Steve Jobs Awarded Posthumous Medal of Freedom By President Biden (theverge.com) 143
Steve Jobs, the co-founder and former CEO of Apple, has been awarded a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Joe Biden, the White House announced Friday. The Verge reports: The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the highest US honor that can be given to a civilian, and it's presented to "individuals who have made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal, public or private endeavors," the White House said in a statement. Jobs founded Apple in April 1976, and it's since become one of the biggest companies in the world. He helped launch many tech products that have gone on to become cultural touchstones, including the Mac, the iPod, and the iPhone. He died on October 5th, 2011.
In its statement, the White House praised Jobs's creative approach to his various endeavors. "Steve Jobs was the co-founder, chief executive, and chair of Apple, Inc., CEO of Pixar and held a leading role at the Walt Disney Company," the White House wrote. "His vision, imagination and creativity led to inventions that have, and continue to, change the way the world communicates, as well as transforming the computer, music, film and wireless industries." The award will be presented on July 7th. The full list of this year's Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients can be viewed here.
In its statement, the White House praised Jobs's creative approach to his various endeavors. "Steve Jobs was the co-founder, chief executive, and chair of Apple, Inc., CEO of Pixar and held a leading role at the Walt Disney Company," the White House wrote. "His vision, imagination and creativity led to inventions that have, and continue to, change the way the world communicates, as well as transforming the computer, music, film and wireless industries." The award will be presented on July 7th. The full list of this year's Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients can be viewed here.
In case you're wondering or forgot (Score:5, Informative)
Re:In case you're wondering or forgot (Score:5, Informative)
My first thought was "That fucking asshole?". Yeah he went through two liver transplants because he fucking refused to have a slow growing cancer cut out of it while it was still very treatable. Never mind that your liver grows back whatever you remove (literally, if you donate half of your liver, the other lobe still in you grows back to become a full size liver again, and the recipient has their lobe grow to a full size liver) he thought it would be a brilliant idea to go to a naturopathic doctor and do some juicing bullshit instead, and magically the cancer would be gone.
Two livers that could have saved two other people went to a guy known to yell at his waiter for the crime of giving him butter, all because he's rich and can afford to list in all eleven UNOS regions at once.
Why the FUCK do democrats, or anybody for that matter, worship a piece of shit like this? The same piece of shit who said that good artists copy, and great artists steal, then declares thermonuclear war on Google over Android, then steals a ton of ideas from Android. That's the hero they worship.
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Some peon in the Biden administration thought, "Who could be mad at the guy that gave us the computer and the iphone?" without digging around or reading any biographies or hell, even watching a couple of the movies made about him.
Re:In case you're wondering or forgot (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a bit ironic that the medal has "freedom" in the name as well considering Apple tried to get the government to make jailbreaking illegal under his watch. In other words, he wanted people to possibly go to jail for installing anything he doesn't approve of on stuff that is theoretically the person's own private property.
Re: In case you're wondering or forgot (Score:1)
Re: In case you're wondering or forgot (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think this is really comparable. People knew what the confederate generals did, and they really didn't care. They were kind of local folk heroes that could do no wrong, and so they put up statues memorializing them in death.
Actually I think a better example is when hipsters put up pictures of Mao Zedong thinking he was a great man. If they had any idea what he actually did they wouldn't do that.
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Actually I think a better example is when hipsters put up pictures of Mao Zedong thinking he was a great man. If they had any idea what he actually did they wouldn't do that.
Can't say I've ever seen that. Maybe you're thinking of Che Guevara? Sounds like something you'd hear on Fox.
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Do they also perform abortions and register illegal aliens as democrat voters in these red rooms?
Re: In case you're wondering or forgot (Score:2)
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It's definitely a thing for some Western folks. https://web.archive.org/web/20... [archive.org]
Re: In case you're wondering or forgot (Score:2)
You seem to know an awful lot about what's on Fox.
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Re:In case you're wondering or forgot (Score:4, Insightful)
You can't make a billion dollars without oppressing people.
Of course you can, it is just a lot harder. Jobs was a right cunt that treated people like shit, used child labour and just a general all around pig of a human being, but that was by choice.
Re: In case you're wondering or forgot (Score:2)
Re:In case you're wondering or forgot (Score:5, Informative)
Re:In case you're wondering or forgot (Score:4, Insightful)
I hate to call Biden neo-anything so I won't, but neoliberals love Jobs because they love successful businessmen, because they give them money and nothing else matters. It's very much the same as the evangelicals who believe that money is proof that god loves you. They think money is proof that you're smart. Well guess what, the world is full of rich dumbfucks who are coasting on protectionism, and the fact that money tends to accrue money once you get enough.
