Steve Jobs

667 'Steve Jobs' stories February 2010 - February 2014

The foundation of Apple

Steve Jobs was the co-founder and CEO of Apple. He also founded NeXT and was the majority shareholder of Pixar, both of which he was also CEO. Jobs is known as an icon of creativity and entrepreneurship. The prolific author Walter Isaacson released Jobs’ biography in October of 2011. Isaacson describes his major accomplishment as being a “creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.”

Jobs attended Reed College for a short period of time before dropping out in 1972. However, he continued to dabble with classes unofficially and came across a calligraphy course instructed by Robert Palladino. This course ended up being highly influential for Jobs as he attributed it to bringing multiple typefaces to the Mac.

Steve Jobs founded Apple with Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne in 1976. After a drawn out power struggle Jobs was pushed out of Apple in 1985. He then founded NeXT in 1985 and also funded the move of Lucasfilm’s Graphics Group to become its own corporation, which became Pixar in 1986. Just over a decade later in 1997, Jobs returned to Apple as they acquired NeXT. His return marked the beginning of a new era of success. He took over as CEO in July of 1997 and continued on until handing the position to Tim Cook on August 24, 2011 after increasing health problems. Jobs passed away on October 5, 2011.

Isaacson describes his major accomplishment as being a “creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.”

Ever wondered why your mouse pointer is angled, not straight?

Ben Lovejoy Feb 26 2014 - 3:49 am PT

7 Comments

Here’s the reason, courtesy of a concept drawing from Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, where the graphical user interface was invented, and where Steve Jobs was introduced to the concept that was to lead to the Macintosh. 8BitFuture writes:

When the graphical user interface was later developed by Xerox, however, the team found that the vertical pointer was almost impossible to see due to the low resolution displays in use at the time.

Rather than make the pointer larger, the decision was made to turn it 45 degrees, making it easy to see. Despite the high resolution displays we have today, the concept has managed to stick for 33 years.

Tim Cook’s youth in South Alabama profiled by local paper

Zac Hall Feb 24 2014 - 11:51 am PT

5 Comments

Tim Cook posing for the year book in 11th grade (via AL.com)

In what is a rather interesting profile published on AL.com, Michael Finch II has uncovered some fascinating details about Tim Cook’s early life growing up in Robertsdale, Alabama.

“When it comes to Tim Cook, Robertsdale wraps him in a protective hug and keeps strangers with their curious questions at arm’s length,” Finch writes noting that Cook flew back to his hometown last Christmas through the airport in Pensacola, Florida, about an hour southeast.

The profile goes on to describe the pride Robertsdale feels for Cook’s accomplishments now and what they saw in Cook during his youth
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Commemorative Steve Jobs postage stamp to be released in 2015

Mike Beasley Feb 20 2014 - 4:15 pm PT

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The Washington Post has uncovered a document (embedded below, via Engadget) that reveals the U.S. Postal Service plans to release a collectible postage stamp featuring Apple co-founder Steve Jobs in 2015. According to the document, the stamp is currently in the design phase.

Other individuals to appear on commemorative stamps in 2015 include musical legend Elvis Presley and former “Tonight Show” host Johnny Carson. You can find the full list below:

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The spaceship is on the way: aerial photo shows demolition work on Apple’s Campus 2 site

Ben Lovejoy Feb 20 2014 - 4:56 am PT

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Apple’s new ‘spaceship’ headquarters has been a long time in the coming, with Steve Jobs presenting the plans to the Cupertino city council back in 2011, but work has finally begun. KCBS eye-in-the-sky reporter Ron Cervi took the above Instagram photo, showing that demolition work on the site is now underway.

While we heard last month that the demolition phase was starting, this is the first visible evidence we’ve seen. Apple also recently constructed a full-size mockup of one small section of the building in order to test construction methods and enable the company to see how the concrete elements would look in real life …
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Apple M&A met with Tesla CEO Elon Musk last spring, to partner in battery ‘Gigafactory’?

