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Steve Jobs Resigns As Apple CEO
An anonymous reader writes "The title says it all, really; Steve Jobs has resigned as the CEO of Apple, and would like to become Chairman of the Board. Reasons are not specified, but his declining health of recent years is a likely candidate. He's named Tim Cook as his successor."
SELL SELL SELL SELL!!!!11!!!
It's time to sell all that stock you have in faux-turtleneck companies!
There's a reason there is no "Disagree" mod...
Well on one hand, its better to do these things while everyone is still healthy and of sound mind. It's a sad day for sure, but on a positive note, Steve has set a high bar for Apple to maintain. Combine this news with the fact that Steve's official BIO has been pushed up to be released sooner than expected...it doesn't look good. Be well Steve!
Will the Turtleneck of Power be passed on to Cook?
Or will it instead be enshrined in a glass case at Apple HQ?
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
Take it easy... didn't want to work himself into an early grave.
is rumoured to have Flash, USB ports, AND a 3.5" floppy disk.
Waiting for an amusing sig.
Become, beget, begone. Thanks for all you've brought to market, Steve. Cheers...and, best wishes.
Not this time... ;(
it usually takes weeks for news to get here, erm Slashdot may be turning a point multiple stories withing minutes of happening the last few days
Will he actually surrender control over the company's direction, or play puppetmaster instead? I'd like Apple to use their resources to make laptops and desktops the way they've made iPhones. Focus on encouraging manufacturers to make better, more efficient, cheaper products (or buy them outright). Get rid of the ridiculous prices around right now. Then, maybe, just maybe, I could consider buying a Mac. But then again, more factories like Foxconn wouldn't exactly be great.
I felt a great disturbance...as if millions of fanboys suddenly cried out in terror...
Prove it.
well he was getting up there and his health matters so its not all that surprising .. Tim cook is not SJ but he's a good boss, besides I am sure they will be in close contact.. apple can go on with out SJ .. but I am sure they will miss him. Yes its a sad day apple will never be the same, I think the world will miss SJ but wait ! he's not dead lol just looks like it hehehe
We'll miss you, Mr. Jobs. Wish you good health.
Sincerely,
Apple fans everywhere
Apple will continue. They still have strong leadership, Jobs will be chairman, and progress will continue. It's not like they're suddenly going to stop making Macbooks, iPhones, and iPads.
If I were into buying stocks, I'd watch to see whether APPL takes much of a dive, and get ready to buy.
They waited until after the NYSE had closed to make the announcement.
Everyone's going to jump on the short train anyway.
Then you're good.
Even the mere rumor of this would cause Apple to drop, but it really happening, even if it means no harm whatsoever, will mean some people will get antsy and try to get out.
This is the end of an era. I can only hope that his health is not too bad, but I have my concerns.
Let's play video games with mailmanZERO
Shit
Next steve ballmer?
Looks like we get a chance to find out if the "Genius with a Thousand Helpers" model of corporate leadership is really as fragile as many people claim it to be.
The king is dead!
Long live the king!
Functionality > philosophy
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Even though I don't qualify as an Apple Fanboy, Steve's impact on the world of computing is felt everyday by all of us.
While Xerox PARC did the original GUI environment, and invented little things like the Mouse, Steve's vision with the Mac changed the computer world. It made computer accessible, influencing Windows and other OSs to make their system accessible to the masses.
Apple, Next, Pixar, Mac, iPod, iPhone, iPads.
I believe Steve made the world better.
Now we get to find out who has the stronger corporate culture...
Steve Jobs got them this far, its up to Cook and the rest of Apple, to either (1) remain the new king of the hill or (2) fuck it up royally. Should be interesting either way.
Regards,
MBC1977,
Time for a X mac!
First the earthquake, then this. And this is probably more frightening for them.
The Year of the Linux Handheld has arrived!
on where AAPL stock will be tomorrow.
Put your feet up, go fishing, read some books. Lord knows you've earned it. And nope, I'm not an Apple man - but I recognize hard work when I see it.
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
Comment removed based on user account deletion
So much for "an apple a day keeps the doctor away".
Illness sucks :-( Time pass by fast, isn't. (Disclosure: The last product from Apple I bought was over 25 years ago.)
If Steve Jobs resignation letter is not the work of man returning home to die don't know what is. God speed Steve.
short it, short it now!
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Jobs has certainly been a brilliant CEO for Apple, but I think their biggest wins have been from their good design and their cheap but decent supply chain. It's not clear to me just how much Jobs had to do with that. Jonathan Ive had the lead on the design, and maybe it was Tim Cook all along who played hardball with Foxconn and Intel to squeeze out those healthy profit margins. I sure hope so. I don't want Apple products to become just ordinary now that mere mortals are in charge.
For those wondering if Apple will continue to enjoy success after Jobs, remember:
* He has left before off and on to little effect.
* Jobs has worked hard to instill a corporate culture with the same values he shares, and not just at the top levels...
* Most importantly, as good as Jobs is Ive is probably as much or more responsible for the designs we think of as being Apple - he's still quite alive and designing like mad.
Good stock buying opportunity ahead...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Apple fans what to think?
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
I'm rather saddened by this news. Jobs' attention to detail and intolerance of crap amazes and inspires me.
It's simple, really. We should all have such high standards, perhaps then the world would be full of more exquisite and useful things.
