Steve Jobs: A Legacy
Even most successful entrepreneurs do not change an entire industry. But that’s exactly what Steve Jobs did to personal computing — three times.
With the Apple II, Jobs made personal computers useful. In the mid-Seventies, home computers were build-it-yourself hobby boxes, useful only to the nerdiest nerds. By the time I entered middle school in 1981 there was an entire lab filled with Apple II Plus machines, and lots of fun software to run on them. The first computer “clone” wasn’t Compaq’s copy of the IBM PC — it was a clone of the Apple II. An industry was born.
Three years later Jobs made the personal computer approachable with the Macintosh. He didn’t invent the GUI or the WIMP metaphor but he and his team made them useable and affordable. What most computer users took for granted in 1995 was deemed a “toy” by many critics when the first Mac arrived in 1984.
And last year, Jobs made the personal computer ubiquitous with the iPad. This third revolution is only beginning, yet still many critics deride this “toy” as a “media consumption device.” I do most of my photo editing on my fat, slow, first-generation iPad — and I’m outlining a novel on it, too. Others use it to create music, paintings and video. That’s some “consumption” going on.
In the meantime, Jobs also:
• Created the first “event” Super Bowl ad
• Reinvented the cell phone
• Revitalized and reinvented movie animation with Pixar
• Brought low the old, thieving record labels
• Started from scratch the largest music retailer
• Changed the way people buy, keep, travel with, and listen to music
• Created a physical retailing empire with greater profits-per-square-foot than Tiffany’s
• Apple is currently making people (and the competition) rethink the laptop computer with its diskless MacBook Air
Oh, and Jobs by-the-way took the helm of a computer company that was just months away from bankruptcy and turned it into the world’s most profitable and valuable computer maker, consumer electronics firm, and cell phone manufacturer.
Good lord. Any one of these many accomplishments, and Jobs would be hailed as a titan of industry. You may or may not be an “Apple person,” and the way you work, play and compute have all been deeply effected by the man in the black, mock-neck sweater. From your Windows 7 all-in-one computer, to your Acer Timeline ultra-lightweight laptop, to your SanDisk MP3 player, to your Android smartphone or your Samsung tablet — none of them are made by Apple and all of them adhere to the vision of Steve Jobs.
That’s an astounding legacy, unparalleled except perhaps for Henry Ford.
Poor health is certainly what prompted Jobs to resign yesterday as CEO of Apple, Inc. Nobody knows how long he’ll have to enjoy his retirement — but he’s earned it like no one else has.
So, thanks, Steve, for all the insanely great stuff. Thanks also for leaving Apple in such capable hands. But thank you most of all for setting an example that never failed to inspire.
I only wish Apple would actually manufacture products in the US instead of in China through contract manufacturers such as FoxCon. Do you enjoy your iPad and MacBook enough to let you forget about the dozens of FoxCon employees in the past year that have decided jumping out of windows to their death was preferable to continuing as a FoxCon employee?
FoxConn had some suicides, yes. But “dozens” of “jumpers” in “the past year?”
That’s nonsense, and I think you know it.
Eighteen in the last year and a half. Not “dozens” but nothing to be dismissed so cavalierly, either.
You “forgot” Mr. Jobs biggest mistake, NeXT computer. Just an oversight, I’m sure…
I remember NeXT quite well. In fact, I still use it everyday on my desktop computer — oh, and my tablet and my phone. These days, of course, it goes by the name OS X or iOS, but an OS by any other name…
Some failure, eh?
Fact is, everybody has failures. Let’s not forget the Mac Cube, the first-gen Apple TV, among others. But let’s also remember Microsoft had been pushing tablet Windows computers for ten years before the iPad — to collective yawns. Or that Android prototypes looked exactly like BlackBerrys before the iPhone came out. It would seem Apple has had some success — and even a wee bit of influence — over the years.
Hey, don’t forget the Lisa, either. I actually used one. A POS.
Point being all gods have feet of clay. It doesn’t keep them from being gods.
Considering the size of the operation, the number of suicides didn’t seem outlandish. ZDnet does the math, but while every suicide is terrible, labeling Foxconn as some kind of outlier seems like a difficult case to make.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/foremski/media-gets-its-facts-wrong-working-at-foxconn-significantly-cuts-suicide-risk/1356
I guess the Kindle didn’t work out?
