Shall we forget that Steve Jobs conspired with other companies to pay developers less?
This is well-documented in courts (and also on many other websites, by the way):
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/24/apple-goo...
See:
"[...] Steve Jobs orchestrated an elaborate scheme to prevent poaching and drive down wages."
> Shall we forget that Steve Jobs conspired with other companies to pay developers less?
Forgetting bad actions is an essential part of the process of deification, and since ancient times, rulers who sought to be equated with gods would put their or their ancestors images on coins with a deity on the reverse side.
Several coins in the US display slave owners because they are founding fathers, and the practice of putting presidents on coins in the US only began in the early 1900s, with the Lincoln penny, and their portraits on paper money only began 50 years earlier.
In our current era of tech industrialist worship, is it surprising that we do the same for Steve Jobs?
That said, you are absolutely right to bring it up, as a push back against that deification process.
This is one reason I support not putting humans on money. We used to put mythological figures on our coinage (liberty, justice, etc), because the are symbols and are uncomplicated by substance.
Humans are flawed. Putting humans on money -- as symbols -- is going to make us go in circles about their imperfection. From Washington as a slave owner to Steve Jobs suppressing wages.
This is not an issue if we just put the symbols on the money instead of using people as proxies. If we want a coin for innovators, but Providentia on the coin.
Guess when you put it that way, it's much better to have a clanker on a coin than a person.
Sadly, with that mentality we wouldn't have celebrities or perhaps even that many leaders. Fests like this are what drive some of the most driven people, and our biology makes us want to follow and admire other people as a former pack hunting species. The best we got is thst we can't put any living person on a coin (though, guess what the rumors are trying to say?)
> Shall we forget that Steve Jobs conspired with other companies to pay developers less?
What could be a more fitting placement than on a dollar coin? He'll be used to pay employees using an inflating dollar currency, where he can continue to pay employees less in perpetuity.
Considering it costs $1.25 for each of these he's already withholding value!
On the other hand what's more American than eroding workers rights through coordination between rich business owners? Granted there's fewer machine guns on trains involved than in some periods. [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre and several other incidents.
For real. Where is my Dennis Ritchie coin?
Would ha e 100% taken Woz, but he still seems to be kicking.
That is the interesting thing about tech. So many pioneers that transformed society are still around. It's a relatively young field that exploded over the last few decades.
Yes ... Steve Jobs was a complete jerk, but he was a brilliant salesman and CEO, and you cannot deny that.
He was an absolutely brilliant visionary who was able to bring his way of thinking to life through others, in the most brutal way possible. This included business (successes and failures) and his treatment of people (including his own family and ultimately himself).
What he did was literally change the shape and direction of the entire human race through his ability to level up existing products (directly and indirectly) to a level that no one would have thought possible, including his own employees.
That said, he was absolute piece of shit human being and all of his successes came at great expense of himself and others. I think there are a great number of people who are far more well-rounded and, if we aren't focused on fascist ideals, we should elevate those folks instead of Jobs.
He wansn't any kind of visionary. He didn't invent or design a single thing. He was a ruthless manager and marketer, abusing people and taking credit for their work.
Sometimes half the battle of making a product is to get the right people in the right room at the right time.
He managed to do that quite frequently. How much credit to give him for it is something I'm not quite sure of myself, but you really can't argue with the results.
He was obviously an asshole, but claiming that he wasn't any kind of visionary is just blatant revisionism.
Hot take, but I'm not sure if "salesman" is what I want represented in history.
Then again, that's probably what most represent America of the last 50 yearss. Selling off all its talent overseas and then trying to sell off the idea of labor afterwards.
Many people don't even know the Syrian ancestry of Jobs, as per WikiPedia.
Steven Paul Jobs was born in San Francisco, California, on February 24, 1955, to Joanne Carole Schieble and Abdulfattah "John" Jandali (Arabic: عبد الفتاح الجندلي)
...
His cousin Bassma Al Jandaly has claimed that Jobs' birth name (prior to adoption) was Abdul Lateef Jandali (Arabic: عبد اللطيف الجندلي).
Perhaps also a good moment to remember this Banksy art
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/dec/11/banksy-...
(...from where we read..)
In a rare statement accompanying the work, Banksy said: “We’re often led to believe migration is a drain on the country’s resources but Steve Jobs was the son of a Syrian migrant. Apple ... only exists because they allowed in a young man from Homs.”
Ok? That doesn’t diminish in any way his technological and industrial accomplishments.
> Ok? That doesn’t diminish in any way his technological and industrial accomplishments.
Why are those the criteria for being on a coin? Neither Henry Ford nor John D Rockefeller are on coins.
Jobs was dismissive of concerns about US technology manufacturing jobs being offshored to China, famously saying "Those jobs aren't coming back" [1].
He was right of course, and he seems to have consciously avoided involvement in discussions about the economic impacts of the manufacturing exodus on US workers - he was a requisite globalist.
It took Obama pressing him to get him to even make the statement I referenced above.
1. https://m-economictimes-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/m.economi...
I'm personally glad that Steve Jobs wasn't a protectionist and we weren't all paying $2000 in 2011 dollars for an iPhone.
No, just in 2025 of you really crank out the storage. Much better time to invest i premium products.
Tangent: I won't understand people hesitant to put down as much money on a phone as a desktop. Especially when considering that we know it costs more to shrink technology. If that's too much, oh well. I tend to buy 1-2 years previous when upgrading. Easily halves the price and the old flagship specs are still competitive.
> I'm personally glad that Steve Jobs wasn't a protectionist
Me also. What does that have to do with Jobs being represented on currency?
