Steve Jobs

The foundation of Apple

654 'Steve Jobs' stories February 2010 - January 2014

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.”

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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

Screen Shot 2014-01-23 at 12.59.44 PM

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

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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]

Camera patent granted to Apple reflects Steve Jobs’ promise to “reinvent iPhone photography”

Ben Lovejoy Nov 26 2013 - 5:51 am PT

16 Comments

The same photograph with the focus point changed retrospectively (lycro.com)

The same photograph with the focus point changed retrospectively (image: lytro.com)

A patent granted to Apple today for a Light Field camera – a camera with zero shutter delay and where the focus point can be changed after taking the photo – covers the precise technology Steve Jobs told biographer Walter Isaacson he wanted to use to “reinvent photography.”

He had three things that he wanted to reinvent: the television, textbooks and photography.

Jobs met with Lytro CEO Ren Ng in the summer of 2011, was shown a demo of the company’s Light Field camera and said that that he wanted the company to work with Apple …
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The $5k and Apple II donation from Steve Jobs that kickstarted sight restoration for 3.5M people

Ben Lovejoy Nov 20 2013 - 6:46 am PT

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The Apple II donated by Steve Jobs in use by the Seva Foundation sometime around 1980

A $5000 donation by Steve Jobs in the late 1970s was key to the successful creation of a charity which, 35 years later, has helped restore eye-sight to 3.5 million people in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Nepal, Tibet, India and other countries, reports the NY Times.

Jobs also donated to the Seva Foundation an Apple II computer in 1980, with a copy of the spreadsheet Visicalc and a 5MB drive which he said the charity would never be able to fill.

“You’ll never be able to use all the [capacity],” Dr. Brilliant recalled Mr. Jobs telling him. “It’s five megabytes!’”

The Apple II was returned to Steve’s widow Laurene Powell Jobs after spending 33 years in Katmandu, Nepal, by SEVA co-founder Dr Larry Brilliant, a long-time friend of the couple. Dr Brilliant said that the charity would never have existed without that initial $5k donation. Ms Powell Jobs said her husband has been proud to support the charity.

“Steve was always very clear about his role in the genesis of Seva and it was his privilege to help support the heroic on-the-ground work of the doctors and health professionals involved in this courageous effort,” Ms. Powell Jobs said in a statement. “It’s amazing Seva found the Apple II donated by Steve and our family is thrilled to have it returned.”

While Jobs was often criticised for a lack of visible philanthropy (though no-one knows how much he gave away privately), Dr Brilliant says he believed this was because Apple took 100 percent of his time and energy.

“I only know how to do one thing well,” Mr. Brilliant said Mr. Jobs told him. “I think I can help the world by doing this one thing.”

The full piece is worth a read.

Apple receives full set of building permits for its ‘spaceship’ campus today [Update: video added]

Ben Lovejoy Nov 20 2013 - 3:54 am PT

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View of the main campus from the on-site auditorium building

Apple will receive the full set of building permits for its ‘spaceship’ campus in Cupertino today, following a formal approval vote by the full council. This final vote was just a rubber-stamping exercise, with the go-ahead effectively granted a month ago.

We have a pretty detailed idea of what to expect, thanks to a detailed scale model, project video and series of renders made available by Apple as part of its planning application.

It’s taken the company some time and work to reach this point. The company initially faced objections from local residents on environmental and traffic grounds, prompting CFO Peter Oppenheimer to send out a brochure to local residents to alleviate concerns, and the project is reportedly $2B over-budget. But work can now begin, with completion expected in 2015 or 2016.

You can watch the video of the full council meeting below.

Apple book season: tidbits from Dogfight as unofficial Jony Ive biography goes on sale

Mark Gurman Nov 14 2013 - 11:03 am PT

4 Comments

For fans of books about Apple, this is a epic time. Earlier this week, Fred Vogelstein’s book Dogfight went on sale, and today, Leander Kahney’s The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products book about Apple Senior Vice President of Industrial Design Jony Ive went on sale.

