Skip to main content

iSteve

By

Ever since 2003, one had the feeling Steve Jobs' days were numbered, and the recent announcement that he had stepped down as Chairman of Apple carried a very ominous ring to it.  His long battle with pancreatic cancer is over.

Walter Isaacson is the latest biographer to tackle the story of Steve Jobs.  The book is due out late next month.  It was tentatively titled iSteve, but it seems the publishers wanted to give Jobs full respect.

Listening to the CNN memorial this morning, I heard "genius" and "visionary" tossed around a lot, but it struck me that Steve was first and foremost a good businessman.  He knew the value of good packaging, good advertising and cultivating a strong and committed market for his product.  What started out as an everyman's personal computer became a highly successful niche industry, as Apple computers became prized possessions.  The long waiting lines in front of his Apple stores for the latest igadget are testimony to his great marketing skills.  The store fronts became symbolic in themselves.



But, one certainly can't deny the tremendous impact this man had on the personal computer industry, portable music and the fully loaded telephone.  He was also instrumental in developing Pixar into the multi-billion dollar animated feature company it became, even if he was ready to jettison the project when the best it could initially produce were a few commercials and  award-winning short features.

He will be missed.
Labels:

Comments

  1. avrdsOctober 6, 2011 at 4:18 PM

    I''m reading this, linked by Erza Klein:

    http://www.cultofmac.com/63295/john-sculley-on-steve-jobs-the-full-interview-transcript/?wpisrc=nl_wonk

    I'm a very very late convert (i.e., in the last year or so) having worked with even mainframe computers and going to GE computer training in the 1970s. But I love my mac now for the screen -- I could never go back.

    ReplyDelete
  2. James FergusonOctober 6, 2011 at 4:56 PM

    I was tempted to put my name on the waiting list,

    http://news.yahoo.com/pre-orders-soar-authorized-steve-jobs-bio-133142813.html

    but am going for Eco's Prague Cemetery instead.

    ReplyDelete
  3. avrdsOctober 6, 2011 at 5:09 PM

    He's a good biographer. Should be an interesting book, although don't think that's my thing. Still, I found that Sculley interview fascinating. What it takes to build a great product -- intensity and a little insanity I suppose.

    ReplyDelete
  4. avrdsOctober 13, 2011 at 3:52 PM

    Our first spam! And, we can get it at less than the purlisher's price.

    ReplyDelete
  5. James FergusonOctober 14, 2011 at 1:56 PM

    I feel honored ; )

    ReplyDelete
  6. James FergusonOctober 14, 2011 at 1:58 PM

    One young man's tribute becomes a nightmare,

    http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Dispute-Over-Apple-Image-nytimes-3537731561.html?x=0

    ReplyDelete
  7. avrdsOctober 15, 2011 at 5:22 PM

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/comic-riffs/post/steve-jobs-smackdown-matt-bors-delivers-our-cartoon-of-the-day/2011/10/14/gIQAk6EdkL_blog.html

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro
228 comments
Read more

Dylan in America

By
Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan.  Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose.  Looks like only yesterday.  Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.
182 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more