According to Apple, Steve Jobs – easily the most brilliant and creative business entrepreneur of his generation – has died. Breaking story from AP.
UPDATE: Following is letter from new Apple CEO Tim Cook to employees of the company -
Team,
I have some very sad news to share with all of you. Steve passed away earlier today.
Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being. Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor. Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple.
We are planning a celebration of Steve’s extraordinary life for Apple employees that will take place soon. If you would like to share your thoughts, memories and condolences in the interim, you can simply email rememberingsteve@apple.com.
No words can adequately express our sadness at Steve’s death or our gratitude for the opportunity to work with him. We will honor his memory by dedicating ourselves to continuing the work he loved so much.
Tim
Not many people can say they changed the world. Jobs, Wozniak, and – let’s face it – Gates, definitely did. RIP, Mr. Jobs.
The first computer I ever used was an Apple, and that’s all I’ve used ever since.
Without Steve Jobs, I’d still be a Luddite cave-dweller.
Twice in my life I had to interact with a Windows machine, to help elderly relatives — and both times I wanted to smash the machine after about ten minutes. How anyone can tolerate Microsoft products is beyond me.
People forget that before Apple came along, computers were designed to make things easier for computers and for their designers. Steve Jobs was the revolutionary who flipped the narrative and made the focus on the human user and on ergonomics. That completely changed society. Because not only did Apple products make computers approachable and easy to interact with, but every single competitor computer and device maker had to play catch-up with Apple. Windows was invented to compete with Apple’s System 7, and everything has followed ever since. Were it not for Steve Jobs, we’d all still be learning and using MS-DOS and Unix commands.
I give credit where credit is due, Apple makes good products and has a good operating system, but my answer to “How anyone can tolerate Microsoft products is beyond me” is this – I am an engineer and none of the products that provide me with a living run on Apple platforms.
That has more to do with the fact that many business and engineering software companies got started when IBM and Microsoft still had a near monopoly on the business computing market, and so it became the default scenario to make most software packages in those fields for Wintel machines. Once the pattern was set, it was (and remains) very hard for Apple to get a toehold in that market. I’m sure there’s a word for this syndrome — maybe “legacy platform resilience” or something like that. It had nothing to do with the quality of the Apple OS, and everything to do with the early-stage savvy of the IBM/Intel/Microsoft alliance in wrapping up a whole sub-field of computing and never letting go.
I think the word that best captures the idea is “incumbency”. And you’re quite right that the success of a technology often has little to do with the technical merits of that technology. One of my favorite Dilbert cartoons shows a sales rep saying Dilbert, “Our product adheres to all industry standards”, to which Dilbert responds, “In other words, your product does nothing useful but it’s not your fault.”
This principle even applies to Apple products. The early Macintosh machines were pretty crappy in many ways, partly due to Jobs’s insistence on developing a proprietary OS that was a nightmare for software developers. But one of the great things about Jobs was that he learned from his mistakes. Eventually they switched to Unix (Mac OS is built on Unix) and made a decent platform. Today I own a Macbook, which is my workhorse.
That said, I would agree that Windows is clunkier to configure, but really, for everyday use — web browsing, email, word processing, spreadsheets, etc. — Windows and Microsoft products work just fine. A WIMP interface is still a WIMP interface. It doesn’t matter any more. If you want to tout Apple over MS, then point to the real progress: MS has nothing like the iPhone, and if it ever does, it will be an also-ran. The iPhone is the incumbent.
Yes, but how usable would Winblows have been without Mac OS X to keep it honest? Or would there even have BEEN an MS Windows if MS didn’t face competition for MS-DOS from a GUI?
Steve Jobs’ influence is WAY broader than Apple products. He showed the way for the entire industry.
And yes, I know Mac OS wasn’t the first GUI — just the first consumer/prosumer one.
Outside computers, where have you last seen the Zune (Microsnot’s pathetic iPod competitor)? Or what’s the market share of Win Mobile? (Even RIM/BlackBerry, arguably the creators of the smartphone market, are fighting for their lives against the iPhone now, and Nokia, once the world’s biggest cell phone maker, is struggling.)
