
Good luck Steve
Your have done us proud
Steve Jobs resigned as Apple's CEO and was replaced by Tim Cook, formerly COO of the iconic company Jobs cofounded 35 years ago. According to a letter circulated on Business Wire, Jobs tendered his resignation to the company's board of directors on Wednesday afternoon after saying he was no longer able to meet the requirements …
Ok, Im no clairvoyant so this is pure speculation. I'll allowmyself for a couple of minutes to imagine being in Steve Jobs shoes.
Rich beyond my wildest dreams. Have successfully helmed a company to the pinnacle of success. Accolades aplenty. Sounds good so far.
However, I'm only in my late 50's and my health is ailing. The future is unclear for my company, where do I take it now? History shows it is more difficult to keep a company at the top than to get it there.
You dont suppose he's just decided to take it easy and enjoy the more important things in life do you?
Best of luck to the man, love him or hate him, (or both) he's earnt it. I hope he gets to enjoy a few more years.
SJobs and Woz are exactly opposite of eachother. That synergy made Apple (once) 50% marketshare with very credible enterprise/business market.
Woz wants almost everything different.
They aren't "enemies" btw, they just think different. These guys (even including BillG to some extent) are competitors or disagreeing people. Not like BillG is "happy" now. Not sure about Ballmer.
Or there being a reported run on black turtlenecks in the retail clothing sector?
Not sure whether to be disappointed or to respect your dignified restraint.
. . ^^^ . . Best of luck to Steve, though; he did some darn good work and I hope he's able to take what I can only imagine must be a much-needed rest.
Every personal anecdote about him I ever read makes him sound like a total bastard. On the other hand, every one of my Apple products performs really bloody well and I enjoy using them tremendeously.
Good luck to him, and good luck to Apple. I hope they find another benevolent (if unpleasant) tyrant, rather than get bogged down by committees.
(Hope there's be no need to re-introduce the St. Jobs icon any time soon.)
I have worked in the Semiconductor industry for thirty years. I have worked with people whose spouses have worked for Jobs. Yes he is a total bastard. Just like Gates, Dell and just about any other you care to name. Some have made their companies successful like Jobs and some have chased away all of the good workers and put the company into the ground. This was job's forte, he was still able to retain good people who would go the extra mile for Apple.
On a side note I never heard Mr Hewlett or Mr Packard being called total bastards.
Paris, because she doesn't know what happened to the Steve Job's icon either.
Pretty much every successful businessman ever was a bastard of some kind or other. You have to be pretty driven to succeed in a big way, you also have to be ruthless and unsentimental. Gates isn't exactly the picture of sunshine and happiness either, or Ellison, for that matter, or any other big tech CEO you care to name.
Created locked in ecosystems like iTunes?
Creating hardware with proprietary connectors to ensure lock-in?
Creating Apple only formats like Quicktime that force others to join Apple to view?
Creating a market where image rules above technology?
Apple products are no longer great, Apple just spend a tonne of money ensuring Apple fanboys believe they are. That's the harsh reality, you can get better than Apple for less money these days.
He's a seven-year survivor of pancreatic cancer. It really doesn't need to be spelled out, the likely reason he's stepping aside (as if "that day has come." doesn't do exactly that). There's no need to be callous at this time (although this being the internet, some doubtless will be).
Us Apple Haters, may dislike everything the guy stands for and has done, and sure if the headline read "Steve Jobs Axed amind patent lawyer bribery charges" Then Yeah we would all be cheering like crazy.
But the man has had a battle with cancer and it's best to leave our comments on the matter to ourselves. A man stepping down from his role for the sake of his health to enjoy his life and family rather than run himself into the ground is not a thing to celebrate.
its nothing to do with respect or the fact he has cancer... the real truth is about posting comments that's going to get thumbs up....
He has had cancer for the last 6 years, just because he resigns from the CEO of apple doesn't change that. It doesn't change any of the reasons that would make android/windows fanbois jump up and down with glee the fact that he is gone from the top job at apple..
select the right thread, say a very pro android thread, and make a joke about his exit from apple and your gonna get thumbs up galore... in this thread with all the apple fanbois going into mourning as they remember the dark days of the past when apple was jobs-less,and are praying for those dark days not to return. your gonna get slammed !
I was not on about my comments, and dont give a damn what people think about my comments, I say as I see it and I see a lot of people that do comment to gain thumbs ups....
I see a lot of people in this thread that even up to a few hours before this article was published, that have slammed jobs and his ideals in other threads. He was still dying then, nothing has changed except he announces he is to step down...,
so what's the difference? The difference is in a " Love Steve Jobs" thread you get voted down for even the slightest hint of a dislike of Steve Jobs. and in a "pro android" article you get voted up for saying he is the spawn of the devil....
and that is why my original post was titled "the two faces of commentards" because a lot of comentard are very two faced, and the only reason I can think of is they want lots of thumbs up to validate themselves....
maybe you didn't read my post properly, or maybe i didn't make myself clear, but it was my intention to say what i really thought and not what I believe will be popular.... my post was clearly aimed at those who do post to align themselves with the popular opinion of the thread....
