Quote:
Originally Posted by 'Hamas' Jenkins
This is incredibly important. You don't want to piss on the guy's grave, but he didn't exactly invent protease inhibitors or the Polio vaccine.
In some ways, this is almost like the death of the Georgio Armani of Computers. He didn't invent the damned thing, he just came up with ways to make it more convenient, but more than anything, fashionable.
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I think you're short-selling how much of a business genius it was. He wasn't successful because he took other people's products and wrapped his Apple brand around it. He had a unique gift for bringing a product to critical mass in a split-second.
The iPod wasn't just a pretty version of an mp3 player. Jobs battled a music industry that was extremely resistant to using mp3s because they viewed them as largely pirated media, and they were too old-fashioned to recognize that this is what consumers wanted. He created a market for mp3s that was way too big to ignore and that was the tipping point for the music industry to finally wake up to the idea that music had to be sold on a different platform. The iPhone wasn't just a phone that could do smart stuff. It required coordination of a lot of external software developers who could rapidly create enough apps to make the iPhone cool to use. If you don't believe that, take a look at how Blackberry screwed the pooch with RIM.
What I disagree with is I think you're presupposing that had Jobs not been around, these innovations would have hit the market anyway. Maybe so, but it would have taken a really long time. The product life cycle isn't smooth. Most revolutionary technologies hit what's called a life cycle chasm and never make it across. And until you cross that chasm, the technology runs into a ton of obstacles.