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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."
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.
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.
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.
Nope. It's still $1 per year.
Plus options.
And a jet.
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
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!
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