Be Excellent To Each Other

Other than Jobs leaping around the stage shouting "LOOK I'M NOT DEAD"? Seemed to me like it was a blatant attempt to boost the share price and delay any successor talk.

What the hell do they need to boost the share price for? They're almost the richest company on earth!

Maybe they should give their stuff away, then

Been there - it can change pretty quickly

The technology to enable immortalisation does not come cheap.

Did Jobs not buy MJ's Oxygen chamber then?

Go for 32. 16 is too restrictive for these devices, especially if you start buying a few games or interactive books. I learned this the hard way with my 16 GB iPhone (which is now apps-only).


The sheer number of people I know who are holding off of an iPad due to its lack of cameras suggests not. Also, when every one of your competitors are willy-waving over tech specs, you need to ensure you're keeping pace, even though it was pretty damn clear from the event yesterday that Apple's primary concern remains enabling users to do stuff. The cameras per se were glossed over, in favour of talking about Photo Booth, FaceTime and iMovie.


Yeah, bit fucking weird that. Odd to see a company's CEO on stage to announce an upgrade to its (in many ways) biggest product. Are you related to Jemima Kiss by any chance?

Noted, ta.

What are O2 like for tethering, which I assume will be the same structure for pricing as this new portable hotspot stuff? I won't be lumping for a 3G model, but may want to very occasionally take it to non-WiFi places depending on costs.

Got an iPad 1? Got Smart Cover envy? The Incase Convertible Magazine Jacket may be relevant to your interests:
http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/03/appl ... ne-jacket/

Because if Steve doesn't appear, you get another group of shareholders moaning about who his replacement will be.

Steve appears, stocks go up, shareholders shut up, no bad press.

They should just hire an impersonator to replace Jobs. Nobody would ever foil their cunning plan.

[Phones Alexander Armstrong]

Not really. Plenty of people today have been going on about how he shouldn't have appeared, because it covers up the succession story. That Cook's basically been CEO since Jobs was diagnosed seems to have escaped most of these people, sadly. Also funny how people seem to ignore that it's hardly Jobs alone on stage anyway. During the last two events, we've seen him joined—at the very least—by Cook, Phil Schiller, Jon Ive, Scott Forstall, Randy Ubillos and Xander Soren. Craig Federighi, Bob Mansfield and others on video, too.

And how many have we heard of? Would they get media coverage? I mean outside of the fanboy press.

None of those guys stands a chance while Jobs still insists on appearing at these things. I mean, I don't give a stuff about Microsoft but at least I'd heard of Ballmer.

Yes, you've heard of Ballmer, but how many other MS execs can you name? How many Exxon execs, or Ford execs, or Glaxo-Smithkline ones? Jobs's celebrity is out of all proportion to the influence that any single man can wield over a company with fifty thousand employees.

True, but it's not unheard of. Lee Iacocca was a household name for example.

Who?

o/

He was the Steve Jobs of the US auto industry in the 80s. Chrysler I think.

[vote: Woz]

That Remington guy, who 'bought the company'

Viktor..... something?

Kiam!

Are Bill Gates and Paul Allen enough? No idea if either are still involved in any capacity but I still could have named all 3 when Gates was still in charge. Gates is as widely known as Jobs and anyone in the IT industry knows who Allen is.

So that leaves me scratching my head when it comes to any of the Apple execs or in fact any key people. Who designs these things? The problem is that its made out that Jobs pulls these new devices out of his arse. He doesn't, but they keep on giving that impression.

One of the worlds largest computer companies, of which I own 3 of their products. I could state the names of 3 high level employees (or former employees) of Microsoft, and if we can go historical I could do the same for Sinclair, Amstrad, Commodore, Acorn and Atari (if I can count Tramiel twice).

Says alot. Jobs is Apple as far as the public is concerned, and that needs to change.

You're the only person in the country that can though.

Isn't he the guy that got killed with an axe. In the FACE?

But I am talking *at the time*, when the companies were still current. Clive was often on the news (as witnessed on the Micro Men drama which used archive news footage). In many ways he is the closest to Jobs, but that was because his name was the brand. But there wasn't a cult around him, although the media was interested in his products.

But this is about Apple. Nobody expected to see Jobs at the launch, he's almost overshadowed it by being there and also made it harder for the other execs to get out there and be seen. By being there it turned into the Steve Jobs show.

I once read an interview with Peter Davison that said after he quit Doctor Who he deliberately kept his head down for a few years in terms of any work related to the series as he didn't want to undermine his successor. That wasn't arrogance, it was giving the other guy a chance to establish himself. The new guys at Apple need their chance and it doesn't help to have Jobs popping up.