What are you talking about? I love my Kindle! And when Jeff Bezos retires (not for a long time, I hope) I’ll have some lovely things to say about him.
You’re equating working for FoxCon as a reason to committ suicide? Ya, I don’t think that’s how it worked; see they may have jumped out the windows to their death at their work, but I’m pretty sure it was because of non-work related circumstances that made them suicidal, otherwise EVERYONE working their would be suicidal, which obviously isn’t the case.
All of the bankers and investors that jumped out of windows during the stock market crash of 1929 were manufacturing Apple products at Foxconn on the side.
Don’t worry, Foxcon is replacing suicidal workers with robots.
One hopes they aren’t suicidal robots…
I’d prefer suicidal robots to any that are planning to participate in the robot uprising.
I’m itching on calling Woz to come down and SMITE THEE
I would’ve given Woz his due credit, but:
1. This was really about Steve, and;
2. Every time I think of Woz, I think of the Apple ///, and a little piece of me dies inside.
2… okay, martini, that was just cold (Hugs my 2c and wonders whether these floppies will still work….)
Nitpick: Let’s not forget the Commodore PET. The Apple 2 won the game (as an arguably superior design, especially the keyboard and slots), but there were other pre-fab computers you could buy, of comparable spec – and the PET sold very well.
You call it a nitpick, Sigivald? I call it an absolute scandal that the predominant histories of personal computing jump from the Apple II to the IBM PC just like that, skipping over the important contribution of Commodore (and Sinclair Research in Britain) in their glory days in the 1980s.
While the geniuses at Apple and IBM were still stuck in a largely textual world (the only world the VT100 terminals of their youths afforded them) and beeping speakers, Commodore with the VIC-20, the C64 and the Amiga catapulted a generation of computer users to the world of amazing graphics and sound (by the standards of that time).
Apple gets credit for popularising the GUI. The credit to popularising the idea that a computer should be more than a glorified calculator or typewriter goes to Commodore.
Well, I meant a nitpick on the “made personal computers useful” claim, is all.
I think the reason Commodore gets ignored in the “start of the real PC” era is that the VIC and C64 weren’t in the same class. (Indeed, they arguably weren’t quite in the same class as the Apple 2, lacking the expansion options, but that’s much more minor.)
Yeah, the C64 sold like hotcakes. But it came well after the Apple II “made personal computers useful”. I think our host is still right about that specific claim.
Sinclair made, let’s be honest, toys. The ZX-81 was an enthusiast machine, not a “doing work” computer. And that’s fine – but really, they just weren’t so important to The Development Of The PC, as far as I can tell. (I’d say as far as I can remember, but that was a little before my time.)
(That said, I still have a ZX-81 in a box somewhere, with a 16k ram expansion and a thermal printer…)
Yeah — mt first computer was a VIC-20, and the price of the 16k cartridge damn near broke me. My second was a C-64 which I nursed through until about 1992. Anyone wNts to say I don’t appreciate Commodore has another thing coming.
Sigivald, Stephen Green: Not you specifically. Sorry if I came out that way. I said “the predominant histories of personal computing”. It’s an establishment thing – like trying to find a sympathetic account of Enoch Powell in the mainstream historiography of British politics.
I acknowledge the important contributions of Apple and IBM to computing. I just wish I didn’t see Commodore’s important contribution waved aside like it is. In lots of ways, the C64 is more personal than today’s computers could ever be, because it packed both a powerful (for its time – having a real graphics chip and a real sound chip) machine and easy access to all its innards (I’m talking about the ability to attain full understanding of the machine and program every aspect of it in assembly language) in one handy package. I don’t think anything has ever come or ever will come close.
As for Sinclair, while the ZX Spectrum was inferior to the C64 in almost every regard, it was important in Britain because it filled the C64′s role there for the most part. Both the Spectrum and the C64 forced IBM to give its personal green-screen beeping machine better options for graphics and sound, by popular demand on part of emigrees who were accustomed to nothing less. People who envisioned computers as scientific workhorses or business machines weren’t going to give them audiovisual capabilities of their own accord – it took the C64 and the Spectrum, the “computers for the masses”, to steer them in that direction.
The tragic part of this story is that Steve Jobs = Apple. His earlier departure signaled the start of a long, slow decline that was only arrested and turned around by his return to the helm. We see a similar story emerging at Microsoft as well in the years since Bill Gates left and I don’t see him ever returning to Redmond for any reason. It stands to reason; the “bullpen” consists of people who made their careers following the visionary, not by striking out on their own.
