Steve Jobs said to be considering an appearance at Apple's iPad 2 event - Page 2

My concern with any appearance by Jobs is that that will become the news rather then the new iPads. Apple likes to make sure the spotlight is on the products they announce.

My guess is that future media events are hosted by Phil Schiller. Cook will come onstage to go over any financial or other milestones. Then they will trot out the appropriate Sr. VP based on the product (Forstall, Serlet, Mansfield). If a new product design is involved Ive (or his replacement) comes onstage or they roll a video (which they have routinely done in the past).

I like Cook a lot, but I think that Apple would be making a mistake if they try to have him fill Jobs' shoes - no matter how good, he will never be as good as Jobs is in presenting new products. It makes more sense to me to adopt a different format because Apple truly will be a different company without Jobs.

And we know that how, exactly?

Listen, instead of hanging on like vultures greedily waiting for the news of an untimely demise, why not invest your energies into something productive, like harboring only your best and warmest wishes for Steve Jobs? People seem to forget that Mr. Jobs, aside from being a snappy dresser and a hoot at a party, is a real human being, with real feelings, and actual hopes and desires... who maybe deserves just a little bit of compassion, a little bit of warmth, some understanding, and (wow, what a thought) maybe some well-wishing rather than greedy machinations concerning his mortality.

Maybe just a bit?

If it does not hurt his medical leave I don't see a reason not to show up for a few minutes before handing the presentation off. However I would much rather see Steve rest up and do a full blown reveal of Lion this summer.

Steve Facetimes Tim at the event. EPIC.

If he has time and energy to meet with somebody like Obama, then he surely has time to be at the iPad2 launch, which is far more important.

Wow. Human compassion and empathy! What a concept here on AI forums.

Thanks.


People seem to forget that Steve is still the active CEO, even while on medical leave from day-to-day operations.


Given the amount of work Steve puts into preparing for and practicing his public presentations/keynotes, something as simple as having dinner with the President of the United States is a piece of cake. The two are not on the same level of difficulty. Making presentations look effortless takes a lot of effort.

He won't do that. Phil and Tim can do the boring stuff at the beginning, announcing numbers of iPads sold, number of iPad apps downloaded, photos of their new store in Shanghai, then finally, Steve will appear on stage and say, "and one more thing..." iPad 2! Applause. Faster, more memory, FaceTime yeah! More applause. Mystery port... iOS 5 preview. Scott Forestall comes out. He trouts a list new features. Salivate. Here to show you what it looks like, some app developers will now come on stage and demo iOS 5 apps. Chilingo, Epic, some French Canadian guy from Gameloft. More Applause, Steve wraps it up with a summary. Same time next year.

Second that, and add 'unseemly ruminations' to those 'greedy machinations.'

LOL! Thanks for the good humor!

"definitely not confirmed."?

So this article brings no extra info to the table. What a waste of time.

Any news on whether this event will be broadcasted live or not?!

the man had pancreatic cancer and a liver transplant. He is going to always look gaunt,always going to have hormone and nutritional issues that will ebb and flow. That is just a fact of his life regardless of whether he lives six weeks, six years or six decades more. This is something that the media etc need to figure out and get over. If they would stop pushing this idea that he's going to drop dead any second and leave a pack of morons behind, the people would stop thinking it as well



I can't help thinking that myself. I'm sure he probably was a bit exhausted after getting the Verizon iphone, new notebooks, new ipads etc to production ready status. January and February are dead times now that they get themselves out of Macworld. So it's a good time to take some time off. And Medical Leave is a way to do it without the Board being able to object. Legally they have to let him. So now he can come and go as he wishes, phone in etc. It's a cleaver move really



Two years ago, Jobs might have mattered. But now it is all about the products. As Apple wants it. Jobs being there are not is a footnote

Yeah mouse I could really give a shit if Steve Jobs is even there. Unlike you that will most likely be spanking off to the live feed.

--bum steer deleted; can't find anything

Apple has a succession plan and probably has since way before the whole cancer thing came up. They just aren't going to announce it and for good reason. If the world knew 100% that Tim Cook was going to be the new CEO, etc they would try to snake him away. Same with Ive, Johnson etc

That whole WSJ article was about a shareholder vote on some group demanding that Apple reveal the plan. The shareholders voted no, Apple does't have to tell

That article is from last year. The ipod event.

Yeah, except that AAPL shares dropped when Steve's leave was announced. So go tell it to the stock market.

That was from last years event.

I could be reading this wrong but I was under the impression that the shareholders at the meeting are not even aware of the succession plan.

