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Steve Jobs: The man has gone nuts.

Gone nuts? The man has always been nuts. Even when he has stolen things from other companies, he claims they are his own divine creation. He has an obsession with control (which is why all of his endeavors start off as great successes, but end in failure). The only true success he has had was the iPod. The jury is still out on the iPhone for me. It hasn't been long enough to see if it will be a dominant player for years to come.
 
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Gone nuts? The man has always been nuts. Even when he has stolen things from other companies, he claims they are his own divine creation.

I would like to ask what was stolen and shown as his "divine creation"?

He has an obsession with control (which is why all of his endeavors start off as great successes, but end in failure).

Could you elaborate on such endeavors which started out as great successes but ended in failure? I can think of some that receved lukewarm response at launch, and never gained traction. Like the Apple HiFi. AppleTV is also an example of an idea that never materialized in a high volume product.

The only true success he has had was the iPod. The jury is still out on the iPhone for me. It hasn't been long enough to see if it will be a dominant player for years to come.

I'd say OS X is a true success as well. WebKit is another. Both will be major players in years to come. OS X as the only true desktop competitor to Microsofts Windows dominance, and WebKit as the engine to run Safari, Chrome and several other desktop and mobile browsers (even Samsungs new mobile OS bada has a webkit browser)

(webkit is a fork of khtml, and os x is based on NeXTStep (NeXT was Steve Jobs other company after he parted with apple) and that again is based on *BSD)
 
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It now seems that Stevie is trying to trademark on "Pad". Not iPad mind you, but just simply Pad. This has led me to believe that the man is nuts.

Apple was just as protective towards *Pod. An example,

Apple Aggressively Pursues ‘Pod’ Trademarks | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

And using 'Pod' or 'Pad' in applications towards the i(pod/pad/phone) might be crossing the line for Apple because it capitalize on the brand name they pay to build up, and by not being slippery with allowing use might help on hardware companies launching "~Pad" to exploit the brand name without using the exact trademark. But I fully agree to the frustration this company has towards an established application being banned from further update pending name change. I would be pissed as well.
 
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I would like to ask what was stolen and shown as his "divine creation"?

Steve Jobs acted like the GUI was his divine creation, that is why he sued MS over it. He claimed they "stole" what he had created, when in fact he stole the concept to begin with, leaving his complaints moot.


Could you elaborate on such endeavors which started out as great successes but ended in failure? I can think of some that receved lukewarm response at launch, and never gained traction. Like the Apple HiFi. AppleTV is also an example of an idea that never materialized in a high volume product.

The Macintosh in general, maybe you are too young to remember this, but there was a time that Apple was considered to be a legitamite threat to IBM's dominance. However, because of how controlling Jobs was, many software devs moved to Windows.



I'd say OS X is a true success as well. WebKit is another. Both will be major players in years to come. OS X as the only true desktop competitor to Microsofts Windows dominance, and WebKit as the engine to run Safari, Chrome and several other desktop and mobile browsers (even Samsungs new mobile OS bada has a webkit browser)

(webkit is a fork of khtml, and os x is based on NeXTStep (NeXT was Steve Jobs other company after he parted with apple) and that again is based on *BSD)

OSX as a success? Depends on your definition of a "success". If you look at Apple from the beginning on down the line, you would not see OS x as a success. Apple could have been bigger than Microsoft, but their way of doing business rubs many of their partners the wrong way. Devs jumped onto the iPhone because of the masses flocking to it. Like I said, Steve Job's style works in the beginning. However, once something else that allows more freedom shows itself as a true competitor, devs begin to leave Apple for the other product. It has happened time and time again. I agree with you about webkit, though, I honestly forgot about that.

Answers in bold
 
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WebKit as the engine to run Safari, Chrome and several other desktop and mobile browsers (even Samsungs new mobile OS bada has a webkit browser)

(webkit is a fork of khtml, and os x is based on NeXTStep (NeXT was Steve Jobs other company after he parted with apple) and that again is based on *BSD)

Webkit is not an entity of anybody.
It was JUST started by apple as an open source project [apple-open source, i still find it hard to believe],but it only picked up when google and others kicked in and devloped and fixed it further.

Reason- need for light weight browser engine & an alternative to gecko engine .
 
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Steve Jobs acted like the GUI was his divine creation, that is why he sued MS over it. He claimed they "stole" what he had created, when in fact he stole the concept to begin with, leaving his complaints moot.

I think you are lacking important parts of the problem. Apple never claimed to have invented the concept of GUI. The problem was that Apple and Microsoft was engaging a deal for Microsoft to produce software for the Apple OS. So Apple have been providing Microsoft with early prototypes and even some source code to help the optimization of Word and MultiPlan (predates Excel). Windows Menu bar was almost identical to Apples, it even had a Special menu containing disk operations as well as other similar items elsewhere.

Microsoft however had licenced technology from Xerox and had begon the work on windows prior to the deal with apple. So they weren't breaching much beside the blatant rips mentioned.


The Macintosh in general, maybe you are too young to remember this, but there was a time that Apple was considered to be a legitamite threat to IBM's dominance. However, because of how controlling Jobs was, many software devs moved to Windows.

I'm too young to remember Apples infancy, but only because I was occupied with the Commodore range of products at that time, and business-computers weren't a toddlers choice of fun. I however gained a strong interest in computer history.

