Steve Jobs - page 27

Apple has posted Steve Jobs’ resignation letter (and no, apparently there’s not an app for that). Like you’d expect, it’s short and sweet. Full text below.

Surprising news today from Cupertino that Steve Jobs resigned as CEO of Apple, Inc. Jobs has stepped down and the board is naming Tim Cook as his replacement. The company said, “Steve extraordinary vision and leadership saved Apple and guided it to its position as the world’s most innovative and valuable technology company, ” and Jobs stated:

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

Steve Jobs will remain as the Chairman on Apple’s board. Check out the complete press release after the break.

A 9-year-old girl with sight problems has swapped out magnifying glasses and other clunky equipment for  an iPad.

Holly Bligh, of Melbourne Australia, has albinism, which affects her vision. To read, teachers had to make photocopies with enlarged text for her or she had to use a magnifying glass or other devices to read.

One look at this vintage pic of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates from the early days of each man’s career says a whole lot about the ultimate trajectories of both their businesses and their customers, dont’cha think?

The original provenance of the photo is unknown, though it clearly predates the historic conversation the two tech titans had at the All Things D conference in 2007.

From the looks of it, we’ll hazard a guess here it’s from a visit Gates made to Jobs’ California home back when the battle between Microsoft and Apple was more of a fair fight. What do you think?

[Awesome People Hanging Out Together]

We Apple watchers are forever reading whatever tea leaves are available to divine Apple’s intentions, vision and plans for the future. This is increasingly important because Apple’s products are not only growing across the board in market share, but those products are arguably the most influential in shaping the direction of the entire industry.

Steve Jobs’ presentation to the Cupertino City Council this week looked like a company CEO requesting approval for a construction project. But for Apple watchers, it was Christmas.

In Apple’s breathtaking plans for a spectacular new campus was revealed everything you really need to know about Apple – and the Apple-dominated future of consumer technology.

Here’s what Apple’s plans to build a giant spaceship campus tell us.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcXGLGRUEiY

Espen Horne, a filmmaker in Norway, had an eerie experience with an iPhone and a fire alarm, resulting in one of those Reese’s peanut butter moments.

The next logical step: he made a three-minute clip asking Steve Jobs to integrate a fire alarm sensor on the iPhone.

Is your head still spinning from the smackdown of new details Steve Jobs and the Apple crew just slammed you with? Apple’s iCloud page just went live so you can get all the details on the new software that Apple is bringing to you for free later this fall. Of course, Cult of Mac will be posting all new material throughout the day breaking down iCloud and it’s features, so don’t stray too far.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAhP-yLJJ9s

When Steve takes the stage tomorrow morning, it’s pretty much a sure bet that he will use the words, magical, amazing, beautiful, and extraordinary a few dozen times each as he introduces the new iOS 5, iCloud and OS X Lion. We’re sure that iOS 5 is going to be great, but the iOSMagic Team has dreamed up something more amazing than even Steve Jobs can deliver.

As Apple commemorates the 10th anniversary of the Apple Store retail launch, it’s fun to take a look back and see what things were like a decade ago. In the pre-launch video below from 2001, Steve Jobs gives us a walkthrough of Apple’s newest creation.

Underwhelmed with Apple’s new smartcover for the iPad, the folks over at Tuff Luv in the U.K. decided they would show Steve Jobs how it’s done.

So they sent him the above case in hemp.

In an effort to appease the angered politicians in Washington, Apple is sending VP of Software, Bud Tribble, to the Senate hearing to discuss the storage of location data on iPhones. Location-Gate became one of the hottest topics concerning privacy and the use of cellular phones recently. At the center of the controversy, Apple quickly released an update to iOS (4.3.3) to amend the issue of iPhones storing user’s location data, which could possibly be acquired via a third-party to discern everywhere the user has been over the past few months. Senator Alan Franken has been the most vocal opponent of the recent discovery and was the one to initiate the hearing.

Bud Tribble has been with Apple since the 80’s, but as a Jobs loyalist, he left the company when Steve was ousted and became one of the founding members of NeXT, serving as the company’s VP of Software Development where he worked on projects that would later become the foundation for OS X.

