Henry Ford didn't invent the motor car. Edison didn't actually invent the light bulb. Jobs is compared to those two not because they are inventors, but because they are the people who 'weaponised' a technology and brought it to the masses and in the process changed people's lives. They took something that was a curiosity to the majority of the population and a) showed them how it could be of use to them and b) put it in a package people could afford and wanted to buy.

I think Jobs is a perfect peer to Edison and Ford. Much more so than he was to say Da Vinci or Daimler, who actually did invent stuff out of pretty much nothing.

Jon

I don't thin anyone had invented an MP4 player by the time the iPod came out . I don't think patents, particularly in the US, are a valid measure of 'inventiveness'. Especially when you're talking about someone who worked within a giant corporation, it's very hard to say who specifically 'invented' a thing that company sells.


As above, I think 'reinvented' isn't quite the right term. 'Popularised' is a better term. However, I'd argue we need people to popularise technology just as much as we need people to invent it. If you want milk you need a cow, but you also probably need a farmer to get it out of the cow and put it in a bottle for you.

Jon

Or a goat.

Presumably the heads of Google, Microsoft, Samsung, HP, etc. don't occasionally say similar things behind closed doors? The only reason we know about this is because Jobs included it in an interview with his biographer, who was writing a book that Jobs probably knew he wasn't going to see...