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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."
I want an iPhone! Gimme gimme gimme gimme now!!!!!
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.
Doesn't this follow his trend for last quarter century? When he has to prove something to the board or other people in the company he can pull off some impressive stuff. Once he is crowned king of the company, his performance slips. He's done this with apple how many times? And there is a chain of other companies he has also done it with. I'm guessing the next cool stuff he does will be with Disney since he sill has to prove himself there.
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.
I think we can all agree we don't want either.
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?
You must be new here?
Is there heaven? Is there Hell? Is that a Tuna Melt I smell?-Primus
"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
Etc... etc... Etc... Same thing with the PowerBook, the Cube, the switch to Intel, ad nauseam. I wish these people could stop writing that FUD, already! Apple will disappear when it will disappear, in the meantime, its financial position looks excellent.
I personally think Macintosh, and Ipods, and Mac OS X are very sexy beasts. They are much too expensive for my taste, they run expensive proprietary software, and everything Apple does is way too costly for me, but Gosh, aren't they sexy.
The fact is, Apple has survived. Every single "Apple is dying" has been proved wrong time and time again. They have top-notch engineers and designers and they will keep on making great products for the time being. Sure, the last WWDC may have been unexciting, but guess what? Even great companies won't release great (hardware) products every six or eight months. These things take time.
And dissing Steve Jobs for looking thin is simply disgusting. The guy recently survived cancer, for (bleep) sake! Give him a break: he is not going to look plump after chimio or whatever he had to do to overcome cancer! Sheeesh. Tech Journalists sound more and more like bottom feeder, these days.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
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...
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.
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
This "dumbarse" with a blog has been writing professionally, full-time, about the Mac for over ten years. I sat a few cubicles away from him at MacWEEK when he was a news reporter and I was a reviews editor, waaay back in 1996. He went on to his current job at Wired (where he's maintained the Apple beat) and has written two excellent books about Apple.
So, umm, no.
Tom Geller
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
Reference the Spice Girls?? what the hell?!
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.
Sorry Dell fans, your boxes with wires sticking out everywhere do not cut it and "software" Soundblaster emulators do not cut it either.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Are there really people whose heartbeat rises when some new tech is introduced ?
//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.
:)
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
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
Windows Backup is not installed on the Home Edition of XP that ships by default on 90% of users' new computers. Plus if you order from Dell or somewhere nice like that, they don't give you an installation CD to install the program (which on the MS website they tell you to hunt down Ntbackup.msi on the CD and run it to install). Plus it does back-up's by folder (which means knowing where the obscure stuff is if it's not in your My documents). Plus it doesn't do selective registry backup and restore... etc.
In otherwords, it's good for saving your "My Documents" folder after you've bothered to install it.
Production is off pace for Apple. In their Mad Rush to move everything to Intel, including their OS (For production). A lot of resources were diverted to Redevelop their product line. Noramlly these changes are paced out much more slowly so you can get a Big thing every keynote. PowerBook/MacBook Pro, iBook/MacBook, MacMini, iMac, PowerMac/MacPro, XServe. Then a bunch of Ipod updates and a Major OS once a year/Year in a half. This normally happends in a 3 year cycle. With about 3 New OS happening (at each WWCD) and a new iPOD at MacWorld, Mixed with some new software from Apple and 3rd party companies...
But 2006 Was a 2/3 of a year of Major Macs upgrades. That is a lot of work, and there was no supprise about it. Leapord needed to be set aside and the Demo is of a beta version that is not to be released for almost a year, they say it is Top Secrete, but in truth it is probably not at Keynote Presentation level yet. Most the application teams have been working to make all their apps Universal Binary. Not much time for massive exterior case redesign, new software, or Highly inovative stuff that can make the keynote great.
I bet Apple is extreamly greatful that Long^H^H^H^HVista has been delayed so many times, It gave Apple a change to do a Major undertaking, and still come out ahead of Microsoft. With rumor sites giving more and more hype on what can come up with next, people are expecting apple to come up with the impossible. Heck I still want my holographic display iMac.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Some stuff is being kept under wraps for now, lest it be "innovated" by Microsoft and appear in Vista.
Remember years back when Aqua was demoed, and not long after that XP suddenly had that ugly Fisher-Price GUI in response?
I honestly think that at this point feature-theft by Microsoft isn't that big of a threat. They've proven too inept to even get Vista out with the feature set they've got currently, much less suddenly bolt on something else to it to better compete with Leopard.
I just wish they would have demoed some of the new stuff in Leopard Server. I've been begging them for years to put together something that can replace Exchange (at least for the SMB market), and it seems like the iCal server fits the bill quite nicely, in concert with improvements to the other services that already exist in Tiger Server.