Why not do the same for the pharmaceutical CEOs who have set up generic drug supply chains overseas, or the leaders of apparel companies who set up overseas sweatshops to enable us to have disposable clothing?
Arguably, affordable antibiotics and underwear have made a vastly bigger positive impact on standard of living than iPhones.
I was addressing your point about Steve Jobs being a globalist, which you made out to be a bad thing. Globalism is a rising tide that lifts all boats.
> Arguably, affordable antibiotics and underwear have made a vastly bigger positive impact on standard of living than iPhones.
Maybe so, but "positive impact on standard of living" isn't the theme of this US Mint collection. The theme is "American Innovation."
Real sad to hear thst "making the world a better place to live in" isn't innovation anymore.
But yeah it's all marketing. Who better than the marketer?
I think the moral character / deeds of a person should play a role in whether or not we choose to honor them.
His ultimate crime of cheapness was pushing the $1-$3 app.
He singlehandedly set the anchor price of the entire industry so low that he set in motion the whole freemium/monetization/enshittification trend.
I think even if the price was set high it would have devolved into enshitification and ad-infestation. With expensive televisions amd fridges pushing ads, it is not too far fetched. Expensive software is also going down the path of enshitification.
Yeah this was an Asian move. The first lootbox want as fat back as the 90's and their pre-smartphone apps were bustling.
You add in a large screen and quick transactions and Asia would have hit f2p just as soon, with or without however America priced it.
developers deserve less. they were paid way too much especially back then
If we’re doing “deserve” then I have some other, more pressing suggestions for who might deserve less, than the people doing the actual work.
If we’re not doing “deserve” then no, they should have had more money if illegal wage suppression hadn’t been happening. Else the illegal wage suppression wouldn’t have been needed.
>to pay developers less
Oh no, he only paid them $300k/year? How did they survive without selling their kidneys to the black market?
The difference between a highlh paid specialist worker and a billionaire is about a billion dollars. They are still working class, they can still be screwed over.
Times are hard, but don't confuse the person with a bowl of rice with the people who own thr rice factory. Even if that is a lot compared to the scraps you have.
Why Steve Jobs and not the Apple II? Or even the iPhone?
Alternatively why not Seymour Cray instead of the Cray-1?
Or why not use one side for the inventor and the other side for the invention?
Jobs sitting there in an empty field just throws the whole set for me.
I would've been happy with the picture of Steve and Woz in the garage.
Woz is still alive, so that wouldn't be possible yet. But I do agree.
The title was editorialized and not accurate. These are two separate coins celebrating innovations in their respectable states.
Sure. But why does one coin have a person and the other have an invention? Why not inventions for both or people for both?
America invented the Steve Jobs, now ubiquitous around the world.
You could argue that Steve Jobs was a product of very Californian circumstances: Born to parents of very different cultural backgrounds, raised in a hotbed of electronics development (and new age spirituality), started a company in an area full of enthusiasts and venture capitalists…
Maybe California should put him on their dollar coin then.
He is, in the link above. And the cray-1 is for Wisconsin.
For completeness, mobike refrigeration is for Minnesota and Dr. Normal Bourlag is for Iowa
Jobs did a lot of useful things, but he was not an inventor and so has nothing to show. He was really good at forcing people to perfect the inventions of others which is a useful thing. Cray-1 is an invention, and better known than the inventor. So it is the right decision for both.
You can of course debate which is better and there are hundreds of other choices that could be put on either coin - both humans and inventions. I would probably pick different things (not people) for both - but this is a reflection of my biases and not some universal truth.
Jobs was arguably the first product manager in personal computing - meaning he had a clear vision for the consumer and product and worked to carry that out.
The intent here is to get people's attention, and an arguement over "which is best" is exactly the outcome desired. I won't step into it except to say regardless of the subject and reasoning, the design of the Jobs one is pretty dumb. It looks like the gave a prompt focused on hippy-spirtual-big-thinker to AI and said "design a coin".
Probably decided by committee and a subcommittee for each state. So you end up with inconsistent decisions between states.
bc theyre going for the aspect of the innovation that the most people in the relevant political constituencies will recognize. in some cases the inventor, in others the invention.
Why not Wozniak (probably still alive), or Shannon (I'd vote for him), Convey, Knut, Reed, Solomon, Thompson, Ritchie, Kernighan, etc?
Why it is a CEO? Why Jobs and Edison?
It is just how it is...
Well Jobs repeated it ~3-4 times without Wozniak (and arguably being a part of making Apple II a huge success was not even his greatest achievement).
What did Jobs actually build himself? My understanding was that man was technically inept.
Saying "no" to off-topic / dumb ideas in a consistent way is an amazing product development skill.
It's like carving away all of the marble that doesn't look like David.
Neal Stephenson wrote a really great Substack about art and how it's the end product of many small decisions. That's exactly what Jobs did on the hardware he worked on.
https://nealstephenson.substack.com/p/idea-having-is-not-art
Far enough, because I will even concede that after Jobs died, Apple has never been the same. Cook has been serviceable, but I haven't really been comparatively thrilled with anything to come out during his tenure.
Technically inept is acceptable as long as he could communicate well. The man consistently had clear vision and the ability to communicate that vision to those who were around him.
He told other people what to invent, all whilst leaving his Mercedes in the disabled parking spot.
That's an achievement.
Products? I mean at the end of the day (as long as you consistently pick the right people/tools for the job) technical part is just an implementation detail.
I'd love to see Wozniak up there. From Al Alcorn, a pivotal computer scientist and electrical engineer employed in the early days of Atari:
"So, meanwhile, Steve’s friend Wozniak comes in the evenings. He would be out there during burn-in tests while these Tank games were on the production line, and he’d play Tank forever. I didn’t think much of it; I didn’t care. He was a cool guy.
