“Steve Jobs didn’t invent anything! Not the Mac. Not the iPod. Not the Next cube. So says tech-industry pundit Mark Anderson, CEO of Strategic News Service, as part of his strategic predictions for 2012,” Bob Evans writes for Forbes.
“Let me help you wrap your willing suspension of disbelief around this: if you thought Steve Jobs invented the Apple II, the Macintosh, the iPod, iTunes, the iPad, and various other profoundly successful and influential products, you’d be wrong,” Evans writes. “Because, you see, Jobs didn’t ‘invent’ them; no, he merely ‘integrated’ them.”
Evans writes, “I think where Anderson is way off in his comment on Jobs as non-inventor is that it doesn’t have to be an either/or situation—in fact, I’d argue that the most-successful companies going forward will be those that continue to invent while they also pursue breakthrough approaches to integration.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
I don’t know for sure.
But he made people want the products. I don’t think Apple would have amounted to much more than a fit note in history without Jobs no matter if he invented anything or not.
More accurately, Jobs both “integrator” for big things and “inventor” for many small things (around 340 patents).
By the way, Daimler of Germany did not invent the engine, but he remade it and thus he came up with an automobile (car).
It does not make Daimler any less great since engines (of various types) before were done for almost two hundreds years, and no one could apply it to small car before him.
To say Steve Jobs did not invent anything is flat out BS.
The same creation format happens in music:
I bring in a guitarist to do a lead solo and most do something completely generic (boring) that appeals to their technical minds, ego, and peers. Often they have to be pushed to break out of the routine of the “expected” and when this happens we often come up with truly creative results. After that, it’s a matter of working note by note to perfect it with the attending musician. Strictly speaking, I’m not creating or playing anything hands-on, but it would never happen without me standing there saying “Umm that’s great but not what we’re looking for, just play something and we’ll know when we hit on something original that works.”
The same happens in almost every industry (IE: car parts, computer chips) where specialists tend to be narrowly focussed, lacking an overall view, and need to work alongside overall designers. Few could achieve such great products alone.
And Edison didn’t ‘invent’ the light bulb. So what’s your point?
He just integrated the components.
Edison was a thug. Tesla was better.
If you had lived in Colorado Springs in 1899-1900, you would not make such an assertion, KSH. Tesla’s reputation here reflects the FACTS of his scientific inquiry (and complete lack of business acumen, including paying his bills). Edison was a giant, sir. Tesla, not so much.
And Edison never electrocuted a cow.
Unlike Tesla.
Didn’t Edison electrocute an elephant?
Some puppies, a horse, and Topsy the elephant.
Oh, yes, and William Kemmler, homo sapiens, in the Auburn Prison, New York, August, 1890.
These, however, were all intentional. Tesla’s cow was a mistake.
Maybe. But Edison did electrocute an elephant.
And forget Tesla vs. Edison. Westinghouse was greater than either when it came to practically applying electric power. Westinghouse was the promoter of AC power, what you are using now. Edison advocated DC power, which would have required a power station every few miles. Tesla advocated “broadcast” power. Still a pipe dream.
Westinghouse was using Tesla’s patents. Tesla is brains behind AC power, he later moved on to wireless transmission.
that’s perhaps the most stupid statement I have ever read here, KSH…well done.
Steve jobs was an inventor, but you can argue that he reinvented more. He made things better and more popular.
Exactly. It’s not about whether Steve was sitting at a workbench crafting this stuff with his own hands. No, instead he crafted them with his mind and let the engineers do the hands-on work. It’s still invention no matter how you put it. He created Apple and NeXT, both of which are the foundations upon which OS X and iOS are built.
This is an attention-grabbing headline from a quote taken slightly out of context in order to reel in hits. And it worked.
And he didn’t write that story he mearly integrated the words.
lol
++1
+100
A few minutes ago MDN had a story on the collective fading interest in Facebook’s. MDN has apparently removed it? Censorship?
Just finished reading that article AFTER I read your comment. Sorry, no censorship.
I know you’re kidding, but at least with Apple I know what it is they want me to buy. With BASF I never figured out what it was I was supposed to go shopping for.
if the iOS made by apple and invented by who? who made or invented android???
If you have the knowledge and foresight to come up with a detailed idea for a great product, but you don’t have the skills to actually build it, what do you do? You hire people with those skills.
Once they’ve built it, who invented it? The person who thought of it, not the skilled labor who built what they were told to build (even though they used their expertise to flesh out the technical details).