Dallas is experiencing thunderstorms and now this?!? I'm holding my breath. Something bad is round the corner.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
down 6%. Better sell.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Although I do not like some of what he has done, he has had a great influence on the shape of PCs and we would be poorer without having had him. I hope that he can keep his health problems at bay to enjoy his family and continue as chairman.
Oh, before anybody winges - an Apple Mac is often used as a Personal Computer and is thus a PC -- regardless of what the marketing people want you to think.
What does that entail?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I wonder if the next Steve Jobs will be whoever puts on his turtleneck and blue jeans, The Santa Clause-style.
This will not please the Human Resources Dept. I'm guessing none of the execs or board members will serve as a reference for him when he applies for his next job.
I guess he knows he can't continue working much longer, and he is the only one who knows how much time he has left.
Tis well.
You can't handle the truth.
This guy is so far above influential in everything that he did, such a tribute to American creativity. I was just thinking that it is just a shame that there seems to be no one who's on his level. I mean, this guy brought ideas about graphical user interfaces to reality. His visions shaped the courses of his competition. He's the Walt Disney of our era. I never really found Apple products useful enough for me personally to own, but I enjoy the fringe benefits of touch screen phones, simplified user interface (think why Windows 7 looks like it does), and of course films from Pixar and Disney. Who's going to fill the void?
Epic fail at being human. I see why you posted as AC.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
steve jobs has handed over his black turtle neck to tim cook in a ceremony rumored to consist of a lot of holier than thou snide remarks, starbucks coffee, african drums, and spoken word.
Apple got where it was because Steve Jobs could tell off anyone who disagreed with him and NO ONE questioned him. As soon as he is completely off the radar, the Wall Street wolves will descend and force Apple into every stupid, short-term profit over long-term success, dumb move that has killed or mediocritized most other public companies.
... that this will trigger a huge blowout sale of Apple stock, which will enable me to buy a pile and get rich when it quadruples in value the next few months.
Then I remembered that the stock marked already has crapped out so I don't have any money to buy Apple stock with. Crap!
Anyway, just shows what the tech world has come to; even us engineers are greedy bastards who think of nothing but money. Sad news, indeed.
No more turtlenecks. The world is a better place.
But I am actually HAPPY this has happened.
I don't want to deride Steve, (he is many orders a more effective CEO than balmer) but I personally hate the direction he has taken computing.
Apple dried up and almost died the last time he left. That is something I hope returns with this encore.
The reason I hate apple computer, is that they abuse court systems, shear their buyers, contort patent and copyright laws, and act smug and superior the whole time they do it.
Any company that makes a practice of telling the customer that they are wong (what else can you call apple's behavior concerning user demands for flash, and interpreted code execution?) While having previously decried the rest of the industry as being oppressive (1984 mac commercial, ring any bells?) And systematically attacking competitors over bullshit aesthetic patents is not only worthy of disdain and derision, but should not remain in business.
I strongly hope thar Job's resignation will mean that either these abusive practices end, and apple enters a new golden age, or that apple computer succombs to the pernicious rot going on under their polished plastic exterior.
Dear god the apocalypse is upon us! The iPhone 5 will be a Newton and Pixar will release Manbearpig the movie!
This announcement reminds me of the recent passing of another charasmatic leader who provided a huge boost to his organization, had a struggle with cancer, and stepped down from his post.
I really hope this turns out better for Jobs.
I stole this Sig
May you live in interesting times. And while this may seem trivial compared to war and terrorism, the times did just get a bit more interesting.
Good luck to you and your family, Mr. Jobs.
#DeleteChrome
End of an amazing run. Steve took a company I disliked (I was hugely anti-apple in the 1990s) and, in the last decade, made it into a company whose products I looked forward to each new announcement!
While i think Steve is a Jerk and have never been fond of him, he cared about his company and gave it direction.
Last time he left the company just wandered around in a fog. I would expect that to happen again this time.
No matter how much market you control, if you don't have leadership you can kiss it good bye.
Disclaimer: I like apple, always have, and will still be a fan as i watch them slowly disintegrate.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Mr. Steve, thanks for all the years of hard work, and vision beyond the next quarter. You are a genius and has helped millions.
*hugs*
Have a happy retirement.
-Woof woof woof!
Apple's stock lost half its value within a year.
the attacks on hackintoshes
You mean like the original hackintosh lawsuit? Apple's been at it since before the Mac came out.
This day is nearly unavoidable in an personality-driven organization. I hope the Apple stock holders enjoyed the bubble while it lasted.
If Microsoft is anything to judge by, this very well may be a huge mistake, just like when Gates resigned as CEO and put Ballmer in charge. Let's just hope the Cook is better than Balmer at steering the company and not just counting the beans.
iQuit!
Whatever you say about Steve Jobs, you will have to admit that he had a good index finger. He could simply point at things and they would get done.
Only founder CEOs have that ability and never as powerfully as Jobs had it. His word was 'the word'.
Steve Jobs was Apples savior, he was resurrected to save them. Tim Cook is an Apple Employee, I bet there are plenty of people who think of him as a peer - who may start to feel they have the ability to assert themselves more. To many cooks spoil the kitchen.
If Apple isn't careful it could lose it's focus. With the nature of Apple's products, it won't take long for any competitor to take advantage of a lack of direction.
There may soon be plenty of infighting over at Cupertino. We can all see what's happening at Microsoft now that Gates is gone.
