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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."
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.
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
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
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.
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
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.
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
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
Arr! Read The Government Manual for New Pirates!
>>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