Yeah I am no Apple fan, but it is hard to argue with their revenue numbers and branding success. For better or worse the Apple of the past died. Is Jobs culpable for that death? Perhaps.
I'm a huge Apple II fan (still have mine! and use it!), but computers don't live forever, and the Apple//e was already the ugly duck on the home computer party at that time. From the best computer of an era, it became one of the technically worst by Apple Computer negligence.
It was the open architecture (and a bunch of stubborn god damned good programmers) that saved the Apple II line from oblivion.
The Apple IIgs could had give some more time to the architecture, but Jobs were obsessed with the Lisa/Macintosh project and, well, undermined the product to prevent it to run against the Mac.
The Mac is a good machine at its own merits, however (I have a old Quadra here. Impressive). But I also think that IIgs could had found its own lucrative niche and, so, giving Apple another source of revenue.
Jobs was not that wrong on the Macintosh idea. What I fail to understand is why he needed to sacrifice the Apple Computer's cash cow (Apple II line) in order to reach his Mac vision. Apple Computer probably would not had run in all that financial problems, at first place.
But this is all done, and doesn't matter nowadays anyway.
Perhaps not, but I believe Steve would have found the money, he always did. The Apple money was used up before NeXT took off.
Without the huge success of the Apple II, the true is that Jobs would not reached the money guys.
Apple II popped up Apple Computer to the stars. When Jobs gone for funding NeXT, he already had Apple Computer on the Curriculum. I don't think he would get the money he got without this on his Résumé.
Remove Jobs and there is no Apple in the past, Woz stays at HP.
Without any doubt, you're right here. Woz is a great engineer. Not a business man.
Remove Woz and perhaps there would be no Apple and we would have had Pixar earlier or something else, who knows.
The odds are against you (I think no one would give so much money to Jobs if he didn't co-founded Apple Computer), but anyway, who knows? You may be right: there already existed Angel Investor at that time, it's not impossible that Jobs could find one.
But we would know one Steve no matter what, and that is Jobs.
No doubt about it.
But, honestly, some of us will remember Woz more foundly.
I think I now understand where you want to go. And I may agree with you, *IF* you are talking about the current Apple's status quo.
But I think you are not correctly dealing with some facts of the past:
1) It was the Apple II money that funded all the company in order to lead it where it is today.
2) The Jobs that came back to Apple is not the same Jobs that was kicked out from it.
The first fact talks by itself. The second one demands some further explanation:
The first Jobs' Era at Apple did not ended up very well. He was driving the Company to its demise. The Steve Jobs of the era was mining the company's finances with projects far beyond the current technological cost/benefict and, yet, promoting uneasiness inside the company. It was ugly. It was bad.
The Scully guy had take too much time to control the situation, and most of the difficulties Apple had after the Jobs' Era were long term collateral damaged already did by Steve. It was ugly. It was bad.
But Jobs is not dumb neither stupid. He learnt his lessons, and improved himself. The Next itself was not a huge success (he was still pushing the current technology beyound an affordable cost/benefict , but this does not implies a complete failure!), but what this guy did with Pixar is formidable.
And all this new knowledge (that he did not had in this first Apple Era!) he took with himself when he returned to Apple.
What make Jobs a formidable guy is not their long career of successes, but his ability to bring on its failures until he find a way to use them to make something else in a huge success. (Next it's still alive inside MacOSX).
So, yes, the present Apple is Jobs, and it would probably be history without him
But no, the present Apple would not existed at all without the money earned with Woz's Apple II. He started the whole thing.
Without Jobs, Woz would not had chance to show his invention to the money guys, and Apple would not had ever existed.
Without Woz, Jobs would not had chance to show a invention to the money guys, and Apple would not had ever existed.
Make no mistake - Jobs owns Woz as Woz own Jobs.
Jobs was not a rich guy looking for a clever inventor. He was lucky to be friends with Woz, as probably no other guy would risk his life this way with him, as Woz did.
We can argue forever about who is the father and who is the mother of Apple Computer.
But it's just silly trying go argue if Apple would exist without one of them: the answer is a sound "NO".
If you have control over the hardware (as Apple does), you can make hardware changes that renders the original code unusable, locking you up in the derivative closed code.