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I was an apple fanboy when I was a kid but it was the other Steve I worshipped. Jobs was just the marketing guy.
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That's odd because the corporate types are usually democrats. Especially tech companies. Besides that is mostly casual trolling for comic relief. I don't know if you've ever noticed, but trolling is fucking hillarious [imgur.com].
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OK I paused at the 'democrat' statement in the previous poster as well but let's not forget the context of the entire article: BIDEN (ie democrat) is lionizing Jobs.
There was never a hint of this from Trump nor Bush II, the last 2 GOP presidents, nor as far as I'm aware, any adulation from the Right side of the fence.
So dem = love Jobs, not ENTIRELY gratuitous.
And yes, hate-corporations skews the simple cleave lines in US political firmament, as this puts some blue collar dems in the same meme-camp as arden
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I've always thought of libertarianism as somewhat more central on the spectrum. Lot's of liberal handout programs can be libertarian if given to all equally. Treating everyone the same regardless of race, sex, gender, etc also lines up nicely.
A libertarian should not care what any two consenting adults do, aka marriage or whatever.
The conservative part of libertarianism would be taking care of your own problems and not being compelled to take care of others against your will. I'll look out for me within the
Nope, didn't forget .... (Score:5, Insightful)
But first off, medical experts aren't at all sure Steve Jobs would have fared any better with his pancreatic cancer if he went for conventional treatment. The "islet cell tumor" variant he had is rare and there's not a lot of medical documentation on successful treatments for it. They haven't identified highly effective chemotherapy agents to treat it, and definitely didn't have that information back in 2011.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
I don't think Steve Jobs was worthy of "worship" any more than any other successful businessperson is? But the fact remains, Apple was a company that managed to stay viable after dozens of other "IBM PC" competitors failed. The entire 8-bit era of personal computing is littered with brands that didn't make it, as people started standardizing on the x86 PC; Atari, Commodore, Timex/Sinclair, Texas Instruments, Tandy, Osborne... That's significant!
There are plenty of stories about what a jerk Thomas Edison was in his personal life too.Yet he still changed the world with the phonograph, the electric light-bulb, and moving pictures.
As for Android? I'm with Jobs on that one. The iPhone was clearly an innovative concept when it launched (beating Google's first Android phone release by about a year). Before that, the closest thing you had were relatively crappy stylus-based phones running PalmOS or variants that required pulling their battery packs out and re-inserting them every day or two when they'd crash. The Android stole a lot from Apple and then Apple stole some things back. Tit for tat.... who cares? Story of the whole damn I.T. industry.
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The iPhone was clearly an innovative concept when it launched
Not clear to me it isn't.
The iPhone was essentially, a slick, well made feature phone with a UI that was well put together, good hardware, some innovative manufacturing tricks (the injection moulding one was cunning). It wasn't even a smartphone in the modern sense since it had a fixed set of manufacturer supplied apps at launch.
The first smartphone was made by IBM in 1994. OS allowing 3rd party programs. all touch screen, no buttons. Built-in in
Mods on crack (Score:2)
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Not the electric light-bulb either. I would credit Joseph Swann, but there were frankly way too many inventors of the electric lightbulb to name just one person. Multiple inventors invented and developed the phonograph concept as well. Edison was good at self promotion and commercialization, but those inventions would have been developed and come to prominence with or without their most famous "inventors". They were ideas whose time had come.
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Why the FUCK do democrats, or anybody for that matter, worship a piece of shit like this?
Why worship anyone? There is literally not a person in the world who hasn't done something boneheadded or hasn't acted like a piece of shit at some point in their lives. The good news here is for being a piece of shit he paid a pretty heavy price, so with that stupidity punished (capitally) we can focus on his positive achievements in life too.
That said the medal is pointless.
Park Different (Score:2)
And then there's the part where he'd park in handicapped spots [cultofmac.com] and he ran around with no plates by constantly buying new cars.
He made a good product, but he was not a good person that I've ever heard.
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He was actually only at apple for 25 years over a 35 year period. He was fired in 1985 and was rehired when Apple bought his company NeXT in 1996.
Re:In case you're wondering or forgot (Score:5, Interesting)
He was also a dick who abused his staff and made his fortune exploiting Steve Wozniak and others. He's a champion of the walled and proprietary garden and the world is worse for him having been in it.
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Freedom? (Score:5, Insightful)
Steve Jobs accomplished many things, and is loved for many reasons.