They're designed by a team led by Jon Ive. He's a major player and quite a well known name within product design.

Stupid sexy Ive.

Is it Jon now, or are you and Craig pals with him?

Hm?

Never seen him referred to as Jon before and now it's appeared twice in one thread.

You're fucking him, aren't you?

Yep. You want in?

I would quite like to, quite literally, 'be' him.

My first thought is what the fuck does he have to do to become president of industrial design...

Well, he has to run a successful campaign then win the election.

Apparently, get head-hunted by Apple while working at the same company my wife's tutor was once at (Tangerine), spend years knocking around various Apple design teams, get spotted by Jobs, and then spend further years making design as minimal as possible.

Amusingly, my wife's tutor's comment, on being asked what Ive's was like at Tangerine: "It was OK, but a bit boring really".

It was more a comment on the fact that he has designed every single successful Apple product in the past 10 years, and is still only vice president of design

I'm fairly certain though that Clive Sinclair was the only big guy at Sinclair that the vast majority of people could name, even at the time. And he had a reputation for making unreliable products - especially with the C5, the guy turned into a bit of a media joke.

It's almost the opposite with Apple - the company was on the verge of bankruptcy before Jobs came back on board in the mid-90s, released the first iMac and totally turned the company around. He's entirely rightly seen as the company's saviour.

Plus, he's not actually dead yet. Maybe Apple don't want to be discussing his successor just yet? He's something of a big deal there, after all.

Also, I strongly recommend the made-for-TV movie 'Pirates Of Silicon Valley' to anyone interested - it's essentially the American version of Micro Men and is about the rise of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. It's actually really pretty decent (though I imagine a fair bit of it is total fiction). Available from most decent torre- online distributors.

Sorry—missed that. Aren't all the vice-presidents at Apple effectively 'guys that report to the board' though? That or at least the Cxx level (i.e. Ive presumably reports to Jobs/Cook).


Quite. The thing is, the media just wants its story. Apple's stated on more than one occasion that it has succession plans in place, but that there's no damn way it'd ever make such things public, because that would open things up to the competition. (See also: Apple's general secrecy about its kit, which has proven to be a much better idea than "Here's something we might be shipping at some point in the next six months or so," followed nine months later by "Oh, it appears we didn't ship it. Oops!")

Unless things at Apple change dramatically for some reason, I suspect Cook's the obvious guy to take over the CEO role, since he's essentially been CEO since Jobs was diagnosed with cancer anyway. If Jobs is healthy enough, he'd remain involved in some kind of 'president' role, but I suspect he'd be purposefully made less visible, to bring through other designers more prominently.

To be fair to the media, Apple has no hesitation whatsoever about using the cult of personality around Jobs whenever it can further its own goals. Complaints about it cutting the other way with speculation about his health is a little rich, even if much of that speculation is highly tasteless.

I don't really buy into that to the same level. He appears on stage, sometimes to crazed fans. He has clout in certain industries. He's seen as a visionary within tech. He pens the odd open letter, but otherwise says little in the press. Frankly, you could apply an awful lot of those things to a ton of CEOs in the tech space. Jobs gets elevated because he's more often than others proven to be right; unless you'd also argue there's a cult of personality at the likes of Microsoft, Google and Facebook et al too. (Maybe there is, I guess, in which case I agree with you. SHOCK TWIST ENDING, etc.)

On that note I was amused when you RTd me yesterday.

Jobs is the only massive-company boss to answer emails to the public though, I'd wager.

Others have done this, although not often. I'm still a little unsure why Jobs does this. Partly, it seems a convenient way to leak basic information that Apple's getting screwed over (such as AirPlay being rubbish), but he's also reportedly pissed off about people making every email public, not least when they're private discussions rather than quickfire responses about a feature.

Some CEO's might respond, the difference with Apple is that every rabid fanboy who gets a response then publishes it like he has just walked down from the mountain like he's Moses after having talked with god.

I'm pretty sure I've seen Martin Eberhard actually posting on forums like a mere mortal.

Not to mention LordSurAlun being mistaken for an impersonator on the Digital Spy forums a few years back:

I'm not entirely surprised by that, having witnessed his twitter output.

http://www.tuaw.com/2011/03/04/notes-on ... -2-launch/

My notes on the iPad 2 launch.

Having never used an iPod, never mind an iPhone or iPad, this (below) statement leads me to ask, how do you tether it to iTunes?

Plug it into a Mac or PC. My TUAW audience would know what I mean (I hope!).