The problem I have is that these attitudes are fragile. If you have a monarch, for example, with complete control over a country and who has tons of money and doesn't need to ask for permission, he can build a great nation of he's a good person.
When he dies and his son, who's an asshole but equally determined and powerful, takes over, now you have a bad situation.
Fortunately Steve Jobs wasn't in such control. But the point is that, yeah, if someone that determined and set in their ways and they're right...awesome!
But when people are like that and they're wrong, which happens a lot...god damn it's not good.
So I guess the question is whether this sort of "riskiness" is good? Like, when you win a horse race it's badass. The other 9 times out of 10 when you lose it sucks. Is that the human behavior we should model ourselves after? Interesting...
There are tons of behaviors which are great if you're right and bad if you're wrong. Should we never stand up for what we believe in? Should we let others decide things because we might be wrong?
And keep in mind that bad people won't care about these arguments. Only good people with reasonable and healthy self-doubt will be convinced to make less of an impact, and that's the opposite of what we should want.
I'm not at odds with your opinion, I agree. My point is that a lot of other fragile attitudes impact the person holding them. But a cavalier attitude like with Jobs or people set on having an impact on the world is fragile in that it can impact many others. That's the only concern with me.
Suicide rates in populations around the world is much higher than you think. [1] The media don't report on them generally (if they did, there'd be more stories about them than horrific car crashes that the news outlets report on).
Car crashes in the US kill 40,000 people per year [2], and the US has a suicide rate of 11.1 per 100,000. With a population of 300 million, that's over 300,000 suicides in the US per year. 260,000 more than car crashes. Does that surprise you? What do the media report? Car crashes!
Given the number of Foxconn employees [3] (over 1 million) and the average suicide rate in China (13.8 per 100,000 per year), that's potentially 138 suicides of Foxconn employees per year.
Wired did an article on the suicides, there were 11 of them [4], to paraphrase the article "The nets went up after the 11th jumper took their life in less than a year.".
So there were another 127 people to kill themselves to get up to the national average in that year. The whole issue was a load of FUD. I bet you own heaps of junk that was made in China in factories with worse conditions. If you live in a first world country, it's inevitable.
> Car crashes in the US kill 40,000 people per year [2], and the US has a suicide rate of 11.1 per 100,000. With a population of 300 million, that's over 300,000 suicides in the US per year. 260,000 more than car crashes. Does that surprise you? What do the media report? Car crashes!
Your math is off by 10x. 11.1 per 100k * 300M/100k = 33,000 not 300,000.
Why should suicide attempts count? They can't be compared to the rate in the general public -- most suicide attempts don't succeed. More importantly, even if you did count them as successful, there'd need to be another 119 suicides for Foxconn employees to be up to the general population's rate of suicide.
That means, conservatively, that people who work at Foxconn are 7x LESS likely to commit suicide than in the general population.
11x LESS likely if you don't do intellectually dishonest things as counting attempts as successful suicides.
People also kill themselves over Tamagotchis. Suicidal people find a reason. So unless there's actually evidence of a higher-than-normal rate of suicide, the whole line of argument is a red herring.
And why is that worthy of a downvote? Suicides aren't valid negative things? I am not against Steve Jobs. But to say all he did was hurt feelings is ignorant. He hurt feelings and perpetuated a supply chain with a lot of negative elements to it. And no, Apple is not the only company doing it.
I'm amazed people still trot this out. Foxconn has more employees than many mid-sized cities. Their per-capita suicide rate is lower than that of China as a whole. They make electronics for many of the big consumer electronics manufacturers, not just Apple.
I tried to post a reply last night from an iPhone app but it didn't go through. Maybe if it had my Karma would not have gone from 11 to -10...
Anyway, the reason I'm "trotting this out" is because to say all he did was hurt feelings is ignorant. He hurt feelings and perpetuated a supply chain with a lot of negative elements to it. And no, Apple is not the only company doing it. But I'm looking at some of the negative elements Steve Jobs had. Yes, he was rude to people. Also, he took part in a labor practice that I think is messed up, personally. That's all.
Hitler exemplifies your last statement beautifully. The world needs people who stand strong with their ideas but constantly think about others and be open-minded. And not douchebags.
Pretty much everyone knows about the whole Nazi = bad thing. So, because so many people know about it, I'm pointing to an example where the original commenter's ideal behavior went wrong. Godwin and Glenn Beck just threw "Hitler" around to get a reaction. That's not what's going on here.
I think he's more commenting on Jobs' behavior and how he doesn't like it. I mean, lots of people at Enron talked about it being the thrill of their lives. But as observers we can recognize that their behavior sucks and not like it.
The problems this guy has with Apple are things still going on now.
Every problem the author notes in this article is specifically with Steve Jobs' behavior, not Apple's. I'm commenting on what was in the submitted article.
However, you reiterated my point beautifully with your cotton anecdote. I'm not sure why you needed to repeat the sentiment but, yes, it's similarly irrational.
This is completely irrational and irrelevant. A misogynist is someone who hates women and/or girls. He's saying he's never encountered a bad business woman, which is not hatred at all under any circumstance. He's a man writing about a man, so the gender of pronouns shouldn't mystify or bother you. And "those seeking to better their own image while perpetuating a problem" isn't any form or category of misogynist. See the definition at the beginning of this comment for reference.
And he did not say "negative businesswomen do not exist". He said he's never personally encountered any.
