People view Steve through rose colored glasses and then become indignant whenever those glasses get knocked off. It's selection bias, pure and simple. Steve was wrong about as many things as he was right. The magic of Steve Jobs was in taking something complicated, utilitarian, ugly, and confusing to the average person and making it accessible, beautiful, and enjoyable to use. You apply that formula successfully enough times, across a wide enough range of ideas, you are going to hit some home runs.
I've said it before, but we've got a few years before we really see the post-Jobs apple. Like the OP I find it very strange that people keep coming up with comments about Jobs wouldn't do X.<p>Steve has been dead for only a bit over a hear. The time it takes to deliver products like the iPad Mini or iPhone 5 are a <i>tad</i> longer than that.<p>We'll see the real post-Jobs Apple in another four or five years time. After we've had the products that aren't even on the drawing board delivered by people hired after Steve died.
100%. If any old jackass could say with any accuracy what Steve Jobs would or wouldn't do, then there wouldn't have been much magic to being Steve Jobs, would there?
Great post, Zach. I couldn't agree more. I even had the same thoughts yesterday, when a few of those types of posts popped up on HN. And I completely agree, although yes Steve had that old interview where he hated the idea of this middle sized iPad, I think at some point he would have had to make something like this to cave in to the market demand. And sort of like you mentioned, products like this are not made overnight. I would not be surprised if the early talk of the iPad Mini was when Steve Jobs was alive. I'm not sure if anyone can really publicly confirm or deny that.
Whenever Apple messes up people say that now. However remember Apple messed up under Jobs. Remember the iPhone's poor signal? What do you think would happen if the response to the Maps app poor quality was "You're using it wrong?", that's what happened (essentially) under Jobs.
>Can you remember when the iPad came out and everyone said it was a giant bloated iPhone (myself included.) Now it’s indispensable to most.<p>This is a little OT, but I just find it hilarious when people say this sort of thing. Something like 10% of people in the US have an ipad.
I'm so tired of popular HN comments because drawn out blog posts that volley back and forth. I'm also tired of talking about Steve, regardless of what direction it's in unless it's a purely historical one.