RIP Steve Jobs.

[R K]

Really? PC? Jobs and Woz. Smartphone popularity? Jobs. Tablet PC popularity? Jobs.



Yep overblown. No one in the last 50 years has done more to change the world than Jobs and that comes from an Apple product hater.



Think of it this way, the product you are using to type that was influenced heavily by Steve Jobs. But yeah overblown

A tiny company called Microsoft allowed Apple to exist. When being sued as a monopoly they conveneintly dumped serious money into Apple to ensure they stayed around.



Steve Jobs was an inovator no doubt, but definitely not the only one and would be pressed to say the most prestegious.

 

[the canadian dream]

Neither Apple or Microsoft would exist without those who have worked their asses off and risking their lives mining out the natural resources needed to make those products operate and work. Some random people who we will never know their names of made both Steve Jobs and people like him who they are and were.



Sorry I had to go there. It's the Marxist in me.

 

[R K]

Neither Apple or Microsoft would exist without those who have worked their asses off and risking their lives mining out the natural resources needed to make those products operate and work. Some random people who we will never know their names of made both Steve Jobs and people like him who they are and were.



Sorry I had to go there. It's the Marxist in me.

Well they certainly werent from Vancouver. Maybe Montreal, na.

 

[supraman]

Well they certainly werent from Vancouver. Maybe Montreal, na.

good hard working boys from Ontario.

 

[supraman]

A tiny company called Microsoft allowed Apple to exist. When being sued as a monopoly they conveneintly dumped serious money into Apple to ensure they stayed around.



Steve Jobs was an inovator no doubt, but definitely not the only one and would be pressed to say the most prestegious.

No PC, no big microsoft company.

 

[Variable]

For something as big and world changing as this current age of computing, it's never as simple as coming down to one man the way that some want to make it out to be with Steve Jobs. There are always layers and complexities to it.

 

[BiscuitintheBasket]

A tiny company called Microsoft allowed Apple to exist. When being sued as a monopoly they conveneintly dumped serious money into Apple to ensure they stayed around.



Steve Jobs was an inovator no doubt, but definitely not the only one and would be pressed to say the most prestegious.

This I disagree with. Apple was pulling in $500M to near $1B in the 90's. They just did not grow with the rest of the tech boom, so they were labeled as a dead company. However, much of Microsoft's "get out of jail" money did lead the development money for the "i" products and it also gave Microsoft some of the patents\licenses for GUI things that Apple owned (along with the quicktime code that magically is in silverlight).

 

[BiscuitintheBasket]

For something as big and world changing as this current age of computing, it's never as simple as coming down to one man the way that some want to make it out to be with Steve Jobs. There are always layers and complexities to it.

How many tech companies can you name that have made\drove multiple (more that 5) major and permanent changes to the industry in the last 30 years and everyone follows?



Only a handful come to my mind: IBM, Apple, Microsoft in that order. I know I have listed much of what Apple has done over the years, and could go on.

 

[winos5]

His wiki page is pretty interesting. Don't know how accurate it is but it makes me want to read his autobiography now. Epitomises the "American Dream".

 

[R K]

This I disagree with. Apple was pulling in $500M to near $1B in the 90's. They just did not grow with the rest of the tech boom, so they were labeled as a dead company. However, much of Microsoft's "get out of jail" money did lead the development money for the "i" products and it also gave Microsoft some of the patents\licenses for GUI things that Apple owned (along with the quicktime code that magically is in silverlight).

They were fading fast. Part of the Jobs exodus. Without MS they would have continued to fade. It also allowed Apple to get a little more compatability, ever so slightly. The reason they did not grow was purely due to compatability IMO.



Apple had a fringe market at the time. Mostly revolving around graphic design. The vision was not what it could have been. Which is the main reason you see very little Apple if ANY in most network infrastructure.

 

[mikita's helmet]

Without MS they would have continued to fade.

That and LSD.