Any future success and leadership at these companies will depend on bringing in new executives not in thrall of the founders.
We can only hope that Apple employees adopt a mantra of “WWSJD?”
I think you’re selling Apple’s exec team short.
Products don’t emerge fully fledged from the head of Steve Jobs. Instead, he’s instilled, corporate-wide, a discovery process for creating new products. An initial idea is prototyped and test and prototyped and tested over and over again. Example: Apple starting working on a tablet computer early in the decade. Battery and processor technologies weren’t good enough yet, and big screens were still too expensive. But they kept honing it until, one day, Jobs said, “This would make an excellent phone.”
And that’s how the iPhone was created — by discovery and accident. Apple then wisely kept the iPad under wraps, until the batteries and processors and screens could be affordably developed.
That’s not one man. That’s a very sharp team.
It’s also, I think, what Woz warned against this morning: That Apple needs to stay fiscally responsible — not to pursue every little idea they come up with. To me, that will be the real test, not “can they keep coming up with great stuff.”
You may be right. However, the past 20 years have been littered with “insider” CEO successions at major companies that led to business failure remedied only by replacement with someone not immersed in the culture; AlliedSignal/Honeywell and Boeing are particular examples that come to mind. And, again, Microsoft is a work-in-progress in this regard.
I do hope, for the sake of employees and shareholders, that Apple is in a position today to assure that the fallout of Jobs’ earlier departure is not repeated.
I seriously doubt that any of the executives or other potential followers of Jobs has the the same motivation as Jobs.
What Jobs has been doing since the 80′ties and what has been his motivation the whole time is basically to try to create the Dynabook – Or more accurately create Jobs enhanced version of the Dynabook. Ie. a book sized device you’d communicate with using fingers, speech, drawing and handwriting with graphical symbols looking like real world objects like garbage bins, printers etc.
And he has been relentless in getting incrementally closer to his goal ever since he had his epiphany at the beginning of the 80′ties. From the Macintosh to the Newton to the iPhone to the iPad. He is almost there now. The only thing still lacking is the ability to control the device with speech. And having the device communicate back with speech in an intelligent and meaningful way. I suspect that he will keep trying to get this last piece of the puzzle incorporated before he retires completely.
This is also why he has been making these radically changes to how we use computers again and again. Everybody else has been shocked every time something new cam from Apple. For Jobs there was nothing radically different about it. He stuck exactly to how he envisioned his product from the very beginning. It’s only everybody else who thinks it has been radical.
I read about Steve Jobs and the Dynabook in an interview sometime back in the 80′ties. And it has been in the back of my mind every time something new came from Apple. I specifically remember laughing knowingly to myself when the first Powerbook came out. By the fact that he used the terminology “book” to describe his device, I knew that he was still pursuing his original obsession. And he is not done yet.
I found this right after I finished my comment.
http://alltechnews.org/apple/speech-recognition-interface-unveiled-in-ios-5-12797.html
I found this right after I finished my comment. Jobs is actually pretty predictable, once you acknowledge the Dynabook connection.
http://alltechnews.org/apple/speech-recognition-interface-unveiled-in-ios-5-12797.html
Jobs pointedly mocked the idea that Apple had no succession plan in his resignation letter. Tim Cook, Phil Schiller and Jon Ive have had experience carrying on in Jobs’ absence, and I think the evidence is that they will do just fine. I’ve even seen it argued (though perhaps not that convincingly) that Ive, as the industrial design guru, was actually more important to Apple’s success than Jobs. Certainly, Cook is credited with the masterful supply chain management that has characterized the production of the iPhone and iPad.
Besides, I think it’s a mistake to think of this as the end of the line for Jobs. No doubt, the exceptional burden of being CEO of a company as big and as important as Apple was a lot to handle for a man with his health history. But he did request that he stay on as Chairman of the Board (immediately granted, of course), and he remains on the Board of Disney/Pixar. AppleInsider reported that on the day that he resigned as CEO, he still put in a full work day at Apple HQ. To me, it sounds more like a man entering a well-deserved (and inevitable) semi-retirement than a man preparing for his own death. I think he will continue to make his influence felt around Apple for a while yet.
