Steve Jobs announced today that he was resigning, effective immediately, as CEO of Apple.
In his public statement, he refers to his health issues as the reason for his decision:
Letter from Steve Jobs
To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community:
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.
Steve
Job’s reign as CEO of Apple is recognized as a remarkable example of management. Apple was a failing also-ran when Jobs returned in 1996, now it has category defining products and is the most valuable company in the world.
Jobs could not leave the company in better shape – but the change is certain to take a toll on the company’s stock and to leave many OS X and iOS users wondering what the future holds for their platforms.
It’s premature to conjecture what the implications are for the two systems as music platforms. For the near term, both OS X and iOS are state of the art platforms that should continue to be popular with musicians. Long term, though, the platform’s futures will depend on how effective Cook and Apple are at continuing Apple’s legacy of innovation.
Best of luck Steve… everyone else, sell your stock
That was cold…. 🙂
Alot of people praise him. To me he always came across as arrogant.
Whether he strikes you as a fun guy or not – a lot of people recognized Jobs as America's top CEO.
Apple's operating systems are widely considered to be superior to their competition, Apple's products have better reliability ratings than their competition, the company's stores make more per square foot than any other national brand, the company dominates the profitable areas of consumer technology and Apple is now the number one company in the world.
The country could use a few more CEOs, arrogant or not, that run their companies as well as Apple, don't you think?
Wagner and Beethoven were also arrogant. Walt Disney wasn't the nicest human being either. Brilliance doesn't always go hand in hand with niceness.
Show me a CEO who doesn't come across as arrogant! At least Jobs produced quality products and amassed a pile of cash while doing so, instead of running his company into the ground and then taking a golden parachute like most other arrogant CEOs.
Fanboy or not, he's affected everyone technology somehow. He needs to focus on his health. Cheers to you Jobs!
Steve-O! Keynotes will never be the same. He just took the "M" right out of magical
He's been able to take advantage of others innovations by making them small and sleek to appeal to the materialistic appetite.
Marketing and design with an undercurrent of proprietary monopoly.
Just because someone knows how to make money, doesn't make them a great man. It makes them a great businessman.
The world needs more great men, not cash cows.
Indeed. You don't hear people singing Wallmart or McDonald's praises merely for being "successful". Apple have achieved the impossible, however. I can't think of any other corporation that has so successfully created a culture where their customers actually applaud (and occasionally deify) them for encouraging and exploiting their own aspirational consumerism. I suppose they have to be admired for that.
steve jobs made technology accessible for the people. there ain't nothing wrong with that. and it just so happens to be a smart business plan: make something everyone can use, that offers a considerable amount of power, and a LOT of people will use it. it wasn't pandering or selling out, but it was profit-driven and takes some power away from the end-user, but some people (including a good number of musicians) don't mind exchanging that customizability and access for a product that boots up every time and does what it is supposed to do.
Apple treat their work like it is a cure for cancer, Steve Jobs now know it isn't.
His he really a hero? for what providing expensive machines, very bad work places (has the suicides escaped everyones minds at the manafacturing plants? It is good to hear the criticism of Apple, all is not lost.
Steve jobs is an irritating prat , the I pad isn't even velocity sensitive, so fat lotof good that machine is on its own for music.
the earth ended
YAWN! How in the world does this apply to synthesizers and synth technology?
Not sure what PC you tried, but that sounds like operator error.
PC's have like 80+% of the market place for a reason.
Macs are for people who want to be geeky, but not nerdy and look cool too.
Meanwhile, people like Jobs are collecting the ripple of your amounting debt.
A free world doesn't need another proprietary monopoly feeding people's materialistic egos.
At least 80+% aren't blinded by design and handcuffed by a closed system.
The word "icon" gets overused and misused a great deal these days. Not in this man's case.
I thought the iPad hype was overblown, until I got one. To call it revolutionary was almost faint praise. Look at HP getting out of the PC biz. The iPad may even kill off the laptop in the next few years.
Give the man his due. What he achieved at Apple was incredible.
not to say That Jobs didn't to a good job at Apple, or that the iPad was/is not a milestone in the history of computing… but a revolution is something different. It's Gheddafi getting kicked his butt out of Libya, it's the invention of the anti-gravity engine, it's people colonizing the moon… or a new economic system that replaces capitalism. Revolutions change the world, they change it radically. the iPad just capitalizes on changes that have already started long before it was even thought of. Nowadays I feel like everything is called a revolution just because the marketing guys have overused the term so much that we call it a revolution when we take a shorter dump in the morning.
