Tag Archives | Apple

Steve Jobs Steps Down the First Time: The 1985 Press Coverage

In 1985, John Sculley–Apple’s president and Steve Jobs’ partner and confidante–became frustrated with Jobs’ management style. He forced Jobs into a role as Apple’s chairman that was designed to prevent him from making any decisions. A few months later, Jobs resigned and founded NeXT. And that, it seemed, was that.

The saga got a lot of coverage in the press–not as much as this week’s Jobs news, but a lot. It’s fascinating to look back at it. And I don’t blame anyone who failed to understand the implicates of Jobs leaving back then or even cheered his exodus. I mean, who would have believed you if you’d outlined the story to come?

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Steve Jobs Steps Down

So it’s happened: Steve Jobs has resigned as CEO of Apple. He says he can “no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO,” but would like to remain as Apple’s chairman, and as a director and employee. And to nobody’s surprise, he advises that Apple execute its succession plan and name Tim Cook as the company’s new CEO.

Jobs doesn’t specify the reason for stepping down, but it’s clearly due to the health problems that led him to go on medical leave in January–his second such leave since 2009, but one which he took breaks from to preside over Apple’s iPad 2 event in March and its WWDC keynote in June.

Lots more thoughts to come.

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Gone in Sixty Seconds: The Shortest-Lived Tech Products Ever

Companies in Silicon Valley are fond of saying that they like to “fail fast.” They mean that it’s virtuous to try lots of new things, but to give up quickly when something’s not working. But sometimes they fail fast in a manner that’s nothing to brag about. They invest millions (or hundreds of millions) of dollars in a new product and hype it to the Heavens–and then kill it after only a few months, if they ever release it at all.

From this day henceforth, HP’s TouchPad may be the poster child for bizarrely short-lived tech products. But it has lots of company–famously infamous flops such as Audrey, the G4 Cube, and Foleo. Let’s honor them, shall we?

For this list, I considered only products that were on the market for less than a year, or which never quite made it to consumers, period. Every item that made it was from a large company that should have known better. And while they all share the indignity of a short, embarrassing life, they represent multiple types of failure. (Some of them should never have left the drawing boards in the first place; others could have been great if they’d been given more time to succeed.)

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OS X Lion 10.7.1 is Here

As major operating-system upgrades go, I’ve found Apple’s OS X 10.7 to be smoother sailing than most. But Apple has released 10.7.1, an update with the sort of minor fixes that usually show up in the first update to an upgrade. The Loop’s Peter Cohen has some details.

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How a Thin 2011 Notebook is Like a Chunky 1970s Calculator

PCWorld’s Jason Cross explains how the MacBook Air is like HP’s HP 35 calculator  from 1972, and why that’s bad news for today’s PC makers (HP included):

HP’s market research said they shouldn’t make and release it – it was going to cost at least $350. At twenty times the cost of a slide rule, nobody was going to buy it! Bill Hewlett said, “I don’t care, I want one of these things” and pushed the project through. It was so revolutionary, so visionary and transformative, that even at a cost of $350+ (that’s 1972 dollars!) the orders were over 10,000 a month.

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