...they fail to get it [as usual] ---
Ballmer, to shareholders: "Today will be a day long remembered. It has seen the end of Jobs, and will soon see the end of the Apple Rebellion."
Good luck, Steve, and thanks for all of the dogcows.
Can't stop the Beta? Time to evacuate to ##altslashdot at webchat.freenode.net - Slashcott in effect.
And look at what happened to Apple last time!
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
And I bought my first ever Mac today as well. At least I bought it during Steve's reign though...
If you gave me a choice between a printer and a giraffe with explosive diarrhoea, i'll get my ladder and my raincoat
Actually, he was kicked out in 1985, but you had to read the article to find that out, of course. The summary was pretty much rampant fanboyism.
Apple wont quite be the same, and the culture will change.. not a crazy amount, and Apple will be still be making mounds of cash. But it wont be the same Apple, some of the employees will feel it, and some will flee. Most of the evacuees will go to Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Amazon as expected. Though a few will have some cash, and forge off on their own. They'll be the folks that know what they hate about Apple, and know what they love about it.
While I don't expect another assault on the desktop, as Be tried 20 years back, I see an assault on the tablet/cell space in the near future. I see phone apps that are smart enough to silence the ringer at a funeral, that can take into account your schedule and location to know when to act politely. Apple and Google have reasons that prevent this kind of app from existing.
The right applications for a cell phone could cause some interesting changes to the the space Google and Apple are battling in.
I know you're a dumb troll, but Slashdot has actually turned sharply against Apple since Android came out. Basically, the site is opposed to any of Google's direct competitors, even if they once admired them.
I don't know you but I know part of the problems you're must be dealing with.
I wish you long remission(s) and lots of weed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2B-XwPjn9YY&feature=player_embedded#
My wife is a medical research doctor.
She commented 8 months ago that Jobs outlook seemed bleak, he may only have a few years left.
I fear this may well come true, my Mother was just diagnosed with cancer too.
A terrible affliction indeed.
All the best Steve.
Chill dude. Steve is not dead yet, and this is only a complete surprise to those not paying attention. Tim Cook, by most accounts, has already demonstrated his ability.
Of all of Apple's concerns, your misplaced outrage is not even a tiny blip.
Everyone begin comparisons now, from consumers to the employees..
Steve Jobs is going to be patent trolling in heaven soon.
Members of the Sadducees approached RMS and asked him, "A man patents his design for a hammer but then dies, passing the patent on to his brother in his will. If the brother then dies, which of them owns the patent in heaven?" to which RMS replied, "In Heaven, patents are neither given nor retained." He then departed to a lonely place but the crowds followed him, and he fed them with crumbs from his beard. And the number fed was 4000.
We know why he resigned (health). Competition will continue as normal, Apple will do its thing as a company. Business as usual.
The contributions, whether agreeable as successes or failures amounts to a wealth of experience that he has given to the tech community deserves recognition.
I think all we can say is "thanks Steve, good luck, and live well, you deserve it."
End of an era. I started with an Apple ][+ and am typing this on my iPad 2. These definitely been ups and downs, and I still love the old NeXTStep OS.
On the plus side, it looks like the short term (next 1-2 years) is taken care of.
iPhone5-cross carrier
iPad3
The new paradigm machines due out later this year (not sure what this is besides an A5 ultralight/ultra cheap)
AppleTV becomes a game console.
Live well, Steve. You may have been pompous and arrogant, but you cared about the design.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
but I don't see how this is sad at all.
The most probable reason for this particular change is that Steve's health is failing; and this announcment is a proxy for "Guys, I'm not going to be ok."
Short Apple stock or buy deep out of the money puts and make a real killing.
Best CEO ever.
Nothing sucks like a Vax, nothing blows like a PowerMac G4
Apple itself announced that Jobs has been elected chairman of the board.
YEAH!
"Good...The Force is strong with you. A powerful CEO you will become. Henceforth, you shall be known as Darth...Cook."
Any company that makes a practice of telling the customer that they are wong (what ...
Yes, not all customers are wong. Some are wu, and some aren't even Chinese.
Use the spatula, Luke
Amen brother! The axis of evil computing is being disassembled. The unholy alliance of the iPhone with AT&T - WTF WAS THAT?? A cash-grabbing power-hungry coupling of America's worst cell company without regard for the subscribers or their desires. Ugh. Glad to see him go.
Doctors of Medicinal Wizardry at Netcraft Sanatoriums have determined that Steve Jobs is dying. His slow lapse into permanent death is due to a fatal lack of Ego, which he has depleted to run Apple Enterprises. Doctors had considered giving him a shot of Humility (which has has no natural reserve of) as an experimental treatment, but past review of his life has determined that this would be of little or no effect. Apple fanbois are quietly assembling at Cupertino to prepare for the inevitable deathwatch.
Steve's biggest talent was making people - who really had no business carrying a computer - look good. It's not a crime, but it's a testament to his ability to elevate the computing-challenged that he could make such obscene wads of cash doing it. And to wave his hand and say "All things Apple are good" and to have people fanatically agree. It boggles the mind what is possible with whitewash.
Slashdot is not a person and therefore does not and cannot "oppose" or "admire" anything. You are thinking and acting exactly like your parent poster, making you a dumb troll by your own admission.
Any company that makes a practice of telling the customer that they are wong (what else can you call apple's behavior concerning user demands for flash, and interpreted code execution?)
