[Prestidigitweeze]

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

I can understand your creating a straw man over the course of a discussion. Nearly everyone slips from time to time. What I can't understand is your choosing to become an assembly line of straw men.

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

And I can say the same thing about you. Remember post #141?

Yes, let's look at post #141. Here's the entire thing:

It's important to differentiate between Jobs' talents and successes, his failings and limitations, and his moral ambiguity. All three aspects are not interchangeably bad or good.

Hans' point is merely logical: Jobs would have found other creative people to galvanize, bully, steal from and improve upon. Those same creative people would likely not have found another Jobs. To say so is no more a trivialization of those people's talents than it is a justification for Jobs' tendency toward mystification, hype and dictatorial self-assertion. Despite all that, he was good at some important things.

The man was a gifted organizer, salesman and conceptual simplifier. He might be dead, but (even if he annoyed you beyond patience) to discount his gifts is to fail to recognize and possibly absorb the strengths of a former rival. It's easy to see how Guy Kawasaki might have learned from Jobs but eventually decided to work for Google.

To whom am I attributing questionable arguments in that post? It was a post that tried to establish context for Hans' position (with which I clearly agreed), which is why I addressed positions that I thought could be unfair -- not because people had voiced them, but because the context could invite them to.

That you should have taken exception to that post was initially baffling to me -- but less so now that I know there might be a communication issue (see below).

And in post #144: I didn't say that the screen size needed fixing. I don't believe in the idea that there must be only one screen size. I was pointing out the lack of variety, which is good for maximizing profits, but not good for the consumer.

Your point was understood. There seems to be some sort of disconnect between us re mutually understood terms.

Here's an example: By fixed screen size, I meant a screen size that is fixed, i.e., a size that does not change. It was a paraphrase of your idea that consumers should not simply be offered a single screen size -- an idea with which I have always agreed.

If we misunderstood one another on that minor point, then I wonder how clearly we've understood each other in the past several posts.