The front page of the gossip rag The National Equirer February 17 shouted about the untimely demise of Apple’s founder and CEO Steve Jobs: “APPLE BOSS 6 WEEKS TO LIVE.”

That headline was derived from a medical source quoted by the newspaper: “One of our experts – Boca Raton, Fla., critical care physician Dr. Samuel Jacobson, who has not treated Jobs – told The ENQUIRER: ‘The poor guy! Judging from these photos, he is close to terminal. I would say he has six weeks.'”

Well, needless to say, the doctor was wrong and the whole “six weeks to live” thing was just sensationalist baloney. Jobs is very much alive. And since his paparazzi death sentence more than six weeks ago, he has dined with the president and launched the iPad 2.

Steve Jobs famously once quoted Picasso as saying: “Good artists copy; great artists steal.” And by that metric, Apple is a lousy artist.

Apple is stolen from by just about everybody. Microsoft and other companies steal design and interface ideas from Apple’s OS X. Cell phone handset makers steal Apple’s iPhone design elements. The new tablet market is essentially Apple’s iPad plus the tablets that steal ideas from the iPad. Everybody has stolen Apple’s approach to app stores.

There’s a difference between stealing ideas and stealing intellectual property. Stealing winning general approaches to doing things like multi-touch gestures on a tablet device is good. Stealing the code to do that is bad.

Microsoft has long been accused of stealing Apple ideas in the many designs of Windows that have occurred over the years. Windows has tended to be more challenging to use than OS X over the years, and Windows products tend to be less elegant. Because of all this, Apple fans often dismiss Microsoft as a company without innovation.

In fact, the opposite is true. Microsoft’s research wing is an under-appreciated engine of invention, in my opinion. And while Microsoft fails to productize some of its best inventions, it’s also occasionally successful at implementing new ideas in real products.

I’ll go further. Apple and its customers would benefit enormously if Apple were to steal the following five key ideas from Microsoft.

Apple just posted the full length video from this morning’s keynote. Users wanting to view the event can now stream the entire 72 minute video of Steve Jobs unveiling the iPad 2 by going to Apple’s website (click here for video). Also, if you’d like to download the video it’s been made available on iTunes (click here for iTunes download).

Many people have seen the 1984 SuperBowl commercial introducing the Macintosh to the masses. In the fall of 1983, Jobs gave a preview of this spot to an enthusiastic crowd of Apple shareholders and insiders. With full Reality Distortion Field in place, a young, passionate Steve Jobs describes the history of computing, IBM’s missed opportunities, and their current threats to Apple and the computing industry.

Happy Birthday, Steve – you haven’t lost your touch! Apple SuperNerds will notice a few soundtrack differences between this preview and the commercial that actually aired – can you spot them?

For people like me, and the other 28 million living with cancer, people like Steve Jobs are incredible role models. When I was undergoing chemotherapy three years ago, I was often tempted to think “why me?” But then I asked myself, “Why Steve Jobs? Why Lance Armstrong?” And I reflected on the remarkable things that they went on to achieve after their treatment. Their inspirational example helped me more than I can say.

Steve Jobs chooses not to talk about his cancer. He prefers to focus on his work. We should respect his choice.

Rebutting the National Enquirer’s morbid rumors that he is near death, Steve Jobs will be among the attendees at President Barack Obama’s dinner with tech industry leaders in San Francisco tomorrow, an inside source tells ABC News.

At today’s White House press briefing, press secretary Jay Carney said that the focus of the event will be “innovation and job creation” with business leaders “who know a lot about private sector job growth.”

The full list of attendees has not yet been released, but it has been learned that outgoing Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, and Paul Otellini of Intel are also on the guest list.

Institutional Shareholders Service, an independent proxy-advising service, and the Laborers’ International Union of North America have endorsed a shareholders’ proposal to require Apple, Inc. to disclose a succession plan for Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs, according to a report Thursday at Bloomberg’s Businessweek.

Apple shareholders will consider the proposal, which would mandate Apple’s board disclose a CEO succession plan annually, at the next shareholders’ meeting on February 23.

