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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."
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.
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.
"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
I think you're right, but I also think that this is a little more vitriolic than previous articles on how Apple launches don't excite anymore. Yes, there is no new iPod (did anyone see that coming when it was announced anyway?). Yes, there is no new Mac like product, and we won't see advertising to match it either. But is that really surprising? Do these people really expect that Apple will release every year a new, ground breaking product? Is every conference going to be life-changing? Of course not. Yet judging from the article, that seems to be exactly what's expected.
You know, to me, this sounds simply like this specific journalist drank too much of his own kool-aid, and is disappointed that Apple and Jobs don't live up to the hype that he probably created himself in earlier articles. And now he is frustrated, and vents his frustration in a meaningless articles. Kinda reminds me of how the Spice girls fell. First everyone loved them. Then, suddenly everyone hated them, even though their music really hadn't changed. I think the same thing might happen to Apple and Jobs if they make even minor missteps. Everyone will be so happy to make some new predictions that they'll be announcing the emperor's nakedness even before the emperor is on the street.
Personally, I'll just enjoy what Apple is doing so far. The iPod is great, and while I'd love the full-screen iPod if it ever comes to pass, I'm happy to wait for it. Same with a MacBook that doesn't burn and can play Spore.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
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!
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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."
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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