STEVE JOBS 1955 - 2011

Steve Jobs Dies at 56

On His Watch, Apple Came to Dominate Digital Age

Steve Jobs, who built the world's most-valuable technology company by creating devices that changed how people use electronics and revolutionized the computer, music and mobile-phone industries, died. He was 56.


Mr. Jobs, who resigned as Apple Inc. chief executive officer on Aug. 24, 2011, passed away today, the Cupertino, California-based company said. He was diagnosed in 2003 with a neuroendocrine tumor, a rare form of pancreatic cancer, and had a liver transplant in 2009. Apple disclosed Mr. Jobs's passing in a statement.

Mr. Jobs embodied the Silicon Valley entrepreneur. He was a long-haired counterculture technophile who dropped out of college and started a computer company in his parents' garage on April Fools' Day, 1976. He had no formal technical training and no real business experience.


What he had instead was an appreciation of technology's elegance and a notion that computers could be more than a hobbyist's toy or a corporation's workhorse. These machines could be indispensable tools. A computer could be, he often said, "a bicycle for our minds." He was right -- owing largely to a revolution he started.

On his watch, Apple came to dominate the digital age, first through the creation of the Macintosh computer and later through the iPod digital music player, the iPhone wireless handset and more recently, the iPad tablet.


With each product, Mr. Jobs confronted new adversaries -- from International Business Machines Corp. in computers to Microsoft Corp. in operating systems, to Sony Corp. in music players and Google Inc. in mobile software.

Mr. Jobs said in 2004 that he had been diagnosed and treated for a neuroendocrine tumor in his pancreas. After surgery to remove an islet cell tumor, he took a month off to recuperate and declared himself healthy and cancer free.

For a few years, he looked that way. He was thinner, which was no surprise after what he'd been through. One person who knew him well said that the cancer scare didn't slow him down, convince him to spend more time with family or reconnect with friends. If anything, Mr. Jobs seemed to get even more engaged with work, said this person, who wished to remain anonymous because the matter was private.

During his 2005 Stanford commencement address, Mr. Jobs described how the inevitability of death was a motivating force in his life.

"Remembering you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked; there is no reason not to follow your heart," he said.

Mr. Jobs's appearance changed noticeably by early 2008. He started looking gaunt. Tech blogs bubbled with discussion about what was going on. Typical headlines: "The Incredible Shrinking Apple CEO," and "Why "Why Does Steve Jobs Look So Thin?"

When he took the stage at Apple events, Mr. Jobs joked about his health. In August of that year, Bloomberg News erroneously published an obituary; at a product launch a month later he recited the Mark Twain line that reports of his death were greatly exaggerated. At another event that year, he projected a slide of his blood pressure.

In January 2009, Mr. Jobs said that his weight loss was caused by a "hormone imbalance"; nine days later, he began a five-month medical leave, handing control of the company to his chief operating officer, Tim Cook. Later that year, he underwent a liver transplant at Methodist University Hospital in Memphis.

Mr. Jobs announced his resignation from Apple Aug. 24. "I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple's CEO, I would be the first to let you know," Mr. Jobs said in a statement. "Unfortunately, that day has come."

In the weeks preceding his resignation, Mr. Jobs was largely housebound, according to a person familiar with the matter.

"Under Steve's leadership Apple has not only revolutionized the computer industry but also transformed how the world communicates, plays, shops and works," Frank Quattrone, CEO of Qatalyst Partners LLP, a Silicon Valley investment bank, said at the time. "In the entrepreneur hall of fame, he is the charter member. He is, and will remain, an inspiration to the world."

Apple CEO Tim Cook Will Unveil The iPhone 5 On October 4th!

It has just been announced that Apple will rollout their new iPhone 5 on October 4th with a huge media event led by new CEO Tim Cook.

While Apple could certainly change its plans anytime, sources said that the Oct. 4 date has been selected by the company to showcase the iPhone 5. Sources added that the plan is now to make the new device available for purchase within a few weeks after the announcement.

And while the iPhone 5 is a much-anticipated handset, the event itself has a lot more importance for Apple than many previous ones.

The Behind-The-Scenes Partnership At Apple

The Behind-The-Scenes Partnership At Apple

HOW A 16 YEAR KID MADE HIS FIRST MILLION DOLLARS FOLLOWING HIS HERO, STEVE JOBS

His name: Christian Owens. His age: 16. He made his first million dollars in two years, "inspired by Apple's CEO Steve Jobs". This is how he did it.

The British teen—who lives in Corby, Northamptonshire—got his first computer age seven. Three years later he got a Mac and taught himself web design. Four years later—at age 14, in 2008—he started his first company. It was a simple site that some of you may know: Mac Bundle Box. The site was pretty, rooted into Apple's own design guidelines and style, but actually was even closer to Macheist, which has done the same package-bundling price plan for a while now.