(I'm not implying that Apple is evil - all companies are: if any of them finds a breach to restrict a freedom in order to maximize a profit, they will do it!)
And you forgot, America is paradise. The home of everything that is good and beautiful about technology and consumer gadgets. America is the land of the free. You just have it all wrong, bad you.
One big mistake, in my humble opinion, on the product's cost chain, is the absense of the cost of disposal. Virtually no product has this cost attached to it at the selling point - and this end up with the government taking the hit of this cost, using our tax dollars to fund it.
It's expensive to throw things away. Some things takes centuries until it ceases to prejudice the environment where they were disposed. Someone, somewhere, somewhen will have to *pay* for cleaning all this mess.
Slashdot Mirror
or jailbreak it.
If I use a third-party installer that do not makes me agree with the EULA, I'm not binded to it!
Yeah I am no Apple fan, but it is hard to argue with their revenue numbers and branding success.
For better or worse the Apple of the past died. Is Jobs culpable for that death? Perhaps.
I'm a huge Apple II fan (still have mine! and use it!), but computers don't live forever, and the Apple //e was already the ugly duck on the home computer party at that time. From the best computer of an era, it became one of the technically worst by Apple Computer negligence.
It was the open architecture (and a bunch of stubborn god damned good programmers) that saved the Apple II line from oblivion.
The Apple IIgs could had give some more time to the architecture, but Jobs were obsessed with the Lisa/Macintosh project and, well, undermined the product to prevent it to run against the Mac.
The Mac is a good machine at its own merits, however (I have a old Quadra here. Impressive). But I also think that IIgs could had found its own lucrative niche and, so, giving Apple another source of revenue.
Jobs was not that wrong on the Macintosh idea. What I fail to understand is why he needed to sacrifice the Apple Computer's cash cow (Apple II line) in order to reach his Mac vision. Apple Computer probably would not had run in all that financial problems, at first place.
But this is all done, and doesn't matter nowadays anyway.
Perhaps not, but I believe Steve would have found the money, he always did. The Apple money was used up before NeXT took off.
Without the huge success of the Apple II, the true is that Jobs would not reached the money guys.
Apple II popped up Apple Computer to the stars. When Jobs gone for funding NeXT, he already had Apple Computer on the Curriculum. I don't think he would get the money he got without this on his Résumé.
Remove Jobs and there is no Apple in the past, Woz stays at HP.
Without any doubt, you're right here. Woz is a great engineer. Not a business man.
Remove Woz and perhaps there would be no Apple and we would have had Pixar earlier or something else, who knows.
The odds are against you (I think no one would give so much money to Jobs if he didn't co-founded Apple Computer), but anyway, who knows? You may be right: there already existed Angel Investor at that time, it's not impossible that Jobs could find one.
But we would know one Steve no matter what, and that is Jobs.
No doubt about it.
But, honestly, some of us will remember Woz more foundly.
I will. I'm an engineer.
Smart people goes away.
The people that stays are the ones that endup like North Korea, and this is the problem here (IMHO).
+1 underrated, please.
"-1" moderation is not a valid argument against ideas. This guy has a point.
You mean like Sony does with the PS3 (looking at OtherOS and the whole debacle attached to it)?
No. Sony didn't sued anyone that ever used the OtherOS feature before dropping it.
(What Sony did is evil, but it's not the same evilness Apple did).
Grandparent is correct. This is rather useless on a platform such as linux that does software management the right way.
But not the "profitable" way.
They're trying to monetize.
No. It's not an AI test. Instead it's aliens trying to determine if there's inteligent life here.
Stubborn aliens these of you! :-)
Come to think of it, most of my old photos from that era are pretty overexposed .....
With plutonium radiation? =P
(this is a joke!)
I think I now understand where you want to go. And I may agree with you, *IF* you are talking about the current Apple's status quo.
But I think you are not correctly dealing with some facts of the past:
1) It was the Apple II money that funded all the company in order to lead it where it is today.
2) The Jobs that came back to Apple is not the same Jobs that was kicked out from it.
The first fact talks by itself. The second one demands some further explanation:
The first Jobs' Era at Apple did not ended up very well. He was driving the Company to its demise. The Steve Jobs of the era was mining the company's finances with projects far beyond the current technological cost/benefict and, yet, promoting uneasiness inside the company. It was ugly. It was bad.