Get a grip. Apple innovated very little. Xerox invented the GUI. While the Apple ][ was certainly one of the first real home computers, it was preceded by others, such as the Commodore PET. Audio Highway released the first mp3 player. As for the iPhone, IBM beat them to the punch in 1992 with the Simon.
Apple did a great job designing and marketing their devices, but they innovated very little.
True, Ken, but there’s a big difference between innovation & application. There were many car companies back in the day, but Henry Ford made them useful & affordable.
Apple didn’t invent many innovative technologies, but they did manage to develop useful & economically sound products using said innovations.
It’s funny how everybody’s new products look and function like last year’s Apple products, and Apple’s new products look and function like nothing else. Funny, I mean, for a company that doesn’t innovate.
Sorry Mr. Green, nearly every Apple product and idea has been preceded by someone else or runs on someone else’s technology:
Pixar’s RenderMan and most top quality FX rendering? Runs on / done on Linux
First MP3 music store? Ritmoteca.com in 1998 itunes? 2003
First MP3 Player? Audio Highway in 1996 ipod? 2001
MP3 file format? AT&T (and a few others)
MP3 made successful by? Winamp and Napster (arguably the first mp3 store)
First tablet/slate/etc? Not a Mac by a long shot
SSD? XO PC and eeePC 2007 Macbook Air? 2008
And lets not forget that the demand for these internet ready media devices is largely to the credit of websites like Facebook, Google, Netflix etc (each runs linux by the way).
Apple loses this nearly every single time. That being said, lets give Jobs and Apple their credit where it is due… they make the ideas that others develop more appealing. I won’t lie, I chose the Samsung Fascinate because I wanted an Android OS but the iPhone look and feel. I’ve even installed a variation of Android that has an iOS like GUI.
Apple and Jobs create a look and feel that no one has been able to match. The Jobs legacy is the innovative design and marketing, seeing past the technology.
I think you missed the point more, Ken.
Apple didn’t invent the MP3 player, it’s true.
They did make the first one that didn’t suck*.
I owned an early Rio, for example. It was garbage, like everything else on the market. Bad build quality, crappy UI, everything.
(* “No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame” was Slashdot’s reaction. Somehow the market just didn’t agree that wireless and more disk space than a Nomad was what mattered in an MP3 player compared to usability and size.
Indeed, I haven’t owned a non-Apple MP3 player since the first iPod came out – because nobody’s managed to make one that sucks less.)
IBM’s “Simon”? I’m a giant computer geek and have been for decades, and I never heard of it before you mentioned it. “Inventing” something that completely fails because it sucks [because the tech isn't ready, and the OS is.. IBMish] is not real impressive.
Again, IBM “invented” the smartphone and seems to have had no impact on future designs or the market. On the other hand, the iPhone changed the game instantly, and has been a runaway success.
Which brings me to XEROX PARC and the GUI. Yeah, they invented it (or close enough). They invented what amounts to the idea of using sticks to make a house, and you’re trying to give them credit for a mansion.
Modern UIs like OSX and Windows 7 didn’t just pop out of XEROX. Indeed, I suspect that nobody on the PARC team that invented “the GUI” could have even imagined what we have now, because the ability to do so is conditioned on the previous steps.
XEROX gets (huge) credit for planting the seeds and inventing the concept – they don’t get credit for making it work worth a damn.
Innovation does not mean, alone, “coming up with some great concept”. It also includes “making that concept not suck in actual use”. Indeed, the latter is kinda vitally important, as your own examples end up showing…
To back up your point about GUI and Xerox PARC, I recall that (at least as Robert X. Cringely told it) Jobs had so little trouble getting a look at GUI because the Xerox folks didn’t think it was valuable enough to keep it secret. Xerox may have invented it, but Jobs’ genius was to understand its potential better than they did.
It should not be forgotten, nor overlooked, that Apple and its computers were a great success despite their being basically ignored by corporate America. The reason for this was that “personal computers” were regarded as toys in the executive suites until such machines appeared with those magic blue initials IBM. I was there. I watched it. My company began to slurp up the original IBM PCs and XTs (and the Compaq clone portables, dubbed “luggables” by any who actually had to carry one) once lower and middle management discovered them and programs such as Lotus 1-2-3 that ran on them. Suddenly these managers could confront the High Priesthood of Information Systems who either stalled or said “No” to requests for information, and they would say “Well, it’s too bad you can’t get this for me on the mainframe, because I can buy a machine for $5,000 and program it myself.” The Priesthood’s power was broken forever and they had to join the lower class.
