Steve Jobs

Perhaps the most fitting epitaph for Steven P. Jobs, courtesy MACWORLD magazine:

Steve Jobs: Informed by his era
by Christopher Breen, Macworld.com Oct 7, 2011 4:02 pm

Steve Jobs: Informed by his era | Computers | Macworld

Again, Steve Jobs loved America so much that he
created 1000's of jobs in China.

^ It depends on how much responsibility you want to assign to him for the shift of manufacturing jobs overseas. From where I sit, the country's political leadership (both parties) and key business interests (not Apple) had alot more to do with it.

The thing is PM4HIRE, although you're entitled to your views, maybe voicing them in a thread that was started to pay homage to a bloke that's just died isn't the best way to go about it?

pm4hire,

apple does manufacture products in china. it is well known that foxconn factories have been one of the primary outfits assembling products for apple. they also assemble products for amazon, intel, cisco, hewlett-packard, dell, nintendo, nokia, motorola, sony, ericsson, vizio, microsoft, and acer.

sadly, i don't know if large scale computer fabrication facilities exist in the u.s. anymore.

if you've looked at apple products or packaging, you'll recall that they read "designed by apple in california. assembled in china."

it is also well known that apple is the largest employer in the city of cupertino, california - as of 2010, employing over 34,000 people in the cupertino area.

apple's contribution to the northern california economy is not insignificant.

also not insignificant and in fact without parallel is the economy apple has created around the ios platform.

what made steve jobs great is not that he started a company in his garage, although such a start seems like the classical american entrepreneur story, and then lead that company's rescue from bankruptcy to amongst the most valuable companies in the world. these were the result of his greatness, and his greatness, in my humble opinion, was his vision of what does and does not work well, his ability to lead the company to deliver on that vision, his ability to hire and keep talented people, and what people have called his reality distortion field - his ability to sell an idea, his ability to build relationships, his ability to market.

there are many companies out there that make computers - dell, ibm, lenovo, hp, acer, and others. there are other operating systems out there besides mac os x - microsoft windows certainly has the larger market share. and whether one prefers using windows or a mac or linux is personal preference.

i think we understand that you don't care for apple products, and that's totally fine.

my request to you is for us to please keep the conversations on this forum positive.

i prefer using a mac over windows, but i won't post something bashing microsoft or bill gates or steve balmer.

i ask that you please reciprocate the same courtesy.

thank you!

The thing that Apple does super well is it's marketing.

Most technology companies sell off of this basic model: We make computers, they come with this improvement, this technology, and this speed. Buy our computer.

Apple seems to sell based off of an emotional appeal: "Everything we do is based on making a simple, easy to use product. We have these technologies. Oh yea, we also sell computers.

Apple seems to sell why they do things, as compared to other companies that sell products.