image: Reuters (click)
At my request, the board of directors has granted me a medical leave of absence so I can focus on my health. I will continue as CEO and be involved in major strategic decisions for the company.
— Apple CEO Steve Jobs 17/1/11
All I can say is I wish him and his family well.
(It’s galling the way some people focus on the stock price. It will take care of itself.)
John Gruber says it well:
http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/the_leave
I have just been reading Johns Blog’s and he epitomise’s the “One eyed”
Apple Fan boy and cannot be taken seriously discussing Apple.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL7yD-0pqZg
Count me as a fan boy too.
Steve Jobs (in my one-eyed opinion) is a genius, the equivalent of Thomas Edison or Henry Ford.
Of course his success and his ‘different’-ness attracts hostility. He’s a perfectionist, an enthusiast, a driven, demanding task-master.
Good luck making your own ‘dent in the universe’ Craig.
This commencement speech is revealing and inspiring.
Transcript of Commencement Speech at Stanford given by Steve Jobs
SlashDot ^ | 6/14/2005 | Steve Jobs
Posted on 15 June 2005 11:18:09 AM NZST by Swordmaker http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1422863/posts
Thank you. I’m honored to be with you today for your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. Truth be told, I never graduated from college and this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation.
Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first six months but then stayed around as a drop-in for another eighteen months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife, except that when I popped out, they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking, “We’ve got an unexpected baby boy. Do you want him?” They said, “Of course.” My biological mother found out later that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would go to college.
This was the start in my life. And seventeen years later, I did go to college, but I naïvely chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and no idea of how college was going to help me figure it out, and here I was, spending all the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back, it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out, I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me and begin dropping in on the ones that looked far more interesting.
It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms. I returned Coke bottles for the five-cent deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example.
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer was beautifully hand-calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans-serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me, and we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts, and since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them.
If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on that calligraphy class and personals computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do.
Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college, but it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later. Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something–your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever–because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.
My second story is about love and loss. I was lucky. I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents’ garage when I was twenty. We worked hard and in ten years, Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees. We’d just released our finest creation, the Macintosh, a year earlier, and I’d just turned thirty, and then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew, we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so, things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge, and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our board of directors sided with him, and so at thirty, I was out, and very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating. I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down, that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure and I even thought about running away from the Valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me. I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I’d been rejected but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods in my life. During the next five years I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world’s first computer-animated feature film, “Toy Story,” and is now the most successful animation studio in the world.
In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT and I returned to Apple and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance, and Lorene and I have a wonderful family together.
I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful-tasting medicine but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life’s going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love, and that is as true for work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work, and the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking, and don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it, and like any great relationship it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don’t settle.
My third story is about death. When I was 17 I read a quote that went something like “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself, “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “no” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important thing I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life, because almost everything–all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure–these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago, I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctors’ code for “prepare to die.” It means to try and tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next ten years to tell them, in just a few months. It means to make sure that everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope, the doctor started crying, because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and, thankfully, I am fine now.
This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope it’s the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept. No one wants to die, even people who want to go to Heaven don’t want to die to get there, and yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It’s life’s change agent; it clears out the old to make way for the new. right now, the new is you. But someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it’s quite true. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called ‘The Whole Earth Catalogue’, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stuart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late Sixties, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. it was sort of like Google in paperback form thirty-five years before Google came along. I was idealistic, overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stuart and his team put out several issues of the The Whole Earth Catalogue, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-Seventies and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath were the words, “Stay hungry, stay foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. “Stay hungry, stay foolish.” And I have always wished that for myself, and now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay hungry, stay foolish.
Thank you all, very much.
He is a very clever guy, no doubt about it. And I wish him a speedy recovery.
As far for making my own dent in the universe, I am making my own dent it may be subtle in comparison but at least its my own, I’m not trying defend someone else’s dent.
But his dent is far overstated. There are many people in the world as influential as God sorry Steve Jobs.