Jobs announced his most recent medical leave of absence from the company on January 17, which led to new rounds of speculation in the media and blogosphere as to the Apple CEO’s health and his long-term prospects for continuing to lead the giant technology enterprise.

Tim Cook, Apple’sChief Operating Officer, has taken over responsibility for day-to-day operations in Jobs’ absence, but the board has offered no guidance as to who might take over in the event Jobs is unable to return to work.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggQQwNbkmmo

The news of Steve Jobs’ health problems has saddened a lot of Apple fans. Rather than sit around speculating what may or may not be wrong with Steve’s health, we want to do something to try and lift his spirits. But we need your help.

We’re asking all our readers and anyone else who’s a fan of Steve Jobs to use their creativity and join us in making an awesome Get Well Soon video message.

Click on the YouTube video above and submit your own video reply. You can upload video or record a quick message with your webcam. It’s the easiest way we can think of to get a bunch of video messages that we can edit together into a big group message.

Uniquely express your well wishes to Steve and upload it. The more video replies we can get the better. It’s your choice if you wish to make your message funny or dramatic or sincere. Just make it you. Spread it on Twitter with #getwellsteve.

Let’s let the world’s best CEO know that we care about him.

Here are step-by-step instructions showing how to use YouTube’s Video response feature. And again, please spread the word.

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With the announcement of his leave from day-to-day operations at Apple, Steve Jobs set off a flurry of speculation and sent some stock prices skittering.

Jobs once again asked for privacy and respect — some believe he should have it, others believe Apple will be under too much pressure from shareholders to maintain much reserve.

Do you think Steve jobs will get the privacy he has asked for? And how much does he deserve?

Apple CEO Steve Jobs and design head Jonathan Ive are so close they are called “Jives” around the Cupertino campus for short.

The dynamic duo have been inseparable since the mid-1990s, when Jobs returned to Apple to find a young Ive stuck in a basement surrounded by hundreds of prototypes. Jobs recognized immediately that the company had a great resource that should be put to work.

NPR did a nice piece delving into how Jives have been working together to create some of Apple’s most memorable products.

Even though he’s a pretty reserved and deeply private individual, Steve Jobs sure does churn out great lines every year. Here are the 10 Ten Steve Jobs Quotes of 2010

Apple CEO Steve Jobs is a hands-on kind of guy, but usually, that hands-on approach tends to pop up as dashed-off emails from his iPhone in response to customer queries than telephonic reach-outs.

That’s not to say the latter can’t happen, though: A Seattle-based iPad developer was recently called by His Steveness himself after his app was rejected for using private APIs.

With his usual fanfare, Steve Jobs has just strutted onto the stage at Apple’s own Cupertino headquarters for today’s Back to the Mac event.

Steve’s looking confident, and he has every reason to be with $50 billion in the bank. The big question is, what will Apple be announcing today to add to the corporate coffers? iLife ’11 and OS X 10.7 are definites, as is a new MacBook Air… but could we also see a Verizon iPhone, refreshed MacBooks and maybe the slam dunk of a totally new product that Apple has somehow managed to keep completely secret by the end of the next hour and a half?

Place your bets in the comments, but best do it quick: Steve’s about to open his mouth, and that’s when the bets begin to close, one by one.

[image via Engadget]

In 1983, Steve Jobs wooed Pepsi executive John Sculley to Apple with one of the most famous lines in business: “Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?”

Jobs and Sculley ran Apple together as co-CEOs, blending cutting-edge technology (the first Macintosh computer) with cutting-edge advertising (the famous 1984 ad) and world-class design. But it soon soured, and Sculley is best known today for forcing Jobs’ resignation after a boardroom battle for control of the company.

Now, for the first time, Sculley talks publicly about Steve Jobs and the secrets of his success. It’s the first interview Sculley has given on the subject of Jobs since he himself was forced out of the company in 1993.

“There are many product development and marketing lessons I learned working with Steve in the early days,” says Sculley. “It’s impressive how he still sticks to his same first principles years later.”

He adds, “I don’t see any change in Steve’s first principles — except he’s gotten better and better at it.”

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