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A Look Back At the Career of Steve Jobs
Zothecula writes with a rather extensive piece in Gizmag about Steve Jobs's various business endeavors. From the article: "Revered by many, hated by some, but respected by most, the indisputable fact remains that Steve Jobs is the most successful business leader of his generation and quite possibly of all time. The numbers are impressive in themselves but the most remarkable aspect of his success is how it was achieved. Though he remains at Apple, the end of his tenure as CEO is the end of an era and an opportunity to try and grasp just exactly what it is he did and what lessons there are for all of us 'trying to make a dent in the universe.'"
Bill Gates, was never fired, Microsoft has better market, more value and far more in people's lives. Now that Bill doesn't direct MS we all known what happened. I like Jobs but the phrase "the most successful business leader of his generation and quite possibly of all time." is a fallacy. Thomas Edison, Henry Ford come first easily.
The Life and Career of Steve Jobs, from Next Media Animation in Tapei. Enjoy.
Regardless of what you think of Mr. Jobs' company's products, you must admit the man had an almost unparalleled vision for the future.
In a hyper-connected world of ethics-free corporate drones apathetic about anything past this quarter's profits and stock price, Jobs stood apart by having a 5, 10, perhaps even 20 year plan for Apple that he ruthlessly pursued at the expense of anything standing in the way (be it under-performing employees or products). As a commenter last week put it, he set out to make a dent in the universe, and actually did it.
Enjoy your retirement, Mr. Jobs, you've bloody well earned it.
He did what he wanted and he had good ideas. He didn't compromise. He was kind of a dick at times but he was generally right and he knew it, and stuck to his ideals.
He had the luxury of being in a position to do that. It was only when he lost that ability that he got fired. He left. Apple sank. When he went back it was on his terms.
I think he was in the right place at the right time with some damn good ideas about how to build computers and products. But without the initial products to launch everything, courtesy of Steve Wozniak, Jobs would have been all dressed up with nowhere to go without getting even luckier.
All the articles I've read have an *obituary* feel to them. It's like he's already dead except his body hasn't read the news yet.
originally it wasn't an obfuscated file system, originally it didn't require proprietary software, originally it was firewire. heck my old iPod was the first generation with the proprietary cable, (called a dock port at the time as the iPod shipped with a docking station) it still connected via firewire. and MP3 players weren't that common in 2001, especially in the gigabyte range. 128 mb players were shipping, but were expensive novelties. you do realize this was 10 years ago right? I had a 20 gb creative Nomad before that and that thing was huge (by today's standard, at the time it was the same size and shape as a CD player) and a piece of junk, if the original original ipods worked on PCs I would have had one of them instead.
Um, NO. It was a standard firewire connector on both ends. http://media.techeblog.com/elephant//ul/23125-450x-r_5.jpg I know, because I owned one. And, at first the filesystem was NOT obfuscated, to boot. the filenames were merely truncated, not turned into random four-letter filenames like it did later on.
A sentence you'll never see on an Internet discussion board: "You know what? You're right."
Perhaps Jobs just prefers to donate anonymously, as many of us do.
It was a standard firewire port. It was one of those 6-pin standard jobs that can supply 12W of power (up to 48V, .25A. And yes, Macs have been known to fry Firewire hubs that way. 12V was more typical though).
Only on the 3rd gen did Apple switch to the Dock connector which enabled USB as well, but through a proprietary cable.
Hell, many Firewire PC cards were 6-pins (though 12V max). Many laptops came with the more common 4-pin variety which didn't supply any power. Enough that Apple supplied a 4-to-6 pin adapter.
I feel kind of uncomfortable judging anyone about what they may have/have not done for charity. Jobs is a relatively private person when it comes to his personal life and a pretty deep thinker. Yes, he has no public record of philanthropy. Who's to say he doesn't do it privately or hasn't set up his will for postmortem charitable contributions?
Bill Gates and Warren Buffet bank on their reputations as front men for their charitable organizations. That's their right and they do a lot of good work. But that's not the only way to do it.
That's right â" Steve Jobs, worth $5.1 billion, has no public record of philanthropy.