In this way, Jobs did invent the Apple I, Apple II, Mac, etc. He didn’t say, “I have no idea what I want Woz, just build something and I’ll market it.” No, he had the idea along with Woz.
Once Apple got going, he didn’t say, “Make me a better computer, ” and then some engineer put a Mac in front of him. That’s not how it happened.
There’s a reason his name his on a whole lot of patents.
So, the Wright brothers didn’t really invent the airplane. They just integrated wire and fabric and wheels.
Otto Lillienthal had a hang-glider that flew, the Wright Bros. had the first successful powered airplane that maintained sustained, controlled flight. Sony didn’t invent the personal, portable tape music player, they just created a small, pocket-sized one that people fell in love with.
Steve’s skill lay in identifying a shonky product then making it work better and look beautiful, and easy to operate, thus desirable.
He may not have personally invented many of the Apple devices we use today, but he hired the engineers that did. Maybe I should say he integrated his ideas with the engineers he hired.
By these standards, nobody has invented anything since creation; every human activity is just an integration (or disintegration) of something already made.
Did the Wright Brothers invent the first airplane. They only invented the first successful airplane.
No. They integrated it. The only inventors are those who came up with wires, canvas, sticks, and string. There are about a couple dozen valid patents, all expired. Nobody’s done any inventing for the last thousand years. We’ve just been sticking stuff together.
No creativity there.
Yeah, right.
Well if not innovators or inventors, I sure wish there was a good word that says exactly what I am thinking of when I see an iPod next to every MP3 player before it. Or when I see the first iPhone next to all other smartphones before it, or the Mac next to all other personal computers available or in PARC that came before it. Something that does whatever I am trying to label, justice. That word would describe what it was Jobs did for Apple, and it’d also describe what Apples products do in the markets they are in. Fine, if it isn’t “invent”, then invention doesn’t seem as profound I thought it meant. If it’s “integrate” then the word integrate means something much more profound than I thought it did.
@Polymath
I propose the word: inventigrate. Steve was a superb inventigrator.
Steve Jobs has 300+ patents credited to him. Something most “real” inventors would be more than happy to have
Jobs was many things. A child abandoner, a liar about being sterile, a thief stealing from Woz, a crook for backdating options, a stingy stink for hoarding his wealth, a father missing in action and needing a book to tell his kids his life story, a moron for not listening to sound medical advice that led directly to his death, a immature stinking baby in the way he treated prospective employees in interviews … its all in the book.
Good riddance. Gates outclassed this moron by leaps and bounds.
isn’t child abandonist?
Siiiiggggghhhhhhh. You are so pathetic.
Too cowardly to link to a profile with your real name, are ye?
What exactly did he steal from Woz? He started a business with Woz, they remained friends and Woz is still an Apple employee. Woz built the first Mac and Steve had the idea. How is that theft? Ask Woz if he feels stolen from.
Actually, Woz had almost nothing to do with the Mac – but everything to do with the Apple l and the Apple ll.
Yeah you’re right I mistyped. I meant the Apple I and II. I’m just so used to calling an Apple computer a Mac lol
Oh and as for Gates, he currently trying to buy his way into heaven to make up for all his criminal actions.
@X
Why do I have the feeling that you could easily be replaced by a pile of shit?
“Gates outclassed this moron by leaps and bounds”
AHAHAHAHAHA
What are you? One sociopath defending another? Gates built an empire based on crime, and I say that without hyperbole. Microsoft’s heritage is theft, backstabbing, and an obsessive compulsion to destroy all competition even if it meant breaking the law, which it regularly did.
Let’s also not forget that his company produced(and continues to produce) some of the worst products ever forged by human hands, which never seemed bother him, and through his efforts to force everyone and their dog to use them he has caused amounts of time, money, and productivity to be lost that exceed all measurement. Bill made the world a worse place to live in, palpably so.
And in addition to all that, he runs a hollow charity as a front to evade taxes on his business investments.
Yup, he’s classy alright.
Nothing like that horrible Steve Jobs fellow, who actually innovated, brought great things into the world, and didn’t run his businesses like a gangster. Which is all apparently moot because he could be a jerk in his personal life. Thanks for letting us know that, X.
Henry Ford didn’t “invent” the automobile, he just succeeded in in bringing it to the masses. A feat which some would say is more difficult than “inventing” it. Jobs brought the PC, the mouse, touch interface, the digital music player, tablets, apps, and innumerable other innovations to the masses. Nice resume I’d say.
