Steve Jobs: Apple tablet "the most importing thing I've ever done" - Page 2

"What good is it, besides surfing the web in the bathroom?" ~Steve Jobs

That's right. I doubt he just sits at his desk doing the accounts all day. My understanding is he works on the actual products.

That's the magic of it. Before anything is even out the hype has been insane, and you can't say Apple was all behind that. It was, and is, hype that feeds of itself, like an inverse black hole.

Not in English really, but it's pretty much like that the gang of designers should be led to the success...

"I believe OS/2 is destined to be the most important operating system, and possibly program, of all time." (1987)

"Spam will be a thing of the past in two years' time." (2004)

~Bill Gates

this is correct - I don't know why people keep saying jobs was wrong about the segway - here's the actual meeting


http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/3533.html

I would not be so quick to write off the Apple TV yet.

Oh and I loved my Lisa

Yes but if this thing becomes big then bill gates was right. He said in like 2001 that tablet computers will be big.

What does it take to get you excited - a mission to Mars? :-) This is the guy that did the Mac, iPod and iPhone saying it's the most important thing he's ever done (if the quote is to be believed).

Don't forget the Apple HiFi, that was so unsuccessful people don't even remember it, despite the fact it's their only real product that's gone into the living room to replace something already there.

If Steve Jobs saying,

Quote:

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

This will be the most important thing Ive ever done.

is true, than it will be.

I would suggest that his 'latest creation' is not his goal to save the print industry, or any other industry for that matter. I suspect that his 'latest creation' will simply be to ease our way of obtaining, perusing, dissecting, discerning, learning, creating, editing and disseminating information in virtualy every aspect of our daily life.

As such,

The Truth Will Set You Free. Like his Mac, iPod, iPhone and retail/virtual store paradigms, he set a wave of innovations throughout their respective fields of play and they continue to do so.

As history tells us, it will repeat itself. But whatever his 'latest creation' is or how successful it may be, it will be the most important thing he has ever done.

You're easy to market to, I see.

I would write it off, cause Apple's living room success story isn't going to be a wireless Apple box, it's going to be a wireless Apple Television. You'll turn it on it'll make a "bong!", you'll type in your iTunes password and use your iTunes TV subscription. The first TV that is auto-setup! I don't mean auto-tune.

"One TV, One Remote, More Power."

And what's more, with iTunes Cloud you'll have all your content on your TV without ever syncing!

I'm not the one with an Apple logo and a loveheart graphic in my sig.

It was a joke. The love-heart represents the word "unicorn", i.e. this tablet cannot live up to the hype. It's called sarcasm.

I really didn't think Steve would love this more than MAC, but after analyzing Apple and looking into the future I think he sees this new OS as the great drive for Apple. I think Apple is thinking right for moving away from conventional computer control, like mouse and keyboard. This might have a better against PCs.

No tablet for me. Not even remotely interested in it.

Long time reader and fan, never posted. But I think it is inaccurate to even imply that the Newton project rose to the level of significance needed to be blamed with "nearly run[ning Apple] out of business"... it was always a niche product and I can believe the rumors that it was cancelled by Jobs simply because it was originated by Sculey.

And as another poster said -- the article glosses over many failures of Jobs: The cube, like other products, failed because it was a complete FORM without FUNCTION.... grossly overpriced, non-expandable, under-powered, etc. And how many people have bought Macs and the first thing they do is toss the Apple supplied mice and keyboards (not so much these days, but true for MANY years). I still won't buy an iMac because you can't even replace the disk drive WHEN (not IF) it fails or should you actually want a bigger one!

Apple will always be a niche player as long as they, like yesterday, insist on 40% profit margins --- Bill Gates may have sold CRAP for many years, but he recognizes the value of selling a LOT of it and building market share. Steve Jobs does not.

And what happened to all the fanboys who declared that Jobs/Apple would destroy the corrupt system of cellphone mega monopolies??? Where are they these days. Not only did Jobs NOT destroy these monopolies, he made them even stronger by providing an immensely popular phone and doing everything within the power of the considerable engineering talent at Apple to keep it locked and fully and firmly in the service of these same monopolies. And by refusing to even unlock the phones AFTER THE CONTRACT is paid for in full, preventing people from doing what they want with property that they have paid a very high price to buy!

I sit in Palm Springs California, in an area with NO ATT service -- although all around me it does exist. Therefore no ATT iPhone. Although I have a very good T-Mobile signal... which is also GSM, but for which I can't legitimately buy the iPhone.