Apple machines were nowhere to be seen in this revolution because they were considered to be toys to the “suits;” the Apple logo didn’t have the power of those three magic initials in the front offices. True, their kids were playing games on them at home, but that just reinforced the image.
Yet today Apple is “all over the place” and you won’t find a computer with IBM on it, except for an older machine someone is still nursing along (I’m using an IBM ThinkPad laptop to type this).
(Pardon the sermon)
IBM Thinkpad? Do you mean Lenova Thinkpad?
Not if it’s a “older machine that someone keeps nursing along”.
(This comment was written on a Lenovo Thinkpad, but there are several IBM Thinkpads in use in my house.)
“Apple machines were nowhere to be seen in this revolution because they were considered to be toys to the “suits;” the Apple logo didn’t have the power of those three magic initials in the front offices.”
Yeah, but we were pumping out all the newspapers, magazines, pretty much every printed product.
Apple has reached the momentum of being able to do NOTHING but sell their existing product lines with marginal improvements and be an extremely successful company for many, many years to come, with or without Steve.
However, two key points:
1) While Jobs’ management has been amazingly good (and occasionally amazingly bad), Apple is made up of thousands of extremely creative, intelligent people who aren’t going to just stop building cool products that people will line up for in droves. I suspect a couple questionable ones might make it through the Steve filter in the coming years, but overall not much will change.
2) If anyone things Jobs’ retiring as CEO means he will not continue to have significant input on Apple’s direction and product development, they’re insane.
Indeed, this isn’t quite the end of the Jobs era at Apple. He’s not CEO anymore, but he is the Chairman of the Board. He’s not being wheeled offstage to his deathbed.
A good read about Apple and Steve Jobs. I was not aware of all of Steve’s accomplishments. It is astounding how much in this computer world continues to advance.
No argument that Jobs is a visionary, but this is a bit overboard, if you ask me. Just as an example, I used a Toshiba Portege 2000, years before the Macbook Air came out — diskless, 1 inch thick, and 2.8 Lbs.
The MacBook Air is sans a hard drive, not just the optical drive. And for three years now, the Air has been thinner and lighter than the Protege by half.
A-freaking-men!
Jobs deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Ford, Edison, Watson, Walton, Kroc, and Ron Popiel.
Personal computers were an expanding market before Apple, and more folks than the “nerdiest nerds” were using them. Folks like Jerry Pournelle, who parlayed his journal about using computers into a second career.
CP/M still had a oomph behind it during the Apple II days; it was the Linux of its time. The major obstacle was that it was an 8-bit OS, which was addressed in CP/M-86. In fact, Digital Research had a multi-user system (MP/M) for the microcomputer market when Jobs & Woz were puttering around in their garage. No disrespect to the latter intended. The Apple II was undeniably an economic & useful computer, in the same vein as the Model T.
I think our host missed a very important factor in the acceptance of the Apple II: VisiCalc. THAT is what propelled Apple into the spotlight, and arguably drove microcomputers into the mainstream. Back in the day, tens of thousands of businesses wanted “that thing that runs VisiCalc.” They didn’t care about the details; they wanted VisiCalc.
One still wonders what would have happened between Apple & the CP/M systems, once VisiCalc became more widely available. Apple was clever enough to release a CP/M expansion card for the II.
Still, at the end of the day the IBM/MS leviathan rolled over Apple, with schools one of the few markets where the latter maintained a presence.
This changed with the Mac. I remember when it first came out. I fell in love with the high-res eggshell-white monitor, the graphics, etc. I fell out of love with the price, the 128Kb memory, no expansion slots…
You have to give Jobs credit for OS X, which I consider one of the single most powerful influences on personal computing after the release of Windows 95. I remember when OS X began making inroads into the Miami University Systems Analysis department back in the day (I still think the iMac G4 is one of the prettiest designs around). When I pointed out to the generally Wintel-oriented students there that OS X was based on FreeBSD, there were two reactions; the first was “hunh?” and the second was “hmmmm…”
So while I won’t give Jobs as much credit as our esteemed host, I’ll go about three-quarters. If nothing else, the effects upon Apple of his departure, then return, not to mention the effects on the computer community, are undeniable.