But freedom was never one of them. "You want to install *what* on your iPhone?? Ha! No soup for you.".
Jobs is responsible for IOS being locked down tighter than a John Deere tractor, and total control over what can be installed.
Re: Freedom? (Score:4, Insightful)
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It was even worse than that when they launched. I had a simple Sony Ericsson phone and could add my own ringtones (gasp) and even assign them to specific contacts along with pictures. Shocking, eh? Yeah, some of those features arrived in later ios updates, but it took way too long.
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You're forgetting something about phones back then though. Those Sony Ericsson phones were THE phones that normalized that. With pretty much everyone else's phones you needed special software to even get MP3s onto the device at all. For example on Motorola Vxxx phones you needed a special software they sold that would crop your mp3s and install them as ringtones. (But at least it was possible.) They would also let you associate ringtones and images with contacts. I think they came first, too, but I don't re
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He was an asshat that yelled at other people until they accomplished shit.
Re:Freedom? (Score:4, Insightful)
He probably didn't *code* shit. But it's not fair to say he did nothing. He was a fucking asshole, but he had marketing skills along with decent enough foresight to pick the winners that *really* made an impact. Sure he screwed up a few, but I don't think it's honest to say Apple would be its own entity if not for Jobs coming back in what, '99 or 2000?
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He didn't "have the foresight to pick the winners" he jumped on other company's ideas and marketed it to everyone saying they thought of it first. The "Reality Distortion Zone" was a real thing. That guy could have sold rain the the Seattle government.
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Apple was a month or two away from Bankruptcy in 1997.
when apple was in the toilet (Score:2)
At the time, I figured apple would be broken up for about $20/share.
I was holding out for $13.50 to shift $5k of retirement money.
But it never went below $14 . . .
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"individuals who have made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, "
His products generated a lot of money and power to merica I guess that's why he deserves it. Don't know why burger people call this medal the medal of freedom.
Steve jobs? (Score:2)
I'm a strong Democrat but I really don't like it when Biden reminds me how cozy he is with the corporations...
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Does Steve Jobs who forced Chinese factory workers into 12 to 16 hour days so he could change the bezel on the iPhone at the last minute?
Naw. He just admired them for working long hours [theguardian.com] while complaining American workers avoid doing any work at all.
If he admired them so much (Score:2)
Re: Steve jobs? (Score:2)
Re: Steve jobs? (Score:5, Informative)
Parked in handicap spots (Score:5, Insightful)
What's Biden think about him parking in handicap spots and having a new lease vehicle that looked exactly the same swapped out before he would legally be required to put a license plate on it?
Parking in Mercedes SL65 AMG in a handicap spot out front at Apple isnt exactly deserving behavior.
Thomas Edison (Score:2)
Thomas Edison was also an asshole of a person, and he's often formally revered.
For example, he lied about the relative dangers of direct current to rid competition; and electrocuted an elephant in public to "prove" it.
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For example, he lied about the relative dangers of direct current to rid competition;
yes
and electrocuted an elephant in public to "prove" it.
no [smithsonianmag.com]. He did electrocute a bunch of other animals including a horse, though.
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Well in all fairness he did own the property.
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Re: Parked in handicap spots (Score:2)
Really tired (Score:5, Informative)
of the Steve Jobs' fellating by the mainstream. The guy was a salesman who often never heeded the sage advice of the experts he hired.
The person who really deserves that award is WOZNIAK.
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I don't think that Woz would have done anything with the Apple I outside of demoing it at homebrew meetups without Steve Jobs. He was a great engineer but didn't know jack squat about marketing the device he invented.
That said, if Steve Jobs hadn't come along, I'd imagine that some other company would have released an easy-to-use home computer around that time. Who knows, maybe Commodore or Atari might still be in business as a major computer manufacturer.
Re:Really tired (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah and Steve Jobs stole money from Woz at a time that neither of them had a lot of money.
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Yeah and Steve Jobs stole money from Woz at a time that neither of them had a lot of money.
Which, BTW, Woz never really got over.
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Jack did understand very little to computers, he was a ruthless businessman who alienated his partners. And who entered the computer business by serendipity.
If i would give an award it would be to Chuck Peddle, Tomczyk, Bill Seiler or others, for the VIC-20 which sold en masse. Or the four main engineers that designed the C64. Or miner and his team for designing the Amiga.
By all accounts, Jack didn't withdraw because the ball was rolling, it is because he disagreed with Irwin Gould using Commodore as his pe
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I made quite clear in my post Jack did not agree with Commodore funding Gould's lifestyle.
