Slashdot Mirror
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."
Jobs, who is worth $1.7 billion (U.S.), according to Forbes magazine last year, routinely declines interview requests and could not be reached for comment for this story.
What does Steve Jobs not wanting to do an interview for the San Francisco Chronicle have to do with how much money he is worth?
Portland, North Dakota Puppies
While I firmly agree with Pixar breaking off from Disney, the statement
Jobs went so far as to declare that Pixar had surpassed Disney as "the most powerful and trusted brand in animation."
seems a little fishy to me. While Pixar is amazing at what it does, it's no Disney. Nobody wants to take thier kids to Pixarland, and you don't get the Pixar channel at home, and I'd say it'll be quite a while before either of those happens. They are by no means trusted to the level of Disney in a family atmosphere.
They have a good thing going, but IMHO they are far from the top still.
Jobs is a rebel because he is successful and innovative and they will close him down? No wonder the entertainment industries don't seem to get things right if thats the definition of a rebel.
Jonathanjk.com
In light of the previous Slasdot story regarding the most popular Linux distro - comments by Steve Jobs to this effect might change many a geeks opinion.
Or not, if Pixar's Linux farm is totally hacked specifically for number crunching (which it probably is). Oh well....
--
Got something to say? RantsRus.com - blogging for the disillusioned.
Only on /. can you find a comment relating an article on the business moves of the CEO of an animation studio and a computer company related back to needing more advocation for Linux.
And then it gets modded up??? Puh-Leeese
If the Pixar modeling/rendering software ran on MacOS X, then there'd be an army of Joe Sixpacks out there competing with Pixar, with a few thousand dollars worth of computers.
Steve JObs wants to keep this business obscure enough to keep the bar raised to where Pixar offers a unique and valuable service.
Above all, despite his $1 salary, Steve Jobs is the Elitist's Elitist.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
That means what to the point a made?
As a side note, i don't watch TV either or drink "sickly sodas", they are both detrimental to the human condition, looks like Jobs is being a reponsible father, I would do the same.
Besides its not like he could do the rest of the population the sam favour is it? Big money and power comes from feeding kids crap foodstuffs and having them watch TV all day long.
Jonathanjk.com
If Disney comes out on top for this deal, why do you
suppose so many other distributors are slobbering
at the chance to latch onto some of the profits
from future Pixar movies?
4. To trade away the Toy Story/Nemo/Monsters franchise in order to bet that Pixar will continue to make hit movies is a bad bet. Nobody stays on top forever in this business. ..how long has Disney been on top?
Dude's been a Unix-head for a long time. c.f. NeXT in the late-80s/early-90s... It's zero suprise that not long after he comes back to Apple, OS X is announced, a unix-based OS (and at that, one *strongly* derived from NeXTSTEP). I don't know what he thinks of Linux in particular, but it's obvious he likes Unix in general.
Then again, can you name any Disney movie in the last couple of years that was:
1. Animated
2. A hit
3. Not made by Pixar
Their only non Pixar movie in the last couple fo years that was considered major and not a pixar film was that Sinbad one that tanked at the box office. Unless the future of Disney Animations is making cheesy home videos, they're going to have to do a lot of work to get anywhere near where Pixar and who ever they ally with will be.
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
Awww heck, why doesn't Apple just go ahead and buy Disney and keep all those profits they were trying to get Disney to give up? :)
What really bad ones? You say there were a lot...
And NeXT was fucking fantastic, it amazed me that even in '99 the rest of the computing world hadn't caught up to how far along NeXTSTEP was when it came to providing a useful, coherent, sane computing environment.
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 (hint: it doesn't). Emacs don't cost near 2k, iMacs do and they are poor sellers because of it. The G5 machines are priced well if you do a serious comparison of what you get for the money... and more importantly they are priced great since Apple sells them as fast they make them (the single 1.6 excluded).
I realize you are doing the anti-popular opinion troll for mod points but unfortunately for me I can't help but reply.
--- I do not moderate.
No. Steve Jobs runs a company and doesn't answer to them. He answers to shareholders.
. George Bush is an elected (???) representative of the people and should make time for his people.
If I point out that you are incorrect, making me a foe does not make you any more correct.
Mahatma Gandhi was rich?
"But then again we are talking about Apple ppl here who must have more money than God in order to afford an Apple computer."
