…Except it’s not. Sorry, I just couldn’t resist using this phrase as the headline.
Steve Jobs’ untimely departure is very, very sad news, although not really all that unexpected. After all, the man did not step down as Apple CEO for no reason. But the real question, of course, is: what does it mean for Apple? Without its famous co-founder, will the company slowly descend into oblivion like it did in the mid-90s?
I think, the ultimate answer to that question is ‘No.’
First of all, Apple is a huge company with more than 50,000 employees. There’s no denying that Steve Jobs’ unique vision helped to shape many of Apple’s iconic products, but it would be foolish to attribute the quality of Apple’s products and their success to Jobs alone.
Second, for the last 3 years Steve Jobs was not the main driving force at Apple. He was too busy fighting the uphill battle with cancer while the company was run by Tim Cook, and his appointment as CEO this August was just an official recognition of this fact. You have to ask yourself: were Apple’s products introduced in 2009—2011 any worse than their earlier devices? As for me, I don’t think so.
Third, it’s certain that Jobs knew his time at the company was seriously limited. I’m sure Apple’s executive team was preparing for his departure for several years. Most probably, there is an extensive roadmap written together by Steve Jobs and Tim Cook. And it may very well contain something as disruptive as iPod, iPhone or iPad.
But perhaps the most important thing that sets Apple apart from other companies in the industry is the culture of excellence. The whole company lives by the notion that ‘good enough’ is not good enough. That’s what makes their products so special.
And that’s not going to change.
Sure thing, this is the best way to sell expensive gadgets to the general public.
It seems many, even among the Apple faithful, are disappointed by the iPhone 4S announcement. I personally don’t get it: the new phone is an improvement upon iPhone 4 in almost every area, except maybe the screen and the physical appearance. So what? In both regards, it’s still the best device on the market.
My assumption is that Apple has adopted Intel’s ‘Tick-Tock’ model where every ‘tick’ is an incremental update to the previous year’s model and every ‘tock’ is a substantially different design.
This assumption seems to be at least partially correct. Dean Bubley from Disruptive Wireless speculates that the reason for this year’s delay (and for iPhone 4S being what it is) is the new hardware hidden under the hood. In short: Apple wanted to create a single integrated platform to build all the future iOS devices on—this can dramatically reduce not only time to market, but also development and support costs. They have succeeded, but the complexity of this task meant that they basically had two choices: a) to create something slightly more fascinating in terms of looks, but delay the announcement even further; or b) to use the same tried and true iPhone 4 design and make it (almost) in time. No wonder they chose the latter option.
Now, with the new hardware platform in place, we can expect iPhone 5 (most likely to be announced next October) to be huge. In the meantime, all the improvements in iPhone 4S will make our wait quite a bit less tedious.
I think Google shareholders are so excited about the Motorola acquisition they are shitting bricks. No wonder S&P has downgraded Google’s rating from ‘buy’ to ‘sell’ and slashed the 12-month target price to $500 from $700.
One of the stations has recently been renamed. This is how the subway maps in the carriages look right now. I think no comment is necessary.
The Kyiv subway has many shortcomings when it comes to the visual side of things, but there is something that has always stricken me as particularly odd.
This sign means “Entrance”:
This sign means “No entrance”:
Don’t you think there’s something wrong here?
Of course there is. The permissive sign is in red while the prohibitive sign is in dark blue. This is extremely confusing. I have noticed that on the subconscious level I always want to enter the wrong door because of that.
Even more oddly, this color scheme is not consistent across different stations. At some stations the “Entrance” sign is in green and the “No entrance” sign is in red and at some stations both signs are the same color.
I imagine foreigners with no knowledge of Ukrainian are having a lot of fun.
Safari is the only browser I am aware of that works with multiple keychains correctly. That’s why I use it.
Unfortunately, in OS X Lion it’s porkier than ever before.
Click the image to see the full-size version
And that’s with just 6 tabs open…
David Drummond, Google senior vice president and chief legal officer, loudly complains that other companies have organized “a hostile campaign” against Android through patent litigation.
I think these claims are bogus. Judging by Google’s conduct, it’s difficult not to assume that Google has knowingly and intentionally violated others’ patents. Android is as free as WebM (which violates a handful of patents held by the MPEG-LA group) and it’s no coincidence that Google refuses to indemnify their partners in both cases.
Innovation is not free. All the companies mentioned by Drummond (Microsoft, Apple, Oracle etc.) spend billions on R&D every year. Of course they want some return on investment and no amount of Google’s whining is going to change that.
I think deep in its heart Adobe agrees that HTML5 will eventually kill Flash. That’s why they have begun a transition from Flash to HTML5. Adobe Edge seems to be a great tool, and it’s capable of producing a truly platform-agnostic rich Web experience. Check out the sample animations created with Edge, they’re pretty cool.
(A note of interest to fellow Mac users: when I opened all five HTML5 animations simultaneously in different Safari windows visible at the same time, the CPU load never went above 20% and my laptop stayed cool. Meanwhile, a single Flash banner running in the background often brings my Mac to its knees despite all the power of Sandy Bridge.)
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