Live data from Hacker News

Resigned

daringfireball.net

31–40 of 92 posts

Re: Resigned

#31
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The company is a fractal design. Simplicity, elegance, beauty, cleverness, humility. Good text, but maybe not well-chosen words throughout the whole post. Humility is a little too much.

I find humility in things like deciding to ship without copy/paste, or the decision to ship the initial phone without an SDK. These decisions are an implicit admission that the company wasn't able to get these things sufficiently polished or thought-through to include in a given iteration.

That's an interesting take. I've not thought of it that way. Apple doesn't include everything a device obviously should have in the first iteration but what it does include it does very well.

All of the iPad competitor devices absolutely suck at looking up the definition of a word in an ebook. (The ones I've tried that is.) On the iPad it is so simple, so intuitive, and quite fast. When they do something they do it well.

Re: Resigned

#32
post #26

I, apparently in agreement with Apple's investors today, have a little trouble with the notion that Steve Jobs stepping down will have no effect on Apple's success. I'm afraid the Apple faithful are playing a little fast and loose with logic on this one. Let me see if we have this straight... 1) Steve Jobs was absolutely and almost singularly responsible for Apple's meteoric rise over the last 14 years. His vision, h…

Agreed. Just look at Microsoft after Gates. Or Intel after Grove. In both cases, they turned things over to operational, #2 types in Balmer and Barrett and in both cases, the companies stagnated.

Re: Resigned

#33
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree. I will gladly bet $100 on that Apple, without Steve Jobs' help, will create a new product in the coming decade that'll revolutionize (or even create) a market completely like they've done with the iPod, iPhone, iPad and many other products. Steve Jobs may not be the CEO anymore, but his spirit and philosophy will be alive and well in Apple for a long time to come, no matter what happens with him p…

I will gladly bet $100 on that Apple, without Steve Jobs' help, will create a new product in the coming decade that'll revolutionize Maybe, but skeptics will probably be right to doubt it. Many had similar hopes as yours when Steve was fired from Apple in the '80s. The company ambled along for a few years, then started its famous nosedive. Expect the same this time.

Except in the 80s Jobs didn't hand pick his successor (at the time of his succession).

Re: Resigned

#34
post #26

I, apparently in agreement with Apple's investors today, have a little trouble with the notion that Steve Jobs stepping down will have no effect on Apple's success. I'm afraid the Apple faithful are playing a little fast and loose with logic on this one. Let me see if we have this straight... 1) Steve Jobs was absolutely and almost singularly responsible for Apple's meteoric rise over the last 14 years. His vision, h…

Do you think that Steve Jobs was the entirety of Apple's QA and decision-making process? Far too much good stuff has come out of Apple in the past decade for Steve to get sole credit. While Jobs obviously had the power to veto any bad idea, he didn't have the time to veto every bad idea, or to suggest every good idea. He can only micro-manage some of the things some of the time.

He built and trained a system that, even with Steve still running it, is obviously capable of making good decisions without him. He may have been the primary motivator for the development of the iPad and iPhone, but he didn't create OpenCL, libdispatch, CoreAnimation, and Automatic Reference Counting. He didn't invent the unibody construction process or Gorilla Glass or LightPeak or multi-touch, and he's obviously not the only person at Apple who can recognize their value and figure out how to use them to make a better product. If that were the case, he would have been a huge bottleneck and Apple would never be able to ship more than one product a year.

You're confusing leading by example with doing it all yourself.

Re: Resigned

#35
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will gladly bet $100 on that Apple, without Steve Jobs' help, will create a new product in the coming decade that'll revolutionize Maybe, but skeptics will probably be right to doubt it. Many had similar hopes as yours when Steve was fired from Apple in the '80s. The company ambled along for a few years, then started its famous nosedive. Expect the same this time.

Except in the 80s Jobs didn't hand pick his successor (at the time of his succession).

This, and the fact that the man himself is still on the board of directors (at least for a few years).