I found that what really had happened was that Jobs never designed a lick of anything in his life. He had Woz do it [redesign Breakout].
Woz did it in like 72 hours nonstop and all in his head. He got it down to 20 or 30 ICs [integrated circuits]. It was remarkable… a tour de force.
It was so minimized, though, that nobody else could build it. Nobody could understand what Woz did but Woz. It was this brilliant piece of engineering, but it was just unproduceable. So the game sat around and languished in the lab."
I don't think you're allowed to have living people on a US coin
Not so much an exception but a work around according to the guardian newspaper [1]:
[...] the law specifically says “no head and shoulders portrait or bust of any person, living or dead, and no portrait of a living person may be included in the design on the reverse of any coin “created to mark the US anniversary”.
The proposed design features a wider illustration of Trump on the reverse side, a move that legal experts said would fall outside the ban on a “head and shoulders portrait or bust”.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/03/trump-coin-t...
Neil Armstrong (technically his spacesuit, presumably with him inside) was on the 2002 Ohio quarter.
There is a law but there have been plenty of exceptions including President Calvin Coolidge on a 1926 half-dollar and Alabama Governor Thomas Kilby on a 1921 commemorative coin and Carter Glass on the 1936 Lynchburg Half Dollar.
On the US Mint Site I was just looking at the 'Medals', where you CAN have a living person minted onto what they call a medal. Unsure of if it's the same size as a coin, but if it is, you could conceivably try and circulate the medals of living ex-presidents (to great cost to yourself).
The main difference between a medal and a coin is that a coin has a face value issued by a country.
Why not the inventors of the transistor?
Anyway, at least I'm happy the Nobel prize committee isn't based in the US. Otherwise we'd soon see the Nobel prize for advertising.
There are many inventions and people from AT&T Bell Labs that deserve their own coin.
Or venture capital.
I'm thinking Elizabeth Holmes should either be on a coin or get some kind of Nobel.
(he said in jest)
But seriously, Lee de Forest (Iowa or New York), Chester Carlson (Washington, New York), Charles Martin Hall (Ohio), Philo Farnsworth (Utah)…
Who? that's why they're not on a coin.
Wasn't he a mega racist and eugenicist?
Maybe, but that's the flip side of the coin ...
Each state voted on its innovation.
Had to consult an LLM about Kansas. I'm going to go with Clyde Vernon Cessna, George Washington Carver or Walter Chrysler.
George Washington Carver is already on the 2024 coin for Missouri.
Basketball (um, coaching), escalators (Jesse W. Reno, 1891), styrofoam, slushies.
Dolly Parton is the only person of value to ever come out my state (TN).
Al Gore and Elvis Presley are two prominent Tennesseans who immediately come to mind as a third-generation Californian. Don’t discount your state.
One neighbors growing up used to tell people to not believe any of the conspiracy theories about Elvis still being alive. He knew Elvis was dead because he was one of the paramedics to carry his body out of Graceland.
(Elvis is also from Mississippi, btw)
Tennessee already had their coin in 2022. They featured the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)
Oh no way? TVA is great. I went to college down the road from their HQ, and they were the main source of internships for my comp sci program. My university had a strong cybersecurity program that was partly DoD funded, in which many graduates went on to perform cybersecurity roles for TVA. After all, power plants are often juicy targets.
Grim take on your family and neighbors.
If you had some of knowledge and experiences I have had, I would hope you would agree with me. Things have gotten better over the years, but there is a lot of dark and grim history.
I don’t want to psychologize too much but when people have tough upbringing and then find a community in adulthood they tend to invert the morals and values of their upbringing.
Cordell Hull, architect of the United Nations, who won a Nobel peace prize for his work, was from Tennessee.
(Mods, I am sorry if this is getting off topic.)
The KKK was founded in Pulaski, TN, which is about an hour from where I was raised. It wasn't until July, 2021 that the bust of the founder of the KKK (Nathan Bedford Forrest) was removed from the state capitol building. It's now been relocated to the 'TN State Museum' which was magically opened mere days after the bust was removed.
I could provide countless more examples of things I have heard, read, and witnessed, but I am certain you do not need any more examples, and honestly, even thinking about it all really depresses me.
Having shitty people from your state doesn't also mean that there are no good people from your state
I mean you did essentially give us the atomic bomb?
I'd vote for a Stallman coin and its him eating his foot flesh
> Mobile Refrigeration — Minnesota
The logistical chain for keeping products products is really interesting:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_chain
Besides food, another area where it is critical is pharmaceuticals.
They said these innovations are what the state is known for, but I've been a Minnesota resident my entire life and didn't know refrigerated trucking was invented here.
Unlike California, MN is not good at promoting all the things they do and so people never think of them despite all the cool/useful inventions that come from there. (I now live in Iowa which is even worse about promoting).
Probably should - California has a lions share of all the innovations. I would guess that it would be even more concentrated than just the correlation to population given the research institution / market structures.
Other states should most certainly promote their successes.
I just decided to pull mine up... I live in Florida, and I had no idea of the following:
* Air conditioning: In 1851, Dr. John Gorrie invented a machine to cool air, which laid the groundwork for modern air conditioning and refrigeration
* Gatorade: The sports drink was developed at the University of Florida to help the football team rehydrate.
* Sunscreen: Benjamin Green invented the first commercial sunscreen in 1944.
* IBM Personal Computer (IBM PC): A team in Boca Raton developed the first IBM PC in 1981.
* Supercapacitor: A new type of supercapacitor was invented in Florida. (2013)
There's a bunch more, seems like a number of them have to do with the weather ;) I knew about Gatorade, but had no idea about the rest.
