Sad News - Steve Jobs Dead

[MY littleboat]

A day and a half after the launch of the iPhone 4S, Apples CEO Steve Jobs has lost his long fought battle with cancer and died at the age of 56. I wonder how many people will realise that the phone they are using today came from the re-emergance of this company from the ashes when Jobs returned to the company in 1996.

A true hero of the computing world and one of the most charasmatic and visionary people ever in the business!!

Here is a look back to his original milestone - the introduction of the Macintosh computer back in 1984

!

[Guest]

Personally i'm not a great fan of the over hyped Apple product range, however you have to admire how he/they engineered a generation of followers that would buy a cow pat if it had an apple logo on it.

[wayneakp]

Personally i'm not a great fan of the over hyped Apple product range, however you have to admire how he/they engineered a generation of followers that would buy a cow pat if it had an apple logo on it.

And is that not what a good business is all about??

Personally I find my iphone the most useful "gadet" i have ever owned - regardless of the hype.

It is indeed sad that this man lost his fight against cancer. He was of course just one of many who pushed (and continue to push) the boundaries of technology to give us the ability to take for granted some of the things we can do today, almost everyday.

Next time we take a digtal photo and send it to someone, post or watch a video online, text your mate, use a sat nav, send an email, or indeed post and communicate on a forum it may be worth a thought how these people have changed the world in such a relatively short time.

Quite an achivement IMHO.

[Guest]

Steve Jobs was remarkable, a real genius of the business and computing World. There aren't many like him.

[loribear]

i think it's a very sad day indeed, i don't know what i'd do without my iphone, it changed the way i use a mobile, there's so much you can do with them, i always use my iphone to go on fbook & other forums, even on this site. lori

[pks1702]

The advances in technology we take for granted now but if I look back 10 years when I was involved in the emerging technology side of the print industry the advances are staggering.

I remember a client of mine visiting and the MD proudly showing him round the repro studio telling him that this cabinet the size of a very large suitcase housed a 1GB tape drive and that that desk (the size the bridge on Star Trek) could compose pages and airbrush images. Sending images down a phone line to clients first 56kb and then ISDN was a wonderous thing, you just had to leave the machine sending a big file (100mb) overnight!

Within a couple of years Apple had revolutionised this industry and the defacto choice of designers, repro and print houses today is Apple.

Someone that can have successful products in both business and consumer markets was clearly very astute.

Like the products or not you have to admire what he has built.

[C.Ricko]

Who needs market research? just tell the public they will need it

[littlesprite]

Sometimes technoligy can be a backward step, many years ago when I started work computers were not something you ever saw or heard about. Wages would be worked out, hand written slips, made up every week, by one little old lady, there was seldom a mistake and if there ever was you could get it sorted immediately.

Then computers came into being, the little old lady became a whole department, wages only got payed monthly into the bank, mistakes became a common thing, and you waited another month for the error to be corrected.

Much of what you did is still and always will be a mystery to me, but RIP Steve.

[Guest DAYTONA-BILL]

Personally i'm not a great fan of the over hyped Apple product range, however you have to admire how he/they engineered a generation of followers that would buy a cow pat if it had an apple logo on it.

While we don`t agree on very much at all Loo, i think you`ve hit the proverbial nail on the head . Call me a "ludite" if you like, but all these things are unnessecary toys, that are upgraded every year to brainwash the mindless that they must get themselves into serious credit card debt just to have one.

[Lucky]

brainwash the mindless....

Whilst I agree with you on most subjects Neil, just sometimes you generalise a little too much !

[wayneakp]

Have a day in my life trying to run a business in this country without the "toys" and see how far you get.!!!

[Guest]

Any premature death is sad and there is no doubt at all that Steve Jobs (and Steve W) had a massive impact on the world of computing, both commercial and consumer. Whether that was through very good products or very high quality marketing and an eye for a trend will be debated for years to come.