I really never considered Jobs an inventor. What he really did was take an idea, and revision it.
For example:he did not invent the mp3. In fact, there are many companies who already sold them way before the iPod was introduced. What did he do then? He took the idea of MP3 players which used to be quite large, and revised it to this smaller, just as good, portable music player that could easily fit in your pocket and no longer use discs.
Same goes for the iPhone, iPad and laptops.
In a way he’s right. Apple don’t invent products, they simply take an existing technology/product and make it much better.
Apple didn’t invent the computer, the smartphone, the mp3 player, the tablet computer, etc, etc. I can’t actually think of anything they did invent. Even the Mac OS was taken from Xerox.
No, Stan, the Mac OS was NOT taken from Xerox. First
No, Stan, the Mac OS was NOT taken from Xerox. First, what Steve and his team saw at PARC was the GUI and the mouse; the MacOS – the actual operating system – was a ground-up new OS created at Apple and partially based on the Lisa OS, also created at Apple. Second, nothing was “taken” – Apple paid Xerox in stock options the equivalent of $16 million to use the interface ideas it saw at PARC.
The ignorance of the real history of Apple is staggering…
Really!?! Because I can think of countless things Apple invented off the top of my head. Do you think Xerox just had the first Apple OS ready to go? No, they had a bare bones OS that Aple paid to get a look at. Just from seeing this OS, Apple invented the first Apple OS and they invented a ton of tech to make it work, like the drop down menu for instance. Apple invented the Click Wheel used in the iPod (for which they hold a patent). They invented several of the different technologies that make up HTML5, canvas for instance. They invented Grand Central, a totally different and unique way of multitasking in OS X (they made that tech open source). They invented OpenCL, an open source language for GPUs. They invented CLang, a proposed replacement for GCC (also open source). Apple also invented the unibody construction process used increasing their newest laptops. These are just a few of Apple’s inventions.
In reality nobody invents anything. The seed of every invention has been there since the creation of the world. All “inventions” came about through by accidents (discovery) or through observations of the interplay of how nature works.
The Neanderthal man would had created all the wonders of the world if he had been as observant as the modern man because all the principles of invention were there since the beginning. Radio waves, telegraphy and all the unseen forces like electricity were present from the beginning of time and it only takes an “inventor” to just discover the principles and apply it.
In fact science is nothing more than the discovery of principles of nature that were there all the time. Every thing needs to follow certain laws of operation for it to become viable. And I believe there is a Creator who set such principles, not the gibberish theory of the Big Bang where things came about through chaos. There has got to have been an inventor to bring out the automobile, the phone or a building; not by smashing things up through the collider or the hurricane and presto a new things were being created!
He didn’t really make them better, he just convinced people they were better and that they really needed them. At an inflated price also. His legacy is he was good at selling things.
Well, Beethoven didn’t invent musical notes, but, boy, look what he did with them!
Primitive named Ogg: “I just invented the wheel.”
Primitive named Bogg: “No you didn’t. You just cut a couple slices from that redwood and drilled holes in them and stuck ’em together on a straight branch – you didn’t invent ANYTHING, you just put some stuff together. In fact, you hired Smogg and Globb to do the heavy lifting and you just told them what to do.”
Ogg: You’re an idiot.
Anderson is way off in his comment on Jobs – CORRECT.
Jobs INNOVATED not INVENTED – huge difference.
LOOK at all the technologies and pick certain KEY DEVELOPMENTS and COMBINE those key developments into a PRODUCT we never had thought we needed.
THATS like designing… allow yourself to be inspired with this and that – AND PUT your own SPIN on things.
THATS like story telling… the same basic story can be told many ways… but the one that creatively adds value or some way to DIFFERENTIATE the story from the original is INNOVATING not INVENTING.
UNDERSTAND this and you KNOW STEVE JOBS better.
Thank goodness we have deep thinkers like Bob Evans and classy websites like Forbes. They are the real heroes, destined to be remembered forever, not like that “mere integrator” Jobs.
Yea, let us be grateful to look upon the greatness that is Evans and Forbes. Truly we are the lucky ones to benefit from their wisdom.
It’s an amazing time to be alive, when the likes of Evans and websites like Forbes are upon this earth.
X is my son and the result on generations of inbreeding. The family is note for its many educated idiots, many of them post on MDN.