Steve Jobs Resigns As Apple CEO 1027
An anonymous reader writes "The title says it all, really; Steve Jobs has resigned as the CEO of Apple, and would like to become Chairman of the Board. Reasons are not specified, but his declining health of recent years is a likely candidate. He's named Tim Cook as his successor."
Re:This is a sad day for the tech world (Score:3, Insightful)
Loved his work or hated it, he was big (Score:5, Insightful)
Sincerely,
Apple fans everywhere
The end of an era (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This is a sad day for the tech world (Score:2, Insightful)
Why exactly is the resignation of any CEO, of any company, 'sad' news? I don't wish him ill, but I don't see how this is sad at all. Times change, people change, employees (yes even CEO's) come and go. It's just business.
Re:This is a sad day for the tech world (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's be blunt. Only nerds on tech sites worry about "closeness." They're a tiny niche that wants to keep their nerd playgrounds around. The vast majority simply wants good products that work.
Steve's impact on the world (Score:5, Insightful)
While Xerox PARC did the original GUI environment, and invented little things like the Mouse, Steve's vision with the Mac changed the computer world. It made computer accessible, influencing Windows and other OSs to make their system accessible to the masses.
Apple, Next, Pixar, Mac, iPod, iPhone, iPads.
I believe Steve made the world better.
Re:This is a sad day for the tech world (Score:3, Insightful)
I think it's probably seen as sad in this case because it's assumed that if Jobs has felt the need to resign, it is because his health is deteriorating. Probably terminally.
Enjoy a happy retirement (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is a sad day for the tech world (Score:5, Insightful)
but I don't see how this is sad at all.
The most probable reason for this particular change is that Steve's health is failing; and this announcment is a proxy for "Guys, I'm not going to be ok."
Re:This is a sad day for the tech world (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This is a sad day for the tech world (Score:5, Insightful)
do you really think he'd resign if his health was 100%? The fact that he's stepping down is definitely worrying, it's not likely he's stepping down to go work for another company or doing something else.
And no, I don't know him in person, but I definitely respect him and his accomplishments, and wish him well, and I'm sure a lot of others are feeling the same way.
High standards is the lesson (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm rather saddened by this news. Jobs' attention to detail and intolerance of crap amazes and inspires me.
It's simple, really. We should all have such high standards, perhaps then the world would be full of more exquisite and useful things.
Re:This is a sad day for the tech world (Score:4, Insightful)
As much as Bill Gates may have been a royal thieving bastard, and as much as I loathe most of what Redmond has done over the last twenty years, anybody who says that Bill Gates was less important that Steve Jobs to the computer world is out of their minds. Gates' MS-BASIC became THE interpreted language of the late 1970s and right through the 1980s. Whatever the source of MS-DOS, the fact is that he built a mighty software empire at the same time as Apple was treating its product line like a walled garden. Yes, Gates had significant help from IBM, but the mere fact that the overwhelming majority of personal computers out there are running one of Microsoft's operating systems, and have been doing so since the final bell tolled for the 8-bit world in the late 1980s pretty much indicates that what you wrote is pure nonsense. Steve Jobs has his place in history, no doubt, but Bill Gates' role, particularly for that twenty year period from the mid-70s into the mid-90s is a primary one in the development of modern consumer and business computing.
Re:This is a sad day for the tech world (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is a sad day for the tech world (Score:1, Insightful)
You call it "closing everything off" because you want to keep nerd playgrounds like the PC around indefinitely. He would call it making simple products that mere mortals want to use. The public has spoken, and appliance computing is here to stay.
It's also a bit of an odd opinion to have considering how much Apple has contributed to open source, from WebKit to Clang. The company doesn't make shady moves to be #1 in a market or maintain monopolies. They're more interested in being the perceived "best" in a market and appealing to customers in that way. In other words, comparing them to Microsoft is pretty baseless.
Re:This is a sad day for the tech world (Score:2, Insightful)
I had an eye-opening experience back when i bought my one apple product, an ipod nano (7 years or so ago), the 8GB model.
I had it loaded up with music, and after reinstalling, wanted to get my music back by syncing it with the newly installed itunes.
The result was a wiped ipod, as apple does not want me to own my data. Lession leaned.
Re:Steve's impact on the world (Score:5, Insightful)
It was designer Steve Jobs that focused on the systematic problems of computer usage that changed the world.
What on God's green earth are you talking about? Steve Jobs was not the one who saw a problem with the corporate vision of computing-as-a-utility. Wozniak was the one who aligned with people like Lee Felsenstein and the Homebrew Computer Club, and Wozniak was the one who designed PCs that people wanted. Steve Jobs did not envisioned the GUI interface, the mouse, video games, WYSIWYG, tablets, PDAs, smartphones, or anything else that has made Apple a successful company.