I own 4 of `em, and I certainly don't consider myself "rich" by any stretch of the imagination. I use my machines to make money on the side and I use the tools that will make me more productive. It might cost me more initially, but if I can complete a job faster, with the least amount of hassle, then the machines have paid for themselves.
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
Your above statements only hold true if you assume Pixar can't create any other market-winning content. Obviously they believe they can and to their credit, Nemo, etc... were very successful market creations, much more so than anything Disney has created in a while.
--- I do not moderate.
If the Pixar modeling/rendering software ran on MacOS X, then there'd be an army of Joe Sixpacks out there competing with Pixar, with a few thousand dollars worth of computers.
I read statements like this with a bit of bemusement. Here's a clue to all you movie makers of the future: it isn't about which software have, or which computer you are running. Movie making is hard because most people don't tell very interesting stories.Let's look at it this way: Steve Jobs runs both Apple and Pixar Animation Studios. One could imagine that if a move to MacOS X allowed such a dramatic reduction in costs for movie development that perhaps Pixar would go ahead and take advantage of it themselves. Or perhaps you think Pixar works hard to spend millions of dollars on salaries and equipment when it cut expenses and expand profits by the simple process of porting software?
Get real.
"He might be surprised to find that Hollywood closes it ranks to rebels," said Kay, the IDC analyst. "By aspiring too high, too quickly, that could be his downfall. But that story's not told yet.''
Certainly not. People want to see Pixar movies and that is guaranteed money. I can see Hollywood closing its rank to rebels when it comes to cash. Right.
Apples marketshare is calculated against an enire computer industry and people expect Apple to gain marketshare? that means that have to sell more computers THAN the industry to have that figure climbing back up again. As long as they make a profit who cares, other than know nothing tech reporters?
Jonathanjk.com
To the contrary, I think it's an interesting question. Jobs is the head of one of the world's great computer companies. Jobs is also the head of one of the worlds great computer animation studios. As both mentioned in the article. But his studio's render farms -- the industrial engines that churn out the frames -- do not run on his computers, even though for many years he has pitched his computers as the machines of choice for computer graphics. I know that rendering is actually on the "production" side rather than the "development" side, and that it is a batch process rather than a creative process, but still, it creates an interesting tension from a PR standpoint. Kind of like finding out that the president of Chrysler drives a Porsche.
If the Pixar modeling/rendering software ran on MacOS X, then there'd be an army of Joe Sixpacks out there competing with Pixar, with a few thousand dollars worth of computers. Steve JObs wants to keep this business obscure enough to keep the bar raised to where Pixar offers a unique and valuable service.
Hold your horses there cowboy bebop. It would take a lot more than Pixar's software to turn Joe Sixpack into the next "Finding Nemo" creator.
All the software in the world cant get around the CPU cycle requirements for this type of rendering. Perhaps if Joe Sixpack had a raised floor room in his basement with about 2000 Xserve G5's (Ok, so it's a big basement) then maybe the release of this software on OSX would be a threat.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
Jobs and the Reality Distortion Field
Jobs is basically a promoter. Nothing less, nothing more. A charismatic evangelist.
For my money the Woz is the man, but Apple is past the age of technology and into the age of promotion. Such is life I guess.
KFG
Just as script kiddies have no innate intelligence and have no clue how all those scripts work, this writer has learned from some rule book somewhere that clauses in a sentence are the preferred way to spiff up boring writing. Rather than try to understand why, he has applied this rule indiscriminately and come up with nonsense.
It has been ages since I worried about this stuff (6th grade, I think). I think these are called subordinate clauses, and are supposed to clarify the rest of the sentence. Thus if he had said "Jobs, who made his money interviewing famous people, routinely declines interviews requests" or "Jobs, who is worth $1.7 billion, said he cannot afford to finance movies himself" -- either one would have been legitimate.
Now I hope I've cleared up SOMETHING, for Ifni's sake!
Infuriate left and right
Yes, because you know, Disney had so much to do with the creation of Spirited Away... Oh, wait a second--that was all Studio Ghibli's doing! Disney just bought the rights to make money off of Spirited Away's theatre runs in the US, that's all. So, grandparent poster's point still stands.
Always ask 'why?'