Say what you will, and I know many people hate Apple passionately, but Steve Jobs has made the world a better place. I’m saddened that his candle, having burned so bright, now dims at such a young age.
KZ, don’t pat yourself on the back. Acting the fanboi can be embarrassing. Let’s all grant SJ the rank of great innovator, and let the cultists of personality froth around Barry Obama, mmmkay?
Nice to see all the Apple apologists have their TP’s at the tip of their keyboards regarding FoxCon suicides. Whatever gets you through the day with what’s left of your conscience intact, I guess.
SJ may have been a great innovator, but was apparently not so much fun to work for. (See Accidental Empires, et al.) Lionizing an individual for what amounts to team accomplishments? Why the hero worship?
Since you seem to be doubling down on your assertion of “dozens” of “jumpers” in just “the past year,” I suggest you back it up with facts. And to accuse others of using “talking points” while you make up numbers? Inexcusable.
Meanwhile, all business efforts are team efforts. And every team requires a leader. Was Steve Jobs fun to work for? That depends on who you ask. Personally, I doubt I’d want to work for the man. But it is far from “hero worship” to recognize the accomplishments of someone with his track record.
Now, you haven’t attempted to tear down that record — who could? Instead, you’ve made baseless accusations and insulted other commenters. So, you can back up those assertions in the next day or two. Or make apologies to my readers you’ve insulted. Your choice.
I have a few things to say about the suicide stuff. I used to work for Foxconn, and now I work for a competitor. I was DAMN glad to get out of that place. So I am not exactly a fan.
That being said, the suicides need to be taken in context. Foxconn has at least 1 million employees in China, and some say closer to 1.2 million. 15-20 suicides out of a million workers is not much. This rate is less than in the general population in China.
And it is about ONE FOURTH the rate of the similar demographic in the US! (late teens to mid 20’s, US rate is about 70-80 per million)
And some folks think the fact that these people killed themselves on company property as some sort of smoking gun that their jobs drove them to kill themselves. But in China, the workers live in the compounds 24/7, for all but a few weeks a year. So unless they want to kill themselves when they are home visiting their families on the holidays, they pretty much have to do it “on campus”.
During Jobs’ reign at Pixar they had such a string of hits that they went from an upstart that needed Disney to distribute them to basically eating Disney. And during that time he was also the CEO of the steadily growing Apple. You try being a hands-on CEO of two major corporations.
Back when Apple was basically the testbed for inventing or popularizing interesting ideas in the industry (USB, anyone) they were a fraction of the size of Microsoft and IBM, both of which had much more money to throw at user interface design, etc. than did Apple. I was working for an Apple retailer when the iMacs first came out. People would walk into the store and unconsciously caress the damned things.
Steve Jobs’ vision, and the team he assembled to bring it about is how come Apple has had such a run of product that you look at, feel that thing in your solar plexus and say “Oooh, I want that.” Also, I’ve noted over the years how often a stint at Apple is prominent on the resumes of the folks who bring off interesting gadgets for other companies.
While I have plenty of reason to dislike Apple (I had a dealership in the mid-90s when they were busy stabbing us all in the back), but I also have to thank Heaven for them, and Jobs especially. I work daily on a Mac and a Win7 machine, and have done so for many years, but while Win7 is much better than its predecessors, it is still just not quite up to X. It reminds me of MacOS 9.
I just spent a couple of hours trying to get my high end 22″ windows monitor to approximate the richness of color on my iMac 24″ (first gen) and it just fails. My niece was trying to play MineCraft on my Win7 machine and was annoyed that though it could use the ‘fancy’ graphics it looked pale and washed out by comparison. She’d rather play with the basic graphics on the iMac even though it’s slower and far older, because the color is just that much better.
It’s the attention to small details that really make Apple stand out. I’ve built dozens of Windows machines, and none of the cases I’ve used comes close to the elegance of design Apple uses. They’ve had some bad designs over the years (several of the Quadras were no fun to work on) but they also have some of the best designs, and they certainly are better looking in general. While that ought not to matter, it does, always has, and always will. Just look at cars. Form over function is the rule, not the exception. With Apple you get both.