Seth Weintraub Feb 16 2014 - 6:20 am PT

7 Comments

Those ongoing analyst predictions that Apple would buy Tesla may have been based on some sort of reality. According the the SF Chronicle, Adrian Perica, Apple’s head of mergers and acquisitions, met with Tesla CEO Elon Musk last spring.

A source tells The Chronicle that Perica met with Tesla CEO Elon Musk in Cupertino last spring around the same time analysts suggested Apple acquire the electric car giant…

Six months before Ahmad’s letter, Musk met with Perica and probably Cook at Apple headquarters, said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect business relationships. While a megadeal has yet to emerge (for all of its cash, Apple still plays hardball on valuation), such a high-level meeting between the two Silicon Valley giants involving their top dealmakers suggests Apple was very much interested in buying the electric car pioneer.

But it is unlikely that Apple wanted to buy the car company and even more unlikely that Musk would sell it. In response to the acquisition rumors at the time, he tweeted the following:

Forgot to say one thing at Tesla annual shareholders meeting: just as my money was the first in, it will be the last out.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 5, 2013

But it’s highly likely that Apple would want to buy into one of Tesla’s major upcoming projects.

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Analyst suggestion of converged iOS/OS X device flies in face of Apple statements

Ben Lovejoy Feb 12 2014 - 6:26 am PT

45 Comments

CNET reports that JP Morgan analyst Mark Moskowitz forecasts that Apple will release a converged iOS/OS X device he has dubbed the iAnywhere.

While not a new idea, our global tech research team believes Apple could be on the cusp of introducing a new category with iAnywhere, a converged MacOS-iOS operating system that allows an iPhone or iPad to dock into a specially configured display to run as a computer

This is a variation on earlier claims that a larger iPad – widely dubbed the iPad Pro – could also run both operating systems. I’ve written at length about this idea, so won’t rehearse the arguments again here, I shall simply counter with a few quotes from Apple …
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Original Lisa mouse used by Steve Jobs dug up from buried time capsule [Video]

Ben Lovejoy Feb 12 2014 - 4:49 am PT

10 Comments

A Lisa mouse used by Steve Jobs to give a presentation at the Aspen International Design Conference in 1983 and then buried in a time capsule has been dug up, reports CNET.

The capsule was originally due to be unearthed in 2000, but landscaping work meant that conference organisers lost track of its position and had to call in help from the National Geographic Channel show Diggers to locate it.

The capsule was retrieved back in September, but the video has just been made available.

Former WSJ Apple reporter has a dreary take on life at Apple after Steve Jobs in this excerpt

Seth Weintraub Feb 6 2014 - 9:33 am PT

26 Comments

Former WSJ Apple reporter/scoopster Yukari Iwatani Kane is coming out with a new book called Haunted Empire: Apple After Steve Jobs ($12.74 Amazon/$14.99 iBookstore).

We’re not sure how the book reads quite yet but this excerpt of her New Yorker piece via Fortune, doesn’t take on a very optimistic tone for the company where she once had some solid sources:

When Jobs was ousted in 1985, the impact of his absence on Apple’s business was not immediately obvious. After a slow start, Macintosh sales began rising. Two years after Jobs left, Apple’s annual sales had almost doubled compared to three years earlier, and its gross profit margin was an astonishing fifty-one per cent. Outside appearances suggested that Apple hadn’t missed a beat.

Inside Apple, employees knew differently. Something had changed. “I was let down when Steve left,” Steve Scheier, a marketing manager at Apple from 1982 to 1991, recalled. “The middle managers, the directors, and the vice presidents kept the spirit alive for a long time without his infusion, but eventually you start hiring people you shouldn’t hire. You start making mistakes you shouldn’t have made.” Scheier told me that he eventually grew tired and left. The company had “become more of a business and less of a crusade.”

