Tag: apple

The Lost Steve Jobs Tapes

f Steve Jobs’s life were staged as an opera, it would be a tragedy in three acts. And the titles would go something like this: Act I–The Founding of Apple Computer and the Invention of the PC Industry; Act II–The Wilderness Years; and Act III–A Triumphant Return and Tragic Demise.

The first act would be a piquant comedy about the brashness of genius and the audacity of youth, abruptly turning ominous when our young hero is cast out of his own kingdom. The closing act would plumb the profound irony of a balding and domesticated high-tech rock star coming back to transform Apple far beyond even his own lofty expectations, only to fall mortally ill and then slowly, excruciatingly wither away, even as his original creation miraculously bulks up into the biggest digital dynamo of them all. Both acts are picaresque tales that end with a surge of deep pathos worthy of Shakespeare.

But that second act–The Wilderness Years–would be altogether different in tone and spirit. In fact, the soul of this act would undermine its title, a convenient phrase journalists and biographers use to describe his 1985 to 1996 hiatus from Apple, as if the only meaningful times in Jobs’s life were those spent in Cupertino. In fact, this middle period was the most pivotal of his life. And perhaps the happiest. He finally settled down, married, and had a family. He learned the value of patience and the ability to feign it when he lost it. Most important, his work with the two companies he led during that time, NeXT and Pixar, turned him into the kind of man, and leader, who would spur Apple to unimaginable heights upon his return.

A Must Read for anyone who is an Apple Fan, or for that matter, anyone who wants to understand the power of self-improvement. Beautiful.

Read the Brent Schlender‘s full article here.

Microsoft vs Apple

“For apple to be successful, we have to let go of a few things. One of the things that we need to let go, is the notion that, for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose. We have to embrace the notion that, for Apple to win, Apple has to do a really good job. And if others are going to help us, thats great, because we need all the help we can get. And if we screw up, and we dont do a good job, it is not someone else’s fault, it is our fault. So, if we want Microsoft Office for the Mac, we’d better treat the company that puts it out, with a little bit of gratitude. The era of setting up the stage as a competition between Microsoft and Apple is over, as far as I am concerned. ”

Steve Jobs, MacWorld 1997.

This was the time, when Gil Amelio was ousted, and Steve Jobs came back to Apple. Apple was close to bankruptcy. Microsoft bought some shares, which helped the company financially. A bunch of agreements got signed – including making IE as the default browser for Mac.

I (personally) think, Jobs showed a lot of maturity and humility in this speech. If you want to see the whole speech, see below.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEHNrqPkefI&w=640&h=390]

Quotable quotes from Steve Jobs

Yes, there are many many more. But a couple that I came across today morning, that are worth mentioning.

On focus groups?

“It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”

“You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.”

On creativity

“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something.

On how innovation really happens

“But innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something that shoots holes in how we’ve been thinking about a problem. It’s ad hoc meetings of six people called by someone who thinks he has figured out the coolest new thing ever and who wants to know what other people think of his idea.”

On designing products

“Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works… To design something really well, you have to get it. You have to really grok what it’s all about. It takes a passionate commitment to really thoroughly understand something, chew it up, not just quickly swallow it. Most people don’t take the time to do that.”

And ofcourse, the quote from his famous Stanford Commencement Speech –

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”

Thanks are due to Inc.com, from where I found these.

Icon Ambulance

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Steve Jobs (Circa 1981) - Source nymag.com

An incident narrated by Vic Gundotra about Steve Jobs. Beautiful and touching.

Icon Ambulance

One Sunday morning, January 6th, 2008 I was attending religious services when my cell phone vibrated. As discreetly as possible, I checked the phone and noticed that my phone said “Caller ID unknown”. I choose to ignore.

After services, as I was walking to my car with my family, I checked my cell phone messages. The message left was from Steve Jobs. “Vic, can you call me at home? I have something urgent to discuss” it said.

Before I even reached my car, I called Steve Jobs back. I was responsible for all mobile applications at Google, and in that role, had regular dealings with Steve. It was one of the perks of the job.

