I'm loving this list of quotes from Steve Jobs, which is offered up as a model for open-source developers by Tech Source from Bohol. I couldn't agree more.
Freedom is one thing, and we've got Richard Stallman to beat the freedom drum. But making products that people want to use is quite another, and equally difficult to accomplish (if not more so). Steve Jobs is the person for counsel on that aspect of engineering.
Here are two of my favorites from the list:
Look at the design of a lot of consumer products - they're really complicated surfaces. We tried to make something much more holistic and simple. When you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can often times arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions. Most people just don't put in the time or energy to get there. We believe that customers are smart, and want objects which are well thought through.
And...
It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them.
I love these two, as they point to fundamental flaws in the way some open-source software is developed. In the first quote, Steve Jobs unwittingly reveals a key reason that open-source projects beyond infrastructure fail: because developers scratch their itch, and their itch is likely very different from the business user of a CRM system, for example. Developers often focus on elegance in design of the code, but what end-users want is elegance in design of the UI.
The second quotation relates to the first: Linux largely succeeded because Linus Torvalds knew what he wanted, and corralled a community around that vision. Where open-source projects truly depend on a community to not only build but also envision a product, they end up squandering time and resources. The key to great open-source programming is the same as great closed-source programming: a compelling, unified vision that drives people toward a common goal.
Open-source developers often look to projects like Apache and Linux for inspiration, but I think Mark Shuttleworth is right to set his sights on exceptional consumer products like those that Apple builds. Shuttleworth realizes that great engineering is about the end-user experience, and not really about the bits. Maybe he learned that from Steve Jobs.
Via LinuxToday.
I never liked the Fake Steve Jobs blog because I didn't like an author to be able to hide behind anonymity. When Dan Lyons, the then-Forbes and now Newsweek reporter, revealed his identity as Fake Steve Jobs and decided to continue blogging as Real Dan Lyons, I cheered. I know Dan and respect the reporting he's done over the years, even when it hasn't been favorable to open source.
Why? Because I can always count on Dan to tell the truth, as he sees it. Dan pulls no punches.
This past week, that tendency toward brutal candor caught up with him, as The Guardian reports. Dan lashed out at Yahoo! for lying to reporters like him and at The Wall Street Journal's Kara Swisher for conceit, only to have both blog posts removed. (I caught the Yahoo! post in my RSS reader before it disappeared. You can find it here.)
The Guardian seems to think such censorship is a necessary evil:
...[I]t must be tough for Dan Lyons. He could say more or less what he liked as Fake Steve because it was satirical (many a true word spoken in jest, as they say), and that brought him a big audience. He can't say the same sort of things as Real Dan and a Newsweek employee, so he doesn't have a big audience. And there certainly isn't enough money in blogging for him to give up the day job.
Are we happy about this? That Dan may have "bailed on blogging" due to pressure from Newsweek? I know I'm not.
Dan stepped over the line, perhaps, but I still prefer it to the watered-down non-news that most media publications shovel out. And, closer to home, Newsweek is talking out of both sides of its mouth in censoring Dan's blog. On one side, it apparently forced Dan to remove the posts. On the other, it headlines his blog in this way:
(Credit:
Newsweek)
So, which Dan Lyons does Newsweek actually want? The answer is most likely "both," but it seems to believe it can have both without the occasional bout of squeamishness. It's not going to happen.
The people who read Dan's work in Newsweek are generally not going to be the same people that read his Real Dan Lyons blog: grit in the latter does not affect his credibility in the former for 99 percent of the population.
That "grit" is sorely lacking in most reporting, which pretends to take a safe, neutral, and distant view on everything from Yahoo!'s change in executive leadership to child-rearing tips, perhaps afraid of the hovering specter of a lawsuit. Well, I for one am glad that Dan takes risks, even when I don't agree with him, and even when I think he steps over the line. Bring back the blog, Dan. We need the raw commentary.
Perhaps it was just a stunt to drive traffic (It's working!), but I enjoyed Valleywag's collection of the "10 most terrible tyrants of tech." It's perhaps telling that some of the industry's top companies (Microsoft, Apple, Salesforce.com) are headed by some of the most difficult people with whom to work:
Here's to the screaming ones. The chair-throwers. The death-threat makers. The imperious gazers. The ones who see things differently -- and will stare you down until you do, too....[T]hey have no respect for conversational decibel levels. You can cower before them, hide from them, quote them behind their backs, or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they're so damn loud.
That's the description. Here's the list. You'll need to visit Valleywag, however, to find out just how abrasive these people can be:
- Apple CEO Steve Jobs
- RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser
- Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff
- VMware cofounder Diane Greene
- Ex-Jobster CEO Jason Goldberg
- Microsoft chairman Bill Gates
- Ex-AOL sales chief David Colburn
- TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington
- Google SVP Jonathan Rosenberg
- Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer
Enjoy.