I have to wonder if his health is taking a turn for the worse again. He said in the letter that he could no longer continue his duties and knowing how determined and focussed Steve is I think health issues are the only likely reason.
So long Steve, and thanks for all the cool stuff.
I doubt there will be a massive freefall in Apple stock prices. He's been on leave since January and Cook has been running the show. And Jobs is now Chairman of the Board. He's still there. He still has some overarching leadership role. And his opinion would carry serious weight around there.
In a sense, Apple is MORE Steve Jobs today than it was Yesterday. He's gone from not here to Chairman.
Small investors are at risk as Apple gives such an image of "everything is SJobs". Well, it is not. It is a PR policy, always was. He has amazing charisma and vision but it isn't like he picks an empty paper and draws iPod and starts writing iTunes.app on Xcode.
As Apple isn't dumb to pick one of IT monsters as CEO and company face, it may all go well. I just pity "Apple is dead, lets sell all" guys. You know, somebody has to BUY when one sells.
He built a technology giant out of nothing along with Woz and their early successful products were their own unlike Microsoft who bluffed IBM and supplied them with DOS bouight from someone else.
But those who built such big companies from nothing deserve some respect, unlike many CEOs of today who have just climbed the ranks of companies.
You know how often we say that the CEOs and suits don't deserve their money and benefits? In Jobs' case, must of us who can remember Apple in '96 and '97 would agree that Jobs has earned it as much as any one else has.
Here's hoping his health is okay, and if not, that he recovers well and soon.
I hope you're still that same 100% bulldog you've always been. I gotta say, I disagree, a lot, with the way Apple goes about things but you've always made me money. I'm not sure I'm better off than I would be without all the lawsuits but I am sure it could be worse. Thanks Steve, be well.
Now Tim, we expect more of the same but lighten up a bit. Well, at least until I pass the patent bar.
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She doesn't have the balls (or guts, if you want to be PC) to come up with new ideas that'll change the world in even a vaguely good way. Wonder which one of her puppets thought that iQuit could be useful.
And as for which camp I'm in, "I'm a PC" (at work) but mac user at home / on the road / in my pocet (iPhone).
Fail cos of the first paragraph obviously...
While I may not entirely agree with the direction Apple has taken recently, it is at least profitable, successful and forward-looking.
If we recall the Apple of 15 years ago, and if we had written an article back then about Apple being trendy, fashionable, releasing mobile phones that are ubiquitous, controlling a large library of music sales and kickstarting the tablet market, while becoming the most profitable tech company and only 2nd behind ExxonMobil overall, you would've been sectioned!
Back then Apple was known for quirky little computers for the education market, seemingly doomed to go the way of the Acorn.
So while everytime some trendy young thing who thinks he is the next Damien Hirst / Moby / Banksy pulls out a MacBook or an iPad in the cafe a little bit of me dies inside, I still respect the work that Jobs has put in to make the company what it is today.
Personally, I wish him well. Health issues are Not Fun and no one should have to deal with them.
Professionally - I guess the Cult of Apple became a creepy thing, almost from the start. The Mac vs PC thing was adolescent, and my personal experience of Macs has been of poor hardware and software design - not as poor as Windows was until XP, but still badly flawed - disguised by excellent industrial design and laser-sharp marketing.
Steve personally didn't invent things like the iPod. He did what Apple does as a company - took other people's ideas and marketed the crap out of them.
So where MS's main product was corporate marketing, Apple's main product was always consumer marketing, selling a largely illusory feel-good factor through clever story-telling and a relentless appeal to consumer narcissism.
I can't really thank Jobs for that. It worked, but... hey.
Back in the 80s the Amiga was running a full multitasking OS with excellent (for the time) graphics and sound, and Atari was the cheap consumer option. Somewhere left field Acorn were doing cool things with the Archimedes.
Those lines could have been developed. Instead Apple and MS flooded the market with technology that was relatively underpowered and not so relatively unimaginative - but, in Apple's case, nicely packaged.
Between them Jobs and Gates probably held IT development back by ten or fifteen years. Developing ecosystems was good, but developing such slow-moving and flawed ones was a disappointment.
Without that conservatism we might well have had physical and tactile computing so much more quickly.
Jobs gets props of sorts for realising Apple was a content company rather than a tech company a good few years before anyone needed that realisation.
But Apple has always presented stinginess as opportunity. App development and iTunes are both ways to generate content without having to pay people as employees. And Apple has a mountain of cash, but isn't using any of it for sponsorship or talent support programs for new ground-up content or innovation.
At least record companies and publishers find talent and then sponsor it through advance payments for projects.
The new content companies - Apple, Google, Facebook, MySpace (as was) - don't need to, so they don't.
The world is a poorer place for it. There's more content, but it's hard to argue that (say) Angry Birds is really innovative.
So Jobs doesn't get props for innovation. Apple could have done so much more with its position, and could still do more. But an integral corporate tight-fisted conservatism means that it didn't, and never will.