While in normal discourse "misogynist" means "someone who hates women and/or girls", in formal academic feminism a misogynist is someone who disagrees with the feminist dogma. It's not difficult to spot third-wave feminists: usually by the time someone uses jargon like "cis-gendered" (which is Women's Studies for "doesn't suffer from gender identity disorder") you're well above 90% odds that you're dealing with some type of left-wing identity politics wonk. Interestingly, "misogynist" itself is a high-probability marker as well. It would be interesting to run a Bayesian classifier and find out what the observed probabilities actually are....
I'm a fan of Steve Jobs for his vision and ability to see things we all blatantly are unaware of. He changed technology, but also advertising, movies, music, etc.
But I'm glad to see someone holding him accountable for his life and the consequences of his actions.
The iPhone rocks, but the Foxconn factory it was made in is so fucking hard to work in that they have suicide nets on the roof; almost a dozen have killed themselves to escape the 14+ hour days.
The MacBook is beautiful, the iMacs are amazing, the software (before Lion) had a simplicity and aesthetic that were unmatched.
But to ignore the fact that many people were screwed over by Steve, that many people were payed a few cents an hour to make his products, and that he was a cold, arrogant man is just ignorant.
Thomas Edison was a shrewd, competitive, harsh man. Does this mean we should ignore his contributions to science? Absolutely not. Nikola Tesla , Leonardo Da Vinci, Howard Hughes, etc. etc. all had negative qualities like every other human. They contributed a lot to the world, though.
So some of the comments that are accusing this post of being over-dramatic or don't want any criticisms of Lord Jobs are foolish. He did a lot of good and a hell of a lot of bad. Acknowledging and accepting both, and then learning from both, is fair and rational. Facts are facts.
Even if you posit that 100% of China is unemployed and thus causes double the normal suicide rate, you'd still expect ~60 suicides at Foxconn in an average year.
I've said this on other comments, but comparing an uncontrolled environment like and entire society (China) to a semi-controlled environment like Foxconn is bad statistics and foolish.
Get rid of your television, shoes, computer, mobile phone and clothes then. They are all made in china (or indonesia/taiwan/etc) in probably worse conditions. What do you even know about their manufacturing?
"I'm glad to see someone holding him accountable for […] the consequences of his actions" is what I'd call over-dramatic.
I don't know much about their manufacturing, which is why I do what I can to buy from people I know and buy from within the United States.
As I replied to Nirvana, I'm recognizing the fact that Jobs, like everyone, was not perfect and had negative qualities. I'm also recognizing his involvement in a supply chain I don't feel 100% happy about. I still buy his products but I'm aware of the negative stuff, too. I'm just trying to be informed and fair about him. And by talking about a part, that does not mean I'm unaware of or ignoring the whole. If I talk about the evils Dr. Mengele that doesn't mean I've forgotten about the rest of the Nazi party. We're just talking about specifics in relation to this article (Steve Jobs and Apple).
Please stop resorting to reductio ad Hitlerum arguments. It cheapens the thread, is lazy and soporific and will never make your point, if anything it does the exact opposite.
I think you should visit china sometime. You'll probably realize that the working conditions at Foxconn are like working conditions at Google after visting a few of the smaller crappier factories. My grandfather owned a toy company (they do anything plastic injection molding) and the workers there had 20hr shifts -- although that has probably changed for the better now.
Locals there are probably applying to Foxconn the same way we apply to plush companies like Google/Facebook. And if Foxconn turns them down, they're forced to work at factories with far worser conditions.
Spreading a bunch of lies and engaging in the politics of personal destruction is not "holding him accountable".
Also, I'm tired of seeing Apple haters say "I love me some iPods, so you must know I'm being objective when I say Steve Jobs murdered a man! Stabbed him in the back, even!"
I'm not an Apple hater nor spreading lies. Unless the Isaacson biography is made of lies.
If you were a Penn State football fan and recognized that Coach Sandusky was fucked up, you're not a) spreading lies or b) being a Penn State hater. You're recognizing a negative thing that is unfortunately a part of something you generally like.
I generally like Steve Jobs' message and his speeches and products. But I'm recognizing the fact he, like everyone, was not perfect and had negative qualities. I'm also recognizing his involvement in a supply chain I don't feel 100% happy about. I still buy his products but I'm aware of the negative stuff, too. I'm just trying to be informed and fair about him.
I disagree and don't think that's the point of the article. The analogy you gave is a little hinky, too.
The main point here is that too much time is wasted on simple issues. While energy is heaved into whether or not <time> is a better tag than <data>, a lot of actual work and design could have been done.
I work in a front-end only dev shop, and while we might have a few hour-long discussions on markup scattered around the year, there aren't enough elements in the spec to keep us busy for a day. The article is just exaggerating the "issue".
I think there are some generally "semantic" things that are just good practice, like using logical classnames, keeping markup and styles separate, using the right list type for the task, etc. but I completely agree with the article.
It's all about readability and, call it crazy, but I think markup and code are like poetry. Imagine trying to have universal semantics for poetry...it seems dumb, right? But general practices make sense and general types of structure are good for different things.
Code and markup should be looked at the same way. This article, to me, did a great job reminding us of that.
The problem I have is that these attitudes are fragile. If you have a monarch, for example, with complete control over a country and who has tons of money and doesn't need to ask for permission, he can build a great nation of he's a good person.
When he dies and his son, who's an asshole but equally determined and powerful, takes over, now you have a bad situation.
Fortunately Steve Jobs wasn't in such control. But the point is that, yeah, if someone that determined and set in their ways and they're right...awesome!
But when people are like that and they're wrong, which happens a lot...god damn it's not good.
So I guess the question is whether this sort of "riskiness" is good? Like, when you win a horse race it's badass. The other 9 times out of 10 when you lose it sucks. Is that the human behavior we should model ourselves after? Interesting...