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Steve Jobs Resigns As Apple CEO

Posted by samzenpus on from the au-revoir-mr.-jobs dept.

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."

34 of 1,027 comments (clear)

  1. This is a sad day for the tech world by arcite · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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!

    1. Re:This is a sad day for the tech world by bonch · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Let's be blunt. Only nerds on tech sites worry about "closeness." They're a tiny niche that wants to keep their nerd playgrounds around. The vast majority simply wants good products that work.

    2. Re:This is a sad day for the tech world by jedidiah · · Score: 5, Funny

      Millions of people also said "yes we do" to MS-DOS.

      Being the vanguard of those with absolutely no taste is not necessarily something to brag about.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    3. Re:This is a sad day for the tech world by Anne_Nonymous · · Score: 4, Funny

      >>...it doesn't look good

      Don't worry. When he dies, Jobs will become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.

    4. Re:This is a sad day for the tech world by vux984 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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."

    5. Re:This is a sad day for the tech world by MarcoAtWork · · Score: 4, Insightful

      do you really think he'd resign if his health was 100%? The fact that he's stepping down is definitely worrying, it's not likely he's stepping down to go work for another company or doing something else.

      And no, I don't know him in person, but I definitely respect him and his accomplishments, and wish him well, and I'm sure a lot of others are feeling the same way.

      --
      -- the cake is a lie
    6. Re:This is a sad day for the tech world by antifoidulus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Because unfortunately Steve was one of the few CEOs of big American Corps that actually gave 2 shits about the product that his company made. Outside of a few others(Google being chief among them), the modern American CEO couldn't really give a flying fuck about what the company actually makes(see Balmer, Fiorna). They are there to absorb as much money as they can while doing nothing but playing financial games with the company's balance sheets. Love him or hate him, you cannot deny that Steve was genuinely passionate about technology.

      --
      Monstar L
    7. Re:This is a sad day for the tech world by medcalf · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I am pretty optimistic about Apple, though, in the immediate post-Jobs era. The reason is because Jobs didn't just drive the development of great products; he also developed great people. The entire top leadership of Apple, not least Tim Cook who will replace him, follows and contributes to Jobs' philosophy on product design, markets to jump into, how to use the company's resources to secure strategic future technologies, when and why to kill your baby. In other words, it's at least a good 5 or 10 years before Apple's management culture starts to change significantly, meaning that Apple will continue to drive in the direction they've been going since Jobs came back in the late 1990s. As someone who really likes that direction, towards a simplified and thus more broadly useful application of technology, that makes me content.

      --
      -- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
    8. Re:This is a sad day for the tech world by sg3000 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Steve Jobs is the embodiment of the American Dream, there are scant few individuals on this earth than can attest to the scale of success that he has achieved.

      Jobs is arguably the best business leader of our era.

      He co-founded the hugely successful Apple out of the proverbial garage, got fired from his own company, went off and started NeXT, bought Pixar from George Lucas and turned it into something big. At the same time, he came back to Apple, made a huge hit with the iMac, then the iPod, then the iPhone, and now the iPad. Now Apple one of the most successful companies around. I'm not sure if any other business leader's accomplishments could beat that story.

      What impresses me is, as others have said, he actually cared about the products his company made. He wanted to make a "dent in the universe" and he actually did. He didn't do it by managing to costs or other things that business schools tell people to do, but by putting products and the user experience first.

      --
      Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
    9. Re:This is a sad day for the tech world by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 5, Informative

      The iPod is just a cache of your music. It's not a backup.

      By any reasonable definition, it's a backup, since the files are physically there. It does, however, deliberately pretend for them to be inaccessible, unlike every other similar device on the planet.

      Case in point: when I bought my (non-computer-savvy) mother an iPad, the first thing that got her extremely annoyed was that she couldn't just drag and drop files to it in Explorer like she used to do with her USB sticks, MP3 player, and camera, but had to go through setting up sync in iTunes. She doesn't know what iTunes is, and doesn't want to learn yet another way of doing the exact same thing she already knows how to do.

    10. Re:This is a sad day for the tech world by Bobartig · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's not Carly Fiorina coming in and fucking up HP for a few years and leaving - Steve Jobs started the company, worked there ~10 years, left for a few, then came back and was CEO for 14 more. No other CEO on the planet is so closely associated with their company. As a pillar of the tech industry, his input drove the state of the art forward. It is a loss for the tech world when any big name leaves for good. By the way, this website is called Slashdot, and its a place for "News for Nerds," you know, people who generally care about technology.

      --
      This is where I get my recommended daily allowance of "Foot in Mouth."
    11. Re:This is a sad day for the tech world by Bobartig · · Score: 5, Funny

      I don't know how you did it, but you seem to have forgotten about this device called the iPod. Yeah, it brought PMPs to the mainstream. Apple sold a metric butt-load of them and made a mint in the process. Oh yeah, they also created an iTunes store, sold over 10,000,000,000 songs and other related media, and now sells more music than anyone else on the planet, including Walmart.

      iOS and iPhone didn't save Apple, it catapulted them from ludicrously successful to can't-talk-I'm-having-too-many-orgasms-all-the-time successful.

      --
      This is where I get my recommended daily allowance of "Foot in Mouth."
    12. Re:This is a sad day for the tech world by mjwx · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Let's be blunt. Only nerds on tech sites worry about "closeness."

      Only aircraft engineers care about mechanical safety.

      That doesn't mean it's not important.

      The average technophobe doesn't worry about openness because they already have it and take it for granted, much like the average airline passenger takes for granted that the plane their flying on wont fall apart. What they dont know, nor want to know is that a lot of work goes on in the background by very dedicated people to ensure that everyone can enjoy the boon of openness or safe flights.