Dogfight focuses on the emergence of both Apple and Google as the world’s two preeminent technology companies, and it details the competition of the two companies and the respective product development cycles of early iPhones and iPads and devices running Android. The book provides first-hand accounts of life working under Steve Jobs, and details the incredible run-up to the launch of the first iPhone in early 2007…

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Apple II DOS source code released by Computer History Museum

Jordan Kahn Nov 12 2013 - 2:18 pm PT

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With permission from Apple, The Computer History Museum and the Digibarn Computer Museum announced today it is publishing the original DOS source code for Apple’s 1978 Apple II. The Apple II was the first fully assembled computer with a monitor that Apple sold following the Apple I and originally retailed for $1298 for the base model with just 4K of memory.

A blog post from The History Computer Museum explains that Apple contracted Paul Laughton of Shepardson Microsystems to write the Disk Operating System for the Apple II in just seven weeks. In April of 78, Steve Jobs and Shepardson signed a contract (pictured below) that would see Apple pay $13,000 for a file manager, a BASIC interface, and utilities. The source code being released today is scans of original documents that Laughton kept over the last 30+ years:
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New book quotes Steve Jobs as calling Android founder Andy Rubin “big, arrogant f***”

David Beren Nov 12 2013 - 10:24 am PT

29 Comments

Steve Jobs isn’t exactly a man known for keeping his thoughts to himself which is why excerpts from the upcoming book Dogfight found by Business Insider documenting the Google-Apple smartphone war are grabbing attention. According to the book written by Fred Vogelstein, Google was already working on its first Android-powered smartphone when Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007 but had to stop in its tracks…

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Eddy Cue accepts award on behalf of Steve Jobs, with very personal speech [Video]

Ben Lovejoy Nov 12 2013 - 4:00 am PT

4 Comments

Apple senior VP Eddy Cue has tweeted a link to a video in which he accepted on behalf of Steve Jobs induction into the Bay Area Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame was created by the Bay Area Council to recognize prominent entrepreneurs in the San Francisco Bay area.

[tweet https://twitter.com/cue/status/400162837789540352 align=”center”]

The 14-minute video (below) contains some memorable Steve Jobs clips, a message from his friend and Intuit chairman/Apple Board memeber William Campbell – and an emotional speech by Eddy Cue, in which he talks of what Steve meant to him as both a friend and a colleague …
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New renders of Apple’s Spaceship HQ provide the most detailed view yet

Ben Lovejoy Nov 11 2013 - 6:40 am PT

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New renders released by the City of Cupertino from Apple’s planning documents provide the most detailed view yet of what life inside the company’s new spaceship headquarters will be like.

Illustrating everything from cafes to car-parks, the renders are intended to provide a feel for what the building will be like to work in, rather than just its appearance as a structure. They also include additional renders of the upper level of the 1,000-seat auditorium.

Full gallery below …

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Five year old genius proves wise beyond his years, disses free Sony tablet for iPad [Video] (Updated)

Zac Hall Nov 6 2013 - 7:15 am PT

16 Comments

[youtube http://youtu.be/XFxjy7f9RpY&start=300]

UPDATE: It looks like ABC removed the video from YouTube and Hulu. Maybe Sony wasn’t too pleased with the poor product placement?

UPDATE 2: There’s currently another version of the video below the fold.. for now.

UPDATE 3: Alas, ABC has made the clip public again, but notably without the ending. See the video in its entirety below.

Five year old genius Arden Hayes would make Steve Jobs proud.

Not only can he hold his own when discussing United States politics and world geography, but Hayes proved his Real Genius when offered a free Sony Xperia tablet during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live last night.

“Well you could just give it away because we’re just planning to get an iPad for Christmas.”
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Twelve South’s BookBook Travel Journal: a beautiful rich, leather case for your iPad, new or old

Zac Hall Nov 5 2013 - 9:25 am PT

6 Comments

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Just in time for those new iPad Airs and soon-to-ship Retina iPad minis, Twelve South has introduced an all-in-one travel case for stowing your tablet along with tons of compartments for organizing your headphones, cables, and other accessories.

Keeping with the theme of the popular BookBook lineup, the Travel Journal takes the appearance of a vintage novel, both a tasteful stylistic statement and a clever security benefit. Twelve South says the dimensions are similar to that of Walter Issacson’s Steve Jobs biography and accommodates all previous models of full-sized iPads as well.

