Steve Jobs - page 33

A chandelier inside Steve Jobs’ abandoned mansion. Photo by Jonathan Haeber, Bearings.

On Tuesday night, Woodside town council granted Steve Jobs a controversial demolition permit to tear down his rotting mansion in Woodside, California — one of Silicon Valley’s nicest and poshest towns.

Jobs bought the mansion in 1984, the year the Mac was released, and lived there with no furniture for almost a decade. But he hasn’t lived there for nearly 10 years, and he now wants to raze the house and build a smaller, greener dwelling on the land.

The mansion is locked up, but urban adventurer and photographer Jonathan Haeber sneaked into the house and took some rare and unbelievably beautiful pictures.

Explains Jonathan: “As far as how I obtained access, I can’t really say much, other than the fact that it was back in 2006. I found the gate open (I believe there was some landscaping work being done at the time) and the font door slightly ajar. I had my camera on me, and being substantially curious found myself inside of the mansion. I came back soon afterward for a night trip, explicitly to photograph the architecture.  It was one of the most bizarre experiences of my life and I don’t regret doing it.”

Haeber’s photographs show Jobs’ mansion in all its faded glory. Haeber’s haunting pictures include dusty copies of The Godfather videotapes; vines creeping across interior ceilings; and the front of the boarded-up mansion with its immaculately-maintained front lawn.

The pictures are poignant and lovely, and are possibly the last that will be taken of the mansion. On Tuesday, the Woodside town council approved a demolition permit.

Jonathan is an architecture buff who is working to catalog abandoned historical buildings on the West Coast.

He lives in Richmond, California, across the Bay from Woodside, and documents his adventures at his Bearings website. There’s a video explaining his project on the TBug website.

Jon has also photographed Michael Jackson’s empty Neverland Ranch and a flooded Six Flags amusement park in New Orleans.

All Photos used with kind persmission of Jonathan Haeber.

Jobs’ Woodside mansion in its glory days. Photo by Friends Of The Jackling House.

After a long legal battle, Steve Jobs has been granted permission to tear down his crumbling mansion in the posh Silicon Valley town of Woodside, California.

At a hearing of the Woodside town council on Tuesday night, councilors voted 6 to 1 to approve a demolition permit allowing Jobs to tear down his neglected, 14-bedroom Jackling mansion.

“It’s an unfortunate thing that Mr. Jobs doesn’t like the house,” Woodside’s Mayor Peter Mason told the Palo Alto Daily News. “It’s really sad that we’re going to continue to tear down historic resources in this town because they’re old.”

The mayor, who is also an architect, cast the sole dissenting vote.  

Jobs bought the mansion in 1984 and lived there for a decade with barely any furniture until he got married and started raising a family. He currently lives with his wife and children in Palo Alto. The 17,000-square-foot mansion has remained empty and neglected since.

In 2004, the Woodside town council granted a demolition permit, but it was blocked by a local preservationist group called Friends Of The Jackling House, which claimed the mansion is a national treasure. The mansion was built in 1925 for copper millionaire Daniel C. Jackling by architect George Washington Smith.

At one point, Jobs offered to give the mansion for free to anyone who would haul it away.

CC-licensed photo by Dario Melpignano.

Steve Jobs will not headline Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June as many fans had hoped.

Instead, a team of executives led by Phil Schiller will deliver the keynote, according to an Apple press release issued Wednesday morning.

The news is a big blow to Apple fans, who were hoping Jobs would mark his return to Apple with a big splashy appearance at the conference.

Jobs took six months medical leave in January to focus on his health, which had appeared to be in serious decline during 2008. In public appearances, Jobs appeared alarmingly gaunt and thin. Jobs said he would return to work at the end of June, but many hoped he might make an earlier appearance at the week-long programmers conference, which will start on Monday, June 8.

The full press release after the jump.

Via Gizmodo.

Half way into Steve Jobs’ six month medical leave, the Wall Street Journal looked into whether Jobs still has a hand in the running of the company.

