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Steve Jobs' Grand Vision
ejungle writes "The Toronto Star has an excellent article on Steve Jobs and his increasingly interesting role as head of both Apple Computer and Pixar Animation Studios. The article goes into the market pressures surrounding both companies, and goes a long way to explain their recent moves."
Disney did not dump Pixar. Pixar walked away from negotiations when it was determined that negotiations were not likely to result in a deal which would be in Pixar's best interest. Disney only retains what they already had: joint ownership of the Pixar characters for previous and the next two movies. It's hard to see how removing themselves from the profits of future Pixar movies can be considered getting the "better end of the deal".
he didnt invent the Mac, Steve Wozniak did, Jobs marketed it, so yes he is innovative at selling computers branded as premium product$
Sinbad was from Dreamworks. And I do believe you've forgotten Spirited Away, the 2003 Best Animated Feature Academy Award-winner.
Bít, zabít, jen proto, ze su liska!
Well okay i RE-READ your post. Lets see where to start...
He doesn't push anything, the PR department does.
And I noticed you spelt Hypocrite wrong.
Being serious however, we all have a choice and its us who is at fault if a negative comes from our choices. They may control the doors but we have the keys.
It also says something of somebody if they market shit to kids but have their kids eat good stuff. It should make you think, why does he do that? Is it because he knows better and wants the best for his kids future? If yes then seperate what you said and realise his personal choices are nothing to do with what he sells.
He is also a Vegan most probably because he thinks animals have a right to live but you don't see him doing the opposite and pushing for legislation do you and forcing people to not eat meat? He has the money to do so but he doesn't, again his choice but he doesn't have it encroach onto us simple folk.
Jonathanjk.com
Well,
:) I will tell you why I (a 10+ year vet of the computer field) went to it, and why I like Steve Jobs.
.Apps. Seriously. These things rock. I like the whole framework. I can drag them around to install them, delete them to uninstall them, launch them from the CLI, copy them, back them up, etc. It is great.
Since you asked so nice, and aren't AC
1) Apple makes systems with a tight verticle integration. The same reasoning behind AIX, RS/6000 and Shark storage holds for a G4/G5. It is designed and optimized like a console, but allows for upgrades. (The whitebox upgrades are even supported by the warranty. I can add RAM or vid myself under warranty. Can I do that with a Dell?)
2) Apple really understands the customers. It has a really good idea of what people expect from Apple Computers, and usually does a pretty good job of delivering that.
3) Apple has a three year warranty that is only the price of a low-end vid card. It is around 150, if I remember correctly.
4) Apple support is composed of some of the nicest people I have ever talked to, and I even have some friends now who work there. They are willing to patiently explain that something a user did was dumb, and explain how to fix it. Without making even a grandmother (who WASHED her mac) feel stupid. My wife even likes talking to them.
5) Apple has really top-notch driver integration. I have only installed one driver on a Mac. Ever. Dozens of hardware add-ons and accessories, and I only had to install a driver for an ancient Wacom tablet. Everything else was perfect plug and play. It just doesn't happen with Windows. REALLY doesn't happen on Linux.
6) Full media ships with the computer. No crippled OS versions. It is the whole enchilada.
7) Safe system restore. Fix the problem in about 15 minutes, without losing a single byte of your data. It rocks! I've only had to use it once, but it was amazing.
8) Well-laid out keyboards. Personal preference.
9) Fantastic engineering. Again, personal preference. I happen to like a 6 lb 1" laptop with the power and battery life of something much larger. And a DVD burner. And the ability to run 2 external screens at the same time as the internal screen. I frequently use mine in dual screen mode at work.
10) iLife. A simple suite of cheap/free apps that really cover the bases. They work together nicely, too.
11) Safari. Really nice, fully integrated mostly STANDARDS COMPLIANT browser.
12)
13) Free dev environment. Full on IDE that is actually pretty nice. Works for Java, Perl, AppleScript, and C/C++/ObjC.
14) Finder. Finder is a very smooth way to navigate a computer. It has some issues, and I will certainly bitch about them.
15) Unix based. I like this. I've been on Unix since the mid 80's, and I love it. I'm glad Apple went that way.
Now, as for what I like about Jobs? He's a really charismatic person who is willing to tell people to go fly a kite. He goes in really weird directions, does really weird things, and they even sometimes work. What I really like, though, is that Apple seems to suck without him.
