Being an Apple user is a religious experience for some, believing surrounding yourself with iPhone, iPods, iTunes, Quicktime, MacBook, and Apple TV will make you a better person. Seriously, I’ve seen this many times. I worked at Apple from 1985 – 1992, and joined “at that time” evil Empire Microsoft 1992 – 2006. Now I am independent of these religious views, and watch as many technologies are debated on almost a religious level.
The Economist has a cover story on “The Book of Jobs”
Tablet computing
The book of Jobs
It has revolutionised one industry after another. Now Apple hopes to transform three at once
Jan 28th 2010 | From The Economist print edition
Illustration by Jon Berkeley
APPLE is regularly voted the most innovative company in the world, but its inventiveness takes a particular form. Rather than developing entirely new product categories, it excels at taking existing, half-baked ideas and showing the rest of the world how to do them properly. Under its mercurial and visionary boss, Steve Jobs, it has already done this three times. In 1984 Apple launched the Macintosh. It was not the first graphical, mouse-driven computer, but it employed these concepts in a useful product. Then, in 2001, came the iPod. It was not the first digital-music player, but it was simple and elegant, and carried digital music into the mainstream. In 2007 Apple went on to launch the iPhone. It was not the first smart-phone, but Apple succeeded where other handset-makers had failed, making mobile internet access and software downloads a mass-market phenomenon.
The religious tone of the article continues as the author discussed the Power of Jobs.
As rivals rushed to copy Apple’s approach, the computer, music and telecoms industries were transformed. Now Mr Jobs hopes to pull off the same trick for a fourth time. On January 27th he unveiled his company’s latest product, the iPad—a thin, tablet-shaped device with a ten-inch touch-screen which will go on sale in late March for $499-829 (seearticle). Years in the making, it has been the subject of hysterical online speculation in recent months, verging at times on religious hysteria: sceptics in the blogosphere jokingly call it the Jesus Tablet.
The enthusiasm of the Apple faithful may be overdone, but Mr Jobs’s record suggests that when he blesses a market, it takes off. And tablet computing promises to transform not just one industry, but three—computing, telecoms and media.
Preacher Steve makes another claim that is caught in Wired Magazine – Google’s “Don’t be Evil” Mantra is Bullshit.
Google’s ‘Don’t Be Evil’ Mantra is ‘Bullshit,’ Adobe Is Lazy: Apple’s Steve Jobs (Update 2)
- By John C Abell
- January 30, 2010 |
…
On Google: We did not enter the search business, Jobs said. They entered the phone business. Make no mistake they want to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them, he says. Someone else asks something on a different topic, but there’s no getting Jobs off this rant. I want to go back to that other question first and say one more thing, he says. This don’t be evil mantra: “It’s bullshit.” Audience roars.
Read More http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/01/googles-dont-be-evil-mantra-is-bullshit-adobe-is-lazy-apples-steve-jobs/#ixzz0eIsnUlct
Then there is an Adobe statement about Flash which reminds of the Adobe Type Manager’s problem in the Mac OS.
About Adobe: They are lazy, Jobs says. They have all this potential to do interesting things but they just refuse to do it. They don’t do anything with the approaches that Apple is taking, like Carbon. Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy, he says. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it’s because of Flash. No one will be using Flash, he says. The world is moving to HTML5.
Read More http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/01/googles-dont-be-evil-mantra-is-bullshit-adobe-is-lazy-apples-steve-jobs/#ixzz0eIsw6YKj
The Economist closes on death and resurrection.
If Mr Jobs manages to pull off another amazing trick with another brilliant device, then the benefits of the digital revolution to media companies with genuinely popular products may soon start to outweigh the costs. But some media companies are dying, and a new gadget will not resurrect them. Even the Jesus Tablet cannot perform miracles.
It looks like Steve Jobs is rallying his troops to fight a Holy War of Mobile – Google and Flash are his enemies.
