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Steve Jobs and the New iMac

C

citizenzen

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Mar 22, 2010
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I've read a number of posts where people have implied that the new iMac reflects the loss of Steve Jobs and his leadership at Apple.

But I'm curious how much truth there is behind those opinions.

Jobs died just over a year ago (October 5, 2011). It would seem to me that most of the design and features of the new iMac would have already been determined, and I would have to assume that this latest model is very much a reflection of Job's vision, influence and direction.

Is that assumption correct? Or were there late changes in the iMac's design or features that deviated from what Job's would have approved?

I do believe that one day Apple will deviate from the path that Job's himself would have set for the company. But I don't believe the new iMac is a sign that this moment has arrived.

Thoughts?
 
I think the new iMac is exactly like Steve Jobs would wanted it to be. Honestly: What else could have been improved?
Steve was no fan of optical discs, so getting rid of it is just logically(as seen before on the mac books) and Steve also liked thinner design.
So (thinner/better) new design+more power = better machine. Wouldn't steve like such a thing?
 
The new iMac is right up Steve's alley. If he didn't have a hand in it, he would love it.
 
It certainly follows 100% or somewhere near there the design Jobs had chosen (it's not like you wake up one morning and design and mass-produce something like that).

The only thing which we'll never know is on stuff like pricing, etc., but as it's rather expensive, i think Steve agrees from up-above :)

The Steve-impact will be seen in the next 2-4 years, when basically there will be nothing specific left from its design and vision. The culture he has built in the company, on the contrary, is something that will last for decades -broadly-, just as any other huge company with a very strong culture.
 
apple has at least 4 years of product iterations in the pipe from steve jobs vision they can release. But god help this company once that is used up, because so far there is no one at apple that has any vision or innovation to replace steve at the top level.

Cook is a good ceo in term of operations and day to day, but the guy has no vision to shape future apple products, and their top design guys are great at making screens thin/sleek but the key to integrate with new innovative software to work as a complete simple functional unit is totally lacking.

There will not be another new innovative product like the ipod, iphone or ipad. All you will have left are redesigns of the same product with faster hardware/better resolution etc.. Some say iTV, i will believe it when i see it, also even if they release it will it actually be good without steve jobs vision.

On the flip side i dont think the competitors are all that great either, windows 8 is a giant step forward for microsoft in term of mobile integration but it's still playing catchup, samsung's hardware already exceeds iphone but it cant get away from android - a clunky and unattractive os, no matter how nice the hardware is.

What you will ended up is a stagnant landscape where everyone just keep blindly upgrading hardware without any true innovations, it's already happening. We no longer have a steve jobs to light a fire under those companies to keep pushing the edge. I can guarantee you without the iphone, we will still be using windows mobile and blackberry type interfaces on the smartphone right now.
 
gagaliya said:
Cook is a good ceo in term of operations and day to day, but the guy has no vision to shape future apple products, and their top design guys are great at making screens thin/sleek but the key to integrate with new innovative software to work as a complete simple functional unit is totally lacking.

There will not be another new innovative product like the ipod, iphone or ipad. All you will have left are redesigns of the same product with faster hardware/better resolution etc.. Some say iTV, i will believe it when i see it, also even if they release it will it actually be good without steve jobs vision.
Click to expand...

I think you're under-estimating Cook and over-estimating Steve.

1. Cook knows what he's good at, and he's proving to have the one thing which is key to leadership: delegate to the people who know their stuff, and don't pretend you can do everything. Namely, he thinks Ives and his gang are the ones with the "vision", and he's putting them in charge. His job is to make things happen, and make those vision happen in a realistic, real-world scenario. No small task. I don't think Mr. Jobs and the people running the biggest company in the world chose Cook without thinking very, very, very deeply.

2. Jobs very often took other's idea and brought them to life. iPod is one clear example. He just did not invent it, it was someone else idea. He has, obviously, incredible credit for bringing it to life, but it was not its idea.