In other areas, Jobs didn’t just show the way — he created entire markets from scratch. Did anybody realize they needed an iPad? (Actually, this may be one case where Apple listened to the grassroots — I remember people on Mac forums ranting and raving how great an iPod Touch with a big screen would be, which is basically what an iPad is.)
“Make a dent in the Universe” Steve Jobs exhorted his employees. He did, at least in the “universe” humans live in day to day. May his memory be blessed.
Steve Jobs both created jobs and made many peoples’ jobs easier.
May his neshama have an aliyah.
Well, Steve himself was a Buddhist (though he was raised nominally Christian by his adopted parents), and his biological mother was Christian while his biological father was actually Muslim (non-observant in both cases). One wonders: does the fate of the soul depend on the belief system (or even the heritage) of the person? Do Christian souls meet Jesus in heaven, while Hindu souls get reincarnated, etc. etc.? Or is there one true religion, and all the non-followers get the short end of the stick? Or is there a universal resolution that applies to all of us, regardless of the cultural “form” we embrace while alive?
Better check my iPhone for the answer.
I love that bit of Judaism: “May his soul be elevated.” Pretty good for all of us, I think.
He was probably as close to a “renaissance man” as anyone could have been in the 20/21st century. Rest in peace and in our hearts. From a man who never purchased an Apple product in his life, but wished he would have.
Wow, I was shocked to hear that Steve Jobs has passed away. I wish him to be well remembered. It’s a great loss to everyone. What’s amazing is how he worked so hard right up to the very end.
POLL: Is the death of Steve Jobs the biggest lost to the technology world this decade?
Vote: http://www.wepolls.com/p/3497079
As yes, I’ve even taken a picture of Steve Jobs — by sheer chance:
Apple unveils iCloudy future, and my secret Steve Jobs snapshot
Weird to think he’s now gone.
The last quote I heard from Jobs was when he was addressing a large meeting of Apple employees. “What was this product supposed to do?” After the proper response, he exclaimed, “Then why the **** doesn’t it do that?!?” That’s why Apple products have been so good. Good old-fashioned business sense. Most tech guys are geeks, not users. They prefer nifty to sensible.
According to the folks on my Facebook Homepage, a messiah has passed. I find that kind of weird.
Depends on the meaning of “messiah”, I suppose.
If being an innovator that radically transforms our way of life by technological empowerment qualifies, then yes, Gutenberg, Edison, Ford, and yes, Steve Jobs qualify.
Steve Jobs staunchly believed that AGW was real, serious, and accelerating.
So much so, that Steve Jobs yanked Apple out of the US Chamber of Commerce (CoC) … because Jobs appreciated that the CoC was harming Apple’s customers by selling-out to corporate special interests.
For many PJM/Tatler‘s, Steve Jobs’s actions are proof-positive that Jobs was (1) a moron, or (2) a commie, or (3) a secret liberal. Or all three.
But yah know what? Just maybe, Steve Jobs was (4) absolutely correct.
Good on Jobs, and may he rest in peace.
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AppleInsider: Apple abandons U.S. Chamber of Commerce over climate policy
URL: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/10/05/apple_abandons_u_s_chamber_of_commerce_over_climate_policy.html
And thank you, Dr. John Sidles of the University of Washington, for your indirect financial support of Pajamas Media, which, I am sure, will continue to post articles debunking the AGW fantasies of Algore and the rest of you True Believers.
As “A Physicist” intimates – Steve jobs could never have been wrong about anything. Isn’t he the same guy that founded NEXT computer?
It sounds like you need to learn a little more about religion.
You are a moron for tying thise things together on a thread which is about honoring the guy.
What’s wrong with honoring Job’s foresighted recognition that AGW is real, serious, and accelerating.
It’s good too, that Steve Jobs always totally ignored short-sighted critics.
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Carbon Coalition Against Global Warming
Gratitude to Steve Jobs
URL: http://carboncoalitionoz.blogspot.com/2011/10/gratitude-to-steve-jobs.html