Seems odd that nobody remembers him well for Pixar as to my mind that’s where he had the biggest influence on the largest number of people (Toy Story anyone?).

Phil

[goodall_m1]

Any premature death is sad and there is no doubt at all that Steve Jobs (and Steve W) had a massive impact on the world of computing, both commercial and consumer. Whether that was through very good products or very high quality marketing and an eye for a trend will be debated for years to come.

Seems odd that nobody remembers him well for Pixar as to my mind that’s where he had the biggest influence on the largest number of people (Toy Story anyone?).

Phil

If there is anything that he should be remembered for it may well be for the concept of the GUI (Graphical User Interface those that aren't IT nerds).

Apple had the first one, and almost all the interfaces that we use today have developed from their "point and click" and "click, hold and drag" concepts.

With modern machines you may use a finger instead of a mouse, but they are all far easier to use than having to navigate with a keyboard...

Moving from Apple into Digital Films and Pixar was probably a simple move for him, after all Apple had already almost captured the entire Design, Publishing and Image Manipulation market in those days.

The biggest problem with Apple pc's was that more software was being written for the Windows platform than for Apple's, and hence it was harder to get people to use Mac's.

I currently have two obsolete ones gathering dust at home, my first one came with a massive 4K of memory,and I remember having to pay £400 to upgrade it to 16K... (And no it wasn't one of the original Macintosh boxes!)

[littlesprite]

I am amazed at the innovation of some people, only 24 hrs and already it's started.

30 years ago we had Steve Jobs, Johnny Cash and Bob Hope, now we have no jobs, no cash and no hope.

[Guest DAYTONA-BILL]

Have a day in my life trying to run a business in this country without the "toys" and see how far you get.!!!

I totally agree with you on that Wayne, but i`m talking about ordinary members of the public who simply"must have the latest gizmo" who most of the time don`t even use it. Modern technology will always be extremely nessecary in industry and buisness, but to me, it seems as though a lot of the general public just buy it because it`s new. Look at the number of mobile phones that get sold, only to be rplaced by the lates updated version less than 6 months later, even though their current one works perfectly well. I think people should slow down and take a good look at what`s really important in life, and it is`nt the lastes mobile thingy.

[w44nty]

Would we be doing what I am now,without the innovation of people like Steve Jobs,yes I mean sitting in front of a computer comunicating on a forum?

I don't think you!

Tecnology is a very powerful tool,so powerful that one day unfortunately it will destroy the human race,it will happen because the way it is advancing is frightening,just stop and think about how it has come over the last 25years.

As for people having the new must have latest gadgets,why not if they have worked for the money,everyone likes to have the latest what is on the market whatever it might be.

[Guest]

Tim Berners Lee is the one you must be thinking of Waanty. Steve and Steve did an awful lot to make it accessible anytime, anyplace, anywhere but not their invention as such.

Phil

[MY littleboat]

I agree with Phil in that Pixar is easily forgotten - Pixar Showplace is an awesome rendering program and the animations that produced Toy Story and the like are pure magic!

For those who dont know the difference, here is it in a nutshell - whilst microsoft developed products for PC based computers that CISC processors that kept guessing until they hit upon the next sum, apple stayed with RISC or reduced instruction set processing which, although tackled one sum after another (In effect and very basically explained) it was soon realised that things like rendering graphics and video were done so much better on these machines and a few years ago you wouldnt walk into any publishing house or production facility without seeing a mac!

Nowadays its pretty much 50/50 in the professional field as m emory and storage cost have reduced, processors have become faster and more easily 'stackable' (Only recently has the public version - ie not NT or Windows Server versions - supported multi-processor platforms) whereas apple have always developed their OS to support multi processor working, and with the likes of adobe concentrating all of their effort in the past on mac has meant for a long time they had the market edge

However, they were very late into the MP3 player market, what they did though with the early iPods was to develiop a way of delivering the music - encrypted at a cost from the music companies.. the cream of the cake was that they managed to lock UK users out of international sites so we couldnt see that in the US for example they were paying approx 10% of what we were for the same music!

