Slashdot Mirror
Has Steve Jobs Lost His Magic?
TimAbdulla writes to mention a Wired article wondering if Steve Jobs has lost his magic? The keynote yesterday, author Leander Kahney says, was the most uninspiring he's yet seen out of the usually charismatic man. Accompanied by other folks from within the company, Kahney wonders what lackluster showings like this will mean for the company after Jobs steps down. From the article: "Looking very thin, almost gaunt, Jobs used the 90-minute presentation to introduce a new desktop Mac and preview the next version of Apple's operating system, code-named Leopard. The sneak preview of Leopard was underwhelming. For what seemed an interminable time, Jobs and Co. showed off one yawn after another. There's no way I can get excited about virtual desktops or a new service that turns highlighted text into a 'to do' item. Oooo."
maybe it's a recurrence of illness?
Didn't he have surgery for a tumor?
Don't I read this exact same article following every one of Steve Jobs' keynote speeches?
Has he "lost the magic" or is it just impossible for any man or any company to live up to the incredible hype the technology media puts on Apple and Jobs?
didn't/doesn't Jobs have a health issue he's dealing with? that could explain his appearance.
it's too bad he didn't have a flying mokey to release for the gawkers wanting a mac-gasm. guess we'll just have to live with a reliable, stable system.
One of the hardest working Companies in the computer industry, trying to make your experience genuinely better, and some people still aren't impressed. Go wait with baited breath about what Dell is doing if you're that underwhelmed. The lines aren't nearly as long!
God is real unless declared integer.
The company can't come out with an awesome new toy every 3-6 months. Steve and Co. just had nothing to talk about, and anyways it's the WWDC. It's for developers and there were tons of new developer centric stuff Obj-C 2.0, XCode 3.0, a preview of Leopard (which I think the big things are still be held close to their chest, don't want to promise stuff like Vista and just have it trimmed every month). Wait til near Christmas, because you know there will be a new iPod or something for the masses to drool over.
Cheers,
Ian
Maybe it was kinda dull to the author because it was a developers conference. From TFA, the author didn't understand the applause on speed improvements and the technical under-the-hood wizardry. As a developer, you get why that was important and you get excited about it. I guess its the difference between being a journalist and being an engineer/computer scientist. We actually get excited about the geeky things.
Who?
I know this has been asked many times before, but at what point did the opinion of dumbarses on blogs become "news"?
(Yeah, I know there's a lot of technical wizardry under the hood, but that's for the geeks).
What part of "developer's conference" did you not understand, dickhead?
Apple's head of marketing, Phil Schiller, is the most relaxed of the bunch and has his own cuddly charm.
Hey, I'm as infected by Shillermania as the next Machead, but cuddly?
The whole article reads like a MySpace posting by a 14 year old girl disappointed by the first experience with her latest 40 year old beau.
Can the man not have a bad day without it being a cosmic event?
"That's right, Diane. Moreover, reports say the amount of water Jobs convreted into wine was down almost 35% this year from last!"
Jeeze, over the last six years under Jobs, Apple sextuples it's share price, exceeds Dell in market cap, takes over the MP3 market, practically invents and dominates the music download market, doubles the Mac's market share, successfully transitions first from OS 9 to OS X, then from PowerPC to Intel, the last several months ahead of schedule. What the hell do you people want?
Christ, Jobs could announce that from now on every single Mac would ship with a free Natalie Portman clone, and you people would be complaining that it was a disappiontment because the rumors sites said it would ship with two free Natalie Portman clones, each holding ice creame sundaes!
Crow T. Trollbot
Nobody attending WWDC thought so. Leopard has lots of cool features that beat even previous stuff like Expose and Dashboard in the dust. Time machine in particular looks like star trek computers. Apple completed a complete platform migration in less than a year, Objective C is getting garbage collection and properties.
Looks like the article's author doesn't care about anything besides iPods, but there is more to technology than just small gadgets.