I am all for encouraging charitable giving, but this is not a respectful way to do it. This is attempting to impose a value judgment ("People should have a public record of philanthropy") rather than talking about why charitable giving is a good idea and why the potential donor might be interested.
Regardless of whether he has given or not, Steve Jobs has served the public admirably. He has created wonderful products that people are willing to pay for, so obviously his service must have been valuable to some people. We live in a Jetsons age thanks to Steve Jobs. I haven't even bought an Apple product in eight years, but I'm still benefiting from the impact his company's designs have had on the industry.
I think it would be spectacular if Steve's billions were now spent looking for a cure for the medical conditions that are plaguing him. Doing so might seem "selfish," but would in fact serve the public yet again. Extending Jobs' lifespan would be a wonderfully fitting reward for the valuable service he has already provided for the world.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
This.
Steve Jobs has a publicity problem. It's basically at the point where the news goes wild everytime he breathes. His every action is scrutinized and criticized and commented and such 10 times over.
Now imagine how it applies should he not give anonymously. If he gave to a pro-gay-rights group, he'd have half the US population cheering him, half the population jeering him (and death threats). Ditto if it was a religious organization. Or minority group. Or whatever he honestly believes in. The act of donation would basically bring on such a wrath of coverage and commentary that really, I doubt even the charity itself would want that sort of scrutiny (especially since it often takes away from whatever goal they want to accomplish).
He gives anonymously, the charities respect that (and thankful the media doesn't go over their charity) and life goes on.
Hell, given his Spartan lifestyle (does he have a couch yet?), he may be giving a ton away - he certainly doesn't have a need for money.
More than Jonas Salk? More than Charles Drew? More than Alexander Fleming?
Personally I don't believe in charity. You can't just throw money on social problems and have them magically disappear. History has shown that time and time again. It's feels more like an American cultural phenomenon where people expects celebrities to make shallow statements on how "world peace is great" and donate some money "to the cause". I'm not a big fan of Steve Jobs but the fact that he hasn't thrown away his money on some temporary Africa projects and rather invested them in the economy (the real eradicator of poverty) doesn't affect my view on him negatively the slightest bit.
Inheritance tax is not theft. It is a very progressive tax in that it serves to prevent the perpetuation of wealth, free of tax, in wealthy families and are “a certain corrective against the development of a race of idle rich”.
FTR, agree with most of your post.
> Yes, he has no public record of philanthropy.
Philanthropy is not a black or white issue. His salary at Apple was $1.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-dollar_salary
> Who's to say he doesn't do it privately or hasn't set up his will for postmortem charitable contributions?
Exactly.
The best thing he could do with the money (if he is not going to leave it to his heirs, and BTW, inheritance tax is real theft) is "donate" it to somebody who already has a lot of money and is running a successful company or to set up an investment fund to have the money invested into various start up businesses.
OTOH he could just burn it, wouldn't have to pay any inheritance tax at all and it would be something different for a change.
I'd rather see inheritance taxes than people gaining wealth due to nothing more than an accident of birth. Especially since money = political power^w speech, why should some people inherit a greater say in the political process than others. Seems the founding fathers fought a revolution against inherited political standing.
So you mean they added the proprietary connector and obfuscated filesystem as a value-added feature later on?
I see...
You are welcome on my lawn.
When the network gets choppy you are going to wish you bought devices that actually aimed at storing data locally instead of relying ONLY on the "cloud".
With iCloud you get the best of both worlds - any media you want on-demand, but stored away so you can really access it any time you want.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Our society it predicated on making a mark on the universe. We are obsessed with painting the scenery with our big fat egos. Its kind of sad and pathetic.
I don't see your concern here. Humans are, among other things, capable of changing the universe profoundly, not merely making a mark on it. It's not magical. Any intelligent, self-reproducing machine could do the same.
You don't see astronomers with ego issues for the most part, because they have a fair sense of man's importance in the big picture.
They don't. Ask them where humanity will be in a billion years. The question is unanswerable.