Jobs on Gates:



"I wish him the best, I really do. I just think he and Microsoft are a bit narrow. He'd be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger."



http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs





http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/226888/20111007/steve-jobs-death-2011-ashram-counterculture-apple-ii-seven-things-you-didn-t-know-about-stevejobs-ar.htm

 

[Variable]

How many tech companies can you name that have made\drove multiple (more that 5) major and permanent changes to the industry in the last 30 years and everyone follows?



Only a handful come to my mind: IBM, Apple, Microsoft in that order. I know I have listed much of what Apple has done over the years, and could go on.

Those changes you might list of what Apple has done don't come without other people's work. I mean, for example, Microsoft became the first big software company, it paved the way for just about every other software company, proving it could stand on it's own with just software. Because of their focus on that, they made computers 1000x more accessible to the vast majority of "regular" people and more importantly, most importantly actually, it made it a lot more accessible to developers with their operating system. In turn, it gave rise to countless other software companies after seeing the example set with Microsoft, that it could be done and it could be sustained. That's where it began to take off.



All of that happened from building on existing ideas, building on what others had achieved before them. I'm not doubting that Jobs didn't have a vision of the future of computers, but the way people are attributing most if not all of it's rampant success to that one person, yeah overblown is exactly the right word for it, because it's not exclusive to this topic. It is all enveloping, everything. One way or another, just about everything is developed serially. TCD is completely right in his post.

 

[supraman]

Those changes you might list of what Apple has done don't come without other people's work. I mean, for example, Microsoft became the first big software company, it paved the way for just about every other software company, proving it could stand on it's own with just software. Because of their focus on that, they made computers 1000x more accessible to the vast majority of "regular" people and more importantly, most importantly actually, it made it a lot more accessible to developers with their operating system. In turn, it gave rise to countless other software companies after seeing the example set with Microsoft, that it could be done and it could be sustained. That's where it began to take off.



All of that happened from building on existing ideas, building on what others had achieved before them. I'm not doubting that Jobs didn't have a vision of the future of computers, but the way people are attributing most if not all of it's rampant success to that one person, yeah overblown is exactly the right word for it, because it's not exclusive to this topic. It is all enveloping, everything. One way or another, just about everything is developed serially. TCD is completely right in his post.

Need hardware before software.

 

[BiscuitintheBasket]

They were fading fast. Part of the Jobs exodus. Without MS they would have continued to fade. It also allowed Apple to get a little more compatability, ever so slightly. The reason they did not grow was purely due to compatability IMO.



Apple had a fringe market at the time. Mostly revolving around graphic design. The vision was not what it could have been. Which is the main reason you see very little Apple if ANY in most network infrastructure.

It was not until after Windows 95 was released that WinTel computers were in more homes than Apples. Education had more Apples than WinTels through most of the 90's, which was Apple's largest segment. The niche of video editing and such was just a WinTel spin, just as their "hardware integrated with the software be bad" arguments (oddly this is what Microsoft ultimately did to kill .dll hell and a high amount of incompatible devices with each release). Not growing in the homes, and definitely never making a business device meant they were never going to keep with the growth of the PC industry. Yet still they pulled in $500M - $1B annually throughout the 90's. Not a dying or fading company, just did not grow with a market that grew very fast. Easy for investors to think they are doomed.

 

[phranchk]

Those changes you might list of what Apple has done don't come without other people's work. I mean, for example, Microsoft became the first big software company, it paved the way for just about every other software company, proving it could stand on it's own with just software. Because of their focus on that, they made computers 1000x more accessible to the vast majority of "regular" people and more importantly, most importantly actually, it made it a lot more accessible to developers with their operating system. In turn, it gave rise to countless other software companies after seeing the example set with Microsoft, that it could be done and it could be sustained. That's where it began to take off.



All of that happened from building on existing ideas, building on what others had achieved before them. I'm not doubting that Jobs didn't have a vision of the future of computers, but the way people are attributing most if not all of it's rampant success to that one person, yeah overblown is exactly the right word for it, because it's not exclusive to this topic. It is all enveloping, everything. One way or another, just about everything is developed serially. TCD is completely right in his post.

Everything that's ever been invented was built on existing ideas. You need existing ideas to create new ones. Jobs genius was his ability to push his his employees past what they thought was possible. Where other CEOs would have told his workers that this device is good enough Jobs said no, there's still room for improvement. We can still make it smaller and better.