Citing “people familiar with the matter,” the paper maintains he is “keeping a grip” on Apple:

“People familiar with Apple’s operations say they still expect to see Mr. Jobs return in June. Some of these people also say members of Apple’s board of directors are monitoring the situation directly, communicating regularly with Mr. Jobs’s physicians.

People inside the company, business partners and others who are familiar with the situation say life at the Cupertino, Calif., company remains much the same as it did before.

Those at other corporations who deal with the company also say their interactions with Apple haven’t changed. Mr. Cook, who had already been handling most of Apple’s day-to-day operations, has kept tight control over the company, say business partners and those inside Apple.”
The article also speculates about the future of Apple management, stock prices and employee turnover.

Image © BasiCMYK

BasiCMYK is a talented photographer and self-described geek who was lucky enough to get one of the 300 limited edition PodBrix Young Woz and Jobs playsets when they were issued not long after the iPhone’s debut in 2007.

He’s also apparently a big Steve Wozniak fan, allowing in the description of the accompanying photo that “every time there’s a Stevenote I secretely hope The Woz will pop up on the screen.”

Something tells me there’s no limited edition Bill Gates or Steve Ballmer Lego knock-off playsets lurking out there anywhere.

The doll version of Steve Jobs wears a black turtleneck, jeans and the kind of intense gaze bound to make you feel guilty while downloading useless apps instead of masterminding something great.

Brought to you by podbrix, the same folks who created a limited-edition Young Woz and Jobs Playset in Lego (unfortunately sold out), this plush version of Jobs will cost you about the same as a pair of Apple earbuds ($32.00, shipping included).

Only 500 available, so if you want a pocket guru, now’s the time to act.

Via Macenstein

Came across the Italian edition of CoM founder Leander Kahney’s book on Steve Jobs (“Inside Steve’s Brain“) the other day in a shop in Milan.

The title in Italian has been translated as “Inside Steve’s Head.” Perhaps the idea of being in his brain was considered a little too graphic?

It looks like the Spanish edition took the same route…Curious to see if there are any other differences in title translations, if you spot any, let me know…

After a decade of being the clear leader driving market trends in computing, Apple’s influence could wane in the post-Steve Jobs era, according to a thoughtful piece posted Tuesday at TG Daily.

Industry analyst Rob Enderle describes Apple’s amazingly diverse impact on wider market trends:

* The iPhone immediately became the gold standard for mobile phone manufacturers, resulting in an explosion of new devices and innovation across every mobile software platform;

* Apple created integration between power and graphics in computer processors that would not have been possible without the company’s commitment to OpenCL, a framework for writing programs that execute across CPUs and GPUs;

* Apple’s focus on design and higher margins resulted in the introduction of products such as the recently released Dell Adamo, a PC notebook designed and marketed to emulate Apple’s attention to every detail from the packaging inward, down to the absence of stickers promoting Microsoft Windows and Intel;

* The elegance of the user experience in Mac OS X virtually doomed OEMs’ embrace of Linux to a competition not with Apple but with Windows, an outcome which will affect the introduction of Google’s Android when it comes to market next year as well.

In short, Enderle writes, “Apple is at the core” of all recent change in the computer industry, that “as a result Apple’s efforts, the products we will see from a variety of vendors will be vastly more amazing than they otherwise would have been.”

None of the above is really subject to debate. Enderle goes on to question whether Apple can keep it up in the post-Jobs era, however, and this writer disagrees. Follow the jump to find out why.

Steve Jobs missed leading an Apple shareholders’ meeting on Wednesday for the first time since his return to the company in 1997, but the founder and visionary CEO remains “remains deeply involved in strategic decisions,” according to director Art Levinson, who spoke to reporters at the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, California after the meeting.

Despite his absence from the meeting, shareholders sang Happy Birthday to Jobs, who turned 54 yesterday. Reporters were barred from taking laptops, iPhones or other communication devices into the meeting, but a few attendees were apparently able to sneak in wireless handhelds to post notes during the meeting, according to a report at Fortune.