If you don’t have an iPad or just prefer to carry other accessories like for your MacBook, the BookBook Travel Journal looks great for holding your MagSafe power adapter, Magic Mouse, or other laptop accessories as well.

I’ve used Twelve South’s BookBook case back in my iPhone 4 days and found the material and build quality to be top notch. These leather cases are quite durable and tend to look better with age. Availability details and more photos below.
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Apple’s first warehouse was Steve Jobs’ bedroom as seen in this rare 1976 image

Zac Hall Oct 16 2013 - 1:44 pm PT

5 Comments

A recent auction of an Apple 1 computer has allowed an image to surface of 50 cardboard boxes containing early Apple computers from 1976 in a rare photo believed to be taken by Steve Jobs himself, according to The Daily Mail. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, of course, built the first Apple computers together in Jobs’ parents home, and the photo depicts Jobs’ bedroom at the time. The company behind the iPhone and iPad has certainly come a long way.

Check below for a photo of exactly what was inside those boxes:

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Apple’s Cupertino ‘spaceship’ campus given go-ahead (final rubber-stamp vote in Nov)

Ben Lovejoy Oct 16 2013 - 4:03 am PT

1 Comment

Cupertino City Council last night voted unanimously to approve Apple’s planning application for the circular campus building first presented to council members by Steve Jobs in 2011, in what was to turn out to be his last public appearance before his death. It was Steve Jobs who nicknamed the building the ‘spaceship.’

Although the approval is still subject to a final vote on 15th November, the San Jose Mercury News reports that this is merely a formality.

Now that the project has been approved, the council by regulation must meet one more time on Nov. 15 for a final and largely perfunctory vote. The spaceship, for all practical purposes, has now been approved for liftoff.

You can view a gallery of photos of a detailed model below the fold …

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Original iPhone radio engineer details the heart (and Scotch) pounding moments that lead up to the Steve Jobs iPhone announcement

Zac Hall Oct 4 2013 - 9:45 am PT

3 Comments

Fred Vogelstein, author of Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution, has published a massive, detailed account of the atmosphere around Apple in the lead up to the historic announcement of the original iPhone in 2007. This particular profile, which is entitled “And Then Steve Said, ‘Let There Be an iPhone,'” appears in The New York Times Magazine and portrays the exceptional excitement and nervous energy that encompassed the people who worked tirelessly to deliver what we now love and know as the iPhone.

Vogelstein begins with describing how Andy Grignon, the senior engineer behind OS X’s Dashboard and iChat, felt terrified ahead of his boss Steve Jobs demoing the iPhone publicly to world, namely because Grignon was responsible for the iPhone’s radios and his work was facing the ultimate challenge of sink or swim in front of the entire world, and more particularly the press.

Grignon and some colleagues would spend the night at a nearby hotel, and around 10 a.m. the following day they — along with the rest of the world — would watch Jobs unveil the first iPhone.

But as Grignon drove north, he didn’t feel excited. He felt terrified. Most onstage product demonstrations in Silicon Valley are canned. The thinking goes, why let bad Internet or cellphone connections ruin an otherwise good presentation? But Jobs insisted on live presentations. It was one of the things that made them so captivating. Part of his legend was that noticeable product-demo glitches almost never happened. But for those in the background, like Grignon, few parts of the job caused more stress.

Much of the piece illustrates the colorful gems of reality for the team behind the iPhone:

By the end, Grignon wasn’t just relieved; he was drunk. He’d brought a flask of Scotch to calm his nerves. “And so there we were in the fifth row or something — engineers, managers, all of us — doing shots of Scotch after every segment of the demo. There were about five or six of us, and after each piece of the demo, the person who was responsible for that portion did a shot. When the finale came — and it worked along with everything before it, we all just drained the flask. It was the best demo any of us had ever seen. And the rest of the day turned out to be just a [expletive] for the entire iPhone team. We just spent the entire rest of the day drinking in the city. It was just a mess, but it was great.”

Read on for more entertaining anecdotes and tales of what happened behind-the-scenes (and in the fifth row, in this instance) that made Apple’s tremendous announcement possible (and endurable).
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