Steve Jobs, the “blind code”, blind technology and lessons for the hi-tech world

Referring to Apple is referring to a hi-tech giant. Referring to Apple is also mentioning an important name to the coder world, when even the user guide for Android Studio is also written on Google Mac.

Yet Steve Jobs, who represents Apple’s creative spirit, is “blind.” In an article answering fans, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak made the assertion:

Between two co-founders named Steve, Steve Wozniak is the technical genius of Apple, the brain behind the machine that made the name of the Apple (Apple II). But Wozniak just stuck with Apple through a unique revolution. Without Wozniak, Steve Jobs made the whole world explode with Macintosh, iMac, iPod, MacBook Air, iPhone and iPad.

Thanks to these products, the name Apple is associated with “design”. Design, as defined by Jobs, is not just a look or a handheld feel, but also how it works. Design, according to Jobs, is also a way to create success:

If you have to find someone who is completely opposite to Steve Jobs’ thought (and people), then it is definitely Mike Lazaridis, RIM’s former CEO and founder (BlackBerry).

Jobs took a semester at Reed, studied liberal arts and didn’t even have a major. Mike Lazaridis also dropped out of school, but only two months before graduating from the electrical engineering / computer science department at the University of Waterloo. Jobs dropped out of school to travel, Lazaridis left to develop a computer control system for General Motors. Lazaridis used this project money to create RIM, and Jobs used the money to sell Wolkswagen Microbus.

RIM’s founder is described by the Royal Society as “a talented leader, inventor and engineer”. The role of his engineer contributed a lot to BlackBerry, especially when building stability for smartphones that can send email:

Understanding the limits has helped BlackBerry create great products in terms of technology: “buffalo” battery, stable operation and data saving, BlackBerry is the king of smartphones before the iPhone was born.

As for Steve Jobs, when he launched the iPhone at Macworld on January 9, 2007, he took the time to demonstrate the ability to browse a full website on the iPhone screen.

In accordance with Mike Lazaridis’ judgment and prediction, the iPhone has a poor battery life, a bad feeling of typing and when there is an app market, it is seriously congested.

Within the first year, iPhone sold 6.1 million units.

Why is that paradox? Because BlackBerry makes phones based on technology savvy – based on what Mike Lazaridis calls “physical limits”.

And Steve Jobs, unlike BlackBerry or Nokia, did not allow operators to dispose of smartphone data browsing capabilities. He does not rely on technical knowledge to shape what smartphones can do.

In contrast, the vision for iPhone is the slogan that Jobs repeated on the stage of the release: “Phone, iPod, Internet communication device”.

All technological breakthroughs follow the vision of technology blind. Gestures of zooming in / out of the web require a 3-layer capacitive screen, eliminating both physical keyboard and touch pen. iPhone has computing power, has a computer-level operating system (shortened from Mac OS X). Lazaridis himself, when “surgery” iPhone said, “If this is successful, we will compete with the Mac, not the phone.”

The other revolutions of Apple all carry the same nature as the iPhone: despite technological breakthroughs, technology is still a secondary factor. Design and experience are the determining factors.

Apple II: A product that makes a name for Apple Bite, Apple II launches with two technology masterpieces: an “open” architecture that makes it easy to attach components through “expansion cards” and floppy drives due to Steve Wozniak built from inexpensive components. But the most important decision was that of Jobs: all breakthroughs must be placed inside the home-inspired shell. Jobs wanted to create a mass-market computer, not just for those “tech-savvy” but for everyone.

3 years after the shelf, Apple II sales reached 118 million USD. Not only connoisseurs of technology, both home users and business users have come up with an easy-to-use machine (and comes with a very detailed guide) of Apples.

Macintosh: no shortage of technological breakthroughs: 32-bit Motorola 68000 chip, overclocked board from 5MHz to 8MHz and 384 x 256 pixel graphics, 128kB RAM chip can be expanded by … circuit welding. But all the breakthroughs in processing power are for a single purpose: display the intuitive graphical interface Jobs has “learned” from Xerox. Hardware power is optimized so users can hover, can move to any position on the text, can drag and drop color blocks on the screen …

Immediately, the Mac unveiled a new era, where anyone could create beautiful documents. Within 74 days, Mac sold 50,000 units – unfortunately, Bill Gates will soon copy Mac to Windows and enjoy all the sweetness of the GUI revolution.

iMac: Absolute victory before Macintosh, Windows computers are still ugly, still carry all the less convenient connectors and generally require an external modem to connect to the Internet. iMac was born to solve these problems and immediately became a milestone for the popularity of USB as well as Ethernet (LAN).

Connecting to the Internet now just plugs the cord into the computer. Sounds simple to users 2019, but in 1998, that idea helped Apple escape losses and started the journey to the billion dollar milestone.

iPod: The iPod idea didn’t come from technology innovations like Toshiba’s 1.8 ″ hard drive or a high-speed FireWire connection. The iPod was born first because Jobs wanted to have an additional music player for the Mac, but the music player on the market was too bad, the battery was low, and the memory was low. Realizing the potential of a user-friendly music player, the new Jobs requires engineers to focus on technology breakthroughs to create iPod: cache to increase battery life, 1.8 cứng hard drive to reduce size, iTunes software to copy and buy music easily.

Most importantly, ClickWheel was born because users still had to use the buttons inherited from the CD player, which didn’t match the player’s menu interface. In less than 2 months, 125,000 users spent $ 400 just to own this experience.

MacBook Air: When Steve Jobs withdrew MacBook from … envelopes, the whole hall was shocked. This ultra-thin laptop incorporates many technologies at the time, which is still uncommon, such as a multi-point SSD and trackpad. Even, Intel also customized Core 2 Duo to reduce the size by 40% to bring the body less than 2 cm thick. Even the ultra-thin casing is an achievement of the manufacturing industry: the origin of the machine is a large aluminum block, which is cut by a CNC machine to create a stunning body.