Details on shareholder actions at the meeting after the jump.

Steve Jobs, who historically would spend hours a day logged into a chat client, has been using his computer less since taking his six-month leave of absence, according to a report by former PBS journalist Mark Stephens.

“Steve Jobs has stopped using his computer. He’s off curing himself of something he won’t name and in some manner we can’t know but I CAN tell you right now it doesn’t involve using his computer,” Stephens wrote under his pen name, Robert X Cringley.

Stephens argues in his post that because Jobs has not yet resigned from his position as CEO at Apple, his health is material to Apple and to Apple shareholders, is material to the company, and should be disclosed.

Because Jobs’ previous habit was to be available online to his coterie of personal contacts, a trend he apparently continued even after he announced he’d be taking a six month leave of absence near the beginning of this year, the apparent fact that he is no longer logging on daily is, according to Stephens, “important.”

“His condition remains squarely on the table, hot and steaming and ready to be served-up,” Stephens writes. “Who cares?

Anyone cares who actually expects Steve Jobs to return to Apple.”

Via MacNN

Back in the dark mists of Time before the internet, Playboy magazine was among the more popular media vehicles serving up a stimulating cocktail of news, opinion, creative writing, gadget reviews and naked flesh. And over the years, the Playboy Interview gained quite a reputation for getting the most interesting newsmakers and personalities of the day to open up about their lives and philosophies in ways other mainstream publications could never quite match.

The Playboy interview with Steve Jobs was published in the February 1985 issue of the magazine, just a little more than a year after the debut of the Macintosh and a few short months before the Apple CEO would be ousted from the company he helped found. The long piece finds a 29 year-old Jobs at the top of his intellectual game and elicits commentary that, looking back on it now, makes Jobs appear both prescient and consistent in his views and in his dedication to Apple’s success.

Follow after the jump for a few choice comments from the interview and be sure to click through to the full piece from the Playboy archive.

Via Edible Apple

Times they have changed: a quarter of a century ago, reporter Michael J. Miller was on the West Coast bureau of Popular Computing. (Now he blogs for PC mag.)

A few choice extracts about his trip down to Cupertino to see the first Mac:

“I met with Steve Jobs, who was then Apple Chairman and heading up the Mac project, along with key designers including Burrell Smith, the original hardware designer and software designers Andy Hertzfeld and Bill Atkinson.”

“Most of the time I was meeting with other members on the team, but I remember Jobs coming in —  he was very charismatic: intense, proud of the work and a bit prickly about any criticism. He and his folks were quick to put down the IBM PC and its clones for not pushing the envelope and settling for “mediocrity.”

“Jobs and the team were rightly proud of the new machine, which was very different from the IBM PC that then dominated the industry. Maybe it was the famous “Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field,” but even then I was entranced by the new machine and the possibilities it offered – particularly the graphical user interface.”

Miller’s trip down memory lane — complete with anecdotes about the Mac II, Apple’s first laser printer and the role of industrial design at Apple — is well worth a read.

I can’t decide if this is a delightful sign of the caring Mac community, or if it’s a sickening sign of people who can’t just leave a sick man alone.

Look, over here: it’s Prayers for Steve. Except most of them aren’t prayers, most are simply “Get well” messages. You can add yours. There are, of course, Google ads at the bottom. Could be worse: they could be plastered all over the top and sides too.

I don’t know, maybe I’m being too grumpy. Is this a good idea? You tell me.

Image via Flickr, used with permission

Steve Jobs is in a no-win situation right now. Either he’s healthy and he keeps coming to work every day and the question on everyone’s mind remains, “is Steve really healthy?” or, he’s not healthy and he takes some time to go get better, and the question on everyone’s mind remains, “how long is Steve going to live?” In either case, Apple is deprived of the singular focus of its driving force; in either case no one stops wondering about his health.

Many hope beyond hope that Jobs will regain his health and his drive and his focus, that he will return to Apple this summer, or sometime, and lead the company to many more years of innovating and producing products that “put a ding in the universe.”

