A reader writes:
Your dissenter, along with many media commentators, forget that Jobs' most significant contributions were not in the last five years but over 30 years ago when he realised that computers were not just for businesses, universities and engineers, but could, and should, be like an appliance in the home – something for everyone. And unlike other technology visionaries who theorised this idea Jobs went and made it happen, pushing the Apple II and the Mac with its revolutionary features like a Graphical User Interface and a Mouse. Sadly this achievement has been eclipsed by the "inventor of the iPhone and iPad" tag because home computers have become so ubiquitous that a world without them has become unimaginable.
Another defender:
Your dissent is absolutely correct that Jobs was a master marketer; the fact that the term "Reality Distortion Field" was coined back in the eighties is testament to this. But there is too much else to Jobs' legacy to simply dismiss him as the guy who brought us slick pitches and minimalist designs. Your dissenter completely overlooks Jobs' fundamental roles at places like NeXT and Pixar – roles which, in both cases, could not have been fulfilled by someone as simple as a master pitchman. (Fun fact: Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the World Wide Web, used a NeXT computer to build the first web browser and web server; how slick marketing and shiny consumer devices alone made that happen is an exercise left to the reader.) Your dissenter also makes no mention of OS X, an operating system firmly rooted in Jobs' work at NeXT. Without Jobs, OS X would simply not exist today.
Your dissenter also furthers the canard that Apple products are fundamentally more expensive than their non-Apple counterparts. The key difference between Apple and the Dells, HPs, and Toshibas of the world is that Apple simply never entered the bargain-level race. You can spec out pretty much any Apple product and land in the same price range as comparably configured non-Apple PCs, and while Apple's entry-level $599 computer isn't cheap, it's a stretch to call it prohibitively expensive for an average first-world family. What's more, Apple is decidedly more price-competitive in the tablet space than any other manufacturer out there, by dint of having aggressively gobbled up the supply chain back when the rest of the tech world was pooh-poohing the idea of an "oversized iPod Touch".
Jobs is a pariah in many tech circles. To call his relationship with developers over the decades "rocky" would be an insult to rocks. Jobs had a long history of treating developers as secondary fixtures in the Apple ecosystem; to Jobs, it was far less important to make the development community happy than it was to make the end user happy. Jobs was a control freak, and created a "walled garden" around his iOS devices, locking developers out of areas that are generally considered free territory on other platforms. This alone was enough to put him on the blacklists of free software advocates, despite Apple's many substantial contributions to open source projects. There are sizable swaths of geekdom that actively disdain graphic and interface design efforts as pointless and counterproductive; after all, why waste time on making something pretty when you could spend that time making it work better?
Because Jobs was such a successful marketer, and because he was so focused on style and design, there's a strong tendency for geeks to undercut the man's formidable geek credentials. There's also considerable (and very fair) disgruntlement that Jobs is a household name largely because he made pretty, popular devices, but great minds like Hamming, Djikstra, Knuth, Cerf, and Turing draw more blank stares than anything.
Jobs is not a titan of computer science, and was no great friend to many in the computing world's more technical spheres. That said, he's not the empty turtleneck geeks often make him out to be, either. He had considerable technical insight and skill, and managed to join it successfully with his knack for wrapping complex systems in easy-to-use devices and pitching them to the world at large. That's a rare and valuable talent.
One more:
The analogy to Armani clothes holds only if there was an alternative. When the iPhone and iPad launched, there was nothing like it out there. That's why he is often spoken of as changing the world. Because he did. He put it all together in a way no one else could.
What other company has the level of customer support satisfaction that Apple has? (Hint: nobody – it is the envy of all companies.) You can break down that $300 iPod touch and find out the part costs are only $125 and some will scream highway robbery. This ignores development, marketing and support costs. For most, you don't have to hold waiting for a CSR from India if you have a problem; you can take it to your local Apple store and get it fixed right there.
Yes, Jobs made these devices cool and that's the appeal for some. For others it is the sheer simplicity and knowing it will just work. Do they charge a premium for having something that just works and if it doesn't you can get fixed very very easily? Maybe, but that's a trade off most customers are willing to make.
The Dish 