I don't think so, it's more like finding out the president of Chrysler's landscapers drive Ford trucks
Geekleak.com - Silly name, serious geeks
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.
Why do people still claim Mac is on the verge of bankruptcy? According to some, they've been "on the verge of hell" since the late 80's. Correct me if I'm wrong, but they're doing much better now than they were in 1996...
If any of you are still wondering, just sit down and watch Lion King 1 1/2. Then compare it to Finding Nemo. Ask yourself: which is the better movie? Then ask yourself: How would Walt have felt about the character Poomba in the Lion King, whose defining characteristic is that he passes gas? (A LOT of gas). Methinks old Walt would not have approved of fart jokes, and furthermore that when you have to resort to scatalogical humor to intertain kids, it's a symptom that you've completely run out of good ideas. Shrek and Lilo and Stitch weren't as bad, but they too seemed to need to resort to scatalogical humor. The closest Pixar ever comes to scatalogical is in Monsters Inc, where I really cannot figure out where in the middle of the Himalayas the Abominable Snowman is getting lemon juice with which to make yellow snowcones...
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
If the Pixar modeling/rendering software ran on MacOS X, then there'd be an army of Joe Sixpacks out there competing with Pixar, with a few thousand dollars worth of computers.
... and the talented people who know how to organize all of the above.
Steve JObs wants to keep this business obscure enough to keep the bar raised to where Pixar offers a unique and valuable service.
yeah, sure. It's not the machines, it's not the software. It's the talented people who know what to do with the software, and know how to work around all the things that it can't do.
and the talented people who can write a good script, design good characters, and act. Without them, the people who know how to push the buttons don't have anything to do.
Hardware [check]
Software [check]
Content [check]
Mindshare [check]
Market [check$]
In the great race to revolutionize previous services, CableTV, Telephone and Audio are all taking new forms. Seems to me that the Pixar acquisition after iTunes means Job's only needs a portable device with a large enough screen to make the portable, secure, wireless future happen.
Pixar will produce its own content, and those who seek to distribute their movies through that 'channel' will join in the success. Filling out the market footprint for Jobs' in 2005.
M$ may suffer from being more than we need with their next release.
If at the same time indie Musicians and Filmakers could get the gear they could offer great alternatives, but Apple and Pixar are a collossus.
Stuff that matters.
And guess what? Jobs was right. There are many, many more Mac OS X machines out there on the desktop than Linux machines.
I'm restricting this argument to desktop machines because that's where Microsoft has a stranglehold (cf. parent post).
The vision can be grand even if the results are not, no?
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
That is 'funny' math. He only gets a 1 dollar check per year but his stock optins and bills that Apple picks up for him are worth millions. Hell, they play for that GS5 he flys in.
Ever wonder if there's a valid reason WHY someone's karma might drop with Mac-bashing? Doesn't that say something about the /. community?
At any rate, that article is seriously out of date... referring to "1.5 GHz processors" shows that it obviously hasn't been updated since the PPC970/G5 came out eight or nine months ago.
Second back when I had my NeXT it came with Renderman which was I beleive the Pixar developed shader for 3-d rendering. It was very slick and blow-your-socks off fast on a 486 computer.
NeXT also came with Zilla, the predecessor to all grid computing that let the Zilla project steal unused cycles on all volunteer NeXT computers in the world. Among its feats was part of the four-color-map theorem proof (an exhaustive proof), and the early CGI movie rendering.
So the convergence of Jobs computer platforms and Pixar in not a new thing. The fact that its running on Intel hardware is also no suprise since NeXTstep and Renderman ran on INTEL hardware.
but it seems that with pixlet, Xgrid, Xraid, and the new rackmount G5 all the peices are in place to go back to an all apple platform if he chooses too. But circumstantially they probably will wait till their next movie is done. But presumably with Pixlet, and finalcut pro they can do all the desktop work on apples now.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
16) Apple made a computer that doesn't crash, one that I can use, and I'm just some guy.
17) Apple gets that while functional is good, functional and stylish is better.
18) Apple made a computer that I'm proud to bring with me.
Example: The other night I was at a screening of a foreign movie on some sort of esoteric VCD format that the language lab computer (running XP pro) couldn't play under RealOne, WMP9 or the other DVD software installed. Soooo, just as the professor was about to send everyone home, I offered to try it out on my ibook.