Some believe his decision Wednesday to absent himself from the day-to-day operations at Apple signals the beginning of the end, that he is taking time to spend with his family and to prepare for his inevitable death coming sooner rather than later. And many wish him all the peace and comfort he can find in the love of those closest to him if such should indeed be the case.

What’s certain is there will be oceans of ink poured into writing about Steve Jobs and the unique place he has made for himself in his life and times. Whether he dies tomorrow or lives another twenty, thirty, fifty years, he has assured for himself a legacy of renown unlike anyone of his generation.

He’s been called a tyrant and a diva, a rock star and a king – and such superlatives are not out of proportion to the impact he has made on the way people live, not only in contemporary times, but on the way people will live long after he is gone.

I saw on Wednesday a piece about Jobs, written by music industry analyst Bob Lefsetz, who laments his feeling Jobs’ demise is imminent, saying his death “will be like the loss of Lennon. We will feel collectively that we’ve lost something that can’t be replaced.” And I have no doubt many will feel that way.

But the fact is, music didn’t die with the passing of John Lennon, as sad and incomprehensible as his death was, and as big and unfixable a hole as there seemed to be in his absence. His work lives on, for one thing, but also his example and his influence continue to inspire songwriters and musicians a generation later. The John Lennon Educational Tour Bus, ironically, had a prominent place just a week ago at Macworld, where Jobs’ presence was so sorely missed.

The day Steve Jobs dies may seem, as Lefsetz wrote, “like one of those great teen songs, where the lover dies and the singer just can’t move on.” But, like Lennon, his work will also live on. His example and his influence will continue to inspire people in many walks of life, I daresay, for generations to come. And that is something to be happy about.

Back in December, Gizmodo blogger Jason Chen put up an entertaining spoof of the iconic children’s book series Choose Your Own Adventure, in which the game is to pick Apple’s next CEO.

Perhaps you saw it. Even if you did, my guess is that you didn’t think it was quite as poignant then as it seems today. Chen probably didn’t think, either, his post might enjoy the second life it’s getting out of Jobs’ announcement Wednesday that he’ll take a leave of absence from day-to-day Apple affairs until June.

It is clever, and it’s fun, and everyone can use a little adventure now and then.

Via Gizmodo

Photo: James Merithew/Wired.com

While I was researching Inside Steve’s Brain, I read everything I could lay my hands on about Steve Jobs, including just about every book and magazine article published in the last couple of decades. One of the most striking things was how many times Jobs mentioned death as the driving force in his life.

Over and over Jobs said he was driven to make an impact before his time ran out.

It was such a recurrent theme, I thought of devoting an entire chapter to the subject in the book. Jobs had an obsession with death to rival Emily Dickinson’s.

Even in his twenties, Jobs obsessed about death. He told former Apple CEO John Sculley he was convinced he would live a very short life and urgently needed to have an impact before he died. Sculley thought this was why he was so driven and ambitious, according to Sculley’s autobiography. Of course, Jobs lived much longer than he suspected.

Best known perhaps, are Jobs comments during his 2005 commencement speech at Stanford:

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life,” he said. “Because almost everything all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.”

It’s comments like this that makes me pessimistic about today’s news that Jobs is stepping aside, even if he claims it is only temporary.

For the last four decades, since Jobs cofounded Apple in his bedroom, he’s worked like a horse — rising early, taking short vacations, avoiding parties and sacrificing holidays to prepare for Macworld.

Work and family — that’s all he does.

I think he’s now focusing on his family.

I hope it’s not the case, but I suspect Jobs will not return to Apple.

Today’s announcement makes me think he’s focusing on “what’s truly important” — his family.

The ad targeting algorithm they use over at the Washington Post has either got a sick sense of humor baked-in, or perhaps the instance of the ad running with the story above is a stone cold coincidence. Either way, it’s a chance to seek levity in a bit of a heavy moment for the Apple community.

Godspeed, Mr. Jobs.

Via TechCrunch

“Dear Apple Community,”

→ Dear asshole bloggers,

“For the first time in a decade, I’m getting to spend the holiday season with my family, rather than intensely preparing for a Macworld keynote.

