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.”
This is of course a sad day and one that we’ve had in the back of our minds for years now. After founding Apple 35 years ago in his garage in Silicon Valley, and subsequently getting pushed out less than a decade later, Jobs was brought back in 1997 when Apple was on the brink of collapse. In the 14 years since his return, Apple has turned into the most valuable company in the world by market cap. To say he’s leaving the CEO position on top would be an understatement.
Since his third medical leave was taken in January it has seemed Jobs has been moving into a Chairman-type roll, still leading the Keynotes but giving everyone else a bigger role. As Chairman, Jobs will “continue to serve Apple with his unique insights, creativity and inspiration,” said Apple Board member Art Levinson. Tim Cook will take over as CEO as per the Apple succession plan. Jeff Williams will likely take over as COO.
To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community:
I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.
I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.
As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.
I believe Apple”s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.
I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.
Steve
From the newswires….
CUPERTINO, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Apple’s Board of Directors today announced that Steve Jobs has resigned as Chief Executive Officer, and the Board has named Tim Cook, previously Apple’s Chief Operating Officer, as the company’s new CEO. Jobs has been elected Chairman of the Board and Cook will join the Board, effective immediately.
“Steve’s extraordinary vision and leadership saved Apple and guided it to its position as the world’s most innovative and valuable technology company,” said Art Levinson, Chairman of Genentech, on behalf of Apple’s Board. “Steve has made countless contributions to Apple’s success, and he has attracted and inspired Apple’s immensely creative employees and world class executive team. In his new role as Chairman of the Board, Steve will continue to serve Apple with his unique insights, creativity and inspiration.”
“The Board has complete confidence that Tim is the right person to be our next CEO,” added Levinson. “Tim’s 13 years of service to Apple have been marked by outstanding performance, and he has demonstrated remarkable talent and sound judgment in everything he does.”
Jobs submitted his resignation to the Board today and strongly recommended that the Board implement its succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO.
As COO, Cook was previously responsible for all of the company’s worldwide sales and operations, including end-to-end management of Apple’s supply chain, sales activities, and service and support in all markets and countries. He also headed Apple’s Macintosh division and played a key role in the continued development of strategic reseller and supplier relationships, ensuring flexibility in response to an increasingly demanding marketplace.
Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced iPad 2 which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices. Expand Expanding Close
Hewlett-Packard engineers did dare pull unthinkable: They hacked iPad to install webOS only to find out Apple’s hardware runs their mobile operating system more than twice as fast compared to their own TouchPad hardware, a source “close to the subject”toldThe Next Web. The finding had devastating effects on the team’s morale:
The hardware reportedly stopped the team from innovating beyond certain points because it was slow and imposed constraints, which was highlighted when webOS was loaded on to Apple’s iPad device and found to run the platform significantly faster than the device for which it was originally developed.
It should be pointed out that webOS runs on Qualcomm ARM chips while iPad 2 runs on Samsung silicon. This little nugget is even more revealing:
With a focus on web technologies, webOS could be deployed in the iPad’s Mobile Safari browser as a web-app; this produced similar results, with it running many times faster in the browser than it did on the TouchPad.
In fact, the webOS team wanted HP’s TouchPad and Pre hardware “gone” even before the products hit the marketplace according to TNW. With a hardware refresh a year off and similar issues with the Pre phones, this could have contributed to the decision to shutter the webOS and perhaps license it out to other companies (with better hardware).
In a separate report, TNW details how the news was broken to the webOS group within HP.
Almost everyone at HP found out about the death of the TouchPad and Pre hardware as the public did, in the press release. Only the top executives knew anything about this decision and even senior staff as high as Ari Jaaksi, the Vice President of webOS software, didn’t know about the shuttering of hardware before it happened.
After the press release came out, there was a company wide meeting filled with a bunch of ‘corporate speak’, in which staff were told that they were going to be in limbo for 3-4 weeks.
Reutersreported this morning that top brass from China Mobile, the world’s largest carrier by both subscribers and market valuation, and Apple’s head honcho Steve Jobs met “several times on introducing an iPhone based on its network standard”. Did Jobs travel incognito or was he accompanying Apple’s operations wizard Tim Cook during his China tour (snapped paparazzi-style in the shot below)?
More likely, Jobs probably hosted China Mobile reps in Cupertino.
Interestingly, China Mobile counts a cool 7.44 million iPhone users on its network, although it doesn’t carry the handset yet and iPhone users cannot tap 3G speeds on their TD-SCDMA 3G network.
Apple’s been alleged previously as wanting to release an iPhone optimized for China Mobile’s fourth-generation TD-LTE network. The Wall Street Journalchimed in with sources saying the gadget maker and China Mobile are close to cutting a deal set to open up the carrier’s 600+ million subscribers to Apple’s phone. The highest-level meeting isn’t surprising considering that Apple is only “scratching surface” in China, having reported in the June quarter a sixfold growth in the country for a total of $3.8B in revenues from operations in the country.
The official Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson, which is now set for the November 21 release, has been available for pre-order on Amazon for a while and Apple’s iBooks store also had an entry and meta data in place, but without a price and sporting the old cover, depicted below. A tipster told us (thanks, Roshan Z.) that iTunes now lists the book for pre-order for $17 (or 13 quid, above), also featuring the new cover by Albert Watson and the official description from publisher Simon & Schuster, as evident in the updated iTunes listing on the web.
Interesting that Amazon has also updated the blurb, but they still show wrong publication date (the original release date of March 6, 2012) and incorrect tittle, “Steve Jobs: A Biography” as opposed to just “Steve Jobs” (the original, rather painful title, was “iSteve: The Book of Jobs”). The online retailer has a $19.50 price tag for the hardcover, which makes it a much better deal for those preferring a dead tree version – $2.50 more compared to the digital download over at the iBooks store. iTunes already has nine “reviews” from fans eagerly awaiting this high-profile release. Also find two screenshot for the iPhone below the fold.
Given that comforting sanity check, I measured the diameter of the Apple spaceship as 1615 ft, plus or minus a few ft., depending on where one places the ruler. That’s a radius of 807.5 ft.
The outside measurement on the plans is 760′ but the large outside shader structures could account for the additional size.
Interestingly, that is a bigger footprint than the world’s largest office building, the Pentagon, which at five stories tall, two basement levels and with a smaller courtyard, still has significantly more usable square footage.
Also (using our geometry skillz) plugging the 1615 ft diameter into a perfectly round circle, you get an outside circumference of just under a mile (5074 ft). That means taking some paperwork all the way to HR might be a lunch killer.
Update: Obama Pacman notes that Apple could install 3 full sized Football fields in the courtyard (below). Expand Expanding Close
Image courtesy of Simon & Schuster. Click for larger.
The official Steve Jobs biography, which is based on forty interviews and set for publication by Simon & Schuster November 21, sports the memorable front cover shot depicting Apple’s leader touching his guru-like beard, his eyes piercing intensely at the camera and eyebrows slightly lifted as if he is imagining Apple’s next big thing. That image, also found on Apple’s recently revamped PR website under the Apple Leadership section, is the Albert Watson portrait taken in 2009, author Walter Isaacson revealed in a private email exchange with Fortune’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt. The back cover?
The back is a Norman Seeff portrait of him in the lotus position holding the original Macintosh, which ran in Rolling Stone in January 1984. The title font is Helvetica. It will look as you see it, with no words on the back cover.
More important to Apple fans, the earlier than expected book launch – which had been originally pinpointed for March 6, 2012 – has nothing to do with the state of Steve Jobs’s health, Isaacson told Fortune’s Elmer-DeWitt. Apple’s boss has gone on an indefinite sick leave in January 2011, his third health-related leave of absence from the company he co-founded. Here’s from Isaacson:
It’s actually not related to any decline. I turned most of the book in this past June. It’s now all done and edited. The March 2012 date (or whatever date it was) was never a deeply-considered pubdate. Like the original cover design, it came about because the publisher wanted to put something in the database last spring.
This is obviously an important tidbit for Apple fans concerned about Steve’s well-being. Go past the fold for the publisher’s long description of the book. The book is available for Pre-Order at Amazon for $20.
According to Barnes and Noble’s website, the official Steve Jobs biography – titled Steve Jobs: A Biography – is becoming available on November 21, 2011. This is a big leap from the previously announced March 6, 2012 release date for the first Steve Jobs-approved biography. In addition, the book seller’s website has seemingly revealed the cover for the biography (shown above), and it is unsurprisingly simple. (via AllThingsD).
The book is also 448 pages long and is based on over 40 interviews with Steve Jobs in addition to interviews with his family and friends. Interestingly, although approved by Jobs, the Apple CEO had no control over the biography’s contents. The Apple CEO had this to say about the biography:
I’ve done a lot of things I’m not proud of, such as getting my girlfriend pregnant when I was 23 and the way I handled that, he said. But I don’t have any skeletons in my closet that can’t be allowed out.
In a series of PDFs released today (Intro, Site Plan/Landscaping, Floor Plans and Renderings), the City of Cupertino released detailed floor plans of Apple’s 20,000 plus person super-structure.
Jobs called the new building “a spaceship” and said Apple will use its experience in building retail store masterpieces to construct this “architectural landmark”. Parking underneath, the building would perhaps be used for events like the WWDC – Jobs mentioned that it would have a large auditorium and a single cafeteria [below] that could seat 3,000 at a time.
Cupertino’s Mayor went on record a few weeks later saying “there was no way they weren’t going to approve the deal”.
The massive building’s plans detail the main building and a mostly subterranean adjacent parking structure with Solar roof (below).
We’ve been hearing so much about the new iPhone 5 that it has all but drowned out any talk of the iPods, which are traditionally released at the September Apple event as well. There hasn’t been any definitive word, but I expect them to get an update as well before the holiday shopping season.
The new iPod touch will likely head in the same direction as the iPhone 5 – faster A5 processor and better backside camera (hopfully 3MP w/ autofocus?) etc. I don’t expect a lot of innovation on what is already a pretty incredible little device. Perhaps a $199 entry level price tag (a $30 drop – which we already see quite often) will be the marquee new spec.
The iPod classic wasn’t upgraded last year and wasn’t on the keynote slide (below) where Steve Jobs said “we’ve got All-new designs for every model” which kind of makes it feel dead to me.
There are a lot of people who think Apple is going to eventually move its “Mac” line to iOS. In fact we found it curious when Apple turned ‘MacOSX’ to ‘OSX’ as of Lion earlier this year.
Steve Jobs and Apple in general are very sensitive to CPU power issues with their push to make high end devices thinner.
As part of the WSJ article on Intel spending $300 million on developing MacBook Air alternatives (a hint in itself – why does Intel need to create competition for its own Air), it was revealed that Apple was threatening to leave Intel’s ‘low power’ processors if they didn’t drastically cut power.
Welch said Apple informed Intel that it better drastically slash its power consumption or would likely lose Apple’s business. “It was a real wake-up call to us,” he said.
What are the alternative processors for the MacBook Air? AMD? Not likely (though not impossible).
The big alternative is a platform switch to ARM which certainly schools the Atom Chip in terms of power consumption. It would also mess with a lot of non-App Store Apps built on legacy code.
But, you know Apple would love to create a cheaper, thinner, more power efficient iAir type of hybrid device that still operated like a laptop. In fact, Lion seems to already be heading in that direction.
Apple passed Exxon today to become the most valuable company on earth. The excitemnt only lasted a few hours until the market rally at the end of the day put Exxon back on top, however. But, that didn’t stop people wondering: What’s next for Apple?
Enter Robert Cyran, Columnist for Reuters, who doesn’t understand why Apple isn’t headed straight towards being the first $1Trillion company.
Apple’s sales have been surging 80 percent a year, and its profit faster. What’s more, it trades roughly in line with the growing stock market — and at less than half the price-to-earnings multiple it fetched in 2006, when revenue growth was much slower. Apple now trades at about 11 times estimated earnings for the fiscal year ending September 2012. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index is valued at about 10 times next year’s profit. But Apple’s sales growth is nearly 10 times faster than that of the average company. Apple also holds $76 billion of cash and investments.
So, what’s the deal? Apple, if put on the same P/E multiple it traded on in 2006, would be worth $900 billion.
We’ve received photos of a purported white iPod touch front panel. Specifically, this panel is the digitizer component, according to the iFixYouri iPhone repair shop. We obviously cannot confirm the legitimacy of these photos but according to iFixYouri, they fall in line with the fourth generation iPod touch’s build. Knowing this, these can either be photos of a scrapped white iPod touch 4 in white or (hopefully) photos of the fifth-generation iPod touch’s front panel in white.
Although we have been hearing some whispers of a new form-factor for the fifth-generation iPod touch, the previously accurate Ming-Chi Kuo has reported that the fifth-generation iPod touch will, in fact, come in white and will feature an overall design that is akin to that of the fourth-generation iPod touch. Additionally, iOS SDK data reveals that the iPod 4,2 (possibly the fifth-gen iPod touch) will be more about internal changes. On that note, we’ll likely see the dual-core A5 processor to move the iPod touch ahead in the growing mobile gaming industry, and maybe some better cameras. More info and a few more high-resolution pictures of the white panel are after the break…
Just hours before today’s earnings call, the well-connected Yukari Kane, Joann S. Lublin and Nick Wingfield of the WSJ report:
Since Steve Jobs went on medical leave this winter, some members of Apple Inc.’s board have discussed CEO succession with executive recruiters and at least one head of a high-profile technology company, according to people familiar with the matter.
The conversations weren’t explicitly aimed at recruiting a new chief executive and were more of an informal exploration of the company’s options, said these people. The directors don’t appear to have been acting on behalf of the full board, some of these people said. Apple has seven directors, including Mr. Jobs. It is also unclear whether Mr. Jobs was aware
Interestingly, the WSJ actually got a response from Jobs. “I think it’s hogwash.” he said.
According to the report, Board members have even held talks about the company’s leadership with some search firms after those recruiters informally approached them, said three of these people. (…or at least according to voicemails left on their machines?)
It would be shocking if Apple had to look outside its own walls for a successor, at least outside of interviewing for due diligence purposes. Full article available through Google Plus. Expand Expanding Close
According to his LinkedIn Profile, John Herbold has left the iCloud. On his departure, he said:
I’ve been fortunate enough to define, ship and market a variety of products for one of the world’s most admired product companies. That opportunity was a great privilege.
Now I get to take that experience and apply it to the enormous challenge of materially improving youth health.
He is the third prominent Apple employee to leave the company in recent months (though much less so than the others), following MacOSX head Bertrand Serlet a few months ago and Stores leader Ron Johnson last week.
He was at Apple during the MobileMe rollout and managed to stay almost until the iCloud announcement this month.
Steve Jobs’ favorite analytics company, Flurry, has some interesting numbers that put app usage above web usage.
Today, however, a new platform shift is taking place. In 2011, for the first time, smartphone and tablet shipments exceed those of desktop and notebook shipments (source: Mary Meeker, KPCB, see slide 7). This move means a new generation of consumers expects their smartphones and tablets to come with instant broadband connectively so they, too, can connect to the Internet.
Yeah but those devices have web browsers…
Our analysis shows that, for the first time ever, daily time spent in mobile apps surpasses desktop and mobile web consumption. This stat is even more remarkable if you consider that it took less than three years for native mobile apps to achieve this level of usage, driven primarily by the popularity of iOS and Android platforms. Let’s take a look at the numbers.
But what if one of those apps is a web browser like Opera? (via Business Insider.)
Our own Seth Weintraub is on hand at San Francisco’s Moscone West where Steve Jobs has taken the stage at 9am Pacific, ready to deliver a landmark presentation on the future of Apple’s operating system and cloud services. A press release issued last Tuesday has divided the agenda for the software-focused WWDC 2011 show between iOS 5, Mac OS X Lion and iCloud segments.
The statement also said “a team of Apple executives” would help Jobs deliver the keynote. We’re guessing Timothy Cook will join Apple’s CEO shortly to provide an update on business metrics and are keeping our fingers crossed for Scott Forstall and Phil Schiller to demo the new stuff in iOS 5 and Lion, respectively, with Jobs jumping in and out between segments… Expand Expanding Close
Amazon today lists the Walter Issacson authorized Biography of Steve Jobs, the one commissioned by the Apple CEO last year. Issacson will have had three years of access to the normally reclusive Steve Jobs. Listed at 448 pages, the book will be published by Simon & Schuster.
Product Description
From bestselling author Walter Isaacson comes the landmark biography of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. In iSteve: The Book of Jobs, Isaacson provides an extraordinary account of Jobs’ professional and personal life. Drawn from three years of exclusive and unprecedented interviews Isaacson has conducted with Jobs as well as extensive interviews with Jobs’ family members, key colleagues from Apple and its competitors, iSteve is the definitive portrait of the greatest innovator of his generation.
About the Author
Walter Isaacson, the CEO of the Aspen Institute, has been chairman of CNN and the managing editor of Time magazine. He is the author of Benjamin Franklin: An American Life and ofKissinger: A Biography, and the coauthor of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife and daughter.
Before you get too excited however, the book doesn’t ship for nine months (March 2012). But even so, it will likely be a big hit and as you know with iPads, it is good to get in early.
iOS software head and frequent Apple Keynote presenter Scott Forstall got his Twitter account verified in July of last year. That was right after the Apple-Ping-Facebook breakup (iOS Facebook integration was planned in late betas) and, with the benefit of hindsight, about the time Apple may have started getting the idea of Twitter integration.
He follows one account: Conan O’Brien’s, but has yet to send out his first tweet.
According to Business Insider, Apple COO Tim Cook told Goldman analyst Bill Shope, “he sees no reason why the tablet market shouldn’t eclipse the PC market over the next several years.”
That is right exactly in line with Steve Jobs comments of a year ago. Shocking, we know. Expand Expanding Close
More fun from the D9 event: Kara Swisher told Eric Schmidt that Steve Jobs told her “to do more privacy stories on Google” and that “Android is a probe in your pocket.” The conversation would have been off the record until now. More at 9to5Google.com Expand Expanding Close
According to ABCNews (via Fortune) Simon and Shuster will be publishing the Walter Isaacson Authorized Biography of Steve Jobs in early 2012. The title is a curious: iSteve: The Book of Jobs
The Jobs book was announced in February of last year but now it has a title and release date. Fortune has a great profile on Isaacson who has a long history of convincing notable people to tell them their story.
Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs has sent out an email to the company’s team in Japan to share the message of support and help local employees cope with a series of terrifying disasters that have brought the country to standstill. The Macotakara website first published (and MacRumors confirmed it) the contents of Jobs’ email, posted here in its entirety.
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To Our Team in Japan,
We have all been following the unfolding disaster in Japan. Our hearts go out to you and your families, as well as all of your countrymen who have been touched by this tragedy.
If you need time or resources to visit or care for your families, please see HR and we will help you. If you are aware of any supplies that are needed, please also tell HR and we will do what we can to arrange delivery.
Again, our hearts go out to you during this unimaginable crisis.
