shorts and he went home. Sorry, but whether he uttered a "Trumpian" - YOU'RE FIRED, or not, is irrelevant to the situation. Steve was fired, disrespected by a board of buffoons and had little choice for a shred of dignity to leave his lifelong work. Maybe it was kharma for his disagreements with Woz, who knows.



    Steve brought Apple back from the brink by sheer fucking will. Bill Gates even stepped up with Microsoft's checkbook because he knew the kind of investment Steve was. I was a Mac guy since the Mac Plus and rode it downhill until I couldn't take it anymore. Then I switched to PC. I swore I was done. But now I am looking at a goddamn MacBook Pro because they are so good. Expensive, yes, REALLY expensive, but damn good.
  • Reply 114 of 122
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Black Belt View Post


    Expensive, yes, REALLY expensive, but damn good.



    Obligatory links to the many, MANY studies showing price of ownership of Macs is lower than PCs?



    Also, if you're looking, wait for Ivy Bridge; that's pretty soon.
  • Reply 115 of 122
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Black Belt View Post


    Sculley did do good things at Pepsi and made some very noted improvements in how they did business, but he was an incredibly poor choice and strategy for Apple by a board of buffoons.



    You must mean he was an incredibly poor choice by Steve, since it was Steve who headhunted Scully.
  • Reply 116 of 122
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by SolipsismX View Post


    1) You forgot agriculture and animal husbandry. Very important in to that list of early inventions that changed society.



    2) Again, my position is and always has been that 1) all these inventions are important, 2) you can't deem one invention more important without it subjective, and 3) The computer age and Steve Jobs have the changed the world and we don't need a thousand years of debate to know that its a fact when the change is around us every day.



    I was just talking about mechanical inventions. By the way, those inventions predate agriculture and animal husbandry by tens or even hundreds of thousands of years.



    Fire and toolmaking were much more important in a number of ways, because they actually raised us from being just somewhat more advanced animals to humans. In fact, the extra calories and nutrition from cooked food was one of the most important results of any invention. Cooked food is given direct credit for allowing our brains to increase in size, along with the shrinkage of our jaws and the muscle ridges on our skulls.



    So while agriculture and animal husbandry gave us civilization, fire and toolmaking gave us us.
  • Reply 117 of 122
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by SolipsismX View Post


    network (n.) "net-like arrangement of threads, wires, etc.," 1550s, from net (n.) + work (n.). Extended sense of "any complex, interlocking system" is from 1839 (originally in reference to transport by rivers, canals, and railways). Meaning "broadcasting system of multiple transmitters" is from 1914; sense of "interconnected group of people" is from 1947. The verb, in reference to computers, is from 1972; in reference to persons, it is attested from 1980s.





    Be back later...



    I kinda know what network means. It's the wrong term for what I was trying to get across.
  • Reply 118 of 122
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Flaneur View Post


    Which is why the better comparison is Jobs to Aldus Manutius, not Gutenberg, as I've said more than once here. Aldus made the book portable and attractive, and recruited the refugees from the fall of Byzantium, and/or a crew of Greek intellectuals he imported to Italy, to provide content for his saddlebag-sized, beautifully produced volumes. He was the engine of the Enlightenment's beginning, building on Gutenberg's "mainframe" books.



    He's hardly remembered. I only learned about him through Clay Shirky, via Elizabeth Eisenstein, who relied on Martin Lowry. Jobs may also be similarly disremembered, but that doesn't change the fact that he did the most to humanize the personal computer, make it attractive, and then make it really personal -- you keep it in your pants (Gruber) -- and really attractive.



    If we left these things to the Gutenbergs and Microsofts, there would be no revolution, or renaissance, until another Aldus or Jobs came along. Credit where credit is due. And don't forget the production designer, Jony Ive.



    Who was Aldus's? Those books were magnificent. That's the other thing Jobs and Ive did -- bring beauty back to technology. Absolutely crucial.



    Edit: Aldus is remembered by people more bookish than I've been in my life. I know an Aldine Bookstore in L.A. -- there must be many of those in the world -- and then there is Aldus Pagemaker, named after this founding typographer and publisher. He also invented italic typefaces.



    Yes, Aldus was certainly important. I was going to mention the company Aldus, and then saw it at the bottom of your post. I still have the box of the first edition (I suppose I could call it that) of Aldus Pagemeker.



    We see that while Jobs didn't invent the laser printer, or vector fonts, or the page layout program, he was the first to see that with a computer like his Mac, they would all meld together to form something new, and he was right. His foresight there led to those companies products becoming successful, and heralded in a new age of publishing.



    Would it have been done without him? Likely it would have, sooner or later, in some way. But we'll never know, and so he must be given the credit.
  • Reply 119 of 122
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Black Belt View Post


    Sculley did do good things at Pepsi and made some very noted improvements in how they did business, but he was an incredibly poor choice and strategy for Apple by a board of buffoons. He skated along on previous work and eventually ran it right up to the iceberg and Amelio took it the rest of the way. Steve was not a pleasant guy to work for, being referred to as "The monster" when he left. But I think he was manically insane because he wanted Apple to be insanely great. And you go apeshit when your company is being dragged down a hole by it's employees. I think Sculley's backtracking is bullshit. He whined to the Board and got his way, and Apple took it in the shorts and he went home. Sorry, but whether he uttered a "Trumpian" - YOU'RE FIRED, or not, is irrelevant to the situation. Steve was fired, disrespected by a board of buffoons and had little choice for a shred of dignity to leave his lifelong work. Maybe it was kharma for his disagreements with Woz, who knows.



    Steve brought Apple back from the brink by sheer fucking will. Bill Gates even stepped up with Microsoft's checkbook because he knew the kind of investment Steve was. I was a Mac guy since the Mac Plus and rode it downhill until I couldn't take it anymore. Then I switched to PC. I swore I was done. But now I am looking at a goddamn MacBook Pro because they are so good. Expensive, yes, REALLY expensive, but damn good.



    Gates stood up because Apple had him by the uh, dangling participles. He really had no choice. MS was caught with their hand in the QuickTime cookie jar, and rather than going to court, Apple offered to license it to them in exchange for at least five years of development of Office for the Mac, an investment in non voting shares of $150,000,000, an announcement of support at the next Macworld, and extensive cross licensing of patents and copyrights, which is still in effect today.



    By the way, when MS did sell the stock, they made a fine profit.
  • Reply 120 of 122
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by NomadMac View Post


    Ask the people of Africa who bought Macintoshes and Laserwriters whether a free press made a difference in their lives.



    Ask my wife who video chats with her widowed mother 5,000 miles away in Japan, every Sunday afternoon for 3 hours, whether Apple has made a difference in their lives. Or the deaf who now can communicate with each other via sign language and video chat whether their lives have significantly changed.



    Ask my kids when we take our iPad outside at night with GoSkyWatch point it at a planet and we finally learn what we're actually looking at.



    Ask a senior citizen or others with limited vision whether iBooks has made a difference in their lives now that every book is a large print book.



    Ask a parent of an autistic child whether an iPad has made a difference their lives.



    Go back and watch "Blade Runner" from 1982 when their vision of 2019 included floating cars but the computers all had green screens.



    You ignorant whiners complain that Steve Jobs did nothing to change the world while you sit and make your rants AT YOUR COMPUTER.



    YES. Good post.
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