Posts tagged steve jobs
Steve Jobs posts “Thoughts on Flash”
Apr 29th
In the typical Steve Jobs manner, Apple posted an article detailing his thoughts on Flash this morning. They didn’t add the letter to their typical “Hot News” page… instead they have a link to the article directly on the Apple.com homepage. I was very interested in Steve’s actual perspective on Flash, but realistically, there’s not much we haven’t already heard Steve say at one point or another.
After the break, we cover Steve Jobs’ main points and add a little bit of our perspective into the mix. We also interviewed Jason Carr, a prominent PC developer, and asked his opinion on Steve’s letter. His answers may surprise you. So click the “Continue Reading” button and get the whole story.
Jobs and Schmidt meet for coffee… say WHAT?!?
Mar 26th
There have been countless reports about the souring relationship between Apple and Google… Apple has never stepped into the search market (and shouldn’t) but Google continues to slap Apple with conflicts of interest like the mobile phone market, the introduction of Chrome browser and the inevitable Chrome OS.
So, in a surprising move — one that has the CTA staff baffled — the two head honchos met for coffee a little earlier this afternoon. I. Don’t. Believe. It. Just looking at the first picture we thought it could be fake. But the fact that this has two angles of the CEOs sitting together and a shot of Steve Jobs’ mercedes (which I’ve actually seen in person) makes it incredibly unlikely that this is fake. Also, there are several people on Gizmodo claiming to have seen the same casual meeting. So, we can’t debunk it. It most likely happened.
But why? If you look back at our post about the Apple employee town hall minutes, you’ll read about a very frustrated Steve Jobs talking about a company that has betrayed Apple: Google. Granted, business is business, but I’ve never understood Google’s desire to get into Apple’s markets… the Nexus One isn’t doing anything better than the iPhone. The Chrome browser has actually impressed us so far, but what’s the driving motivation behind it?
Google has punched Apple in the face a couple of times now, but Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt are still meeting for coffee. Dave Caolo, a former colleague and TUAW writer, suggests that it was staged to get the public thinking. While that’s entirely possible, I hope there’s more to it than that. I’d love to see Google and Apple continue in their relationship — they do work well together — but the competitive and secretive nature of the companies are preventing innovation. Google doesn’t like to share, and Apple’s even worse… so was this a personal meeting to catch up on their March Madness brackets? We doubt it.
Steve Jobs said this: “They’re going to see it all eventually so who cares how they get it.” That’s in reference to “web content.” Kinda vague, but we like that they’re talking about web content; we don’t like that there’s probably money involved from Eric Schmidt’s perspective. After realizing that people had begun to gather and gawk at the informal meeting, Steve said, “Let’s go discuss this somewhere more private.” It seems obvious to us that no one wants people listening to their conversations, so it may have been of zero potential importance, but god number one is talking with god number two again: that makes us happy.
- Jobs, Schmidt Coffee 1
- Jobs, Schmidt Coffee 2
- Jobs, Schmidt Coffee 3
The future of Apple according to Steve Jobs
Jan 31st
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Mac Rumors has a great post outlining some things that Steve said to the Infinite Loop Apple employees this past week. Two independent sources have confirmed that the following bullets are topics that were discussed in the town hall meeting:
- Steve was very candid about their relationship with Google. He explained that Apple didn’t get into the search business, Google came into the phone business. He’s obviously not very happy about the situation and as a result… we’re going to get better software and hardware for the iPhone. Supposedly, we’re going to see updates so aggressive that Google and its phone OS, Android, won’t be able to keep up with the pace.
- Steve specifically called Adobe lazy, and that’s the main reason they’re not supporting Flash on the iPhone OS. The Mac Flash client has been notorious for being… well, garbage. We’re sure that Apple is afraid that the iPhone client would be even worse. According to Steve, the majority of reported desktop/laptop crashes are caused by Adobe’s Flash. He also went on to boast about the advent of HTML5, saying that no one will be using Flash in the near future… the world is moving to HTML5. CTA actually hopes that’s true, but we know what it takes to change a standard: 5-10 years.
- Jobs was as heavily involved with the iPad as we had suspected. It has been his primary focus since he returned to Apple at the end of June.
- Apple expects to integrate Lala into the iTunes team, which means it hasn’t happened yet. We’re still expecting the North Carolina server farm to host a large amount of North American iTunes content. We may even see it expand to support the streamed music and TV subscriptions we’ve heard so many rumors about.
- Supposedly, the next iPhone we see will be an “A+” update. That’s not very in-depth, but we can assume better hardware… and please let there be more customizable software!
- The Macs coming out in 2010 will set Apple apart from the rest of the industry… interesting, because we expected hardware revisions on the 27th, but didn’t see any. Will we have to wait until June? Either way, Steve said they’re not pursuing Blu-ray adoption until they see a solid increase in BR sales. Makes sense: I’ve never bought a BR disc because of the price tag. I have player in my media center, just haven’t used it for anything except rentals.
It’s nice to hear some of this stuff. If you’ve ever spoken to Steve in person, you’d know that he can get pretty passionate about many things… especially things that frustrate him (like Google and Flash). But, I’m probably one of the few in the room that can realistically say that. 
It pays to have been a Mac Genius.
