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Posts Tagged ‘Steve Jobs’

Read the Revelations in Full: Book of Jobs Now Available [Steve Jobs]

24 Oct
Almost the entire book has leaked already, but now it's time to read the whole thing cover to cover. Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography is available starting today in hardback with ebooks available since late yesterday. Kindle price is a steep $21.14, with the hardcover version at $17.88 [Amazon via TUAW via Gizmodo UK] More »


 

Read the Revelations in Full: Book of Jobs Now Available [Steve Jobs]

24 Oct
Almost the entire book has leaked already, but now it's time to read the whole thing cover to cover. Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography is available starting today in hardback with ebooks available since late yesterday. Kindle price is a steep $21.14, with the hardcover version at $17.88 [Amazon via TUAW via Gizmodo UK] More »


 

#thankyousteve

07 Oct

thank you steve

Twitter engineer Miguel Rios pays tribute to the man, the legend. Zoomed out you see the portrait of Steve Jobs. Zoom in, and you see public tweets tagged with #thankyousteve sent out over a four and a half hour period on the evening of October 5. Tweets are ordered by number of retweets, left to right and top to bottom.

See the full-sized version here.

 
 

Steve Jobs

05 Oct

My iPhone slid out of my shirt pocket a few months ago and fell straight onto concrete. I was luckier than some: the only damage was a shattered back panel. I slapped a strip of black gaffers tape over it to keep it intact. I knew that I could take it to any Apple Store and have the back replaced for just $29, but I carried it around like that anyway.

I figured it was my punishment for not taking care of my toys.

I finally went into a Store today to get it fixed.

I went to Apple.com and was able to reserve a time for my visit. When I arrived, I was greeted at the entrance. The place was packed, even though it was the middle of a random Wednesday afternoon. People were playing with every demo unit on display.

For all of the crowding, this mall Apple Store was still a pleasant place to be. It was clean and well-lit, and the staff were all clean, kind, and patient.

I made my way to the Genius Bar at the back. I was greeted a second time by an employee whose job it was simply to act as a welcomer and a concierge and a facilitator. He invited me to take a seat while I waited for my appointment. I was early.

I sat in a large area reserved for one-on-one training. A dozen or more people were learning how to use their Apple hardware. Some, I reckoned, were doing things with computers that they’ve never done before.

Me, I took out my iPad and was on the store’s open WiFi in an instant.

Five minutes before my scheduled time, a Genius walked up to where I was sitting. It was a simple problem and he explained that they could fix it up in just ten or fifteen minutes. He tapped away at an iPhone that had been equipped as a logging system for work orders and then walked away with my phone.

I looked around. I saw a man carrying in an iMac wrapped in a towel, the way you’d carry a sick and beloved dog into the vet.

I saw a child who couldn’t have been more than four years old playing with an iMac that had been set up at a table low enough for four-year-old children to set at. She was playing a word game of some sort. Presently, a parent came by and handed the girl what I presumed to be the child’s own white iPad 2. I sure didn’t think that this 30-ish woman had put Dora stickers on her own iPad.

The child stopped just short of hugging the iPad like a beloved doll, but she was clearly very pleased to have it back again. She held it and woke it up and tapped through to her favorite apps. Satisfied — and at the urging of her mother — she then tucked it under her arm in a maternal way and held her mother’s hand as they walked out.

I spied another store employee with a full-sleeve tattoo in progress. Her forearm was complete but a koi that splashed down from her elbow had only been outlined. The traditional staff uniform is a tee shirt (in the color du jour). Staffers are welcome to throw something on underneath it. She obviously felt comfortable enough in this environment to show off her tattoos.

Another Apple employee approached me, with my repaired phone. I hadn’t budged from that table since I walked in and sat down. $29 plus tax for the repair. His iPhone card scanner didn’t work for some reason but he didn’t let his annoyance show. After two swipes, he apologized sheepishly and led me to the store’s POS terminal. Zip, tap, a few pleasantries, and it was all taken care of.

Let me extract elements from that story:

1) Staff acknowledging people as human beings, and with courtesy.

2) A pleasant, beautiful space to be in, even if the store wasn’t a “landmark” property.

3) People learning things.

4) People who don’t simply own and tolerate their computers, but who feel a real emotional connection to them.

5) People who live lives that are a bit out of the mainstream, in a space where they feel comfortable being who they are.

6) Kids who see the most advanced technology in the world as just another window through which they perceive the world.