This makes me kind of wish I had this when I was in public school as part of one of our courses, it's kind of nice to learn about the innovation around you, especially when you don't exactly live in a place known for it. I think its inspiring to a younger mind to know you can be creative and innovative living just about anywhere.
> Air conditioning: In 1851, Dr. John Gorrie invented a machine to cool air, which laid the groundwork for modern air conditioning and refrigeration
And modern cooling was invented by Carrier, with the original use case to actually control humidity to help the publishing/newspaper industry:
> On December 3, 1911, Carrier presented what is perhaps the most significant document ever prepared on air conditioning – Rational Psychrometric Formulae – at the annual meeting of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. It became known as the "Magna Carta of Psychrometrics."[8][9] This document tied together the concepts of relative humidity, absolute humidity, and dew-point temperature, thus making it possible to design air-conditioning systems to precisely fit the requirements at hand.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willis_Carrier
The idea of temperature (first in cinemas and theatres) came later. People under-estimate how much humidity control is needed for comfort: many building codes are adding language to have a standalone whole house dehumidifier.
Its funny because in Florida you kinda need the dehumidifier, it makes a major difference, I have small ones all around the house, but for years I didn't know this. I actually believe wholeheartedly I get sick way less because of it. In other places / states you need a humidifier instead.
A book on the subject came out earlier this year that I've been wanting to read, "Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves" by Nicola Twilley
check out Bill Bryson’s “at home” if you’re looking for something a little less specific to refrigeration and more fun narration of similar novel life/home inventions. To give a sense of depth, refrigeration is probably a few pages. It’s very high level but a fun read about things you’ve forgotten to think about around the house
I have to say, I like the Mobile Refrigeration coin the most.
During the pandemic there was controversy about who received Moderna/Phizer vs who received J&J's vaccine. They were giving black neighborhoods J&J because it didn't have as strict refrigeration requirements, and a lot of black neighborhoods don't have a nearby pharmacy which can store the vaccines. J&J was thought to be less effective and had a higher rate of vaccine injury though.
J&J was very effective. They came later and turned out to be less effective than Moderna/Phizer - but their vaccine was still very good when viewed in isolation - they just were unfortunate to have an amazingly great competitor to compare against.
When I think of COVID and refrigeration trucks I think of them being used as makeshift morgues before the bodies were moved to mass graves.
> J&J was though to be less effective and had a higher rate of vaccine injury though.
What's a 'vaccine injury', though?
Side effects of the vaccine basically. I guess technically headaches or fatigue would be a vaccine injury
But I use the phrase "thought to" intentionally: I don't know what the science says now, but at the time there were reported cases of myocarditis in people who took the JnJ vaccine. This was like May of 2021, so I don't know if the science ever panned out on that, but it definitely drove discussions around health equity with the vaccine
A lot of dissimilarities from that photo.
I like the photo though. Maybe I'm just a hi-fi dork. Is it a McIntosh tube amplifier behind him? Would be befitting.
weird design for steve jobs.. without context it looks like the depiction of some spiritual leader (which maybe is a bit funny given the early apple fanbase). I get he was a bit of a hippie, but that's not exactly his claim-to-fame
> His posture and expression, as he is captured in a moment of reflection
i dont associate "reflection" with him. not to disparage him in the slightest, but its just not in the top ten of things i associate with him.
I then made myself laugh by trying to imagine a depiction of Bill Gates in the same pose
If you scroll down there is a description explaining the pose:
> This design presents a young Steve Jobs sitting in front of a quintessentially northern California landscape of oak-covered rolling hills. His posture and expression, as he is captured in a moment of reflection, show how this environment inspired his vision to transform complex technology into something as intuitive and organic as nature itself. Inscriptions are “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA” and “CALIFORNIA.” Additional inscriptions are “STEVE JOBS” and “MAKE SOMETHING WONDERFUL.”
sometimes I'm really flabbergasted by the replies and reading comprehension on HN. I'm genuinely curious what's going on. Are you a last-gen AI or something? Did you read the first sentence and hit reply?
I'm literally quoting the passage you're citing and talking directly about it. And then you quote it back to me.
mind = blown.
It reminds me of the scene from the movie where he’s taking LSD in the field.
> I then made myself laugh by trying to imagine a depiction of Bill Gates in the same pose
That is funny, although nothing will ever top Deborah Feingold's 1985 photoshoot where he lies on his desk and flirts with the camera
Maybe Boucher's Blonde Odalisque.
see, now that's a coin I'd actually get! I'd get a whole roll and give it out to friends
From:
Steve Jobs, sjobs@apple.com
To:
Steve Jobs, sjobs@apple.com
Date:
Thursday, September 2, 2010 at 11:08PM
I grow little of the food I eat, and of the little I do grow I did not breed or perfect the seeds.
I do not make any of my own clothing. I speak a language I did not invent or refine.
I did not discover the mathematics I use.
I am protected by freedoms and laws I did not conceive of or legislate, and do not enforce or adjudicate.
I am moved by music I did not create myself.
When I needed medical attention, I was helpless to help myself survive.
I did not invent the transistor, the microprocessor, object oriented programming, or most of the technology I work with.
I love and admire my species, living and dead, and am totally dependent on them for my life and well being.
Sent from my iPad
yeah, i don't wanna shit of steve jobs. I'm sure he reflects on stuff. (though this thing seems to suggest.. he needs to reflect on some real basic human stuff..) I'm sure you can find some cute quotes from Bill Gates too. It's just not really what he's known for
just out of pure curiosity.. what's the context of this?
He wrote a poem.. to email to himself?
and.. how did he get access to his private emails?
