In the last 12 hours I have been called by everyone from friends to MSNBC wondering what I thought of Steve Jobs’s resignation from Apple. I’ve read thousands of words that have been written about him, and realized that my thoughts are much shorter. This is what I would say to Steve:
Thanks for all of your hard work and products that have changed my life. Thanks for changing the world. Here’s to a long reign as Chairman of Apple’s board.
Cheers Steve.
Jim
Well put.
Ditto. Thanks Jim.
Seconded.
Well said Jim.
Many articles I’ve read regarding Jobs’s stepping down tickled me the wrong way.
I don’t worry about Apple one bit, it’s in good hands and I can easily ignore the idiots shouting “Apple is doomed”, but the tone of many reports I read, conveyed that Steve Jobs had just died, not stepped down from the CEO position at Apple.
Chairman Gruber got it right in saying that Jobs’s biggest accomplishment is today’s Apple, not a single product.
Thank you, Steve. Take good care of yourself.
Nice one Jim
Speaking good sense from behind the beard. . .again!
In comparison, I have a lot more words to share. I was pondering the timing, from a very broad scale. Steve Jobs and Apple are each described in many ways, but I want to single out two of them:
–Creation of extremely disruptive products
–Willingness to sacrifice their own successes to make way for the next disruptive product
But here is the thing: the disruption of the iPod, or the iPhone or iPad, those were stepping stones, and broadly were NOT disruptive in the seismic way that the original nub of the idea was disruptive. And that nub of that idea is, for lack of a less dumb term off the top of my head, Star Trek.
It’s a vision of a world where any data you need is available to you, anywhere. You don’t have to carry this data around with you, you just have to ask for it. Perhaps it’s from a computer console or a handheld device or a screen or whatever…the data is there. We find ourselves right on the cusp of that; iCloud was the last piece.
I don’t know if it’s legitimate to credit the full vision to Steve Jobs, but if he didn’t create it then he certainly *believed* in it, and executed on it. And that’s the true disruption: the realization of this vision where WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE MAINTENANCE OF THIS DATA. We just create it and consume it. I no longer have to worry that this song I bought is safe on my hard drive…it’ll be in the cloud and it’ll be there when I ask for it. I won’t even need to have it physically on my device when I need it.
I often wonder how early in the process this vision became the driving force for Apple’s innovations. But it’s easy to see how each new product wasn’t an end in and of itself but a stepping stone towards that vision:
–Around the turn of the century, Jobs announces Apple’s new product strategy of the “digital hub”: the computer at the center of this solar system of devices. That is the purest expression of this vision.
–The iPod gets us used to this idea of a small device carrying around a portion of your data. It’s on a spoke, the PC is at the hub.
–For several years the sophistication of these client devices increases, and new kinds of data are added to the scheme. Audio consumption, video consumption, communication, then general data consumption.
–In the meantime, the iTunes Store grows and grows into a data store of immense proportions, accumulating not only digital products to buy but lists of who should have access to what.
–With iPhone and iPod Touch, our tools for CREATING content with these perimeter devices get more sophisticated; more data flows *into* the hub than ever before.
–And now, iCloud. Steve Jobs said it himself: Apple is demoting the computer itself to be one of these devices, it’s no longer the hub.
The technology has evolved to the point where now, content is created anywhere on the rim — on your phone, on your connected camera, on your PC — and it’s instantly available to any other device on the rim. The management of your data is invisible…all you need worry about is the creation of content and/or the consumption of content.
We’ve got a long way to go to optimize the workings of it all. But the foundation is there.
How much of this was part of Steve Jobs’ vision? Was it a vision from 1997, or a vision from 1984, or one from 1976? Were these stepping stones — and they are stepping stones, and not even subtly — coincidentally bring us here? Or were they planned that way? Were they dictated by the vision, or just inspired by it? It would explain why Apple so consistently sacrifices its own products. Because the products are not the end, they never were…they were a means to arriving here.
All the rest of it: iOS vs. Android, Windows vs. Mac OS…that’s just noise. That’s competition to build the best devices on the rim. But the real disruption was the creation of the system itself, the grand vision.
(The real competition to that grand vision is, I think, Amazon, which has its own similar universe as well, only slightly overlapping with Apple’s. Only they started from the inside and worked outwards, while Apple started from the outside and worked inwards.)
Perhaps that’s why now, why he is stepping down: that iCloud was the last piece of the puzzle, his job is done, his vision is complete. Let others now carry on the work of optimization. The true disruption has been accomplished, and that will be Steve Jobs’ lasting place in history.
There is no backing to the claims that Jobs health has taken a turn for the worse or that he’s been weak and sickly the last few weeks blah blah.
But the man did have a very deadly form of cancer and a major organ transplant that has permanently altered his body’s functioning and overall health. You don’t ‘recover’ from these types of things. Life will always be one of being on an edge in terms of being more prone to exhaustion, hormone issues, weight issues etc.
So some time in the last year or so it came down to making a choice.
1. Give the reigns to the guy you had picked and trained and didn’t let you down the last two times you gave him the ship while you stay on as Chairman of the Board and a Consultant (a real one not this ‘honorary’ thing that Woz seems to be doing). You can follow your passion and yet avoid the 16 hour days and 7 days a week and perhaps live another decade or two
2. Keep going the way you are going and stress out your body and push it too far and be dead within 2 years.
Jobs picked #2 and I have no issue with that. Nor do I have any issues with Tim Cook being promoted to Captain of the Ship. The last 8 months have proven to me that he can more than handle the job. Heck I suspect that that was the real point of this last leave and Jobs really had no plans to ever return (not that he was going to say that before the proof of Cook’s abilities was in the Earnings Reports)
It’s “reins”, not “reigns.” Use a dictionary.
Though I’m as much a stickler for grammar as anyone, it serves no purpose but bullying to get all up in his grill for incidental misspellings. Use some tact.
Mind your own business. If anyone’s “bullying” it’s you.
Daniel, this did come-off as a little condescending.
Yeah, let’s have a panel discussion here. Since when is “Use a dictionary.” bad advice for someone who guesses or doesn’t know how to spell a word?
Bien dit !