[WillAdams]

Big change from when Steve Jobs killed the Newton and one unspoken reason was the USMC having just had a _very_ successful trial and being in the process of getting Apple approved as a DOD vendor.... (yes, I'm still salty that the only Apple products I've bought since my MessagePad were OpenStep 4.2, and two iPods for my daughter --- the MacBook I use doesn't count since work bought that --- at least Samsung and Amazon use Wacom EMR in their products, though neither is fully a replacement for my Newton....)

[tokyobreakfast]

You're forgetting Casey Fucking Ryback!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDlpPs19NU0

[Teever]

I've wondered how the world would be different right now if Jobs was still alive.

Asshole as he was, there's no way he would have stood for the kind of shit that is going on in America, and he would have vindictively used all of his resources as the largest shareholder of Disney and CEO of Apple to fight it.

Jobs was obviously not the greatest guy, and harmed a lot of people around him but it's unlikely that he would be seen within a mile of the current President and certainly wouldn't have been photographed in the WH handing him a tacky gold and glass paper weight like Cook.

[pokstad]

Jobs was the rare person outspoken with unconventional wisdom. Don’t assume he would agree with your popular opinions.

[gehsty]

He would have understood the potential of LLMs straight away. If he would have delivered a successful product no one knows but 100% would have understood how LLMs could become another interface to computers.

I think his pitch would have been like garage band but for making apps “now anyone can make an app” feels very Jobsian.

[toyg]

Maybe. Or maybe he would have just sent a close associate or relative, like his big friend Ellison does.

[peyton]

Tim gave Trump the paper weight.

Steve met once with Obama and complained about the fact Obama did not ask for the meeting personally, that it was too hard to build factories in America, and that teachers unions were kneecapping the American education system.

All signs point to Trump and Jobs becoming thick-as-thieves. Sorry.

[bigyabai]

If we have to rely on the canny benevolence of a random CEO to prevent the world from going to shit, then we truly deserve to live in the shit world. Steve made businesses larger-than-life, and I expect his behavior played no small part in conditioning tech enthusiasts to respond to Trump and Elon's hyperbolic, baseless rhetoric.

[Hamuko]

Apple has grown quite dramatically in value since his death. Not sure if he would have the leeway to oppose Trump as an officer of a publicly traded company when he's shown to be quite vindictive against companies he doesn't like.

[surgical_fire]

He was a billionaire. It's foolish to believe he was any less of a sociopath than other billionaires.

Most likely he woult thrive as a contemporary oligarch.

[runjake]

Three things come to mind, up front:

- Steve Jobs wouldn't have personally donated $1 million to the Trump campaign.

- Steve Jobs probably wouldn't have presented a gold bar to Trump.

- Steve Jobs would have been better at manipulating (reality distortion field) Trump.

[frumplestlatz]

Do you have a source for that USMC trial and that “unspoken reason”?

I don’t remember any such thing at the time, and I can’t find any source for the claim.

[WillAdams]

If memory serves, the trial was covered in a sidebar in _Pen Computing Magazine_ as well as _The Marine Corps Times_, and the whole thing was discussed on comp.sys.newton a bit, with SJ not wanting to be a defense contractor being put forward as one reason among many (not profitable, not working well, bad publicity ("Eat up Martha"), pet project of Sculley, &c.)