Until we get over ourselves (as individual selves), our focus won't be contributing to a future worth living in for human beings, and with 7,000,000,000 on the planet now, perhaps its a good time to make this shift while there still is a future left for human beings.
What shift? To a humbler, unambitious useless creature which will die off in time, leaving no trace? What reason is there for you to issue this call to seven billion people, if you're intent on being so humble? Maybe you should practice what you preach? Or maybe you should eat your words.
Being "slow" is one thing. How long has Apple been making iPods and other handheld devices now?
I think after a decade of stubbornly sticking with proprietary connections, you stop saying that they're just being "rather slow on picking up the open standards stuff".
Or maybe I'm wrong. When do you see Apple adopting "the open standards stuff"? 2013? 2018?
I'll tell you one thing: a certain person is going to have to be safely scattered over the Pacific Ocean near Cupertino before that day ever comes.
I would be surprised if the words, "We'll adopt open standards over my dead body" have not been uttered at least a few times in Apple HQ since 1997.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Ten Times the man Bill Gates is. Bill Gates is now trying to buy his way to people liking him.
You realize Steve Jobs isn't going to sleep with you, right? I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure Bill Gates never fathered an illegitimate child and then refused to acknowledge it was his. People already like Bill Gates for the fact that he was essentially responsible for bringing personal computers into homes, regardless of how you may feel about his business practices.
If you want to talk about "likability", talk to people like Wozniak, John Sculley, or anyone else that worked directly with Jobs.
That's not to suggest that he ever became easy to work for. Jobs is even known to yell at company directors. Asked how she dealt with her boss, former Apple PR chief Laurence Clavere once told a colleague that before heading into a meeting with Jobs, she embraced the mindset of a bullfighter entering the ring: "I pretend I'm already dead." (Clavere says today that she doesn't recall making the comparison but notes that "working with Steve is incredibly challenging, incredibly interesting. It was also sometimes incredibly difficult.")
Often Jobs would suddenly "flip," taking an idea that he'd mocked (maybe your idea) and embracing it passionately - and as his own - without ever acknowledging that his view had changed. "He has this ability to change his mind and completely forget his old opinion about something," says a former close colleague who asked not to be named. "It's weird. He can say, 'I love white; white is the best.' And then three months later say, 'Black is the best; white is not the best.'"
I challenge you to find a single account from someone who personally knows Bill Gates who claims that the man is unlikeable.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
I see you failed American History of the 20th century.
Progressivism as a political movement emerged in reference to a more general response to the vast changes brought by industrialization: an alternative to both the traditional conservative response to social and economic issues and to the various more radical streams of socialism and anarchism which opposed them.
Theodore Roosevelt, Wilson, FDR and LBJ are noted Progressives.
I believe that the Estate Tax system, even if the Bush cuts are repealed, will not lead to all of an estate's wealth going to the government, at the same time with an Estate Tax, it does not create a noble class of ultra wealthy land owners. I don't see government spending and welfare as an evil.
Reasonable tax regimes don't lead to the abolishment of private property, the 1950s saw the highest post-WW2 tax rates in the United States and also the lowest unemployment rates.
A progressive tax is a tax by which the tax rate increases as the taxable base amount increases. Income taxes are progressive as are Estate Taxes, sales taxes are regressive in that everyone pays the same percentage, leading to the poor paying a greater share of their disposable income.
So in no way does "progressive", either in politics or tax systems mean theft.
ROFL. "Jobs contributed nothing to NeXT, he MERELY BANKROLLED IT."
Please tell me this was snark! LOL I'm sure there are a lot of cool ideas out there that we'll never see because they were never "merely" bankrolled.
The FIrewire connector was removed because whilst contemporary Macs all had Firewire, very few PCs did. So they switched to a USB connector at the computer end of the cable. They created the dock connector at the iPod end because they wanted to add video out, and that's not possible with a standard USB connector.
So yes, it was a value added feature. More compatible with PCs plus it supported video.
If you use a smartphone or tablet with anything better than PalmOS5, then yes, Apple HAS made your life better....indirectly, at least. Competition with Apple's progress spurred other manufacturers to up the ante in the products you probably enjoy today.