3. What i think no-one else can replicate are two things: A) The boldness and power needed to do "crazy moves". When there's one guy in command and he does not care about anything else, he just does whatever he feels it's right. It's a dictatorship, like it or not. And dictatorship is the way you create an empire: bold moves, no BS, quick moving, just do it. You can do it only if you have full control and everyone else totally follow it. Basically, you need to be the owner of the whole stuff. This will never be the case anymore.
B) Probably no-one else, as of now, has his incredible mix of genius, skill, boldness, pain-in-the-ass attitude, etc., that can bring revolutionary products like the iphone not to only to life, but to life with a near flawless execution: mp3 players existed long before the ipod, but it's the ipod that created the market. Tablets existed long before the iPad, but....and the list goes on.

Companies are just like human beings: someone is more talented, someone less. Someone is luckier, someone less. But in the end, they all born, live their life, and in the end die. There's no way around it.

Reality is, we can spend hours of quality time discussing each others opinions, but no-one will ever know the "what-if" scenario.
 
I think he is under estimating the team.
Teams make these things not one man.
The team just needs a good leader and i think they have that.
 
Didn't someone say he had his hands on development for a good 5+ years forward?
 
jessica. said:
Didn't someone say he had his hands on development for a good 5+ years forward?
Click to expand...

Yes, but that, even if it's true, in real terms mean that you have Steve-Designed products on Y1, 70% Steve-Designed product on Y3, and then you enter in a realm in which everything can change.

Take something like the TV device: maybe Steve had the vision on "how it should be", and some draft prototypes, but then reality kicks in and needs to manage years of R&D, which is what then delivers the end product.
Take the iphone: he had the vision of it, but then had two different teams in place to develop its vision, one based on the ipod interface and the other one on what is now the ios interface. No one can say what would have happened without him leading and harassing the two teams. It's a speculation, but i think it's an educated guess to say that thanks to his impossible attitude we ended up with a better device than what we would have been if someone else led those teams.

Again, no one knows the truth, it's just a nice conversation for the sake of it.
 
you can have a team of 10000 of the best people, each with their own iphone idea but if no leader with the vision & ruthlessness to bring it to reality, then it's all for nothing. Right now noone in apple can bring a new innovative product to life.

Look at what they have done so far towards the end/after jobs besides standard hardware cycles:

1) Iphone - bigger screen
2) Ipad - higher res screen, smaller size version
3) Imac - thinner edge
4) Macbooks - higher res screen
5) AppleTv - nothing
6) Mac pro - nothing
7) Mac mini - nothing
8) For software, the three item you can consider innovations:
- Map: complete disaster
- iCloud: their most successful innovation - to bring network/cloud to the masses in an easy to use interface
- App store for osx: not really innovation but relatively successful.

Doesnt exactly wow you...does it.
 
theSeb said:
It's best to ignore those simplistic and naive opinions.
Click to expand...

No doubt.

Does anybody know how much change is actually possible on a device a year before its release?

I can't imagine there's much anybody could do at that point.

But maybe I'd be surprised.
 
gagaliya said:
you can have a team of 10000 of the best people, each with their own iphone idea but if no leader with the vision & ruthlessness to bring it to reality, then it's all for nothing. Right now noone in apple can bring a new innovative product to life.

Look at what they have done so far towards the end/after jobs besides standard hardware cycles:

1) Iphone - bigger screen
2) Ipad - higher res screen, smaller size version
3) Imac - thinner edge
4) Macbooks - higher res screen
5) AppleTv - nothing
6) Mac pro - nothing
7) Mac mini - nothing
8) For software, the three item you can consider innovations:
- Map: complete disaster
- iCloud: their most successful innovation - to bring network/cloud to the masses in an easy to use interface
- App store for osx: not really innovation but relatively successful.

Doesnt exactly wow you...does it.
Click to expand...

Since you seem to be so brilliant yourself, what innovative product ideas did you have in mind that Apple could introduce? Apple introduces products that demonstrate a need (or want) by the general public, and they're excellent at what they do for the most part. But seriously, what else could they introduce that you had in mind? :confused:
 
jessica. said:
Didn't someone say he had his hands on development for a good 5+ years forward?
Click to expand...