I admit i did not understand you wanted to talk about entrepreneurs like Jobs or Jack. In this case, i am not interested. I will never understand the fascination some have for people making money. In Bagnall's book there is a mention of some French marketer who simply lied by saying the apple 1 was selling like hotcakes. Maybe he was the inspiration of Jobs distortion field ?
IMHO, Jack's contribution to the popularizat
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Commodore killed itself, so they would still be gone.
Atari would have had their asses kicked technically no matter what happened. If there had been a big hole in the market, one of the more competent console devs might have done it. Think about what the Saturn could have been like as a computer, with a bigger memory expansion and a higher video output resolution. In its day it had really quite a lot of power. Or the Playstation 2, we could still be using MIPS! ha ha just kidding.
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I don't think that Woz would have done anything with the Apple I outside of demoing it at homebrew meetups without Steve Jobs. He was a great engineer but didn't know jack squat about marketing the device he invented.
That said, if Steve Jobs hadn't come along, I'd imagine that some other company would have released an easy-to-use home computer around that time. Who knows, maybe Commodore or Atari might still be in business as a major computer manufacturer.
Jobs didn't "know" anything about Marketing, either. He just had Chutzpah.
Re:Really tired (Score:5, Interesting)
Not really. Wozniak is a great engineer, but a lousy salesperson. His Apple I would've been a nifty thing at the Homebrew Computer Club, but that's all that would happen.
HP didn't want it, and Woz would've never left HP. At best, Woz would've been yet another no-name HP engineer. Remember, the goal of the Apple I for Woz was so he "could own a computer".
Jobs saw what Woz does and made it popular. He saw the Apple I and saw it as an opportunity to make a computer for masses. He sold the Apple I to computer stores as a premade board - add a keyboard and power supply and you're done.
Commodore wouldn't have done anything special - remember, they were an office supplies company - the most high tech thing they sold was an electronic calculator. But they were big into other office supplies like filing cabinets and such. MOS was the one that created the KIM-1 which demonstrated the 6502 processor
Jobs and Woz were the Yin and Yang. With Woz, Jobs had nothing. Without Jobs, Woz would be nothing. We admire Woz because he's the engineer-engineer doing the work. Jobs was an engineer, but was more a sales engineer who understood the intricacies of business.
I mean, going by this, Bill Gates was both - he was an engineer that worked on a lot of early software and then did the business side by selling it to the point that Microsoft Basic was the dominant BASIC out there used on practically every major computer other than say, the BBC Micro (which had its own implementation that was superior) and Apple's Integer Basic by Woz. Though you could get Microsoft Basic for the Apple II as well, since Integer Basic was really for the Apple I (Jobs sold the Apple I as going to have Basic and stores held him to that, so Integer Basic was created for it).
And of course, IBM licensed Microsoft Basic for the IBM PC (4 times!).
Of course, there are reasons why we don't celebrate Bill Gates. But he was a skilled programmer and a shred businessman, combining both the engineering skills of Woz and the salesmanship of Jobs into a single person.
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Commodore wouldn't have done anything special - remember, they were an office supplies company - the most high tech thing they sold was an electronic calculator. But they were big into other office supplies like filing cabinets and such. MOS was the one that created the KIM-1 which demonstrated the 6502 processor
I agree with you on the necessity of Jobs (though without Woz there would have been no Apple I) for Apple to exist. But on Commodore I think you're quite mistaken. Remember that MOS ran into a buzzsaw of litigation from Motorola and wound up being bought out by Commodore in 1976. While Jobs offered the Apple I to Commodore (wouldn't that have been an odd reality), Chuck Peddle of MOS/Commodore persuaded Jack Tramiel to instead go for what became the Commodore Pet in 1976.
Certainly absent a Jobs/Apple, the P
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Of course, there are reasons why we don't celebrate Bill Gates.
I suspect it's because most people have had to use his products at some point.
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Of course, there are reasons why we don't celebrate Bill Gates. But he was a skilled programmer and a shred businessman, combining both the engineering skills of Woz and the salesmanship of Jobs into a single person.
And with all the taste and panache of an MBA.
Re:Woz is awesome, but no (Score:4, Insightful)
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of the Steve Jobs' fellating by the mainstream. The guy was a salesman who often never heeded the sage advice of the experts he hired.
The person who really deserves that award is WOZNIAK.
Absolutely true.
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Woz is at least an engineer that builds stuff. Good stuff too. I don't like Bernie either, but Woz is a guy deserving of respect IMO.
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Woz is at least an engineer that builds stuff. Good stuff too. I don't like Bernie either, but Woz is a guy deserving of respect IMO.