“Hey Steve – this is Vic”, I said. “I’m sorry I didn’t answer your call earlier. I was in religious services, and the caller ID said unknown, so I didn’t pick up”.

Steve laughed. He said, “Vic, unless the Caller ID said ‘GOD’, you should never pick up during services”.

I laughed nervously. After all, while it was customary for Steve to call during the week upset about something, it was unusual for him to call me on Sunday and ask me to call his home. I wondered what was so important?

“So Vic, we have an urgent issue, one that I need addressed right away. I’ve already assigned someone from my team to help you, and I hope you can fix this tomorrow” said Steve.

“I’ve been looking at the Google logo on the iPhone and I’m not happy with the icon. The second O in Google doesn’t have the right yellow gradient. It’s just wrong and I’m going to have Greg fix it tomorrow. Is that okay with you?”

Of course this was okay with me. A few minutes later on that Sunday I received an email from Steve with the subject “Icon Ambulance”. The email directed me to work with Greg Christie to fix the icon.

Since I was 11 years old and fell in love with an Apple II, I have dozens of stories to tell about Apple products. They have been a part of my life for decades. Even when I worked for 15 years for Bill Gates at Microsoft, I had a huge admiration for Steve and what Apple had produced.

But in the end, when I think about leadership, passion and attention to detail, I think back to the call I received from Steve Jobs on a Sunday morning in January. It was a lesson I’ll never forget. CEOs should care about details. Even shades of yellow. On a Sunday.

To one of the greatest leaders I’ve ever met, my prayers and hopes are with you Steve.

-Vic

Source: [link]

Does Apple create Magic ?

Lex friedman, in his article in MacWorld, has a beautiful piece on Apple. An excerpt below:

Apple uses the word “magical” a lot these days. It’s enough to make you wonder if Steve Jobs dropped out of Hogwarts. The most magical item in Apple’s endless bag of products is probably the iPad. Even before the tablet hit the shelves, chief operating officer Tim Cook was talking up the “magic of using [the iPad]” at an investors conference. For a time, Apple’s standard boilerplate at the end of each press release described the original iPad as magical.

It’s not just tablets, though—Apple sells products like the Magic Mouse and the Magic Trackpad. With the possible exception of Mr. Clean, no other non-legerdemain-focused company so consistently depicts its products as supernaturally enhanced.

As fond as Apple may be of promoting its products using terms of enchantment, I think it misses the point—and actually sells the company’s efforts a bit short. Instead of “magical,” it’s more accurate to describe Apple’s products as brilliantly and patiently engineered, with meticulous attention to detail.

Read the full article here.

 

The tech mud-slinging match that is happening …

Some of us have been following the mud-slinging match that has been happening between Microsoft, Google, and Apple, in recent times. The scene is hot now, with the latest patent issue.

If you have not been followng this, MG Ziegler from techcrunch has a good piece on how it has panned out until now. Read it here.

Can you beat Apple?

Jason Kottke has  a very compelling article on the few weaknesses of Apple. Very good observations I should say. On hind-sight, and on reading this list, they do seem like missing link. I list a summary below:

1. Apple doesn’t do social well on a large scale

2. Apple can’t do the cloud either

3. iTunes is getting long in the tooth.

4. The Apple software that rock (eg KeyNote) are the ones that Jobs uses. The ones that he does not care about (social, ical) etc are the ones that are not so good.

Read the full article here.

Apple Magic TrackPad

Is it not amazing to see the level of innovation and game-changing that Apple always try to do. They removed the floppy. They removed many other things that PC people are so used to. Why .. at some point in time, they even removed the computer – putting it on the monitor itself! Now, they are getting people to do away with the friendly rodent – the mouse – as well ! It is introducing the multi-touch trackpad that is found in the Macbooks as a separate input device.

And it looks fancy. Same style as the wireless keyboard. Same incline as the keyboard. Same brushed metal finish. Eye candy at its best.

The apple page.

