Sad news that Steve Jobs has died tonight.
What a legacy he has left behind.
Sad news that Steve Jobs has died tonight.What a legacy he has left behind.
"Steve was among the greatest of American innovators - brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it," said President Obama.
What now for Apple . . .
Personally I reckon Steve has not been at the helm full time for a while. It may make a difference, but I don't think anything will change for some time.
Personally I reckon Steve has not been at the helm full time for a while. It may make a difference, but I don't think anything will change for some time.
He has still been shaping its future and the products it develops. As someone else pointed out on another forum, he is the CEO who chose the wood colour for each Apple Store. No detail was too small for him, and that's why I do not think Apple can possibly continue to release the types of products that it has been. There is nobody there any more to fine tune the vision, or to stamp their vision for a product you do not realise you wanted at a time that is right.
I put my thoughts about Apples future on another forum;
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=13487787&posted=1#post13487787
I also agree, and it is what I was getting at in my other thread of a similar theme.I just feel that under Tim Cook they will just maintain the status quo and won't do anything radical. Jonathan Ive has creative vision/genius for practical objects, but Jobs could see beyond gadgets. The iPod for example wasn't just an MP3 player. Jobs had iTunes and a whole music delivery system built around it.
Certainly Other companies had made MP3 players before the iPod but hadn't bothered to think much about how people could legally put their music on them. Under Steves watch the Mp3 player became practically usable and a must have item.
I am sure that a certain roadmap lies ahead. But one thing that struck me about Apple under Steve was mentioned in the news today that also separated Apple from every other company in the world. Apple doesn't really do market research for products. They din't go out and ask us if we wanted a tablet like the iPad. They didn't ask anyone if a phone like the iPhone would sell. They just went out and made them. Steve had so much conviction in his ideas and vision that he could get the company to do that.
Under Tim Cook I am convinced that because the necessary firm vision isn't heading the company any more, products will now start to be commissioned by committee, and possibly after market research.
And the big problem with doing market research for the types of products Apple have been making, like the iPad, is that before they were released I'd bet most people would have said "I wouldn't really have a use for that" and as a result they wouldn't have been made!
Part of the beauty of Apple products is that people didn't realise that they wanted or needed them until they had actually been released and the true scope of their usefulness became apparent.
Another risk is that Apple could go the other way in an effort not to stand still. The big risk of doing that is encapsulated with one product. The Newton. A good idea, but far too early for its time. And that's where Jobs wouldn't have made that mistake. Steve Jobs not only had creative vision, he knew the time and the place in which to release that vision. He instinctively knew when the market was ready. Something that Sculley did not.
I only hope that Tim Cook recognises his limitations with regard to these aspects. He needs a number two who can help bridge the gap that Jobs has left. But I do not think that such a person exists.
Quote:
I did read somewhere that Steve Jobs has left them plans on future products for the next couple of years..
Even if he did, it is the fine tuning of those products that is important. Lets say that the iPad hadn't been developed yet, and Steve Jobs wasn't around. Would Apple have made their tablet as good as the iPad is now, or would it have been more like the competitions current lineup? That's the thing Jobs brought along with everything else. The ability to fine tune the detail.
I rather liked this, if only because I hate survey requests cluttering my inbox.
In one of the Obituaries of Steve Jobs this morning his success in product development was put down to:
“understanding what the public wanted before they did and then doing it, with no use or time for market research”.
The world's third most famous apple, after Adam and Eve and a Mr I Newton. Presumably the Beatles are now fourth.
Hi
I think he had only been concerned with iCloud, and the long-term future innovativeness and production roadmap of Apple since 2008.
So nothing whatsoever will 'change' as of this moment - Tim Cook, Jony Ive and Phil Schiller (for marketing) have been running the show for the last two years.
Hence the FCP X marketing debacle, and the uncompetitive price of the low-end Mac Pro.
The recent huge 'loadsamoney' profitability of Apple has I think been down to Tim Cook. I think Steve Jobs was just as happy with 'insanely great'.
My first Apple Mac, a Quadra 840av running Premiere v3, COSA After Effects and Photoshop 2.5, with a VideoVision card, and Telecast PAL/NTSC component I/O breakout box, had nothing much to do with Steve Jobs in as much as it was completely different from his early version of the Macintosh.
But it cost as much as a small house :(
Making the Mac affordable was one of Jobs' lasting legacies - together with the build quality and the 'it just works' user interface...
In particular:
http://allaboutstevejobs.com/bio/long/01.html
In his own words:
"When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much."
Here's the video version, the above quote is the end part:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc
Put a major new product on the market, with no market research, just on the intuition of one man?..don't be silly!!
OK, he got lucky that time.
What do you mean, he did it again....and again?.....impossible!!
A truly remarkable man. Doubtless one of the most important people of the last 100 years.
A sad loss.... we're unlikely to see his like again........
RIP, Steve Jobs
As everyone says it was the finishing touches and his demand for perfection that made the products just so. apparently after trying the iPod for first time he sent it back to the engineers and said he wanted to be able to access a song in under 3 clicks.
It was this sort of thing that drove the finesse, he seemed to have a knack for knowing what felt right and this will be missed
However in saying that, He got a big lesson when he was fired from Apple in regards to the people that he had brought in to run it, I think he has made sure that the team he has put in place have the same attitudes as him and he has created a culture that is reflective of his personality. He wasn't able to pass on the knack he had but I'm sure he will have taught them well.
i hope they stick to releasing products that are ready not because of market pressure although the new siri being released as beta is hopefully just a rare thing.
On retrospect this explains why the executives at the keynote didn't seem as excited on Tuesday and why they probably had it in the small town hall incase they had to cancel the event.