A sentence you'll never see on an Internet discussion board: "You know what? You're right."
I don't own a single Apple product and most likely never will.
And yet Apple has still made your life better.
" BTW, inheritance tax is real theft)"
No it isn't.
And he would never pay any inheritance tax, sine he would be fucking dead.
You're little unthinking excuse to rant does nothing for the conversation, fucking flamebait.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You call people thieves and hacks, but then tell others THEY won't be polite?
you Hypocritical ass.
Government spend has ALWAYS created jobs. It is the only way ever to get us out of any recession.
"As to lowest unemployment past WWII, well of-course, government finally stopped spending after the war was over and it allowed the depression to stop and since 1947 there was growth helped by USA's virtual monopoly on labor (on production, because USA had intact infrastructure and others didn't)."
this is factually wrong.. and stupid.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Charity doesn't fix underlying problems any more than antibiotics fix underlying systemic failure that lead to life threatening infections. However, if you don't provide the antibiotics, the patient dies. Hundreds of millions of people are alive today because of people who were generous enough to help those who could not help themselves, and that help includes money, time, labor, and the essentials of life. To be clear, I'm not talking about cultural failures, I'm talking about disasters (some natural, many man-made.) From Catrina to the Indonesian Tsunami, from Haiti to the devastating earthquakes in China and Japan, we've helped those who were in no position to help themselves, and these are true acts of charity. This is distinct from assuaging a guilty conscience by giving a bum a buck, who will promptly drink a dollars worth of rot-gut. That buck honors neither giver nor the receiver.
So if you are saying that saving those in need is pointless because it doesn't address the real problem, I would counter, save the people in need, then by all means, address the real problem. That doesn't mean let millions die a horrible unnecessary death. Of course you might be more of the mind "If [the poor] would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population" -- Ebenezer Scrooge.
Steve's lack of philanthropic endeavor paints a picture of a man more interested in himself than others. Absolutely not a crime, its not even evil per se'. Its just small.
Most charities are essentially scams. Giving to them accomplishes almost nothing.
Astronomers sent a probe out into the universe with a gold disk because they feel aliens would want to know about are species. How is that not a big fat ego?
And you know what? it's that big fat ego that builds huge bridge, building covered in glass that touch the sky., It's that ego that put us on the moon, and sent rovers to mars, it's that ego that allows us to make better vaccines, and better cars.
Ar ego is awesome, inspiring and makes us the greatest species on this rock.
The problem is the few psychopaths that run large corporation, or any large body of people.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"Poverty, AFAIC, is created by government spending (and regulating/taxing/subsidizing) and wealth is created by the private sector investment. Government is not (or shouldn't be) here to invest. It's here with a specific spending function - protect liberties. That's all that all of the government must be concerned with."
Have you read the United States Constitution?
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html
Article 1, Section 8
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
General Welfare means social programs, they aren't theft, and the US began taxation programs during the Washington administration.
As for the statement that no one paid income tax in the 1950s, that is just ridiculous, there were accountants, there were ledgers and people went to prison for tax evasion.
http://ntu.org/tax-basics/history-of-federal-individual-1.html
http://www2.census.gov/prod2/popscan/p60-018.pdf
1952-53 - 22.2% on income above $4000.
92% at $400,000.
Average income was $4011
And the bulk of US households made more than $4000 a year.
If welfare is evil, does the US military-industrial complex strike you as evil? Lockheed Martin for example makes the vast majority of it's income from US government contracts, as does Northrop Grumman, General Dynamic Land Systems, TRW and many others.
this is definitely the most moral way of saving money - working for it, as opposed to how gov't creates it
Right, those nasty governments which do nothing except borrow money, invest in building shared infrastructure, and then levy taxes on the users of that infrastructure, and return any excess to the public purse. They're totally different from private companies which borrow money, invest in building shared infrastructure, and then levy intellectual property rent fees on the users of that infrastructure, and return a sizeable profit to a bunch of speculators in another country who don't use or care about the products at all.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
The 16th Amendment made Income Tax constitutional, as did Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 and Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
If there is a Constitutional Amendment, then it's not unconstitutional.