So what about now? Apple’s supporters point to the company’s billions of dollars in quarterly profit and its tens of billions in revenue as proof that it continues to thrive. But Apple’s employees again know differently, despite the executive team’s best efforts to preserve Jobs’s legacy. People who shouldn’t be hired are being hired (like Apple’s former retail chief, John Browett, who tried to incorporate big-box-retailer sensibilities into Apple’s refined store experience). People who shouldn’t leave are leaving, or, in the case of the mobile-software executive Scott Forstall, being fired.

Mistakes, in turn, are being made: Apple Maps was a fiasco, and ads, like the company’s short-lived Genius ads and last summer’s self-absorbed manifesto ad, have been mediocre. Apple’s latest version of its mobile operating system, iOS 7, looks pretty but is full of bugs and flaws. As for innovation, the last time Apple created something that was truly great was the original iPad, when Jobs was still alive. Although the company’s C.E.O., Tim Cook, insists otherwise, Apple seems more eager to talk about the past than about the future. Even when it refers to the future, it is more intent on showing consumers how it hasn’t changed rather than how it is evolving. The thirtieth anniversary of the Macintosh—and the “1984” ad—is not just commemorative. It is a reminder of what Apple has stopped being.

It is tough to replace the legend, but hopefully this is just the pessimistic take. We’ll have more from Kane and the book as it becomes available. It debuts March 18th from HarperCollins.

Post-PC era in full swing, as Sony exits PC business and Apple leads in combined devices

Ben Lovejoy Feb 6 2014 - 4:58 am PT

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Sony has confirmed earlier rumors that it is exiting the PC business, selling both its computer division and the VAIO brand to a Japanese investment fund which plans to use the brand only within Japan, at least initially.

Once the coolest laptop brand around, VAIO notebooks were admired even by Steve Jobs for their slim form factors and sleek designs, and it was to Sony that Apple turned for help in designing its early PowerBook models. Sony, however, failed to maintain its design momentum, and found itself increasingly overtaken by smaller companies.

We described yesterday how Sony in 2001 turned down an offer from Steve Jobs to run Mac OS on Vaio laptops.

Sony is also restructuring its TV business, announcing that it will be focusing much more on high-end models. Sony is the current market leader in 4K TVs, a market Apple is expected to enter.

The news coincides with a report by Canalys that if you measure PC and tablet sales as a single category, considering both to amount to personal computers, then Apple is the leading computer manufacturer, with a 19.5 percent market share – more than HP and Dell combined.

Combining Macs and iPads, Apple sold just over 87 million personal computing devices last year (excluding iPhones).

The backstory: Sony’s 2001 offer from Steve Jobs to run Mac OS on Vaio laptops [Updated]

Ben Lovejoy Feb 5 2014 - 6:19 am PT

7 Comments

Update: the rumor was true, Sony confirmed that it is selling its PC business and the VAIO brand to Japan Industrial Partners, with the deal set to complete by the end of March.

Former Sony President Kunitake Ando says that Sony turned down an offer from Steve Jobs back in 2001 to allow it to run Mac OS on Vaio laptops, several years after the original Mac clone program ended in 1998.

Speaking to freelance writer Nobuyuki Hayashi, Ando described the moment Steve Jobs met senior Sony execs to make the offer.

Most of Sony’s executives spent their winter vacation in Hawaii and play golf after celebrating the new year. In one of those new year golf competitions back in 2001, ” Steve Jobs and another Apple executive were waiting for us at the end of golf course holding VAIO running Mac OS”

But there is an interesting Backstory told through Quora by the wife of an ex-Apple Engineer working on the Marklar project…
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Steve Jobs was almost Clippy and other things learned from prototype Twiggy Macs

Zac Hall Jan 31 2014 - 11:39 am PT

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Just months before the original Mac debuted 30 years ago, it was deeply troubled by an in-house 5.25″ flimsy floppy-disk drive it relied on called the Twiggy (you know, for it’s flimsiness). This was replaced by a more stable 3-inch Sony drive before shipping, but the Twiggy Macs had more than just a different drive.

Interestingly, the operating system featured a Steve Jobs rendtion of Microsoft’s dreaded, now retired Clippy assistant. The Ashton Kutcher resemblance has never been clearer… er… pixelated.