I don't think it has anything to do with someone trying to snake away Tim Cook, I think its simply, in the eyes of many Steves Jobs simply can not be replaced.

I tend to buy into this.


http://www.theatlanticwire.com/opini...ion-Plans-7081

"It Might Not Matter If They Disclose a Successor: Jobs Can't Be Replaced An unnamed "high ranking" Apple employee speaks to the Los Angeles Times, and neatly sums up what losing Jobs will mean: "Without him, the innovation will slow, regardless of all the great people there...When Apple does something, the whole world innovates. Who's going to do that now? That's not going to continue. I don't care what anyone says. How could it? How can you replace Steve? The reality is, you can't."

Oops, apologies. Story of my life right now, a year late and 50,000 $ short . . .

People don't usually comment on my "old days of computing" posts, but doesn't bother me, and I will on yours because we're both about trying to bring a little perspective to the heat of the moment that rules the roost here.

My unk was an IBM'er for 30 years, dress and grooming code and all. I've seen the company song book (a very Japanese-like thing to have at an American corp., btw, in any era - unless the Japanese adopted it from Watson in the post WWII era), with songs to encourage the IBM Way.

So I was an IBM groupie long before Apple grabbed my fascination. Best view of digital sci-fi becoming reality around. And there's a soft spot in my heart for Big Blue even now.

And I agree the momentum from Watson's tenure did get enough intertia built up to keep the ball rolling well after he was no longer there. And some is still in the corp's deepest DNA. As will likely be the case with Steve (and to a much lesser, but still real degree, Woz).

But you did leave out the part about IBM foundering and nearly breaking into 4 or 5 parts about 20 years ago now after they misunderstood the significance of the personal computer (otherwise they NEVER would have outsourced the OS for it, when computer OS's were their speciality). For one thing, IBM had grown too bureaucratic and ossified and had lost "the vision thing." For another, they were (or had been, I forget some of the exact time-lines, here) simultaneously distracted by a many year long tooth and claw battle over the government's anti-trust suit. And somewhere in this post-Watson era, they also critically "mis-underestimated" the brashness and cold determination of their upstart "partner," MS to stab them in the back (which is how I saw - and still see - what MS did) in a way that turned out to be a near mortal wound - as they drove petal to the metal on releasing Windows 3.0 while supposedly working equally hard on IBM's OS/2.

Clearing out the cruft in the wake of the Wintel revolution, which marginalised IBM in so many ways, while trying to stanch the bleeding was a painful and lengthy process - in which the traditionalists still at the company were both a strategic asset (deep cultural continuity) and a tactical liability (didn't understand the then field of battle). So I'm happy the new IBM has re-established itself as a key player in many areas of the ongoing info processing/transmitting revolution - even if it doesn't directly and visibly touch the public as it did from the Selectric typewriters through the IBM PC - and that its market cap has come back to the point it might pass MS's again within a year or two! (Champagne WILL be opened up in the exec suite in Armonk on that day!)

In fact this page has a number of interesting statistics about market cap, earnings per share and gross sales which are worth a peek, because even these few stats help show what an amazing business feat Apple's accomplished during the Jobs II era.

Why does this matter in considering Apple's future? A number of reasons (I'll just list two):

1. Steve's successor will be picked along a continuum between someone whose approach will be to keep things the way they've brilliantly been set up with minimal disruption, that is "like Steve" - i.e., Steve circa 1995-201?, to, on the other hand, someone with hopefully equal potential to be a visionary for the next generation by instituting bold new strategic directions and ways of running the company to bring about that vision, i.e., someone "like Steve" only in the sense of brewing up his/her own iconoclastic stew of what will keep Apple's products "insanely great." Bottom line: from don't rock the boat to tear the boat apart and remake it (over and over). Both approaches - the "safe" (for the interim term) and the "bold" (for the long term relevance of the company) have potential upside and downside in the immediate post-Jobs era for Apple.

Typically among corporations with retiring charismatic, transformative leaders, the first choice will be safe - until safe quits working and then a rush to a seemingly possible "new Jobs," or a quick succession of several would-bes until lightning strikes, or Apple becomes another "mature" company among others and no longer defining the future.

2. While people say Apple controls all of its own hardware and software, so there's no MS to pull a Gates/Ballmer on 'em, that's not really the case. Apple has plenty of "partners" (and manufacture almost nothing themselves anymore) as well as plenty of rich competitors with lots of smart people working for 'em. And anyone who doesn't think that the rise of Asian computing will eventually result in companies with the clout of IBM, MS, Apple, Oracle and Google is drinking some strong Kool-Aid. How can Apple's (and HP's and Dell's and Cisco's, etc.) suppliers not be learning a ton from their collaboration?