A company that doesn't give customers the products they want, but the products they love. Sounds like a good plan to me. And what customers are asking for interpreted code execution? And Apple will continue systematicilly attacking companies that copy instead of competing, and rightfully so.
(waves goodbye) we shan't miss thee, nor thy high prices nor censorship. (*gasp* did I say that in my out-loud voice?)
His name is Steve Jobs not Steve Job, the apostrophe belongs on the other side of the "s". That should read Steve Jobs' resignation.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Cute. Post was made from an android smartphone, with stubby little chicklet buttons for keys.
Typos are unavoidable.
Do you feel better now that you called me out on an unregistered button press?
Steve Jobs changed my life. First I bought an Apple ][, and the rest is history. No. Really. It made my career. Now, several thousand PCs later, I'm retired. Rock on, Steve. And thanks.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
Now they'll have to appoint one of his patent lawyers to the CEO position lest people go on thinking he's a one-of-a-kind douchebag. On the bright side, he and Bill Gates now have plenty of time to sit down, have a few beers, count their money, and regale eachother with grand tales of putting volunteers out of work with vicious litigation and political lobbying that has been of tremendous detriment to their customers and the people that actually care about serving them.
Perhaps you didn't hear that Jobs was fired from Apple in 1985, then Apple failed in his absence, then Jobs came back and orchestrated the greatest comeback in corporate history, and made stockholders like myself a fortune.
Apple also bought NeXT from Jobs for millions, and it became the Mac OS.
Oh, and this thing he bought called "Pixar" for $5M? He turned it into the most successful movie studio in history, and sold it for like $6 billion.
Epic history fail.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
The official resignation after the third leave of absence, plus an authorized Steve Jobs biography--and even that has been moved up from March 2012 to November 2011--depicts a gloomy prognosis for Mr. Jobs.
Very sad.
Customers that want to do ANYTHING with .net or java?
Business apps, emulation of any kind, that sort of thing?
And no. I don't love apple products. I recently had the toe curling misfortune of repairing a macbook pro. Thing had a very sick sounding disc mechanism in the dvd drive, and would not boot on the *supplied* OSX install DVD. My customer had to break down and hunt online for snow leopard because the default version of leopard that came on it was one subrevision newer than was on the install dvd. (The EFI loader would not permit loading the dvd.)
White plastic and a sensation of feeling posh are not justification for what apple does.
Best Wishes to Steve and his family.
Here's hoping that Apple keeps on keepin' on.
"I'll fucking RESIGN before I let fucking SPRINT have the iPhone!"
- Steve Jobs
"Your proposal is acceptable. We'll take the iPhone 5 in October. Be out by then."
- Sprint
why do i suddenly have the song "ding dong the witch is dead" stuck in my head.
stock is already down 5% in after hours trading. i'll gobble it up if it goes down another 5%.
is the internet. which is open.
if you want closed, go back to Prodigy and Compuserve.
I feel a great disturbance in the internets, as if millions of fanboys suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced.
Let's face it Apple's bread and butter is their iPhone and its seeing a decline because other phone makers have caught up and Android is just as stable as Mac OS. In last few quarters, Android devices have began to out sell the iPhone and are increasingly passing it. On the tablet market, the Android device makers are making products with more appealing features such as video cameras 1080p, while iPad is 720p and 3D recording or a big thing for most people 4G. The biggest reason I have no desire to get an iPad is no USB port, while many of Apple's competitors did include the USB and 4G. Apple fell behind in a market they pioneered, I think the biggest showing of this is their attempt to litigate rather than innovate. The initial bans are being lifted in other countries and Apple's current case against Samsung is not going as well as they would have hoped because of the broadness of their patent and prior art, which Samsung's lawyers highlighted today when they showed clips from 2001: A Space Odyssey showing a tablet similar to the iPad. Apple is also trying to fight for icons that Samsung used. All of which are too broad and were used too much before the iPhone was ever around a small calendar, notepad, white quote balloon, flower for the pictures, and apparently the phone icon to call. The phone icon to call was originally used by Bell on payphones, the text balloon is too widely used prior, notepad picture was first used my Microsoft for a dumb down text editor, a calendar emblem is also too widely used so it is doubtful they will win any of these either. Apple has began to level off and maybe decline I think Jobs is getting out before that happened.
Just because you are wrong and I called you out on it doesn't mean I am a Troll.
I wonder how much of this has to do with that news story a little while back about that new experimental treatment for leukemia. From what I understand, it was amazingly successful and has applications in other cancers, including pancreatic cancer (my assumption is that it would apply to both the common kind and the one that he had). Since cancer risk never goes away, and since he was looking to transition out at some point, and that cancer has affected his life so deeply, and that he has extremely deep pockets, I wonder whether he will be pulling a Gates move in the area of cancer research.
This was a tag on a Jobs story once, and it should be for this one.
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
Pretty much my feelings!
The way you spell reveals your level of intelligence.
Me: Hello Mr. Broker?
Stock Broker: Yes?
Me. Apple Stock... SELL! SELL! SELL! SELL! SELL! SELL! SELL! SELL! SELL!
Stock Broker: Too late sir. Your stock fell to $1 per share.
Not one post has mention Jobs was the one who killed music download DRM! The reason iTunes was such a success was that it offered a legal way to buy music online that wasn't cripple with some DRM or proprietary format (MP3 patents not withstanding) which is fucking huge. Seriously.
Goodbye.
Try posting more than a few lines of text from a smartphone with staggered keys, and get back to me.
