Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

In Praise Of Entrepreneurs

15 Comments

Over at Pajamas Media, I have some thoughts this morning on Steve Jobs and people who really change the world.

[Update a few minutes later]

The business of Apple was business, not politics.

[Update a while later]

Did Jobs die from quackery?

[Update a few minutes later]

Here’s the WSJ obit.

[Update a while later]

More thoughts from Lileks.

[Update a while later[

Michael Malone remembers Steve Jobs.

[Update a couple minutes later]

How his philosophy changed technology.

[Late morning update]

The Onion says we’re doomed.

[Update in the afternoon]

Rob Long: The right kind of tyrant.

15 thoughts on “In Praise Of Entrepreneurs”

  1. It’s worth pointing out that Apple has actually been shafted from the other direction – that is, competitors managing to enshrine dubious, constraining practices into law.

    The DMCA and now ACTA were fundamentally written with the goal of making the (older) Apple way of dealing with music damn near impossible with movies. Insert CD, auto import, auto metadata fetch, auto incorporation into library, auto sync to unlimited “iPods”.

    With DVDs, the tools exist. But any ‘big’ company that attempts to assemble them all in one place (Real) for ease-of-use has been convinced via lawsuit by the MPAA to stop that. Most (Apple, MS, IBM) have avoided the area. Even though it is an obvious fit with iTunes.

    1. One of the things I despise most about Apple is the iTunes model of music distribution, where “digital rights management” [sic] technology limits how many devices you can use to play the music you’ve purchased. I much prefer the Amazon model, where you purchase an MP3 and no one cares how many CDs you burn it to, or how many generations of computer you transfer it to. But Jobs was an incorrigible control freak. You can see it in the original Mac design (No cursor keys! You don’t need cursor keys, because you have a mouse!) to iTunes DRM, to the iOS gateway model (You can’t run your programs on our iPhone! You’re too stupid not to screw things up!) Meanwhile, the innovations for which he was lavishly praised were all about hype and industrial design (You’ll love the iMac! It’s BLUE! Not just blue, it’s BONDI BLUE!). No, thanks.

      1. I was under the impression that iTunes stopped selling DRM’d music some time ago. Even when they did sell it, they always gave the user a rather easy way around it (“back up” to an audio CD, then just rip the CD), so that wasn’t really an issue. On the other hand, their video is still (as far as I know) still DRM’d, which does suck.

      2. There is no DRM in any music sold by Apple today. And the restrictions on “number of devices” is strictly about which computers can “host” the music. Not the number of iPods/iPhones/iPads that can play it. You could have 20 different mobile devices on which you can play your music.

        And, with the advent of iCloud, and the demotion of the computer to device-level, the computer restriction may go out the door too. I don’t know if that is the case. I’ve not seen anything in my iOS 5 testing thus far.

        1. It is my understanding that music purchased before the 2009 transition is still crippled with the FairPlay DRM. Is that not correct? Maybe I misunderstand.

          My understanding is also that burning and ripping Apple-crippled music files results in a loss of sound quality. Is that not correct?

          You can have N different mobile devices that play songs with FairPlay DRM, as long as they are Apple products. I have a Creative MP3 player and an Android phone. I don’t have a Palm Pre, but you may recall that it was able to access iTunes, until Apple decided to screw Palm Pre owners. Each iPod can only access media from five different user accounts. WTF?

          I don’t know how your household is set up, but in my family of four, we have 8 different computers current. (My wife and two sons each have a laptop, I have two laptops plus a desktop machine at work, plus we have a PC hooked up to the entertainment system, plus there is one more “floating” netbook). Why is it any business of Steve Jobs to say that I can only play my music on five of those eight machines? This is not even counting the five other machines that I have owned since iTunes was introduced in 2001. Presumably I would have had to call Apple to retire any of those machines. What a creepy hassle.