Dan Lyons utters an uncomfortable truth today: We'd never let Microsoft get away with the PR smoke and mirrors that Apple regularly offers. I'm a near-religious Apple fan, but it's absolutely true that we give Apple a free pass on just about everything.
He's referring, of course, to the way Steve Jobs treated a New York Times reporter (called him, insulted him, and then said he'd give him information but only off the record). If Ballmer did that same thing, and if Microsoft sheltered Ballmer the way Apple shelters Jobs, the media would freak, as would the rank-and-file like you and me.
We'd have him drawn-and-quartered.
Apple fan though I am, I'm getting uncomfortable with the double standard by which I and others judge Apple.
I like Dan Lyons' blog much more now than when he was writing as Fake Steve Jobs. Same bite and same insight without the noise.
Take, for example, a post today on Valleywag's complaint about how Apple PR is managing information relative to Steve Jobs' health. I made an unfortunate decision to post on the subject earlier, got swatted by Tom Krazit, and now am following it from the sidelines.
Those sidelines, incidentally, are fascinating, as Dan's post suggests. Dan is a veteran news reporter and talks through how the Jobs story is playing out, by whom, and why:
[John] Markoff is a great guy and knows tech better than almost any other reporter on the beat, but he's also one of the reporters Apple views as friendly and trustworthy, which in the Valley means he can be counted on to play ball. Make of that what you will but there's a reason this story leaked out in the Times and under Markoff's byline, and it isn't because he's such a dogged, hard-nosed investigative reporter who's breaking down doors to get at the truth. Ahem....
You think it's a coincidence that just as the Journal was breaking its story about hedge funds hiring private detectives, Markoff at the Times happened to run into some "people close to Mr. Jobs" who knew about Steve's surgery and were willing to tell John Markoff all about it? Right. None of this is happening by accident. Apple PR is playing the Valley press corps, and the Valley press corps is going along with it, like they always do. Not so the hedge fund guys, who have real money at stake and don't care if someone like Katie Cotton [Apple's head of PR] yells at them. Frankly I'd be shocked if the hedge fund guys didn't already have people posted 24×7 at the Stanford Medical Center.
Fascinating, and I don't mean Steve Jobs' health. It's a fascinating glimpse into how PR works in the Big Leagues, from the pen of someone who has been involved in the thick of it for a very long time. Worth a full read.
Nine days after Apple released its iPhone 2.0 software, the code has been cracked. PwnageTool 2.0 will successfully unlock your iPhone.
This is great, but what I'm waiting for is a tool that will let me downgrade to the older iPhone 1.1.4 software.
Why? Because iPhone 2.0 remains very buggy.
Last night, I was reading my Arsenal news in the Safari browser, and the browser dumped me back to the home screen repeatedly, something that never happened in the iPhone 1.0 world. E-mail routinely dies on me, and those App Store applications? It's rare that I can get through a Sketches session without the application dying.
Steve Jobs once ridiculed Microsoft for cloning its software ("Redmond, start your photocopiers"), but this feels like Apple desperately trying to come up with a suitable rendition of the so-called blue screen of death.
As a hard-core Apple fan, I'm starting to wonder if there's more to this fiasco than meets the eye. It's very unlike Apple to have a sloppy upgrade (iPhone 2.0), terrible customer experience (activation problems at the launch of the 3G iPhone), and a crummy product launch (Mobile Me). Rumors have been swirling that Steve Jobs' health is in significant decline.
Could the recent foibles have something to do with Jobs' lack of oversight due to encroaching health problems?
... Read moreOpen Season Episode 12 was a very special session for us, as we got Fake Steve Jobs (aka "Dan Lyons") to join in. We spent a fair amount of time talking with Dan about his position on open source and why he gets so much flak for his coverage of the open-source community. Dan is hilarious and often insightful. It was a pleasure to have him on the podcast.
One of our best. Have a listen. (Also, the link provides my coconut cream pie recipe, which is definitely worth having.)
Dan Lyons, the erstwhile Fake Steve Jobs, has told Robin Miller that he doesn't hate Linux, after all. As Robin reports:
He told me that people who say he dislikes Linux are not being fair to him; that out of 70 articles he's written about Linux, 67 have been positive, and he absolutely denies that he is paid by Microsoft to write what he does about Linux, Apple, or anything else.
I think it's all in how he means "positive." "Positive" for Dan is somewhat different from positive for, say, 99% of the human race. :-)
... Read more
Daniel Lyons, Frigtard
(Credit: Forbes.com)Brad Stone of The New York Times just outed the Fake Steve Jobs and it's none other than open-source software lover (Not!) Daniel Lyons of Forbes. The Great Faker Himself has admitted it..
And now there's nothing left to read with childlike wonder. Especially the wonder of how anyone could write with such acerbic bite about people that Lyons will interact with each day.
20/20 hindsight points to Lyons, who has never had much in the way of praise for open source. ... Read more
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