Agreed. I'm sure in time the effort will be put in to get a factual version done right. His impact on where we are now is huge, and alas it's just not the same company without him, heck innovation in the industry has died as a whole. For me he was apple.
I have to give credit to fassbender, I was never interested in watching the movie as there was so little remblance, but once I started watching it, I was captivated..... The relationship and acting with Kate winslet is worth the price of admission alone.
Personally, I think we put too much pressure and emphasis on innovation when it comes to Apple. I don't believe people find innovation as much as innovation finds people. When Jobs returned to Apple the industry as a whole was languishing. I think there was plenty that could be done to improve our digital world, and that Apple was suffering mightily from a decade and a half of mismanagement and lack of focus that was based largely in the inability of the people in charge being able to see through the chatter to know what was needed to save them.
Jobs' pure stroke of genius that saved Apple, and created a rennaissance in the computer business that I believe still goes on to this day was the 4 panel grid. Simplifying the Apple lineup, and allowing Ive and his team to develop four, basic computers that not only focused the whole of Apple's energy on four attainable goals, but focused their consumer base on the new message of Apple: Simple, elegant, easy to use, and approachable.
Then came the iPod, and the iTunes store. Digital music as a business was in its infancy, and anarchy reigned. Jobs and Apple pushed through the criticisms that their solution for digital music had already been done cheaper by offering simplicity, elegance and ease of use. With the iTunes store (and the move to Windows) not only did Apple save an entire industry from pirates and their own stupidity and shortsightedness, but they cemented themselves into the lead for digital music commerce that they have never relinquished. The introduction of Windows iPods and a Windows iTunes store created the much discussed halo effect, and gave many people a view into the Apple ecosystem that caused a major shift, especially on the consumer side. People who would have never considered owning an Apple computer before now were looking and buying. That trend goes on to this day.
The move to Intel, while more technologically necessary than an innovation per se was nonetheless a big part of the success of Apple in the last 17 years. It made their computers much more maintstream from a standpoint of programming, and hardware support.
Then came the iPhone. Mobile phones in general sucked. Smart phones were not smart. Blackberry, the most successful smartphone of the time relied heavily on the Windows model for success. Enterprises needed push email, and they were the only ones who could reliably provide it. But their products sucked, too. The user interface was horrid, and while it did secure email better than anyone else it had frustrating and horrible personal information management (PIM) functionality. Obviously, most everyone reading this knows about and appreciates the technological and UI revolution that was the iPhone.
But the innovation that a lot of people lose sight of with the introduction of the iPhone was Apple's insistence on wresting control of the hardware and software experience from the cell phone carrier industry. I believe that this was just as important and innovative as the technological innovation of the iPhone. Imagine if Apple had invented the iPhone, but allowed Verizon to control software updates, what programs were on the phone out of the box, and to cripple and disable features and applications, like the cell phone industry had been doing for years. Little or nothing would have changed, and innovation would have been stifled. Telling Verizon no, and going with Cingular/AT&T was a risky and gutsy move. But in the end it, along with the innovation of the technology and software of the iPhone won the day, and IMO has as much to do with the massive growth of the smartphone segment as anything else. That's why I found it very ironic that fans of the Android infrastructure will go on about the "openness" of Android, when what that "openness" actually did was allow cell phone carriers and hardware manufacturers to get back to the business of locking down smartphones the same way they had been doing to feature phones for decades. True, you could jailbreak them. But the average person has no idea, or desire to jailbreak their device. And most consumers have no clue that they can buy a vanilla Android phone directly from Google. I, personally believe that the Android OS, even with all of its refinements over the years still sucks compared to iOS. But that's my personal preference. And there's the fact that security is built into iOS, and it's pretty much bolted onto Android.
The iPad took a technology that had been around for 12-15 years, and had languished because engineers just refused to understand how people wanted to work and turn it inside out. The irony of it is that, with the massive success of the iPad, and all of the me too tablets that came afterward the industry, especially on the Windows side is trying its damndest to reintroduce the convertible tablet again. Admittedly, the current versions are much more viable than earlier ones. But I believe that is only because of innovations, both technological and human behavior that Apple showed the industry.
So all of this was a long winded way of saying that I believe that the "slow down" of innovation at Apple and in the industry is the result of a few things. First, we have to consider that Apple had essentially three or four groundbreakingly innovative products over 12 years. There were 6 years between the introduction of the iPod and the iPhone, and another 3 for the iPad, which was pretty far along before the iPhone was even introduced. But also all of the low hanging fruit that was there when Jobs returned to Apple has been picked. Many of the things he introduced upon his return to Apple are things that he envisioned back in the 80s. But the technological capabilities did not exist at the time to push them forward.
I'm sure Jobs' death has had an impact. But there's also less innovation to be discovered right now. And I believe that what is there will take longer to develop. Just one guy's opinion, and pretty much off topic.
