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Showing posts with label Steve. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Steve. Show all posts

Thursday, 29 December 2011

Steve Jobs wins Grammy for contribution to music

Steve Jobs wins Grammy for contribution to music

Steve Jobs isn't one to be slowed down by a little thing like having shuffled off this mortal coil, having been awarded a Special Merit Grammy award for his contribution to music.

Despite music industry types roundly agreeing that iTunes' monopoly over digital downloads isn't exactly the best thing, it's impossible to deny that Jobs, who passed away in October this year, was responsible for inventions that had a huge impact on the music industry.

Neil Portnow, the president and CEO of the Recording Academy, explains, "This year's honorees offer a variety of brilliance, contributions and lasting impressions on our culture.

"It is an honour to recognise such a diverse group of individuals whose talents and achievements have had an indelible impact on our industry."

Also inedible

Indelible is certainly the word for Jobs' efforts. The iPod led where countless other MP3 players tried and failed to follow, while iTunes brought the concept of actually paying for digital music into the mainstream - and that's not to mention the hard- and software created by Apple that countless musicians use to create, mix and master their work.

The official press release explains, "Jobs' innovations such as the iPod and its conterpart, the online iTunes store, revolutionised the industry and how music was distributed and purchased."



Thursday, 27 October 2011

In Depth: 12 most memorable Steve Jobs moments

We're going to miss Steve Jobs as Apple's CEO - not just because of his talent, but because of his talent for making tech interesting.

Just when things start to get dull, Jobs pops up with a new device, a new philosophy or a new feud - and the tech industry will be all the poorer without him. These are some of our favourite Jobs moments from the last 14 years.

1. "Tell me what's wrong with this place"

After more than a decade away from the firm he founded, Jobs returned to Apple in 1997. It was the beginning of one of the most incredible chapters the technology industry's ever seen. On his first day back, Businessweek reports, he asked executives to tell him what was wrong with the stricken Apple. "After some mumbled replies, he jumped in: 'It's the products!'"

2. "Thoughts on music"

Jobs has never been afraid to pick a fight, and in early 2007 he gave the music business both barrels, damning DRM copy protection and urging the labels to wise up. "Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats," he wrote.

3. "A glass of ice water to somebody in Hell"

The good Mr Jobs is rarely short of a memorable put-down, and his comments on Windows in 2007 were no exception: giving a Windows user iTunes was like giving a glass of ice water to somebody in Hell.

4. "The Post-PC era"

Speaking at the D8 conference in 2010, Jobs outlined his vision for the future: iPads and iPhones are cars, and PCs are trucks. "We're moving into the post-PC era, and this transformation's going to make some people uneasy."

5. "They have restaurants and swimming pools... for a factory, it's pretty nice"

Jobs doesn't always get it right, and his comments about subcontractor Foxconn - whose employees appeared to be committing suicide in alarming numbers - caused something of a storm.

6. "The whole ecosystem will go down the shitter"

Steve Jobs kills the Mac clones, first by attempting to change the licensing terms and then by shuttering the programme altogether.

7. "Don't be evil is a load of crap"

What do you think of Google's "don't be evil" motto, Steve? Speaking to Apple employees at a company event in early 2010, Jobs accused Google of trying to kill the iPhone - "we won't let them" - and railed against Flash. That's something Jobs would come back to just days later.

8. "Thoughts on Flash"

Did someone mention picking fights? Steve Jobs taking on Flash was jaw-dropping: "Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticising Apple for leaving the past behind," he wrote in 2010. Flash remains a no-no on iOS.

9. "We're not perfect"

The iPhone 4 "antennagate" furore was a rare example of Jobs fumbling Apple's PR, with Jobs managing to apologise for the issue while implying that everybody in the world was an idiot.

10. "The excitement of the internet. The simplicity of Macintosh."

Look! Steve's in a suit! Tear your eyes away from that, though, and look at the first iMac: a splash of colour in a world of beige, and one of the most influential designs of all time. They were pretty good computers, too.

11. "We love music"

"No-one has really found the recipe for digital music," Steve said in 2001 as he introduced the iPod. "This is huge". He wasn't kidding.

12. "No one wants to die"

Jobs' 2005 Stanford commencement speech was typically Jobsian: smart, funny and serious. "Have the courage to follow your heart and your intuition," Jobs said, explaining how his cancer diagnosis had affected his worldview. "They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."



Sunday, 23 October 2011

Five of Steve Jobs' less successful moments


Even the best minds have their off days. We take a look at the moments that helped Steve Jobs to become the success he was

You might think it's in bad taste to bring up five negatives on a day when the world has lost a brilliant man, but we are sure Steve himself would probably attest to an important fact of life: it's usually the imperfections we remember most fondly.

What's made Steve Jobs so fascinating, so famous, so successful, wasn't just an eye for detail, a visionary outlook on tech, the ability to understand consumers and a persona that strives for perfection in design, no - it was more than that. It was a potent mix of sheer determination and an attitude to never give up, even when faced with life's worst challenges such as ill-health.

That's why we've decided to look at what you could say were his worst moments - the times when Steve got it wrong - because it's these moments that remind you he was only human. A family man. A man who loved technology and shared his vision with the world.

Stood at the pearly white gates, no doubt Steve Jobs will proudly look back at his life, both the bad and the good, knowing there was something to be learnt from everything.

You're fired
You can make billions, create an army of loyal fans, but nobody is safe from being fired as Steve Jobs found out in 1986.

At the time, Apple was being run by John Sculley, a former Pepsi executive. Sculley had been drafted in because Apple was struggling and investors wanted to see results. This didn't go well with Steve Jobs' vision for home computing, when the industry was still in its infancy, because his ideas would've sounded risky - and so he was fired.

Sculley later admitted in an article in The Week Jobs should've been the one calling the shots and that Apple's success wasn't down to him: 'My sense is that it probably would never have broken down between Steve and me if we had figured out different roles. Maybe he should have been the CEO and I should have been the president...'

Jobs maintained being fired was a blessing, because it allowed him to be freed of the success and pressure of being a CEO, which meant he could effectively start again and focus on nurturing his vision for computing.

Apple Pippin
People often forget Steve Jobs was involved in video games quite early on, and it's less well known he actually had a punt at gaming before the App Store's rise to fame.

Known as the Apple Pippin, this multimedia device rocked a not-so-impressive 66-MHz PowerPC 603e processor and a Mac-lite operating system. It looked a little like a video player with a few squares of colour thrown in for good measure.

Steve Jobs was a master of timing, but the Apple Pippin was a masterclass in how not to do it. When it was released, it was trodden on by the PlayStation, Nintendo 64 and even Sega's ill-fated Saturn console. It sold just 42,000 units in its short life and was forgotten by pretty much everyone.

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Wednesday, 19 October 2011

eBay VP Steve Yankovich: En Route To $4B In Gross Mobile Sales (TCTV)

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Last week, I moderated a panel at the Planet Of The Apps conference in London, which included Steve Yankovich, head of eBay's mobile business operations and development.I caught up with Steve after our panel to talk more about eBay's strides in introducing mobile commerce to a mainstream audience.Yankovich tells me eBay is on its way to process around $4 billion in mobile sales (= gross merchandise volume, not revenue) in 2011, double the number it logged last year. ]]>

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