People become personal and very defensive of Apple products, because heaven forbid they have bought the wrong product for overpriced margins. They never have a bad thing to say about them. And there is many bad things about Apple.
And if people wish to believe he is responsible for all of Apple’s design, innovation etc you have never worked in a large IT organisation. He’s the CEO (of which he did rise Apple from the brink) who stands up in Apple only events getting cue card assisted applause. For things like this .we have added a front facing camera. Yey on the IPhone for Facetime, as long as the other caller is also on an Iphone and its both are on Wifi. Oh that’s brilliant Steve you are genius. He has just sold you another Lemon feature. Hey don’t diss Apple. Shut up slave have you seen the way it looks. Its gorgeous.
“Of course his success and his ‘different’-ness attracts hostility”
What do you mean of course. No, people who have opinions different to Apple Nuts tend to be honest about their opinions on Apple. And don’t have the blinkers on.
Hey, we see things differently. No sweat. Refer to this pic:
http://www.thepaepae.com/wp-uploads/2010/11/tshirt-hitler-450w.jpg
And have a look at this (below). I have one of these. It is, all schadenfreude aside, technically and aesthetically very pleasing. Sure, an iPhone doesn’t allow all the tinkering below the bonnet that some other phones do. It’s a part of the Apple eco-system (which works for me, and has done for a long time) … and, you know, I like it.
Find me a similar PR pic of your phone, if you can be bothered. I’m curious. (Is that defensive?)
I like your poster, very good.
See this is where I think my view point is stronger.
In some instances not all. Apple make things simpler. And they do make aesthetically good looking product.
However I don’t put them up on some pedestal which many ridiculously do Where they can do no wrong, I think its so they feel comfortable falling for the ‘expensive’ Apple PR BS. And it drives me nuts.
I would love to attach a Photo not sure I can. I think you will shocked.
“…shocked.” ??? Intriguing. 😉
Use this html: [angle bracket]img src=”XXXX” border=”0″ /[angle bracket] …where XXXX is replaced with the URL of your image. – P
Simpler? Yes. Good industrial design? Yes. Cheap? Er, why do you ask?
And then there’s this… which I posted on PropertyTalk when it came out …
http://www.propertytalk.com/forum/showthread.php?p=97231&highlight=fastest#post97231
PC WORLD — Fastest: Apple MacBook Pro
The fastest Windows Vista notebook we’ve tested this year (through 10/25/07) is a Mac. Try that again: The fastest Windows Vista notebook we’ve tested this year–or for that matter, ever–is a Mac. Not a Dell, not a Toshiba, not even an Alienware. The $2419 (plus the price of a copy of Windows Vista, of course) MacBook Pro’s PC WorldBench 6 Beta 2 score of 88 beats Gateway’s E-265M by a single point, but the MacBook’s score is far more impressive simply because Apple couldn’t care less whether you run Windows.
I don’t know what the current state of the play is, but it made me chuckle at the time … you can write that all off to my one-eyed fan-boyness – P
For sure
No the best machine around at the moment is the new Mac Book Air range has like 15 secs Cold boot time. Thats quick. ANd they look good are very lite.
http://store.apple.com/nz/browse/home/shop_mac/family/macbook_air?afid=p219|GONZ&cid=
But I always cringe when I see these types of articles because it can be just grandstanding, also Apple machines should more often than not run Windows faster, if it can be installed, than a “windows machine” just by their specs alone. But you have to pay for it.
Preach it brother.
‘Grandstanding’? You know that’s PC WORLD review copy — not Apple advertising, right?
As I mentioned here: http://www.thepaepae.com/talk-about-product-placement/8731/ my best friend from my radio tech days (studying for NZ Cert in Engineering — telecommunications, yeah, we were geeks) uses a MacBook Pro to run Windows.
He appreciates the good industrial design (ditto) durability, battery life … and just likes it (along with his iPhones.)
I realise it’s PC World. I said these kind of articles can be Grandstanding. not that this one specifically was.
There has to be a more of an Apple way of attaching pic in a wordpress blog. 🙂
Its the best phone I have ever had. Its Fantastic. And its White by the way jealous?
