[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.

[awad]

There's this old gem about being able to ask Aristotle a question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YzLMPm3Jgw

[HerbManic]

I suspect Jobs would have held off for a few years just to see where the road is going before making a move. In that sense, Apples current lack of real dedicated to move into the LLM space has become a happy accident. They have avoided the hype cycle and the potential blow back once the more exuberant part of the AI craze fade away.

They have pulled an accidental Jobs move.

[scottyah]

He for sure would loathe their current state though. They are a perfectionist's nightmare and detrimental to many brands. He wouldn't even allow Apple^Red for his friend's charity- there's no way he would let AI slop come from Apple products.

[toyg]

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

[dijit]

MacOS doesn’t use ZFS because Ellison owns it. Don’t read too much into their “friendship”.

[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.

[macintux]

Jobs to Murdoch:

> “The axis today is not liberal and conservative, the axis is constructive-destructive, and you’ve cast your lot with the destructive people. Fox has become an incredibly destructive force in our society. You can be better, and this is going to be your legacy if you’re not careful.”

[1986]

Yeah, we're talking about the guy who leased a new car every 6 months in order to avoid having to put a license plate on it, and then parked it in handicap spots, right? Absolute same "rules for thee, not for me" energy

[joe_mamba]

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

Yep, this. We're talking about a guy who basically abandoned his biological daughter, had his stuff manufactured by slave labor in factories with suicide nets to save costs and increase shareholder value, and GP imagines Steve Jobs as this leftist freedom fighter that would fight Trump instead of work together with him to increase profits even further. People's delul, historical revisionism of people who were just cutthroat unscrupulous businessmen at the end of the day, saddens me.

We can agree has was good at business, without trying to whitewash him as some humanitarian saint.

Don't worship people you never knew personally as some sort of heroes because you never know. For all we know he could have been a client on some else's island, like Steven Hawking.

[Teever]

All those things may be true but at the end of the day guys like Jobs and Trump are like oil and water personality wise.

Trump would have invariably said some stupid shit about Jobs publicly or to his face privately and Jobs would have never forgot it and would have obsessed with hurting Trump over it.

For better or worse that's just the kind of guy he was.

[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.

[astrange]

He was a billionaire because Disney bought Pixar, not because of Apple. In a strange sense it was an accident.

[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.