Steve Jobs Insult Response
Why Hacker News recommends it
Commenters link it as a canonical statement of Jobs's product philosophy and as an example of handling an insult calmly and articulately.
What it is
A clip from Steve Jobs's 1997 WWDC session, in which he answers a hostile question from an audience member about Apple killing OpenDoc. He says to start with the customer experience and work back to the technology, and that saying no is part of focus.
Recommended by 4 HN commenters across 4 different months, 2011 to 2022.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec chx · 2017-12 · on “Apple and NeXT announce merger (1996)”
Watch Jobs in his prime a year later describing his philosophy: [this video] I am very far from an Apple fanboy but gosh, this guy totally gets it.
Recommends nirvana · 2011-10 · on “The last time I saw Steve Jobs”
I've been following Steve Jobs since I was a kid, about 30 years ago. Woz was more my hero then, but I read everything I could about Jobs even then, and ever since. I think Jobs transformed himself on a fundamental level. The young Steve seemed arrogant and self centered. Getting pushed out of Apple seems to have been a kick to the soul, and then in his 10 years away, he seems to have changed everything about him that was bad. Just check out how he responded to the insult given to him at the 1997 after WWDC session. [this video] Now that enough time has passed, all the people who were bashing Jobs from 1990-2011 are back bashing Jobs again. But I think these stories are the real guy. I was in his
Recommends EricE · 2020-08 · on “Celebrate Woz's 70th”
Jobs was all of that and more. Modern personal computing wouldn't exist without his insistence at making "Computers for the rest of us". There were many quite pissed at Apple for selling pre-assembled, ready to use computers. It was thought that unless you could assemble your machine you didn't deserve it. Heck you see a lot of that attitude today in many open source projects. And that's just one way he pushed modern computing into what it is today. Did he perform every detail himself? Nope - that would be absurd. But he took things that until that time no one else correlated, and he correlated and pushed for them. Often with amazing presence. And it wasn't willy-nilly, either. I mean just l
Recommends SenHeng · 2022-06 · on “Ask HN: How to talk with logical flow and coherence at interviews?”
Some good examples by Elon Musk and Steve Jobs described in this article. [LINK] This was probably one of Steve Job's most impressive example. [this video]
Cites jroseattle · 2011-10 · on “Jobs Told Google's Page to Cut Bloat to Avoid Becoming Microsoft”
Good observation, I think that's exactly what we're seeing. It's an interesting balancing act that can sometimes go against the very grain of tech companies, especially one the size of Google. Everything we as mere mortals in the tech business are taught is to try things, fail quickly, iterate. Jobs approach was to do a few things and do them well. Indeed, he felt the most important thing one could do, as an agent of change in that type of role, was to learn to effectively say no. [this video] Page has always been very smart and a phenomenal software engineer, but his new role is different. I believe Page finds himself in a somewhat similar position to Jobs in 1997, and it will be very interestin
Cites kunai · 2013-06 · on “Yahoo shutting down AltaVista and other services”
This is the video: [this video] For those not initiated, OpenDoc was a multimedia document format developed by Apple before Steve Jobs came back to Apple, which was when he violently killed OpenDoc.
Cites mehrdada · 2013-07 · on “Google Reader Founder: I Never Would Have Founded Reader Inside Today's Google”
"Google Reader founder Chris Wetherell said that if the idea came to him in today’s Google, he would leave the company and build it on his own rather than put it at the mercy of Google leadership." Guess what dude?! If I were in that position and I were primarily worried about my project "being at the mercy of Google" (or any company that I don't have sufficient control over, for that matter), I would have left _anytime_. It should not be something you realize _today_. This is just whining over a "wrong" (presumably; assuming you would have pulled it off well) tradeoff you, yourself, made back in the day. It's not "today's Google vs. back then's Google". This is the tradeoff that you make an
Cites teovall · 2013-10 · on “Remember when Apple was failing? Jobs responds to insulting question (1997)”
Cool video, by why not link to the original copy with 2.5+ million views instead of some copy with a bunch of SEO keywords and only 38 views? Here's the original: [this video]