Live Coverage of Tim Cook's Interview Session at D10

[Winni]

Well, ignoring the fact that this image is overly biased (without Jobs we probably won't have object oriented programming/proportional fonts/computer mouse etc.)

Ahem, the mouse was invented at the same place where the graphical user interface was invented: Xerox Parc. You know, the place where Steve Jobs got "his" great ideas from.

The Xerox Star was the first product with a mouse and a graphical user interface. Then came the original Mac. Neither ever had any significant market share. Like it or not, it were the Commodore Amiga, the Atari ST and then the Windows PC which eventually brought computer mice and GUIs to the mass market. Ultimately, you have to thank Gates, not Jobs, that computers are now relatively easy to use. Gates made that stuff affordable for everybody. Jobs only sold expensive designer products to the wealthy.

Also, Object-Oriented programming was around quite a while before Steve Jobs and Apple came around. Again: Xerox Parc. Alan Kay is the name that should ring a bell, because Jobs loved to quote him: "The best way to predict the future is to invent it." The object-oriented programming language we are talking about here is called Smalltalk, the mother hen of OOP.

And in case you didn't know it, object-oriented programming in Steve Jobs Land was introduced rather late with Objective-C in NeXTstep. The original Mac toolbox targeted the language Pascal and did not use an OO paradigm.

You give Jobs a lot of undeserved credit. Give him credit for fabulous design and taste. But as he said so himself by quoting Picasso: "Good artists copy, great artists steal. And we have always been shameless about stealing". Jobs was not the mother of all invention. But he was extraordinarily great at taking somebody else's invention, design and technology and turn it into some beautiful (but very restricted and limited) product.

As for Dennis Ritchie: Man, Unix is the foundation of the Internet and most mobile phones today (including Android AND iOS). I never liked that curly braces language called C, but that does not change the fact that it is the most important and most widely used system language in the known universe. (And I mean C, not C++ or Objective-C.)

Kernighan and Ritchie are the giants on whose shoulders an entire industry stands. And unlike El Jobso, I never heard either of the two complain that somebody stole their ideas. You know, without Unix, there would never have been NeXTstep or OS X. Or Linux. Or FreeBSD. Or iOS. Or Android. Or Solaris.

 

[blow45]

Sorry, I recognise that it did come across as a cheap-shot. It wasn't an entirely frivolous point though: the reason John Gruber is read by people is because his analysis, while not always spot-on (and whose is 100% of the time?) is clear and succinct, and well-written. Yes of course that's not enough: if he wrote complete drivel, but nevertheless wrote it well, that wouldn't be much of a recommendation. Equally however you can have been part of the original design team for the Apple II, but if you can't express yourself well on paper then people won't read you.

His track-record as an analyst and follower of Apple is far more important than whether he can design a good web page. I'm not saying necessarily that he does have a good track record, but a lot of people think he does. That's why people read him.

In the same vein, what's most important in a CEO is that you are a good manager of people, and that means first and foremost you are someone who surrounds yourself with good talent. That was Steve's greatest attribute, and his innate sense of what was right or wrong in a design was an added bonus. I suspect that Tim Cook is a good manager from that perspective, and that's why Steve Jobs gave him his blessing. I further suspect Jon Ive is far better off running the design team than he would be managing the company. Give Apple's new management a chance here.

I am trying to, I don't like it when they use Gruber types as marketing tools when they haven't put due care developing their os. And this is very apparent with lion, very very apparent.

 

[Rocketman]

What do you want them to do with their cash that would take Apple to "new heights"?

They have sufficient cash for the "liquidity" they need for preferential supplier contracts and factory co-investments and internal growth. The 2.6% dividend they declared is pretty small and very sustainable. They can afford it.

That does not mean it is a good idea. The reason many growth companies don't pay a dividend is one way of valuing a company is EPS growth and its stock multiple PE is usually close to the growth rate. Apple has an over 40% growth rate and a PE ratio of around 15, so is "PE compressed". By announcing a dividend it furthers that condition as stocks priced on yield of the dividend like to target a price that yields a rate at or above the 10 year treasury yield rate which right now is around 2%.

To me it feels like the dividend is designed to damp or moderate the expected PE expansion when/if the overall stock market improves, almost certainly associated with the federal annual deficit figure, thus monetary destruction.

If we were in a "normal economy" we might expect the Apple PE to be nearer 30-40 or a stock price of 1200-1400 right now.

It will make for an interesting econometric study some day.

Rocketman

 

[KnightWRX]

without Jobs we probably won't have object oriented programming

Wait, what was Jobs doing when James Gosling and Co. introduced Java to the world, which became one of the almost defacto programming language in the industry ?

Oh right, he was still trying to get NeXTSTEP and Objective-C to take off, which he only succeeded in doing like 5 years later.

To say Jobs had any importance in the industry using OOP is quite ignorant of the history of OOP. Even Java built on top of an already budding industry. OOP was popular before Java and it was introduced before NeXTSTEP and Objective-C.