The Scully guy had take too much time to control the situation, and most of the difficulties Apple had after the Jobs' Era were long term collateral damaged already did by Steve. It was ugly. It was bad.
But Jobs is not dumb neither stupid. He learnt his lessons, and improved himself. The Next itself was not a huge success (he was still pushing the current technology beyound an affordable cost/benefict , but this does not implies a complete failure!), but what this guy did with Pixar is formidable.
And all this new knowledge (that he did not had in this first Apple Era!) he took with himself when he returned to Apple.
What make Jobs a formidable guy is not their long career of successes, but his ability to bring on its failures until he find a way to use them to make something else in a huge success. (Next it's still alive inside MacOSX).
So, yes, the present Apple is Jobs, and it would probably be history without him
But no, the present Apple would not existed at all without the money earned with Woz's Apple II. He started the whole thing.
you really don't mind what content you consume, as long as it's consumed on a quality device, I'm right?
I may be wrong, but I prefer quality content being consumed on a good enough device.
I do not condone censorship, no matter the excuse.
Funny enough, I agree with you.
I miss the "Open/Apple" and "Closed/Apple" command keys. :-)
+1 Informative.
I'm Woz fan, but not a blinded one. :-)
You are misguided.
Without Jobs, Woz would not had chance to show his invention to the money guys, and Apple would not had ever existed.
Without Woz, Jobs would not had chance to show a invention to the money guys, and Apple would not had ever existed.
Make no mistake - Jobs owns Woz as Woz own Jobs.
Jobs was not a rich guy looking for a clever inventor. He was lucky to be friends with Woz, as probably no other guy would risk his life this way with him, as Woz did.
We can argue forever about who is the father and who is the mother of Apple Computer.
But it's just silly trying go argue if Apple would exist without one of them: the answer is a sound "NO".
Not necessarily.
If you have control over the hardware (as Apple does), you can make hardware changes that renders the original code unusable, locking you up in the derivative closed code.
(I'm not implying that Apple is evil - all companies are: if any of them finds a breach to restrict a freedom in order to maximize a profit, they will do it!)
But, still, he's still wondering why would be his best interest to contribute, as this same beasts are unlikely to give him any kind of reward.
I understand why companies pay for some people to contribute to BSD style projects.
I understand why people with some heavy stakes on a project (the maintainer, for example) do contribute to BSD style projects.
But I can't see why he (or me) would expend our time doing it.
I can't afford a Mac, and my Linux box is doing fine.
Nested functions as context manipulation is extremly useful in large code bases.
I think that static functions and a clever use of the file system are a better alternative.
Nested functions are nice in a small scale, but once the code grows the file becames a huge monster hard to parallelize development (and to maintain).
I remember my Pascal times - I endup giving up nested functions in favor of modules very fast.
Sorry my crappy English.
Where I wrote "The more valuable", please read "The *most* valuable" instead.
(I need more practice, I know!)
Yes, they do.
Don't think that BSD is imune to this. Don't make the same mistake the FSF is doing with GPL3.
I never implied BSD is loosing (or would do) contributors.
I was replying to the (implicit) statement that contributors worth less than the code.
Make no mistake here. The more valuable resource any open source project has (BSD including) is not the code.
Clang and FreeBSD aren't proprietary software. They're BSD-licensed open source. That code doesn't magically disappear when a company uses it.
But the contributors do.
And you forgot, America is paradise. The home of everything that is good and beautiful about technology and consumer gadgets. America is the land of the free. You just have it all wrong, bad you.
You're holding it the wrong way!
On the monetary point of view, you are right.
On the ambiental point of view, they are right.
One big mistake, in my humble opinion, on the product's cost chain, is the absense of the cost of disposal. Virtually no product has this cost attached to it at the selling point - and this end up with the government taking the hit of this cost, using our tax dollars to fund it.
It's expensive to throw things away. Some things takes centuries until it ceases to prejudice the environment where they were disposed. Someone, somewhere, somewhen will have to *pay* for cleaning all this mess.
... as it appears that, well, lithium batteries are in fact accidents waiting to happen.
The gadgets industry is to be blamed here. They own us safer batteries!
Please mod parent up.
+1 insightful