Adonis Diaries

A few excerpts of Steve Jobs biography and comments

From the biography of Walter Isaacson. He claimed that Jobs refused to read any notes or a draft version. And this book is pretty thorough.

On June 29, 1975, Steve Wozniak typed a few characters on his invented machine (a keyboard, a screen, a monitor and a microprocessor) and letters were displayed.

Wozniak had spent 2 months hard working on the program.

This inspiration of creating a personal computer was the result of attending the Homebrew Computer Club that displayed the technical file of the Altair Kit microprocessor.

On January 24, 1984, Apple Computer launched the Macintosh. The motto was “You will understand why 1984 will Not be as 1984” (A reference to George Orwell book)

Ridley Scott (director of Blade Runner) shot the story-board of Lee Clow in London. The grey industrial complex was packed with skinheads listening to the speech of Big Brother. A blonde athlete woman (disk thrower) runs and smash the big screen the moment Big Brother (IBM)  is declaring “We are going to win”.

IBM PC had snatched the personal computer market.  By then, Steve Jobs had lost his fire as a renegade, a pirate: The Macintosh had a steep price ($2,500) with no external extensions. Computer geeks could Not add their own cards, functions, or even open the box.

After he was diagnosed with cancer, Jobs said at the graduation ceremony in Stanford, June 2005:  

“Remembering that I will die soon was the catalyst for taking the greatest of decisions of my life.
The waiting, pride, fear of failure and feeling embarrassed…all that vanished in the face of death
Remain what count

The best way Not to fall in the trap of believing that we have anything to lose
We are already naked.…
Why Not start listening to your heart?”

If you hire a commercial PDG instead of a product designer, don’t be surprised for your enterprise to fail in the medium term.
If you sell your start ups, blame yourself for failing to build a perennial institution

(A closed, vertical integrated product of materials, programs and applications performs better for common users. Looks like many start-ups needed certain constraints to deliver on their products. For professionals and institutions, open systems suit better and enhance technology and start ups.)

the 21st century is the intersection of technology and Art designs.
After he was diagnosed with cancer and his son Rees got interested in DNA processes, Steve said:
The current century is the Intersection of technology and Biology

As he was getting ready to pass away, Jobs said:

“It is difficult to admit that all the experiences and wisdom we acquired can vanish at death.
At least, I like to believe that conscious survives
Most probably, life is like an off/on interrupter.
I never installed this kind of on/off alternatives on Apple products”
After the implant of a new liver, the nurse tried to install an oxygen mask for Jobs. He snatched it away while barely coming out of anesthesia, on the ground that it was Not aesthetically designed. He ordered to have 5 version submitted to him to select the best designed.

Lisa Brennan (Steve’s daughter from Chrisann) said of what Steve’s believed in:

1. Everything leads to its contrary

2. The best harvest are produced in arid soils

3. Pleasure is generated from privation

Tina Redse, the first love of Steve’s that lasted 5 passionate years and till the end of his life, described the character of Steve as emanating from the psychological syndrome ör pathology of  “Troubled narcissistic personality” that matched perfectly the behaviour of Steve’s, mainly a deficit in empathy

Steve connected with his biological mother after his adoptive mother passed away in 1986. He refused to meet with his biological father (originally from Syria)

The author Mona Simpson was his sister and they met and linked up and became great friends. She looked like him and was a red-headed person.

Daniel Kottke was one of the closest friends of Steve Job. He attended with him the Reed University for 2 years, joined him on his trip to India for a year, shared an apartment with him where Job’s girlfriend was pregnant, and worked with him in the garage developing Apple II.
Jobs refused to give him a single share when Apple went public on the ground that Kottke was just a technician.

Many wanted to give Kettke a few shares but Job was adamant: Zero shares.
Wozniac distributed 2,000 shares on 40 people in his team who were able to purchase their dream homes.
If Wozniak behaviors are considered naïve and ill-matured, then these labels must be common to most well-adjusted, caring and compassionate people.

A few quotes by Jobs:

1. If you want to develop a program, try to figure out the machines that will use it

2. The best way to predict the future is by inventing it

3. The good artist copies, the genius steal (from Picasso)

From Stewart Brand in Whole Earth Catalogue (1968):

“Free access to tools that permit private and individual power to tailor-make education, to find inspiration, model our environment and share our adventure with all who need them…

The genius of Jobs (rip, mix, burn) was to transform the personal computer into a digital hub for all portable electronic gizmos, such as camcorders, iTunes, iPod, iPad…The computer served as a center for producing and generating videos, movies, clips…iMovie, iDVD, iTune…

Jobs also got totally engaged in the Cloud technology and succeeded in closing the loop.

Note 1: Bill Gates is Not an outlier: He is pretty much mainstream of the proper timing for new technology. Steve Jobs is an outlier: He could Not program but made all the nerds in electronics and programmers rally to his distorted reality

Note 2: There are plenty of geniuses in human history and in all kinds of disciplines.
Rare are those geniuses who could invent (intuition) and do the demonstration also.

One common traits among those rare geniuses is that they had to write down that they discovered and in two versions (Not the case of Jobs):
1. A version for their own benefit translating their mental processes for ease recollection when re-read, and
2. A version for publication to satisfy the rational processes for the period

I am thinking of Blaise Pascal, Galileo, Kepler, Lavoisier, Kamel Hassan Sabbah and scores of ancient Arab scientists who experimented before publishing their thesis

Note 3: And how would you “want to change the world” Sir?
Are more lunatics those who make apologies of the fools who claim their mission is to change the world
Like all those cult-like minds who want the world to behave according to their world views
What do you want to change Sir?
1. The standard of living all over the world?…
2. Behavors of individuals?
3. The standard norms of communities?
4. Reforming system institutions to cater better to the common people requests?
5. Re-structuring the administrative institutions that are meant to control and rule the masses?
6. How about focusing first on your own community, and provide draft projects for its approval?
7. How about accepting the many idiosyncrasies surrounding you and your community?

Note 4: We have a structural problem to approach climate change.
You can simultaneously understand the medium to long-term risks of climate change and also come to the conclusion that it is in your short-term economic interest to invest in oil and gas.
Which is why anybody who tells you that the market is going to fix this on its own is lying to you.
But the government institutions are wary of changing this mid-fix of market stupid fixing of anything that drastic and existential

Note 5: Any man-made system must necessarily be fraught with errors, faults and limitations on its intended usage.
Any man-made system (product, service, administrative, management, political, control…) is doomed to fail when designed to cater for complex tasks and objectives: It will end up tying up many teams targeted for training, maintenance, redesigning, repairing…

Man-made designs barely consider the idiosyncrasies of users and the environment of the community and the designers lack the necessary knowledge, technically and the socio-psychological intricacies and interrelationship of the users and community.

The diversity of users and environments will easily pinpoint the deficiencies in any system.
The proper functioning of any system in the medium term relies solely on the acceptance of the idiosyncrasy of the community, regardless of the level of performance the system is delivering, particularly in health and safety usage and applications