~Philly
I don't think it's Steve Jobs per se, but the fact is, and it's not limited to Apple or Microsoft, but innovation is clearly slowing down. Virtual desktops are a great addition to OSX, but as (many) others have pointed out, Unix has had it for years and you can get similar functionality from other products. Time Machine is a great idea, as is the VMS versioned file system.
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.
I'm not saying Unix isn't an awesome OS, its longevity is a testiment to this fact, but complacency has certainly set in across the research spectrum, AFAIK; where are the truly groundbreaking ideas in interfaces, storage, etc.? Why has nothing that has been put forth been greeted with anything more than a ho-hum? Can we not find something better than the desktop metaphor to organize everything by? Is there nothing better?
New ideas seems to be a well on the verge of running dry and no one cares enough to notice. Until somebody comes along with some truly ground-breaking stuff, I see Microsoft's and Apple's OS offerings getting thinner and thinner from version to version; just not enough meat to hang on the old bones.
And while I'm ranting, Linux provides the *perfect* platform for people to go nuts on...it's completely open, anyone can use it and work with it...no one has an excuse not to use it for developing the next great leap in computer technology. The banquet is all set, but who is coming to dinner? Why do we have these pointless KDE-vs-Gnome, Reiser4-vs-everybody, distro-vs-distro holy wars?
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."
Sorry, I couldn't resist.
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
Yes, you should really say "X users that know what they're doing". There's some black magic text file editing involved. I can run MythTV on my box's VGA output or on its PVR350 TV output, but I've absolutely failed to get it to run mythfrontend on the TV out while simultaneously running an independent desktop session on the VGA out. It can allegedly be done, but it's not obvious how.
If Windows or OS X had the ability you can bet it would be a matter of checking a check box in a control panel. It's great that Linux has some exotic capabilities, but not everybody enjoys scouring a bazillion different mailing lists and web forum posts for obscure clues to exactly what to put into a text file to get something to work.
As long as Microsoft and Apple keep adding easy to use features there will be vast hordes of people willing to pay money for them. Those hordes won't care that Linux could have accomplished the same thing years earlier because those hordes wouldn't have spent the hours or weeks of research necessary to make Linux do those things. But they'll gladly pay Apple or Microsoft ~$100 because their time is more valuable than that.
And for the extra $1000, I'll deal with the wires, thankyouverymuch.
Really? You'll pay an extra $1000 for a Dell, AND deal with the messy wires?
You must be a pretty smart guy.
If anyone remembers the CherryOS fiasco of two years back when that weird Albanian in Hawaii stole the PearPC source and claimed it as his own "80% native ppc speed" clone, the same Leander Kahney wrote one of the biggest bullshit articles I've ever read, claiming that he felt it was the real thing (even though it didn't even get past the boot screen), and that Apple should start worrying about its hardware sales. I wrote to the guy and flamed his butt off for being such a bullshitter. The guy wrote back telling me that I was just being typical of Mac zealots. Fast forward to the present and lo and behold, we have the same brain dead idiot making the same negative "Apple's dying" (but please read my crap anyway) statements like "but that's for the geeks" at a DEVELOPER conference!
The guy is simply a more effeminate version of Dvorak. It's one of those minor trendy things amongst pseudo intellectuals (Boing Boing's rant on Apple because Apple hadn't released the sources to the x86 XNU kernel yet, for instance) to be mildly critical of Apple, YET STILL SPEND GOD KNOWS HOW MUCH TO GO AND WATCH A PRODUCT INTRODUCTION SPEECH! Apple must laugh itself to tears at morons like this who pay large amounts of cash to them for the privilege of being trendily critical of Apple.
Make no mistake, Apple is no saviour and there are many things that I personally prefer in Linux and Windows (Linux for its openess and configurability and Windows for its GUI responsiveness), but acting like a clueless consumer at a developer conference only makes you look dumber than you are, or, in this case, exactly as dumb as you are.
"This "dumbarse" with a blog has been writing professionally, full-time, about the Mac for over ten years. I sat a few cubicles away from him at MacWEEK when he was a news reporter and I was a reviews editor, waaay back in 1996. He went on to his current job at Wired (where he's maintained the Apple beat) and has written two excellent books about Apple."
Okay, you've countered the subject line of his post; and I'm not particularly happy with the juvenile insults and name-calling found in the parent (de rigueur for Slashdot unfortunately). But the points raised are totally valid. How did a professional tech beat writer totally miss the whole point of a developer's conference?
#DeleteChrome
>>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.
/. tradition, I didn't bother to read the article and instead immediately jumped to a prior-held conclusion based on emotion. I sure showed them who's boss!
Not me! In proud
Thank you.