Indeed. That was the message from Apple and the story was on mac rumours some time back. I cannot stand the childish posts regarding Steve Jobs and how apple is doomed without him. It's an incredible insult to the rest of the people working at Apple. People who make those posts show a high level of ignorance about how things work in a corporate company. They also forgot the countless mishaps that happened when Steve Jobs was around.
 
coolosxapps said:
Since you seem to be so brilliant yourself, what innovative product ideas did you have in mind that Apple could introduce? Apple introduces products that demonstrate a need (or want) by the general public, and they're excellent at what they do for the most part. But seriously, what else could they introduce that you had in mind? :confused:
Click to expand...

A quote from steve jobs i hear :D
 
coolosxapps said:
Since you seem to be so brilliant yourself, what innovative product ideas did you have in mind that Apple could introduce? Apple introduces products that demonstrate a need (or want) by the general public, and they're excellent at what they do for the most part. But seriously, what else could they introduce that you had in mind? :confused:
Click to expand...

This has always been my thought. It's not easy coming up with paradigm-shifting technology.
 
No optical
Thinner
Very sexy
More powerful

Sounds like something he'd be proud of
 
There seems to be an endless supply of forum members that are quick to return to the past & spend their time wondering about Steve Jobs. "What involvement did Steve have?" Or ruminating over "what if" scenarios.

On a certain level they must experience some sort of intrinsic reward for spending their time that way. The lure escapes me. And I'm so glad it does.
 
gagaliya said:
you can have a team of 10000 of the best people, each with their own iphone idea but if no leader with the vision & ruthlessness to bring it to reality, then it's all for nothing. Right now noone in apple can bring a new innovative product to life.

Look at what they have done so far towards the end/after jobs besides standard hardware cycles:

1) Iphone - bigger screen
2) Ipad - higher res screen, smaller size version
3) Imac - thinner edge
4) Macbooks - higher res screen
5) AppleTv - nothing
6) Mac pro - nothing
7) Mac mini - nothing
8) For software, the three item you can consider innovations:
- Map: complete disaster
- iCloud: their most successful innovation - to bring network/cloud to the masses in an easy to use interface
- App store for osx: not really innovation but relatively successful.

Doesnt exactly wow you...does it.
Click to expand...

I think it wows everybody how anyone can be so XXX to think that Jobs didn't have its full hands on all of the list above.
Or maybe you think that there was a revolutionary product pipeline ready to be launched that was scrapped the day after he passed so that they could finally spend some quality months in designing an entirely new product line? Do you have a remotely vague idea of how much time is needed for products like Apple sell to move from idea-stage to mass-production? I guess not.

Get a clue on how a company work before posting again.
 
imagine the scenario

they make a fatter iMac with lots of extra ports and connection types

"omg steve would not of let such a monstrosity happen, where is the elegance and simplicity in design"


They make a slim iMac and take out things like the disc drive and include less ports

"omg they are running apple into the ground with sub standard, rushed money grabbing designs"
 
I don't think he'd like the rMBP or Mac mini simply because they have HDMI ports.

Or, did the Mac mini have an HDMI port ages ago?

Well anyway, that just makes it easier for people to use other people's products to connect a display, so I don't think he'd like that.

And I don't think he'd like the iPhone 5 because it looks too similar to the 4 and 4S...maybe I don't know Steve enough?

The new iMac has a few too many flaws in my eyes, but I think he'd like it. Maybe he wouldn't be so pleased because it's a desktop, and he doesn't like desktops, but the way it's set out I'm sure he'd like.
 
Plenty of areas for innovation. A few off the top of my head

1. Television. Noone has really integrated the Television properly into the whole computing/Entertainment ecosystem properly yet

2. Human User Interface. Kinect is just the start. I can only imagine what Apple are working on right now in this area.

3. Home Appliances. Take the Apple ecosystem, and now apply it to a whole house !
 
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