And, don't get me wrong. I love the Mac OS. My first Mac was the original 128K Macintosh, which was upgraded to the 512 E (?) Mac, which was upgraded to the MacPlus (I think.. too long ago) --- I appreciate what Mr. Jobs has done for Apple --- brought it to life and brought it back to life. But, he is not perfect. He makes mistakes. Sometimes very expensive mistakes.

I am interested to see what tomorrow brings. But, if it's tied only to ATT --- no tablet for me either!

Old Macheads who perform penance to Apple for their lack of faith, whips themselves with AppleTalk cables and shoves SCSI terminators into their nostrils.


"I find your lack of faith disturbing..."

can't live up to the hype how?

Macintosh transformed the computing industry. 26 years later all computers basically look like the original Macintosh (from a UI perspective).

before the iPod, the MP3 player market was about in the state the tablet market is today. Companies had tried, there wasn't much success. The iPod changed that because Apple was the first company to have the whole solution. Apple didn't just transform the MP3 player industry, they defined and dominated it. Selling MP3 players in numbers nobody really dreamed was possible.

iPhone transformed the cell phone industry. 2 1/2 years later "innovation' in the cell phone industry consists of releasing a phone that superficially looks like an iPhone. The android, the pre, etc.

What does live up to the hype even mean for the Apple tablet and how long does it take to know the answer?

If the tablet follows a similar growth curve of the iPod and iPhone, it certainly lived up to the hype. Nobody has a tablet computer today that has a chance of following that kind of growth curve.

If the industry itself grows out of the niche market and into the mainstream with competitors copying Apple, it's also lived up to the hype.

if 10 years from now mainstream computers look more like the tablet and less like the Macintosh, then it's exceeded the hype.

Is it simply an evolution of iPod touch (same ui, only a larger screen) or an industry changer. We get an idea tomorrow, but won't really be able to judge it for a year or two. I have to think that Apple has some innovation up it's sleeve beyond simply putting a larger screen on an iPod touch. If that was all there was to it, it would have leaked by now. The extent of the secrecy behind this suggests there's more to it.

First of all I would like to welcome our newest trolls, new trolls are new.

Second when he says most important thing he has done, he is most likely referring to helping / saving (?) the print industry.

carry on.

Seen the movie: The Devil Wears Pravda?

...and you read it and found it important enough to post about.

It's easy to erase a troll here, either new or old.

Just visit your USER>CP and Edit Ignore List.


I watch how people act to others and then simply add them to my ignore list.


Deny a troll the object of his efforts, confrontation.


Better yet, give them a link to MacDailyNews and a list of web proxy servers...

I've been saying this for awhile.

- What can the "ablet" do that we can't do with the iPhone, iPod, iPod Touch, Laptops, Desktop units?

If the "ablet" did EVERYTHING thing that each of these items does, better, cheaper, cooler, then he has a hit, but it will come at a cost.

What is there that you can't do, with whatever you have right now, that would cause you to purchase the "ablet"? Now how many other folks are in your shoes? Or does Apple come ourt with something that isn't out, or is out, but makes it better. I know most of you don't want to hear this, but think "Games", if only as the base of the unit, with many other features and functions, but GAMES as the main feature.

Skip

I'm actually hoping the announcement is not for a tablet but something completely different, just to throw a curve ball into the marketplace and calm down this hysterical rumor mill (and I don't mean here, I mean in mainstream media).

But it probably is a tablet, in which case it will be incredibly important IF:

If there's something unbelievably innovative about its interface that somehow, single-handedly, ushers the hapless print media into a profitable screen-based paradigm. THAT would be incredibly important from both a technical and social-value point of view - because if things keep going the way they have been, the only profitable information company left on the planet in 3 years will be Google, and the entire point of a free press, i.e., to fuel democracy by providing moderated, high-quality, as-objective-as-possible, journalism, will just seem quaint (it already does, doesn't it?), along with democracy itself.

Or, if the device can be rolled up like a, um, a magazine (and stored like, say, a small umbrella), but made rigid, and as big as a laptop's screen for use - THAT would be a completely revolutionary device even if it otherwise functioned the same as a large iPod Touch.

But if it's just a 5X larger version of the current iPod touch or a laptop screen with the keyboard moved onto the screen - well that would just be a wonderful new device, but simply evolutionary and just what everyone is expecting, but not necessarily wanting.

At this point *nothing* could meet the level of hype. Hell, the NYTimes today had an article about the impact of the tablet on media companies and the damn thing *isnt even out yet*!!!