          I’m sorry, but this is just way too much hassle for me, just to satisfy the control-freakishness of one mad billionaire. My current music setup is that I have a library of about 30 GB of MP3 files, mostly ripped from my CD collection, with some additions from the Amazon music store. I can copy this library wherever I want, burn whatever CDs I want, put it on any MP3 players I want, loop samples into Acid or Audacity, without having to get permission from the corporate mothership for my every move. Screw Apple.

          1. Jeebus. Do you really think for one second this was Jobs’ decision to make? He fought the music industry tooth-and-nail to make music downloads as open as possible. DRM wasn’t his wish. It was the wish of the industry. The only way he could get them on board initially was with the promise of DRM and the consequent restrictions. The only reason Amazon can now give you so many options with MP3s is because of the tireless work by Jobs and Apple to bend the record company executives to our will.

            Get a fracking clue before you blame Apple and “one mad billionaire”. That mad billionaire has made DRM for music obsolete. You’re welcome.

            You’re “understanding” is severely limited by your ignorance of the facts.

        2. Amazon was selling DRM-free MP3s from all the major labels in January 2008. It was more than a year later that Apple finally got on-board. Why?

          DRM wasn’t his wish. It was the wish of the industry. The only way he could get them on board initially was with the promise of DRM and the consequent restrictions.

          Oh, nonsense. Apple’s market cap is $350 billion. They could buy Sony Corporation outright — the whole thing, not just Sony music — for $19B. They could buy Vivendi — the whole thing, not just Universal Music — for $20B. Saying Jobs was at the mercy of the music industry is like saying Walmart is at the mercy of toy companies. Maybe this is how Apple lovers preserve the sainthood of Jobs, but it’s propaganda. Jobs bought into DRM because he thought it maximized his revenue stream, not because he was forced into it.

          You haven’t answered the question — what happened to all the pre-2009 music that people bought on iTunes? Was it liberated along with the new music?

      3. You can see it in the original Mac iPhone virtual keyboard design (No cursor keys! You don’t need cursor keys, because you have a mouse touchpad!)

        FIFY

        Which is partly why I chose a Android Samsung Intercept for my new phone.

  2. I’m always a little surprised to learn that people of such abundant resources don’t devote more of them to funding research to help them (and others) live longer

    It was Jobs who said:

    … death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.

    I’m sure he wanted to live another 20-30 years, but technology that let people live for centuries would have struck him as a bug, not a feature.

    I’m not aware of any donations to efforts that would have helped not just himself, but millions of others, to extend their lives

    Jobs wasn’t very active in politics or philanthropy, but he was involved in the effort to establish California’s live kidney donor registry.

      1. FTW – had to google that. (Of course I use the term generically as I don’t actually use Google)

        You are right. Awesome, Bbbeard!

  4. I think Jobs was incredible with understanding the human machine interface, and to that end, I’ll accept him as an innovator. Otherwise, I think Entreprenuer is definitely the far better description. I’ve found all his devices limiting, while many considered them the exact opposite. What they missed was while a Mac, iPod, or iPhone was easy to understand, it could only be used the way Jobs allowed. His genius was designing constraints that didn’t seem restrictive to casual observers. It didn’t matter to many that they were confined to doing with Apple’s products only what Apple approved of them doing. It was fine, because Apple consumers wanted to do only what to do those things, and be able to them easily.

    The loss to Apple will be understanding how to keep the constraints in place while keeping their customers blissfully unaware.

  5. The Jobs legacy that means the most to me is Pixar. That outfit created some of the best animated films ever as Disney was going into decline.

    This scene is my personal Pixar favorite.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9IvnptQJ__U

    On my own blog I likened Jobs to Remy:

    “Like the restaurant in the film, the microcomputer revolution owes much of its talent to humble origins. Apple was started by two college dropouts in Steve Jobs’ bedroom. It now ranks 35th in the Fortune 500. Steve Jobs and his pals have made the world a better place.”

    I never get tired of watching that scene.

  6. Actually, the most important thing about Jobs is how he twisted the computer software business into the App Store model, and how Microsoft is preparing to do the same with Windows 8. There will be no more independent software distribution for “personal” computers because of Jobs.

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