I can't think of any other example of people writing and mailing poems to themselves
> I can't think of any other example of people writing and mailing poems to themselves
How many people’s emails have you checked to see if they do this?
And then you made me laugh as well.
> which maybe is a bit funny given the early apple fanbase
Or, you know, just early Steve Jobs.
I love how much Iowa embraces the man who saved a billion lives. He's also one of their two representatives in the National Statuary Hall Collection
If you haven’t read it, I loved The Wizard and the Prophet and think about it a lot
That is one ugly coin and doesn’t look like Steve Jobs.
It also makes no sense to not include a computer. I get the “California theme but Steve and hills and trees doesn’t jive.
Agreed though the shape of the Cray-1 is really suited to be on a coin. The Jobs one looks really terrible.
if the intent is to bring attention to technological innovations, Jobs was not a technological innovator, despite what the decades of PR would lead you to believe. If we want to argue that he was a promoter of tech innovations, in his capacity as a businessman, I would find that less objectionable but I still don't think Jobs is the guy we should be highlighting, given his track record of screwing over the people doing the actual work and innovating. (though depending on how cynical you are, that is perhaps exactly the type of person that the Powers That Be would want to push as the face of innovation)
He created Apple, and then came back to save them from bankruptcy and made them profitable within months which none of their other CEOs leading up to his return could.
The way he got the notoriously staunch record labels on board with their $1/song plan to make iTunes possible and make music infinitely more convenient and accessible overnight was unforeseen.
Not many people have repeatedly proven themselves many times over like he did. I do believe he was one of the greatest business men of all time, and for all the things you can complain about with Apple, I'm glad they exist to inject some sense of taste into computing, and a standard for every other computing device to be compared to (cue examples of bad design decisions that came from Apple. Don't bother, doesn't disprove my point)
Innovator has a broader meaning than the individual who wrote the program or built the circuit. Setting the direction and vision for technology is a big deal.
The engineers were very smart but it’s hard to see us knowing their name or having such an impact on technology without Steve. Woz was destined for a comfortable 30 year career at HP.
Why should driving a "design-first" and "user experience"/UX first model not be viewed as innovative?
Just implementing something isn't enough. You need to also be able to ensure that it is usable by non-specialists.
And this is something that Jobs really drove in the tech industry in it's early days, when non-technical users were basically an afterthought.
That is the reasoning behind their choice for Jobs, and honestly it's a valid one.
And meanwhile today you can get more power than the Cray-1 (or Cray-2) from a single chip a fraction of the size of that coin.
Very quickly:
a dollar coin is about 550 mm^2 on a face
the Cray-1 could do 160 MFLOPS
an M1 chip has a die size of 120 mm^2
an M1 chip can do over 1 TFLOPS
I had just gone down this rabbit hole for unrelated reasons (looking into yields). Nvidia's 5090 die is 750 mm^2, managing 419 TFLOPS on the FP16 benchmark.
And on the side it reads "you're holding it wrong".
It's not a major deal as nobody will use them, but it's strange to have a company on US legal tender. I wonder what percent of the run Cray will buy?
Presumably some, although HPE don’t use the old Cray logo, and the name is a bit downplayed when they talk about their supercomputer stuff, although it is still used (like most old computer companies, naturally they’ve ended up owned by HPE, who seem to collect them).
Ah, I noticed they had been acquired by HPE, but their Wikipedia article still listed revenue so I assumed they were a subsidiary. Looking again, the revenue is from the year before the acquisition. My mistake.
There isn’t a company on the coins, just the supercomputer device itself.
The Jobs coin has Jobs himself.
The device is followed by the word "Cray" and overall it's similar enough to their trademarked logo I imagine I'd get in trouble if I tried to use it.
Yeah I just meant the actual device is being honored, not the corporation itself.
Maybe its simply my personally opinion, but I agree with @tylerflick with the opinion that why not Dennis Ritchie. Sure, Jobs was a ridiculously effective *promoter*, and there is without a doubt a place for that role in the world...But i guess when i think *innovation* i think Ritchie, Woz, Cray, Admiral Hopper, etc...not, like, the business folks...but maybe i'm being too harsh?
Before Steve Jobs, UX was an afterthought in much of software development.
It was he and Apple that really drove the tech industry to recognize that User Experience and developing simplified products for non-specialists matter.
Even the Mint gives that explaination for why he's included as an "innovator".
Respectfully, i disagree. But, then when i really probe why i feel that, i think i simply have personally negative feelings against Jobs, and that of course isn't fair to fans of Jobs. It might sound like i'm discounting the good things that jobs indeed did accomplish, and which directly did help society...I'm not! I just feel like Jobs is that kid who - yes, does help - but others do LOTS of the work, but because he is the loudest kid, tends to get all the attention...clearly the issue is on my side; my personal feelings towards Jobs, and its not a fair assessment for whether he should or should not be considered an innovator...So i think i will respectfully stop commenting on this thread since i am of course not adding value, other than to express: i never liked Jobs...Which isn't helpful for this dialogue. So...Sorry, and thanks all!
Hmm.. I would’ve preferred Wozniak.
They got the wrong Steve.
Woz is awesome and as an engineer I understand the urge to say he’s the main one who should be honored but we have to be realistic. Jobs ushered in 2 eras, only 1 with Woz. The personal computer and the computer in everyone’s pocket.
That’s not touching any of the other areas like helping to drive Pixar. Woz did not have a second act, which is perfectly fine and I deeply respect him but he doesn’t have quite the same cultural impact.
Woz is a genius who invented the personal computer as we know it.
Jobs was a celebrity who was good at branding himself as a genius.
