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"THE TWEAKER" The real genius of Steve Jobs.

DaltheJigsawDaltheJigsaw Mountain View Veteran
edited November 2011 in General Banter
Not long after Steve Jobs got married, in 1991, he moved with his wife to a nineteen-thirties, Cotswolds-style house in old Palo Alto. Jobs always found it difficult to furnish the places where he lived. His previous house had only a mattress, a table, and chairs. He needed things to be perfect, and it took time to figure out what perfect was. This time, he had a wife and family in tow, but it made little difference. “We spoke about furniture in theory for eight years,” his wife, Laurene Powell, tells Walter Isaacson, in “Steve Jobs,” Isaacson’s enthralling new biography of the Apple founder. “We spent a lot of time asking ourselves, ‘What is the purpose of a sofa?’ ”

It was the choice of a washing machine, however, that proved most vexing. European washing machines, Jobs discovered, used less detergent and less water than their American counterparts, and were easier on the clothes. But they took twice as long to complete a washing cycle. What should the family do? As Jobs explained, “We spent some time in our family talking about what’s the trade-off we want to make. We ended up talking a lot about design, but also about the values of our family. Did we care most about getting our wash done in an hour versus an hour and a half? Or did we care most about our clothes feeling really soft and lasting longer? Did we care about using a quarter of the water? We spent about two weeks talking about this every night at the dinner table.”


Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/11/14/111114fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all

Comments

  • Yeah, you know what? After reading the article, the picture I get is neither tweaker nor genius, but obsessive a-hole with a huge ego. Sorry, but just because the obsessive ego happened to latch onto an idea that made him rich doesn't mean he was a very nice person or a genius. Just obsessive.
  • Say what you will, he had the vision to change the world. Love him or hate him, he had a genius for that.
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