Steve Jobs last act?
This post was published 3 years 3 months 15 days ago and its content may not be valid anymore.Steve Jobs is ready to retire, period. The writing is on the wall, and WWDC all but confirmed it. The master showman, who always leads the charge with a call to arms for the Mac faithful is tired and aging. The charisma was a fraction of what it once was.
Case and point. Jobs style and so called ‘reality distortion field’ can make his flock of the faithful explode with excitement with the most mundane announcement. I remember watching a crowd go wild when Jobs announced that MacOS X supports color coded folders. Mind you this is an old feature that was lost with the transition between OS9 to OSX. Yes, colored folders, that just illustrated Jobs salesmanship.
Fast forward to WWDC 2006. Steve Jobs, who clearly looked tired, was not the center of his three ring circus. When Jobs takes the stage he does his presentations solo, with brief breaks to have third party developers sing his praises, or to embarrass a CEO with a bunny suit. In this presentation he was flanked with his loyal lieutenants, which I’m sure are fine businessmen but can’t put on a show to save their lives. Take Phil Schiller, looking more and more like a character from Willy Wonka, was responsible to announce the Mac Pro. Apple pulled out the stops with the hardware selection, however the presentation of the ‘fastest Mac Apple has ever produced’ seem boring. There is no enthusiasm.
Cut to Steve Jobs portion of the presentation, you still won’t find the excitement. Agreed, WWDC is a developer’s conference, and the focus should be on hard core technical details of everything Apple but without the typical pomp and circumstance of a typical Jobs stage show WWDC simply felt like any Fortune 500 CEO showcasing, in my opinion, a lackluster feature set to a new ‘revolutionary’ OS.
I’m sure Jobs brought Schiller and Serlet out to see how the crowd would react to his potential successor, but I must say if either of those gentlemen are to fill Jobs shoes as CEO, Apple’s future is dim. Jobs enthusiasm and attention to detail is Apple. With his vision and leadership Jobs transformed Apple from a bloated beleaguered company with confusing computer choices to the sleek, stylish, minimalist company it is today.
Again to highlight how Jobs is losing his touch. With the transition to Intel, Apples riskiest move ever, instead of housing Apple’s new processors in sleek new shell to shed the stigma of the PowerPC processor, Jobs retrofitted the existing designs to accommodate the new processor. I don’t think any Apple enthusiast would agree that the old Steve Jobs would have signed off on it.
What does the future hold without Steve, is Steve ready to retire, disagree with my opinion? I would be interested to hear your reactions. Chime in with a comment.
um, dude, the guy is recovering from cancer, if he looks thin and tired, it’s probably from preventative treatment. It’s no walk in the park, I’ll tell ya from experience.
While I agree this shows releases were not the spectacular and the One More Thing they tend to be, you point out that this is a technical show, not a Consumer oriented showing. I would like to comment however more specifically on your comment about the choice not to change the case in which the new intel chips reside. There are many reasons that I can think of not to have made some readical new change to the exterior. The first, is the radical change to the interior. Mac addicts love the sleek flashy newnes of each product release, but as you said yourself again, this is a risky move to the intel chip. Like any other consumer, when there is such a major change, we want something familliar. This case, which encompases a machine meant to be a workhorse, just like it’s cousin the xserve, reflects that it is a workhorse, but still retains a style all it’s own. While the brushed metal may be getting old to some, it;s an industrial statement. It says I’m no froofy arrt deco all in one PC, I’m the bad ass mother who will crunch and crunch numbers like no other… at least until my younger brother eventually comes along. I guess I’m sounding a bit the crazy devoted mac advocate as usual, but I for one feel that the full line of mac products, the iMac, the Mini, the Macbooks as well as Pros, and now Finally the long awaited Mac Pro’s are the sleekest, sexiest Lotus of the computing world.
I wasn’t suprised to see the laptops not changing because they are quintessential
macs. But the “tower of power” MacPRO is the perfect time to reinvent the design. I still like the design but give something to people to show off that hey new mac, yup!
“Jobs retrofitted the existing designs to accommodate the new processor. I don’t think any Apple enthusiast would agree that the old Steve Jobs would have signed off on it.”
“Willy Wanka”? Hilarious! Shouldn’t it be “Willy Wonka”?
Roberto, I know he is recovering. I think the cancer may have accelerated his retirement schedule though.
Dan yesterday as I was watching reading the live feed I was thinking the same thing. He was bringing out his possible sucessors to see how they did. I think what you wrote is right on and to be honest I am sad.
I think the guy who showed Time Machine does it really good. He wasn’t nervious at all, actually, i see self-confidence there. Too bad his iPhoto crashed though.
i hope he won’t leave apple. i see him as the father of great products like the macintosh, mac os, the iPod and he could change the world with them. he has helped many people with this! please steven paul jobs – go on, good luck, power and success for apple
I agree… the guy who showed the Time Machine Feature was good. It could be the guy to presents apple keynotes..
well firstly, it isn’t a lacklustre feature set, it is a selection of a few of the features coming in 10.5 that would appeal to developers.
secondly, I fear you may be right about the retirement. He sold Pixar recently and that more than anything may signal his desire to take it easy. I think he deserves it though.
For future keynotes they should use Actors, Rockstars and Al Gore. That would be awesome.
Here’s the deal. I’m here at WWDC and saw the keynote and thought the same thing. However, there is some amazing stuff being done in Leopard, but it’s mostly under the hood. I’m under NDA so I can’t talk about it, but suffice to say, the underlying technologies that have been added to Leopard, along with the new enhancements to the core apps is huge. This is going to be the biggest release ever for Apple, and they are doing it the right way. Unfortunately, it doesn’t make for a super exciting keynote, but the conference sessions I’m attending while here really highly the monumental changes that are being made to the underlying OS.
Also, keep in mind what Jobs did say – much of what will be in Leopard wasn’t even demonstrated yet. I’m pretty sure that means a revamped IU, revamped Finder, and dozens of other features that aren’t quite ready for prime time. 9 months is a long time to complete and OS, especially for a company like Apple.
“The Stigma of a PowerPC Processor”?
What are you talking about? To most of Apple’s existing customers the PowerPC Chips were the best thing since sliced bread. And many customer’s still believe they are- as they view Intel as unreliable. I believe he tried not to deviate from the previous designs of 2004/5 because they are tried and true. They are sextastic enough as is.
*is one of IkonQ’s PowerPC loyal customers*
The previous designs work for me. New designs come after the guts are ready, in my opinion.
Keeping the design of the MacBook and the Mac Pro relatively the same is a smart move. The insides were drastically changed (Intel, etc.), so why not bring consistency to the purchase decision on the outside? It probably made business sense too; maybe there were a bunch laying around, or the manufacturing of those units were to be cheaper if used, thereby lowering the price for us crazy kids ;-)
Sure, I agree that the WWDC presentations seemed lack luster but to announce the retirement of Steve Jobs seems premature to say the least. Everyone knows (hopes that the rumors) that the true announcements will be with the – Video iPod – and with the – iPhone -.
Regarding the rehashing of designs for the new Intel lineup, while disappointing, the true reward is the vast improvement in computational speed. Having said that I hope the redesigns of the Macbook Pro, iMac, Mac Mini and Mac Pro happen by next year.
Hope steve will still be able to give next year WWDC Keynote address.
Is he going to follow what bill gates did and relax his position a bit.
And anyone notice what shoe he wore? Nike or New Balance. It would be interesting to know.