As for the "effective taxes", there are not historical documents or data sets to support that claim.
Income Tax in the US dates to 1861, not 1913.
In order to help pay for its war effort in the American Civil War, the United States government imposed its first personal income tax, on August 5, 1861, as part of the Revenue Act of 1861.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue_Act_of_1861
Well, this is the web we are talking about, invented by Tim Berners-Lee on a NeXT machine...
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I don't consider emergency relief "charity" so I think there is some mix-up in terminology here. When it comes to emergency relief there are already systems in place, if not governments then at least the UN. If you want to talk about the real problems like world poverty, lack of education, widespread disease, non functioning markets and election systems things tend to get a lot more complex than "people starving because this disaster cuts of their supply of food so we need to give them food". You need to realize that most of the world is actually not in a state of emergency but have problems just as pressing in the long term as people starving in the short term.
What I'm criticizing here is that many charity projects just burns a pile of money for the sake of easing the consciousness of people that are better off, which helps nothing at best and is counterproductive at worst. For example building a bunch of schools so children can get education. Very heart-warming but futile when you don't have teachers and the kids needs to work anyway to provide for their family so the families are not interested in getting education for their kids. The well functioning market economy is the best tool invented so far to generate wealth - and charity is just a temporary flow of resources that could actually interfere with that mechanism. Especially when the goal of the investment is to have a huge impact in the short term just like many charity projects do, since the easiness to gather money is proportional to how seemingly pressing the issue is that being addressed by the charity is.
What's interesting though is charities that attempts to kick start business and entrepreneurship in poor regions. There has been some interesting projects in that area that touches on micro-loans, hands-on education and getting involved with the actual people you are trying to help. I don't want to call that "charity" though since that word has another meaning to m. ("blindly giving away money to things that makes me warm and fuzzy"). If charity was more focused around those kind of projects though I would be less critical of the form it takes today.
Come back with assertions like that when they are published in Fortune, Forbes, or the Wall Street Journal.
Some blog called Gizmag? Why do I scent a whift of fanboy spirit?
Not only is it a proprietary cable at the iPod end, they also actively and intentionally break 'non-approved' third-party video out adapters. I have one that worked fine when I first got my iPod but which was 'killed' in a subsequent firmware 'update.'
The connector doesn't 'HAVE' to support video out. A second connector could have been added for that. The USB connector could be one of the tiny standard connectors. But then... oh my, there would be an identifiable video out port on my iPod that they would have disabled with a firmware upgrade. It's always better to push all the connections into their own proprietary fog-zone so they can do with it as they wish.
Proprietary is as proprietary does, and if Steve Jobs will be remembered for anything, outside his circle of worshiping zealots, it will be for always putting that shiny proprietary 'twist' in anything apple produced.
A man who owns his own Gulfstream V does not live a "Spartan" lifestyle.
he may be giving a ton away
I find this hard to beleive. Unless the cayman islands banking association is a registered charity.
If he was really interested in creating good will, he'd use his public persona to raise awareness of issues in need of charity in the same way Bill Gates does.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
You seem to think charities exist only to help the poor. With that in mind, many, many people will fall upon hard times at some point in their life and need assistance from others. Apparently you would rather they die off than help them out for a while until they get back on their feet.
Aside from helping the poor, charities also exist to:
Yes, he has no public record of philanthropy.
Philanthropy is not a black or white issue. His salary at Apple was $1.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-dollar_salary
A $1 salary is not an act of philanthropy, it's a tax dodge.
Any high ranking businessman does not earn the majority of their income from salaries, they earn it from shares, gifts (from the company), trusts and other means that are: 1) tax deductible.
2) non-taxable
3) taxed at a lower rate.
How many restricted shares in APPL (the kind that pay dividends and are not permitted to be sold openly) does Steve Jobs own. A lot more then $1 worth I'd bet. Meanwhile he compares all his expenses against his $1 salary in order to gain tax deductions on his other sources of income. Not that I'm singling out Jobs here, just pointing out that it's far from philanthropy, in fact it's getting out of paying income taxes.
