Word comes that Steve Jobs - Apple's famous former CEO and sitting chairmain of the board - has passed away. We've known that Steve has been ill for some time, culminating in his stepping down from Apple's CEO, but you never really know when to expect the worst. Not a single AnandTech editor went through their childhood without working with an Apple II at least once, and numerous other Apple devices years later; the story of the coming of age of the personal computer and the story of Steve Jobs are often one in the same.
R.I.P. Steve Jobs, 1955-2011
Source: Apple
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cactusdog - Thursday, October 6, 2011 - link
I'm trying to hold my tongue as people say Jobs invented everything from the user interface to the mouse and just about every part of a computer. None of which he invented.The only thing Jobs were genious at was marketing. How he convinced people to pay twice as much for the same thing you get on a PC i will never know. But then again he only convinced 10% of the computer market i guess.
I dont know how he has respect after catering for rich westerners at the expense of Chinese slave labour. MP3 players, Smart phones had already been invented, Jobs genious was convincing people that Apple was something special. He convinced a small religious cult-like army of people to defend Apple and criticise the PC, and he was genious at stealth marketing.
HE deserves some credit for fine tuning other people's technology and convincing a minority of rich western people it was new and they had to have it, but marketing was his best skill.
Ronakbhai - Thursday, October 6, 2011 - link
I never knew him and already I miss him. He was quite an inspiration.Dug - Thursday, October 6, 2011 - link
Before and after iphone/ipadhttp://www.redmondpie.com/tablets-and-smartphones-...
But he knew it wasn't just the device. And this is why other companies fail.
It wasn't just the ipod. It was also itunes.
It wasn't just the the iphone/ipad. It was the app store.
It wasn't just a nice design. It was the user interface.
So you can say he didn't invent the technology (which you can say for anything being sold right now), but he invented a complete package that worked. And he did it over and over again consitently. Even when top exec's laughed at him and his ideas, they are now eating their words.
This is a prime example of why other companies struggle, because they don't get it-
Nike CEO, Parker called Jobs, who he is friends with, to ask for some tips.
“Well, just one thing,” said Jobs. “Nike makes some of the best products in the world. Products that you lust after. But you also make a lot of crap. Just get rid of the crappy stuff and focus on the good stuff.”
“I expected a little laugh,” Parker said. “But there was a pause and no laugh at the end.”
Gansan - Friday, October 7, 2011 - link
It's very enlightening to read many of these comments. It illustrates why products like the Xoom, the Playbook, and the TouchPad are released with fanfare and then flame out. Clearly, the engineers who built them put a lot of effort into their work, and look at their creations and measure them against (in this case) the iPad and are confident what they built was competitive. Then the product is released and they are flabbergasted when sales are tepid. They are probably the people who look at Apple and say, "they didn't invent anything. Look at this iPad. It's off the shelf parts. Same stuff I used in my Xoom. But my design has 4G upgradeability and has better specs."The problem is that when you look at things through an engineer's lens, you are just not seeing the same thing as what the rest of the public sees. And what you are not seeing (or maybe it is more like dismissing as unimportant) is what makes the difference between an iPad and a Xoom.
sdffs - Sunday, October 9, 2011 - link
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montre à chacun comment devenir riche.
Allez voir ce qu'ils ont à dire.
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marraco - Thursday, October 13, 2011 - link
Is otrageous. So much attention to Jobs, and nothing to Dennis Ritchie death.Dennis Ritchie was creator of C programming language, and the UNIX OS.
He died at 8 of October of 2011. A real creator, not a marketing ploy, and he got not a single page from Anandtech. What a shame.
Ryan Smith and Anand: you should be ashamed.