To some of these Asian companies, the corps above are software/marketing middlemen they believe they can eventually do without altogether (just as MS no longer needed IBM).

The Datsuns of yesterday became the Nissans (and Toyotas, Hondas and Hyundais) of today, and some of the Foxconns of today will become the Samsungs of tomorrow.

As both Thomas J. Watson and Jeopardy's "Watson" would say, " 'THINK' about it."

PS: Fun fact for anyone who's read this far, and doesn't know it: The name for "HAL" in 2001 - whose voice isn't all that different from Watson's - came from the three letters in the alphabet preceding I, B and M.

Steve Jobs' presentations are excellent. I would hate to see him become a "guest star" in Apple product launches who comes on, does a demo or two, and gets a huge round of applause. I want him to run the whole show.

Both of these interesting posts are directed toward the unusual 'founder ethic' behind the two companies. It may be that the business of information processing itself makes it more likely that conscientious service to the customer will be part of the DNA of the company. John H. Patterson of National Cash Register (NCR) is another example. When you are selling machines to keep a business straight with its numbers, the last thing you want to do is short-change that business in any way. NCR during its heyday was forever talking about how its business was the success of the businesses it served, long after the founder was gone.

But if we contrast Apple with Microsoft, or IBM for that matter, we can see that there is one more thing. Steve Jobs calls it 'taste' or making 'just great products for people.' We have the 'thinking machine' conscientiousness there -- the products have to work for the customer -- but there is also a deliberate injection of artistry into the business mix. This is new, I think, except maybe for some companies and products that SJ is on record for admiring -- Sony, Porsche, BMW motorcycles, Leicas.

So, just as Apple is Steve Jobs's greatest product (great statement, by the way) Apple's greatest product is technology as art -- self-correcting information and thinking technology as art. No other company seems to have grasped this yet. Artists are scarce in the business and engineering and sales worlds. I'm sure every single hardware and software person at Apple gets it, and Apple will continue on this trajectory they have discovered. It carries the genes of its own survival, as much or more than IBM, because it's a new species of business and represents a new phase in technical evolution.

Edit: interesting that nine of the top 25 most valuable companies are in information technology, hardware and/or software. Edit 2: Come to think of it, the old-school information tech-company AT&T, before the breakup, had a serious 'it just works' ethic driving it. The call must get through, and all that. Western Electric hardware was way overbuilt.

Thanks for your post - adds a lot of food for thought.

Got one more bit of trivia to add about the rivalry between JH Patterson (NCR) and TJ Watson (IBM) - which also, for a round robin, many decades later includes AT&T - and even Apple:

Watson named IBM precisely to show it was greater in scope than NCR. "National Cash Registers" implied a US company that made... ...cash registers. "International Business Machines" was a rejoinder that Watson's company could be world-wide and make all kinds of machines for business.

But even that part has an epilogue: After the Bell breakup, the remaining core of AT&T (then including Bell Labs) was (and had long been) very anxious to get into computing and to go head to head with IBM in certain areas. So it bought NCR in 1991, which by then was deeply - and often innovatively - into computers and related products of many kinds (and was officially NCR Corporation - no "cash registers" in the name). Including, though, expensive PC-AT clones using IBM's microchannel architecture and SCSI connectors, along with a custom DOS which, like IBM's PS/2 line became a (cash-bleeding) dead end.

(NCR was, by the way, the "N" in "IBM and the BUNCH" - where the "bunch" trailing behind behemoth IBM was Burroughs, Univac, NCR, Control Data and Honeywell.)

And going back to the name game, this new ATT division was christened as the next round of name one-upsmanship over IBM: GIS for Global (not just International) Information Sytems (not just biz machines), i.e. the notion was that the NCR assets plus the Bell Labs division could and would do greater things than IBM.

As it turned out of course, AT&T, partially because it was just freed from many decades of being a regulated monopoly with little marketing or even competitive experience in selling products as such, especially, to the public, and despite all of its inventions (including MOSFET circuits, UNIX, fiber optics, 32 bit microprocessors, lasers, CDMA and the C and C++ languages and many others, without which the computing and communication landscape today would be entirely different), and partly because of NCR's PC line having chosen the wrong standards horses to ride, among other non-fits between ATT&T and its acquistion, Ma Bell was not able to make a go out of this foray into new waters. (At that time its primary assets were long-distance phone service and Bell Labs).

