Email or username:

Password:

Forgot your password?
Devil Lu Linvega

Whenever I read the words "bicycle for the mind".

4 comments
R. L. Dane :debian: :openbsd:

@neauoire
To this day, I cannot reconcile Steve Jobs words with his actions (early 80s).

It's like he had so many bright ideas for the liberation of computing, but like the founding fathers of the U.S., all those freedoms were only meant for the wealthy, not the commoners.

Steve wanted to sell the Mac for $1,999; Sculley pushed it up to $2,495. That's $5,624 and $7.019 today.

Bonkers.

Also, the Apple ][ was made as cheaply as anyone could possibly make it, but was stupidly expensive.

@neauoire
To this day, I cannot reconcile Steve Jobs words with his actions (early 80s).

It's like he had so many bright ideas for the liberation of computing, but like the founding fathers of the U.S., all those freedoms were only meant for the wealthy, not the commoners.

Steve wanted to sell the Mac for $1,999; Sculley pushed it up to $2,495. That's $5,624 and $7.019 today.

Devil Lu Linvega

@RL_Dane Steve Jobs supposedly claimed that he intended his personal computer to be a bicycle for the mind — But what he really sold us was a train for the mind, which goes only between where rails and stations have been laid down by armies of laborers.

R. L. Dane :debian: :openbsd:

@neauoire
Yes, and very well put.

His hatred of all things open was pretty awful.

I read his firstborn daughter's autobio, "Small Fry." It was pretty unnerving.

Kartik Agaram

@neauoire @RL_Dane I remember it all made sense when I watched the actual words in context: youtube.com/watch?v=KmuP8gsgWb

What he's getting from "bicycle" is just efficiency. So of course when he could get to a car and then a train, he did. It's just that he'd have gotten laughed out of the room back in 1990 if he'd claimed his computer was like a car. But he'd be mystified by us wanting to continue using bicycles 30 years later. Of course people want more and more efficiency! What are you, a commie?

Go Up