For once, we agree!
interesting, but wrong guy ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Jobs was admirable in many ways. I've been an Apple user since the original Apple ][ (not the plus). I've enjoyed most of their products and also the entertainment that Steve provided. But Steve was a pretty selfish person. I didn't know him well enough to say 'extremely' selfish or self-centered, but I suspect that.
OTOH, despite all the hatred here, I wonder if Mr. Gates is more deserving considering his recent work.
Re:interesting, but wrong guy ? (Score:4)
Jobs was a jerk. In my career, I've worked with two others who worked with him at Apple or Next. They have the same view of him that while he had vision he could be cold-hearted. While he paid well even for Silicone Valley, he'd fire you in a heartbeat if he thought you weren't pulling your weight or were undermining his vision.
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Person I use to work with also worked with Mother Teresa.
He described her as a miserable cunt.
All idols end up having clay feet in the end.
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Christopher Hitchens certainly describes her as such.
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OTOH, despite all the hatred here, I wonder if Mr. Gates is more deserving considering his recent work.
No, especially considering his recent work. He hasn't eradicated any diseases, there are reservoirs in countries he doesn't get to go to. You can't get meds from the Gates foundation without strong IP law favoring Big Pharma. His influence on education is overwhelmingly negative. He's pushing nuclear power bullshit which doesn't make sense (Yet another design of SMR for which there are zero working prototypes) because utilities in the USA typically profit by a fixed percentage when new generation equipment
What's the point? (Score:5, Interesting)
The dude's been dead for over a decade... it's not like it matters to him.
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As someone who voted for Biden (orange duress). (Score:5, Insightful)
This is by far the most embarrassing shit he's done.
Re:As someone who voted for Biden (orange duress). (Score:4, Interesting)
I know it's great isn't it. Finally back to a normal presidency which isn't an international embarrassment every time a camera or reporter is present. Sleepy Joe Biden. Trump took that to mean an insult. Voters took that to mean they finally get a break from insanity.
Re: As someone who voted for Biden (orange duress (Score:5, Informative)
I want to be clear about something.
Biden is president because he was the only option running against Trump. Period.
I would have voted for a shit sandwich over Trump.
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They are likely about the same since Biden is likely being entirely run by his handlers instead of himself. That's still a step up from Trump but definitely sad times.
WTF? (Score:3)
utterly perplexing (Score:3)
Let me just leave this here (Score:2)
https://nypost.com/2018/09/06/... [slashdot.org]">Steve Jobs was a shitbag in every way
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Wow, I totally failed to leave that there.
Let me just leave it here instead [nypost.com]
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Interesting read, thanks. Can't say I'm surprised. Most of the shitty things Apple has done can be traced directly or indirectly to him - so being a piece of shit in his personal life is just being consistent.
more deserving recipient (Score:2, Interesting)
He should award one to Julian Assange.
And stop the bogus extradition process too.
Big deal (Score:3)
He also gave it to that purple hair soccer player. For WHAT?!?
Total devaluation of this once prestigious award.
Guess this is the only thing Biden can accomplish (Score:2)
Re: Guess this is the only thing Biden can accompl (Score:2)
The Presidential Medal of Freedom / soccer player (Score:2)
That computer in your pocket (Score:2)
Thank SteveJobs.
Steve didn’t set out to put a computer in every pocket. Steve asked what computer would people “love” instead of “hate” using everyday of their lives. Newton tablet, neh pad, taught that a cult would glom onto technology in the hand. iPod further validated the handheld form factor. iTunes proved giving people what they wanted – they would pay for it. Steve wanted to own those two layers by abstracting them.
SteveJobs imagination sprung from a cellphone butt
What about Woz??? (Score:2)
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Everybody hails Steve Jobs as the Jesus of computing, but when you bring up Wozniak around the Apple fanboys, they're like "who?" Woz is truly more deserving of the medal of freedom, considering he did the heavy work with designing the earliest Apple computers. Who's with me in that Steve Wozniak should get more recognition than Jobs. All Jobs did was make the products more expensive than they had any right to be, yelled at employees over the littlest things, and was just an overall d-bag.
Mods? Why has this been Modded Down?
Please Mod Parent UP. This is 100% true!
Freedom? (Score:3)
He advocated total control by his company, breaking compatibility and opposing repair. He was the enemy of freedom
So what? (Score:2)
This award means nothing. Look at the other recipients.
Dead (Score:2)
Are they going to dig him up to present it to him?
What if he doesn't want it?
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I wonder if Biden even remembers who Steve Jobs was?