      Shove the average person into a world of "closedness" and they'll start caring about it quick smart.

      --
      Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
    13. Re:This is a sad day for the tech world by UncleTogie · · Score: 4, Insightful

      But realistically, he took the whole open platforms and devices to really bad direction with the closeness of iOS and maybe upcoming Macs.

      Apple shareholders would beg to differ.

      What a coincidence! Standard Oil's shareholders said the same thing back in the day....

      Color me leery when people start equating "makes lots of money for a limited number of rich people" with "doing the right thing."

      --
      Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
    14. Re:This is a sad day for the tech world by ToasterMonkey · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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 and maybe upcoming Macs. Would you really want that for computer world?

      What a silly question.

      Open systems need competition from closed systems just as closed systems need competition from open systems.

      A complete lack of direction cannot be the only way forward, and lack of diversity is not healthy. You need both.

    15. Re:This is a sad day for the tech world by rocket+rancher · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Seeing a problem and warning other just helps keep the consumer aware of the limitation of the device they are purchasing.

      " If yes, STFU, you KNEW what you were getting into when you laid down the plastic at the Apple Store or Amazon." Since apple doesn't go out of there way to tell people of their limitations, how do you know he was fully informed?

      Limitation? It's a fucking appliance, dude -- you don't buy a dishwasher if you want to do something besides wash dishes, do you? Apple devices are aimed at people that want the functionality, and have zero interest or desire in the mechanism that delivers the functionality. I'm a sysadmin, not a motorcycle geek -- I buy a motorcycle not because it is the most fuel efficient one, or the most mechanically reliable one. I bought a Ducati 1098 because it does what I fucking want it to do -- go insanely fast and look really good in my parking slot at work. I admin linux/windows/solaris/HPUX boxen, but I use an iPhone and an iPad because they do what I want them to do without having to RTFM. Just like my Ducati and my dishwasher.

    16. Re:This is a sad day for the tech world by s73v3r · · Score: 5, Informative

      Yeah, it does. It told you EXACTLY what it was going to do. You decided to ignore it, and let it do what it said it was going to do.

  2. So... by NecroPuppy · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.
    1. Re:So... by kaizokuace · · Score: 5, Funny

      Will the Turtleneck of Power be passed on to Cook?

      Or will it instead be enshrined in a curved glass case at Apple HQ?

      fixed.

      --
      Balderdash!
  3. And in other news, the iPhone 5... by MrDoh! · · Score: 5, Funny

    is rumoured to have Flash, USB ports, AND a 3.5" floppy disk.

    --
    Waiting for an amusing sig.
    1. Re:And in other news, the iPhone 5... by Chryana · · Score: 4, Funny

      Picture of the upcoming iphone 5.

  4. Loved his work or hated it, he was big by BBTaeKwonDo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    We'll miss you, Mr. Jobs. Wish you good health.
    Sincerely,
    Apple fans everywhere

  5. Steve's impact on the world by dreadlord76 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Steve's impact on the world by betterunixthanunix · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It was designer Steve Jobs that focused on the systematic problems of computer usage that changed the world.

      What on God's green earth are you talking about? Steve Jobs was not the one who saw a problem with the corporate vision of computing-as-a-utility. Wozniak was the one who aligned with people like Lee Felsenstein and the Homebrew Computer Club, and Wozniak was the one who designed PCs that people wanted. Steve Jobs did not envisioned the GUI interface, the mouse, video games, WYSIWYG, tablets, PDAs, smartphones, or anything else that has made Apple a successful company.

      Steve Jobs has two talents: the ability to see what products can be marketed, and the ability to market those products to home computer users. He is not a designer of anything other than good business plans.

      --
      Palm trees and 8
    2. Re:Steve's impact on the world by tmp31416 · · Score: 5, Informative

      not again...

      NO.

      Xerox PARC *DID NOT* "do" the original GUI environment. Doug Engelbart (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart) did it at SRI.
      Xerox PARC *DID NOT* invent the mouse. Engelbart did it also at SRI.

      People overestimate PARC's importance, downright ignore Engelbart and underestimate Apple's contributions (when they don't say that Jobs & co. "stole" from Xerox)... this cheeses me off royally. /rant

    3. Re:Steve's impact on the world by kocsonya · · Score: 4, Informative

      "Xerox PARC *DID NOT* invent the mouse. Engelbart did it also at SRI."

      Um, Telefunken had a mouse with a ball before Engelbart had his with the wheels. That is, the German mouse was already like the (mechanical) mice we have today. See http://www.oldmouse.com/mouse/misc/telefunken.shtml

  6. Enjoy a happy retirement by Kittenman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  7. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 5, Funny

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  8. High standards is the lesson by QuatermassX · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  9. Re:Lemme be the frist to say: by blind+monkey+3 · · Score: 5, Funny

    No, buy. I'm going full-in. I'll be an millionaire.

    So, you're telling us your a billionaire then?

    --
    BM3
  10. Re:What happens next? by Darth_brooks · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "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.
  11. We'll miss ya, but thanks for the past and next yr by mbourgon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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
  12. Not so fast... by rocket+rancher · · Score: 4, Informative

    Apple itself announced that Jobs has been elected chairman of the board.

  13. Re:To Quote Obi-Wan by interkin3tic · · Score: 4, Funny

    No exaggeration. This is one of the only tech news stories that I've actually heard about IRL instead of the internet. Someone actually looked at me on the sidewalk and said "Oh my God, Steve Jobs retired!"

    I said "FIRST PSOT!!!!" and was trying to think how to use HTML formatting to link to a relevant XKCD before I realized it was a conversation and not slashdot. But it's okay, I'm safely back in Mom's basement now.