The same goes today, in that every app that is developed for the iphone has to return apple 30% of all profit it generates..

They are a successful company because they have always looked for gaps in the market, and also delivered products (in modern times) that just look way better than the competition!

[Guest DAYTONA-BILL]

Would we be doing what I am now,without the innovation of people like Steve Jobs,yes I mean sitting in front of a computer comunicating on a forum?

I don't think you!

Tecnology is a very powerful tool,so powerful that one day unfortunately it will destroy the human race,it will happen because the way it is advancing is frightening,just stop and think about how it has come over the last 25years.

As for people having the new must have latest gadgets,why not if they have worked for the money,everyone likes to have the latest what is on the market whatever it might be.

I totally aggree with you there Steve, but i will say, our pc is nearly 5 years old, and works fine for our purposes, so there`s no need to buy another one.

I don`t have an i pad, whatever that is, and i`ve never had an i pod, because my 15 year old Panasonic CD walkman still works perfectly well and suits me.

I think your comments regarding technology killing the human race is spot on . I find it quite frightening how many people say how nobody would be able to survive without a computer. One of my colleagues at work refused point blank TO ACCEPT that i could do without a pc, and said that i would`nt be able to do ANYTHING, and actually tried to make me believe you can`t do things such as banking, booking holidays, or simple things like shopping without being on-line. If supposedly sensible thinking people are already believing things like that, then it seems like it`s already begun. Some of us prefer the simpler uncomplicated way of life, and will be able to survive when others will simply fade away and die because they can`t live life without a machine telling them how to live.

[teadaemon]

If there is anything that he should be remembered for it may well be for the concept of the GUI (Graphical User Interface those that aren't IT nerds).

Apple had the first one, and almost all the interfaces that we use today have developed from their "point and click" and "click, hold and drag" concepts.

With modern machines you may use a finger instead of a mouse, but they are all far easier to use than having to navigate with a keyboard...

Moving from Apple into Digital Films and Pixar was probably a simple move for him, after all Apple had already almost captured the entire Design, Publishing and Image Manipulation market in those days.

The biggest problem with Apple pc's was that more software was being written for the Windows platform than for Apple's, and hence it was harder to get people to use Mac's.

I currently have two obsolete ones gathering dust at home, my first one came with a massive 4K of memory,and I remember having to pay £400 to upgrade it to 16K... (And no it wasn't one of the original Macintosh boxes!)

Actually, IIRC Steve jobs himself admitted that he first saw a GUI with a mouse being used on a visit to Xerox's R&D department, he just borrowed the concept and commercialised it (and was lucky that Xerox didn't have the same attitude to intellectual property disputes that Apple has these days).

In my years as a sysadmin, I've worked with hardware and software from pretty much all of the major computer companies, and quite a few of the more minor ones too. Apple kit is ok, but once you take the pretty box away (and quite a lot of the stuff I worked with is from the days when they came in beige boxes like every other computer), it's no better or worse than other decent quality computer equipment, it's just a bit more expensive. I do like OS X, but that's mostly because underneath all the pretty graphics it's UNIX (specifically it's based on NeXTstep, which was based on BSD), which means that geeks like me can administer it using a proper command line interface (harder to learn to use, but much harder to do the wrong thing accidentally, much easier to audit changes, and much easier to automate by writing your own scripts).

Whilst the death of Steve jobs is regrettable, and he's certainly an important person in the history of computing, I do feel that the cult of Apple has raised him on a pedestal somewhat, when really he was just one of many people responsible for inventing and popularising the technology we take for granted today. As an example, this week also saw the death of Dennis Richie - not somebody I expect many people will have heard of, but as part of a team at Bell Labs, he helped to create UNIX, without which it's unlikely that modern computer networks or the Internet would exist in anything like it's current form (even Windows (since Windows 2000) uses a network protocol stack lifted from BSD, one of the early free UNIX implementations).