That’s the good news. I have had it just shy of 2 years, but already Apple don’t support it. You are more than welcome to update software at your own cost What? No IT company dumps Support after 18 months.
2 upgrades ago the Phone was so slow it was basically a brick, and has not returned to normal speed even after Rollbacks. and the latest IOS which I paid for.
tp://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/07/iphone-3g-ios4-slowdown/
Would I upgrade to another Phone? No. Its a great phone I-phone 4 is better but just cosmetically. However for some reason people who are in same seat as me go from here too bowing down to Apple, I will now defend Apple till the end for making such a great piece of art. Open your eyes, if you loved BMW cars and they started making beautiful trailers for $10,000 each would you like a zombie buy a BMW trailer? Most would not. This is how Apple Fans act.
Why is it some get so personal about Apple. I think its because deep down they know its just an very over priced item. It can be the best looking version on the market and its their way of justifying it to themselves.
You’re quirky.
Yeah, that was my phone of choice too (3G. White 16GB. No case) until I got an offer from Vodafone that it would have been rude to have declined and upgraded to the iPhone 4.
Having used it now for a while, let me say the upgrade is FAR more than cosmetic. Have a serious play with someone’s and see what you think. (But it may not be long before we see the iPhone 5 …)
Re your 3G software issues: I quickly perceived online that the 3G wasn’t really capable of running iOS4. So I didn’t ‘upgrade’. I can send you a link to restore your phone to 3.1.3 — I did a full restore before passing my (very usable) 3G on to a family member. Let me know if you want it.
As to your comments re psycho-analysing some people’s motivation/attachment to their belongings… Yes, it’s a puzzle how some consumerists seem to derive large parts of their identity/status from their ‘stuff’.
Er, Craig, I actually do drive a BMW (gasp). It’s my second one. I have no accessories for it. You know, they really do a great job of designing and building cars.
Eeek! I also have a Tizio lamp… http://www.dailyicon.net/2008/08/icon-tizio-lamp/
Oh no!
UPDATE: Did I mention my green leather Filofax? I’m a walking cliché/advertisement for ex-yuppies everywhere. 😉
I have tried the 4 extensively and I could not justify upgrading.
When I say its only cosmetic differences that were an improvement for me. I more specifically mean there’s no extra features. The phones smaller, screen’s clearer with Retina Display (serious Hyperbole) IOS is faster, and video capture which is handy, this too me is just window dressing, its not exactly cosmetic but that’s what I consider cosmetic.
I would love Vodafone or as I call them Slowdafone to offer upgrade. Last time I visited sure they offered me an upgrade as soon as I paid for the current contract to be cancelled and then signed up for new contract at full price. Err No thanks.
Wow you drive a Beemer, that’s a bit eerie.
Thanks for the offer of 3.1.3 IOS but with testing I have done including 3.1.3 my current version is the snappiest I could find.
Also I-phone 5 due out in June.
Horses for courses, naturally.
I skipped the 3GS and will probably skip the 5. Time will tell.
What iOS version are you using?
Yeah, that’s spooky about the car. – P
‘Fake Steve Jobs’ Dan Lyons has signed off.
http://www.fakesteve.net/2011/01/im-totally-fine-but-goodbye-for-now.html
Lyons’ anonymous and scandalous ‘Secret Diary’ was brilliant for a long, long time — biting satire at times.
Who can forget stuff like this? (about the ‘exclusivity’ of the iPhone):
With his blog post: “Hey, Apple retail: Which part of `no skanks’ did you not understand?”
Awesome.
—
So FSJ is no more. Here’s his rationale Why We Should All Leave Steve Jobs Alone (Including Me) — link below — which I respect, including this passage:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-01-17/dan-lyons-why-we-should-all-leave-steve-jobs-alone-including-me/
[…] 2011Peter AranyiNo Comments »Following up on the medical leave Steve Jobs took from Apple in January, this, today, while of course not unpredicted, is still a bit of […]