Posts filed under 'Steve Jobs news'

Steve Jobs Winter Break news

Hi all!

I hope you’re enjoying your Christmas holidays, if any.

Steve Jobs news have been kind of slow lately, but here’s a wrap-up of the most important/fun items I’ve read in the past… well, month. Some are a little old but still noteworthy if you haven’t come across them earlier.

1. Steve Jobs news :

Steve is praised so much it’s not fun anymore.

• Dec. 8: MarketWatch names him CEO of the Decade 2000-2010
• Dec. 20: Chief Executive magazine and Applied Finance Group rank him “#4 wealth creator of the year” (source)
• Dec. 23: The Financial Times names him Person of the Year 2010 (source)
• Dec. 23, again: President Obama mentions Steve Jobs in a news conference (gee) :

Something that’s always been the greatest strength of America is a thriving, booming middle class, where everybody has got a shot at the American Dream. And that should be our goal. That should be what we’re focused on. How are we creating opportunity for everybody? So that we celebrate wealth. We celebrate somebody like a Steve Jobs, who has created two or three different revolutionary products. We expect that person to be rich, and that’s a good thing. We want that incentive. That’s part of the free market.

The whole “CEO of the decade” frenzy can only make me smile. Indeed, in 1989, Steve was named “Entrepreneur of the decade 1980-1989” by Inc. (cover above). The interview he gave at that occasion is a delight to read, if you haven’t already. But it’s funny that at the time, Steve was struggling with NeXT, although the journalist didn’t suspect it. I hope this MarketWatch ‘award’ will not bring him similar bad luck for the next decade.

2. Steve Jobs history

After the interview that John Sculley gave to Cult of Mac last month, 37signals published a story on Edwin Land, founder/inventor of Polaroid and one of Steve Jobs’ few alleged inspirers. I don’t think it’s *that* interesting — but the most interesting part is in the comments section. As you can see here Tom Hughes, who worked in the Mac team, tells the real story:

Interesting article, but all serendipity for Sculley who was just along for the ride. He just happened to luck out. And, there was no pilgrimage… no planned meeting with Dr. Land. I was working for Steve as Design Director for the Macintosh project and we were in Boston and I asked Steve if he’d like to meet Dr. Land, whom I had worked with before Apple. I called Dr. Land and he agreed to meet Steve. We arrived to find a BBC documentary film crew there. Dr. Land excused them and we began a 3 hour visit which included a glimpse into color experiments that were in his lab, to his personal office and an amazing review of some of his personal collection of photographs. The memorable part of this was that Steve was meeting someone who legitimately could be, almost uniquely, a mentor for him. And, clearly, they shared an awareness of the importance of good design as it contributed not only to their products, but to their corporate culture as well.

Kinda makes you wonder about the validity of the rest of the Sculley interview. Not that big of a surprise, since Sculley’s book, Odyssey is said to be a ridiculous self-appraisal by the former Apple CEO, with a very liberal definition of history and facts.

3. Steve Jobs trivia

As usual, it’s the majority of stuff.

• Latest Stevemail (on MobileMe):
• Steve Jobs depicted as Big Brother in a 1984 parody by an anti-gay activist group
• Steve Jobs in a BBC Comedy video with his music heroes, the Beatles
• a new iPhone game made it to the App Store while obviously a parody of the iCEO: Ninja Steve. I’ve tried it, and though it’s a little rough, I’m confident in saying it’s a must-have for any die-hard Steve Jobs fan (and less expensive than the famous forbidden doll)

Apple campus 2.0

Finally! We’re finally hearing some news on Apple’s new campus in Cupertino.

As a reminder, news on a new campus date back to 2006, when Steve himself went to the Cupertino City Council to announce the company’s plan to expand, after its purchase of land next to the HP campus. The video can still be watched on YouTube. As you can see, Steve speaks of a “3 to 4 years” period to get it built.