 

[BiscuitintheBasket]

Those changes you might list of what Apple has done don't come without other people's work. I mean, for example, Microsoft became the first big software company, it paved the way for just about every other software company, proving it could stand on it's own with just software. Because of their focus on that, they made computers 1000x more accessible to the vast majority of "regular" people and more importantly, most importantly actually, it made it a lot more accessible to developers with their operating system. In turn, it gave rise to countless other software companies after seeing the example set with Microsoft, that it could be done and it could be sustained. That's where it began to take off.



All of that happened from building on existing ideas, building on what others had achieved before them. I'm not doubting that Jobs didn't have a vision of the future of computers, but the way people are attributing most if not all of it's rampant success to that one person, yeah overblown is exactly the right word for it, because it's not exclusive to this topic. It is all enveloping, everything. One way or another, just about everything is developed serially. TCD is completely right in his post.

Slippery slope as anything that anyone has thought of can be traced back to the first splitting of a cell. There is a thing called "flash of genius", where someone takes something existing and reconfigures\assembles it into something conceptually different or functional. Those with the "flash of genius" get the credit.



There were many "software" companies much bigger than Microsoft before they became prominent. IBM, DEC, Adobe, Visicalc (hell they were pulling in a ton more than Microsoft did in the early 80's, who knew a spreadsheet was going to be the killer app for the IBM PC, too bad the developer never realized what he had).



Speaking of which, Microsoft only exists in the capacity it is know as today because IBM (a rich dad with connections, and a certain Warren Buffet has a major hand as well), went to Microsoft for compilers (which is what they were doing at the time). IBM did not want to be the sole provider of the PC market, just make money off of each PC sold, just as it does today.



IBM had the business market, could easily get into the , and made a cheaper computer. Some say they initially took a loss on all of the IBM PC's sold through 1988 just to get the market share. Let's say you are looking for a new computer, your work has an IBM PC, the stores you go to are dominated by IBM PC's, and the IBM PC is the cheapest option, what do you choose? That was 1/2 of the genius of IBM's plan. The other was to own patents on just about all of the components along with the foundries to make the components.



To say that Microsoft made anything easy, accessible, and compatible through the 80's and 90's is laughable. Remember how IBM got control of the market, Microsoft did similar by underselling to the PC manufactures. There were other DOS makers in the 80's and early 90's. And other GUI's that ran on DOS and on the IBM PC's and would run the same software. Also keep in mind that Microsoft fucked over IBM with the the whole OS/2 debacle (funny how the last of that code has finally left Windows...guess their punishment for that is up).

 

[R K]

It was not until after Windows 95 was released that WinTel computers were in more homes than Apples. Education had more Apples than WinTels through most of the 90's, which was Apple's largest segment. The niche of video editing and such was just a WinTel spin, just as their "hardware integrated with the software be bad" arguments (oddly this is what Microsoft ultimately did to kill .dll hell and a high amount of incompatible devices with each release). Not growing in the homes, and definitely never making a business device meant they were never going to keep with the growth of the PC industry. Yet still they pulled in $500M - $1B annually throughout the 90's. Not a dying or fading company, just did not grow with a market that grew very fast. Easy for investors to think they are doomed.

I somewhat disagree on your time frame. I was selling quadruple the amount of PC's than Apple well before the release of W95. Packard Bell, AST,IBM, soon Compaq, far out matched the Apple Brand in demand. As for W95 the anticipation was unmatched amongst ANYTHING previously released from ANY MFR. There were back orders over a year before the release date. We had over a million copies in stock and ready to fly three months before the release.



Now many colleges, which I mentioned "education and Apples NITCH", through out the country were using the Apple 2SE because as I said it DOMINATED the graphic design, publication industry(NITCH). After that Apple really began to fade compared to the MS OS development that was to follow. Topped with Him leaving the Company and serious compatability issues with the other side of the arena.



Now as for network implementation Apple has never even been in the conversations. In modern times like today, not even option. How many Apple Blades are you running. You aren't. Pre early 90's it was the AS400 and other AS/IBM MFR'd main frame systems.