Steve Jobs has two talents: the ability to see what products can be marketed, and the ability to market those products to home computer users. He is not a designer of anything other than good business plans.
Re:This is a sad day for the tech world (Score:5, Insightful)
Steve Jobs is the embodiment of the American Dream, there are scant few individuals on this earth than can attest to the scale of success that he has achieved.
Jobs is arguably the best business leader of our era.
He co-founded the hugely successful Apple out of the proverbial garage, got fired from his own company, went off and started NeXT, bought Pixar from George Lucas and turned it into something big. At the same time, he came back to Apple, made a huge hit with the iMac, then the iPod, then the iPhone, and now the iPad. Now Apple one of the most successful companies around. I'm not sure if any other business leader's accomplishments could beat that story.
What impresses me is, as others have said, he actually cared about the products his company made. He wanted to make a "dent in the universe" and he actually did. He didn't do it by managing to costs or other things that business schools tell people to do, but by putting products and the user experience first.
Re:What happens next? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Then, maybe, just maybe, I could consider buying a Mac. But then again, more factories like Foxconn wouldn't exactly be great."
Right. Because those Foxconn components in your Dell, HP, or Lenovo PC, or Android phone are made by the *not* evil Foxconn. You know, the one in Iowa where everyone makes UAW level wages, gets free health care and plenty of paid time off.....
Re:Slashdot enjoys swallowing Steve Jobs semen (Score:3, Insightful)
I know you're a dumb troll, but Slashdot has actually turned sharply against Apple since Android came out. Basically, the site is opposed to any of Google's direct competitors, even if they once admired them.
Re:This is a sad day for the tech world (Score:4, Insightful)
And all computers *won't* be like the iPad. This is a scenario that is invented whole cloth out of an irrational fear you and many other people here hold. You will always, for the rest of your life, be able to buy a Linux PC, Linux tablet, Linux phone, Linux whatever. Or possibly replace "Linux" with whatever open system replaces it if that happens during your lifetime.
Do you know why that statement is true? That statement is true because people do care about openness and would not be happy if all computers were like the iPad.
Re:Steve's impact on the world (Score:3, Insightful)
>Steve Jobs did not envisioned the GUI interface, the mouse, video games, WYSIWYG, tablets, PDAs, smartphones, or anything else that has made Apple a successful company.
But he made them popular.
Creativity is nothing without execution. PARC had all this neat shit and basically predicted the future of where computing was headed, including tablet computers, but Xerox sat on it.
Henry Ford didn't invent the automobile, but he made them popular. Jobs and Woz both deserve as much credit as Ford.
Anything less makes you an ass.
--
BMO
Re:This is a sad day for the tech world (Score:4, Insightful)
So what you're saying is that millions of people are wrong and should bow to your taste. Sounds like a dictatorship.
It certainly worked for Steve.
We'll miss ya, but thanks for the past and next yr (Score:5, Insightful)
End of an era. I started with an Apple ][+ and am typing this on my iPad 2. These definitely been ups and downs, and I still love the old NeXTStep OS.
On the plus side, it looks like the short term (next 1-2 years) is taken care of.
iPhone5-cross carrier
iPad3
The new paradigm machines due out later this year (not sure what this is besides an A5 ultralight/ultra cheap)
AppleTV becomes a game console.
Live well, Steve. You may have been pompous and arrogant, but you cared about the design.
Re:This is a sad day for the tech world (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not Carly Fiorina coming in and fucking up HP for a few years and leaving - Steve Jobs started the company, worked there ~10 years, left for a few, then came back and was CEO for 14 more. No other CEO on the planet is so closely associated with their company. As a pillar of the tech industry, his input drove the state of the art forward. It is a loss for the tech world when any big name leaves for good. By the way, this website is called Slashdot, and its a place for "News for Nerds," you know, people who generally care about technology.
Re:This is a sad day for the tech world (Score:4, Insightful)
It isn't taste, so much as the mass of people don't really need to do anything particularly special with a computer. Or any other thing really.
You might, and I write might because most people here are complete posers, need your computer to do something particularly taxing or specialized. In the MS-DOS days people mostly needed to correct a paper they wrote without using up all their correction tape, or maintain a basic spreadsheet, or sort a list. No one needed a multi user UNIX machine for that nor did it makes sense to pay for one. MS-DOS and Windows built on top of it was adequate and cheap.
I'm geeky about rifles. ANd having been a USMC 8541 my tastes run toward quality. When I walk into a rifle shop and see stacks of plastic stocked lowest bidder sticks I think about how people have no taste. But in reality some guy who shoots a deer a year at 75 yards has no need for a McMillan handle and would never ask enough of it appreciate the difference.