There you have it. Feel free to complain or flame, but understand that I really couldn't care less. I love my Macs, and I am not a PC Gamer. I play NWN on them. I do not buy computers to be game consoles, so I couldn't care less if $game supports it. I probably wouldn't own that game for windows, if I owned it.
Of course, there is also no guarantee that my next 4 computers will be Macs like my last 4. It is highly likely, though.
-WS
An operating system should be like a light switch... simple, effective, easy to use, and designed for everyone.
The mac was invented by a team of people. Steve Jobs was very active in the Mac project. While it appears he claimed a lot of other people's ideas as his own, he had the knack to always figure out which idea of all the ones out there was the one that should be used. So Jobs is an innovator. Read Andy Hertzfeld's siteFolklore for more information.
> What really bad ones? You say there were a lot...
I don't want to start a flame war here. The worst thing he has done, is to stick that elitist reputation to the Mac. Where I live (Belgium, Europe), nobody gives a shit about Macs anymore. When tell people I prefer working on a Mac than on anything else, people look at me as if I were a perfect ass. Some of my friends don't speak of computers with me anymore, they just think I've become some kind of extremist who can't see how Macs are doomed.
In my book, that's bad.
> And NeXT was fucking fantastic
Agreed. Mac OS X still _is_ fucking fantastic.
> Emacs don't cost near 2k
Nope, 'only' 1k. For a all-in-one underpowered (1Ghz) machine. $300 for a complete walmart PC, including the screen. OK, Macs are better. Better hardware. Better software. But you have more than 3 low end expandable PC's for the price of an eMac. People care. Then again, I'm talking about us Europeans.
> Installed base is a much more useful number than market
> share, unless you really think real computing advancement
> comes from the hundreds of mid to low end machines typically
> deployed in corporations
So why are most of those corporation renewing their computer base with less expensive PC's? (hint: because they are cheaper).
> I realize you are doing the anti-popular opinion troll for mod points
Nope... I'm playing the betrayed lover.
Instant Karma's gonna get you, Gonna knock you right on the head (John Lennon, 1970)
but a lot of really bad ones.In the meantime, the Mac's marketshare fell below 2% and has been overtaken by Linux Desktop's share.
That's not Jobs' fault. That's Sculley's, and that's the dispute that caused Steve to leave Apple. Steve and Steve started Apple to make computers For the Rest of Us. Computers that people could use; not room-size boxes hidden away in an industrial building.
Sculley had a vision of using Apple's superior technology to make products with high margins and turn Apple into a billion dollar company. And he did. And he gave up marketshare for that.
Lots of people agree that the real reason of the Mac slow but sure descent into Hell is Job's elitist vision and its results, overpriced hardware, rumor cult(ure) at Apple, etc.
Lots of people are uninformed, but that doesn't make them right. Macs aren't overpriced; they're worth every penny you spend on them, the only problem is that you don't have the choice to spend less for things you don't want because Apple doesn't offer those products (like an iMac without the flat panel display and built-in Bluetooth but in an ATX case).
On the same token, Apple can't charge the same prices that Dell does in order to gain market share; they need to fund their R & D divisions. Dell makes money on volume (quanitity). People buy Macs for quality. Apple has to make higher priced units that will yeild larger profits due to the price, not because of a markup. The reason that Apple can't make money on quantity is Sculley's fault, not Jobs. Apple computers were affordable before Jobs left.
Steve's company brought the first personal computer (that could plug into a TV screen, with colour graphics and sound) to the masses. Also the first consumer floppy drive (tapes were the thing before that). The first computer with a GUI, and the first laser printers (along with Canon). And again, when Jobs came back, he brought the iMac, the iPod, and the entire iLife suite to the masses (iDVD, iMovie, etc). Those things wouldn't exist without Jobs; the PC industry was declared dead with no future until Jobs announced the iMac and the digital hub.
Why do so many people worship this one guy?
He's one of the very few people in the consumer-oriented computer industry that moves it forward. Enterprise computing has their own heros (Oracle and Sun come to mind).
Moderators should have to take a reading comprehension test.