Also, don't forget that Apple is stuffed with talented people, like Ive, Forstall and Federighi who won't let apple become another 'me too' company with junky and overpriced products (like the Apple in the late 80's): http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2011/news/1105/gallery.fortun...

Re: Resigned

#36
post #26

I, apparently in agreement with Apple's investors today, have a little trouble with the notion that Steve Jobs stepping down will have no effect on Apple's success. I'm afraid the Apple faithful are playing a little fast and loose with logic on this one. Let me see if we have this straight... 1) Steve Jobs was absolutely and almost singularly responsible for Apple's meteoric rise over the last 14 years. His vision, h…

It’s not that Steve Jobs is unnecessary; it’s that Apple will continue to make Apple-like products without Steve running the show day-to-day because his philosophy is so much a part of how Apple functions now.

In lots of ways, his work is done; certainly the product managers and C-level folks get what differentiates Apple from everyone else and that’s not changing because Steve Jobs’ title has changed.

The point of Gruber’s article is that Steve has been gone for large chunks of time already and Apple keeps cranking along—he’s been on medical leave for over 8 months now—and Apple hasn’t missed a beat. Not even close.

The roles Steve Jobs and Tim Cook have been in for almost all of 2011 have been formalized, with Cook being named CEO and Jobs now Chairman of the board.

So, no, I don’t see upcoming blunders or missteps. Tim Cook isn’t Steve Jobs, but remember that Apple wouldn’t be where they are today without Tim Cook either. He fixed Apple’s manufacturing and supply chain issues that plagued Apple for years prior to his arrival from Compaq. Without Tim Cook, there’s no way Apple could crank out the tens of millions of iOS devices that are just taken for granted nowadays.

Re: Resigned

#37
post #26

I, apparently in agreement with Apple's investors today, have a little trouble with the notion that Steve Jobs stepping down will have no effect on Apple's success. I'm afraid the Apple faithful are playing a little fast and loose with logic on this one. Let me see if we have this straight... 1) Steve Jobs was absolutely and almost singularly responsible for Apple's meteoric rise over the last 14 years. His vision, h…

Jobs' resignation comes as a surprise to no one, Jobs least of all. That is, this has been a long time coming and it seems safe to reason that Jobs has made it his primary duty over the last five years to ensure that an Apple without him will continue to thrive. And, as his letter makes a point of noting, he will continue on as the Chairman of the board and as "an Apple employee"--his final act, passing Apple on to others, is not yet complete.

He was the most important man in tech in 1978 and he is in 2011. The legacy he leaves is not just that of beautiful objects and sensational business intuition, but the generations of people he inspired. My first computer was a Mac, and it was love at first touch. Since that first moment I have always been profoundly fascinated with consumer electronics and computers in particular. I'm sure that I have kin, even among the haters.

And call me a fanboy, but any man who can relentlessly carve a path for passionately crafted objects in the face of largely monotonous, analytics; well, I'm glad he stuck to it.

Thanks Steve. I hope you're well.

Re: Resigned

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to agree. It's been awhile since I've read something like this from him. Well-chosen words throughout the whole post.

The company is a fractal design. Simplicity, elegance, beauty, cleverness, humility. Good text, but maybe not well-chosen words throughout the whole post. Humility is a little too much.

[deleted]

Re: Resigned

#39
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree. I will gladly bet $100 on that Apple, without Steve Jobs' help, will create a new product in the coming decade that'll revolutionize (or even create) a market completely like they've done with the iPod, iPhone, iPad and many other products. Steve Jobs may not be the CEO anymore, but his spirit and philosophy will be alive and well in Apple for a long time to come, no matter what happens with him p…

Buy 1 Apple Share.

If Apple shares come down to $100 you should buy more than one.

Re: Resigned

#40
post #2

Gruber at his best. I get the feeling that he's had large pieces of this particular post in the works for quite some time.

Either that or he wrote all of the post in that nervous jolt.
Post reply on HN