----------

Kernighan and Ritchie are the giants on whose shoulders an entire industry stands. And unlike El Jobso, I never heard either of the two complain that somebody stole their ideas.

They never did, but their employer sure made a mess of things in BSDi vs USL. Of course, that lawsuit and subsequent sealed settlement led to the legitimatisation of BSD and as you say, a foundation for the whole industry (even Microsoft uses Unix code from BSD in both their old Windows and the newer Windows NT).

 

[the8thark]

Nothing wrong with Tim Cook but Steve Jobs was a really nice person and talented guy too.

You know the same Steve Jobs that was CEO of Apple? That Steve Jobs was a genius but a utter ******* too. Mind you you don't become the CEO of a multinational organisation by being kind to everyone.

 

[leman]

Ahem, the mouse was invented at the same place where the graphical user interface was invented: Xerox Parc. You know, the place where Steve Jobs got "his" great ideas from.

(...)

I know all that. I never claimed that Jobs invented all these things. Jobs didn't invent much. But his talent was to recognize the potential of niche (at the time) inventions and make them popular. All these things vere not much more than technical novelties at the time, Jobs and Apple brought them to the consumer base. And NEXTStep was the first 'big' commercial platform that actively used OOP design patterns and let people recognize that these patters allow you to be more productive. And its still the only big platform which uses 'true' dynamic objects instead of the much more primitive class based systems. Delphi, Java, .NET and all similar systems are all influenced by NEXTStep's APIs in that form or another.

----------

Wait, what was Jobs doing when James Gosling and Co. introduced Java to the world, which became one of the almost defacto programming language in the industry ?

Oh right, he was still trying to get NeXTSTEP and Objective-C to take off, which he only succeeded in doing like 5 years later.

Uhm, you do know that Java was strongly influenced by NextSTEP and Objective-C, right? NeXTSTEP took off much earlier, it just never had a very wide adoption because of its prohibitive cost. Last time I checked, WWW was created using a NeXTSTEP computer in the 1990, 5 years before Java was released...

And as to the fact that Java is more popular, no wonder here. Java was designed as 'compile once, run everywhere' platform and its (on the surface) very similar to C++ without many of its idiosyncrasies, while being easier. NeXTSTEP was a niche computer.

P.S. Here is a read for you, from one of Java's creators: http://cs.gmu.edu/~sean/stuff/java-objc.html

 

[KnightWRX]

Uhm, you do know that Java was strongly influenced by NextSTEP and Objective-C, right? NeXTSTEP took off much earlier, it just never had a very wide adoption because of its prohibitive cost. Last time I checked, WWW was created using a NeXTSTEP computer in the 1990, 5 years before Java was released...

"Took off" and "never had a very wide adoption" is quite contrary to each other. The fact that Tim Berners-Lee used a NeXT cube to design the web has nothing to do with Jobs "bringing us OOP" as you stated. You're now officially all over the map trying to backtrack on a statement you said.

BTW, James Gosling begs to differ on the origins of Java :

http://gotocon.com/aarhus-2010/newsjamesgosling/1

But there was a plethora of other languages that influenced James Gosling. When asked by the Java Report what languages inspired him when developing Java, he answers: "They're all over the map. Using Lisp, the thing that influenced me the most was the incredible difference garbage collection made. Using Simula and being a local maintainer of the Simula compiler was really what introduced me to objects and got me thinking about objects. Using languages like Pascal got me really thinking about modeling. Languages like Modula-3 really pushed things like exception mechanisms. I've used a lot of languages, and a lot of them have been influential. You can go through everything in Java and say, 'this came from here, and this came from there.'"

No really, again, Java isn't even the first widely popular OOP language. It became one of the most popular for close to a decade, spawning a whole industry of middleware through webservices and J2EE, websites through JSP and backend work with EB and JDBC if not of desktop software through J2SE.

But still, OOP predates it and NeXT and Jobs. Heck, even Objective-C is not some kind of Jobsian paradigm, the language being the fruit of Stepstone, a company independant from NeXT.

So really, just admit you were a bit too "enthusiastic" about Jobs contributions and move on, there's no way you can back up your initial premise of Jobs bringing OOP to the industry. If Jobs, NeXT or Apple had never been, we would still have OOP. It would still be the same OOP we know today.

 

[leman]

So really, just admit you were a bit too "enthusiastic" about Jobs contributions and move on, there's no way you can back up your initial premise of Jobs bringing OOP to the industry. If Jobs, NeXT or Apple had never been, we would still have OOP. It would still be the same OOP we know today.

You could say similar things about Ritchie, C and Unix. Of course, its difficult to measure things like that, in the software world everything is influenced by everything and finding an original author of an idea (if there is even such a thing in some cases) is often hard to impossible. What one can do though, is to enumerate the historic facts, and I think it is a fact that NeXT's design and APIs inspired lots of OOP people. This, and also (at least to my knowledge) that NeXT was actually having a full object-based API in a commercial product (even if it was a niche product) before anyone else. Windows is still trying to make that transition, more then twenty years later. Of course, most of these things, if not all, go back to Xerox — but Xerox didn't do much of it, while Jobs tried to popularize OOP for over a decade.

