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Steve Jobs died today

P

Paul McLellan

Moderator
View attachment 1964Apple just announced that Steve Jobs has died. There will be lots of tributes in the days to come, but any way you look at what he achieved it is amazing. Not just founding Apple in the first place, but then buying what became Pixar, the most successful animation company ever. And then coming back to Apple when it was on its own deathbed and making it, for a few hours at least, the most valuable company in the entire world.

I met him once, in a completely un-hi-tech environment. His son and my daughter had the same climbing instructor at (then) Planet Granite in Santa Clara. I was sitting changing out of my climbing shoes and suddenly realized the guy sitting next to me changing his shoes was Jobs. I had a brief conversation with him about climbing and our kids' instructor, it would have seemed just weird to say something like "you are insanely great." But he was.
 
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Tim Cook's Internal Email to Apple Employees

"Team, I have some very sad news to share with all of you. Steve passed away earlier today.

Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being. Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor. Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple.

We are planning a celebration of Steve’s extraordinary life for Apple employees that will take place soon. If you would like to share your thoughts, memories and condolences in the interim, you can simply email rememberingsteve@apple.com.

No words can adequately express our sadness at Steve’s death or our gratitude for the opportunity to work with him. We will honor his memory by dedicating ourselves to continuing the work he loved so much."
 
Jobs’ Law

Steve Jobs not only revolutionized the consumer electronics market, he helped make the semiconductor industry what it is today. This piece on Steve Jobs is by Jim Hogan and it is one of the best I have read:

Growing up in Silicon Valley I have witnessed much of the electronic revolution firsthand. The Apple story has been told by many. I recall the Steves starting Apple and the Apple II being what I considered an interesting toy. Steve Jobs had another vision. Jobs has always been a one step removed from me in my network. Lots of my contemporaries joined Apple as it grew, but I never really thought of it as an innovator. It assembled interesting bits and pieces from elsewhere, like the mouse and graphical UI. Steve left and started NEXT and my brother-in law joined them from SGI. He raved about the UI and the graphics ability. I was using Sun and SGI workstations at the time and tried a NEXT. It was a great UI but slow as hell when I loaded a design. Again I wrote it off as a toy.

As everyone knows, Jobs returned to Apple and made the NEXT OS and UI the Mac. The Mac is and was a huge success. It got some horsepower and was actually a great graphics workstation for creative things like media. He also launched the Newton PDA. It was a good idea but you couldn’t make it work worth a darn.

Jobs showed us all that computers were as much a fashion statement when he launched the Mac in designer colors. I know a bit about the development of the iPod and it wasn’t so much a technical masterpiece as a collection of parts that Jobs saw as a way of servicing the consumer. I finally had to say he was the real deal when he launched iTunes and showed us all what the Internet can do in terms of creating and servicing consumer needs through a more efficient marketing approach.

Thus, after dismissing Apple and Jobs as a toy supplier, I think I finally have come to realize why Steve Jobs is indeed the master. I think we can coin a Jobs’ Law, a lot like we have Moore’s and Amdahl’s Laws. I believe that Jobs’ Law is that the user experience is never compromised. In other words Apple will, for example, spend more of its bill of materials costs on a display; all Apple devices communicate transparently with each other (turns out so do Samsung products too, hmm?); the devices themselves are stylish and handsome; and they act as portals to all the things a consumer could want.

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You can read the whole article here: Jobs’ Law | VC Corner

D.A.N.
 
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When I worked at Silicon Compilers we sold EDA tools to Apple. Mr. Jobs looked at one of our product demos that had a primitive GUI and remarked, "That's just brain dead."

He was right, and that product died not long after the comment.

Apple continues a culture of hiring bright people and letting them create products that challenge the status quo, work well, and look simply stunning. Because of that attention to user experience and design Apple can charge a premium for products and services.
 
with the demise of sir steve jobs came the demise of an era .

All should pay respect to the person who tried its best and did change the way
we live.

