Steve Jobs

Your workplace, circa 2000. Employee: “I’ve got an idea for an entertainment device that can hold an entire music collection. It is beautifully designed, fits in your shirt pocket and can retail for under $500. What do you think?”

Chief: “We appreciate your input Steve, but it doesn’t quite synergise with our six-month strategic outcomes moving forward”. What would have happened if, ten years ago, someone came up with the idea for the iPod in your workplace?

Would it have got up? Would it even have got past the initial pitch? And if it did get considered for development, would the original, brilliantly simple concept have ended up as the final product, or would something like this have happened …

Continue reading "There’s a fine line between genius and prickdom" »

This should be quite successful.

Take a look at this line of Steve Jobs action figures by WHOA TOYS. They’ve been pinging around the interwebs. Before you say “too soon”, the line came out just after The Man resigned.

We often hear people ask why we don’t idolise scientists and inventors over sportsmen. But I think it’s nice Jobs has received so much acclaim for his accomplishments. What do you think? And it’s Tuesday. What’s on your mind, folks?

After 30 years of making the world a happier place, Apple co-founder and chairman Steve Jobs died yesterday, age 56. The world mourns the man some have called the Edison of our time.

People around the world took to social networks yesterday to express their condolences. Bill Gates tweeted: “I will miss Steve immensely”. Tony Hawk said: “Steve Jobs was the man”. Barack Obama’s statement, “There may be no greater tribute to Steve’s success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented,” got retweet after retweet. 

While this was happening, Wikileaks was also tweeting about Steve Jobs. Except in doing so, the organisation was committing a journalistic crime taken straight from the playbook of the News of the World. You wouldn’t even read what they published on TMZ.

Continue reading "Wikileaks does a News of the World job on Steve Jobs" »

Steve Jobs has died at the age 56. The technology mogul who founded the Apple Company with childhood friend Steve Wozniak in 1976 has faced considerable health problems over the past few years, including a battle with pancreatic cancer in 2004 and a liver transplant in 2009.

His colleagues at Apple have posted a warm message of farewell to their founder, paying tribute to his creative genius: “The world has lost an amazing human being,” they said.

Jobs has been a hot topic here at The Punch in recent weeks. Simon Sharwood claimed he made the world a happier place. Yesterday Dan argued against the seemingly addictive Jobs business model.

Continue reading "A heartfelt goodbye to the Apple of our eye" »

Another week, another Apple product feted as the Second Coming in gadget form. Wait, hang on a minute. . .

Apple are pretty good at hype, but it seems like they’ve been a little too good at it this week. Apple fan-boys and -girls (and shareholders) were roundly disappointed this morning with the launch of a slightly improved iPhone 4, the 4S. They were let down after whipping themselves up into a frenzy of iPhone 5 speculation over the past week.

But give it 9 days, when the smartphone is set to be released here, and you’re sure to see Apple-maniacs queueing from one end of your nearest capital city to the other to get their hands on the new smartphone. Their existing year-old iPhones will just get tossed. That’s a feature of Apple products. Your latest whizz-bang gizmo is always just a few short months away from being made obsolete by a product with only slightly more whizz and a pinch more bang.

Continue reading "An Apple a day, then Jobs wants you to chuck it away" »

Steve Jobs has quit as Apple CEO. This is sad news for everybody who fell in love with gadgets that were simple to use, and enormously fun to play with.

The secret of Steve Jobs’ success is making customers deeply happy. Steve Jobs changed the world with a manic insistence that his customers must be so happy with his products that they want to buy them again and again.

You’d think every entrepreneur on the globe would do likewise, but no-one cares about customers like Jobs. And that’s why he has changed the world.

Continue reading "How Steve Jobs made the world a happier place" »

Every time my train goes under Central Station, my phone calls cut out. There is - despite what people who have real problems will tell you - nothing more infuriating. It’s 2011. Obama has promised a Mars mission and I can’t even get reception in a tunnel.

These aren’t the only techno gripes I have on this mediocre day of April. How come I have an app on my phone that tells me which M. Night Shyamalan movie sucks the most, but I don’t have one that brushes my teeth for me? Why am I still losing car keys, tying my own shoelaces and having to move my eyeballs to focus on a different point in space?

Why are we wasting money on things like better healthcare and infrastructure, when we could be inventing a gizmo that detects and automatically scratches itches? How is it that in this wondrous age of techno-wizardry, my mouth cannot yet produce milk to go with my cereal? C’mon!

Continue reading "The iPad 2 - it won’t feed the hungry or cure the sick" »

Happy birthday to Apple co-founder, CEO and all-round mega-rich guy, Steve Jobs. He was born on this day in 1955.

And it’s Thursday at The Punch. What’s on your mind? Share it here.

After reading up on Jesus and Mohammed on the Wikipedia app on my iPhone 3GS, I was struck by how old and irrelevant our prophets are. 

Jesus was the leader of a small ministry prone to speak in parables. Mohammed was a merchant who sometimes dwelled in a cave. It’s time for a modern prophet we can relate to.

Likely contenders are Lionel Messi for displaying artistry on a football field, Adam Scott for dating Anna Ivanovic, Jack Bauer for thwarting terrorism, Tina Fey for her role in 30 Rock or the genius who created The Wire.

Continue reading "My road to iDamascus with Steve Jobs as a prophet" »

The first thing that came to mind on seeing pictures of Apple boss Steve Jobs with his new iPad device this morning was Trigger Happy TV, the British skit show whose signature sketch involved the star taking hysterically loud phone calls at inappropriate times on a three-foot telephone.

“Hello?” he’d suddenly shout in a full cinema, brandishing the prop. “No, I’m at a movie. It’s rubbish.”

Let’s not kid ourselves. The iPad is a laptop computer that doesn’t fold. But its appeal – or potential – lies in the content you’ll be able to access from it at a touch, once you hand over your $560 for the basic model when it ships worldwide two months from now.

Continue reading "The future of media is a comically oversized iPhone?" »