Greg, I agree 100%.
Steve Jobs was a visionary and a great business man, but he was not an inventor. In fact, Apple invented very little of anything. Most of the innovations attributed to them were invented in the 70s and 80s by Xerox, but Apple was the first ones to really make use of it. Even their most famous platform, the iPhone, is not a particularly innovative device. Every single part of it had been done by others years in advance. The one thing they did was provide a cohesive user experience. This was definitely something that was not done well by others and it made for a much better device. Still, that's hardly the most innovative thing that has happened in the last 200 years and you sure can't give Jobs all the credit for it.
You want to know what's revolutionary? Calculus. Sure, you can't attribute it to one person, but boy did it ever have an affect on the rest of the scientific world for centuries to come. Almost everything in physics, chemistry, electronics, and other physical sciences relies on calculus; without it, we would be nowhere.
Medicine is another; before we started to understand cells, bacteria, and antibodies, medicine consisted of blood-letting, trepanning, and the ingestion of assorted plants whose effects were largely misunderstood. Medicine has made life better for all of us. You can thank Alexander Flemming, Louis Pasteur, and many others for building a science-based medicine that has saved millions of lives and improved the lives of us all.
And since this whole topic got started from a company that makes computers, let's not forget the discovery of electricity and the invention of the transistor. Both of these involved far more time, effort, and ingenuity than anything Apple ever designed.
To pin down one man and say, "He was a great inventor," is to misunderstand how invention occurs. The best inventions and discoveries of our times were rarely the work of just one person. The most important innovations in history were the culmination of works by many people over decades. This is what we have to foster: a community of scientific research.
Steve Jobs was a visionary and a great business man, but he was not an inventor. In fact, Apple invented very little of anything. Most of the innovations attributed to them were invented in the 70s and 80s by Xerox, but Apple was the first ones to really make use of it. Even their most famous platform, the iPhone, is not a particularly innovative device. Every single part of it had been done by others years in advance. The one thing they did was provide a cohesive user experience. This was definitely something that was not done well by others and it made for a much better device. Still, that's hardly the most innovative thing that has happened in the last 200 years and you sure can't give Jobs all the credit for it.
You want to know what's revolutionary? Calculus. Sure, you can't attribute it to one person, but boy did it ever have an affect on the rest of the scientific world for centuries to come. Almost everything in physics, chemistry, electronics, and other physical sciences relies on calculus; without it, we would be nowhere.
Medicine is another; before we started to understand cells, bacteria, and antibodies, medicine consisted of blood-letting, trepanning, and the ingestion of assorted plants whose effects were largely misunderstood. Medicine has made life better for all of us. You can thank Alexander Flemming, Louis Pasteur, and many others for building a science-based medicine that has saved millions of lives and improved the lives of us all.
And since this whole topic got started from a company that makes computers, let's not forget the discovery of electricity and the invention of the transistor. Both of these involved far more time, effort, and ingenuity than anything Apple ever designed.
To pin down one man and say, "He was a great inventor," is to misunderstand how invention occurs. The best inventions and discoveries of our times were rarely the work of just one person. The most important innovations in history were the culmination of works by many people over decades. This is what we have to foster: a community of scientific research.