I don't consider a clever UI idea like a touch screen to be a work of brilliance, especially since he did zero engineering work, both for early and later Apple devices. Touch screen handheld devices would've come around with or without him, just maybe a few years later.
It should've been Woz.
Woz was one of many people who designed microprocessor based computers in the 1970s (I recently started reading back issues of Dr. Dobb's Journal https://archive.org/details/dr_dobbs_journal_vol_01_201710, and the variety is astounding), and far from the first one, though he was very good at what he did.
What really set apart the Apple II from many of its peers is that it came preassembled, in a neatly designed case (though the Commodore PET and TRS-80 were pretty much released at the same time), and those esthetics were due more to Jobs than Wozniak.
Jobs did not write product code, or design boards, but he had a constant presence in the design of Apple's products and many (though by no means all) of his inputs changed the products for the better.
This is much more true than the parent comment, but nobody invented the concept of an integrated system in a case with keyboard and screen. That's because said concept is called a "video terminal" and had existed for at least a decade prior to the mid-70s. In fact one of the prime target markets for the first generation 8-bit CPUs was...video terminals. A late-70s personal computer is really just a video terminal that has been made programmable by the user. The hardware is pretty much identical.
> Touch screen handheld devices would've come around with or without him, just maybe a few years later.
They already existed. The iPod Touch was not the first one. It was certainly the most successful one though.
> Woz is a genius who invented the personal computer as we know it.
History being written by the victors here, I believe.
He designed some clever things for example bit-banging the floppy interface which allowed the Apple 2 to have floppies at a lower price point than competitors. Another innovation of the Apple 2 at the time was its use of a switched-mode PSU. It was almost certainly the first personal computer to have that, but designed by Rod Holt not Woz. He didn't invent the switching PSU -- they were commonly used in portable test equipment at the time.
Having been alive at the time and paying attention, I disagree that Woz invented anything very significant. Definitely an important figure, and a clever guy though.
After looking more closely at the release dates of the earliest home computers, I found you're right. Three major home computers, all preassembled, with keyboard and video display and BASIC launched in 1977. Seems Apple II was not the first, only the most forward-looking of the three.
I still don't credit Steve Jobs with starting any computing revolutions, in 1977 or 2008.
I mean we're talking about a country which boils down to "What would happen if we maximized capitalism with no regard for other things?", and while I both admire and despise Steve Jobs, he feels like the perfect individual to put on a US coin.
Norman Borlaug's story is amazing. He brought modern farming practices to Mexico and created a new strain of high yield disease resistant dwarf wheat at quadrupled wheat production in the country. Did the same in India, Pakistan, and Africa. Saved a billion lives as a result. Solved food as a limited resource for the first time in human history. We've now gotten to transcend food scarcity as a society.
It's super cool that the US Mint is commemorating his work.
Few individuals have touched anywhere near as many lives as he has, perhaps only matched by Fritz Haber/Carl Bosch and ammonia synthesis.
Those aren't the coins in circulation. Those are proof coins and reverse proof coins, made shiny for collectors.
They could've put the Apple I or the 6502 or an Intel chip on there
are these meant for regular circulation or are these "collection items"?
(Im not from the US, so Im not aware of local specifics)
The answer is an awkward "yes"
They are "designed" for circulation, but only ever get sold as collectors items. Banks won't stock them but you can order rolls or bags of them from the US mint for a little over face value (I ordered a roll of the space shuttle ones to the UK)
I'm not sure what stops the USA using dollar coins in circulation, I assume there's no legal requirement for banks to stock them?
(The fact that's there's currently at least three different sizes of US dollar coin that is legal tender probably doesn't help either)
Banks usually have some dollar coins and if you ask they can get them.
But cash register drawers usually do not have a space for them, they’re relatively heavy, and people don’t use them because they don’t use them.
Vending machines famously went ham trying to use them which annoyed people.
It didn’t help that the old Susan B dollar coins were almost a quarter shape and size if you weren’t paying attention.
The dollar coin SHOULD be small, a bit bigger than a dime, imo.
Or just skip the dollar coin and go right to a three dollar coin.
Pennies are going away so cash drawers should start having room for $1 coins soon. I'm hopeful we'll start seeing them.
The toll booths in Massachusetts used to accept dollar coins.
My intuition is that if there’s no 2 dollar coin to go with it, there’s no way for it to gain practical traction.
In the US, change is already an annoying factor because sales tax is rarely included in eg, 4.99. So no one is jumping up and down to go from five slices of paper to five rattling coins.
>I'm not sure what stops the USA using dollar coins in circulation,
We have a dollar bill
You remind me of the time (probably around 2002) I used a 20 to pay for some transit card/ticket somewhere and ended up with something like 15 dollar coins in change. I want to say it was a metro card in NYC.
Concurrent dismay and delight.
>Concurrent dismay and delight.
That's exactly what I felt at the time too. To me it was always three-quarters delight and one-quarter dismay. A jangling rain of dancing gold coins is a delightful thing. Sure, now I have to go to the bank; but until that time I will walk around as a pirate, pockets full of doubloons.
The problem from a get-the-coins-into-circulation perspective is that the delight diminishes with exposure and the dismay doesn't.
Yeah, there's a moment when the weight of the change you're carrying becomes noticeable that elicits a "seriously?!" dismay response.
Around the same time I was working as a cashier when a woman came in with a Sacagawea dollar.
"Woah, look at this, I just got it as change from the vending machine. I think it's Middle Eastern. Very exotic."
"It's a dollar coin, US currency."
"Woah! No way, how can you tell!?"
"It says United States of America one dollar?"
"Oh."
