Actually it all came from SRI. But, really, who cares? Xerox/SRI, whoever had put literally dozens of units into people hands since they couldn’t create the software and/or vision to make the technology accessible to people who had not attended Stanford. It seems this one of the things that Jobs was very good at: he would push the simplicity angle, presumably to allow for larger market penetration (also, ease of use helps everyone, even people who went to Stanford).
The MP3 player was ‘established’ before the iPod … no, really it wasn’t. The difference in numbers of units sold before and after is astounding. Same can be said for tablets and smartphones.
Who knows if it was genius or luck. He seemed to have one overriding principle: simplicity/ease of use (and sexy packaging), that served him very well as computers moved from the realm of professionals to the mainstream. All that we can say is that his vision (in particular the iphone and the ipad) revolutionized how computing is used by the mass market.
I guess now we get to endure a few days of people explaining how Jobs really wasn’t “all that”, and telling us about how they plan to pile up/sell off Apple stock.
“Steve Jobs did this first!”.
“Steve Jobs did that best!”.
Those are fun statements to debate, but the one thing I know for certain: since I’ve started recommending Apple products to my friends and relatives, the amount of free tech support I’ve had to do has declined dramatically. And for that, Steve Jobs has my eternal gratitude.
What type of people you have on the top seems to define a company. If you have a designer, you can have a product-culture. If you have a generic bussines type, the company will try to mass produce something with mass appeal and cut cost. If you have a lawyer, will make so everything is registered, then will jump on other company releasing a product, and try to make money out of patents. If you have a engineer, you will have massive ugly machines with a lot of ram and bogomips that need to be oiled daily to continue working.
Most tecnical types don’t seems to understand the apple concept of product. Is sad. A apple product is not a lot of ram + a fast cpu with lots of mogomips. Is not a fashion product to sell to people with more money than sense. That most people don’t understand apple products is just tragic.
Is bloody obvious with tablets, but no one want to open his eyes.
You can have a big fat tablet, with much more memory than a iPad, and a lot more bogomips. It will still feel like shit compared to the iPad. Is not the hardware. Is not even the software. Is choosing how you want something to work, and building that. Most people build computers like how a worker stack metal in a scrap yard. So most computer and electronic machines are not really designed to feel in a particular way.
Then, to do that you have to take very hard and not obvious decisions. Or jump with only faith alone to defend your decision. You need a person with courage and determination (what we call vision). Jobs got enough of that for two big men, and more.
The next Apple boss will try to maximize profit by reducing costs and increase sales of existing products, as by designing new products with what people ask for on future quarters. Because thats what make sense and is what everyone do.
My older brother has gone entirely down the Apple rabbit hole. While “just replace it” is a tad harsh, the reality is that 100% of my tech support for him these days is “take it to the Apple store.” I could help him with his problem, but since there is a specific place that claims to have the knowledge and has proven decent at it, I direct him there. For my Windows PC owning family members, I don’t ever feel comfortable with saying “take it to the Geek Squad at Best Buy” because those guys are f-ing clueless.
Yea. And even if I “replaced” most of this PC today, I’d keep the case (with fans, etc.), PSU, two hard disks, a sound card and a wireless network card older than that. Heck, the sound card is from 1998…
Once a Windows OS gets a nasty spyware, is really hard and a waste of time to clean it.
It seems faster to ‘refresh the os’ reinstalling the base OS, and maybe some key apps like Office.
I find interesting that a iPod don’t need a close button for apps. And a iPod user don’t need the concept of closing a app, or closing the computer. You just use the machine. Maybe you want to read Reddit, theres a app for that. Press button, slide, and use.
I can’t even imagine what opinion will have my cousin (he is 3 years old) about pre-iPad computers. The idea to wait 24 seconds for applications to open. The idea of closing a app to open other, and all the baggage of “old” pc computing. Things like a iPad are like computers from the future.
What things like iPad has not manage to do well is productivity. Are nice things to consume video, music, webpages… but if you have to create something like a computer program, is a chore.
Having a ipad next to a pc with windows …with spyware and norton antivirus and microsoft office, is like having a electric car next to a steampowered car.
First, that only applies to desktops. If you’re a laptop user, how often do you re-use internal components?
Second, not everyone has the technical know-how to strip a PC of miscellaneous parts and only upgrade a few components (motherboard, RAM, CPU, GPU, etc.). I’ve been doing that for years, but I try to avoid providing that service for friends and family since it leads to a lifetime of free tech support. When my parents called me a few weeks ago asking for my advice about buying either an HP or Acer desktop, my suggestion was to spend a little bit more and buy a Mac instead.
Apple isn’t trying to win sales from geeks who like to build their own boxes and re-use the same NIC for decades; Apple is competing in the market of consumers who buy a new Dell every 3-5 years.
