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Technology.

Tech is a great industry to be in if you are with the right companies and lucky for this one, Steve made it into a fashion house, where all the designers design great, long lasting, useful, powerful tools for the masses. The company without Steve isn't a company suddenly without natural challenges which any company should have in order to excel right? Common - Cook isn't exactly an idiot. They'll be fine! But I like this guy on the screen I like his confidence.
 
Completely different situation. Back then the people who fired Jobs hated his guts.

This time, Jobs trusted most (if not all) the people on the exec team.
Completely agree.

And most people seem to think that Steve did no wrong while at Apple. He had plenty of screw ups (who could forget the awful failure of MobileMe?!?). People also don't seem to realize that Tim Cook was running Apple years before Steve died. He was the interim CEO while Steve was M.I.A. to treat his cancer. How quickly people can lose faith.
 
Ellison is likely correct

Ellison is likely correct.

Apple right now is running in the iPhone and its spin offs. Soon every other company will catch up to Apple. Really Apple is a static target the best they can so to tweek the shades of colors on the screen, bump the processor speed up and make other minor change. NONE of these things change the way you intercat with the device. The iPhone is going to quickly get to the oint where no one cares about the next upgrade just like with PC hardware

The last big think Apple did on the Mac side was buy Next and adopt it's OS and it's CEO. That was HUGE and saved the company. The Next OS was state of the art at the time.

So what are they doing now, running with what they have, making tiny tweaks.

The "Next Big Thing" is going to be strong AI, not like Siri, more like Hal from 2001. But acutely more like Adam Selene from "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" Adam was the first "social network" I can remember reading about and it works like it should in a totally transparent way.

THere is lots left to be done. I just don't see Apple doing it.
 
Larry Ellison is a clueless arrogant prick. That is the number 1 reason i left Oracle - i was sick of making him rich while our bonuses were cut every year. Take his prediction with a grain of salt. He is clueless. I don't know what Steve saw in him. I think he just liked competing with him.

Apple never competed with Oracle. Maybe Jobs competed with Ellison on a personal level, but on a professional level, Apple has only been Oracle's customer...
 
Apple is less exciting without Steve Jobs. Even if Apples comes up with amazing advancements and products, I think Apple will struggle to convince the world of their amazingness like Jobs could. I and many are still hopeful of what Apple can come up with next, so they haven't lost our attention yet.
 
Completely agree.

And most people seem to think that Steve did no wrong while at Apple. He had plenty of screw ups (who could forget the awful failure of MobileMe?!?). People also don't seem to realize that Tim Cook was running Apple years before Steve died. He was the interim CEO while Steve was M.I.A. to treat his cancer. How quickly people can lose faith.

Cook runs Apple like any accountant would do it. He neither has Steve's charisma nor does he have his talent for presentations nor does he have his taste for design. He probably is a genius when it comes to numbers - but he won't be able to lead a design and development team like Jobs could. Tim can fix problems in the supply chain. Jobs could make the right choices that turned a dull, grey box into a beautiful piece of industry design.
 
I predicted under the Oracle banner Sun hardware and OS support would take a nosedive in value for dollar, that they'd drag Java through the mud & close the Solaris kernel - basically undo all the good stuff Sun did.

At least what I said was a no-brainer.
 
Robotics probably could be the next big thing and Steve would have been able to shape the direction well. But then you would have Google and their "Androids" flooding the market. Apple just has to be creating new stuff and not be happy cruising.
 
I've been a Mac user for at least 20 years and have to say, I don't get all the negative press Apple's been getting since Steve Jobs died. They still make excellent hardware and software. They pay close attention to not only design details but usability. They have weaknesses like all other companies, but a great many more strengths than most. Also, most of their products are said to be losing against competitors that are blatantly ripping off not only their products but even their marketing strategies. I suppose all of this is inevitable after the passing of such a brilliant chief, but it's a bit too much, imo.
 
Funny, Ellison steps down from the board in 2002, right around the time that Apple's second coming started in earnest.

Are you sure the timing is entirely accurate? Also was there a conflict of interest or conflict of participation? Apple is a client of Oracle in some aspects in actuality.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Ellison

Also in 1997, Ellison was made a director of Apple Computer after Steve Jobs came back to the company. Ellison resigned in 2002, saying "my schedule does not currently allow me to attend enough of the formal board meetings to warrant a role as a director." [10]
 
Please remind me....Apple's "lack of innovation" is in comparison to whom exactly?