We’ve been waiting for that new campus ever since. People from the area have reported that Apple people have moved into these former HP buildings, without any architectural modifications. To tell the truth I was afraid that, busy with Apple products, Steve would delay the plans for a decade or so —  until his retirement or something.

That long delay makes more sense now that we’ve learned that just last week, Apple purchased another huge chunk of land from HP, right next to the properties it bought four years ago. The map below is impressive:

If you’ve ever been to the current Apple campus, you’ll realize that this is a HUGE expansion. As if I wasn’t excited enough, a Spanish newspaper has reported rumors that Steve Jobs has designated world-famed architect Norman Foster to build this new ‘City of Apple’. Quote from Philip Elmer-DeWitt’s column:

Jobs is paying extraordinary attention to environmental issues as he designs the future headquarters of his company, the paper has been told. The buildings that will house engineers and the R & D department will “incorporate cutting-edge technology in materials and equipment as well as renewable energy resources,” according to El Economista. All transportation between the buildings will take place through a network of tunnels, keeping surface areas green.

Can you imagine such a place? Steve Jobs moving in underground top-secret tunnels with prototypes of Apple products, underneath a green-clean-futuristic campus? I bet the windows of his iOffice won’t be see-through. This reminds me of old fantasies such as this picture from a 2008 Apple commercial you will most likely recognize:

Steve’s emails of the week

The blog posts are getting shorter because I have a full-time job, and I am finishing up all about Steve Jobs.com super exciting new update. So here’s the lowdown on the new rush of emails from Steve Jobs this week:

Oct 22: on removing Java from the new Macbook Air

Mr. Jobs:

I am the CTO and founder of a Software company based in Philadelphia. We create and sell Enterprise software into the health care space.

Our software is Java based, and runs on both the server and the desktop. We have been in business for over 12 years now, and are a healthy growing company with about 180 employees.

I am a big Apple customer, as is my company. We love developing and testing Java based software on OS X.

Today in the news were stories like this: www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/21/apple_threat ens_to_kill_…
and here’s another example: news.cnet.com/8301-31021_3-20020338-260.html

I am hoping you would consider commenting either to me or via your PR channels what are the future plans for the Java programming language and platform on OS X?

One last note – a growing trend over the last few years at all the software conferences I attend is the popularity of the Macbook laptops. Go to any non-Microsoft focused developers conference and the rooms are typically dominated by Mac laptops. One major reason for this is that OS X is a great platform for Java developers.

thanks,
Scott Fraser
CTO, Portico Systems

Oct 23: on iPad’s side switch button

In IOS 4.2 for iPad is the switch on the side going to be the mute and not screen orientation lock from now on?

Yep.

Sent from my iPhone

Are you planning to make that a changeable option?

Nope.

(source)

About that “Back to the Mac” keynote

As I’ve stated before, this blog is not about the Mac, but solely about Steve Jobs. So I won’t go back on the details of the latest keynote’s announcements.

My only thoughts :

• The photos of both the keynote and the new MacBook Air will all be on the new version of all about Steve Jobs (going live any day now)
• Once again, Tim Cook has been given the “state of the Mac” part of the keynote, which used to be a Steve Jobs favorite. This is to me an indication that after Steve leaves, Tim Cook will probably handle the “business” part of Apple’s future keynotes (I guess the “new products” part will be divided between Phil Schiller and Scott Forstall… god I hope that day never happens)
• On that Mac OS X Lion UI: if Steve Jobs’ past is any indication, it’s very likely that the future OS will not look at all like what was presented today. The UI is always the lastest thing that Steve shows in a new OS – because it’s the easiest to copy, but I guess also because it’s his favorite part.
• Article on TUAW whose title I find funny: Can you trust a Steve Jobs email? “Nope.” because it’s true that Steve denied there would ever be a Mac AppStore a couple of months ago (although when you read it again, he denied there would be an exclusive Mac AppStore, so technically, he wasn’t lying……. yet nothing forced him to write back so it’s obvious he wanted to trump the rumor sites).

