He was the best thief of all.

http://apple.com

C

-Josh

Luckily, he doesn't either.

I did notice a slight apprehension in those on-stage when watching the iPhone 4S event video, but that might not necessarily be attributable to Steve dying on Monday or Tuesday.

EDIT: Ah, it seems a statement from his family said "today", meaning today.

very nice. I like.

thanks steve.(jobs!)

Lion is stunning.

I have a Mac Mini I bought from the Apple store in March of this year but didn't want to upgrade from Snow Leopard so seeing Lion for the first time was inspiring. I also had an 27" iMac in the office back when I was up north in hell, I mean Canada. Macs have come a long way since then.

I hope I can demand perfection without worrying about timelines, budgets or business plans one day too. Only somebody who is truly a pirate can laugh off business people like Steve did, even when he was fired from Apple.

Steve showed that success isn't about meeting quotas or coming in under budget, or being a good MBA. It's about disregarding the business side of things and focusing on products and services regardless of the consequences.

It was only fitting that his company should have the largest market cap of all, and he went out at the top.

2 hours ago, Ian2 wrote

Just wanted to convey my personal sadness at this news and extend my sympathies to the many people that were touched by his life.

+1. Oh, and JoshRoss, shame on you, really, you made me spill my coffee all over my keyboard.

I never bought into the Apple 'culture', but I could always see that Steve Jobs' influence spread further than just Apple in ways that we all benefited from.

A shorter life that hoped for, but a life well lived.

Herbie

3 hours ago, ComeOnBeer wrote

My Macbook Pro came today and it's simply the fastest most awesome laptop I've ever had.

Lion is stunning.

Yup, a little flakey in places, but overall an excellent piece of work. Over the past few weeks I have become a Trackpad addict. Install BetterTouchTool on your MBP; it's brilliant.

Herbie

No matter what you think of his products, his management or his company, you have to hand it to him, he remains one of the most influential pioneers in modern computing.

His legacy is a multi-billion dollar company - the most valued US technology giant for several months now - and one that pervades society with their products. His company has been one that took ordinary items and made them into fashion icons. Microsoft might have more desktop-share, but Apple computers were the first to say "computers shouldn't just be functional, you should enjoy looking at and using them".

He completely reinvented the walkman with the ipod, making it easier and nicer to use, and although other companies got there before, Apple was the company that made pay-to-download tracks work, making the ipod not only the best digital music device on the market, but also the one with the biggest selection of tracks. It really deserved to beat the competition and it brought Apple back to the fore of technology.

Steve Jobs also completely reinvented the mobile phone with the iphone - previously they were for making calls - now they are for watching TV, browsing the web, sending emails and playing games. Again there were forerunners, but nothing as integrated and complete as the IPhone, and the business model of the AppStore again something that Jobs invented and has made the company billions.

Apple are still at the fore - the IPad is the one of the most expensive fondle-slabs on the market, and in cost per hardware it's not that great compared with some of its competitors, but it's outselling all of the rest of the market four-to-one because Apple was there first, they have the biggest selection of Apps and it's brand image is solid.

Jobs' influence goes well beyond Apple. The way most smartphones on the market work is based on the IPhone. All MP3 players look to the IPod as their point-of-reference and even the design of Windows8 is largely informed by the idea that people might have tablets in future - a market almost entirely invented by Jobs, and nobody can doubt that the Android AppStore, the XBox store, the PlayStation3 store and the Windows8 AppStore aren't basically attempts to emulate the massive business success of the IPhone's AppStore.

Ultimately it's a sad thing that Jobs is gone because it means that the world has lost one of its chief desktop consumer electronics innovators - someone whose reputation stands next to Alan Turing and Charles Babbage as a man in the driving seat and setting the direction of the modern computer revolution.

Also, he did not invent many of the things he get's credit for, he perfected them. Where his competitors had products that scored 6 out of 10, Apple's products always scored 10 out of 10.

That to me is his big achievement, taking the consumer seriously and putting the consumer central in his strategy. Coming up with new ideas using existing technology. Hell, they created a whole lifestyle around their products. This sort of focus is what I miss in almost any other company. I hope they keep the innovation up and stop with these rediculous lawsuits.

RIP Steve. 

As long as Apple maintains the "we don't ship crappy products" rule that Steve imposed when he returned then no harm will come to the company - but Tim Cook will need to work on being more distinctive. Steve was instantly recognisable: a distinctive voice and wardrobe, whereas everyone else (Cook, Johnson, Mansfield, etc) all look the same: greying-haired people in blue suit shirts and slacks. Unless you already know them well you couldn't tell once set of vocal chords from the other (except Jony Ive, of course).

Tim Cook as the replacement CEO was a good call, but he should have made Ive the replacement company spokesperson - he is more instantly recognisable (though I appreciate Ive prefers to stay out of the limelight).

There are all but a handful of people that change the rules of a Game, and he will always contend for the top seat.

1 day ago, Charles wrote

His was the art of making computing a human experience.

C

There you have it. When he is remembered as an inventor, I feel people get it wrong. What he did was just as important. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, you can't have one without the other, as much as fanboys from both sides like to deny it.

Come to think of it, he might have been an inventor, in this case of the human experience of computers. As I said: just as important as the invention of computers and the invention of computers in the home.

9 hours ago, elmer wrote

I've heard it said before, and I tend to agree... Jobs was not an "inventor" comparable to those such as Edison, but he was a product/market visionary and is reasonably comparable to Howard Hughes.

That's fair enough. His talent was having a clear long-term vision for what people wanted before they knew they wanted it, then to drive and inspire others to deliver that vision.

And speaking of long term, the Times (I think) said that Jobs and his team still have about four years worth of product releases to carry that vision forward.

A huge loss and, as Bass said, very saddening.

This website just hates mobile. I tried to paste a url 5 times in android, and it never works. There is some mobile hating javascript that disables the box when it loads on page init.

I took these pictures a few minutes ago on my way home from the beach because you know, I write all my code on the sand on my Apple Macbook Pro now and stuff. My office is the beach now. As most of you know I do stuff simply because I can.

So these are from the Santa Monica Apple store about 30 minutes ago.

-Josh

What are these people trying to say? What does that tell us about them?

I could understand if you wrote a letter to the family, about how he affected your life, because previously you owned another type of computer, phone or mp3 player and that you feel very sorry for their loss.

But flowers at the Apple Store? It's a store, you buy stuff there! It almost feels like the Apple Store is considered somekind of place of worship or something.

Seems like they forget that Steve is a person first and head of a company second.

Just confuses the hell out of me.

Are those half-eaten apples?

Been there once, I felt out of place, old, could not operate the products, I am not a hipster..