Behind a Steve Jobs Keynote

Shree writes "The Guardian has an article about what it takes to prepare that smooth Steve Jobs-style keynote. When Steve launches iPhoto and says 'here we have 5000 or so photos', he actually means here we have 5000 or so carefully picked photos ... " From the article: "Objectively, Apple Computer is a mid-sized company with a tiny share of its primary market. Apple Macintoshes are only rarely seen in corporate environments, and most software companies don't even offer Apple-compatible versions of their products. To put it another way, Apple is just bit larger than Cadbury-Schweppes and about the same size as Nike or Marks and Spencer in terms of annual sales. Such comparisons come up short in trying to describe Apple's place in the world of business, because they leave out a key factor: Steve Jobs."

Re:Not surprising. That's what Jobs does.

[pHatidic]

Actually, the Rio 500 was what put the mp3 player on the map. 279 dollars for 20 or 22 low quality songs.

Re:and what a job he does...

[Saint37]

The best thing Apple can do for their stock price in my opinion is to completely open up their architecture by switching completely to x86. This will only add their reputation of simple elegant designs.

http://www.stockmarketgarden.com/ [stockmarketgarden.com]

a mac-head by any other name....

[thatshortkid]

funny how the guy that wrote the very pro-steve and pro-apple piece is named mike evangelist.

can't make this stuff up......

Steve Jobs spoke unto me

[Dystopian Rebel]

And my myopia, plantar fascitis, and unibrow were cured!

Steve Jobs is...

[Billosaur]

...the greatest carnival barker ever. "Step right up and see the iPod... no looking behind the curtain... Step right up, get your first look at the new Intel Macintosh... No sir, no touching the merchandise unless you plan to buy..."

Re:Not surprising. That's what Jobs does.

[pHatidic]

I got mine for free from pointclick.com (click banners to get money during .com boom). My friends and I clicked on the banner ads for 72 hours straight right after it launched. When we had to be in school we'd go to the library and start opening so many new windows in IE that the whole OS would crash. We had one person assigned to crashing all the school computers, and another person assigned to rebooting them and getting them set up again. We just kept going in a big circle around the library for like three days until we all got life bans. I feel like I personally put that website out of business.

Re:Not surprising. That's what Jobs does.

[garcia]

No really, there a ton of sex tapes going around the internet - that's not enough to make someone famous.

That explains everything! Bill Gates posed in Teen Beat magazine. No wonder he's so famous!

Re:Great Story

[Slashcrap]

This story has been on digg TWICE already. /.'s a little slow on the uptake here.

Yes it has hasn't it? And I am going to demonstrate the reason why most of us don't give a shit for your Digg advocacy by reposting some of the intelligent and insightful comments from the discussion :

Nick says, "lets not forget, He is a sociel engineing king, he knows how to say anything and wont say it unless he knows it will stick"

Matthew says, "I posted this yesterday: http://digg.com/apple/Behind_the_magic_curtain [digg.com]"

Dickyducky says, "God!"

Fudgebrown says, ":-("

The rest of them are variation on Digg or No Digg. And the thing is I'm not even trying to make the users look retarded. Those were pretty much the best comments.

So yeah, Digg may well have posted this before. But how long did you spend reading the discussion? I am assuming it wasn't long because personally spending more than 5 minutes on Digg makes me want to exterminate the entire human race.

Re:Title and summary

[vertinox]

Title and summary are completely different.

They were trying to think different.

Re:Great Story

[Thalagyrt]

I also find it amusing how here on Slashdot, everyone complains when there's a dupe, but on Digg as far as I can tell everyone seems to love seeing the same article twice...

Re:At least he's visible

[Jearil]

At least we know a CEO that actually does something (in the eyes of the public) that justifies a high salary.

You bet your ass he works hard for that $1 a year salary [wikipedia.org].

Peons like us can only dream of that sort of thing :)

Re:Not surprising. That's what Jobs does.

[charlieOReilly]

Man, this is horrible, but I'm automatically going to trust the guy with the three digit id.

Re:Really

[revscat]

In the end, I don't know what stranglehold or blackmail Steve Jobs has against other Apple execs, but if the rest of them were smart, they would drop Steve Jobs like a lead balloon. The only problem is, Apple execs have never shown one drop of intelligence in their entire history of the company.

Oh my fucking god, you have GOT to be joking. Apple is having (a) record growth (b) record profits and (c) a stock price that keeps going up and up and up. What in the holy hell are you talking about? They are respected and make excellent products that consumers love and have captured a large amount of mindshare. The executives would be completely RETARDED to get rid of Jobs. He's an excellent CEO. Much better than, I think, you are.

Put down the crack pipe, baby. Or maybe it's a anti-Jobs pipe? Whatevah, you need to think about quitting. :)

centimillionaire?

[aaronrp]

I think the parent means "hectomillionaire," as being a centimillionaire isn't all that exciting.

See the list of SI prefixes here. [wikipedia.org]

Re: only a 2.3% market share

[BlueDjinn]

"I'd guess they are within a few percentage points of being 4th."

Again, you're technically correct (4th place is Acer, with 4.7% vs. Apple's 2.3%), but in this case "a few percentage points" actually means that Apple would have to double their sales in order to make up that difference. I'm a major Mac advocate, and Apple is certainly kicking ass lately, but their actual market share is only just now starting to rise from it's all-time low (which was actually 2004, believe it or not). Again, however, market share isn't nearly as important as profitability.

"So when claims about top-ten PC shipments are made by the media and research firms, Apple should be in the top-ten. They are not because they specifically exclude Apple."

And again, it depends on what you're measuring. If you include Macs as "PCs", a top ten list should definitely include Apple. If you're distinguishing "Macs" from "PCs" (which most people do, even though they shouldn't in this context), then of course Apple wouldn't be included.

Re:Not surprising. That's what Jobs does.

[Ohreally_factor]

I think it's the Dewey Decimal number of the Beast.

Re:Not surprising. That's what Jobs does.

[Andrew Tanenbaum]

Bill G lacks flair? Haven't you seen his DOOM [google.com] video?

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