Thursday, October 06, 2011

Steve Jobs: Obiter Dicta

Steve Jobs was a genius and a great man and I know a lot of people are hurting. I am starting to see a few dissenting voices. The charitable way to put it would be that one does not get to be that great a maker of omelettes without also being a prolific breaker of eggs. So once there's been a respectful period of time since his death let's also talk from the progressive point of view? Both the good and the bad. Apple's support of the education sector and institutions on the one hand, and their corporate practices on the other, such as building his devices abroad and the conditions at their factories, and so on.

2 comments:

Abbas Zaidi said...

I don't think there's any contradiction in the two. Apple doesn't own any of the factories where they get their stuff made. Besides, they followed the same policies everyone else follows. What makes them answerable to a different standard? Why don't we ask the same questions of other manufacturers?

iFaqeer said...

Who said anything about the being contradictory? In fact, I was acknowledging and am conscious--more specifically than other people--how he did do good things besides just bring coolness to computing. Apple, for example, was one of the first to foreswear harmful chemicals in manufacturing.

But when the head of, say, Dell or IBM or something dies, I don't get non-stop messages all over my social media saying "who created revolutionary products and reshaped the way the world approaches computing and personal communications" [quoting from you here] and wondering if they could have been saved. That didn't even happen for people who did revolutionize the world as Jobs did--like the inventor of the microchip, or people who did amazing philanthropic work.

What I am challenging is the groupies that are being irrationally emotional.