God bless him for his efforts for the suffering huminity much much ahead of any
political leader in the World.
Posted by Rafiq
 
The world has lost much more than an amazing human being. Much more than we can imagine! Steve Jobs was the greatest inventor of our time. The world didn’t see anyone who has had so much impact to our lives since Nikola Tesla. He will be missed very much.
My condolences to family, friends, and colleagues at Apple.
Posted by Miroslav
 
It is widely written that Steve Jobs fathered a baby girl, denied paternity, refused to contribute anything in support of his daughter, lied in statements to the court, claimed in court that he was sterile, forced the rest of us tax payers here in the US to support his baby girl and his High School sweet heart via their long term use of welfare . He took advantage of a defenseless baby and mom when they were most vulnerable. Jobs was paid $750 for Atari game development work, and $100 for each chip he designed out to simplify the game. Jobs asked Wozniak to do that part. Woz designed-out so many chips that Atari paid Jobs a $5000 bonus. Jobs paid half of the $750 to Woz as agreed, but gave Woz none of the $5000 that derived from Woz's work. These are not the actions of a good or honest man. Life is what we make it. I have lived my life to a far higher standard.
Posted by Michael
 
How can anyone say Steve Jobs was the greatest inventor of our time - go away and look at the people who have really changed our lives, and not someone who marketed (very well, though) overpriced fashion accessories.

Nothing Apple did was new - just better marketed.
Posted by Bob
 
As a marketing guy I hate it when people say that something is "just" well-marketed. Marketing involves specifying the right thing for a market and then delivering it. Apple's products are no more overpriced than BMW or Whole Foods, or even Chevrolet and Safeway. Everyone who buys one of their products considers it a better deal, for what they want, than the alternatives. Almost nothing BMW or Whole Foods do is new either, but it fits a niche that some people want. We could all drive Hyundais and buy our food in Walmart but many of us choose not to for all sorts of reasons, some good maybe (BMWs are safer? organic food is better for you?) and some just tied up with our own self-image (I'm a macho driver, I'm a foodie). And we could all torrent all our videos and software rather than use iTunes, but that just isn't going to work for the mass market (and if it did, it would kill the business model for producing that stuff in the first place, like we've killed the model for vaccines and perhaps antibiotics).


I think it is highly likely that "bob" above has an Android phone; but mostly because it fits his self-image as an open-source kinda guy, not because he wants to edit the source. When Apple is making almost all the profit of the entire mobile phone industry, it is hard to argue that it is "just" marketing, with the overtone of meaning "convincing people to buy something that they don't really want." Maybe in the long term Android will develop faster since it is open-source (ESR argues this all the time) or maybe the Chinese and Amazon will use Android to build huge businesses where Google doesn't even get a cut. And for sure, nobody knows just how critical Steve was in Apple's design process. They have lots of talented people but maybe without Steve's leadership they will stumble. But my money is on them for now.
 
Full disclosure: I neither own an Android or an iOS phone or tablet. Just a single band 1G phone that allows me to make phone calls, send text messages and keep an agenda.

Paul McLellan said:
but it fits a niche that some people want.
Click to expand...

Agree with that but some people seem to forget Apple is a niche high margin market player in an emerging market; commoditization of smart phones and tablets has only just started. Given this fact I also find statements on the importance of Steve Jobs for the consumer electronics markets most of the time overblown. I own an C64 and I find the Commodore range of computers (PET/VIC20/C64) at least as important as the Apple II.

Paul McLellan said:
I think it is highly likely that "bob" above has an Android phone; but mostly because it fits his self-image as an open-source kinda guy, not because he wants to edit the source.
Click to expand...

What a condensing statement: people who choose Apple are smart, the others are just mislead.
If I would buy a smart phone or tablet I would go for one where the OS does not want to control everything: what online stores I can use, what apps I can install; so most likely it won't be an iOS device nor an Android device that has been heavily locked down by the service provider. I would even prefer a device I can ssh into from my desktop computer so likely it will be some kind of Linux machine: Android, Tizen or something else...

greets,
Staf.
 
Agreat man left,sad!
 
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