I put in the disc, "DVD Player" started up, the movie started, I plugged in the projector cable, the controller faded away subtly and seemlessly and we watched the movie. I sat back with a grin, as if it was me who did something right... As if I was the one who fixed the movie player with my Apple.
So what's my point again?
Apple is great because it makes my life easier, my computer does the work I want it to when I want it to and I'm proud when it does so.
If you read, I wrote:
Apple's no longer in a position to afford profiting by quantity. The first step is to make the public want Macs. In 1997, the public didn't care. In 2004, finally, Apple is associated with Cool. The public wants Macs.
The thing I find is, whenever I tell someone how much an entry level iMac costs, they're always shocked because it's less than they expected. Step 2 is to make the public decide to buy Macs. That's what the Apple stores and the iPods are for.
Moderators should have to take a reading comprehension test.
If I had to handicap the animation industry, I'd bet on Pixar because they have five mega-hits under their belts, and zero flops.
Dreamworks has been much more spotty.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Consumer's aren't choosing Linux, enterprises are choosing Linux for desktops. Mom and Pop aren't formatting their hard drives and installing Linux distros on their 'box' at home. If anything, Microsoft has to worry about the loss of enterprise desktop share, not Apple, who's not in enterprise.
Enterprise takes what's cheap and what works. That's why they buy thousands of identical, feature-less Dell boxes. And that's why they'll install Linux on those boxes instead of Windows XP Pro if Linux does what they need it to do. I mean seriously, why would you install XP in the enterprise? The reasons keep diminishing.
Moderators should have to take a reading comprehension test.
No, it's kind of like finding out that a company uses the best tools for the jobs it needs to do. Apple doesn't run on all Mac OS X boxes, either. And I'll bet that SGI workstations aren't powering the SGI website, either. Oh the horrors and hypocrisy!
Do you really think Jobs would change Pixars Hardware/Software setup to please his Apple side?
;-)
And why should he have to explain it? The fact that most of that software comes straight from the NeXT days should be "explanation" enough on the techie front. But go ahead and raise your fist for Linux dominance
It's only very recent that Apple's making serious servers and raid solutions, and while they're very cool and cost effective, an established business will wait just a bit longer and see where it goes before switching the most processor-intensive part of their work to G5's.
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.
I'd never expect a serious CEO to have to think about that in other terms than cost-reduction, productivity and quality.
I think, therefore I am...I think.
You can get an eMac (1GHz G4, 17" CRT, DVD-ROM/CD-RW), or last year's iBook (800MHz G3, 12" LCD, CD-ROM), for $799. Financing available. If God can't afford that, no wonder He has so many of His followers on TV asking for money.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
their art work and prototyping is done on Macs..rendering is grunt work, why not do it on cheap machines?
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
They probably are sitting on more than a few movie scripts that are complete gold, we don't know. But I am willing to bet that Jobs knows what he is doing here and the split from Disney will be a success.
Having met Pete Docter and a few of the other Pixar crew, I can pretty much guarantee that. They were already working on Monsters Inc and Finding Nemo around the time Toy Story first hit theaters.
By the time we actually get to see the movies, the technology Pixar created during production is already 2-3 years old.
I have no doubts that Pixar will continue to be successful even after Disney. (No sense in letting Disney drag them under like AOL has for Time/Warner.)
8==8 Bones 8==8
10 bucks says that is exactly why Jobs had the G5 Xserve created.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
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.
Sounds to me like your friends are the extremists if the simple mention of a Mac makes them stop talking to you. Jobs has done a bunch of dumb things, sure. To hold him responsible for your friends not talking computers with you is kinda silly though.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine...
What if it resulted in a 35% marketshare?
Can you say iPod?
Linux is outpacing Mac because it is out cheaping MS on cheap boxes.
anyone who would say Linux is a better Desktop system than OS X are crack heads....and this is coming from a Linux desktop user.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Shrek vs. Toy Story 1/2, A Bug's Life, Monsters Inc., and Finding Nemo. That's one hit against five. I'd bet on Pixar.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
As someone who uses PCs and Linux, but really respects Macs and OSX, I'll trying to explain briefly why I think Jobs is doing as well as the head of Apple and Pixar.
What's the focus of Macs: Usability.
What makes Pixas films great: The story.
