October 16, 2003: Six months after opening the iTunes Music Store for Mac owners, Apple expands the service to cover Windows PCs as well.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs later quips that making iTunes available to Windows owners is akin to “giving a glass of ice water to somebody in hell.”
June 6, 2005: Steve Jobs reveals that Apple will switch the Mac from PowerPC processors to Intel.
Speaking at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, Jobs’ revelation reminds the tech world that he is a leader who can get things done. Given Intel’s focus on mobile computing, the move also offers a hint at what Apple’s CEO has planned for the second half of his reign.
With its massive on-hand cash pile, Apple could easily be mistaken for a bank disguised as a tech firm. Modern hedge funds, on the other hand, are increasingly tech firms disguised as banks.
Which is one reason it kind of makes sense why one of Steve Jobs’ most trusted former lieutenants, ex-Apple exec Jon Rubinstein, has just been announced as the new co-CEO of Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund — with a massive $169 billion in assets.
That’s an amount that would even make Apple sit up and pay attention!
This feature is adapted from my book, Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products. It offers a rare look inside one of Apple’s most secretive institutions: the Industrial Design studio.
Where do Apple’s great products come from?
For the last 18 years — since Steve Jobs returned to the company in 1997 — most of them have come out of Apple’s Industrial Design studio, a small and secretive group of creatives headed up by celebrated British designer Sir Jony Ive.
Sure, Steve Jobs might not have been quite the one-man-temper-tantrum he was portrayed as for much of Walter Isaacson’s 2011 biography, but he still wasn’t someone you wanted to get on the wrong side of.
According to authors Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli in their new book Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader, Jobs flipped out after former Apple exec Jon Rubinstein decided to join Palm in 2007: never again speaking with a person he had been close to for years.
One of the interesting tidbits to emerge from testimony during Oracle panent infringment trial against Google is that Oracle had considered producing its own smartphone and buying either RIM or Palm. The testimony came from Oracle chief Larry Ellison, who was a close personal friend of Steve Jobs. Ellison is, in fact, quoted as describing their relationship as “best friends” in Walter Isaacson’s biography of Jobs.
The news raises some interesting questions – not the least of which are whether Jobs knew of the plan and what impact Oracle jumping into the smartphone game against the iPhone might have had on their friendship. Jobs was obsessed with the idea that Google and its former CEO Eric Schmidt (also a former Apple board member) had ripped off Apple’s iOS design work in creating Android.