So in 1997, along with other twists and turns I'm hazy on, eventually the GIS division, now NCR again, was spun off as the independent company it is once more today, and is still an important (global) company. Bell Labs itself - once considered the crown jewel of the whole Bell system - was spun off into Lucent Technologies, where its recent history, in terms of basic science at least, has been notably less glorious than its heyday.

And, full circle, AT&T, after being gobbled back up by one of its former Baby Bells (which had already been buying other babies) in 2005, became a business today known primarily on these forums as a company whose cellco arm is notorious for spotty customer service and not being able to keep GSM Apple iPhones connected to its 3G network.

This from the company whose oldest roots descend from, as noted by Flaneur's post, a long-term business culture known and widely admired as the epitome of the early to late midle 20th Century high tech version of "it just works".....

(Footnote: Verizon represents most of what was left of the other Baby Bells, primarily the eastern ones. The rest, primarily western, were subsumed into QWest, which has never had a cellco arm to my knowledge. Sprint grew out of a small Kansas private phone company, and T-Mobile's roots are in Germany.)

Among the many interesting points you raise . . .

We are talking about the origins of businesses around machines for extending the mind. (A relay-switched phone network is an early giant computer.) The intentions of the founders are part of the capital investment in this field, maybe uniquely so. I hope we get back to this later. I think you're on to something.

iPad event coming up now.

Wow, he looks markedly less thin. Good on him!

Well, ``what have we learned?' '
When it comes to seeing the big picture, it's indeed so damn emotional...

(courtesy of Engadget.com)



P.S. Special thanks for the white machine, Apple.

That would be cool. I was on a net jag half the night once we started on this. And while I knew most of the info I stated, the dialog showed me some new connections between the dots from nearly 120 years ago to today's iPad2 announcement (available on both AT&T and Verizon now......)

Intriguing. Where to move the discussion? Let me know when you find a new thread . . .

Been trying to think of a good answer all day. I'm actually spending way too much time on too many "interesting" things on the net lately instead of tackling a to-do list, including a ton of tax accounting, for weeks now.

I wonder if any of the sites that deal in current tech would be interested in something like a blog on the longer-term perspective that can be brought to bear on the events of each current moment, but have no notion of setting out (or how) to get something started. But I will watch for posts by you on active threads. This was a lot of thinking and writing for something that was probably down to close to no views by the time we really got rolling....

I agree about getting back to work.

But I'll keep my eyes open, should you revisit the topic elsewhere.

What exactly is the topic, we might ask? Well I think it has to do with the ancient (150 yeas or so) history of the communications and information age, with particular focus on the intentions of those who developed the business and industry of this age.

There really ought to be a website dedicated to this topic, because I wonder where -- if at all -- it has been observed that these knowledge industries carry an ethical imperative to get it right and make it work, for the sanity of the user/customer. The telegraph wires can't be crossed and the software can't fight against you, which has become Microsoft's problem from time to time.

But maybe I'm drawing a distinction where none exists. The trains have to run on time and not fly off the track, etc. Dunno, have to ponder this.

So maybe it's time to set up www.itshouldjustworkdammit.com then. Or do a George Lucas and get Alexander Sorkin to write a script for a three movie "prequel" to "The Social Network" about Watson, Edison, Tesla, Charles Wang (of CA), Ken Olsen (DEC), Patterson, Gates, et al. Covering the era from "The rise of the information machines," to "Attack of the Redmond Clones."

LoL We can dream

PS: Trying to remember an aphorism about differences without distinctions and distinctions without differences. But can't dredge it up. In any case, yours is a distinction WITH a difference I think. When we committed to computers and programming languages, we had to accept that we don't entirely know what would make an error-free configuration of hardware and software, and how we'd even know why and when we had. There's still some "black box-ery" about engineering and programming these beasts that requires art as well as science.

The number of possible fail points in the operator-run, direct plugged path in a conversation on the early Bell Network (I have an image of Lily Tomlin in my head here, if you were a Laugh-In fan) compared to the number of variables in our gobal electronic, digitally mediated and overlapping voice systems today is exponentially greater for the above reason and many more - land lines, cable lines, fiber lines, T1 and T3 lines, cell towers, cellular radios in all their varietals, wireless home phone radios, Blue Tooth headsets, internet backbone servers and routers, internet routing, communication satellites, inter-company hand-off, VOiP, digital call switching, antennas (of all sizes) and the sheer number of calls and Txts and VMails and Skypes, etc.