> Who's to say he doesn't do it privately or hasn't set up his will for postmortem charitable contributions?
Exactly.
Love how fanboys need to make up these little fantasies to justify their beliefs. It's so cute that you hold onto the threads of hope like that.
Maybe Steve Jobs is undergoing a metamorphosis (like a butterfly) into a younger version of himself in order to complete his plans for galactic domination. That would certainly explain his absence from Apple's leadership.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Philanthropy is using great wealth to live a legacy. It is not charity in the sense that it is a gift. Yes other do benefit but is like receiving socks and underwear for christmas. Someone has decided what the world needs, and they are going to make it happen. Philanthropy is about control, legacy, and fundamentally tax evasion.
For instance it is arguable that the Gates simply took a low hanging fruit, malaria control, and used as a means to set up a foundation to launder money. Sure they do some good, but does it do net good. If that money was taxed by the relevant government, if they simply gave their money as charity to existing NOG, might there be more good. Was it necessary to set up a whole new bureaucracy to fight what many were already doing, if they only had the cash the Gates had. The problem with simply giving to charity is that they Gates would not be able to insure that even though they money was legally theirs, it would still be available to enrich them.
Buffet is the same thing. I believe the foundations are headed by each of his three children. What a wonderful way to avoid inheritance tax while still insuring his kids have a guaranteed lifetime income and looking good in the process. He could have just given the money in trust to a charity, but he wanted to launder the money instead. Again, there is nothing wrong with philanthropy, it is just not charity.
Many people in the US claim that christianity is the basis of this country, yet they forget the story of the poor women giving her last penny to the church. How this gift was more valuable than all the others in the pot. How the people giving publicly to show how generous they are were simply hypocrites to be pitied. I am not that extreme. I think the world has greatly benefited from philanthropists. OTOH I think we benefit greater from the true spirit of giving. Those that will give a dollar simply because someone needs it. Those that will pay taxes even though much of it funds things, and people, we do not like. Those that will give even though they do not have control over where the money goes.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
The connector doesn't 'HAVE' to support video out. A second connector could have been added for that.
Yes you're right. They could have followed your idea and made the device worse.
http://pinouts.ru/PortableDevices/ipod_pinout.shtml
The dock connector allows a dumb,cheap device to control the iPod (volume, next song, previous song) just by sending the correct electrical signal to the correct pins and has pins for line level sound in/sound out and video. How do you propose you cheaply make accessories that work with the iPod by using USB? It would be a lot more expensive for an accessory maker to implement the functionality through USB.
SMB support has been built in since 10.3
I have firewire ports on both my Dell and Sony. Firewire is not "Apple's" standard, it is an IEEE standard and Apple is part of the licensing pool. Just as there is a licensing pool for USB.
What is a DPort? Do you mean DisplayPort? The mini-DisplayPort that Apple uses was accepted by VESA.
So what "standard" is there that is able to duplicate this functionality cheaply?
http://pinouts.ru/PortableDevices/ipod_pinout.shtml
Or do you expect a $20 boom box to implement a USB host controller?
The Mac Mini has an HDMI port. All other Macs have DisplayPort. DisplayPort is not an Apple proprietary connector. Dell and other manufacturrers have been selling monitors with DisplayPorts for years.
You mean "headaches" such as using a DVI to VGA connector? In fact it has just been recently that at least Mac Minis didn't come bundled with DVI to DisplayPort adapters.
Only a few Macs had optional Zip Disk support. All Macs came with 3.5" disk drives up until the iMacs.
2007 Macs still did not have +/- DVD writers (they choked on -R blank DVD's)
According to this site:
http://apple-history.com/
Every Mac introduced in 2007 had built in DVD +/- drives
Apple is part of the licensing pool for Firewire. The licensing pool and operates under FRAND. Just like most other standards (mpeg, mp3, H.264, etc,).
Thunderbolt was created by Intel.
Well both my Dell and Sony have firewire. There is also a fee to use USB.
