Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Steve Jobs Leaves Apple's Pipeline with Four Years of Products

appleguy123 said:
How can he predict four years into the future? I mean, Steve Jobs was totally brilliant, but who knows where technology will go in that time?
Click to expand...

They knew basically what they wanted both the iPad and the iPhone to look like years before they could build either of them.

So may of Apple's designs depend on waiting for chips and batteries and other things to eventually get small enough. They can design all kinds of stuff that just can't 'be built yet. Once they can be, they'll still be products people want.

Are you saying that you can't predict if a Macbook Air that weighs half as much will sell or not? Because I think that's a REALLY safe thing to bet on.
 
Consultant said:
Design... that's one more thing the haters don't understand.
Click to expand...

That is the main thing haters don't understand.

That is why when people complain about price, there is no comparison. Design is why Apple is what it is today. Why Steve will be remembered forever, and why Jonathan Ive is totally loaded.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/9A334)

I would GUESS he left about five years worth of actual sketches / physical ideas and about "ten years worth of hypothetical this is where we should be" Steve was always a decade ahead of the game.
 
I don't mean to sound crass or inappropriate, but the information that there are four years worth of Jobs influenced product in the pipeline also has the effect of increasing confidence in Apple and protecting stock value.

A lot of lives are tied up in Apples continuing success - especially employees at all levels.

This in no way is intended to mitigate the grief over his death. It is only to point out the importance of maintaining the publics confidence in Apple's future.
 
In 2007, Steve Jobs said, “There’s an old Wayne Gretzky quote that I love. ‘I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.’ And we’ve always tried to do that at Apple. Since the very, very beginning. And we always will.”

Steve’s ability to anticipate future trends helped Apple dominate now-burgeoning markets like digital music sales.

http://www.incomediary.com/21-life-lessons-from-steve-jobs/



appleguy123 said:
How can he predict four years into the future? I mean, Steve Jobs was totally brilliant, but who knows where technology will go in that time?
Click to expand...
 
appleguy123 said:
How can he predict four years into the future? I mean, Steve Jobs was totally brilliant, but who knows where technology will go in that time?
Click to expand...

That's the trick, Steve Jobs never placed a bet on technology. He placed bets on paradigms. Unless there's something too drastic, paradigm shifts are relatively slow.

Well that's why he's called a "visionary".
 
I wish I can plagiarize Jobs' take on design and claim it as my own! Design is not (just) veneer. Right on!!

The 'successive outer layers' he talked about is the brilliant part of it. Users build the right mental model of how the unexplored portions of the system should behave and when it behaves like that, users get attached to the system. It is not that much unlike a friend or spouse who knows what you mean even if you are incoherent.
 
Meh, no big deal. Dell has a ten-year pipeline full of products, and I have a copy. See:

Oct 2011: Introduce model with faster Intel chip
Jan 2012: Introduce model with more RAM
...
Jul 2021: Introduce model with faster Intel chip
Sep 2021: Introduce model with more RAM

See? Brilliant!
 
Last edited:
of course.

While many competitors (many debunked already) were of the idea to take today's technology a step forward.

Apple does this but also takes a leap forward.

The idea that a roadmap is setup is normal in a large business.
I bet they wanted Voice Control of the likes of Siri since the beginning but had to figure out the best company to partner with to build it. Meanwhile add the very basic to get people liking the idea somewhat.

Think about the Magic Mouse and Trackpad. I'm sure these were visualized many years ago when Wacom and trackpads were big things.

They don't put a roadmap of "this chip in this quarter" "this amount of RAM in this quarter" they put together a roadmap of features grow as tech evolves and "get this PIECE" in there within a year's time. and this within two years.
 
Jobs left Apple in good hands for few years. Their big challenge is to keep that momentum happening once the pipeline expires.
I am sure there are quite a few talent individuals there but nobody will replace Jobs. Too sad he died so young. He for sure could contribute his amazing vision for so many years.
 
goMac said:
Apple's the one that changes it.
Click to expand...

Not anymore. Steve Jobs failed to anticipate MSFT's Metro UI approach at all. In fact he never made one comment about it. I suspect it burned him up that Microsoft of all companies created a UI that is so classy and tasteful! :D
 
RafaelT said:
I think apple is in good shape. Jobs has known what condition he was in and set them up nicely for the future
Click to expand...

Agreed, I think he discovered he had this disease back in 2007. From what I understand most people only live a year with it. So I'm sure he had been laying out plans and ideas years before his death.
 
KingCrimson said:
Not anymore. Steve Jobs failed to anticipate MSFT's Metro UI approach at all. In fact he never made one comment about it. I suspect it burned him up that Microsoft of all companies created a UI that is so classy and tasteful! :D
Click to expand...

Sorry, I can't read your whol
comment on my Windows Ph
The new Metro UI likes to cu
off the text. I suppose it loo
cooler that way.
 
appleguy123 said:
How can he predict four years into the future? I mean, Steve Jobs was totally brilliant, but who knows where technology will go in that time?
Click to expand...