And that, above all, is owing to Jobs. His insistence on attention to detail is why borrowed or stolen ideas, in his hands, turned into game-changers. His key contribution is the word elegance, which in computer terms means all the pieces parts work together like a ballet dancers instead of cogs and axles, or bells and whistles. Dragging along the glacial computer industry is no joke, and I hope his replacements are up to the task. I use a command-line interface every day, and it’s a constant reminder that we’d still be doing that exclusively if not for a few risk-takers like Jobs.
{FACE-PALM}
So, mister “I had a dealership,” can you explain why the colors are “better” on a Mac, just because it’s a Mac? After all, your ’22″ windows monitor’ is nothing more than a digital display which performs exactly the same function no matter which sort of system it is connected to, at the same resolution of pixels, color depth, and frequency.
You fail specify what your “windows 7 machine” is. Who built the system? More importantly, who built the video card/integrated chipset? Is the device driver up to date? Does the native resolution of the monitor match the current setting?
Can you accurately define “richness of tone?” What are the video specs on the iMac in question? What are the specs on the Win7 machine? Which card does the Win7 machine use, and what are the specs on the monitor? Can you quantitatively differentiate the color depths of the Apple system and the Win7 system?
For example, I’m currently running an Acer 20″ LCD monitor at 1600×900 resolution, a 32-bit color depth, and 60Mz refresh rate. Certainly if I reduce the color depth to (say) 16-bit, appearances would suffer. If I changed the resolution to (say) 1024×768, appearances would also suffer. Ditto for refresh rate.
I haven’t even addressed issues of display chipsets and drivers.
I look forward to reading the specifics of your claim. It should be entertaining, especially from someone who whinges about command-line interfaces.
P.S. I like Apples; the classics anyway. I especially like the current crop of systems. I just don’t put up with dogmatic Apple fanbois or “Apples are toys” bigots. I have BTW two functioning CP/M computers in my apartment; I am quite catholic in my tastes.
Oh, urk. Looking at my post a day later, I’m sorry I put it up. Way too snarky. My apologies.
Another illustration of the old rule “never post when you’re in a bad mood.”
Yikes. Pictures not good.
http://www.tmz.com/2011/08/26/steve-jobs-apple-photo-resignation-ceo-sick
Personally, I’m not a big Jobs fan. I worked for Claris. When I was hired, I got a grant of 1000 options that vested in thirds over three years. But at the time, the stock went from the mid 30′s, (the strike price) down to around 12 and stuck there. Eventually, after a couple of crappy re-price offers, they made a very attractive one, re-price your options 1:1 at $12.25, but you’d have to re-vest over the next three years. LOTS of people took it. Then within six months, Jobs decided to re-absorb Claris and laid off 600 of us. Poof, no options. They would have been worth around $40,000 when they’d all vested. And who knows what they’d be worth now. (Was there a split since 1998?)
I’m convinced they made the juicy offer knowing they’d be laying us all off and thus robbing us of our stock options. That’s why I’m not a huge Jobs fan.
A very interesting report. I was especially interested in the history contained in the comments. I saw a lot there that needs to be politically addressed to allow the individual to take his available knowledge and apply it the way he sees fit.
Progress is a community effort but not a collective effort. Not every one that reads this report will take away the same impression but will concentrate it on his field of interest.
Different posters pointed out the originating source of the technologies but it wasn’t the originator that developed the technology in the most part. That is what our Liberty under our Constitution is all about. It allows the individual to take an idea and run with it. Then other individuals can build on than run.
The individual lucks up on new technology either by his own effort or by the effort of someone else and and it is cumulative. It seems that it takes different talent and interests to conceive an idea and then to develop that idea.
While most of you posters may not be interested in my analysis it is still important to all of us. We must keep our options open to innovate and that agitates the status quo favored by out government and it bureaucracy along with all who believe our progress is collective, not just collected. The advance of the computer technology may because it time had come but each step of that advance was made by an individual even in a team effort and is not the result of collective effort. I can use this information in my other more political posts.
Steve Jobs had a lot of big ideas. Apparently, a lot of people like the gooey look of Apple stuff, but it turns me off. I also generally don’t like Apple people, because their fanaticism turns me off. But I wish Steve Jobs the best, for being a highly successful businessman.
Me^
And I like right clicking. I like to fix my hardware right away when it breaks (Not wait a week for Apple to do it). I like to pay 1/3 of the price for the same specs. I like to be able to buy popular software and games.
HA! I remember sitting in junior high school using a TRS80. Match, set and win.