Though I agree that Disney still is a powerful media conglomerate and as a brand name it sure has appeal to mass from kids to retired, animation from Disney has lost a lot of momentum compared to its heyday. Animated feature is no longer dominated by Disney, as 3D animation is becoming the mainstream in the film biz. This has been proven by success of animated feature from other studios, like Dreamworks and Fox. Meanwhile, in 2D animation world, there are some indication that Disney might have lost touch in animation business. Boxoffice success of Disney animation is no longer guaranteed unlike old days. While Disney is apparently aware of this trend, they are yet to come up with viable alternative to their ex-partner, Pixer.
Is 2D animation dead? I think not, and neither some studios. But from what we have seen in success of Pixer/Dis films, it is undeniable that Pixer has a better ground to compete in animation after this separation.
They are by no means trusted to the level of Disney in a family atmosphere.
Sure, WE trust Disney for its purity. Disney is clean as long as it doesn't engrave their banner on top of crap they make under other brand name they own.
Cheers.
On Intel Xeons, noless. That said, they built it signficantly before the G5 Desktop and the G5 XServe were available. No offense, but much as I want a G5 and like the look-and-feel of Mac OS X, you have to admit that a bunch of overheating 1GHz G4's were significantly less cost effective than a similar bunch of P4 Xeons at the time the render farm was built.
Now wait just a gosh-darn second here! Who you callin "overheating"??
PowerPC chips use MUCH less power than Xeon. Tons less. In fact, that's what the PPC architecture was designed for was embedded applications.
Overheating G4's????
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
Spirited Away wasn't Disney either, TYVM. It was written, animated, and directed by Studio Ghibli, possibly the best animation company on the planet. Disney just took it, attached a half-hearted dub, dutifully shoved it in theaters for a few days to honor their contractual obligations, and then crossed their fingers and hoped it wouldn't overshadow their carefully-chosen "hit" movies.
Unfortunately for them, it did.
Looks like Disney hasn't had any hits in years. They've just been selling other people's. Guess all those copyright extensions they pushed for haven't helped their creative output much at all, have they?
Why?
1) He helped popularize the personal computer;
2) He helped popularize the user interface that the majority of those computers now use;
3) He helped revolutionize the computer, industrial and product design industries with the iMac (and made USB truly "universal");
4) He helped revolutionize the way people acquire, manipulate and experience music (and stopped Microsoft's bid for domination dead in its tracks);
5) He heads an animation studio that is the undisputed leader of what is becoming a new "Golden Age" in animation;
6) He financed the most successful television commercial ever produced;
7) He brought Apple back from the brink of extinction...
And each of the organizations he heads is obsessed with producing the best quality products possible. There's a lot of crowing here in Slashdot and elsewhere when Apple slips, but the people there put more time, effort, intelligence and care into what they do than just about any organization you could name.
And, yes, I worked there.
I don't really *worship* Steve Jobs in any sense of the word, for anything he did, past or present. I do admire him for certain things, Apple and Pixar among them.
I'm no Mac zealot -- I prefer PCs for desktop work, and the amount of lockdown in OS X annoys me. At the same time, I own an iPod and am considering getting an iBook because I can't find a well-made sub-$1500 laptop with the features I want. (My next desktop will be an AMD64 box, however.) Even in desktop systems, Apple is reasonably competitive -- still pricier than a $500 white-box PC, but not as bad as you seem to think it is. Witness Sub-$2000 iMacs. For that matter, Apple still does quite well in the high-end graphics markets.
So far as I can tell, Jobs doesn't care about selling computers to *everyone* -- if he did, Apple would be like Dell. He wants to do the "computing experience," and do it well. Myself, I applaud that.
Here is a page, from Pixar, describing their tools. Apparently it runs on Linux, Windows and Macintosh. You can even buy the software for use in your own films.
Nope. It's still $1 per year.
Plus options.
And a jet.
Yeah. California law says you split your fortune down the center in divorce and, since more than half of the Lucas fortune was tied up in Lucasfilm, he had to sell off parts of the company or else he wouldn't have been able to retain sole ownership over his company.
Alex.
Slithyly OT but interesting: the Genesis video sequence from Star Trek II was one of the early works of Pixar, back when they were still at ILM, circa 1981/1982.
I know that about 6 months ago Pixar was migrating to OS X in house and were hiring techs to install and admin the new gear.
I'm assuming (yeah, I know) from comments here, that the mass migration to OS X didn't include the render farm, but just development boxes, artists computers, secretary's solitaire box, etc...