I think the problem Apple faced wasn't the control poised by Jobs that was the problem - But I'm curious to learn more about what the problem were back then. It was IBMs choice of building a computer out of shelf-ware with only the bios as the only legacy part. That opened up for clone makers like Compaq to reverse engineer one single part, and then build clones, as well as IBMs fault of not seeing the value of owning the OS, giving Microsoft a free pass to license to every clone maker out there.

OSX as a success? Depends on your definition of a "success". If you look at Apple from the beginning on down the line, you would not see OS x as a success. Apple could have been bigger than Microsoft, but their way of doing business rubs many of their partners the wrong way.

I define success in a product as something that allows the company to grow marked share. Yes, compared to the fact that Apple was 20 times or more the value of Microsoft at some point - OS X is no success. But if you look at the sales figures prior to OS X and the figures today, even in regards of a higher general sale of computers one can say OS X have been a success for Apple. As good as Apples OS were at some point in history compared to what else was out, OS X was a much needed step to ensure Apple could keep up with producing their own OS. Imagine, when Windows 2000 was out Apple still was messing around with an OS without memory protection or pre-emptive multitasking. Even the Amiga I bought ten years prior to that had pre-emptive multitasking (But by no stretch any memory protection. I strongly recall Guru meditation that poorly written software gave in the worst thinkable of situations)

Devs jumped onto the iPhone because of the masses flocking to it. Like I said, Steve Job's style works in the beginning. However, once something else that allows more freedom shows itself as a true competitor, devs begin to leave Apple for the other product. It has happened time and time again. I agree with you about webkit, though, I honestly forgot about that.

Well, we'll see how well Jobs new whip pans out. For the end user, it is all for the best (not to have farmville and related flash games directly ported to an native iphone app is for the greater good too) to have the software written in the languages and libs that provides the fastest and least battery consuming experience possible. But I understand devs that see this as something that either is too hard or make project leap out of the economically sustainable frames as say a flash to iphone app conversion would mean.

I'll be writing apps for Android outside of the company I work for, so I'll just have my own pride to whip my development onto the right track ;) But as an end user, I'll be muttering unpleasant language every time I try out an app that drains my battery digging through bloat created by cross-platform-tools that isn't well optimized for android, and probably wishing there actually was some quality control.
 
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Webkit is not an entity of anybody.
It was JUST started by apple as an open source project [apple-open source, i still find it hard to believe],but it only picked up when google and others kicked in and devloped and fixed it further.

Reason- need for light weight browser engine & an alternative to gecko engine .

To quote wikipedia,

WebKit was originally derived by Apple Inc. from the Konqueror browser
 
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And Macintosh's development and issues were caused by Steve Jobs before he left. There is a reason they fired him.

Perhaps he did, but that doesn't really agree with your point about Jobs' projects starting great but failing later due to his control. Unless you meant pre-Macintosh Apple, which was basically the Apple ][, which was the other Steve.

I don't like how controlling the iPhone is either. And I agree that Mac classic development sucked. But I just don't see a parallel between Mac and iPhone here. Mac has become more open (darwin, WebKit, X11, intel hardware) and iPhone has become more closed. iPhone took over the market right away and Mac has never been more than a niche market.
 
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Well, we'll see how well Jobs new whip pans out. For the end user, it is all for the best (not to have farmville and related flash games directly ported to an native iphone app is for the greater good too) to have the software written in the languages and libs that provides the fastest and least battery consuming experience possible. But I understand devs that see this as something that either is too hard or make project leap out of the economically sustainable frames as say a flash to iphone app conversion would mean.

I agree with you there. But, it doesn't matter which is better for the end user in the end. It matters who the devs back. I can use Windows as the example. Windows 1.0 was a buggy mess, but it was a bigger success because you had more freedom, so devs backed it instead of Apple. Apple has a strong hold on the market, but we all know how quickly a market as volatile as the cell phone market can switch.
 
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I think you are lacking important parts of the problem. Apple never claimed to have invented the concept of GUI. The problem was that Apple and Microsoft was engaging a deal for Microsoft to produce software for the Apple OS. So Apple have been providing Microsoft with early prototypes and even some source code to help the optimization of Word and MultiPlan (predates Excel). Windows Menu bar was almost identical to Apples, it even had a Special menu containing disk operations as well as other similar items elsewhere.

While Apple never claimed to have invented the GUI, they did believe they owned the copyright and sued Microsoft and HP for using, without license, Apple's copyrighted GUI.

See: The Apple vs. Microsoft GUI Lawsuit

...When Gass
 
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While Apple never claimed to have invented the GUI, they did believe they owned the copyright and sued Microsoft and HP for using, without license, Apple's copyrighted GUI.

See: The Apple vs. Microsoft GUI Lawsuit

Exactly what I said, because of the similarities and the early prototypes making available to Microsoft, Apple felt Windows infringed on their intellectual property.

You can also read on that page about other GUIs available at that time, and can't see Apple suing them.
 
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Fake, aaahh the internetz.

Pad cannot be trademarked, go wiki what a trademark is, this is plain lame and people believing it is worse ><

It is using Apples trademark in parts that is the key to the problem,
the company and case in question is very much real:

APPideas

And the reason for the trademark infrigment,

Apple - Legal - Copyright and Trademark Guidelines

"By using an Apple trademark, in whole or in part, you are acknowledging that Apple is the sole owner of the trademark and promising that you will not interfere with Apple
 
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