I wish MS could "bore" me like this...
Define performance. I think that if you look at the actual numbers, what people don't realize is that you can't have 30%-100% growth all the time. At some point, Jobs will have turned the company around, and it will slip back to more reasonable, single-digit growth rates. And there is nothing wrong with that.
I've seen this with a number of companies. People start to believe that a temporary blip, like the introduction of the iPod and Apple's subsequent explosive growth in revenue, is forever. Then they get pissed when they find out it isn't, and blame it on obvious incompetence by management. Instead, the problem lies strictly with vastly exaggerated expectations. Remember the little blurb about past performance not predicting future performance? It's there for a reason.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Exactly. Why NOT have the people within the company, who deserve some spotlight time, talk about the things THEY do in the company.
Basically, I think the Wired article is doing a Dvorak, and inciting Mac users to go to the site. It's much ado about nothing.
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
Yes, in fact, when you look at what's come out of the WWDC, there are some good, solid improvements. Leopard sounds to me like it'll be a worthwhile upgrade, Xcode 3 sounds like it has some improvements that I, not being a developer, won't fully appreciate. And the Mac Pros came out, which is a pretty big deal. It means Apple has a full Intel line-up, and the MacPro looks to be a speed demon at a very competitive price.
And let's not forget that Apple just announced the Intel transition one year ago. The first Intel-based Macintoshes were releases a little over six months ago. Apple is a company in rapid transition and I'm sure it's a lot for them to deal with, and as their position solidifies, they shouldn't be making as many total-redesigns and huge changes all the time. OSX is becoming a more mature OS, and so the improvements should have fewer huge leaps and more incremental shifts. The should be continuing to fine-tune under the hood. The should be refining their UI instead of redesigning from scratch.
I just don't see that there's anything to complain about. They'll release some new hardware designs in the next year, most likely. I think that a phone and a media-center device may well be on the horizon-- now that they've finished the Intel transition and they're on-track to release the next version of the OS, I think their R&D may become more and more focussed on new devices and the next-big-thing after the iPod.
This is more proof that the rumor sites are Apple's worst enemy. They hype things up, even though Apple purposely keeps quiet.
The things that were demoed were demoed because they pertain to developers who will need to interface with the new APIs and test for compatibility with their existing apps. For example:
The only thing I can't think of pertaining to devs is iChat, but I'm sure there's a reason they demoed it now. Also, did anyone notice it wasn't using brushed metal anymore? Straight Aqua.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Apple isn't obligated to release any of their trade secrets. Part of Apple's success is in keeping their cards close to their chest, then revealing all and sideswiping competitors when they least expect it.
It's in Apple's best interest for people to be "underwhelmed" with the 10 features shown, especially competitors like Microsoft. All the more of an impact when Apple fully reveals Leopard at MacWorld.
"Sufferin' succotash."
It's also important to remember that the keynote is just 90 minutes out of a week-long conference. Jobs' role in the keynote is to get developers excited about all of the other 120 (or so) sessions and materials. His keynote sets the tone and the emphasis for the remainder of the week. I remember very specifically lots of really cool stuff that was discussed in the 2004 WWDC in the sessions. Much of it was alluded to during the keynote but, since it was under NDA, never really made it out into the wild. Really, I think that folks like Leander need to remember that the WWDC keynote is not intended to stand on its own -- it is an intro to the conference.
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!
I think the "problem" is that some people are looking for the next significant advance that i s AMAZING. Well, the iPod itself wasn't that amazing when it came out. What is more amazing is people bought em. Every release form Apple is not going to be awe inspiring or even that exciting. Personally what EVERYONE missed is that Apple pulled off the fastest platform switch EVER. Less then ONE YEAR after the announcement, other then repaired machines or refurbs, all new equipment coming from Apple are now running on the Intel platform. That is significant! Anyway, the new hardware kicks ass in my opinion. I probably will never have one.
Gorkman