Attached Link: Apple

There are a couple of posts in the Mac forum.

The last years must have been terrible for him, may he rest in peace.

Cancer sucks. 

The man may have left, but his vision still lives on.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/media/folder_226/file_2255341.jpg

I guess we'll really find out the answer to "Can Apple be successful without Steve."  I guess we'll find out later this week and next week about how wallstreet feels about it.  The guy was definitely dedicated to what he created.

Tim Cook has been pretty much running the show for the past 2-3 years now, so I suspect they'll be okay, operations-wise. Also, Apple tends to follow long-range plans. 

We'll know for certain five years out from now.

I've never used an Apple computer a lot, my phone uses Android and I don't have an IPod. But when I learned about computers and got my first computer, Steve Jobs had already brought his Apple II into a market that not existed earlier. 

There are just a few people who influence the whole world, and Steve Jobs was one of them. With Apple, with Next, again with Apple and with Pixar he really changed the world. 

The world lost a great mind, one of the people who gave us computers. Even if his style was never mine, I'll miss him. A sad day indeed.

I wonder if the last sucess in the American economy will die with him.

Quote - I wonder if the last sucess in the American economy will die with him.

I hope not.  The one thing that he has was imagination of what could be. He had more than just vision. He had the creativity to create.  I'm not quite sure what happend to the U.S. in general, but we don't have the same level of creativity like we used to.  My guess is that the only way the U.S. will improve in creativity is if the economy continues to be bad and basically force people to be more creative.  One of the benefits of economic hardships is that it breeds creativity.

Maybe now they'll loosen their software up a bit. Allow Mac clones once again. License MacOS for PC users. Would be nice.

Laurie

Thank You Steve.

RIP Mr Jobs

IIRC, he was also a co founder of Pixar.

A genius and visionary. 

Quote - Maybe now they'll loosen their software up a bit. Allow Mac clones once again. License MacOS for PC users. Would be nice.

As the owner of Hackintoshes (one physical, one VM), I'd love to see that too. Smart licensing of OSX as a general OEM OS option would obliterate Microsoft's consumer marketshare almost overnight. 

OTOH, I don't think it will happen, and for good reasons:

• Support would be come a nightmare once you start having people slap OSX onto machines made of random PC parts, which may or may not be compatible.

• The amount of drivers required would skyrocket, increasing costs.

• The price difference wouldn't really be all that much - folks like Dell and etc. would only put OSX on their high-end machinery, which in turn means the price would be the same or even more.

• In spite of that last point, 3rd-party OEMs would still cut corners.

All of that together would harm Apple's reputation.

Also, Apple is growing its marketshare by leaps and bounds still, growing at 20-30% per year while the rest of the PC industry grew at a mere 4% (with most of that being corporate purchases). Globally, around one in 10 new consumer computers purchased is a Mac. In the US, I'd say 2 in 10, if not 1/4 of them by now. In other words, they're growing just fine on their own, so they likely don't see the need to have clones right now. If the Mac's sales growth stalls, it might become a reality, but they're growing like hell now, and have been for the past decade. They currently enjoy the highest customer satisfaction ratings, and probably don't want to jepoardize that, nor would they want to have to troubleshoot someone else's hardware.

Well, I hope this Tim Cook has the same kinda of plans, because last time Steve Jobs wasn't CEO, the company tanked ;).

Laurie

True, but that last interim there were a few important differences, both internal and external.

Internally...

• Jobs was kicked out by the board, and the board decided to go with some idiot for CEO who really didnt know what he was doing in the tech field (the guy was an executive at Pepsi before joining Apple).

• During his absence, the Pepsi guy actually licensed MacOS clones (I used to have one from PowerComputing - it was crap), and screwed up the entire product line.

• during the hiatus, 3rd-party developers were worshipped, to the point of crippling development. 

Externally...

• Apple got (very) short shrift in the tech retail market, as stores accepted incentives and offers to push DOS/Windows machines over Macs, and the IBM-compatible machinery was cheaper, allowing for the (usually commissioned) sales critters to move more of them. 

Those things nearly killed the company. 

I think things are radically different nowadays. You now have a board that is comprised of people with some actual brains, sales have shown that clones (and licenses thereof) are unnecessary, Apple has its own retail presence that draws huge crowds, and they have pretty much built ecosystems that are healthy and growing (and more importantly, not as easy to stomp on by the competition).

Now long term? Nobody knows. 

Never owned a mac, never will - but it's sad anyway to see a visionary wither away like that :(

BUT.. Where's the nudity and swearing in this post?! Come on, don't flag posts just to get attention!!

Memento Mori

That was accidental, I think. I know I didn't flag anything intentionally, and it won't let me go back and fix it by the time I found out. Any mod can kindly remove the flag if they wish.

Uh huh Penguinisto..sure you didn't mean to... j/k. I've unchecked the flag for you.

I'm sad to see anyone die before their time. Plus, I love my iPhone. Sadly, I'd be lost without it. :)

iSad

Quote - I'm sad to see anyone die before their time.

Hense me saying memento mori.  You never know when your time really is up.  That's similar to a quote I heard of Jobs the day after he died.  He realized life itself is borrowed time and you don't know when the collector is coming.