There is something significant to be considered here and that is that Jobs is painfully aware of his mortality. I don't doubt that from his perspective another chance to do something significant at Apple was far from a sure thing. This man likely came closer to dying than it was suggested he had and when you live through something like that, it causes you to examine your life.

Jobs knows on a gut level that his time might well be exceedingly limited. We all understand that is the case intellectually but it's another thing to have lived through what Jobs has. As such, it's no surprise that Jobs is tackling a project that he perceives to be important. He doesn't want to be wasting what time he has left.

By the way, I have the latest version of the Mac Mini and have to say it's a great little computer. All it took for me to work on editing more than nine hours of HD footage from a hybrid camera is an external terabyte Firewire 800 drive that I also have the OS running off of. Since I'm not working the internal drive all that hard, it will be easy to deal with a burnt out external drive on account of all I have to do is toss it out and buy a new one, probably with a lot higher capacity and dirt cheap. Easily the best computer I've ever owned.

One more thing. Because the hype leading up to tomorrow's event is absolutely insane, the initial reaction to the device will be major disappointment. Ignore that reaction and wait a bit to see what the fundamental impact of the device will be before passing judgement. Even if it is a game changer, it takes a while for the game to change and Apple's innovations do seem less than they really are at first glance. In the beginning the iPod was just a music player.

Is that a porno take on The Devil Wears Prada?

... that the iPad will "EVENTUALLY" be more important than the iPhone/iPod.

Steve has been going around doing with publishers and TV what he did with
music on iTunes.

HTML 5 and "digital rights" that follows you to the devices you connect with.

The Synnergy of this new platform may or may not be obvious at first. The folks who looked at the feature list and freaked that the iPhone "doesn't do SMS -- it will NEVER sell!" didn't get that 99% of Smart Phone users up until the iPhone didn't use even half of the "features" their phones had, because they didn't know how to access it.

The iPhone has some real competition now but the backpedaling about "other cell providers" is curious -- it makes me think that they will STILL be with AT&T. From AT&T's point of view -- it makes sense. The iPhone provided them about 35% direct conversion for people to use their high-bandwidth features.

Now, I'm guessing Jobs got MAJOR concessions or we was going to jump. Following this man's idiosyncrasies -- I'm pretty sure he is someone to whom just making ANOTHER buck is not what it's all about. Jobs has had a few near death experiences so far, he is uncompromising with quality -- if he has an exclusive deal with AT&T that could mean only one THING to me: AT&T will allow faster and more available streaming.

Jobs has sent this iPad back to the drawing board for 7 years now. There isn't ANYONE else in the computer industry who would waste time perfecting a product -- they would release WHATEVER and hope to fix it in the next release -- make a buck on it in the interim.

But he realizes you only get one shot to make a first impression. Everybody is already down on the tablet concept --- but of course, the same people who brought you the Zune and almost killed smartphones, and of course web design with Internet Explorer, security with ActiveX that works throughout the entire OS because he had to imbed the dang thing to kill Netscape -- well, we got our first look at tablets with Microsoft. Not really a bad situation, nobody is forced to make a BAD design and repurpose a desktop metaphor when you are usually only going to have one hand when operating this thing.


>> I'm hoping it's NOT just an entrainment device. Of course -- THAT part is crucial, but I'm looking forward to seeing what became of all the patents concerning "minority report-like controls." Apple has dozens of 3D interface, eye tracking and display patents and it's only limited by what they can actually implement at this point.

I also think this is Job's "swan song" and that this will be the culmination of his life's work. That's why AT&T better have video streaming right for a cell phone -- I'd think that Jobs would walk and lose half his stock price before compromising on his "VISION" with this "one last thing."

>> This will be THE MAGAZINE AND NEWSPAPER OUTLET. It will be all your media in one place, playable on other devices wirelessly (heck, I was expecting that with the iPhone a couple years ago) -- we only got itunes sharing out of that.

I'm not going to speculate, because it will be pretty hard to live up to expectations of what can actually be implemented from their patents. I'm hoping that at least there is "above screen" detection and they use that fancy recognition to detect the pinky from the thumb on your hand -- meaning that the computer could be controlled by Sign Language conceivably -- arg, I WILL STOP speculating now! It's only too much fun for the Mac haters who talk about the "iPhones with laser beams" that fan boys come up with.

>> I really can't wait!

You're back!