USPS stamp vending machines around that time period were a great source of dollar coins. Didn’t commonly see them otherwise. Never had an issue spending them afterwards. Unlike the time I was in line at a fast food restaurant when the employee at the register was yelling at a customer about fake money. Turned out the “forgery” was a $2 bill.
All the vending machines I've used in the past 5 years were tap to pay.
They're very popular in Ecuador (along with locally minted coins)
The Cray-1 supercomputer icon looks like the outline of burning man's black rock city. Wonder if there was any inspiration from Cray-1 supercomputer's design.
Concentric circles around a central figure, with a wedge to allow entry is a pretty obvious design pattern.
Instead of Jobs I would have liked to have Dennis Ritchie in that coin.
Not American myself, and never been there - are there really $1 notes and coins, or am I missing something here?
The $1 dollar notes are very economically inefficient (they don't last all that long, haven't had enough value to justify notes for a long time), and the mint has been trying to get people to stop using them and switch to coins for a long time. However, there is significant popular opposition to that, people seem to massively prefer notes.
At one point you could order $1 coins from the mint at face value and with free shipping, and they were really happy when they thought that lots of people were starting to use them. They were less happy when they realized just a few people were purchasing them on credit card with cashback, and just instantly depositing them back at the nearest bank to pay their credit card bill.
The single biggest problem with $1 coins, is that they are of similar size to quarter-dollar coins.
26.50 mm (1.043 in) - $1.00
24.26 mm (0.955 in) - $0.25
They feel almost identical, in your pocket, and the $1 coin is small enough to get stuck in many vending machines.
I am not exactly sure of the reason that the mint is so resistant to making the coins a bit bigger (they used to be).
Another, NSFW, problem with $1 coins is that their universal adoption would lead to a lot of bruised strippers.
I hear that they don't accept anything less than a $20 bill, these days...
"Making it rain" turning into "making it hail"
>However, there is significant popular opposition to that, people seem to massively prefer notes.
One of the most important features for cash is that it actually be accepted widely, and if I recall, that is a significant problem for $1 coins. I expect the majority machines that accept cash don't accept them, and trying to use them with a cashier is likely to result in amusement or confusion at best, rejection as a very possible outcome, or even accusations of fraud. That there were few instances where an individual would ever get these in normal activities probably made recognition and use even worse, especially as the instances I cam remember often seemed like attempts to push them inconveniently; I seem to remember that some government machines, I think in post offices, would insist on giving change with enormous numbers of one dollar coins, which would likely generate some resentment for users expecting change that would actually be accepted elsewhere.
It likely doesn't help that the design is rather large, eg, it is wider than a two euro coin and almost as heavy, and that one dollar notes are still being produced. For some reason, the US seems far less willing to be decisive in these changes.
> I expect the majority machines that accept cash don't accept them,
Worse. What wound up happening was that the feds encouraged (probably grant funded, IDK) support for it and the only implementers were other governments and the easiest way to check the box was to make all your mass transit ticket machines and the like spit them out as change despite often times not supporting them as payment so a machine would eat your $20, give you a $2 ticket and spit out 18 items about as useful as Chuck E Cheese tokens.
This has mostly gone away as those machines have mostly switched over to cashless.
Most machines (except those that literally only take quarters) take dollar coins, as these are designed to be the same as susan b anything dollars, which have been around since 1979.
The real key is they don’t stop making the dollar bill and force the issue.
But hey the penny is finally dying so who knows?
There are 1 dollar coins and 50 cent coins. The issue is that they've never had consistent designs/sizes so machines don't take them and people don't recognize them. To my mind, this is the primary reason they haven't caught on
Yes. $1 coins aren't super common but they're not so odd that someone wouldn't believe it's real.
There are also collector-oriented coins but pretty much none of those are actually intended for use.
Edit: fun fact, there are also $2 bills (but those are way more rare and someone might not believe it's real).
That is way beyond my usual experience with the bills! XD
It's happened more than once that people thought $2 bills were fake; here's a recent example: https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/houston-school-confuses-2-...
I had someone pocket a Susan B. Anthony $1 coin and put their own money in the register to replace it, but that was because it was a rare coin, not because they thought it was fake.
$2 bills aren’t rare at all. You can walk into your local bank and get a stack of them anytime, if you’d like.
Okay, awesome point.
Meanwhile, in my 25 years of living in the US (NJ, SoCal, and NorCal), I can count on one hand the number of times I've come across them "in the wild".
I started collecting them in 2004 by keeping every one I ran into in person and I now have: 3.
They’re mostly used by strip clubs so if that’s not your thing, you’ll rarely see them.
Strip clubs also commonly use 2 dollar bills.
The Venn diagram of things I learn on HN and things I expected to learn on HN has an ever decreasing intersection.
I remember using the light rail in DC when I visited, and that used $1 coins.
Caltrain stations' automated machines used to famously give $1 coins as change when buying tickets as well. Getting like 10 $1 coins as change for a $20 bill really weighed your pants down.
DC Metro is a heavy rail system.
Who wants a big pocket of heavy coins? Can keep in a wallet and just about anywhere is happy to exchange for larger bills if you’ve acquired too many.
I'm writing this from a Mac when I ask this. Has Apple actually created anything that could arguably have changed the world? Resistant crops, the Cray, mobile refrigeration all changed the world. My iPhone's nice, but it's not exactly on the same level. Is there anything from Apple that I'm missing?
The iPhone absolutely changed the world. I agree - it is not on the level of the green revolution or refrigeration. It still led to one of the largest paradigm shifts in end user computing, taking it from the desk or table at work or home into the hand, everywhere, for everyone.
