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."
An idle question: Has anyone ever seen Steve Jobs make any significant public statement about the fact that the Pixar render farm uses Linux computers? I'm sure he has an opinion on the benefits of Linux, but I don't know if he's ever expressed it near a reporter.
Steve Jobs DOES have vision, and a profound understanding of the principles of technological innovation, no matter what some people might think. For example, he wrote that famous text himself: http://www.apple.com/thinkdifferent/
Personally, if there IS a Pixarland, I'd go in a heartbeat, and I'll bet millions of people would too. Consider how long Disney has been around versus Pixar, and in time I think Pixar - if it continues to make smart decisions in its productions - could have a wide reach than it does now. However, it would probably take at least a couple generation of leadership - like Disney. I doubt Steve Jobs can do it all, but maybe he is Superman in disguise.
-B
Best Buy can have you arrested
Steve Jobs refuses an interview? That's his right. And stop talking about his money.
See the problem?
The article fails to mention that Jobs can also play an increasingly large role in the proposed Disney/Comcast merger. Comcast's CEO, Brian Roberts, is trying to pursuade Steve Jobs to join ranks with Comcast. Since Pixar has been directly responsible for a very large portion of Disney's recent success, and since Pixar will be severing ties with Disney, if Steve Jobs endorses the merger and decides to renew the contract with Disney (because of the Comcast deal), stockholders will be significantly more inclined to approve the merger.
The quote is: "the most powerful and trusted brand in animation."
o -video-feature-cartoons" then yes, Disney would be correct. The Disney of old is dead. Short live the Disney of new.
The keyword there is "animation". As far as I know, Disneyland is built from steel, not cell shading or computers. The Disney Channel only exists to re-run old Disney movies, and none of the recent Disney-only features have had much impact.
As far as animation goes, Pixar currently has a commanding lead over Disney. Check recent box office revenue and direct movie merchandise sales for evidence. If the quote was "the most powerful and trusted brand in franchised-animation-related-stuff-and-straight-t
the market share thing is really strange... I keep seeing more and more and more macs out there (especially powerbooks).. most of the linux market share has to be in servers. I'm at RIT and I think about half the people I see now have apple laptops, its really insane. even the members of the Computer Science House (special interest housing) about half have mac laptops, despite most also having desktops running windows or linux or windows and linux.. Apple's market share definitely is not decreasing at least.
the most interesting bit from the article--"Jobs bought Pixar from LucasFilm in 1986, during his exile from Apple...
[Lucas] sold [Pixar] to Jobs for a bargain because Lucas needed cash for a divorce settlement."
is that really true?
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Well, oh Anonymously Cowardly one, this is actually a damn good idea and one that makes complete sense. Remember when it looked like Apple or Pixar or both were going to buy Universal Music? I remember mentioning that it made more sense for Apple and Pixar to buy Universal Pictures for a guaranteed advantageous home base to release Pixar movies. I believe that Jobs can marshal enough money to beat the Comcast offer, and would be looked upon very kindly as a "white knight" versus Comcast's hostile bid.
Apple, Pixar, Disney, ABC TV (USA) and Disney Cable Networks? A match made in heaven. Do it, Steve. Do it.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Why do so many people worship this one guy?
I think this statement is a tad off -- while Jobs has a fair chunk of admirers, he's not worshipped by the vast majority of geeks out there.
Still, it can't be denied that the guy has two strong points in his favor:
1. He is a charismatic speaker and promoter 2. He has a vision of where he wants technology to go, and how people use it.
Say what you want about Jobs, he's not a guy whose only goal is to sell you a shiny new box, like Mike Dell does. Beneath the short-term announcements and plans is a long-term vision for making technology accessible to people, so they can accomplish things with it. Take a look at how Apple's spent the last few years building up their iLife software suite, for instance -- it's not just "here are a bunch of programs we're throwing into a box," it's "here's how we've integrated these things to organize your stuff."
And besides, doesn't your current computer use windows and a mouse and icons? That's Job's vision, right there -- he took one look at that Xerox Star GUI, said "This is so fucking cool, everybody should be using this" ... and made it so that everyone is using it.
--R.J.
Electric-Escape.net
Given the failed discussions that Disney had with Comcast, and the subsequent hostile takeover offer, dropping Pixar through being unable to reach agreement, may make a lot of sense.
If the big bad cable company trying to take you over wants content, killing value by dropping an agreement with a major content provider (Pixar) might just be the way to go.
Anyone else think Eisner would do that to fend off Comcast and keep the keys to the Kingdom to himself?
Hmmm, I don't worship Steve Jobs by any stretch, but I do appreciate his vision and his company's products. The world needs more like him. Great designs rarely come from committees - in fact, can you name one? Concorde, maybe. Most "classics" are usually one person's vision.
As for the drop in market share, that is not SJ's fault, it was John Sculley's, and the cluless mob that followed after him. Apple was about to go tits up when SJ returned and used his vision to put the company back on track. In fact, SJ's biggest error was bringing Sculley over, then making an enemy of him. One can only wonder at the shape of the industry today if that had not happened. I'm sure one Bill Gates would have far less influence, power and money, that's for sure.
My major concern with this deal is that Disney just might be enough of a 600 lb gorilla[0] to fight really dirty on this. Can they leverage Pixar out of the screens when Pixar wants to release a movie? Exactly how much power does Disney have?