I think the problem is ATT and the USA, in your case. Sure, Apple's a culprit, but not the only one. They added more carriers for UK, Canada, Australia, countries in Europe, and in "far-flung" places like Singapore and Malaysia the government (not great, but bless their little hearts in this particular case) prevents carrier-locked handsets of any kind.

So basically Steve Jobs is not perfect, but he is out to make an impact, he's not going to solve the world's problems but he will provide the tools that *may* be useful in your situation and help you out and make you feel happy while Apple makes a profit. Simple, yes?

I just saw that "quaint" movie The Invention Of Lying... Jeezus people, think for yourselves. Don't expect this to be the 2nd coming, or be liberated from the evils of ATT, but it sure will be something spectacular to consider and something that will ignite the Tech industry at least -- I mean, look at the garbage Tablet-esque and Netbook-rubbish that came out of CES '2010. I just wanted a frickin' $299 good, fast, reliable 256GB SSD, and affordable, nice, LED-backlit 40-50" TVs. Not all this Tablet-this, Tablet-that, 3D-this, Super-Fast measly 40GB or whatever $$$$ SSDs and stuff.

As for GPUs and CPUs, don't get me started on Intel's monopolistic abuse, and Nvidia's sad grapplings with Fermi, the Biggest and Hottest GPU Ever Designed (TM)

Apple is not the Calvary but they sure are useful in giving the Tech industry a kick in the butt from time to time, despite so cosily in bed with them.

The music industry in the digital age says hello.

It was a good call actually thank you

I thought the porno would be "The Devil Wears Nothing"

Fair enough, but I don't think Bill Gates meant that tablet computers would be big in 2010-2012+ ... He was thinking more 2002-2005.

Why are you (and others) so concerned with market share? This drives me crazy! Yes, market share is one way to judge success, but there are other ways as well. I personally do not want any crap products, nor for Apple to act in any way like Microsoft. I suppose if I owned Apple stock I would care about this as an investor, but I have no stock and don't care. I liked it much better before everyone and their dog suddenly jumped on the iKoolAid bandwagon.

With the huge influx of users in the last couple of years, Apple has had to spread themselves way too thin, and quality is suffering. I have never seen so many problematic software updates (Mac, iPhone, MobileMe) as have been released in the last 2 years. This never used to happen. Software updates used to be extremely dependable and solid. Yes there were issues, but not to this degree.

If some random user decides to switch to Apple because they see value in it and the experience makes sense to them, then that's great. But it seems that a majority of switchers are just doing it because it's cool. I can't tell you how many of my in-laws got iPhones after the 3G came out, just because everyone else was doing it. Then some of them are complaining, "this is a terrible phone! I can't call people with voice commands! My battery life is awful!" Well, the 3G didn't have voice control, so of course it won't do that. And, yes battery life is going to suck if you are playing your music through it all day at work! People are annoying, and not just my relatives and in-laws. It's everyone. Some people DO NOT need to have macs or iPhones.

Go back to PCs people!

I hardly ever comment on here, but I'm just wondering one thing which I hope you can help me out with...

Let's assume for a moment that this device is a tablet, about 10-inches in size, and pretty much like a giant iPhone (thinner proportionally). Let's forget the UI, software, etc. for now.

Imagine you own the aforementioned device. Answer me these questions...

How do you transport it?
Won't you be worried about having 10-inches of glass on display, rattling around in your bag?

The great thing about laptops is that they open and close. Phones are small enough for it to not really matter, but computers kind of need that ability.

Does anyone else worry about these practicalities? Even if it's the greatest device ever, it surely has to be practical.

Schoolbooks and newsprint be dammed! I am so interested to see how they pitch this thing tomorrow. Yes gaming will be a focal point but that alone doesn't really warrant " the most important thing i've ever done". The potential and likely paradigm shift with regards to education seems a bit more apropos. Classrooms and Starbucks full of slate computers..

Maybe it's wresting control of how the networks are used from the cellular service providers, the broadcasters, the cable networks, the phone networks, the satellite networks, etc. Digital freedom.

No, it's saving the press from going out of business.

We'll see. Sheesh, it was a joke!!

Surely it's unheard of for Apple itself to be hyping up a product before it's announcement. It normally just gives the date of the press conference and lets the speculation gather naturally to the usual intense level.

Apple appears to be trying to actually raise expectation, despite there already being what can only be described as a huge level of tablet hysteria. Strange.

I'm as excited about the event as anyone, but can't help feeling that unless Apple REALLY delivers something truly revolutionary, there will be a lot of disappointed folk out there. All this for a product most people think they don't even need.

They must have something VERY special about to land...