As to your Gosling quote, well, I quoted another original Java developer, who was also commenting on a different question. Go figure.

Anyway, I don't see why we should be arguing. I think I have clearly stated that IMHO Jobs credit is not being an inventor, but rather a popularizer of ideas of others. I think this role is as deserving as any else. For instance, I wouldn't been working on my PhD (which contains some of rather new ideas and methods) if it were not for the support and influence of my advisor. I think similar is the case for many 'tech geeks'. As to the exact history, I admit that I may be wrong, for I am not a historian and my knowledge on the topic is far from thorough. However, I don't find your version of the history to be more convincing than mine.

 

[KnightWRX]

and I think it is a fact that NeXT's design and APIs inspired lots of OOP people.

Maybe, but that's a stretch from your initial premise of attributing OOP's popularity and industry wide acceptance to Jobs or any work Jobs did.

Just can't admit you're wrong on this point uh ?

 

[4God]

Mac Pro is being killed off. Siracusa had an interesting slice of information he relayed at the end of this week's Hypercritical podcast. I don't think we'll even see one more refresh of the product. It's over.

Episode 69? I just had a quick listen and I think you're overstating the significance of his guesses by quite a margin there. He even stated he didn't have any information on it and was just guessing based on the fact there hasn't been one in a while.

Sure, that doesn't mean there will be another Mac Pro, but it's not like he had some inside knowledge, like your post might imply to some people.

But regardless, if Apple have decided to kill the Mac Pro off I think it would just be nice of them to tell everyone.

Can somebody direct me to this podcast? I'd like to hear for myself.

 

[woody777]

You know the same Steve Jobs that was CEO of Apple? That Steve Jobs was a genius but a utter ******* too. Mind you you don't become the CEO of a multinational organisation by being kind to everyone.

And did u even done 0.00001% what Steve Jobs did? No?

Many people often critic others but forget about how bad they are they self.

What u done in this world? Non maby?!
How man people did u truly helped ? Nobody?!

P.s.critic is good but do not forget about yourself...

 

[blow45]

And did u even done 0.00001% what Steve Jobs did? No?

Many people often critic other but forget about how bad they are they self.

What u done in this world? Non maby?!
How man people did u truly helped ? Nobody?!

P.s.cretic is good but do not forget about yourself...

You gotta love this post.

 

[RedRaven571]

You gotta love this post.

It is truly awesome; I am wiping the tears of laughter from my eyes.....

 

[blow45]

It is truly awesome; I am wiping the tears of laughter from my eyes.....

Cretic is good but do not forget about yourself

Woody is an underrated star btw:

I think u do not know what u are tolking about
Is not Ivy bridge is better then Sandy?

ivy has less heat then Sandy....
Just go to wiki pedia man and see the difference
P.s. also there re is..

.

Mac OS is known to be a solid stable for a proffesional work and better then Windows

it will be very surprise if Apple woud kill Mac Pro, unless Mac os will be awailable on PC which i do not think will happen.

So two things can happend

1) Mac Pro is killed then Mac OS can be used on PC
or
2) Mac Pro is not killed and Mac OS cannot be used on PC

little oftopic:
i think Apple does not invent bicacle but they rather inovate a new products with a current technologies with some of their own flawor, but sometimes they indeed do invent bicacles.
like i pad, retnel AG cinima displey, rentel i mac, rentel macbook pro....

so did u started that on Facebook? i wounder how many likes there will be

That liquid cooling system looks interesting, do HP still have it any boy knows,I wish Apple would over that for a new Mac Pro,then I am sold

Woody buddy it's all good natured fun of course, don't take the wrong way. these forums seldom put a smile on our face, so it's great when they do. Stay cool and here's hoping apple release that mac pro for ya.

 

[Pigumon]

I read an article about how Apple has shifted it's structure so it's no longer centered around design, but on the business aspect. Apparently, with Jobs, the design and product came first, then came all the other factors. Now they're moving to a more generic corporate structure. I hope Cook talks about this and assures us design is still important!

It's true, but not because of Cook. Jobs shifted Apple to business-centric long ago. The whole "ecosystem" is about making money. Apps are about making money. iTunes is about making money.

Of course Apple still has the best designed tech, and they often make bad choices in their preference of style over substance, but if you follow Apple since the first iPod Touch came out, you can clearly see the shift to business.

 

[gorskiegangsta]

He was always in the spotlight for me.

It just happens that the majority of people are stupid sheep and easily brainwashed into the latest fad.

It just happens that Steve Jobs was the driving force behind things people could easily identify with (i.e. new, cool, shiny, physical devices). No one outside of nerddom gets excited about genius of innovation upon underlying code of modern operating systems.

Btw, nice try trying to justify your ornate residual self image by making statements like "majority of people are brainless sheep". Is it safe to assume you exclude yourself from that "demographic", or are you merely trying to compensate for something?