[0] - Where does a 600 lb gorilla sleep? Wherever it !@#$ing wants to.
it'd cost you several hundred dollars to get in, everything would be stark white with accents of brushed steel and a few aqua bubbles. There would only be 3 rides, and they'd be the really old ones "ported" from Magic Mountain, and before you entered the park, there'd be a little tutorial demonstrating how powerful and intuitive everything is.
So you've been to Epcot?
The Innovation buildings are SO EXCITING. Their "future" of computer hardware is stuff most Slashdotters already have.
---
Given Steve Job's ability to create great usable interfaces, Pixarland may be the first themepark that would not require a map to find your way. It would keep the lines down to 10 minutes even on weekends. It might cost "several hundred dollars", but you would spend all the times on rides rather than waiting in line. At that price, your fast-food concessions can be buffet-style, eliminating the overhead of cashiers inside the park. The justification is that if you are eating, you are not making the lines for rides longer.
Would you pay twice the ticket price for the Magic Kingdom if the lines were half as long? You could see every attraction in fewer days so you could keep the trip shorter and save on hotel nights. And remove the boredom of standing on line for an hour for a 2-minute ride.
---
Pixarland will not happen soon. Since all the past and current movie releases were for Disney, Pixar will have to wait untill it has a few hits on its own. Then buy land. Design rides to fit the land and the movies. Build the rides. Hire people to run everything. Safety tests. Usability testing. Fix anything confusing. Repeat until anybody from 5 to 95 can understand the layout. Finally we mortals are allowed to enter.
I guess they need 5 great movies (at one movie per year) before even starting. Another 5 years to design, build and test the first 10 rides. (I am assuming one adult and one child per movie.) So Pixarland opens in 2015. The grand opening will do well, and adding a few rides each year to match the latest movies would keep people going back.
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
"The way Steve Jobs manages all these tasks is that there is the real Steve Jobs, and the other company is run by a clever, leading edge animated, life-like, 3-Dimensional replica."
No. There's the original Steve Jobs and then there's the clone(s). Remember, Jobs bought Pixar from George Lucas. He obviously got ahold of some spare spaarti cylinders from Kamino to crank out batches of clones. That way he can send a clone to each division of Apple and Pixar and yell at everyone to motivate them into working harder and more efficiently and making him appear omnipotent (I call it the "Zardoz effect"). The difference between him and Gates would be that if Bill Gates did the same thing, Windows would have even more bugs in it. And of course the world would end if there were more than one Larry Ellison.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Pixlet, the first studio-grade codec for filmmakers that was developed in conjunction with Pixar to deliver breathtaking HD-quality video on the Mac that is free from visual artifacts.
"High-end Video Codec
Pixlet is the first studio-grade codec for filmmakers. Pixlet provides 20-25:1 compression, allowing a 75MB/sec series of frames to be delivered in a 3MB/sec movie, similar to DV data rates. Or a series of frames that are over 6GB in size can be contained within a 250MB movie. Pixlet lets high-end digital film frames play in real time with any 1GHz G4 or faster Panther Mac, without investing in costly, proprietary hardware."
You may recall Jobs demoed it in october. He showed in particular how you could use the scrubber to move through the film in faster than real time to any place and the codec kept up with the presentation. And the quality was near DVD. very impressive.
So where is it? it vanished off Apple's main web pages though you can find it in their archives. It vanished about the same time as "home-on-ipod" vanished. I assume panther, ilife and ipod ate its brain share. Perhaps its going to be held back as a premium product to differentiate final cut pro. any guesses
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
1. the whole personality cult surrounding Steve Jobs (face it - Steve Wozniak is the real genius)
I would agree that Wozniac is the greater technical genius. I have not been that impressed with Jobs in the past, but to discount what he has done over the last few years is to fail to recognize real talent. You cannot deny he has brought Apple a huge amount of mindshare and given them a great technical direction over the last few years
2. a futuristic vision that only about 40 years out of date. Take the ipod - it looks like it came straight out of the movie '2001', which was released in 1968
Related to the aforementioned skill of product design above is knowing when retro will sell, and when to move away from it. You'll note that they don't sell candy-colored computers anymore (though they are starting to sell colored iPods).
3. rabid myopic fanboys. Yes, I am aware of the irony of posting this on Slashdot.
They exist for any platform.
4. product deficiencies that are actually features. For a great example of this, bring up the single mouse button thing to a bunch on Mac fanatics. You will be informed that a single button is better, that you can compensate by doing this and that and this, and that you don't really need more than a single button anyway.
I've never heard anyone argue that. I use a three (or more) button mouse for an external mouse, but I do have to say that I personally prefer a single button on a laptop as I am always accidentally hitting the right one on most PC laptops. Since my hands are on the keys all the time anyway I find chording to work better on laptops and two buttons to be very inefficient.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Consumers who are choosing Linux aren't choosing it over OS X, they're choosing it over Windows. Most aren't even considering OS X because it's too pricey for them at this point in their lives. But abandoning Windows primes them to become OS X users down the road, when they become successful enough to see value in trading money for features, ease of use, and status. In essence, Linux creates a feeder program for future OS X users.
I see Linux growing tremendously in the future, as it replaces Windows as the dominant desktop OS. And I see OS X growing significantly in the future, as mature Linux users migrate to it. In between the two, I see Windows slowly being squeezed out of existence, too expensive to compete with Linux, too buggy, insecure, and inelegant to compete with OS X.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.