Re:Tomorrow is another day (Score:4, Insightful)
You're under the assumption that nobody can drive a tech company like Jobs. If that is the case, even a very ill Steve would be better than a fully healthy somebody else. But that may not be good for Steve.
The one thing Steve brought to Apple was the last details that are often missing from products. You may not like the iPhone lockdown or Macs or whatnot, but to ignore where smartphones and tablets are today, you have to admit that AAPL was THE driving force behind those products. THEY got it right, first time, out of the box.
Re:This is a sad day for the tech world (Score:5, Insightful)
Only aircraft engineers care about mechanical safety.
That doesn't mean it's not important.
The average technophobe doesn't worry about openness because they already have it and take it for granted, much like the average airline passenger takes for granted that the plane their flying on wont fall apart. What they dont know, nor want to know is that a lot of work goes on in the background by very dedicated people to ensure that everyone can enjoy the boon of openness or safe flights.
Shove the average person into a world of "closedness" and they'll start caring about it quick smart.
Re:This is a sad day for the tech world (Score:5, Insightful)
But realistically, he took the whole open platforms and devices to really bad direction with the closeness of iOS and maybe upcoming Macs.
Apple shareholders would beg to differ.
What a coincidence! Standard Oil's shareholders said the same thing back in the day....
Color me leery when people start equating "makes lots of money for a limited number of rich people" with "doing the right thing."
Re:This is a sad day for the tech world (Score:5, Insightful)
He mostly set it in design. But realistically, he took the whole open platforms and devices to really bad direction with the closeness of iOS and maybe upcoming Macs. Would you really want that for computer world?
What a silly question.
Open systems need competition from closed systems just as closed systems need competition from open systems.
A complete lack of direction cannot be the only way forward, and lack of diversity is not healthy. You need both.
Re:This is a sad day for the tech world (Score:5, Insightful)
Seeing a problem and warning other just helps keep the consumer aware of the limitation of the device they are purchasing.
" If yes, STFU, you KNEW what you were getting into when you laid down the plastic at the Apple Store or Amazon." Since apple doesn't go out of there way to tell people of their limitations, how do you know he was fully informed?
Limitation? It's a fucking appliance, dude -- you don't buy a dishwasher if you want to do something besides wash dishes, do you? Apple devices are aimed at people that want the functionality, and have zero interest or desire in the mechanism that delivers the functionality. I'm a sysadmin, not a motorcycle geek -- I buy a motorcycle not because it is the most fuel efficient one, or the most mechanically reliable one. I bought a Ducati 1098 because it does what I fucking want it to do -- go insanely fast and look really good in my parking slot at work. I admin linux/windows/solaris/HPUX boxen, but I use an iPhone and an iPad because they do what I want them to do without having to RTFM. Just like my Ducati and my dishwasher.
Re:This is a sad day for the tech world (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm gonna go out on a limb, and say that your mother is in the minority. The vast majority of people don't want to have to deal with Explorer to get their songs on a device.
execution is NOT marketing (Score:4, Insightful)
You must have missed the part where I gave Jobs credit for his marketing talent.
He didn't miss that part. It was simply wrong.
Oh sure Jobs has some marketing talent. But far more than that, he has the ability to EXECUTE a product.
That means taking raw technologies and forming them into something people actually want to buy. It means betting on the right technologies for a long lasting platform, or having the skill to make what you picked work for you (really a mixture of both).
Marketing is the very tiny tip of the iceberg where you try to get through to people what you have actually made. But it doesn't help at all unless people want to buy what you have made. You can't market a bad product from a cold start with no rep, and unless you have built up a good reputation over time with products people have liked using they are not going to trust that your product is what you say it is.
Jobs is also really good at being willing to move on to new frontiers instead of simply milking what they have to death. That is what I think he spent to most time trying to drill into Cook and other Apple execs, hopefully the message has got through.
Re:Steve's impact on the world (Score:3, Insightful)
That's weird, I believe Woz made the world better.
Yes, Woz is an amazing engineer, and Jobs is a sales guy. But Jobs had the vision that Woz lacked. If Jobs hadn't convinced Woz to join him in founding Apple, Woz would have remained just another engineer at HP or wherever. The truth is that everything that Apple has done has been the vision of Jobs (except during the exile years when Apple had no vision). Jobs just needed a good engineer to implement his vision of what personal computing should be. In the beginning, that was Woz. In Apple 2.0, that has been various people, mostly the team he brought with him from NeXT, as well as Jonny Ive who could implement his aesthetic vision for technology.
The hope is that this team that could implement Jobs' vision can have its own vision that is just as visionary.