US politician Nancy Pelosi stated that Jobs claimed undue credit for a product that the federal government contributed significantly toward.
Apple’s iPhone is arguably the phone that triggered the entire smartphone revolution. In a world of phones with all manner of keypads, its all-touchscreen design was revolutionary at the time.
However, recent statements by US politician Nancy Pelosi, Minority Leader of the United States House of Representatives, alleges that it wasn’t the charismatic Steve Jobs that invented the iPhone--it was the US Federal Government.
While speaking at the the Mid-Atlantic Democratic Platform Forum, she asked the question, “Anybody here have a smartphone?” Then holding up an iPhone, she said to the audience in attendance, “In this smartphone, almost everything came from federal investments in research.”
She then proceeded to call out the listing of components in the phone that the government contributed in direct or indirect ways, including GPS, voice recognition, alloys, compression algorithms for wireless data and more.
“The list goes on and on. If you want to learn more, look at the Association for the Advancement of Science in America, and they have the full list,” said Pelosi. “They say Steve Jobs did a good idea designing it and putting it together. Federal research invented it.”
The statement from Pelosi strengthens the public knowledge of Jobs being notorious for taking credit for ideas that weren’t always his. According to CNET, even Jonathan Ive--Apple’s chief designer officer--resonated this in an interview for Steve Jobs’ biography.
“He [Jobs] will go through a process of looking at my ideas and say, ‘That’s no good. That’s not very good. I like that one. And later I will be sitting in the audience and he will be talking about it as if it was his idea. I pay maniacal attention to where an idea comes from, and I even keep notebooks filled with my ideas. So it hurts when he takes credit for one of my designs,” recounted Ive.
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 "Nancy Pelosi / iPhone invention")
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