Check out the full article for other tidbits at Cult of Mac (via Daring Fireball).

Jobs biographer Isaacson back-pedals on innovation comments, says ‘execution is what really matters’, Apple is best

Ben Lovejoy Jan 31 2014 - 5:15 am PT

8 Comments

A couple of weeks after describing Google as more innovative than Apple, and suggesting that Tim Cook was vulnerable to a shareholder revolt if he didn’t quickly release disruptive new products, Steve Jobs’ biographer Walter Isaacson has downplayed his remarks in a round-table discussion on Bloomberg TV.

I think [Google is] very innovative. I was not trying to contrast it to Apple or something. I know, all the Apple fans got mad […]

The one thing I will say is innovation is great, but it ain’t everything. It’s not the holy grail. Execution is what really matters, and Apple is the best at execution …
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AAPL Investors won’t wait forever for new Apple product categories, warns analyst

Ben Lovejoy Jan 28 2014 - 7:27 am PT

58 Comments

While Tim Cook and the rest of the Apple board may be content for Apple to take its time in launching new product categories, investors may be less patient, warns BTIG analyst Walter Piecyk. He also argued that neither the Mac Pro nor a rumored larger-screen iPhone 6 would meet market expectations of innovation.

When we upgraded the stock in March, we assumed Apple could announce a new product that would generate $5 billion of revenue in Fiscal 2014. That new product never materialized. We can’t say we are not concerned. For example, when Apple announced the new Mac Pro at WWDC in June, Phil Schiller proudly boasted, “Can’t innovate, my ass”. If that is what the company considers to be innovative then there should be some concern for EPS growth.

In the investment note, Piecyk cautions that Tim Cook could face renewed investor scrutiny if he doesn’t deliver …
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Watch Steve Jobs compare the Mac to the invention of the telephone in this video not seen since 1984

Seth Weintraub Jan 26 2014 - 6:34 am PT

7 Comments

(Head to 37:40 in the video to see the telphone comparison)

Harry McCracken tracked down this video from the launch of the Macintosh that hasn’t been seen since 1984. It turns out there was a second ‘launch demo’ a week after the original launch at the shareholder meeting and the videographer forgot he had the video of that (woops!) in his garage. The audience this time wasn’t wasn’t Apple shareholders but actually members of the Boston Computer Society and the general public, which made for a different type of presentation. The quality and tone of the video is often much different than the one given a week earlier at the Flint Center on the De Anza College campus near Apple’s then HQ.

Over at YouTube, you can watch the Cupertino presentation, along with a sort of a rough draft held as part of an Apple sales meeting in Hawaii in the fall of 1983. As for the BCS version, all 90 minutes of it are there in the video at the top of this post, available for the first time in their entirety since they were shot on January 30, 1984.

The Cupertino and Boston demos may have been based in part on the same script, but the audience, atmosphere and bonus materials were different. In Cupertino, Jobs spoke before investors, towards the end of a meeting which also included dreary matters such as an analysis of Apple’s cash flow.

What’s particularly interesting to me and not part of any other videos I’ve seen was Jobs’ comparison of the Mac (and eventually by extension GUI interfaces) to the invention of the telephone. Fast forward the video above to about 37:40 to see it. As McCracken puts it, the Mac wasn’t necessarily competing with IBM machines but competing with no computer at all. This metaphor is striking in hindsight.

The video also has a Q&A with the original Mac team which is also pretty interesting if you are into that kind of thing.

McCracken has much more on the video here which is definitely worth a read.

The transcript of the Telephone/Telegraph bit pasted below:

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A nostalgic look back at the Mac launch, and early advertising [Videos]

Ben Lovejoy Jan 24 2014 - 5:08 am PT

2 Comments

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_d5R6Il0II]

Those of us old enough to have been around to witness the launch of the Mac can enjoy a good dose of nostalgia today, while those who weren’t can try to imagine just what the world was like before the Mac, thanks to two YouTube playlists.