Not necessary predicting future, but Steve knew where it was heading. Even if he didn't know what kind of hardware options might be in the future he knew the basic idea. It's very clear if you watch his keynotes from 2000 and so on. He always talked about a vision, then Apple worked on hardware and software to bring it into reality.

Future decade for apple is to merge iOS into OS X. Make everything touch-based. Expand the interaction into living-room and the house etc., as an example. You don't need to know if it's possible yet, you just have to push toward it.
 
vjl323 said:
I wonder why the article mentions that the iCloud project/feature is delayed? Was it supposed to debut sooner? Or maybe they mean that .Mac/MobilMe/iSync was supposed to do what iCloud promises now to do? But that seems to assume too much reading into that statement. Has iCloud been delayed?
Click to expand...

Yeah that caught my eye too. Do they know something we don't? The only timing announcement I ever heard on iCloud was "this fall" at WWDC, and then at the keynote they announced Oct 12.
 
The Daily Mail is an unpleasant little rag, widely distributed, and bought by a majority of uncritical UK readers. It's very successful commercially, as it's well produced and presses all the right buttons to reinforce the prejudices of the unthinking.

It is not my primary 'go to' for insightful tech news.
 
I read this article as far as the part where you stated the information came from the Daily Mail. I wouldn't believe a word that paper writes, and I'm surprised you are using it as a source of reliable information. Have any of you seen this?

http://www.malcolmcoles.co.uk/blog/daily-mail-guuilt/

I don't usually complain about your articles, but this time you really got it wrong.
 
KingCrimson said:
I find that very hard to believe, considering the fast-changing nature of the tech industry.
Click to expand...

The potential is there that those plans, abstract as they may be, take on a "blessed" hue and are seen as immutable and necessary. I've seen this kind of thing happen in lesser development teams: the "alpha" designer leaves a "this is what I think we should do" letter before he leaves, and the team beneath him takes his advice as though it had been handed down on tablets on top of a mountain.

I think - and hope - that Apple is better than that. More than anything else, Steve's legacy at Apple is building a company filled with truly innovative and intelligent people and which encourages innovation from those people at every level. More than any CEO in the modern age, Steve had an ability to roll with changing market realities while not losing an overall "vision" of where the company wanted to go.

I see the "four years of designs" as more a "this is what I was thinking about as the current products evolve" rather than a "this is the product you will produce next May; this is the product you will unveil next September" type of thing. I certainly hope that's the case. I don't think even Steve would have detailed out the iPhone 4S in 2007 when they brought out the original iPhone, although I do suspect that he would have been able to describe the general trajectory of the device and its place in the ecosystem even then.
 
Four years of products? Also, didn't he go to Facebook just this past Spring (while likely knowing his prognosis was bleak) and have conniptions during the visit when he learned the TouchPad would be getting the first official Facebook app for tablets?

That sure doesn't sound like someone disinterested in Apple flourishing after he's gone (as some have implied in another thread).
 
Shrink said:
I don't mean to sound crass or inappropriate, but the information that there are four years worth of Jobs influenced product in the pipeline also has the effect of increasing confidence in Apple and protecting stock value.

A lot of lives are tied up in Apples continuing success - especially employees at all levels.

This in no way is intended to mitigate the grief over his death. It is only to point out the importance of maintaining the publics confidence in Apple's future.
Click to expand...

I really like how you put this. It's a good point. Respectful, too.
 
sammyman said:
That is the main thing haters don't understand.

That is why when people complain about price, there is no comparison. Design is why Apple is what it is today. Why Steve will be remembered forever, and why Jonathan Ive is totally loaded.
Click to expand...

It's called having a good taste. I think I know what it's like to be a hater because I was a zealous Mac hater to the core for most of life. Then I tried the first iPhones and iPods and I was blown away, which led me to add a Mac, iPod Touch and eventually an iPad to my collection.

After I became familiarized myself with Apple platforms and apps, one thing that strikes me is how nicely designed the overall environment is in the Apple platforms. Windows apps and Windows itself tend to be crude, starting with font handling, icon spacing, handling of gradation and animation, etc, etc. It's now painfully obvious to me how tasteless most of Windows and Android devs are. It didn't bother me when I was younger, but now it bugs the heck out of me whenever I use Windows and Android.

Plus now I am married, with a job, and have developed a better appreciation of aesthetics and "just works" type of approach. I no longer have time to play with tech just for the sake of playing with tech instead of getting the utility of of it. These are all things that I just couldn't have fathomed when I was younger.

I still use all the platforms because they have their benefit - for instance my Android phone was very cheap and my plan is so much better than what I'll be forced to sign if I had to get an iPhone. But I now definitely do see the benefit offered by Apple products and their intangibles in use. Appreciating those finer things in iOS and OSX don't come automatically to many people because they often aren't quantifiable, at least not right away.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back