(2023-04-14) Amstrong Steve Jobs Legacy For Builders

Evan Armstrong: Steve Jobs' Legacy for Builders. Steve Jobs was objectively cruel....Steve Jobs was objectively brilliant.... Talent and terror. Cruelty and compassion. Genius and narcissism. To accept Jobs (and by extension every person who changed the world) you have to accept this duality.... Still, when Make Something Wonderful was published on Tuesday, April 11th, I found myself accidentally slipping into fandom

the book was designed by Jony Ive’s creative agency LoveFrom and has a foreword from his widow Laurene Powell Jobs

Perhaps unsurprisingly given who created it, the book does not delve at all into the complications of Job’s past. Instead, it revels only in the godlike powers of Apple’s cofounder.

Despite my struggle with how Jobs treated others, the book lit a fire in my soul. It ignited that part of me that desires to create.

His ethos of product is sorely missing in technology today.

It is worth engaging with Make Something Wonderful as a book of aspirations versus a canonical depiction of a complicated reality.

With that in mind, there were four meta-points that stood out to me.

Tech and content have dramatically different DNA, and can, sometimes, produce incredible results when paired

When he was brought back to Apple, it was supposed to only be on an interim basis, so he retained his job as CEO at Pixar

Plus, Apple was months away from bankruptcy!

Jobs came out of the gate hot during his return to Apple. He slashed the product line from 17 SKUs to 4. He did massive layoffs

Great content gives you an unfair right to sell technology. The same is true in reverse. Apple today has incredible technology paired with good content. Because making just one great thing is hard enough, almost no company is able to do both well

Love what you do and throw yourself full-hearted into it

over and over again he chose the “wrong” thing. He just did what he got excited about and it worked out for him.

"Make your avocation your vocation. Make what you love your work.”

To be clear, I think that Jobs advocating for pursuing your passions is sometimes really bad advice. His perspective is informed from a position of privilege and survivorship bias

Alternatively, I have many, many friends that chose the path of stability and careers.

Investing in experiences that will make you a better person is almost always a good bet. Make smart bets! But bet all the same. Especially if your passion is technology.

The future belongs to the humanities

Here is Jobs talking about what he considers Apple’s biggest contribution to computing. “Our goal was to bring a liberal arts perspective and a liberal arts audience to what had traditionally been a very geeky technol­ogy and a very geeky audience.”

attention to detail and craft was core to Jobs’ personhood. It permeated the very spaces he built and the organizations he started.

This matters, even more, today than it did in the early 2000s. If AI really does decrease the production costs of most goods—I recognize this is a big if—then suddenly we are looking at markets that compete on taste

Make your purpose building and the profits will follow

Both of Jobs’ marquee products, the Apple 2 and the iPhone, weren’t driven by market research. They were forged by frustration.

To be honest, this smells a little bit like revisionist history. Jobs had employees requesting to build a phone for years before he finally relented

Solving problems you care about is an incredible way to live your life

On legacy

You should read this book. It is more scripture than history and that is totally OK. In its teachings, I was reminded why I care so much about the technology industry.