(via Lifehacker. )

Craigslisting my IPAD: Vivek Wadhwa

There are two interesting themes reflected in the title. Craigs-listing is actually now a verb ! Wow. That is the impact an online sharing/marketplace site can create. For those who are not in the know, please go here and check it out. The other interesting theme is something that I will summarize momentarily below. Vivek Wadhwa writes a very compelling article on what the IPAD is NOT. Now that the hype is died down (a bit? maybe just a little?), Vivek dissects on some features that he had expected and how it is not found in IPAD 1.0. He also says that, since he is an apple fan-boy (unashamedly so!), he will check if 2.0 will have it, and stand in line, and pay his dues to Steve Jobs when it releases. Thats the fan following Apple has. Applegate, Antennagate – whatever! 😉

Now for some of the key points that Vivek points out that is not present in the first version of IPAD:

First, I can’t easily load my Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint documents on the iPad or access the year or more of e-mails that I carry around on my 32 GB USB drive.  The iPad has no USB port, and its means of transferring documents—through iTunes—is pathetic.

I agree with Vivek here. For the most part of the public – especially the atypical non-apple folks, who bought the IPAD, this would be a huge bummer. Also for the large non-technical populace, it would be a challenge (fondly called Grandma and the junior in the article).

Second, Apple’s Microsoft Office-like products on the iPad are just cheap imitations. Apple’s Pages is a decent word processor, and Numbers is okay as a spreadsheet manager, but these don’t hold a candle to Microsoft Word and Excel. Moreover, I can’t use the excellent cloud-based word processing tools that Zoho offers, or the decent tools in Google docs. The iPad doesn’t recognize the rich-text format that these applications use, so it doesn’t display a keyboard when you try to type.

For those people, who thought, Fine, there is no office, but I can use google docs or Zoho, Bang, it cannot be done either. Another huge bummer. For a device, which touts working off the cloud, if it cannot support Zoho or GoogleDocs, it is not cutting it, in my opinion. But then, Apple has never really cared about interoperability (until more recently ofcourse).

Third, I usually need to view different applications in multiple screens when I am writing.

Oops. I did not know about this. This is a huge bummer for the folks who live on alt-tabbing (or window-tabbing). Apparently the IPAD only lets you multiprocess one app – which is – you can listen to music, while you are surfing. Hrrm. #FAIL.

Fourth, on many of the websites I visit, I can’t watch Flash presentations.

I thought this would be #1 on the list. But it finds a mention in the list (It has to!). For those following the Adobe-Apple war, this would not be a surprise. Lets just wait for everyone to switch to HTML5 (2020? anyone?).

Last, I didn’t miss the camera that didn’t come with my iPad until I got my new iPhone, but now I can’t fathom why it isn’t there. Facetime, on the new iPhone, is a killer app. It changes the way you use your phone and the way you communicate with your friends and relatives. The iPad lets you make Skype calls over Wi-Fi, but there is no Facetime app—and that’s because there is no camera.

This is an issue too. No Camera? Why Steve? Why? How can you create a tablet which you expect non-technical people also to use, and NOT have a camera? First thing, someone is going to try and do is to do videoconferencing with grandma ! Well, hopefully IPAD 2 will have it.

I think this is a great list. Kudos to Vivek Wadhwa for his very insightful comments.

(Article found through TechCrunch)

First day IPAD sales

Wow. Just found this on John Gruber’s Daring Fireball, and this blew me away. This, after reading so many people saying, that the IPAD is not a computer, it is not a powerful thing, no one will want it, etc etc etc. Apple has once again proven it. Amen.

Apple Sells Over 300,000 iPads First Day

CUPERTINO, California—April 5, 2010—Apple® today announced that it sold over 300,000 iPads in the US as of midnight Saturday, April 3. These sales included deliveries of pre-ordered iPads to customers, deliveries to channel partners and sales at Apple Retail Stores. Apple also announced that iPad users downloaded over one million apps from Apple’s App Store and over 250,000 ebooks from its iBookstore during the first day.

Source: apple press site, through daringfireball

Image source: apple store