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."

Comments

Re:People should be ashamed

[thelost]

unfortunately when you do something well you rarely get praise for it, people generally say 'well thats great, so what's next'. Peoples expectations of Apple are so high these days that when Jobs doesn't pull a full formed iBaby out of his ass they cry fowl.

Personally I did find his key-speech lacking, but I just think that they were being cautious because they are waiting to release the big guns next spring. I personally think it will have something to do with making sure Vista comes out stillborn, but that's just my take.

yeah, nice imagery huh.

Re:They're just learning from the pros

[Millenniumman]

Microsoft presentations boring? What is boring about seeing a billionaire jump around and scream on stage? Or shout your job title fourteen times?

And as far as Apple being "pricy designer stuff that does the same thing as cheap stuff", it is not. Yes, you can get the same functionality out of them, but you can also get the same functionality out of a luxury car and a bicycle. Mac OS X provides an intuitive interface that makes it easy to do what you want. Beyond that, the Jobs's claim about Dell being $1000 more is correct.

It's all about the developers.

[jmp_nyc]

The event is called the Apple World Wide Developers Conference.

Steve Jobs talked about the new version of the OS and new high end boxes. These are the products that will most directly impact the lives and work of those who develop software for Apple systems. This conference has never been about targetting consumers. It's all about things that matter to developers.

The next version of the iPod, the next revision of the iMac and laptops, as well as any other devices Apple has up its sleeve (iPhone, Tivo-esque Mac Mini settop box, tablet, etc.) are all consumer focused items. Anything Apple wants to release to consumers will be released a little closer to the holiday season, making it harder for imitators to be able to produce knockoffs in time for Christmas. Anyone who thought they'd see an iPhone, new iPod, or any other strictly consumer-centric item at WWDC has put their desire for new gadgets ahead of Apple's desire to maximize its profits. That said, stay tuned for a product announcement sometime before October with Apple's slate of holiday season offerings.
-JMP

Re:I dont get why should we get 'excited'

[hackstraw]

Are there really people whose heartbeat rises when some new tech is introduced ?

Yes. Although, the drama is slowing down.

People's heartbeat rises when some new cars are introduced. Cars are pretty common and standard now, but there are still times when new models and/or features are introduced and people go nuts.

I used to go nuts when every beta release of Netscape came out. I would wake up early in the morning and download it from a california server from the east coast so I could get into the FTP server and to get a good transfer rate. Now, I just use the default browser that comes with my OS, and when an update or feature is added, and thats few and far between, I say, wow, thats nice, why did it take them so long?

Now, this slashdot drama about Steve Jobs is probably sensationalized a bit, but as far as desktop computing goes, Apple has it down. I've used kazillions of desktop GUI environments, and I will say that the OS X environment at least wins because it annoys me the least. I've used KDE, Gnome, OL(V)WM, CDE, Windows 3.1->XP, FVWM, TWM, Afterstep, Window Maker, Apple //s, Macs from 84-present, and I'm sure a few others. But as any industry matures, the number of choices diminishes, and the real differences between them are not that big of a difference.

Personally, I'm glad that reboots and crashes are not an integral part of computer usage. I see that the computer market may stagnate for a while, and then, like cars today, there may be a new uprising where there are other options available to fit ones personality and fashion interests, but for the most part, computers, like cars, are just tools. Pretty much a dime a dozen, but if you want to impress your friends and enemies, you can get a more fancy, newer, niche computer, and like a car, your friends will say, "Ooh, thats cool", and your enemies will say "He just got that to compensate for _____", and yeah, both will be right :)

Re:Just going to get worse, I think

[jacobw]

It's come down to new takes on old ideas; everything that has been toted as a new feature in OSX (and Vista) can be found in some other product or OS. While OSX's great strength is its Unix roots, Unix itself has been around literally my entire life. Not much innovation there.

Actually, although it is heresy for a Mac fan like me to say this: Apple has never really been about innovation.

Now, this fact is usually trotted out by people who want to bash Apple--but I'm actually citing it as proof of Apple's savvy. There's an old saying: "Pioneers get eaten. Settlers get rich." Apple has a real corporate talent for noticing when other people have come up with an intriguing innovation of a good idea, but haven't figured out how to combine that innovation with all the things that make a good end-user experience--interface, design, etc. This goes right back to the very beginnings of the company. Stevens Wozniak and Jobs weren't the first people to sell homebrew computers--they just did it better than anybody else around. Apple didn't invent the idea of whole window-based GUI with a mouse controller, Xerox Parc did. But Xerox didn't recognize how incredibly significant the invention was; Apple did. And, obviously, MP3 players were around before the iPod made them a must-have item

Like any human institution, Apple is imperfect. Sometimes they've gotten to the market too soon (as with the Newton). Other times (perhaps more rarely) they've trailed too far behind, as for example at certain points between System 7 and OSX. But they seem to get it right far more often than most companies.