Entertainment For Lively Minds
Odd That This Story Hasn't Been Posted Yet...
Posted by Paolo Meccano on 25 October 2011 - 4:53pm.
"I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's $40bn in the bank, to right this wrong," Jobs told Isaacson. "I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this."
Even for the head of an organisation with a history of control-freakery such as Apple, this statement is shockingly Bond-villainesque in its levels of megalomania and paranoia...
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Jobs had a history of 'grudge cases'
Remember the endless 'look & feel' case against Microsoft? As Gates said at the time,"We both have a rich neighbor named Xerox, and you broke in to steal the TV set, and you found out I'd been there first, and you said. "Hey that's no fair! I wanted to steal the TV set" :-)
As an aside, the Isaacson book appeared on my iPad, as if by magic, yesterday morning and I'm chugging through it now. A little bit like the Keef book, there's no new stories in it (so far) but it's nice to hear the old myths and legends from the horses mouth.
Steve Jobs
The Morrissey of IT.
I reckon it's very understandable..
to see how Jobs may have been a little concerned at Android stealing so much of Apples R&D, and developing a product so near to the iphone. Because this time, to use Jobs phrase, "we patented the hell out of it". Their ill-considered and somewhat naive past when it came to protecting their ideas, was hopefully behind them.
Patents
I just read that Apple has been granted a patent for the slide to unlock feature. First seen on a windows based phone a few years before the iphone was introduced.
Patents II
The US patent system with regards to software is a complete, absolute mess. This is just as likely to be an attempt from Apple to protect themselves from the innumerable cowboys who scoop up patents and sue anyone offering a product that might possibly infringe as it is an attempt to claim the technology as their own.
Samsung
I have not bothered to learn the details, but all the lawsuits to stop Samsung seem to indicate that Apple really want to stop anyone offering competing products.
Look. Apple and Jobs
are / were ruthless. End of. There's no such thing as fight fair, as jobs learned when he was hoofed out of his own company in the 80s. I suspect that his reach will continue to extend from beyond the grave for some time to come.
According to
this article, the next iPhone, presumably the iPhone 5 rather than 4S, was Jobs's last 'full-immersion' project.
As you say, his influence will be felt for quite some time (at least a couple of years?), thereby deferring any 'terminal decline of Apple' stories for now...
Apple Fanatics
I find it rather amusing that every Apple fanatic I know is very left of centre. A company founded and dominated by as ruthless a capitalist as there's ever been.
Data point...
Macintosh fanboi here, used nothing else since 1985, slightly right of centre.
Exceptions to the rule of course.
I just find it ironic that so many of the lefties of my acquaintance have for years viewed Gates and Microsoft as the evil empire when Bill is the one that's putting his personal fortune into trying to make the world a better place. According to the excerpts in the papers, Jobs saw this as some form of personal weakness on Gates' part.
Having almost finished the Isaacson book,
Jobs was undoubtedly a nasty piece of work but he certainly knew how to motivate his team (whilst completely demotivating those who weren't on his team). He was also ruthless in his insistence on Apple products being 'right' even to the extent of cancelling product launches at the last minute.
There's a great anecdotal tale about when he was brought the final prototype of the first iPod. Jobs decided it was too big and when the engineers protested it was a miracle of miniaturisation, he dropped it in his aquarium and, pointing at the line of bubbles emerging from the iPod, commented that there was still empty space inside it :-)
which is proper Bond behaviour
except that a proper villain would have dropped the engineer in the tank as well ...
That aquarium story.
If that aquarium story is not true, it ought to be.
Must admit I thought it would be the Joan Baez Dress story ;-)
--- http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/steve-jobs?before=1319572550
which I don't think was in the various earlier threads here.
But I see she sang at the funeral.
For all generous fans the deceased above ...
Pretty good 60 new minutes documentary out now - just hit youtube
Why Jobs himself, and the Apple brand itself inspired such hatred, is a curious phenomenon. And draws something of an interesting line in the sand. Regardless of any success in their own terms, there are those that condemn him anyway. This is actually pretty odd when you think about it. One day over a deeply irritating Starbucks Latte I'll tell you my theory about this.
It's ridiculous
Phones and computers were not invented by Apple and there are a lot similarities across many many of their products. Apple themselves have been using Nokia technology for their iPhones and a MacBook is essentially their version of a laptop isn't it?
I'd like to see them battle it out in the marketplace based on goods and value for money, instead of trying to take out the competition with court cases. They're far from the only ones approaching business that way of course.
For what it's worth, I love my Android phone.
Yes, MacBook is their entry level laptop
MacBook Pro is the deluxe version