Steve Jobs passes away

[MarneusCalgar]

It´s the sad bad new of the day, the passing of great Steve at 56 years old, by a pancreas cancer...

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NPMAZab1xpg/To1CBBb0ugI/AAAAAAAAF7o/do5Pv6wydGQ/s1600/3.jpeg

His legacy?

Creating Apple, the first personal computers, buying Pixar from Lucasfilms until making it the best digital animation business party, returning triumphant to Apple to make it become the most incredible company, creating revolutionary iPod, iPhone & iPad devices...

http://i063.radikal.ru/1104/b5/29fa77d62e4f.jpg
(Steve Jobs and Bill Gates 30 years ago)

Almost nothing. A man that beside Steve Wozciak and Bill Gates, changed the planet´s way of life, speaking about that cranky old computer machines... His loss is cried in the whole world, and his LEGACY ENORMOUS. But even like in all the other Masters of Mankind, he seemed to suffer a black and darker side: some call him tyrant, other Mr Scrooge, but that´s an inheritance common in all genious, and what also do their magic side more magical

His impact is so big that nowadays there´s no one who does not know Apple or has some of Steve´s products: from Quicktime to iTunes, an iPhone, iPad, iPod or even a PC!!!

http://www.youtube.com/v/6zlHAiddNUY

Bye bye, Steve. You leave young, but genious like you were, are and will be, the real people who move the world... Thank you for never giving up

http://a5.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/s720x720/313166_246659448720358_179699385416365_801950_2018 580168_n.jpg

[scadugenga]

Love him or hate him, he certainly changed the world.

[Gotthammer]

Steve was someone not only with vision of what could be, but the strength of will and clarity of purpose to carry on even through (oft times disasterous) setbacks. Since this is a 40k board I'll quote Lord Solar Marcharius:

"Far greater it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious victories, even though stained by failure, than to rank with those poor souls who neither strive nor suffer because they live only in the grey twilight that knows neither victory or defeat."


A sad day indeed.

[Morgan Darkstar]

Such a shame and a loss of a great mind.

OT

@gotthammer

looks like GW have been borrowing again!

"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they lie in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat "-- Theodore Roosevelt

[Necron2.0]

I feel sorry for the man and those close to him, but as far as this being a tragedy for technological progress ... no, not really. Actually, not even a little.

To be sure, Jobs was far more technically savvy than Gates (which isn't saying much - I've often said if Gates were strangled at birth we'd be 10 to 20 years ahead of where we are technology-wise). However, Jobs did not invent the Apple - Steve Wozniak did. That remains true to this day - most of the innovation and technical breakthroughs coming out of Apple Inc are from those working for Jobs, not from Jobs himself. What Jobs contributed to the mix was his eye for functionality, for packaging and for marketing. He could make the technology look sexy, even when it is (essentially) junk.

So, do not despair too much. Mourn the man, as you would anyone. But rest assured, those hooked on Apple crack can be certain they'll get their next fix right on schedule.

[Morgan Darkstar]

(which isn't saying much - I've often said if Gates were strangled at birth we'd be 10 to 20 years ahead of where we are technology-wise).

I must say I am curious as to why you think this?

[DarkLink]

It's a crack at the quality of microsoft products, and it's a poor one considering that without Bill Gates and Microsoft then the software industry probably wouldn't be nearly as developed as it is today. Bill Gates might not have created the most innovative of products, but the one thing he did better than anyone else is take every idea he could get his hands on and turn it into jobs and money.

Steve Jobs did a similar thing, just to a different area of the market, and the results of his work only recently started to bear fruit. Though frankly I prefer the way windows is laid out (and linux has too steep of a learning curve and I don't feel like learning to write code in order to understand how efficient that os is), I despise iTunes, and while apple hardware is high quality it is also overpriced.

Bill Gates got the industry up and running, whether or not the ideas he used were his own. Steve Jobs has created a company that is starting to push the edge of what we can do. Both have their place, and we'll see where we go from here.

[eldargal]

I'm a PC girl but this is very sad, beyond the man himself I know Apple products are greatly loved and part of that is the aesthetic and marketing Jobs helped institute.

[Necron2.0]

I must say I am curious as to why you think this?

I've been a paid, professional software developer since I was 18. I've been in the business for 20+ years. For the majority of my career, I've worked in some capacity on military related projects. I am being quite literal when I say if Gates and Microsoft had never existed, we'd be at least 10 years ahead of where we are now.

For those not up on their ancient history, the computer revolution did not start with either Jobs nor Gates. Computer games existed before either Apple or Microsoft. Video arcade games existed before them. Gaming consoles existed before them. Hand held computer games, the Internet and even Personal Computers existed before them. What Jobs did that was unique is he packaged all the existent components together into a single, compact unit. What Gates did is, he promised to develop an Operating System for IBM's PC (to compete with the fledgling Apple). Gates then bought someone else's OS at a deflated price, stuck his name on it, and (as an eleventh hour maneuver), forced IBM into a licensing agreement for the software or else miss their release date as they hunted around for a new OS (which he knew they wouldn't find). Later, he forced all PC manufacturers into an exclusivity agreement.

From the beginning, Microsoft software has been known for three things - unreliability, non-compliance with standards and insecurity. For the projects I've been involved with, the Microsoft OS and their development suite has been strictly verboten (mostly due to the security issues). As example, currently I'm running a dual-boot system with Windows 7 and Linux, and I only ever boot up in Windows to check my e-mail. Even so, most places I know of do use some Microsoft tools (particularly MS Works). From my personal experience, there is a 10% overhead in using MS tools due to system crashes, tool failures and useability issues that you don't have with other tool suites and OS's. When you consider the world wide impact of this (the global loss of productivity) and factor in the impact Microsoft's monopolistic practices have had on innovation, then it is easy to see how saying we're 10 years behind where we should be is really a conservative estimate.

[DarkLink]

To be a little more fair to Microsoft, being the standard system for almost everything comes with some big disadvantages, at least with the approach Microsoft has taken. 3rd party software can be handled one of two ways; either you let anyone create and sell programs to use along with your OS (Microsoft's strategy), or you restrict the programs to only things you approve (Apple). This is why you hear about 'jailbreaking' apple products, because their OS is designed to limit what programs can work on it.

This is a tradeoff in security versus flexibility. Since Microsoft lets most anyone create programs, you get a lot of crappy programs that slow down your computer, cause crashes, etc. Since anyone with a little programming skill can go and write up some code, Microsoft is swamped with work going back and creating patches to fix other people's crappy code. Apple doesn't have that problem because they only allow programs that meet their strict criteria, but while that means more reliability and security it goes along with a lower availability of programs.



And, yeah, the original computers (and the internet) were more or less created by the US military for various purposes. It took quite some time for hobbiests to start playing around with their own computers, then some of those early pioneers took that hobby and turned it into a business.

[chromedog]

Steve Jobs isn't dead.

The nurses were just holding him the wrong way.


What? Too soon?