7) The worst thing that can happen in a relationship between a manufacturer and a customer — a broken product — being handled quickly, courteously, efficiently…and affordably.

Steve Jobs was correctly known as the most productively hands-on CEO in technology or maybe even any other industry. The Apple Stores were a particular obsession. If you walked in and discovered that the table of hard drives had become a table of headphones and the hard drives were now on the third shelf of the first bank of product shelves, it was probably because of something Steve decided earlier in the week.

Steve is dead. But you walk into an Apple Store and you see all the reasons why he was such a phenomenal CEO, and why so many people feel the way I do tonight.

 
 

Screenshot of Steve Jobs’s Calendar

29 Aug

 
 

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the…

17 Aug


Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.

- Steve Jobs

 
 

35 Years & $317 Billion Later, Apple Intends To Dominate a Post-PC World

01 Apr


On April 1, 1976, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne established a small company to sell personal computer kits hand-built by Wozniak. That company, as you probably know, was Apple Computer.

Thirty-five years later, Apple is now the most valuable technology company in the world. Its market capitalization exceeds $317 billion, trumping longtime rival Microsoft by more than $100 billion. And Apple’s iconic products sit on the desks and in the pockets of millions of people across the world.

Most people know bits and pieces of the Apple story, but the company has a complicated history. Some of us may not know, for example, that Apple had a third co-founder, Ronald Wayne, who got cold feet and sold his 10% stake in Apple less than two weeks later. Everybody knows Steve Jobs, but they may not know Mike Markkula, one of Apple’s first angel investors and the company’s second CEO.

In the 35 years of Apple’s existence, the company has gone through hell and back. The launch of the Macintosh in 1984 and the coinciding “1984″ Super Bowl commercial remain symbols one of Apple’s highest points, but only a year later, then-CEO John Sculley forced Steve Jobs out of the company. A decade later, in 1996, the company was on the brink of destruction when it acquired NeXT and brought Steve Jobs back. In 1997, Microsoft invested $150 million in Apple to keep it afloat (something it probably now regrets), and soon after came Apple’s golden years with the iPod, iMac, MacBook, iPhone and now the iPad.

We don’t necessarily want to dwell on Apple’s past; you can visit Wikipedia if you want a lesson in Apple Inc.’s history. Instead, let’s focus on what Apple might do in the next 35 years.


What’s In Store For The Next 35 Years?


For the last 35 years, Apple has almost always been the underdog. While it languished, Microsoft flourished. In fact, Apple surpassed Microsoft in market cap for the first time last May.

For the next few decades, however, the technology titan will be incumbent. Apple has a giant target on its back, and it’s not just Microsoft taking aim. Apple also faces challenges from Google, Amazon and a plethora of mobile device manufacturers. While Apple is handily beating its competition today, the status quo could change at any moment.

And while Apple fends off Android, PCs and competing tablets, it has its eye on creating a post-PC world. Rather than compete on hardware specs, it competes on design and user experience. Its a world of mobile devices that Apple intends to dominate for decades to come.

Leading the charge is Steve Jobs, not only the company’s CEO but also its heart and soul. While he’s currently on medical leave, he did show up for the unveiling of the iPad 2, demonstrating things aren’t as dire as previously rumored.

Still, Apple will some day have to continue its quest to redefine technology without its iconic leader, and many question whether anybody can provide the design and product vision Jobs has imparted on the company he founded 35 years ago.

Even if you aren’t a fan of Apple products, it’s tough not to be impressed with what Apple has been able to accomplish since 1976. We wonder what products it will create and challenges it will face in the next 35 years. Right now though, the sun is definitely shining down on Cupertino.

More About: iMac, ipad, iPad 2, iphone, iphone 3g, iphone 3Gs, iphone 4, ipod, mac, macbook, Macbook Pro, macintosh, steve jobs, steve wozniak

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No One Needs Permission to Be Awesome

17 Jan

Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address

No one wants to die, even people who want to go to Heaven don't want to die to get there.

And yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it.

And that is as it should be. Because death is very likely the single best invention of life.

It's life's change agent; it clears out the old to make way for the new.

[…]

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

None of us should ever have to face death to accept the inflexible and, too-often, novel sense of scarcity that it introduces.

In fact, it'd be great if we could each skip needing outside permission to be awesome by not waiting until the universe starts tapping its watch.

