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posted by LaminatorX on Monday October 13 2014, @10:07PM   Printer-friendly
from the Eloi-Elan dept.

Alan Boyle writes that over the years, Elon Musk's showmanship, straight-ahead smarts and far-out ideas have earned him a following that spans the geek spectrum — to the point that some observers see glimmers of the aura that once surrounded Apple's Steve Jobs. "To me, it feels like he's the most obvious inheritor of Steve Jobs' mantle," says Ashlee Vance who's writing a biography of Musk that at one time had the working title "The Iron Man." "Obviously, Steve Jobs' products changed the world ... [But] if Elon's right about all these things that he's after, his products should ultimately be more meaningful than what Jobs came up with. He's the guy doing the most concrete stuff about global warming."

So what is Musk's vision? What motivates Musk at the deepest level? "It's his Mars thing," says Vance. Inspired in part by the novels of Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein, Musk has come around to the view that humanity's long-term future depends on extending its reach beyond Earth, starting with colonies on Mars. Other notables like physicist Stephen Hawking have laid out similar scenarios — but Musk is actually doing something to turn those interplanetary dreams into a reality. Vance thinks that Musk is on the verge of breaking out from geek guru status to a level of mass-market recognition that's truly on a par with the late Steve Jobs. Additions to the Tesla automotive line, plus the multibillion-dollar promise of Tesla's battery-producing "gigafactory" in Nevada, could push Musk over the edge. "Tesla, as a brand, really does seem to have captured the public's imagination. ... All of a sudden he's got a hip product that looks great, and it's creating jobs. The next level feels like it's got to be that third-generation, blockbuster mainstream product. The story is not done."

 
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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by dpp on Monday October 13 2014, @10:40PM

    by dpp (3579) on Monday October 13 2014, @10:40PM (#105745)

    "on a par with the late Steve Jobs" - really?

    Rather, it might be fitting to say of Musk - in a class by himself.

    Jobs - take something others are already doing and make it all J.Ive shiny slick & sell it at 3-4x margin, convince the herd through top-notch marketing/PR to buy a new one every 1-2yr.
    Musk - motivated by moving humanity into the next phase, in regards to say environment(climate change)/sustainability and becoming a true spacefaring species.

    Musk > Jobs...by any measure.

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Lagg on Monday October 13 2014, @11:31PM

    by Lagg (105) on Monday October 13 2014, @11:31PM (#105755) Homepage Journal

    Yeah, if I was Musk I'd be a little insulted by that comparison. Even when Steve actually did something innovative and world changing it was really Wozniak that did it while he sat there whining in his dweebish voice and conning people. Comparing people to Steve is the new version of calling people the "next Bill Gates".

    --
    http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
    • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday October 13 2014, @11:54PM

      by kaszz (4211) on Monday October 13 2014, @11:54PM (#105764) Journal

      Jobs did innovate packaging in everything from GUI, fonts and box. And of course marketing. You are right about the technology however.

  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 13 2014, @11:46PM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday October 13 2014, @11:46PM (#105759) Journal

    My sentiments as well. Jobs was all about money, and self, more money, and more self. Yeah, he had a vision, but Steve Jobs and Money were central to that vision.

    Musk has a vision - and he seems to be intent on making the vision possible with or without Musk present. Cult of Elon Musk? I suppose that there are mindless fanbois who would support Musk in anything at all. I believe that MOST people want to see things happen, and Musk is the single leader who is working to make those things happen.

    Am I an Elon Musk fan? Yes, just as I was a fan of other visionaries. Am I a cultist? Nope - don't think so. I've wanted the same things to happen ever since I watched the moon landings in elementary school. I want to see man in space, man on the moon, and man on Mars. If some other person had taken the lead, I would be supporting them instead. Elon Musk is just about the only person in the western world who has any chance of making these things happen. More, he seems to be building an empire capable of making those things happen even if he should disappear.

    Jobs? He was gone once, and his company floundered without him. He's gone permanently now, and it is unclear whether Apple has a direction, or a plan.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Hartree on Tuesday October 14 2014, @02:41AM

      by Hartree (195) on Tuesday October 14 2014, @02:41AM (#105800)

      I've run into some pretty staunch "Musk will save us all" (with the implied can do no wrong) types in conversations (mostly on that "other" site). That's especially in the space area.

      My take is: Musk is an excellent CEO. He's a very different type of company runner than Steve Jobs was. It's hard to compare them.

      He's doing wonderful work with SpaceX. I admit I was a little skeptical at first. I've seen quite a number of visionary led rocket ventures fail (Conestoga, American Rocket). But, Musk has taken it to being a company with a proven launch record. I expect they'll be able to pull off the manned versions as well. How far he'll go, we have to wait and see. I'm hopeful, because I've been a "get off this rock" type for a long time.

      Tesla? Still a question for me. Will they get the cost down? Will they manage to compete well with the existing gasoline autos? Don't know. I won't bet against him, but it's less clear to me than with SpaceX. Let's get the Giga-factory up and running with the inevitable production bugs ironed out. Then maybe we can talk.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by idetuxs on Tuesday October 14 2014, @12:03AM

    by idetuxs (2990) on Tuesday October 14 2014, @12:03AM (#105769)
    OMG, they don't even compare. Jobs was a guy who wanted to sell things, with no clear benefit to society (communication? nop). Musk is a guy who (apparently) wants to solve real world problems. And that is amazing if true.