In 1992 we took possession of the largest AS400 designed to date. It was a prototype. In 1991 I got my first PC. IT was a Packard Bell 486 DX. I think 32kb of memory, I'd have to check it's still in the garage. 1990 and beyond was the start of the end of Apple in most arenas other than graphic design, and media publication-design.



Soon they were compatible with almost nothing as far as the most widely used software developed for the PC Side. Microsoft, while being sued as a Monopoly dumped MILLIONS into the company. One because they were being sued as a Monopoly. That some what opened the door for some compatability.



Apple will always have its "nitch" of users. But it was ran by and almost burried by the competition, mainly due to the development of software from the giant. Amperpage only went so far.. LOL

 

[TSD]

I somewhat disagree on your time frame. I was selling quadruple the amount of PC's than Apple well before the release of W95. Packard Bell, AST,IBM, soon Compaq, far out matched the Apple Brand in demand. As for W95 the anticipation was unmatched amongst ANYTHING previously released from ANY MFR. There were back orders over a year before the release date. We had over a million copies in stock and ready to fly three months before the release.



Now many colleges, which I mentioned "education and Apples NITCH", through out the country were using the Apple 2SE because as I said it DOMINATED the graphic design, publication industry(NITCH). After that Apple really began to fade compared to the MS OS development that was to follow. Topped with Him leaving the Company and serious compatability issues with the other side of the arena.



Now as for network implementation Apple has never even been in the conversations. In modern times like today, not even option. How many Apple Blades are you running. You aren't. Pre early 90's it was the AS400 and other AS/IBM MFR'd main frame systems.



In 1992 we took possession of the largest AS400 designed to date. It was a prototype. In 1991 I got my first PC. IT was a Packard Bell 486 DX. I think 32kb of memory, I'd have to check it's still in the garage. 1990 and beyond was the start of the end of Apple in most arenas other than graphic design, and media publication-design.



Soon they were compatible with almost nothing as far as the most widely used software developed for the PC Side. Microsoft, while being sued as a Monopoly dumped MILLIONS into the company. One because they were being sued as a Monopoly. That some what opened the door for some compatability.



Apple will always have its "nitch" of users. But it was ran by and almost burried by the competition, mainly due to the development of software from the giant. Amperpage only went so far.. LOL

What they did that was intelligent was to make the move of "gadgets" being their flagship products.



The thing that is a crime to me is apple has basically stated they arent in the "low end market" thats why their computers cost more, but that is complete bullshit.



Take any mac any day of the week and put it up against a pc at the same price point and the pcs hardware specs will blow it out of the universe.



When i built my current PC in 09, it was 800 dollars. (If I needed a keyboard, mouse, Monitor, OS you could probably bump it to 1000-1100, but still.



My 3 year old system is comparable and even better in some categories than a brand new $2000 iMac.



I just put together a config at a online boutique for 1200 bucks including keyboard mouse monitor that ass rapes the 2000 dollar imac and doesnt have the common decency to give it a reach around.

 

[phranchk]

I agree about the hardware side of things costing way too much at Apple. Just look iPhone and iPad prices for a jump from 8gb to 16gb it's $100. From 16gb to 32gb is another $100. Flash memory is dirt cheap these days. No reason it should cost that much.

One area that Apple has Microsoft beat is operating system upgrades. They come on a regular basis and they're cheap.

 

[TSD]

I agree about the hardware side of things costing way too much at Apple. Just look iPhone and iPad prices for a jump from 8gb to 16gb it's $100. From 16gb to 32gb is another $100. Flash memory is dirt cheap these days. No reason it should cost that much.

One area that Apple has Microsoft beat is operating system upgrades. They come on a regular basis and they're cheap.

I can agree there. But MS has gotten better, Win 7 home premium full brand new you can find ranging from $80-100 dollars online. As recent as vista the "upgrade" version was $150 bucks and the full version of home premium was nearly $300.



I belong to the MSDN so I get it all free

. (Through work we have an agreement with microsoft, we can get all MS products for free as developers because they want us to use them and recommend them to clients).