The Paris Hilton of Engineering?

If that were true, Jobs would be famous for being famous, but he did too much to resemble that remark.

 

I'm pretty sure (or at least just guessing) that the late Steve Jobs wore underwear.

 

And we probably won't see (or hear reports of ;-) ) any rogue home-made sex tape of Steve, either. And thank goodness.

 

Interesting metaphor... Totally inaccurate.
He may not have been an engineer or a programmer, but he was a
world-class visionary.

Any question as to boxers or briefs is immaterial:. p

For a short while I thought that "the Paris Hilton of ... (whatever)"
may have become a popular figure of derisive speech. Maybe,
maybe not.

But with respect to "engineering" I found very few references on the Web.
Most a single blogger apparently referring to the editor of Wired magazine:

Oh Yeah Right

 

Steve Jobs great talent was connecting the dots that no one else saw until he pointed them out.

Paris Hilton's great talent is ??? Anyone? Bueller?

 

I have heard of Paris Hilton, but have no idea what she looks like or does.

Whoever made that analogy must have been trying to get some attention without having to earn it. I'd say he/she is the Paris Hilton of stupid quotes.

 

Steve Job's talent was marketing. And he was brilliant at it. He knew what he wanted and what would sell. Didn't care about the underlying engineering too much, but make it shiny, make it sleek, and make it high priced, and it will sell.

Same reason why some stores form queues outside of them even though there aren't many people inside. If there is a line, it must be good, so lets wait in this line to get some of that too!

 

Don't forget quality. Though there have been some exceptions, by and large Apple products are very high quality. Among a certain demographic, quality matters.

 

It hasn't always been that way. Before switching to Unix, the Apple operating systems were pretty crappy. Sadly, most people can't see past the sleek exterior of a new computer.

Tom

 

Jobs real strength was knowing what customers would want before the customers knew what they wanted. He also insisted and got an excellent, simple user interface on his products.

I don't own any Apple products and don't know if I ever will, but I admire they way they look and work. My wife has an iMac and an iPod Nano. When she had a PC she frequently came to me for help, her iMac just works.

 

I'm not forgetting it, I'm omitting it because it doesn't exist higher than other similar brands. However, the other brands aren't as "shiny" so it appears lesser.

You are aware that the insides of an Apple product uses the exact same chips as what's inside most of their competitor's products. They do not actually make anything low level. Therefore the only thing that could be quality that isn't shared between competitors is the casing and product packaging. Again, make it a pretty box, and you can charge more. That is basic marketing and social engineering.

 

Even within PC components there are different quality levels. Apple products aren't as as high quality as the fanbois believe they are, but they also don't use bottom end components like some PC component manufactures do.

Quality aside, they are more than a pretty box, they are also more user friendly.

I don't personally own an Apple product and don't know if I ever well, but I do admire the way they consider the user in their design.

 

The only thing that effects quality is the assembly process, reflow process, testing before shipping. There are companies in regards to low end components (or even some of the big name cheap brands) that take the reference design and minimize the number of passives required to cut costs to make it marginally reliable. The biggest offenders are usually the electrolytic bypass and bulk capacitors surrounding high clock speed parts such as the main CPU or DRAM blocks. As the electrolyte dissipates, the capacitance goes down as well and what was marginal becomes non-functional. However, brands that follow the reference designs which Apple does and Intel does (obviously) have no such issues. This isn't a quality of the manufacturer, it is a bad bean-counter decision.

The assembly, reflow, and pre-test are all things that don't effect quality to the consumer. They reflect how how many pieces are bin0 and bin1 parts versus scrap. Higher scrap means higher prices obviously. But a part that is soldered offset doesn't make a lick of difference as long as it is soldered and nothing is shorted.

I work for a company that supplies many parts for iStuff and I have visibility into the designs.

 

One of the key differences is that Apple never allowed clone products to appear in any significant quantities. The PC market has many competitors, so cost quickly became a major driving force. As a result, many PCs were built with the least expensive components and poor customer support.

Apple, on the other hand, kept an iron grip on all of its products. The result has been higher prices, but more consistent quality. This also helped avoid many of the compatibility issues faced by PC users.

Tom

 

Well I am pretty sure Steve, did not run around in a short skirt going "Commando", nor
Did have a sex tape made of him and pushed around the internet...nor
Did not have everything handed to him like daddy did to Paris.....nor
Did Paris achieve any thing that I would call world changing like Steve did!

Who ever said that statement first is dumber than Paris, and I thought she WAS the bottom of the barrel!

 

It doesn't matter to the consumer whether the problem with their product was the result of a bean counter decision, poor design or poor QA.

Different companies have different standards, some are know for low quality products. Even among the better companies there are differences in failure rates.

 

True. My mom had an Apple running OS9 and I hated it. I bought my Mac after someone told me that OS X was Unix.

Exactly. There may be high-quality PC manufacturers. I've never found them. The only really good PC I had was built to order by a local company. Of course, the worst thing about PCs is Windows. Assemble a quality PC from good parts and put Linux on it and you can have a good machine, if you are savvy enough to administer Linux. I tried, but it was too much for me. I always liked Unix, from the time I had a Unix partition on my 80286. So I'm very happy with OS X.

The simple fact that Apple decided to break with backward compatibility and move to Unix, shows them to be a more forward-thinking company concerned with making products that work.

I don't consider myself an Apple fanboy. But after using DOS, Windows ME, Windows 95, and Windows XP, I'm sick of Micro$oft garbage. I own exactly three Apple products: My Mac, my iPod Touch, and now, just new, an iPod nano that lives in the car.

 

Switching to Unix was a good move, but it wasn't forward thinking that caused it. At the time Apple made the decision to switch, the company was in a death spiral. Several down-sizing cycles had left Apple in a position where they couldn't produce a new operating system; they simply lacked the engineers to do it. Switching to Unix sidestepped the problem. It was a brilliant move, but more desperation than forward thinking. Still, I'm willing to give them credit.

Tom

 

I would think the "Paris Hilton" of Engineering would refer to a product that was all glitz on the outside and a vast empty cave on the inside. Definitely not Apple.