back to article Steve Jobs gets Obama love

Steve Jobs is the kind of rich guy America should celebrate, according to Barack Obama. "We celebrate somebody like a Steve Jobs, who has created two or three different revolutionary products," he said in a digression from a speech about the US economy, "We expect that person to be rich, and that's a good thing. We want that …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Big Brother

    Tin-foil hats on

    Now tell me that removing the Wikileaks app from iTunes was not to ensure the "all glorious one" stays in favour with the President?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      IRL

      You don't have to wear a tin-foil hat to assume something like this!

  2. tony
    Joke

    hmmmm.

    Wonder if 'bama could get a white iPhone, or is that a can of worms?

  3. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Big Brother

    War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Free Market is Windfall Tax.

    "We expect that person to be rich, and that's a good thing. We want that incentive. That's part of the free market."

    So that we can tax it. Did I tell you VAT is coming?

    To show our support and good faith, we provide enforcement of arbitrary "Intellectual Property Rights" for a small fee. Don't go too far though, or Antitrust might come calling to liberate a few dollars more.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Shame

    No success of your own Obama? Nothing to crow about? Tax cuts for the rich eh. Quick look over here, look, look at Steve Jobs.

    Sometimes I'm cynical about how cynical I am. Head implosion imminent...

  5. Gannon (J.) Dick
    WTF?

    Heart of Darkness

    I imagine the President's daughters are reading "Heart of Darkness" in school right now. I'd love to be grading their book reports. iPhones are the new Conflict Diamonds and asia is the new Congo.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    And here they come....!!!

    The right-wingers comin' around the final turn!

    I know it's comin'!!!

  7. maclovinz
    Pint

    Wait, what?!?!

    This doesn't sound Socialist!!!! WTF!!! Who is this guy?!!

    He's a guy you wanna have a beer with. :D

  8. Crazy Operations Guy

    Revolutionary products? What?

    I can;t find a single product that Apple makes that wasn't already done.

    GUI: Xerox

    Mouse: Xerox

    MP3 player: Many others

    Cell phone with touch screen

    Tablet: Bill Gates (Not sure if he was the first, but he did go on about them long before Steve-o made one)

    Making profits by endangering the lives of foreigners

    I suppose you _could_ attribute these things to Apple:

    Computers that are near-impossible to upgrade / repair (Original Mac series / all iMacs)

    Reality Distortion field

    1. Charles Manning

      Technologies != products

      GUI and mouse are not products. They are technologies.

      What Apple has done really well is branding and focusing on what makes a successful product. That's why Mac OSX, ipad, ipod and iphone have been a huge success even though they were not first to market.

      Yes, MS has fiddled with tablets many times since the 1990s but they have all Zuned(*). Nothing you could really call a product.

    2. Will 12

      Wrong

      There's a he'll of a difference between building a prototype and building a commercial product. Microsoft were trying to push tablets for years with very little success. Apple realised that to make a tablet work, you couldn't stick a desktop OS on it. Apple have always been about making things accessible to your average Jo, to Mum and Dad. So while Ceative were adding features and gimmicks to their music players, Apple focused on making them easy to use.

      The public clearly see Apples products as innovative, they keep getting their wallets out and buying Apples products.

      Apple is good for the tech industry, they help drive the market forward, do you really think we'd have seen the Galaxy tab if it wasn't for the iPad?

      1. Player_16

        To put a finer point on it...

        ..."do you really think we'd have seen 'Android phones' if it wasn't for the 'iPhone'?"

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Badgers

          And an even finer point...

          ...30 seconds of research shows that Mr Jobby "tasked about 200 of Apple's top engineers with creating the iPhone in autumn of 2006".

          Another 30 seconds shows that Google bought Android Inc the summer of 2005 and they had already been in existence for 22 months.

          So, yes, we possibly would have seen Android phones whether the iPhone existed or not.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      If you put it that way

      Any piece of electronics is just a rearrangement of already-invented electrical components using well-understood processes, and all software is just rearranging bits. Nothing new has been invented by anybody for decades. Happy?

  9. D. Suse
    Jobs Horns

    Land of the rich and powerful

    So the important thing is that a few people in America become extremely rich and powerful? It doesn't matter if they become communist-style dictators who control customer, employees, other companies, and media? It doesn't matter if they use the resources of their wealthy companies (out of the pockets of Americans) to attempt to destroy other competing companies via lawsuits and patent cartels, to enforce their monopolistic economic dictatorships? Well, I am glad Obama cleared up that whole "land of the free/land of opportunity" misconception.

  10. Blarkon
    Jobs Horns

    Each iProduct sold increases us balance of trade deficit

    There was an analysis done by the WSJ that found that the iPhone actually added almost 2 billion to the US trade deficit with China http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704828104576021142902413796.html?mod=wsj_share_twitter

    You've gotta wonder how making products that cost your country money ends up making you one of the country's best business leaders.

    1. Rainer
      FAIL

      That's not the problem

      The problem is not that the iPhone adds to the trade deficit (it does, though - but so does every other phone, laptop and PC, of which there are far more in volume and value, still).

      The real problem is that the US barely has any products that the rest of the world wants to buy.