...and, *crickets chirping* ?
sig: sauer
Dictators die too old, good folk die too young
But Steve Jobs' death is juuuust right.
Required reading for internet skeptics
I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon.
Microsoft acquires Apple
Anyone know why the stock dipped at 12:13 pm on Wed Aug 24 ?
He mostly set it in design. But realistically, he took the whole open platforms and devices to really bad direction with the closeness of iOS
iOS and MacOS are built atop a huge number of open technologies:
GCC (slowly moving to LLVM)
Webkit
Grand Central Dispatch
OpenCL
OpenGL
Darwin (the kernel)
Contrary you your assertion, I would say there are few other companies besides IBM that have done AS MUCH to promote open source and open technologies.
Yes they have locked down the OUTER part of the platforms they have developed, because they are actually trying to move the computer industry forward by developing systems where people are not in constant peril of harm if they do not care to become system administrators. But you can always get inside and make use of a fabulous array of perfectly good open source frameworks.
In the case of MacOS you aren't even a little right. Apple has closed down nothing, they have build a platform atop which you can place applications if you like, packaged in a way a user can be a little bit more sure they are valid and will be up to date. How is that closed? MacOS is as open as ever, and built atop all those same technologies....
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Does GE make it easy for you to reprogram your microwave? Lookup appliance in a dictionary.
You must have missed the part where I gave Jobs credit for his marketing talent.
He didn't miss that part. It was simply wrong.
Oh sure Jobs has some marketing talent. But far more than that, he has the ability to EXECUTE a product.
That means taking raw technologies and forming them into something people actually want to buy. It means betting on the right technologies for a long lasting platform, or having the skill to make what you picked work for you (really a mixture of both).
Marketing is the very tiny tip of the iceberg where you try to get through to people what you have actually made. But it doesn't help at all unless people want to buy what you have made. You can't market a bad product from a cold start with no rep, and unless you have built up a good reputation over time with products people have liked using they are not going to trust that your product is what you say it is.
Jobs is also really good at being willing to move on to new frontiers instead of simply milking what they have to death. That is what I think he spent to most time trying to drill into Cook and other Apple execs, hopefully the message has got through.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I lived there for a number of years. Why you would think it odd at all for there to be rain in Texas is quite beyond me... I saw tons of it while there over many years.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
can come out...Steve Jobs has actually been dead for 4 years. An "android" has stood in for him.
"interpreted code execution"
You mean like javascript? Just sayin'.
Maybe you should get an iPhone? :)
Wow. I thought I've already seen all the zealous and delusional Apple-hating posts on Slashdot. Yours definitely takes the cake, impressive and amusing at the same time ("user demands for flash"? What the hell...).
If you don't like the direction that computing is taking with Apple at the helm, you're sorely out of luck, because things will only accelerate from here. It'll be a glorious new era of computing, more people-friendly, more user-focused. Bring it on!
The above is just one of many examples that illustrate how crappy, inconsistant and counterintuitive the MS Windows version of iTunes is. It's almost as if it is deliberately designed to make the MS Windows platform look bad and shift people onto Apples. The built in help does not reliably inform the user how to do a backup of all of their purchased and downloaded content. You have to turn to google for that.
Any other cheap and nasty mp3 player that you can trust to run every day of a leap year lets you copy everything the same way as anything else in MS Windows, OS X or whatever.
And nothing of value was lost, good riddance. Good riddance to bad rubbish I say.
I hope Apple with its dumbing down of our Intelligence with user devices everyone can use disappear and their believe in a monopoly of what a user Interface is meant to be goes toobecause there is so much more out there then all things Apple
Or does anyone else find it a bit ironic that the in-depth stories on the linked WSJ article contain photo essays on Jobs that are in .... FLASH?
If you aren't part of the solution, then there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
Steve Jobs' dedication, skills and successes have been outstanding for decades.
The market value of Apple, Jobs' brainchild, the only cosmetic manufacturer in the computer industry (pc's with lipstick), is the unequivocal testimony to Jobs talents!
The 3rd generation of the iPhone was the first and only Apple product I could have imagined buying for myself. The iPad? No, the new Samsung Galaxy outclasses it, and Apple knows that.
Too bad for the Mac OS it didn't receive any injections of Steve Jobs' talents. It still sucks.
Steve Jobs will be missed. But his loss can only be good for Apple's competitors. So Samsung. Get going! Get those Samsung Galaxy out.
Last I heard, Steve had taken leave earlier this year. Even then, most of the stories you heard were about how Cook had arranged to buy up all the production for touchscreens for the next three years. How Cook was managing the supply chain. I'm guessing that this is not a surprise to Tim Cook, most of the upper levels of Apple, and the reigns had already all but been passed over some time ago and he's been de facto CEO since at least earlier in the year. Cornering the supply chain, patent lawsuits, etc. That is all been the new Apple.
Someone gifted me with a Shuffle. I was familiar with some earlier MP3 players I had purchased -- Creative Nomad (parallel port) . Samsung Yepp.-- that simply acted as removable drives. When I tried to load my non-DRM mp3s on the Shuffle I nearly went looneytoons over Itunes, which you so perfectly characterized as a "bloated chunk of software that may erase all the music on your iDevice as it automatically syncs to an empty library."