EverySteveJobsVideo has put together a playlist of 18 Steve Jobs videos, from the launch of the Macintosh at the Apple shareholder event 30 years ago today, through internal videos, some early ads to a set of videos featuring not just the original “1984” ad, but alternative versions and the story of the making of the famous video.

EveryAppleAds (sic), meantime, has collected together the complete set of Get a Mac ads, with the hugely successful “Hello, I’m a Mac / And I’m a PC” format.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZSBWbnmGrE]

Sources say new Apple TV box likely coming soon, App/Game Store possible

Mark Gurman Jan 23 2014 - 10:05 am PT

24 Comments

We’ve learned that Apple is making progress on its development of a successor to the current Apple TV and that the device is well into testing. We are led to believe that the new device, which is said to be a set-top box rather than a full-fledged TV set, will likely be introduced in the first half of 2014. We understand that the product will include a revamped operating system that will be based on iOS. Of course, release timeframes with these type of products can quickly change due to the content partners that are involved in such products…

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Report suggests iPhone 6 could once again retain 8 MP camera, focus on improved optics

Zac Hall Jan 9 2014 - 7:53 am PT

55 Comments

When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone 4 in 2010, Apple began focusing heavily on the device’s camera as an area for continuous improvement and promotion. That device featured a 5 MP backside camera, and the next three models (iPhone 4s, iPhone 5, iPhone 5s) featured an 8 MP iSight camera with various improvements along the way.

That pixel count may not change according to a report from The China Post (via MacRumors) which cites financial group Nomura Securities and falling shares of Largen Precision Company.

According to Nomura Securities (野村證券), Largan’s recently lagging performance in the market is caused by rumors that Apple may adopt an 8 mega-pixel (MP) camera with improved optical image stabilization on its upcoming handset, instead of the 16 MP upgrade anticipated by industry observers.

While the report leaves room to speculate a minor bump in pixel count could see the light of day, it’s not too farfetched to believe Apple’s successor to the iPhone 5s could resist increasing pixel count in favor of further improving optical performance with low light and high dynamic range capturing…
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Opinion: Five years from now, will we have given up all control of our technology?

Ben Lovejoy Jan 9 2014 - 7:20 am PT

61 Comments

I know, it seems an odd question. But a few different things over the last couple of days got me thinking …

Years ago, before either Google or Apple ecosystems were really deserving of the term, I managed all my device synchronisation manually: I decided what content got synced on what devices. My music too: iTunes was allowed to play it, but not to manage it – I took care of the folder structures and meta-data myself. And the miscellaneous notes I kept were in a folder full of text files, the format deliberately chosen to be compatible with anything, not sitting inside Apple’s Notes app.

My view was that it should be me, not some piece of software or online service, that made the decisions about how things got done. Fast-forward to today, however, and things are quite different around here …
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Steve Jobs’ biographer Walter Isaacson crowdsources new book on digital innovators

Ben Lovejoy Dec 30 2013 - 4:53 am PT

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Anyone who has ever written anything on the Internet and read the comments it attracts will salute the bravery of Walter Isaacson, author of the highly-acclaimed biography Steve Jobs, who is inviting comments on drafts of his next book before it is even published.

The book, which Isaacson describes as “a multi-part history of innovators of the digital age”, is due to be published in around a year’s time, and Isaacson has so far put online drafts of two chapters on several blogging sites, including LiveJournal, Medium and Sribd.

Online collaboration is why the Internet was originally built, and I’m interested in any comments or corrections readers might want to make before I publish in a year.

It should be entertaining, not least because many of the people featured in the book are still living and able to comment on Isaacson’s telling of their stories. You can see an example of this here.

Via TechCrunch

Veteran Apple ad man Ken Segall praises holiday ad – says Apple still thinking differently

Ben Lovejoy Dec 23 2013 - 7:10 am PT

5 Comments

Ken Segall, the ad exec behind Apple’s Think Different campaign, and the man who put the i into iMac, has praised Apple’s new holiday ad, saying that it shows Apple is still thinking differently.

