[LINK] What Do Steve Jobs' Obituaries Leave Out? His Appreciation for LSD (Darrell Burkey)(Link Digest, Vol 227, Issue 17)

[Phillip Musumeci]

>
> Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2011 09:41:54 +1100
> From: Darrell Burkey <darrell.burkey at anu.edu.au>
> Subject: Re: [LINK] What Do Steve Jobs' Obituaries Leave Out?
> His Appreciation for LSD
>
~~~text cut~~~

> >  So much so he pulled all Apple's philanthropic programmes when he
> rejoined the company, and apart from Bono bleating about
> >  some miserable giving, there is no record of Jobs or Apple having given
> a cent since.
> >
> I doubt that's true but even if it is, what's your problem? His company,
> his decisions. Businesses aren't required to have philanthropic programmes.
> I doubt you rise that far in business without a few bodies around the place.
>
> I'm changing my will to include a statement that no one on LINK is to be
> informed of my death.
>

Agreed! That might be a very good idea as we appear to be a very critical
lot.

There does seem to be a lot of good engineering as well as business outcomes
from companies led or founded by Jobs. For example, from NeXT (early 90s),
some ex-employees and others wrote
http://www.infoq.com/news/2011/10/steve-jobs-contribution which describes
outcomes derived from NeXT and other companies. I recall the NeXT Station
was the first off-the-shelf system with a built-in DSP, cost more than an
Amiga, but had the advantage that its message passing OS (and graphics) had
more common compatibility layers than TripOS which Amiga had purchased.

In terms of sustainable manufacturing, I guess Ray Anderson from interface
was the trail blaser (see this August 2011 obit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/blog/ray-anderson-dies-interface-john-elkington-tribute
for
more info). However, Apple has been one of the early movers for sustainable
and low toxin manufacturing of IT products down through its supply chain and
also audits subcontractor employee conditions, for reasons some consider
good and/or bad.

At the peril of appearing a promoter (and warning LINK readers to turn on
their happy-English-promotional-talk filters), it might interest some to
look at the energy use improvements over time for products such as the
mac-mini as well as Apple subcontractor employee conditions:
http://images.apple.com/supplierresponsibility/pdf/Apple_SR_2011_Progress_Report.pdf
 ; http://www.apple.com/environment/
Some of these trends will be found across all sorts of industries but I
think it is worthwhile to acknowledge a company publicly reflecting on how
it is going in efficiency/profits and corporate social responsibility. These
sorts of *actions* which include improving working conditions in
totalitarian states are likely more important than typical philanthropic
programs.

phillip

--
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