I'm sure that in a year when it's time to upgrade their farm, they'll be installing 4GHz Dual G5 XServes or whatever similar configuration Apple is shipping then.
While cost per box is a factor, time is a factor in CGI movie development as well. Virginia Univ. proved that 1100 G5s can make an exceptionally cost effective super computer that is #3 in the world. The #1 and #2 systems cost far more and neither of them use Intel processors (NEC and I think HP PA/RISC).
Pixar has migrated machines and OS use a few times in the past and I'm sure they'll continue to use what works best for thier business as the computing market evolves. Right now OS X and G5s are excellent choices for them and if Steve has his way, I'm sure it'll stay that way for a while.
I read that book cover to cover and have absolutly no recolection of his talking about OS X...especialy considering that OS X was not even in public Beta yet when that book went to press.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
There is a fart joke in Finding Nemo. When the mines blow up (in the shark scene), bubbles rise to the surface. Cut to two pelicans sitting on the water. Bubbles surface. One pelican looks at the other, says something like "Nice", and flys off.
In the dvd commentary, they joke about it a little bit.
"If I am such a genius, how come that I am drunk and lost in the desert with a bullet in my ass?" --Otto (Malcom ITM)
OTOH, when there's a proven advantage and a clear cut in cost, you'll see them switch in no time, especially now that Linux and Windows Server have been certified to run on the Xservers.
Uh, no. Apple certified the Xserve RAID to work with a few flavors of Windows and Linux (Red Hat was one of them IIRC).
You can run Linux on an Xserve (maybe not a G5), and there's a VAR somewhere that will warranty it (I think), but Apple sure doesn't...
As for Windows...you'll have to wait for Virtual PC 7, and it'll still be slow, but if you really want to...
And the quality was near DVD.
I bet it is far better than DVD, otherwise it wouldn't be a studio-grade codec for filmmakers. DVD quality is inacceptable for professional editing work.
There are two rules for success:
1. Never tell everything you know.
Err... SGI bought Cray Supercomputer.... they sell some of the craziest web servers out there.
They most certainly would run their own hardware for their website. No reason to pay to train someone for another company's hardware when you've got all the experts in house.
Sun runs Sun. IBM runs IBM. Compaq/HP runs... guess who? Compaq/HP. I bet you'll never guess who Dell uses for its website.
Yes - Steve Jobs answered exactly this question at the last Pixar Shareholder's meeting. I was there. His statement was that Pixar uses the best computers for the job. Period. At one point, he stated, he had to sign purchase orders for Dell boxes.
Now, iirc, Pixar uses OS X boxes for most, if not all of the creative work. The render farm, otoh, is currently using x86 boxes (don't know the brand), running Linux. It used to use Sun, running Solaris. I'd expect within a few years the rendering will in fact move to Apple products - when and if they are truly the best computer for the job. As a shareholder of both companies, this is exactly what I want. There's no hypocracy here - simply do the best possible job.
ummm where did buddy even say that jobs was talking about OSX.
This is what he said:
Linus was bashing OSX
He recollected when jobs approached him.
Not related.
No, Pixar wasn't around before Jobs - prior to its spinoff and subsequent purchase by Jobs in 1986, it was just the tiny computer graphics division of LucasFilm. It was Jobs who took Pixar from being just another small animation studio to being the powerhouse that it is. Your point is valid, though - look at what happened the last time Jobs tried to run two companies simultaneously, Pixar and NeXT. Short version: NeXT came up with some great stuff but financially didn't do as well as hoped, so Jobs got bored and started ignoring it for Pixar. NeXT then just kinda floundered along until it was snapped up by Apple. Not really a corporate success story.
Why do so many people worship this one guy? Is this because he is such an egomaniacal elitist control freak?
Yes! He has the balls to do what some people dream of. He's a guy who will go ALL IN on a 4-5 off-suit because he KNOWS that he'll make a straight on the flop. (Yes, i'm a Hold-em fan). He can push USB and FireWire and make it mainstream. He can push a UNIX-based OS and have people use it.
Since 1984 he has done some good things (NeXT, the first iMac, OS X), but a lot of really bad ones.
Thanks for making my job easier and naming the good things, but you failed to mention the bad things! Like what, killing the Newton? The Cube was a technological marvel, but was overpriced... Name a few more! C'mon!
