lkrupp

GeorgeBMac said:

So, the iPod, iPhone and iPad all derived from Newton...

That says more about Steve Jobs than anything else:
Steve was not a great creator or new technology.   Instead, he took existing technology and mixed it, matched it, improved it and refined it until he had an "insanely great" product that he could stand on a stage with and very proudly show off to the world.

The Newton was clearly great technology for its day.  But it wasn't a great product.  It was big and clunky and not very usable by the average person.   In short, it was (from Steve's point of view) crap.  But the underlying ideas, objectives and technology were not. 

So, product by product, Steve took that idea and that fundamental technology and mixed it, matched it, refined it and made it an "insanely great" product.   Thanks to all that worked to make this possible going all the way back to Xerox PARC!

I basically agree. Tech types like inventors rarely have any business or marketing sense. Look no further than Woz. It takes someone like Jobs, Gates, Musk, Bezos to build a company. The story goes that when Jobs saw what Xerox PARC was doing he instantly knew it was the future of computing. Bill Gates typically bought his technology, like DOS. Gates famously said about the GUI, “I broke into the house intending to steal the TV but when I did I found that you (Jobs) had already stolen it.”