Obama meets Steve Jobs

Business Insider reports that President Obama met with Steve Jobs for a “one-to-one meeting” yesterday.

I don’t want to get politics into this blog, but I think it’s OK if I just bring back this old fave from Fake Steve’s golden days. Enjoy.

Apple 2010 conference call – the complete transcript

Macworld did a full transcript of Steve Jobs’ speech at Apple’s 2010 earnings conference.

Unfortunately I’m working so hard on the new website that I don’t have time to comment on it. But it’s worth reading, so go ahead, guys.

About that Bloomberg TV special

Here’s the full video of the Bloomberg TV special on Steve Jobs: Full video

While I was looking at the titles, I thought: OH SHIT! I know this stuff!!! I know what this is.

Indeed, in December 2009, I was contacted by a guy named Ruth O’Neill who said to me:

I’m a researcher on a new documentary series for Bloomberg Television. “GAMECHANGERS” (working title) is a half hour documentary program that explores the complex careers of the executives and thought leaders who have defined the world of technology, finance, politics and culture.

Well, I never thought it took so long to make a TV documentary. Almost a year! I thought the project had been abandoned. I helped Ruth on finding pictures of Steve and he said he loved the site (yes he did say it). How do you know it’s true? Well have a look at the yearbook photo used in the documentary. It’s got the exact same noise as the one on the website. It’s because i’s where it’s from! I know it because I scanned it myself from the book The Journey Is the Reward. That’s right, a picture I scanned from a book ended up on national television! 🙂

Seriously, I think the documentary picked the best people to talk about Steve Jobs, namely: Robert X Cringely (who did Triumph of the Nerds), Michael Moritz, Alan Deutschman (I love The Second Coming of Steve Jobs) and Leander Kahney (although he did make one mistake saying Steve was living in his Woodside mansion “developing the Mac” – he bought it in November 1984, 10 months after the Mac  was launched). These are exactly the same people I would have chosen, and their books are all well rated on all about Steve Jobs’ sources/bibliography page. I don’t know if this is related to Ruth, but since he repeatedly said he loved the site, I’d like to think it is.

D-7 before Steve takes the stage again

Can’t wait.

One-hour TV special about Steve on Bloomberg

I don’t live in the US and I don’t get Bloomberg, so I’m not overly concerned by this, but AppleInsider reports that Bloomberg will broadcast a one-hour TV special on Steve tomorrow.

Money quote:

In an email to AppleInsider, Bloomberg said the special will trace Jobs from his start-up years in the family garage to his recent transplant surgery and release of the revolutionary iPad, examining his early success and subsequent exile from Apple, his failure at NeXT, his redemption at Pixar and his triumphant return to the company he created.

I’m honestly curious how they’re gonna do that without the usual 20 seconds on NeXT (i.e. 12 years of Steve’s life). We’ll see… when it shows up on YouTube 🙂 I, for one, have always thought that Steve deserved at least a Hollywood trilogy, maybe even more.

Trailer here.

Steve emails on Meizu

Steve is back with an email to delight us all.

This one is about a Chinese consumer electronics brand, Meizu, which has specialized in making copycat replica of several Apple products. Their new M8 phone steals from the iPhone 4. On a forum dedicated to the Meizu company, reader Elliot from the UK explains the exchange he’s had with Apple’s CEO:

I have heard that you are taking action against the Chinese electronics manufacture Meizu and you have successfully managed to stop the manufacture of the Meizu M8. I would like to know why your company has decided to take action against Meizu when there are many phones out there which are designed to be clones of your iPhone. I am quite fond of the Meizu M8 and your iPhone, i own an M8 and an iPhone 3GS but i do not see many purposely placed similarities on the M8.

Steve’s supposed reply:

Sounds legit; that’s pure SJ style.