This ad is a holiday card from Cupertino. It lines up perfectly with the values Apple has communicated for years. It’s not about technology — it’s about quality of life.

The takeaway is much the same as one gets from the “Designed by Apple in California” ad, but I like it a hundred times more. In that previous effort, Apple simply told us why it is different. This new spot tells an interesting story and lets us draw that conclusion for ourselves. It’s a more artful, more memorable way to make the point.

Once again, Apple demonstrates it’s a different kind of technology company. Most talk about what goes into their phones — Apple shows what we can get out of them …
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Tears everywhere: Apple features its new holiday commercial on its homepage

Ben Lovejoy Dec 18 2013 - 5:21 am PT

3 Comments

Apple clearly loves its new holiday ad: it has now featured it on the Apple.com homepage, with links to both the ad and the ‘full home movie.’

The ad has been generally well-received, with most describing it as endearing – replacing Apple’s usual product-focused approach with story-telling based on how the phone might be used. Apple used a similar approach with a recent iPad Air commercial, shown below.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8Le9wvoY00]

Two of Apple’s most active Twitter users, CEO Tim Cook and SVP Marketing Phil Schiller have also tweeted out the YouTube link.

Happy Holidays to all of our amazing customers! http://t.co/eonnck8cDF

— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) December 18, 2013

https://twitter.com/pschiller/status/412798014835535872

It is clearly something Apple is proud of and maaaybe its ad of the year?

Adobe (ADBE) stock rockets after announcing on-target earnings and strong subscription growth

Ben Lovejoy Dec 13 2013 - 7:30 am PT

2 Comments

Adobe stock climbed 10 percent to just under $60 in opening trading after announcing Q4 earnings in line with expectations, and strong growth in subscriptions as the company transitions away from one-time purchase licences.

While year-on-year numbers were poor, revenue down almost 10 percent and earnings almost halved, Adobe has been at pains to point out this was expected as it shifted to subscription-based sales.

As Adobe customers migrate from a legacy Creative Suite perpetual licensing model to new Creative Cloud subscriptions, revenue is recognized over time as opposed to at the time of purchase.

See below for a cool infographic of Adobe by the numbers …
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BlackBerry implosion generating even bigger enterprise gains for iPad, says analyst

Ben Lovejoy Dec 3 2013 - 5:42 am PT

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Concerns about the future viability of Blackberry – once the default choice of mobile device for the enterprise market – have further boosted iPad penetration in businesses, according to an analyst quoted by AllThingsD.

Wedge Partners analyst Brian Blair theorizes that BlackBerry’s ill-starred attempt to sell itself inflamed concerns about the future viability of the company’s platform and gave corporations good reason to migrate their employees to other devices. That opened up a significant opportunity for Apple — particularly since Android continues to struggle for gains in enterprise […]

Said Blair, “Our recent work points to tremendous momentum for iPad in the enterprise over the last few months and we believe that this may be one of the most important trends for Apple as we move into the New Year.”

Steve Jobs said shortly after the launch of the iPad that Apple didn’t need to market the device to businesses as “it’s being grabbed out of our hands, anyways” …
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‘Jobs’ the movie is now available to rent or buy in iTunes, other venues

Sarah Guarino Nov 26 2013 - 4:32 pm PT

2 Comments

Jobs came into theaters on August 16th of this year. The film received mixed reviews, where some thought the film was intriguing but slightly over exaggerated, whereas others criticized the film as being inaccurate. It was better than iSteve.

For those that missed Jobs in the theaters it is available today in iTunes and on DVD. Through iTunes, Jobs is available to purchase for $19.99 in high definition or for $14.99 in standard definition, or it is available to rent for $4.99 in high definition or $3.99 in standard definition. For those who want it on DVD, Jobs is available for $22.99 and comes in Blu-ray, DVD and Digital HD with UltraViolet. This version also contains deleted scenes, feature commentary with Director Joshua Michael Stern and the legacy of Steve Jobs.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKZfFpCKJLM&w=640&h=360]