Google? SamSung? MS? .... all I see are knockoffs, gimmicks, pumped specs, and outright failures from the "big 3".
 
Yeah, comedy gold. For some odd reason Ming the Merciless popped into my head. :) Talk about melodrama. Geez.

Love that dudes daughter .. first BIG crush as a kid, super hot she was. Why do I still love it when she cries "Noooo, not the boa worms" (while trashing about her body being held).

back to reality ok what did I miss? :rolleyes:

----------

The "Next Big Thing" is going to be strong AI, not like Siri, more like Hal from 2001. But acutely more like Adam Selene from "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" Adam was the first "social network" I can remember reading about and it works like it should in a totally transparent way.

THere is lots left to be done. I just don't see Apple doing it.

I was hoping for Brainiac OS 2.0 the remake done in those floating pods on Krypton in that recent movie Man of Steel.
 
Completely agree.

And most people seem to think that Steve did no wrong while at Apple. He had plenty of screw ups (who could forget the awful failure of MobileMe?!?). People also don't seem to realize that Tim Cook was running Apple years before Steve died. He was the interim CEO while Steve was M.I.A. to treat his cancer. How quickly people can lose faith.

Tim did day to day operations while important decisions were discussed with Jobs.
 
The Apple that floundered in the 90's without Jobs was operating in a very different market then than it is now.
That was a computer company fighting for desktop market share and struggling to define the laptop market.
Now we have a mobile device company that sells quite well despite being more expensive than the majority of their competition. They sell computers as well, but that is hardly the core of the business any more. And this is the essential difference (one that Larry should know). Apple 1990's had no other significant revenue besides computers.
Apple of the mid 2010's has iTunes store, App store and mobile devices all bringing in their own huge pieces of the pie before we even get to desktops and laptops.

Or we could look at what Oracle has done with Sun since they purchased it before we take Ellison's opinion as valid.
 
Please remind me....Apple's "lack of innovation" is in comparison to whom exactly?

Google? SamSung? MS? .... all I see are knockoffs, gimmicks, pumped specs, and outright failures from the "big 3".
good point.
Apple may not be coming out with category defining products like the iPad every year. But then the others out there like MS are just doing mashups of the competitors products. Surface? Isnt that an Asus Transformer Prime with a Smart cover?

I am also so sick of all the major tech companies trying so hard to be "cool".
We do not care if our OS rides a fixie and carries it's lunch in a Chrome messenger bag. We just want it to go fast, not crash and have a glitch free user interface.

Microsoft and to a lesser extent Apple seem to think they need to reinvent how we interact with our computers on a regular basis. This is stupid.
Do we reinvent the English language every year? Of course not it evolves over time, but the fundamentals stay the same. Both companies have done OS updates in recent years that stuff some "new way" down your throat.
It is more subtle on the mac side (why did scrolling need to change direction?). But it happens nonetheless.
If anything the death of Apple will be from desperate changes made to simulate innovation. For example, have any of you seen Windows 8? When that starts happening at Apple it will begin the decline.
 
Whether you like his opinion or not, you do kinda have to respect it.

I have to respectfully disagree with you on this. Ellison making a prediction based on one (important) variable, but he ignores how a whole lot other variables are different today and in the last two years than they were when Apple was without Steve Jobs before. He ignores all actions and decisions that were bad in the 90s, and all decisions that the management team takes today.

His logic is flawed, and he seems to be more intent to make a populist statement. That doesn't earn my respect.
 
Apple with Steve Jobs 1975-1985: The Golden Age.

Apple without Steve Jobs 1985-1997: The Dark Age.

Apple with Steve Jobs 1997-2011: The Reborn Age.

Apple without Steve Jobs 2011-?: The Dark Age II.

:D
 
Apple with Steve Jobs 1975-1985: The Golden Age.

Apple without Steve Jobs 1985-1997: The Dark Age.

Apple with Steve Jobs 1997-2011: The Reborn Age.

Apple without Steve Jobs 2011-?: The Dark Age II.

:D

What's your point? If you are on this earth long enough you're going to have ups and downs too.
 
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