Comment by mft_
3 hours ago
I think the previous poster is wrong. In typical understanding of industry roles, a ‘sales guy’ doesn’t typically work hands-on with product development. Some variations of ‘marketing’ roles do indeed work on developing new products, so this might be less inaccurate.
But in reality, Jobs was probably unique in that he blended a combination of multiple roles - sales/marketing, product designer/manager, strategist/visionary, and had the muscle being CEO to impose his will accordingly.
The trope of “he didn’t really do anything as it was the engineers who did the real work” is one trotted out time and time again, by (presumably) grumpy engineers. And it misses the point that, yes, Apple (or Next, or SpaceX) wouldn’t have delivered their exceptional products without the hard work of the engineers, but they also wouldn’t have delivered them in the same way (or at all) without Jobs (or Musk) and what they offered, either.
Two notable instances:
- first iPod prototype --- Steve Jobs dropped it into an aquarium and when bubbles rose up noted, "there's space inside, it can be smaller". https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-threw-ipod-protot...
- iDVD --- he drew a button on a whiteboard and announced, "Here’s the new application. It’s got one window. You drag your video into the window. Then you click the button that says BURN. That’s it. That’s what we’re going to make." https://www.entrepreneur.com/living/how-steve-jobs-1-design-...
I'd like to think that the current behaviour of the Apple Font pallet where when collapsed into a single bar grew out of a suggestion made after discussions on comp.sys.mac.advocacy --- but he was justifiably proud when he showed it off to one visitor (per a link I can no longer find, or which is no longer up, or behind a paywall)