      Germany sells a lot of tools and machinery to actually build stuff (and some cars, though production of those moves to China, too).

      What kind of (high value) products are actually still built in USA?

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    While Jobs is rich and successful...

    He's also represents some of the worst attributes too. Manipulative, lying, screwing anyone over to get ahead.

    While we might need one or two Jobses around, we don't need all corporate America to be cut from that mold.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Good to see the Apple-haters out in force

    I suppose it gives them something to do apart from scratching their arses and picking fluff from their belly-buttons. Oh, and w*nking like a monkey over Linux/Windows

    1. Martin Owens
      FAIL

      Cult

      You'll find Free Software people have a much bigger problem with the Apple's cult of personality than say Microsoft (but only just). After all Apple defines itself as a company of super style, definitiveness and a self gratifying moral position where as the Free Software personality defines itself on responsible ownership, chaotic freedom and a neighbourly moral position.

      Basically Apple scares the bajesus out of various groups because it's more than a company, it's an ideology. And to see Obama praise the leader (and greatest advocate) of the ideology doesn't exactly say much about Obama's ideology. Although it comes as no surprise to me, Obama's administration was always toadying up to big media and silicon valley. Anyone who had a big cheque book or mass market of listeners or readers or quite often, both.

    2. Geoff Campbell Silver badge
      Jobs Horns

      There's nothing wrong with a good wank.

      Mind you, I suppose that using Windows as the motivation might be a bit wrong.

      Actually, I'm slightly puzzled here, and have been for a few years. Apple does one thing very well, which is to take one or more previous bits of technology, and re-engineer it or them into a well integrated, balanced, and often beautiful product. Look at the Macbook Air, the iPad, and various desktop machines, and they are things of beauty, much though it hurts me to admit it.

      But where did the iPod, which bankrolled all of this, come from? The early iterations were all arguably worse than the competition in just about all respects, the *only* differentiator was a set of white headphones, which the adverts emphasised. Surely the market isn't facile enough that this was enough to build a brand and complete market dominance on? Please, someone, tell me I'm wrong?

      GJC

  13. Dave 126 Silver badge
    Pint

    "Technology" is not the same as "products"

    Yet the two above comments that point out this simple truism have both been voted down.

    Yes, the way that Apple implements technology can be frustrating to us who live to tinker or do things our own way. However, Apple have created products that sell very well at margins ranging from comfortable to very healthy, and are generally considered to be of good quality.

    Indeed, they have to be of good quality and and be of high perceived value, else Apple would not be able to dictate terms to its users (You want this sleek mp3 player? Fine- but you gotta use iTunes) The desire / frustration that Apple products can bring out in people are two sides of the same coin.

    Vote this down if you want to- but please do say why.

    Any way, whatever melange of silicon and code you poke at

    Enjoy the festives

  14. Craig 28

    Re:Apple haters

    I own Apple products. I do not love apple, in fact I despise many of their business practices. I chose their products because they were the best fit for my requirements. There is a world of difference between how a company is run and the quality of their products. While some of the posts here do criticise Apple's products many more are critical of their practices.

    As a disclaimer, I'm visually impaired. I bought Apple products because of their included "Voice Over" software at no extra cost and how well this works with the OS. I could have used other systems with third party software to enable speech synthesis output but these companies charge extortionate amounts, way above Apple's high prices, and gouge those people who rely on their products to be able to use devices at all rather than Apple charging a premium for their brand. As an example a "screen reader" which allows people with no sight at all to use a Windows PC costs in the region of £600, plus £125 for each new version upgrade. This is not including the computer which runs it. While Linux accessibility has made a lot of progress Linux itself has a tendency to break quite easily with new software or updates, and it would be quite easy to break something that is a dependency of the access software. Google's Android does not yet have mature access software worth considering. The price of a Symbion series phone plus the extra cost of access software is close to that of an iPhone which I find much easier to use than a symbion 60 despite having no sight at all. If I wasn't visually impaired I would probably have stuck with a cheap mobile for calls and text messages when necessary, and used a netbook or mp3 player for my other needs (though an iPod touch would have been a viable option in place of an MP3 player).

  15. James Woods

    ha

    Of course obama looks up to jobs about the same way as the republicans would.

    He is both the crony capitalist and also communists idea of a free market guy.

    How can you have a free market when apple utilizes the third world to produce it's goods? What is free when your employees need $10-15/hr+ just to survive (along with all the industry rules and regulation we have) when you can simply outsource to an area that you can pay a few bucks an hour (if that) and have no workplace safety.

    Sounds like obamas kind of guy since Obama sees us equal to the third world. Wasn't it this administration that said we need to compete with China?

    How about they start with having the government sector compete with the private sector. When will amtrak make a profit? How about government motors and chysler? How about the postal service?

    When are these government fiascos going to compete?

    How about fannie mae and freddie mac who are exempt from the recent financial reform bills?

    Take a ride around old steel citys and the auto industry in detroit. Or big industry that was one in Indiana. Take a look at what this concept of free trade has provided to us.

    You have that $500 flat screen and $10 toaster however the price we pay for that is we are killing ourselves.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Another MORON speaks up

    I was almost having respect for Mr. Obama.... So much for that, he is obviously a moron sucking steve's ass.

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