So Who's Running Apple Now? 399
An anonymous reader writes "With Steve Jobs stepping down from heading Apple for at least six months who's running the company that he resurrected? This article names the three people who will try to keep things running. But you have to wonder whether they'll have the charisma needed to keep Apple cool..."
Um...Tim Cook, anyone? (Score:5, Informative)
Reader Bastian227 adds a link to this letter from Steve Jobs on Apple's website, which also says that Tim Cook will be responsible for daily operations, though Jobs will remain involved with major strategic decisions.
Less than 24 hours ago on Slashdot, emphasis mine.
Hello, are you stupid, people?
Dan Aris
Re:Did I miss the news? (Score:3, Informative)
Well, Steve named Tim Cook as his acting replacement until he comes back in June, so that would probably be a good place to start looking.
And it's not like Jobs is the only Apple enthusiast at the company.
Re:It's not charisma nor vision (Score:5, Informative)
Your drag-and-drop explanation makes no sense. Many other music players have drag-and-drop functionality.
And they were markedly slower to access the music and playlists on them, especially back when the first ipod launched. No other player had 5+ GB and was anywhere near as fast to access the music.
And... meta data...?! Now THAT "feature" is truly silly. Last play date?!
Jokes on you. That is one of the best features of the ipod.
The way my ipod is set up... 4 and 5 "star" music is always loaded. While 2 and 3 star music is rotated out automatically every time I sync, and replaced with a new selection of 2 and 3 star music. It does this by checking last play date... stuff that was listened to recently is rotated out, and replaced with stuff from my library that hasn't been.
I also have a skip count playlist that tracks songs with high skip counts that are in the rotation... which I check periodically to re-rate the music... if I start skipping a track everytime it comes on, i probably don't want it to be played as much, and I'll either pull it out of rotation or downgrade its rating, or both.
This allows me to have a few 300 track playlists that contain all my favorite stuff along with a selection of other tracks I like. Everytime I dock it the selection updates automatically; my faves stay, while the selection changes.
If I'd tried to put everything i liked on the pod, it would over fill it; I only have an 8GB touch, after all. And if I got a bigger ipod, then I'd just never hear my favorites, because I have maybe 100 songs in my favorites list, and around 8,000 in rotation. If they were in one big list, I'd hear a favorite 1 out of 80 give or take.
The way I've got it set up I hear a favorite track around 1 out of 3. And I never really know what the other 2 will be, beyond they'll be something in the rotation that I haven't heard for a while.
For me, going back to 'drag and drop' would be a HUGE STEP BACKWARDS. Having to manually managing one's playlists is for chumps.
A final advantage of the ipods method, is that it it is more efficient and reliable. If i have 10 playlists with a lot of overlap, I either have to have the song copied 10 ten times with drag and drop, or spend a lot of effort making sure that all the songs on my playlists are actually on the device. That's a hassle I don't need.
Re:Did I miss the news? (Score:1, Informative)
A hard drive with an accelerometer? Please. My (not new) HP came with one, and you can buy off the shelf Seagate and other brand hard drives with this built in. This is not an Apple innovation.
Apple does not innovate, I do not see anywhere where they have actually made any innovation in their technology. Power PC? Joint research with IBM, chips not made by apple. Multitouch? Not new, not Apple. MP3 player? Not new, not Apple. Nothing else stands out, they use the same damn off the shelf parts as every other PC manufacturer, they have literally always done this, and their OS is kind of an overrated piece of software (one mans opinion). That leaves us with: The Magsafe connector and Firewire. Magsafe is good I admit, a very clever idea but one that a first year design student might have come up with, ie we are not talking about advanced tech here. Its a magnet. Firewire is just not so much, no matter how much the fans rave about it, it is basically just USB but a bit faster and nothing will connect to it.
But now in defense of Apple 'iInnovation(TM)' I expect comments along the lines of: "its not the parts but the sum" or "the whole user experience is innovative" and other, amorphous and content free claims. There is no innovation here, move along people or just admit that macs are shiny, so very shiny and desirable. Thats it.
Shiny and desirable != innovation