Since I actually know where my files live, and where I want them to go, I just wanted to see the Shuffle player as a drive, like I do with my other players, and load the freaking thing with my music and audio books. But, no, I had to work within the confines of Itunes' peculiar grammar and create "playlists" and "sync" them. *shivers in horror* Nothing was transparent about the process. And I felt like I was in the grips of a nightmare virus. It was not hard to suss out. But it seemed so...pointless. What's hard about drag and drop? At least provide it as an option. And if it is an option it is not an easy-to-find option.
My wife used the Shuffle for a couple of months, but Itunes kept wanting to update itself every two days as an excuse to try to sell me DRM music. No thanks. I buy Redbook CDs and rip them with EAC into high quality MP3s. Finally, I deleted Itunes, which IMHO is practically malware. I bought my wife a Sansa.
Sorry about Steve, however. It is a terribly early frost for him if he is truly sick unto death this time around. A lot of Apple products have been great. And he is an authentic pioneer.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
While i'm not a jobs fan, i will say they made quality products - even if you couldent replace the battery. Even though i dont really buy their merch, i hope they continue on the same path of quality products and mabye make a couple of improvements like batteries you can replace and better security for their products (especally iTunes). Mabye lower the price on some of their products as well, they do fetch quite the high premium.
Yes, actually.
If you can't be bothered to proofread what you just wrote, we certainly CAN be bothered to mock you unmercifully.
The Internet is no place for the weak, the stupid, or the inattentive.
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
"sig: sauer"
I see what you did there.
Kudos.
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
This article has been up almost 12 hours now and only ~400 comments.
If this article had mentioned George Bush anywhere in the summary, there would be around 1000 comments, at least.
BLOG ARTICLE http://goo.gl/0NfsX – I think that this is the perfect time for Steve Jobs to retire. This week. This day. And the really shocking thing is that nobody predicted it a week ago In the context of all this industry-wide uncertainty, Apple will be the calm port in the storm, even with Steve Jobs retiring But it would compound the lack of foresight to think that Steve Jobs would leave without having vetted and given his direction to the next few innovations in the pipeline.
Apple is Jobless now! :(
Without Steves reality distortion field helping (or rather *being*) their marketing, Apple might be back to the sub-10% market share they came from in no time. One evil empire less to worry about.
I wish him good health though, he has done a lot and maybe more than anyone else for making computers more usable.
Everyone's health is deteriorating. His influence was profound, yet the fruit of his labor at best is a fractured market of equally vile products. I give a shit if he's dying. May Apple die too. Those are my genuine thoughts, not flamebait. Call me a cold-hearted bastard if you will; perhaps I am.
Buy your next Linux PC at eightvirtues.com
I am not sure of his choice of Tim Cook to be CEO. You know what, Steve Jobs has consistently managed to attract, find, and choose the best scientists, creatives, and imaginative people in the world to design products for Apple. The only time Steve Jobs has made a mistake in this regard has been in finding a good CEO. So, I wonder .. is Tim Cook going to be as great a CEO .. is he going to have the same kind of vision, love of technology, focus on quality, and ease of use that Steve Jobs has had? It sort of worries me that Tim Cook never started a business .. and are his names on any Apple patents? You'll find Steve Jobs name on the iPhone's design patent as well as a bunch of other stuff .. but is Tim Cook's name there?
I suspect the haters in this thread never actually build anything themselves - nor will amount to anything in their collective, sad lives. https://plus.google.com/107117483540235115863/posts/gcSStkKxXTw
Good point, as it shows just one of many facets of Apple's recent hypocrisy.
I kid you not, when I opened /. this story read:
"Read the 666 comments"
An omen?
And now Apple is supposedly bigger than Exxon. Amazing revolution in tech...congrats to him and team for making technology exciting again, in a rough financial time.
As for his health, must be frustrating to be one of the world's richest men, head of a fantastic company, with nothing you can do to stop incurable fatal illness. Unfortunately, from what had to be a non-functional neuroendocrine pancreatic tumor that metastasized, to the "I'll treat it homeopathically" delay, to an attempt to save him with a liver transplant, Mr. Jobs is dying, likely in a year at most. All the we-won't-talk-about-it won't fix it. Disclaimer, I am not a doctor, but I did have a treatable pancreatic tumor this year that was caught by freak luck and removed before spreading; I've learned all the details. Not an Apple shareholder, but I wish they'd be honest with their shareholders, and stop trying to surprise them like with the latest shiny gadget.
"Boy, was that company suckered."
That's John Dvorak in his last column for Infoworld 1985 when Steve Jobs was ousted from Apple.
http://books.google.com/books?id=jC8EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA58&lpg=PA58&dq=%2Bdvorak+steve+jobs+leaving+apple+1985+infoworld+suckered&source=bl&ots=pJ8NZY9Wgv&sig=2YM64qODziCzfzYWR3lYJ6Zhu2U&hl=en&ei=t_xVTr6iDsb54QS3l52jDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBQQ6AEwAA
In 1997 Michael Dell added "I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders".
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-203937.html
How could they be so wrong? They weren't. Steve Jobs just had luck, plenty of it.
Slashdot's positive/negative karma system ensures that a specific viewpoint coagulates and eventually governs the comments section. You're obviously aware of the impact of group moderation on an account since you're posting anonymously.
AppleTV becomes a game console
At least that they add an app store to it and extend the iOS SDK to cater for it as well...
.....lets give him a big hand.....