In the meantime, the Mac's marketshare fell below 2% and has been overtaken by Linux Desktop's share.
MARKET SHARE is not the same as INSTALLED BASE. Market Share is a percentage of computers sold in a quarter / year. i.e. of every 100 computers sold, 2 are Macs. Installed Base is just that, how many computers are Macs? The numbers float around 11-13 percent.
As for Linux overtaking the Mac, you word it in such a way that Linux users are switching from Mac, whereas Linux and the Mac are about even when it comes to market share. The word "overtaking" is deceptive. Just because I "overtake" you in traffic doesn't mean you're driving slower than you already were. It just means i'm driving faster. Just because Linux has a larger market share, it doesn't mean the Mac is losing ground to Linux.
Lots of people agree that the real reason of the Mac slow but sure descent into Hell is Job's elitist vision and its results, overpriced hardware, rumor cult(ure) at Apple, etc.
Let me take a minute and digest what you said....wait..not done...okay.
What people? If anything Jobs' vision has made the Mac what it is today (compared to 3, 5, even 7 years ago). Think of it this way. You're not paying for overpriced hardware. You're paying up-front for some incredible software that is already pre-loaded onto the Mac (Simple, junk-filtering threaded eMail, pop-up blocking Safari, vCal-reading iCal, System-wide Address Book, iLife++)
Today the guy seems more interested in selling online muzak than selling less-than-$2000 computers. iMac's and eMac 's used to be nice
He's selling music to sell iPods! There's no money in selling music online.
As for your comment about $2000 computers, Apple currently has 5 product lines, and a total of 16 "stock" machines within those lines. Of those 16, *5* are over $2,000 (7 if you count the ones at $1,999).
Only ONE consumer-based product is over $2,000: the 20" iMac. ALL iBooks and eMacs are under $1,500. Hell the eMacs START AT $800.
Wow. That was fun. My first troll-rebuttal!
Its been shipping for awhile now. Open a movie in QuickTime Player Pro and choose export, open options, click on the settings button in the video pane, and look at the popup that contains the list of codecs. Its there.
6) Full media ships with the computer. No crippled OS versions. It is the whole enchilada.
What about that crippled Quicktime version shipping with OS X?
Someone that has done "some good things (NeXT, the first iMac, OS X)" in their career gets my respect.
Most of the negative tales about Jobs probably have some grounding in truth -- it was almost amusing watching him berate the stage people before a show for glitches in the prop moving systems: "What the hell is this??? Did you guys pick up these parts at Home Depot???". However, he did always listen when I was talking about a technical issue, even when I was saying something that didn't sit with his current understanding of graphics cards / APIs / gaming.
When I was considering setting up to demo Doom 3 at macworld, all of the Apple people were going on about how we needed to sanitize it because "Steve won't let there be any blood or killing". I finally went to him directly, and he replied "If you think you can make it great, then let's do it. I trust you, so you'll have to decide." Not quite the overbearing micromanager he is sometimes portrayed as.
I'm not a regular mac user, but I'm glad Steve Jobs is still around.
John Carmack
The G5 Video - http://www.apple.com/powermac/video/ has someone from Pixar, talking about how great they are... and showing RenderMan on OS X.
Join the Free Software Foundation
Um...
Unless I'm going crazy, it's on:-
http://www.apple.com/macosx/
Join the Free Software Foundation
I know there is support for several languages. But that doesn't mean it supports my language. 'Half dozen' is far cry from 'comprehensive'.
Both Windows (since 95) and Linux supports it. OSX doesn't.
What is worse, many applications (including Apple's own iCal and any application that uses Wise installer) crash when using my native locale (sorting, day names, separators, that sort of things). This makes OSX completely unusable for me.
Just because you are ignorant of the fact that there are more than 200 languages in the world doesn't mean that your favorite software is ready.
Pixar's RenderMan(R) was used in 35 of the last 39 films nominated for a Best Visual Effects Oscar(R)
Go there: https://renderman.pixar.com/
and see the full list yourself.
2003
Bad Boys 2
Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle
Finding Nemo
The Hulk
The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
The Matrix Reloaded
Peter Pan
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
Seabiscuit
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
X2
2002
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Men in Black II
Minority Report
The Scorpion King
Spider Man
Star Wars Episode II - Attack of the Clones...
etc. etc.