Notice how technology is used as a means to end in each case? While yes the technology behind Pixar films is amazing, it's the story that makes the films so entertaining. And while Macs aren't any more powerful than PCs (I know this is arguable either way) it's the ease of use that makes Macs popular. I think Jobs understands this, and there's probably a reason the man makes enough money to pay for my college tuition in the time it takes him to drink his coffee in the morning.
ce n'est pas un Sig.
It seems to me that Apple is greatly expanding. The X Serves are actualy selling fairly well (and those can't all be going to schools) and many of the markets that started to drop Apple have started moving back, for example, 2 years ago, my highschool decided it was going all Dell. They had given us a great deal and they were cheap computers, so we started pulling machines for Dells. Now the school is probably about 90% Dell, and we're rapidly back pedling and trying to get new macs. The teachers want them because they were less of a hassle, the sys admins want them because the dell rackmounts have been nightmares (and they want something that will play nice with the linux boxes and the old macs that are still being used) and the repair techs want them so that they can sit down for longer than 5 minutes at a time. Similarly my college was considering a year ago to standardize all computers across the campus as x86 windows machines. Just 2 weeks ago, the IT department sent out a campus wide email to all staff that the school had just negotiated a bulk order from apple, and anyone who wanted a machine should order now. To top it off, they just recently opened a mac tech position to support the influx of new macs into the campus.
I realize these are anecedotes, but going on what I've seen, I think Apple is slowly creeping back.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
1) Woz was a genius yes, but Woz was the Apple. Steve and his team was the Mac.
2) And yet for all of that, no one did anything like it until Apple did it.
3) No matter where you go, there will be fan boys
4) It's not that the single button itself is better, it's the philosophy that you should be able to do everything with a single mouse button. Just for fun, try to create a new folder on your desktop of your windows machine with only the left click.
That and when you really think about it. If you're hard set in teh 2 button ways, you already own a 2 button mouse, so just plug it into your mac and be done with it.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Yikes! Confuse, but don't offend!
Virginia Tech != UVA
Pixar is run by some very bright computer graphics legends. They make Renderman, the best and basically only production renderer in the movie industry.
They don't tell Jobs how to do his job, he doesn't tell them how to do theirs.
Do these numbers make any difference? Are they in any general way meaningful. *nix boxes are sprouting up everywhere. Windows boxes are bought by the dozen, used for a year, then put in a corner. I have three unused windows boxes myself.
Market share in this sense says nothing about suitability. It merely states that the number of *nix boxes are growing, and the Mac is not a commodity machine. It does not say that they Mac is not a good machine. It does not say that many people would like to own a mac. When i was into bicycles everyone wondered why i wanted campy instead of shimano. Everyone had shimano, so, no matter what quality problem shimano had in the range I wanted, i should buy it just because everyone else did.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
What Apple borrowed from PARC and others before them they improved and innovated. For example, pull-down menus (Mac) are simpler to use then pop-up (pre-Mac) because they're always visible. Previous systems did bit-blits only of rectangular regions, Apple introduced non-rectangular, non-contiguous region blits. Etc.
MS, on the other hand, has slavishly followed and usually dis-improved. Or been way late to the party. For example, Apple added Quartz Extreme a couple of years ago: use OpenGL and the today's opwerful graphics cards to improve and accelerate the Mac UI. MS will bring this to Longhorn in a couple of years.
Heck, MS so copies Apple that they even use the same color schemes and desktop patterns for their advanced UI previews. They can't even come up with their own.
And THAT is the difference between Jobs and Gates.
Not that Gates hasn't innovated. He has. But in the business/marketing realm, not design or technology. Most of us geeks admire tech/design innovators over marketing innovators.
"1. the whole personality cult surrounding Steve Jobs (face it - Steve Wozniak is the real genius)"
What, exactly, do you mean by "Real?"
There is more than one kind of genius, and all kinds are very real. There is genius in mathemeticians who focus only on esoteric theories, there is genius in engineers who only solve real problems they can feel, and there is genius in Ella Fitzgerald's singing.
The genius of Dali's art is very different in kind from the genius of a certain Finnish student coming up with the right code for the world, but who would say that Linus Torvalds is no genius?
Not all genius is necessarily what you might consider to be good. There is a genius in Bill Gates' domination of markets, in George W. Bush's political mastery, in Osama Bin Laden's sheer survival skills and leadership abilities.