    It's amazing that you can watch someone with resources thinking long-term and trying to make the world better. THIS [teslamotors.com] is inspiring. Would anyone expect something like this from Apple?

    So still don't know if is pure hype, but I know that Musk already did some good actions and it's not all chatty-talk.
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Tuesday October 14 2014, @12:19AM

      by Nerdfest (80) on Tuesday October 14 2014, @12:19AM (#105777)

      I was going to say the same thing about the patents. That probably did more public good than most will *ever* do. Musk seems to be trying to solve the big, hard problems, and doesn't seem driven by greed. It's quite nice to see. When the time comes for me to buy a new car, Tesla will get serious consideration.

    • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday October 14 2014, @04:11PM

      by Grishnakh (2831) on Tuesday October 14 2014, @04:11PM (#105976)

      They do compare. Jobs brought us smartphones; he (and Apple) didn't invent them, but they made the first one that was easy to use, didn't use a stupid stylus, and had broad appeal, and really made smartphones something that everyone and his brother has. (I'll probably get a bunch of WinMo and Blackberry fans shouting me down here.) Before the iPhone, only some rich people, politicians, and geeks had smartphones, and they were clunky, and didn't have much in the way of 3rd-party apps. After the iPhone, everything changed: now everyone has one.

      The problem with Jobs was that he was greedy and hated open platforms and competition; he wanted to be the only serious smartphone supplier, and everything about his products screamed proprietary and our-way-or-the-highway.. The basic technology wasn't that hard, so they were quickly copied by Android. And now, Android dominates the market; Apple merely served to break it open.

      Musk is different: he doesn't seem motivated by greed at all, unlike Jobs who was a complete control freak. Musk seems to just want to bring new technologies to fruition. Rockets and electric cars aren't really new inventions by any stretch, but space launches have been enormously expensive in the past and his private company is bringing those costs down in an era when NASA can't seem to do anything besides small unmanned missions, and electric cars (not counting golf carts) have only been experimented with but not in a serious way because entrenched players don't want them competing with their high-maintenance gasoline cars. Now with Tesla, you can have an electric car with excellent range and performance and luxury features; before this, you could have a GM EV1 which was seized from you and crushed after a short time, or you could have a Nissan Leaf which is an ugly econobox with crappy range and performance and you're not allowed to own, only lease. I think there was some other econobox EV too before Tesla, but I'm not sure about that.

      So in the sense that they're both breaking open new markets, they are similar. Their methods are entirely different however. Tesla shares its tech with others and appears to be eager to be a battery provider to other EV makers. Apple OTOH refuses to play nice with anyone, and insists on dominating everything and shutting out all competition.

      • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday October 15 2014, @01:16PM

        by urza9814 (3954) on Wednesday October 15 2014, @01:16PM (#106230) Journal

        They do compare. Jobs brought us smartphones; he (and Apple) didn't invent them, but they made the first one that was easy to use, didn't use a stupid stylus, and had broad appeal, and really made smartphones something that everyone and his brother has. (I'll probably get a bunch of WinMo and Blackberry fans shouting me down here.) Before the iPhone, only some rich people, politicians, and geeks had smartphones, and they were clunky, and didn't have much in the way of 3rd-party apps. After the iPhone, everything changed: now everyone has one.

        That wasn't my experience at all. There was definitely a period in my highschool, somewhere between the RAZR and the iPhones, where everyone I knew wanted either a Blackberry or the T-Mobile Sidekick. Particularly the Sidekick, that thing was MASSIVELY popular. And yeah, the Sidekick wasn't a true smartphone -- but neither was the original iPhone. The Sidekick had more apps too. Of course, not too many kids actually owned either due to the price of the data plans. But definitely far more had one of those than the original iPhone -- the only person I know who owned the original iPhone ALSO had a Sidekick at the time.

        I didn't see smartphones start to REALLY get popular until around the release of the iPhone 3G. I think Apple was more a case of being in the right place at the right time (which, yes, does require some skill) rather than creating the market. Cell phones had been evolving into smartphones for nearly a decade before the iPhone came around, the market definitely existed already. Even the 'whole device is a screen' form-factor predates the iPhone, though most phones were navigating them using trackpads and slide-out keyboards at the time, but the touch screen concept would have come around anyway if Apple hadn't done it. Maybe the only reason Apple got there first is because Apple was the only company that could get people to pay the prices such a device would cost.

  • (Score: 1) by NeoNormal on Tuesday October 14 2014, @01:21PM

    by NeoNormal (2516) on Tuesday October 14 2014, @01:21PM (#105915)
    "Musk > Jobs...by any measure."

    I see you saved me the effort of typing that. Thanks.

  • (Score: 2) by Sir Garlon on Tuesday October 14 2014, @03:56PM

    by Sir Garlon (1264) on Tuesday October 14 2014, @03:56PM (#105967)

    I am the last person I would have expected to defend Steve Jobs, but when you say

    Jobs - take something others are already doing and make it all J.Ive shiny slick

    that is probably a fair assessment for the iPhone but I think it understates the role Jobs & Wozniak had in developing the market for personal computers with the Apple II. Here they were an early mover (along with Commodore) and as I recall, it was IBM that played catch-up by making a personal computer.

    Comparing one celebrity industrialist to another is silly, though. Was Henry Ford greater than Andrew Carnegie? I think they were both pretty impressive. They both transformed my country (United States) and had impact beyond its borders. I do not really care which of them would win in a fight.

    --
    [Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.