A simple start would involve each of us learning to care just a little more about a handful of things that simply aren't allowed to leave with us--whether today, tomorrow, or whenever. Because, I really believe a lot of nice things would start to happen if we also stopped waiting to care. A whole lot of nice things.

If that sounds like fancy incense for hippies and children, perhaps in a way that seems frankly un-doable for someone as practical and important and immortal as yourself, then go face death.

Go get cancer. Or, go get crushed by a horse Or, go get hit by a van. Or, go get separated from everything you ever loved forever.

Then, wonder no longer whether caring about the modest bit of time you have here is only for fancy people and the terminally-ill.

Because, the sooner you care, the better you'll make. The better you'll do. And the better you'll live.

Please don't wait. The universe won't.

43 Folders icon ”No One Needs Permission to Be Awesome” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on January 17, 2011. Except as noted, it's ©2010 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

 
 

The Unprecedented Rise of Apple iOS and Other Internet Trends [STATS]

16 Nov


Legendary Internet analyst Mary Meeker has some statistics she thinks every Internet executive should know, including that iOS is growing faster than almost any other Internet technology in history.

At the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, the Morgan Stanley analyst led a rapid-pace presentation on the state of the Internet industry, revealing the state of mobile (Apple and Google are winning), the most under-monetized asset in online advertising (Facebook) and even the secret sauce of Steve Jobs (he has the mind of an engineer and the heart of an artist).

Some of Meeker’s eye-popping stats:

  • 46% of Internet users live in five countries: the USA, Russia, Brazil, China and India.
  • There are 670 million 3G subscribers worldwide, 136.6 million in the U.S. and 106.3 million in Japan.
  • iOS devices reached 120 million subscribers in 13 quarters, far faster than Netscape, AOL or NTT docomo’s growth rates.
  • Nokia and Symbian used to own 62% of the smartphone market (units shipped). Now it’s only 37%, mostly due to Android and iOS.
  • The average CPM for social networking sites is at only $0.55. Meeker thinks this will increase and normalize in the next few years. She also believes that inventory on Facebook is one of the most under-monetized assets on the web.
  • It took e-commerce 15 years to get to 5% of retail. Morgan Stanley predicts mobile should get to that same level in five years.
  • Streaming video is up to 37% of of Internet traffic during traditional “TV hours.” Netflix is the biggest contributor to this, followed by YouTube.
  • Seven of the companies that were in the top 15 publicly traded Internet companies in 2004 are not in that list in 2010.
  • Interest payments and entitlement spending is projected to exceed government revenue by 2025. In other words, the U.S. government is facing a real financial crisis soon.

We’ve included Mary Meeker’s full presentation below. Let us know what you think of her statistics and trends in the comments.


Reviews: Android, Facebook, Google, Internet, YouTube

More About: apple, internet, Internet trends, iOS, Mary Meeker, Morgan Stanley, statistics, stats, steve jobs, W2S2010, Web 2.0 Summit

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Does Apple want to buy Facebook?

19 Oct


Peter Kafka at All Things Digital thinks that Steve Jobs might want to buy Facebook. His reasoning is that Jobs, when asked what Apple plans to do with its now $51 billion in cash, said, "We firmly believe that one or more unique strategic opportunities will present itself to us, and we'll be in a position to take advantage of it." Kafka believes that one such "unique strategic" opportunity is called Facebook.

Jobs and Facebook founder/CEO Mark Zuckerberg met for dinner the other day. Many presumed that they were discussing Facebook Connect and Ping integration, but what if it were something more, like Apple buying Facebook? Kafka thinks that Apple acquiring Facebook makes sense because Facebook doesn't compete with Apple in any significant way, and Facebook is something that Apple couldn't compete against even if it wanted to. Plus, Facebook is already competing with Google, "which has to make Jobs like it even more," Kafka argues.

What would Apple buying Facebook lead to? Every Facebook user would probably automatically have an iTunes Store account. FaceTime chat could be integrated into Facebook chat, potentially leading to increased sales of iOS devices. If Apple continues down the road of using not only phone numbers, but email addresses and eventually Facebook IDs as designated FaceTime "phone numbers," then 500 million users would already have a FaceTime ID to use when all telephony goes VoIP.

Apple has the cash to buy Facebook outright (Facebook is valued at around US $25-35 billion), but will they? Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg seem to share a lot of traits (not to mention both having had movies made about them), but could two of the most powerful people in tech -- with equally powerful egos -- work together?

Does Apple want to buy Facebook? originally appeared on TUAW on Tue, 19 Oct 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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