One day, perhaps when Apple is a shadow of its former self, and Linux is a term only used by geeks and forgotten to the general public, perhaps we'll all look back with rose-tinted glasses on this era. We'll forget the patent wars, the bickering, the excessive advertising and anti-competitive tactics, and savour the thought that for a moment, consumer electronics devices were elevated to the status of art. That products were beautiful, that elegant design was hugely important, and that for a while the progress of IT was headline news and talked about by nearly everyone.
And we'll also recall that Steve was a big part of that. So thanks, Steve. Without you, we'd be stuck in the land of Nokia interfaces, of Windows 95, of 1990s interfaces.
RS
I fail to see how Macs are more functional than any other x86 PC.
Then you factor in the difference in price and it becomes even harder for me to understand why someone would buy a Mac.
It's not philosophy. I'm just stingy.
Since this comment has lasted about 4oo posts, here is an idea-
If you don't like a closed platform, don't buy it!
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
So i guess this is the part where their stuff gets shit again :D...
Does this mean there will be a "Third Coming"? Will Jobs return in another 10 years after setting up another tech company to create Apple's neXt operating system (lets hope it uses an exokernel or something better than mach)
Get ready to dust off that old mahogany unibody macbook classic in 2020, and log on to buy up Apple shares at their all time low just before they acquire "LatER Step" and Jobs returns in a new cybernetic clone of his body. When he saves the day... with just one more thin and shiny thing.
I have patented the process of resigning as CEO and becoming chairman of a company.
Steve Jobs owes me millions, mwha ha ha ha!
die soon and rather painfully, Steve. You may have tricked ignorant and pretentious idiots into thinking they were part of an elite, but you sold them complete crap.
you declared war on flash, but it aint going nowhere, instead it's you heading for the scrapyard!!!!!!!
This is the end of Apple, and the end of the world.
(You are free to cite me under CC-license.)
Good, it's about time the corrupt fascist steps down. It'll save millions of people and increase average IQ by double digits.
You wouldn't think so, to hear the eulogizing.
Not sure. He seems a competent AdC, but they rarely make great generals.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Every time I see or think of Steve Jobs, something inside of me says that Pink Floyd edited a scene from /Waters
“The Wall" ? Maybe it’s that damn ubiquitous turtleneck and jeans of his, all in uniform black. I've always hated black and I don't have a single piece in my wardrobe because it is empty, soulless if you will.
Ah Steve. They march, onward and onward and onward, those Mac fanboys of his.
"There must be some mistake
I didn’t mean to let them
Take away my soul.
Am I too old, is it too late?"
Pink Floyd
Thought another man has taken the helm and Apple moves on, Jobs consumer remains the envy of every designer and innovator in high tech. My friends are laughing their ass off and I am the butt of that snicker. As a Windows tech for the 20 years, for years and years, I've sneered and taken every chance to belittled Mac. They were toys and no serious productive threat to 'us'. For about 2 years, I wondered is Ballmer and Gates were a sleep at the wheel, or knew something missed by those of us out working on their shit day in and day out. Where's our pad. How about Snow Leopard and the Mac OS x lie, which is really slick. How about that Bill?
Last month I bought an iMac and it is a very, very nice computer. Windows deficits bite when stood next to Lion and damn it, the imac with Lion, it’s down- right embarrassing. Well done Steve job, well done!
... for HP to to get out of the computing business. I can imagine his cackle when HP made the announcement.
I'm already sad to write this, but Steve is not going to live long.
I hope Apple will find someone with the same genius .
It looks like the economy has lost 1 more Job.
On a serious note, I remember the last time Jobs left Apple. They weren't as innovative and they didn't do as well with marketshare. I don't use Apple products, but I hope that doesn't happen again.
I suspect a lot of people don't think about that expression "Can't see the forest because of all the trees in the way". But that seems to be life for the vast majority of people. When it comes down to it, the way almost everything works is wrong, somehow. But it's like a local minimum, almost nobody seems to look past a few small tweaks and adjustments to see the global minimum.
Related, but separate, something that bothers me about most technically minded developers or engineers trying to design things - almost all of them never bother finishing the race. When designing the interface for something, they will develop it until it's possible to accomplish a task, but usually no further. A classic example is digital clocks - how to adjust the time on them. Even now, the interface for most sucks into the negative digits, but the earlier ones were painfully stupid: Hold the "time" button, then either the "fast" or "slow" as the clock advances - past the time you want to set. Repeat this for another 12 or 24 hour cycle and miss again. Repeat until frustrated. Newsflash designers, you can add buttons to go backwards! Yes, you need to redesign the chip to subtract, but you only do that once. Millions of people have to set the time over and over.
And why doesn't every clock just have a "DST ON/OFF" switch? Is that really so impossible?
I see this over and over again, from things like Java libraries, Unix networking, Windows (classic press "start" to stop the computer - and why are there seven options, any why should I care which does what?), the damn "smart" photocopier (I needed to copy a slip of paper onto a page, the copier rotated it and cut off the bottom. I rotated the slip to match the new orientation, the copier rotated it and again cut off the bottom. Should I try diagonal?) - it's like technical types go as far enough to see the finish line, and say "theoretically we can finish the race, so let's just stop here".
This is the thing that separates a genuinely innovative product from others, actually getting to the destination. GUI word processors let you see the format, rather than imagine how special codes would make it look like eventually. iPods couldn't do as much as the competition, but the competition only made it possible to do more, iPods were easier to do more. Nintendo Wii games didn't require reading an instruction manual. A Roomba vacuum just had to be plugged in and turned on.
