Steve Jobs resigns

[iamwhatiseem]

Say what you will about Apple.
The man had a dream...and he by God accomplished it.

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. Unfortunately, that day has come.

I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.

As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.

I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.

I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.

 

[Trajan]

Say what you will about Apple.
The man had a dream...and he by God accomplished it.

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. Unfortunately, that day has come.

I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.

As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.

I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.

I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.

yup, he certainly left his mark, he understood like few, appeal thru design, simplification, functionality and packaging.....and, a college drop out...

 

[zzzz]

He did it his way and fought the big dragon and survived. Not sure if anyone else could have done what it takes for Apple to survive this long. I daresay that it might not be long before it joins other companies in the tech graveyard.

 

[iamwhatiseem]

Yep...if Jobs would not have flipped the bird to IBM so long ago...Microsoft would likely not have gotten beyond DOS. Course...if it wasn't for Gates and crew stealing the graphical interface from Lisa...they wouldn't have gotten beyond DOS when they did either.

 

[iamwhatiseem]

He did it his way and fought the big dragon and survived. Not sure if anyone else could have done what it takes for Apple to survive this long. I daresay that it might not be long before it joins other companies in the tech graveyard.

I highly doubt that.
Macs have an almost cult-like following.
Question is - will their unique innovation continue?
Let's all hope so, as well as hoping the continued slow but sure growth of Linux on the desktop.

 

[Foxfyre]

Steve Jobs has been one of those figurative 'rags to riches' national icons. In 1976, when Jobs was 21, he and Stephen Wozniak started Apple Computers in the Jobs family garage. They funded their visionary venture after Jobs sold his Volkswagen bus and Wozniak sold his beloved scientific calculator.

There are probably thousands of similar stories that didn't not turn out so phenomenally, but hats off to those willing to take that kind of risk.

And prayers and best wishes to Jobs who continues to fight pancreatic cancer.

 

[iamwhatiseem]

Steve Jobs has been one of those figurative 'rags to riches' national icons. In 1976, when Jobs was 21, he and Stephen Wozniak started Apple Computers in the Jobs family garage. They funded their visionary venture after Jobs sold his Volkswagen bus and Wozniak sold his beloved scientific calculator.

There are probably thousands of similar stories that didn't not turn out so phenomenally, but hats off to those willing to take that kind of risk.

And prayers and best wishes to Jobs who continues to fight pancreatic cancer.

Aye...Jobs was the "anti-Gates"...not to say Jobs and Woz never "borrowed" code - cause they did, at the beginning. But for the most part Jobs invented/slaved/dared and practically slaved to produce what Apple became.
Bill Gates...stole/pirated/lied and bought his way to build Microsoft.
Where Jobs's ambition was clearly to produce a great product...Gates just wanted to make as much money as he could with as little improvements he could get by with and still call it a "new" product.

 

[Foxfyre]

Steve Jobs has been one of those figurative 'rags to riches' national icons. In 1976, when Jobs was 21, he and Stephen Wozniak started Apple Computers in the Jobs family garage. They funded their visionary venture after Jobs sold his Volkswagen bus and Wozniak sold his beloved scientific calculator.

There are probably thousands of similar stories that didn't not turn out so phenomenally, but hats off to those willing to take that kind of risk.

And prayers and best wishes to Jobs who continues to fight pancreatic cancer.

Aye...Jobs was the "anti-Gates"...not to say Jobs and Woz never "borrowed" code - cause they did, at the beginning. But for the most part Jobs invented/slaved/dared and practically slaved to produce what Apple became.
Bill Gates...stole/pirated/lied and bought his way to build Microsoft.
Where Jobs's ambition was clearly to produce a great product...Gates just wanted to make as much money as he could with as little improvements he could get by with and still call it a "new" product.

I'm sorry, but, due to one of those wierd circusmtances, I had a chance to meet Bill Gates in person, I found him to be a thoroughly genuine and personable man. You may hate Microsoft products--I have had my run in with them too--but Gates took a wild, speculative idea and turned it into useful products and innovations and went on to make computers sufficiently simple and inexpensive to be useful to countless millions of tech dunces like me. While Steve Jobs also has earned my admiration, he does not have a product that most people can afford.

Gates has probably created more millionaires than any other enterprise has done, has created millions of jobs, more than many national economies, and opened up a whole new world to so many. For the last three years Bill and Melinda Gates have contributed a considerable chunk of their accumulated fortune and spend a great deal of time and effort working their Gates Foundation. It is doing a better job than any government contributions have ever done to help some of the world's poorest people mechanize and begin moving into the modern world. It is a pretty amazing thing.

Steve Jobs has also contributed so much more to the world in possibilities and opportunities than he took out of it, he also is worthy of admiration and appreciation.

Different men. Different styles. Different products. But the efforts of both have made the world a better, more interesting place than it was.

 

[Zoom-boing]

I wonder if his resignation letter said "iQuit"?

 

[Cuyo]

AAPL down 5.09% in after hours

 

[syrenn]

I wonder if his resignation letter said "iQuit"?

iResign

 

[zzzz]

Apple - Press Info - Letter from Steve Jobs
says he will still be involved if asked.

 

[Baruch Menachem]

Jobs had two visions that will carry the company. One is good design the other is computer as appliance. Even in its darkest hours, Apple still had better design. The second vison is something the rest of the industry is just now coming to terms with. The idea of computer as commodity.