I'm honestly still trying to wrap my head around in what way exactly the iPhone was innovative. It wasn't the first phone that could run programs, nor the first phone that could use the Internet (the "i" in "iPhone"). Perhaps it was the first phone that did both of those and also had a touchscreen, however that seems like an odd thing that would "take end-user computing from the desk to the hand, everywhere". I would argue the iPhone itself is not the innovation, but rather the ecosystem around it: the app store. I could be wrong, but I don't think anyone else was doing that in 2006.
The major innovation of the original iPhone was its ability to be both $800 (no carrier subsidies) and be an iconic sought after product that didn’t have much function outside of what was already available in the phone market.
Never heard of that Norman Borlaug guy. Sounds like a standup guy from his wikipedia.
No, it was just a misspelling. Edited for clarity.
That’s a pretty awful likeness of Jobs at any age.
One day they will make a coin featuring Elon Musk with the quote: "Full Self Driving is ready in 3 to 6 month"
Cray-1 - half computer (inner circle), half seating (outer circle).
Any info on the metal used for the coins?
I’d say these celebrate entrepreneurship more than innovation. Nothing wrong with that, but it does bother me that the true innovators often don’t get credit outside academia and enthusiasts well versed in the history.
Apple II was not the first usable by mere mortals PC. There’s a lot of contenders but one of the earliest came from Georgia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compucolor
Cray was not the first multiprocessor wide vector supercomputer, but it did innovate on it. I’d say Cray broke more fundamental innovation ground than Apple.
They could've put the Apple I, 6502, and Intel pentium, or even the frickin iPod on there
I'd love to see Dennis Ritchie commemorated as one of the greatest Americans.
He deserves it, without him, Jobs would be an unknown.
Featuring Jobs without Woz is actually disgusting. IMO, as a child of the 80s, Apple becoming popular and innovative required both.
EDIT: And forgot to mention Jef Raskin, who together with Woz played a pivotal role engineering the first Macintosh in 1984.
Everyone in here is concerned about whether or not X, Y or Z should be on the coin. I am asking myself, why the hell are we minting a new coin at all.
They're commemorative coins.
Woz should be on the coin and not Jobs.
If you’re gonna do jobs, do wozniak as well like jesus, one has actual American values, the other was a ruthless friend-fucker
Every truck has mobile refrigeration for half the year in Minnesota.
Steve should be meditating in a walled garden.
What happened to Trump promising to cancel the penny? It was a genuinely good idea that should have carried on to the nickel and dime. (I’m divided on $1 and $2 coins.)
Treasury stopped minting it reportedly back in May of this year. It’s officially still valid denomination and with tons in circulation, it’s doubtful it will be going away anytime soon.
That Steve Jobs coin really looks cool. It's the sculpture of him sitting cross-legged, surrounded by hills of Silicon Valley.
I wonder if these coins are available for purchase by the general public? anybody know?
Yes, the US Mint sells all of the coins in the American Innovation set to the public. Previous years’ coins can still be bought if they are not sold out.
Not an American but I wouldn't mind having some of these. Actually, coin collecting is a pretty neat hobby, especially for commemorative coins which depict a story like these. I wouldn't go in it for their possible future financial value though.
They should be available from the mint in collector’s tins, and available in circulation from eBay and similar.
They’re great to use as board game coins; much nicer than plastic chits.
Thanks, all.
This is delightful.
I used to be a coin-collector as a kid. Kinda outgrew the hobby as I grew older. But I still love new/old/unusual coins (among other things). I think I might get my hands on some of these.
You can normally order rolls of them
Steve Jobs was an absolut malignent narcissist and a copycat. Why not Dennis Ritchie for example? This is ridiculous.
Yes, I think this is an insult to our profession. All I can say about Jobs is he made lots of $. Dennis Ritchie revolutionized an industry.
> Yes, I think this is an insult to our profession.
I don't think the Mint's goal is to celebrate developers and computer scientists with the new coins. They're celebrating famous innovators and innovations from each state.
When Steve Job died all major newspapers, magazines and television news shows dedicated major space and time to report his death.
One week after someone far more important died: the co-creator of the most influential computer program in history (Unix) and the most influential programming language in history (C). Very few news media outlet reported the death of Dennis M. Ritchie.
I argue that Ritchie's legacy runs deeper and wider than Jobs'. Almost all CPUs and microprocessors existing today run code that was implemented using technologies created by Ritchie, from ABS breaks to satellites. But, even in this forum, many people don't know about him.
The irony of all of this is of course not only that effectively no one has used any of the $1 coins since the introduction of the Sacagawea, when their value had basically halved since then, just based on official inflation fraud numbers; so it is unlikely anyone will ever see these coins either, unless you make a deliberate point to acquire and use them.
The government is clearly trying to do away with the freedom of coinage and bills, intentionally and unintentionally through its inflation fraud, and that decline of America is rather ironically encapsulated in this kind of cheapening of the currency in several literal and figurative forms.
And these coins are not even made of any durable metals that could survive history until another civilization can collectively wonder about how America could have ruined itself so quickly, after rising so rapidly.
They could have at least made these coins at least silver or gold, so some future intelligence could at least find them. But here we are, the government creating tokens with cheap iconography made of cheap materials and a face value that literally cannot even buy you a cup of colored sugar water anymore.
Frankly, who cares? Beyond saying “that’s nifty” while looking at the images of the designs; who here expects to ever see one of these “in the wild”?
Have you seen any of the 40 presidential dollar coins in the wild? How about the 29 “American innovation” coins that precede this set? Heck, how often have you seen a Sacagawea in the wild, considering there were probably about 2+ billion of them minted by now?
And it's a first time Bill Gates had a thought that he would better be dead by now.
I'd personally rather still being alive than being on a coin.
If Trump can get a coin, does that mean Steve Jobs is alive?