The common aspect of these things is designing for the end use, not the implementation. It's more work, but it's work that has to be done only once. The end user that has to figure out what they hell you were thinking has to do this every single time (until they get used to, say, a list of keystrokes or menu choices written on a post-it that they don't understand). If the user has to enter an email address, help out - have a separate username and host fields, with a "@" label between them, rather than trying to parse it for validity after it's entered and just saying "keep trying until you get the format right". Basically, anywhere there are user instructions that give a list of steps to perform, make the computer do them - computers are better at following instructions!
This, fundamentally, is why almost all smart phones sucked before the iPhone - every possible operation needed a magic invocation of actions (or a long menu path) to start that you had to memorize to use them. Apple designers (not one single person, but an entire design team) broke down what was needed and got rid of all exposed implementation, and put the effort into making it just work. I have no idea how complex the technology is that measures where I tap on an iPod keyboard and guesses which of the four keys my finger overlaps is the one I'm trying to press, but it gets it right so I don't care - it should just work, and it does, so I'm happy.
When it comes down to it, whether it's a dictatorship or not isn't important. But without some strong insistence on finishing the job, most technical developers won't bother. And even then, they can come up with some amazingly hair-brained designs (search for design failures/hall of shame sites). A dictatorship is a way to avoid them, at least.
That's because Apple, at that time, was run by the kind of people that would fire Steve Jobs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oAB83Z1ydE
No it doesn't. Nor do you believe that it does. It is common for posts to be modded up to +5 despite going against popular opinion. And you know it, because it has happened to you. Therefore, it is beyond all possible doubt that you are lying.
That suggests that the only reason to post anonymously is to avoid moderation, which is so self-evidently untrue that it, too, can only be a lie. I post anonymously because I do not have any need or desire for an account.
Mr. Jobs is LIVING PROOF that there are still "great men" in a world of committees (the world today). I may not be a "Mac person" (Big Windows person here), but I have to admit it's pretty nice in a lot of ways too (giving credit where it's due, & that'd be to the GUI interface design teams + coders mostly). Mr. Jobs MAY not be a coder or technical whizkid, but he's a decent leader & has "vision + passion" (which imo, is the "other 1/2 of the creative equation" along with business saavy).
He's the one who spearheaded that resurgence of Apple's imo, via his NeXT core & what-not, so... there you are.
APK
P.S.=> I heard he's not doing so well on the health-front over the past couple years now, hopefully he will "beat it" and overcome this adversity the way he did Apple's hassles (iirc, after Scully's tenure - don't quote me on that though)...
... apk
I know. I don't expect Apple to slide all the way back to complete irrelevance again but I do expect them to begin the long slow slide to mediocrity. I expect this of almost all the major players out there. Most of the major companies have reached their peaks or will reach them shortly and will slide back in to the pack. Microsoft and Sony have already slid back, Nintendo is rapidly following, and Google and Apple will probably follow within a few years. I can't wait for the next disruptive company to come along and shake things up. Google changed the internet, Apple changed the way we use technology, what will the next big revolution be?
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
Who is going to instruct them to make it thinner, shinier, round off those corners and hold back features for the next iteration? Oh, and make sure dongles and other accessories are still required for basic functionality.
No more quackintosh! No more eyePhone! No more sanctimonious douchebaggery from that hypocritical self-styled mother superior! And most welcome, NO MORE BODY ODOR! Phew!
Yes. By HIDING all of that stuff where the user doesn't see it.
The sure do see Webkit, or the results of it...
But none of that changes the FACT that Apple has been a champion of Open Source under Steve Jobs.
Preventing the user from running any program they want
That's not true on the Mac and only true on iOS because THAT as a default configuration is much better for most users. Technical users can still run anything they want. This layered approach is far superior to a free-for-all that lets people screw themselves over too easily.
Preventing certain types of programming languages.
They only did that briefly, sort of (they never banned Monotouch or Unity apps for instance) - no longer. If you're that out of touch how can we take any of your rant seriously? The rest of it is even more ill-informed and incorrect, I won't even bother showing you why - I'll just say try using Google sometime.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
One does not have to particularly like M. Jobs, but one would have to be of extraordinary bad faith to pretend his influence in IT isn't huge. One doesn't have to like Apple products to see that they are different, sometime inspiring and often well made. Sure nobody is perfect, but Apple under his leadership has done pretty amazing things over the years, from the Apple I and ][, to the Ipad via Macintosh and Ipod, who can deny this? Yet I'm reading lots of comments, doubtless from great leaders, denigrating his influence and character. How sad.
M. Jobs is leaving most likely because he doesn't seem himself recovering enough to be at Apple's helm. I personally wish him the very best.
Why doesn't everyone do it?
Apple went up 6000% from the time he became CEO again until his first medical absence. Dumbest. Bunny. Ever.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
There's a "special case" when it's listed as one of the features of the software and when it's recommended when an iWhatever is sent in for repair because part of the fix is often a wipe and restore from an image.
It's "Ive' not "Ives", etc.
But the huge hole here is in Jobs' success in hiring executive talent, and in particular the role of Tim Cook as COO to make the Apple production as effective as the product development. I suspect that's another aspect he took from NeXT and PIXAR, if you're going to do Hardware you have to be able to do it efficiently, and you have to be able to scale up when you're successful.
Fucking bastard should be dead.