 

[PeteEU]

Aye...Jobs was the "anti-Gates"...not to say Jobs and Woz never "borrowed" code - cause they did, at the beginning. But for the most part Jobs invented/slaved/dared and practically slaved to produce what Apple became.

Disagree fully. Jobs is very like Gates in many areas, but the difference is that it took a while for Jobs to get his mojo and marketing department up and running. By that time Microsoft had all but killed off Apple.. in fact if it had not been for Microsoft investing in Apple at one point, then Apple would not be around today.

Another difference is that Jobs is a control freak, which is reflected in how Apple is run today. Jobs wants to control what you do and how you do it with his products.. which is why nudity and "bad words" are constantly being censored in Apple land and apps are not approved because they bypass the control of Steve Jobs and his 33% charge on all sales.

Bill Gates...stole/pirated/lied and bought his way to build Microsoft.

Not true. Bill Gates made the right deal with the right people at the right time to make Microsoft the company it is today. Gates made the deal with IBM which put his OS in the market leader and then made that OS available to anyone making similar machines. Apple/Jobs refused to do that and went down the road of making their own machines and refused to license out... it almost cost them the company. Jobs is and was a control freak.

Where Jobs's ambition was clearly to produce a great product...Gates just wanted to make as much money as he could with as little improvements he could get by with and still call it a "new" product.

Bullshit. Jobs has not produced a great product since iTunes. Even his new super OS is so full of bugs that it makes a Windows ME look like a freaking solid piece of software. I mean for the love of god, Apple "makes" its own machines so can test their OS on all the possible machines and yet they some how failed to see the WIFI bug that has plagued OSX Lion? Considering the limited amount of Apple machines out there, there should be NO bugs at all!.. and yet the OS has been patched a lot.

And like it or not, Jobs has copied his way through success. The Tablet computer is something that has been around for decades, both in movies and reality. Sure they have not been as sleak and thin as the iPad, but they have been around. The iPod would never have been successful if it had not been for iTunes. Even today the iPod is very expensive compared to similar music players.. The iPhone was not the first smartphone nor revolutionary, but the marketing surely made it look so. Nokia had smartphones for years before the iPhone came out Even today, the iPhone is so behind technology wise that the next iPhone would have to jump several generations to catch up and if the rumours are correct it wont. And lets not forget many of the new features in iOS5 are stolen from the competition..... iCloud has been around for many years... Microsoft has had it for at least 5+. The new notification system in iOS5 is totally stolen from Android and the list goes on.

And through out, Apple has pushed average at best products at a large premium price.. some would say overpriced. Take any Mac and look what is in side. Often the price of the components are at worst 2/3s of the price of the Mac, often half the price. There is no "super quality", but average every day stuff you can buy anywhere. The only "expensive" part is the screen... but come on... the difference between an IPS screen and a top of the line non IPS screen is freaking minimal but the price is not.

 

[editec]

Apples big mistake (long since overcome) was in thinking they were a hardware company.

If Apple had make its GUI OS available to the world's hardware firms, instead of trying to keep others from using it, APPLE would have surpast MS decades ago.

 

[Douger]

Long live Linus Torvalds.

 

[iamwhatiseem]

Long live Linus Torvalds.

You bet...the only real hacker of the bunch.

 

[Gallagher]

Steve Jobs created a lot of wealth for many people while providing services people wanted, and which enriched all of our lives. Just think of it - without phony stimulus.

 

[ekrem]

I never sat in front of an Apple computer, and I never had an Iphone or Ipod in the hand.
Like PeteEU said it is too overpriced (hardware) and Apple fools the customers with some "style" and "trend". It's a rip-off.

 

[waltky]

Disease is hard to treat because it is difficult to diagnose...

Jobs' Pancreatic Cancer Led to Other Health Issues
August 30, 2011 - When Steve Jobs resigned as CEO of Apple last week, he said it was because he could no longer perform up to the demands of the position. Jobs is known to have been treated for pancreatic cancer, the fourth leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States.

Oncologists say pancreatic cancer is hard to treat because it is difficult to diagnose. The organ is embedded deep in the abdomen, symptoms only become evident in a late stage of the disease. In 2004, Jobs announced he had undergone surgery for pancreatic cancer - a mild and rare form of the disease called an islet cell neuroendocrine tumor. That form makes up about five percent of all of pancreatic cancers. It affects the cells that produce hormones to control blood sugar levels. The more deadly, and common, form appears in the exocrine cells of the pancreas that produce digestive enzymes.

The pancreas is a 15-centimeter-long gland tucked behind the stomach and below the liver. Pancreatic cancer can be hard to diagnose, since the early stages have no visible symptoms. "There are no screening tests in a way mammograms are a good screening tool for breast cancer, or checking blood levels for prostate cancer," says Dr. Khaled el-Shami, a cancer specialist at George Washington University Medical Center in Washington, D.C. Five years after cancer surgery, Jobs got a liver transplant. "About five months ago I had a liver transplant," Jobs said at the time. "So I now have the liver of a mid-20s person.”

El-Shami says that's not surprising, because cancer in the pancreas can spread. “Neuroendocrine tumors tend to spread from pancreas to the liver, and the liver being a vital organ, removing the cancer from the liver can result in improved survival. Liver transplant is a radical way of removing cancer in the liver.” But el-Shami warns a transplant is not a guaranteed cure. “It’s a balance between removing a big chunk of cancer in the liver and the risk of having a weakened immune system, which can encourage not only the original cancer to come back but also emergence of other cancers.”

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