Dear Chuck,

I can agree with the positive points that you make and Isaacson
stresses these many times. I can also agree with Don about things right
and wrong with Apple with and without Steve Jobs.

My reduction was not as neat or as comprehensive as yours but, for me,
your list of positives illustrates my point better than I ever could.
You could "teach" all these positives in a five minute talk. Indeed,
they'd probably fit on to one iPhone screen as dot points, or one
PowerPoint slide (which I know Jobs hated).

Ok, so you can't really teach these things in a basic course and also,
you can't really teach them in an advanced course if by teach you mean
derive knowledge that can be usefully implemented.

Part of the problem of what you can and can not teach about Steve is
that just about everything good about what Jobs did is bad in a context
without Jobs. That is, there is no point in following the master or
guru. I for one don't want to be the person who follows the new Steve as
the new Steve fails to flush the toilet (Isaacson, p. 281).

And, anyway, I am typing this on an Apple Bluetooth keyboard which is
crap (Apple is yet to may a keyboard that is both attractive and
excellent as a keyboard) and using a Bluetooth mouse which is ok and has
nice multiple button touch effects but in terms of hand feel it is still
not as good as the cake of soap Microsoft mouse of decades ago. (I often
use cheap non-Apple USB keyboards and mice because I find they work
better.)

Over the years I have suffered lots and lots of dumb Apple mice (why do
I have to keep cleaning the gunk?), self-destructing power supplies
(lets wrap this cord around a puck) and operating systems to make a
workshop teacher weep. Sure, OS X is grand and sure, the magnetic power
connector is tops etc. but I can't stop myself from thinking that just
as many of these failures arise from Jobs's approach as successes. At
best he is a 50-50 man which might be Ok on dry land but I certainly
wouldn't fly with him or go to sea with him or send my kids to his
university.

One more swipe - at the swipe. Jobs thought that using a stylus on a
touch screen was dumb because God had already given humans ten good
fingers to do the job. Replacing the accuracy of a HD mouse or trackball
with a dumb thumb is a bozo trick. Sure, it is Ok for Angy Birds but as
soon as I want to do something intelligent I go looking for a mouse and
full keyboard. Which means I put the touch screen devices down and pick
up one of my netbooks, notebooks or I turn on my desktop machine. The
new, low cost,  Indian 7" Andoid tablet has a resistive screen. I wait
to see Youtube footage of lucky Indian students who can use a stylus to
speed up their work.

My 4 year-old grandson likes my iPad because it is bigger that his 7"
Android device. I also have a 7" Android just like his. He likes the
Android because the menu system is better and more fun (more fluid) and
the Android Market has more free games. He dislikes the pestering ads on
Apple free games some of which are not age sensitive (Talking Friends
has dating ads? go figure?) Both systems fail and go slow - the Apple is
much more stable than the Droid. All-in-all, he'll use both about equal
amounts depending on software.

I prefer the Android. Why? Because I am an Apple II man who likes to be
able to tweak things and likes to feel that the machine was designed by
people who like things being tweaked. And, the 7" form suits just
mucking around much better (it looks like it is not serious and it
didn't cost serious money - $120) and it is lighter and I can write
little apps in minutes that I can share. My iPad mostly sits on the
shelf waiting for my grandson to ask to play with it. 

But hey, Jobs would claim he invented both so I am doubly blessed.

cheers

keith


 
 
>>> Charles Burnette <[log in to unmask]> 01/10/12 12:20 PM
>>> 
Keith,

I think you are missing the points regarding Steve Jobs. You simply
can't teach or learn in a basic design course what he could and did do. 
Here is my take on his "mythical" accomplishments.

Steve Jobs and Apple have shown that it is possible for a corporation
to operate at the creative level of purposeful thought.  Job*s
background as an abandoned child adopted by loving parents, a father who
taught him to care about unseen craftsmanship, an early interest in
electronics, growing up in the entrepreneurial, hacker community of
Silicon Valley and the California counterculture shaped his
extraordinary views of how to develop products and services that were
*insanely  great*. He was a perfectionist who cared about small
details, materials, and finishes, remaining alert to new information,
resources and techniques. He organized Apple as one collaborative
enterprise with no departments and only one budget. He participated
fully in the conceptual modeling, integration and analysis of all Apple
products during their development. He was a master communicator who
shaped presentations, (Macworld), marketing (Think Different) and
environments (Apple Stores) in creative ways.  He demanded
collaboration, integration, simplicity, beauty, and a seamless user
experience across all products, services and environments. He shaped
both human and material processes to make them timely and efficient,
often applying funds in unique ways to assure outstanding execution,
performance and delivery. He demanded quality in everything, people
included, and was often a harsh judge. He extended his vision and
knowledge to transform whole industries and shape cultures. He
creatively applied all the dimensions of purposeful thought. No one has
been able to integrate design and business better than he, or build a
company more creative than Apple.  

He really was creative across every domain in  A Theory of Design
Thinking. He also raises the question again regarding what makes a mind
creative?  
Best regards,
Chuck