> He has designed 4 consumer prodocts that a good portion of humanity use every day.

Yes, but how much of that was luck and how was extraordinary talent?

It's like saying "Donald Trump is really rich, ergo he must be a financial genius"... getting really rich isn't that hard if you're born into money and invest in New York real estate.

Now someone like Jobs who had fairly working class parents and founded a multi-billion dollar (now trillion dollar) company that radically changed the modern world, that, I would argue, is extraordinary talent.

While I don't personally have much an opinion on Ives's skill as a designer, I understand the GP's point of view - any "good but not great" designer could have done what he did, Ives was just lucky enough to win the lottery w.r.t. what company he worked for.

For a similar example, consider the case of Hollywood - you'll have plenty actors as talented as Brad Pitt (or whatever big name you'd like to choose) that don't end up staring in massive blockbusters, not because they lack talent, but because they weren't quite as lucky to get that first big break, which led to more recognition, more job offers, all of which compounded into making him a proper movie star. Obviously Pitt is a really good actor, but part of his success is likely due to luck as much as it is acting talent - he has tons of talent, but others might have equal talent and less luck, and therefore be less successful/have fewer people influenced by their work.

To use a software metaphor, consider the relative popularity of FreeBSD and Linux. Both are good OSes, but Linux got "luckier" because they didn't have to deal with a lawsuit, which meant it got more attention, more features, which led to a compounding "Matthew effect" where it now has a far larger market share than FreeBSD, despite them originally having roughly the same 'quality'.

This take is so hardworkingly naive I dont even know where to start. After having the undesputed greatest set of products designed in a row, you dane to call it luck.

Asside from your complete ignorance of the history at play, (Ive refounded Apple with Jobs) you seem to not understand what a 'mediocre' designer is capable of and how mind-bendinly hard it was to design the imac, ipad, iphone and apple watch

I genuinely can't believe you could be so wild to beleive such a thing. It becomes frankly stupid to the point of disrespectful of the work individuals put into their craft and the success they can find.

There is no person in the world outside of someone in this forum who would claim that somehow this was 'luck'.

HN has truly become one of the most toxically stupid places on the web.