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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."
but I kind of wanted to stop reading after this:
"The late Walt Disney built his empire with a mouse. The same can be said about Steve Jobs"
Dial a cliche...
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.
It's up to the reader to decide which is which.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
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
Judge: Let me get this straight Mickey, you want a divorce from Minnie because you say she is crazy.
Mickey: No, I never said Minnie was crazy, I said she was fucking Goofy!
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
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/
Best Buy can have you arrested
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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,
:) 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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
Here's to the crazy ones.
The misfits.
The rebels.
The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.
They're not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.
You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them,
disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can't do is ignore them.
Because they change things.
They invent. They imagine. They heal.
They explore. They create. They inspire.
They push the human race forward.
Maybe they have to be crazy.
How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art?
Or sit in silence and hear a song that's never been written?
Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?
We make tools for these kinds of people.
While some see them as the crazy ones,
we see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think
they can change the world, are the ones who do.
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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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
I don't think movie theater chains would kill an incredible revenue source like Pixar. How much leverage does Disney have at this point anyways? What if they threatend to halt distribution to theater chains that didn't do as told? I'm sure that would frighten some theater chains into compliance (not showing Pixar films and such), but are Disney's current box offices draws really worth it? Why not get on board with Pixar instead?
Pixar has consistently delivered a string of hits that continue to bring bodys to the theaters. Disney, on the other hand, has a solid, but shrinking box office draw. Do you go with Pixar and dump Disney, or do you place it safe and stick by Disney?
Of course Disney could jump into the theater chain business. But that doesn't seem likely since they're hurting right now. I'm not saying they're going away any time soon, but even big companies struggle. Pixar sees the potential of manuvering around and utilizing Disney's current weakness.
Wouldn't a power shift be fun to watch over the coming years?
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.
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
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.
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
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.