That's a shame - a real shame. For everyone.
"Between them Jobs and Gates probably held IT development back by ten or fifteen years. Developing ecosystems was good, but developing such slow-moving and flawed ones was a disappointment."
Whilst that accusation can be easily aimed at Gates the Apple you are describing was a product of Jobs not being there post-1985. When he returned in 1997 they started to turn around their lethargic development cycle and utter customer gouging, albeit with absolute (and possibly justified) paranoia about others stealing their thunder.
... I am surprised at how sad I am to hear this.
(I owned a couple of Macs in the System 7 days, more to have some variety at home as I worked with PCs and Unix than anything, but was put off them when I worked for a couple of years at a company full of Apple cultists - I remember just before I left the company's tech guru saying we didn't need to upgrade the company's Macs or switch to PCs, as everyone would be switching to OpenDoc based components within a year and everything would become more slimline)
Here is Job's legacy to the tech world:
- make products that actually work, even in their details
- do not ship something unfinished
- do not ship products in response to a tech fashion
- make products that respond to a consumer need
- design products by using them, not through market analysis data
Wow! Who would have thought. This is pure genius. I just wish the rest of the tech industry would listen.
...is that Apple makes products that -feel good- to use. It's like driving a Toyota Camry instead of a BMW, or an Audi, or a Mercedes: it makes no sense to get the bimmer from a practicality standpoint, and its ability to get you to the supermarket isn't any greater. But you feel better on the way.
Criticizing a Mercedes because it isn't a Toyota, and has an inferior price:top speed ratio, is absurd. That's not why you buy it.
Criticize the idea of paying more for something because it just feels good to use it if you must (and my guess is that all but the most humorless bores would be hypocrites if they did), but Apple delivers an excellent product for its market - and Jobs can predict that market so well he actually creates products for the customer rather than the other way around. That skill is incredibly rare, and, bastard, marketing liar, and other qualities notwithstanding, deserves respect.
I own no apple products, and never have. I use a custom built PC, a Sager laptop, a BlackBerry phone (no, I did not riot), a BlackBerry PlayBook (long story) and a Sansa Clip. And I also own a 'fine European automobile' (bought used, natch). I could have gotten a Kia that would do the job just as well, but I just -like- mine. It looks nice, the seats are great, and it goes much faster than necessary.
Am I stupid? Maybe. But how many here who criticize Apple as overpriced would get a Kia instead of a Maserati if they could afford either? Well, if you'd skip the Kia, don't tell me that Apple products are 'bad'. They're just different products than you want.
Sorry, guys - if people are buying something you don't want, it doesn't make them stupid. But it -does- make Steve Jobs -smart-. As a lifetime PC user, I wish him the best, bastard or not.
...Your post is a perfect example of what I'mm talking about. A BMW differs from a Camry in far more ways than a badge. Maybe not ones you care about, but they're there.
And Apple's hardware is objectively very different from many of its competitors. Again, you might not think they're significant, but you're not the audience. Look and Feel is real, and important, even if that makes you angry. Other people want to pay big markups for difficult-to-create but cheap-to-produce features. Jobs conceptualized and guided those features, and made a few billion dollars. This makes his product design bad how?...
It's been noted in the press that when Steve was "on leave of absence", he frequently participated in strategy and frequently called executives. He's already got Apple's next ten years planned out. As long as he's still alive (and Chairman of the Board), you can bet no Apple product will go out the door without his approval.
Well this is sad. I hope his health improves.
First Bill and now Steve. He is one of the godfathers of modern computing and one of a handful of people in the late 70's and early 80's who invisiged the future of computing. When Zerox didnt realise what there engineers had invented in the mouse, GUI, and first PC, Jobs was allowed to look over their work he saw that future.
Regarding Jobs' back story in this article, there are a few minor errors:
"run-away success of the Apple II and Macintosh computers" Apple II was a runaway success as was the "Lisa" followup buisiness machine. However Macintosh was not a success in those early years and its development along with the adversarial management style of Jobs led to the Apple Board instructing Sculley to sack Jobs after Jobs gave them an ultimatum; "Its Sculley or Me" Sculley now says that the board probably made the wrong choice and should have found a way to use Jobs' talent and "make it work". Anyway, its not important but interesting.
His finest acheivement, I believe was, getting the record companies round the table and agreeing a framwork for digital distribution of music in the post napster world. Napster saw the potential. Apple legitimised it and with the killer products, itunes and ipod changed the way the world buys music. Consumers around the world said “yes please”.
He was probably responsible for one of the greatest turnarounds in corporate history when he was re-hired by Apple in '96. His charisma and marketing vision took products and technologies already in the marketplace and put them together in desireable, well thought out packages that worked well. The masses then bought them in their droves making Apple one of the wealthiest corporations in the world. What other corporation or CEO has managed to develop an almost quasi-religious following from it's customer base. That's the holy grail for any corporation. Jobs was a great businessman.
Best wishes to him and his family for the future.