The weaknesses of the connection or heat sink made Apple criticized. But in return, Jobs was proud to say, “The thickest place is still thinner than Sony TZ’s thinnest.” The following year, Windows rivals massively launched Ultrabook to run after Apple. Design is no longer a secondary factor: Jobs was the last time in his life to revolutionize the PC world.

iPad: If you look at it from a technological perspective, the iPad can be considered a silly … product: this is just an enlarged iPhone, with large icons and easy to use fingers. Unlike the Tablet PC running Microsoft Windows XP from … 10 years ago, the iPad could not connect more accessories (mouse, keys) and could not be used for office work or CAD drawings.

But before the iPad, users could not find a personal device with a large screen, compact, easy to use (with fingers) for simple entertainment needs such as watching movies, surfing the web, read ebook / magazine or … shoot birds into pigs. Poor features and breakthroughs turned out to be an advantage for the iPad to sell 3 million units. Ironically, Jobs’s last revolution was a sweet revenge for his friend and friend Bill Gates.

People remember Steve Jobs for Apple. Few people know that, in 12 years, Steve Jobs is far from Apple, the object he puts on it all is … coder.

It was in 1985, fighting for power failed with CEO John Sculley, Jobs left Apple and founded a computer company called NeXT. Stopping hardware business in 1993, NeXT was the biggest failure of Jobs’s life. But even that failure has a huge meaning for mankind: the World Wide Web today is born on Steve Jobs’s NeXT Cube.

When Jobs died, Tim Berners-Lee, the “father of the Internet,” talked about the “Steve Jobs device” most remembered by few people:

Yes, a code-blind man who has pioneered breakthroughs makes code work “easier”, to the point that the father of the Internet must admire. NeXT’s legacy plays an important role in the programming world later. With Objective-C, Jobs’s company found a way to transfer between highly popular sequential programming languages ​​and object-oriented languages. AppKit is a precursor for SDKs to help coder remove boring, repetitive tasks to focus on core business. Interface Builder allows developers to build applications by drag and drop.

What is the secret of Jobs? In an interview with the Rolling Stones in 1996, he said technology was secondary:

8 years since Jobs’s departure, the concept of “technology” is becoming fuzzy. A large-scale IT system has become a must for any business. Many countries even consider putting code into compulsory curriculum.

Apple is also reaching its technological peak. Without Jobs, Apple still became the leader of the virtual assistant battle, still able to create its own programming language, still the top force of AI on smartphones. Apple’s chip was designed to be admired by experts.

All these steps are just to serve those needs that are not superior. Siri was born so that users can communicate with the phone (and later on the smartwatch, speaker …) without using their hands. Strong chip, neural network is for taking beautiful pictures, to expand virtual reality space. 3D face recognition mechanism using neuron is born because fingerprints are easy to fake, can not serve for mobile payment.

Apple Watch: The hardware released when Jobs is no longer. Apple Watch was born three years after the death of Steve Jobs, when the wearable movement was crowned with the participation of Google. But unlike Samsung or Google that brings the keyboard into the watch screen, Apple Watch was born not to replace smartphones: Digital Crown rotation for easy menu navigation, large buttons and Siri for fast interaction ( and replacement for the keyboard), heart rate sensor (and later electrocardiogram) helps monitor health.

Born later, but the Apple Watch is the first smartwatch that really brings value to human life, instead of trying to become “technology hotpot”.

Airpods: Causing a stir because the headset has its own chip. But Apple’s goal of making chips is not to show off, but to address the trivial earphones needs: how to reduce the least wiring, ensure the most stable connection, switch from laptop to power. The easiest voice and the longest battery can be used without being too heavy. Realizing that Bluetooth “often” does not lose, Apple created chips to achieve its “normal” purposes.

Apple Watch overthrew Rolex to become the world’s No. 1 watch brand in 2007. Currently, half of smartwatch is sold by the Apple family (Strategy Analytics). And AirPods has recently been counted by Counterpoint, accounting for 60% of True Wireless market share, making an important contribution to helping Apple surpass Sony to occupy the overall market of headphones.

The story of “putting people above” to succeed is not only at Apple. In the early 2000s, when the e-commerce business exploded, the engineers of this giant encountered many difficulties in scaling up the system. In order for the coder and their IT team to be less… miserable, Amazon has conducted standardization of communication between system modules and processing infrastructure.

After the standardization is done, Jeff Bezos’ company realizes that standardized services between the code and the infrastructure can be rented. AWS was born, cloud computing exploded. The most important hi-tech movement in the 21st century came when Amazon realized that technology could be used to help people’s lives – including code makers – become easier. .

Running on AWS is Netflix. The company started out as a DVD rental service and is still essentially a video rental. The only difference is that the DVD space has turned into a huge content distribution network, a classic lesson on how to deploy the system in the cloud.

Deep in history, the tape was present in the early 60s, but nearly 20 years after the new Walkman was born because Sony Masaru Ibuka president did not like the bulky TC-D5. CCD technology was abandoned for years until a Kodak employee named Steven Sasson thought of the idea that a camera does not use complex mechanical parts – digital photography was born.

Back in 2008, Facebook was born not because Mark Zuckerberg was too interested in PHP or Haystack, but because this billionaire wanted Harvard students to have books to store and save each other’s information.

Always, technology follows people. Still having to put human needs and experiences above, new technology can grow, can be revolutionized. That thought was tied to the life of Steve Jobs: when he died, Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the Internet, said “the technology community should lift what the Jobs, aspirations and creations of Mr., gave us.

All are drawn in a humble beginning:

Source : Tech Talk via Genk