If you want to legally use a DVD Player there is a licensing fee....
You're not exactly batting a hundred....
"Apple's been actively rejecting the standards other people use, open or otherwise. There is no HDMI on Mac products, No VGA ports "
You must look at different Apple products than I do... These products support HDMI either directly or with a cheap adapter:
"Products Affected
iMac (21.5-inch, Mid 2010), iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2009), iMac (27-inch, Mid 2010), MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2010), MacBook Air (Late 2010), MacBook Pro (17-inch, Mid 2010), Mac Pro (Mid 2010), iMac (27-inch, Late 2009), Mac Pro (Early 2009), MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2010), MacBook Pro (17-inch, Early 2011), MacBook Pro (15-inch, Early 2011), MacBook Pro (13-inch, Early 2011), Mac mini (Mid 2010), MacBook (13-inch, Mid 2010)"
Practically every Mac made in the past decade supports VGA with a cheap adapter (usually from a high grade standard DVI connection).
If you're going to be an irrational hater, at least try to get some of your facts right.
A.
...bringing you cynical quips since 1998
For years they pushed AppleTalk over TCP/IP, even after OS X.
No, the primary networking for OS X always was TCP/IP. AppleTalk was there for compatibility.
Firewire is an open standard, developed by a few companies, but mainly Apple.
Apple contributed their mini-display port connector to the display port standard, and it was adopted. That's contributing to a standard, not proprietary.
iWhatever doesn't have a proprietary USB connector. It has a proprietary dock connector which carries USB signals along with other signals that USB, and no other connector of the time supported. If USB supported video signals, then they would have used it. Apple quite rightly creates their own thing when there isn't anything currently out there that provides the features they want in their products. That's one of the reasons they stay ahead of the rest of the industry.
MacBooks don't need HDMI and VGA ports when they have a DisplayPort connector. Having multiple obsolete ports is a PC laptop thing. It's one of the reasons PCs are bigger and heavier. But that's nothing to do with rejecting open standards. HDMI is supported on the Mac Mini. And of course DisplayPort itself is an open standard.
You mention ZipDisks as if bundling some third party large removable storage is a crime. Again there was no open standard with high capacity at the time. You say "when everyone else was using floppy disks", neglecting to mention the fact that Apple pioneered the use of 3.5" disks and the rest of the industry followed. And they were the first to dispense with floppies as standard, which again the rest of the industry followed. Apple tends to lead with technologies, others often follow.
If you check out definitions of "open standard", you'll discover that there is no consensus that there must be no cost for licensing. Only that such costs should be reasonable and non-discriminatory.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard
When all of you are done arguing whether Bill Gates or Steve Jobs is the true Messiah, will you please wake up and join us adults in the real world? Both men are wildly successful because they knew how best to exploit others, were driven and hard working in doing that, and were lucky. Both men set aside morals and decorum throughout their career to behave badly. Both have a reputation for abusing staff who didn't perform. Both are happy to take credit and earn money from the work others have done. Both are happy to place restrictions on what their products can do and how useful they are to their customers in order to further their own goals.
Charity contributed by Bill Gates is a good thing - he did not have to do it, though obviously it serves his purposes. It doesn't change how he earnt his money in the first place.
Arguing who can walk on water best is purile.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
SMB is a file sharing protocol (Server Message Block) not an transmission protocol like TCP or AppleTalk. I remember getting Macs in 2006, they had Apple talk on by default but not TCP/IP
I used to have IEEE 1394, the laptop I bought last week doesn't have them. Every device I have uses USB and none use Firewire.
Also use of USB is royalty free, unlike Firewire.
Then having it not work.
The headache comes when you dont have the converter handy, or having to carry around 30 connectors because your laptop doesn't have a port everyone else uses.
During my years of tech support, every time someone brings a Mac into a meeting I get called and asked "do you have a converter" when they find out we dont they roll their eyes and ask everyone to huddle around their laptop screen. There's your headaches, not just for you but for everyone else.
Fee to use the USB logo, the hardware is royalty free.
But you're out for a duck.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.