A reader counters this one:
Your reader sez, "The article doesn't take into consideration the outreach of the Apple product line beyond the jobs he created directly" … but he himself is guilty of the exact same error with respect to Ford. There are about 350,000 people in the US making cars, but somewhere north of two million jobs selling, servicing, repairing, painting, and detailing them, or filling them with gas. That doesn't include the people driving the gas trucks, the adjusters insuring the cars, the cops policing their use, or the highway engineers and workers building them. It may seem odd to think of a highway as an "app" for cars, but that's exactly what it is.
Another writes:
How many jobs did he create? Well, he invented the Apple ][ that compelled IBM to develop the PC. He followed that with the Macintosh, which compelled Microsoft to develop Windows. A lot of someones are keeping Windows virus free(ish). He followed this with the iPod, which remains the number one music player on Earth. Someone's selling these things. Those salespeople have entire corporate hierarchies to oppress them. The iPod begat the iPhone, which just so happens to be the numbers one and two (4, 3GS) best selling smartphones on Earth. Someone's selling those too.
Someone's also expanding the infrastructure that allows these iPhone owners to send and receive data (or not, if they have the misfortune of being on the AT&T network). Someone's creating the content that's feeding the voracious data appetite of these devices. Someone's writing the apps that people are downloading from Apple by the billions. Someone is spending the billions of dollars Apple pays out to developers. And that's not even counting the iPad. On that front, let's not forget the someones out there who people call when they need someone to figure out how to make the iPad work with their existing Windows PC-based computing infrastructure and train their workforce to compute post-keyboard and mouse. And what of the Apple Stores?
So how many jobs did Jobs create? That's about as relevant as asking how many jobs did Eisenhower create when he authorized the Interstate Highway system. Focus myopically on the "how many people are required to make the iPad" argument and you miss the "how many people have jobs who wouldn't if this device had never existed" point.
Another:
I'm a professional musician, and I can't tell you how many gigs I would not have gotten if I didn't have an iPhone. Okay, okay, I probably could have had another smartphone, but there was a reason most musicians didn't have smartphones pre-iPhone: they really were geared mainly towards office workers; they were crazy expensive; and, frankly, they were ugly (shock: musicians care about appearances). The iPhone was relatively affordable, very easy to use, and it was sexy. Among freelance musicians in New York, it quickly became first a status symbol (you weren't a serious musician if you didn't have one), and then an absolute necessity (lacking mobile email means lost gigs).
Another:
Jobs is the embodiment of Creative Destruction. The number of jobs he created is important, but so is the number of jobs he destroyed. There are whole job descriptions that have ceased to exist: pre-press operators and color separators and video and audio technicians and manufacturers of thousands of tons of equipment that used to be needed to do what can be done by software in a Mac.
I'm old enough to remember when people got their resumes commercially printed; those little print shops are gone. I was in an audio studio the other day reminiscing with another old timer about the days when every studio had a couple of kids dubbing radio commercials onto tape and sending them out to radio stations across the country. Those jobs are gone, too, because the Mac empowered digital audio and what used to take hours of repetitive dubbing and mailing is now accomplished in seconds with email and an FTP site.
Innovation's effect on employment is dynamic and unpredictable. Jobs brought the enormous power of computers to individuals, and he made those computers engines of creativity rather than just quantification. He gave individuals the power to compete with well-capitalized corporations, and doing that put millions of people out of work, and millions of people to work. The net effect of that on job creation may never be known, but it made possible the modern world, which most of us think is better than the world that came before.
The Dish 