Both Wozniak and Jobs are geniuses, in their own way. Wozniak is the engineering genius, and Jobs is the marketing and management genius.
And neither one is really less of a genius than the other.
Although I agree with the article's point of view, you're dead-on about the submitter's bias. Of course, the submitter's bias is probably why the submitter noticed the article in the first place, and if the submitter didn't like the article, he/she probably wouldn't have submitted it.
This is clearly an opinion piece, not so much a report.
I disagree. As the president of Pixar, his job is to do what's in the best interests of the company. If his admins came to him and said they wanted to make a render farm using a bunch of xeons running linux and he told them to use Apple products instead, just because he's in charge at apple, he wouldnt be doing what is in the best interest of Pixar. He'd be doing what's in the best interest of Apple, and that's not his job at Pixar.
Darth --
Nil Mortifi, Sine Lucre
2:2001 A Space Odyssey is a phenomenal movie. The fact that bits of it show up in today's pop culture is more of a testament to Stanley Kubrick than a knock to Steve Jobs
3:Rabid fanboys exist for many things most aren't even computer related
4:Surely you can come up with a better example of product deficiencies than the mouse! My secretary has been working with a two button mouse on Windows for years and has never used the other mouse button. Apple's target audience doesn't need it.How about the fact that their CPU (G4) has been an embarrassment and is just now showing some promise (PPC 970fx).
Some points that you didn't mention that I feel could more relevant:
Bizarre and alienating marketing decisions
Lack of game titles (Not that I game)
Not as much support for odd hardware, although my GPIB board recently has become supported
Is not the best dollar for performance platform available (which I suspect drives many purchases for the /. crowd!).
We are willing to spend the time and effort to build a PC and install the OS (I am installing Gentoo right now) so having it Just Work (TM) isn't such of a value to you as it is to the general public
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
He only gets a 1 dollar check per year but his stock optins and bills that Apple picks up for him are worth millions.
No, they aren't. His stock options allow him to purchase Apple shares for $43.56. AAPL is currently at around $20.00. Right now, Steve Jobs stock options are worth exactly nada point null. And frankly, in the foreseable future they will rather keep this value. Jobs even once offered a journalist who was estimating their worth at some millions to buy them at half the estimated price. Obviously, the journalist declined. Even if Jobs was half-joking then, he had a valid point - it will take ages for AAPL to break through the $40.00 level and actually it's not even likely for it to ever happen.
Of course, the company pay for his semi-private jet and his powerbook. But even that is not exactly his own salary - if he quits from Apple, another CEO will fly "his" gulfstream jet.
I read statements like this with a bit of bemusement. Here's a clue to all you movie makers of the future: it isn't about which software have, or which computer you are running. Movie making is hard because most people don't tell very interesting stories.
As one who had a Mac and a LaserWriter but failed to takeover the world of publishing, then a Mac and Dreamweaver but failed to become a DotAnything, and now a Mac and iMovie and am totally non-threatening tp Spielberg, I concur. Anyone can buy equipment but it takes a talented person to use it. Michelangelo (artist, not turtle) didn't even have a Wacom tablet!
Talent is innate, but it ain't in me.
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
Following your thoughts, I would think that a part of Steve's "Grand Plan" would be to bring Apple to a position in the market whereby the server-room decision makers are forced to at least look at Apple's offerings for tangible and compelling reasons. If that happens without due harm to Apple as a corporation I would say SJ has done a good job in his respective positions at both companies.
The president at Chrysler drives a Mercades-Benz
Dailmer-Chrysler
Many desktops at Pixar run Mac OS X. It's documented on the behind the scenes featurettes on the DVDs. You're obviously a troll.
mbbac
Ebert's First Law: "A movie is not about what it is about, but how it is about it."
In other words, ya damn right! If you can't tell a good story, don't expect Final Cut Pro to make your movie stellar.
fs
i think we have seen that with the Xserve G5s and such. The man is unquestionably smart.
Nope. As previous posters said, Joe Sixpack ain't got nothin' on Pixar if he doesn't have the story to back up all his rendering horsepower. And I'll go a step further. He can have the story and all the tech. But if he doesn't have the animation talent, it ain't worth shit.
Pixar has nothing to worry about.