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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."
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.
is rumoured to have Flash, USB ports, AND a 3.5" floppy disk.
Waiting for an amusing sig.
Not this time... ;(
I felt a great disturbance...as if millions of fanboys suddenly cried out in terror...
Prove it.
We'll miss you, Mr. Jobs. Wish you good health.
Sincerely,
Apple fans everywhere
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
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.
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.
When Macbooks, iPhones, and iPads are old news and no long pushing the creative envelope, then things may well take a turn the other direction. Jobs drove those things to be what they are and it's hard to imagine someone else taking over and having the same impact and ability to drive the company forward.
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
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.
No, buy. I'm going full-in. I'll be an millionaire.
So, you're telling us your a billionaire then?
BM3
* He has left before off and on to little effect.
hahaha.. clearly you don't remember what happen when he left before and the company needed to be saved my Microsoft?
* Jobs has worked hard to instill a corporate culture with the same values he shares, and not just at the top levels...
Yeah, but it takes continues energy to keep it the same. Will that exist with Jobs gone? history shows it won't.
* 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.
Or his designs will be considered risky and he will be regulated back into the basement where Jobs found him.
The stock is already down 6.5% in after hours trading. I suspect we will see a drop, then an increase when people like you buy, and then a steady decrease after iPhone 5 is out.
I hope I am wrong, but I doubt it.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"mere mortals"? he's resigning due to poor health you insensitive clod
I am a v1ral sig. Plse c0py me and h3lp me spread. Thank y0u?
Yes, because being "hacker-friendly" is what the mainstream public wants from Apple products.
"Then, maybe, just maybe, I could consider buying a Mac. But then again, more factories like Foxconn wouldn't exactly be great."
Right. Because those Foxconn components in your Dell, HP, or Lenovo PC, or Android phone are made by the *not* evil Foxconn. You know, the one in Iowa where everyone makes UAW level wages, gets free health care and plenty of paid time off.....
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
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.
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
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.
You're under the assumption that nobody can drive a tech company like Jobs. If that is the case, even a very ill Steve would be better than a fully healthy somebody else. But that may not be good for Steve.
The one thing Steve brought to Apple was the last details that are often missing from products. You may not like the iPhone lockdown or Macs or whatnot, but to ignore where smartphones and tablets are today, you have to admit that AAPL was THE driving force behind those products. THEY got it right, first time, out of the box.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
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
is the internet. which is open.
if you want closed, go back to Prodigy and Compuserve.
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
Why, that sounds just like the time that Apple still had over a billion in the bank and Microsoft paid them off to settle a copyright infringement case.
The copyright infringement was not look and feel, but code stolen by a third party company on behalf of Intel/Microsoft. Quicktime code knowingly ended up in Media Player which was shipping at that point.
I'd say the bigger question is this: can they keep the vision? Lets be honest folks iPhone 5 and iPad 4 and probably one or two more iPods were already in the pipe under Job's watch, but what after?
Like it or not it is the vision of Jobs that made Apple. look at how they sucked without him before, it ended up an MBA clusterfuck, hell look at what happened to MSFT when they lost Gates, another MBA clusterfuck.
To me the difference between Jobs and the MBAs can be summed up by a story I read by one of the guys that was designing iDVD..."So we hear Steve is gonna be in the next day to look at what we had done, so we have all these mock ups, with tabs and buttons for all the features, when in walks Steve. he completely ignores our mockups walks to the whiteboard and draws a box. he says 'This is it, this is the product. you drop a video in here and a single button that says burn appears" and he walked out. We just stood there shocked"
And THAT is what is gonna be damned hard for Apple to replace. It is damned hard to get people who can see the forest past the trees and cut through the bullshit and Jobs was damned good at that. remember it ran alright for a little while after he left the first time, it took about three years for the MBA clusterfuck to really take hold. I'd wish him well but sadly he has lived longer than most with that type of cancer and this move is probably him putting his affairs in order.
So while I'm sure the company will be fine now, the bigger question is will it still be innovating in 3 years, or like before will they end up coasting on past successes while all the PHBs jockey for position.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.