by RMS 06 October 2011 (Steve Jobs)
Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has died. As Chicago Mayor Harold Washington said of the corrupt former Mayor Daley, "I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone." Nobody deserves to have to die - not Jobs, not Mr. Bill, not even people guilty of bigger evils than theirs. But we all deserve the end of Jobs' malign influence on people's computing. Unfortunately, that influence continues despite his absence. We can only hope his successors, as they attempt to carry on his legacy, will be less effective. ________________________________________________________________ Related Comments by others: Jobs was a marketing guru very good at selling you expensive crap and taking away people's freedom to use software and even hardware. ____________________________________________________________ Apple's vision is a conglomerate of everyone else's vision. It was Jobs himself who said, "we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas". What he has managed to do was dumb things down and make people feel stupid. It's the only way I can explain things like the one button mouse or those idiotic commercials (PC vs. Mac) featuring simple characters, unconfusing white background, and nursery music, not to mention all their other ads where people basically admit to being morons and, "gee, isn't it great that *finally* someone makes a computer for us!" People have never needed a science degree to use computers, this is the lie that Apple has perpetuated. My parents use a PC. My little nephews use a PC. Nerds use PCs, jocks use PCs, and so on and so on. The fact that you would still be toeing the "computer science degree" line says a lot more about how you see your own intelligence than what the reality is. This is what Jobs wants, this is what he's gunning for -- your insecurity, your lack of confidence, your belief that the world is just too big and scary and those awful awful machines are just way too complicated to figure out! And even if computers are easier to use today than they were a few decades ago, something which I will admit is true, Apple was merely riding on the bandwagon of change, not the driver. The people who really pushed things forward were companies like Xerox, Adobe, and Palm - graphical user interface, usable / creative / beautiful software and design, touch and portable devices. Apple simply brought it all together (they don't manufacture any of their own components, their OS is "borrowed"), slapped an Apple logo on it, doubled the price (their mobile unit sales are 4th on the world, their profits are 1st - you do the math), and used their brightest shill, Steve Jobs, to convince people that it was pure Apple "genius". PatrickBay.ca ________________________________________________________________ Mandatory : Apple fans are the exemplars of "Stockholm syndrome" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome ___________________________________________ Best A. Mani -- A. Mani CU, ASL, CLC, AMS, CMS http://www.logicamani.co.cc _______________________________________________ Ilugd mailing list Ilugd@lists.linux-delhi.org http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd