RIP Steve Jobs

[mooncliff]

Re: RIP Steve Jobs

I added further info to my post above.

Anyway, please, by all means, use whatever you want. To me, over the course of my life, the extra thousands I have spent on Apple stuff will make no difference. But the quality and quantity of what I know has just exploded. 20,000 science podcasts in my iTunes, and I listened to every one of them at least once. At double speed. I spent $200 dollars on the iPod I use all day when doing chores, so sometimes manage to squeeze in 20 hours of podcasts in one day at double speed. My friends are biochem, astronomy, physics profs. We talk about developments. I tell them things in their own field about which they were unaware and are interested in. I interview 17 year old college applicants, and their knowledge of current science is astonishing.

I don't know how old you are, but I am over 50, and college just sucked, as did grad school, because I couldnt find out what things meant on demand. The last 5 years have transformed my intellectual life. Perhaps because I went from programming on punchcards to an iPad, the advance seems beyond miraculous. Anyway, the target is to be at my intellectual peak at 70... and the clock is running...

[globaleconomicollaps]

Re: RIP Steve Jobs

Well, when Macs came out, I was told they were for stupid people. While the rest continued to use a C prompt for 10 years... until, Lo and behold! Windows has the same GUI interface.

What I mean is that even things depicted by the writers in 2001 and Star Trek are far clunkier than what you can get for a few hundred dollars from Apple. You don't think holding up an iPad with Star Walk is jawdropping? Everyone I have shown it to is speechless. People in restaurants have come over because they can't believe what it can do. Apple didn't make the app, but it set up apps. Star Walk was one of the things that saved me after the megaquake in March. It was overcast and I couldn't see the sky at 2:30 AM, but hold the iPad up to the sky, and I knew I was going in the right direction.

If you don't like Apple stuff, by all means, don't use it. I don't want to waste time arguing about it... back to BBC4 science podcasts for the last week.

By the way, I have had IBM/DOS/Windows whatever computers for the last 25 years, and I have had Apples for 25 years, and used them about equally. I also have multiple Android devices.

I looked up star walk just now. It looks like a nice piece of software. What is it exactly about apple products that makes this interesting or unique? It seems to me that this program could be made to run on any laptop, tablet or desktop machine made in the last 5 or 10 years. The interesting thing is that people will go out and pay money for this thing. Most people have been conditioned by corporate IT departments to not install software on their computers. On the whole this is a good thing. The chances of finding a piece of Mal-ware in a random search for an astronomy program are pretty high. Also, people have not become habituated to paying for software ( even a few bucks ) in the PC world. By locking down the Ipad so that only Steve Jobs approved software runs on it, a walled garden is created that comes close to guaranteeing that the machine is never going to misbehave. This is a kid friendly environment that denies the owner of the machine the ability to do things like look at the file system ( that C prompt ) or run programs that they write themselves. It's not for me, but I understand the appeal to others. I continue to cling to the irrational belief that people want and will seek out freedom on their devices. I have staked my career on it and on the whole the plan has worked out. Linux and other open source operating systems have completely displaced proprietary operating systems in large internet shops.

[FrankL]

Re: RIP Steve Jobs

I looked up star walk just now. It looks like a nice piece of software. What is it exactly about apple products that makes this interesting or unique? It seems to me that this program could be made to run on any laptop, tablet or desktop machine made in the last 5 or 10 years. The interesting thing is that people will go out and pay money for this thing. Most people have been conditioned by corporate IT departments to not install software on their computers. On the whole this is a good thing. The chances of finding a piece of Mal-ware in a random search for an astronomy program are pretty high. Also, people have not become habituated to paying for software ( even a few bucks ) in the PC world. By locking down the Ipad so that only Steve Jobs approved software runs on it, a walled garden is created that comes close to guaranteeing that the machine is never going to misbehave. This is a kid friendly environment that denies the owner of the machine the ability to do things like look at the file system ( that C prompt ) or run programs that they write themselves. It's not for me, but I understand the appeal to others. I continue to cling to the irrational belief that people want and will seek out freedom on their devices. I have staked my career on it and on the whole the plan has worked out. Linux and other open source operating systems have completely displaced proprietary operating systems in large internet shops.

Ah but most end-users don't want the freedom to do whatever they want (see the success of Apple)! They want a product that they can easily use, and which is well supported. In my opinion, Linux/OSS succeeds for a very different reason: sharing development costs with anyone that develops/maintains for it. Eventually most companies will switch to using OSS for this reason. For end-users, OSS is less usable than say OSX/Windows/etc. without having a service contract with a company like Red Hat if they don't have the time and skills to change the source code themselves to fix issues or add features.

[mesyn191]

Re: RIP Steve Jobs

Actually desktop Linux is quite good these days. Have a look at Ubuntu if you ever get the chance. If you've got a Intel hardware machine made in the last few years everything just works, no command line arguments or anything required. The GUI is solid, even beautiful if your GPU supports it. With WINE many Windows only programs work just fine, even Office. But then you can use free alternatives like LibreOffice or OpenOffice that work just as well for most things and can out put files in Office compatible formats. Firefox and Opera are great browsers and I'm pretty sure Firefox is bundled with it by default these days. The main problem with browsing on the internet with Linux wasn't the OS, it was the flash support really, which has gotten to be much much better these days.

Really for the stuff most people do (Office + youtubes + email + various internet + flash games) Ubuntu and a few other noob friendly Linux variants like Mint are perfectly fine. Where Linux still falls flat on its face is when playing recent games. Many older ones work with little or no tweaking through WINE but anything recent is still a mess to get working which is why Linux hasn't really taken off with the PC enthusiasts for desktops yet IMO.

[Mega]

Re: RIP Steve Jobs

Good guy/Bad Guy.............now Dead Guy
Question, does Apple have a future without him?
Mike

[Fiat Currency]

Re: RIP Steve Jobs

Well, when Macs came out, I was told they were for stupid people. While the rest continued to use a C prompt for 10 years... until, Lo and behold! Windows has the same GUI interface.

Please - let's not rewrite history. Xerox PARC - where some minor things like Laser printers, Ethernet, the Mouse (etc.) were invented - gets the GUI invention plaque.

In fact "Windows" was first running on an Alto there ... and Steve Jobs came to see it and he was "wowed". He was a smart businessman - and traded Apple shares for access to some of the GUI technology. You may also want to read up on MIT's X Windows (aka X11).

My condolences to Steve Jobs' family. There are many Apple products in my house - but I refuse to allow people to rewrite history.

[Sutter Cane]

Re: RIP Steve Jobs

$8bln of "personal fortune" could not do a thing to save him. His assets look with indifference at him now. It's time to pause and take a careful look at our lives before it's too late.

Thanks for this. I looked at Facebook last night and the number of posts about Jobs' death was overwhelming. This was how I wanted to respond to them.

Meanwhile, Fred Shuttlesworth also died yesterday, but it seems his death has been a tad overshadowed.

[shiny!]

Re: RIP Steve Jobs

Dean Reynolds Hole once said, "He who would have beautiful Roses in his garden must have beautiful Roses in his heart."

Steve Jobs loved roses, especially Old Garden Roses, which are especially dear to my heart. He had a seminal rose named Constance Spry planted along 100 yards of fence in front of Pixar Studios. It's probably the best display of this rose in the world:

constance-spry-roses-pixar.jpg

[c1ue]

Re: RIP Steve Jobs

Jobs' billions was able to buy him 4 or 5 years of life.

Most people with pancreatic cancer are dead in 6 months.

Jobs bought a liver for $10 million, and who knows how much more was spent in 'cheap at any price' health care beyond that.

As for Apple: they're toast. Not right away, the products which got them to this point aren't going to disappear overnight, just as the Mac's legacy didn't evaporate instantly.

The reality is that Apple doesn't do anything which would not in time have occurred anyway.

However, Apple under Jobs packaged its offering in a truly exceptional way - by literally forcing everyone and everything else out of anything except the (very well consumer focus grouped) areas which are approved.

I've seen no evidence that anyone else is able to maintain this strategic focus over an organization.

This was Jobs' great skill.

The big risk Apple is undertaking now is - as I've noted before - attempting to transition from essentially a system design house with a brand: think Cisco for high end consumer products, to an integrated device manufacturer with its own fabs, and silicon IP, and so on and so forth in the model of Samsung, the remaining Japanese IDMs like Fujitsu and Toshiba, and so forth.

This is a huge risk which is not understood well: the reason IDMs have largely disappeared unless there were clear national prerogatives (Siemens, IBM, and Samsung are all heavily tied into .gov) is because the capital costs are so gigantic.

Apple may seem to have a big cash hoard, but the cash demands of such an approach will seriously impact Apple's overall profitability.

Apple may be able to make this transition, but it has never occurred successfully before.

They're trying to turn into the Intel of consumer products, but without Intel's processor monopoly.

[lektrode]

Re: RIP Steve Jobs

You should take this post down.

why?
i meant no disrespect to mr jobs and dont believe that my post inferred any.
altho perhaps i should've added my condolences to those who've been emotionally affected by his passing (forgive my insensitivity, have had a number of people important to me checkout the past year, not the least was mom) - jobs/apple and their products have certainly been awe-inspiring in my book, altho perhaps priced a bit too high and somewhat needlessly fashionable/trendy to the point having an iphone/ipad whatevah has become a fashion statement and status symbol vs a utilitarian device that i consider these things to be - i will say that apple's machines are the 'cadillac' of personal computers, vs my HP being the 'buick' that i can afford

but as aaron mentioned, this IS an econ/investment-oriented news site and on monday when the biz headlines mentioned that AAPL market capitalization has put it just below the valuation of IBM and MSFT _combined_ ?
that was what triggered my response, as in "Wow! jobs checks out, now what happens?" as i typically will post a chart of the asset in question just for discussion sake - no offense intended to any of jobs' many admirers, apologies if so affected.

[Slimprofits]

Re: RIP Steve Jobs

[lektrode]

Re: RIP Steve Jobs

bd?
am surprised you'd be so.... so...
SHOCKINGLY insensitive....
ya can always count on Matt to leave no sacred cow untipped, eh?

[seanm123]

Re: RIP Steve Jobs

Matt's stuff is PG-13 compared to South Park.

http://www.southparkstudios.com/full...-humancentipad