The page sold a package of very neat Mac OS X applications for a discounted price and for a limited time. He would negotiate with the developers to get a discount deal on their apps. The resulting bundle had a combined retail value of around $400, but he would sell it for a tenth of that price. (You know, like Macheist, which we've featured before.)

Not only that: If enough people bought the package, a new application would get unlocked for all buyers, which guaranteed very good word-of-mouth promotion. And to top it all, Owens dedicated a percentage of all sales to charity.

The idea did well. Very well, in fact: In its first two years, Mac Bundle Box made $1,000,000 (700,000 British Pounds).

Not happy with that success, Owens jumped into a new venture called Branchr, a pay-per-click advertising company that distributes 300 million ads per month on over 17,500 websites, iPhone, and Android applications. The company, which claims to deliver "contextual, behavioral, publisher-defined, and geographically" targeted ads in those platforms, has already made $800,000 in its first year and employs eight adults including his 43-year-old mother, Alison.

He doesn't know where he would be in 10 years, but the next thing he wants to do is to make one hundred million British pounds with Branchr. He seems to be on his way to success. He claims his business is growing strong—Branchr has already bought another company—and he reinvests all the money back into the company.

His secret to success? There's no secret, he says:

There is no magical formula to business, it takes hard work, determination and the drive to do something great.

APPLE CONTINUES TO OPERATE AS A START UP

• 3 Million iPADS in 80 days
• 3hr staff meetings once a week with all department heads
• Continued innovative product development
• Hands on CEO of product development
• Mobile devices that will replace PC's and MAC's
• Sleeker, faster, more compatible iPhone 4
• Created a digital platform for music, movies, books and more that will allow users to engage in a vast amount of content via touchscreen products

Apple recently released Safari 5.0 with the Reader view which conveniently "removes annoying ads and other visual distractions from online articles." I have personally been zapping those annoying ads with Readability, which Apple used to power its reader, since last year.

Surprisingly, no one seems to have noticed how easy Apple has made it to remove ads from web pages just by double-tapping the browser on the iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad. This, while Apple is simultaneously attempting to re-invent interactive brand advertising with its new iAd format, rolling out July 1. What gives?

Apple CEO and device impresario Steve Jobs has seen online ads and thinks they're so bad they actually threaten the user experience of Apple products from the iPad to the web browser. Fortunately, he's also trying to do something about it.

The Dean's Notes: If all corporate companies, record labels, oil/gas companies, etc. paid as much attention to detail to their products and staff as Steve Jobs does, the economy may just be in a better position at the moment. You have to give a lot of credit to successful indy musicians and start up companies who are thriving by paying attention to detail and listening to what the consumer has to say about their products.

APPLE GOES OLD SCHOOL...

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Apple went big on TV for the new iPad with multiple spots during the Oscars telecast, but don't expect "Meet iPad" to do huge numbers on the web.


While other big-budget TV marketers have taken to flogging their TV ads using social tools on YouTube, Twitter and elsewhere, Apple's strategy is decidedly retro. For Apple, it's all about driving viewers to Apple.com, and a potential sale; dissemination of the video itself is secondary.
To wit: Apple's "Meet iPad" has registered 275,000 views on the web after its debut before an Oscars audience of 41 million Sunday night, from 70 different placements, according to Visible Measures. Respectable, but given the general excitement on the web for new Apple products, a sleepy start. The most-viewed copy with just about 100,000 views was uploaded by a YouTube user, not by Apple.

Social aversion Apple generally does not participate in distribution channels it doesn't control, especially social media, which collides with the CEO Steve Jobs' command-and-control style of running the company. For example, Apple does operate a Twitter handle for iTunes, but @apple is in cold storage.

But Apple's approach is particularly striking given how much energy even the least tech-y major marketers spend to get web views on, say, their Super Bowl campaigns to squeeze additional return on their multimillion-dollar investments. By contrast, Apple's online distribution of its ads focuses on ad buys on, say, Yahoo's home page or in rich media units on YouTube, NYTimes.com or WSJ.com.

"They have willfully abstained at a time when everyone else is hopping on this bandwagon," said Matt Cutler, VP at Visible Measures.

Apple's enthusiastic user base can be reliably trusted to devour anything related to the company or CEO Steve Jobs. Apple never has to even ask. But given that enthusiastic support, Apple ads tend to underperform on the web; only one has made Ad Age's viral chart in the past year, which is typically populated by lesser marketers.

Different approach for iPadBut Apple may be changing its playbook in the iPad, at least a little. The company posted six iPad-related videos to its YouTube channel, albeit with comments turned off, and even allows users to embed the videos on their own sites.

It's a step in a different direction, but as one observer points out, far from embracing the kind of interaction that drives sharing. "This is no different than putting a TV ad on ABC -- it's just going where the eyeballs are," said Steve Rubel, senior VP at Edelman Digital.

LAPTOP SLEEVE

This will be a fun ice-breaker piece to take on a job interview. You will be sure to get the job, especially in the field of advertising and marketing.

STEVE JOBS HAS A PROBLEM...WITH HITLER