“Unfortunately, my decision to have Phil deliver the Macworld keynote set off another flurry of rumors about my health, with some even publishing stories of me on my deathbed.”

→ You journalists are assholes too.

In an open letter addressed to the Apple Community, Steve Jobs said Monday that he has an easily treated hormonal imbalance. The statement, designed to quiet rumors spurred by the Apple CEO’s increasingly gaunt public appearances, came a day before a high-profile keynote at Macworld Expo that Jobs handed off to a colleague.

“A hormone imbalance … has been ‘robbing’ me of the proteins my body needs to be healthy,” Jobs wrote. “Sophisticated blood tests have confirmed this diagnosis.”

Digg founder Kevin Rose announced his concern for Steve Jobs’ health Tuesday, but there’s always a subtext to such public displays of empathy. We’re not sure what it is in Rose’s case, but a few guesses are he:

a) puts way too much stock in what he reads on Gizmodo
b) is more worried about getting publicity for his own Internet venture
c) is a typically clueless amateur money manager
d) lives to see his name on the Internet
e) all of the above

On top of which, he’s either a very careless typist or an embarrassingly poor speller.

The kind Apple fanatics at iPhone Savior have done the great public service of creating Apple and Steve Jobs-themed Christmas eCard templates and posted them over at Flickr for anyone who still has a few last minute greetings to get out.

You can use a pre-made card like the one above, or choose from two styles of hi-res blank cards and add your own graphical text message to express your holiday sentiments and your love for all things Apple in the same vehicle.

As they put it over at iPhone Savior, “Sincerely wishing everyone an iPhone 3G for Christmas and some sweet dreams of Steve.”

Via iPhone Savior

I’m a shy and retiring Englishman, so tooting my own horn doesn’t come naturally, but my brash American wife insist I post this: USA Today named Inside Steve’s Brain, my book about Steve Jobs, one of the best business titles published in 2008.

Says USA Today:

“Offers insightful nuggets on Steve Jobs, who helped create personal computers and digital music while moonlighting as a modern-day Walt Disney at animation studio Pixar.”

Link: Year’s best: These books meant business in 2008

Links: Inside Steve’s Brain on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and 800CEORead.

Every time I say this, some people start getting all shirty and saying: “Yes it is! Steve matters!”

After my Don’t Panic post yesterday, there were similar comments, like this one: “Yeah, actually Steve Jobs health is our business. He made Apple, he revived Apple and he brought Apple to it’s current massive success. Steve Jobs IS Apple. Without him the company has a far smaller chance of survival.”

I completely disagree with this line of thinking, and here’s why:

Politics, not platelets, are why Steve Jobs is turning over the Keynote responsibility to Phil Schiller at next month’s Macworld Conference & Expo, according to CNBC correspondent Jim Goldman.

Citing “sources inside the company,” Goldman writes that Jobs’ demurral from the Keynote address for Apple’s last appearance at the venerable trade show in San Francisco is assuredly not a product of any inability on his part to perform for health reasons, but is rather a result of the company’s “trying to separate itself from Macworld for some time.” Amid the growing trend of big companies scaling back participation in traditional trade shows world wide, Apple has also in recent years taken the lead in producing its own product release events, such as the ones that introduced the company’s new iPods this summer and new notebook computers in the fall.

Apple also directly reaches millions of visitors who come weekly to its growing chain of world-wide retail stores, and millions more who receive the company’s carefully designed and controlled messaging through visits to the company’s iTunes stores.

Knowing how the Apple-interested universe’s collective pulse begins to race with every inkling of Jobs’ mortality, it’s no surprise to see Monday’s announcement generate lots of speculation and extra volatility in the movement of the company’s stock price. As Goldman writes, however, the party to be concerned about is not Jobs, and not Apple, but Macworld. For some time now it’s been fashionable to imagine scenarios about Apple in the inevitable post-Jobs era. But will there even be a Macworld in the post-Apple era?