Again, it's not against Jobs or Apple… I'm just fed up hearing the word revolution used for things that aren't such.
Like him or not, you would all still be using text-only blinking block crappy computers if it weren't for Jobs and Woz. And on that note, you would also still all be using flip phones with two lines of green low-res text. His lifetime of pushing boundaries has opened the door to all the things you love about the platforms you prefer to apple.
Nothing exists alone in the world. Pull your head out.
Don't worry blah, he'll die soon and you can dance.
I got started on an Apple ][+. He and Woz started a revolution. I hope he's ok, though I suspect from this news that he's not. 🙁
Dude, seriously? Jobs is responsible for the smartphone! Would you rather have a flip-phone as your only choice? Or how about graphical user interfaces? Or portables? Or a mouse? He has spent a lifetime making possible everything you love about computers and smartphones, even if you never use Apple products. Look at the ripple effect of those products and what they allow people to do, and you can't deny that this guy brought more change into the world than probably anyone else of this generation.
"The iPad may even kill off the laptop in the next few years. "
Blatant Apple fanboy alert!
Lay off the LSD. The iPad can't do a 10th of what a laptop can, and that won't change for atleast another decade or so. I've used an iPad, and while it is an impressive little toy, it's still just that. Outside of running small apps, the iPad really can't do all that much. It won't even come close to touching the laptop's functionality for several more years now.
The only thing he's made Apple good at is taking old technology, making it look new, revolutionary, and cool, and tripling the price of it. To this day I can find a Laptop that's just as (if not more) powerful than a top of the line Macbook Pro for literally half the price. Don't even get me started on the PowerMac. http://arthurseverythingblog.files.wordpress.com/… < Says it all right there.
"The iPad may even kill off the laptop in the next few years. "
Blatant Apple fanboy alert!
Lay off the LSD. The iPad can't do a 10th of what a laptop can, and that won't change for atleast another decade or so. I've used an iPad, and while it is an impressive little toy, it's still just that. Outside of running small apps, the iPad really can't do all that much. It won't even come close to touching the laptop's functionality for several more years now.
The only thing he's made Apple good at is taking old technology, making it look new, revolutionary, and cool, and tripling the price of it. To this day I can find a Laptop that's just as (if not more) powerful than a top of the line Macbook Pro for literally half the price. Don't even get me started on the PowerMac. http://arthurseverythingblog.files.wordpress.com/… < Says it all right there.
"The iPad may even kill off the laptop in the next few years. "
Blatant Apple fanboy alert!
Lay off the LSD. The iPad can't do a 10th of what a laptop can, and that won't change for atleast another decade or so. I've used an iPad, and while it is an impressive little toy, it's still just that. Outside of running small apps, the iPad really can't do all that much. It won't even come close to touching the laptop's functionality for several more years now.
The only thing he's made Apple good at is taking old technology, making it look new, revolutionary, and cool, and tripling the price of it. To this day I can find a Laptop that's just as (if not more) powerful than a top of the line Macbook Pro for literally half the price. Don't even get me started on the PowerMac. http://arthurseverythingblog.files.wordpress.com/… < Says it all right there.
"The iPad may even kill off the laptop in the next few years. "
Blatant Apple fanboy alert!
Lay off the LSD. The iPad can't do a 10th of what a laptop can, and that won't change for atleast another decade or so. I've used an iPad, and while it is an impressive little toy, it's still just that. Outside of running small apps, the iPad really can't do all that much. It won't even come close to touching the laptop's functionality for several more years now.
The only thing he's made Apple good at is taking old technology, making it look new, revolutionary, and cool, and tripling the price of it. To this day I can find a Laptop that's just as (if not more) powerful than a top of the line Macbook Pro for literally half the price. Don't even get me started on the PowerMac. http://arthurseverythingblog.files.wordpress.com/… < Says it all right there.
"The iPad may even kill off the laptop in the next few years. "
Blatant Apple fanboy alert!
Lay off the LSD. The iPad can't do a 10th of what a laptop can, and that won't change for atleast another decade or so. I've used an iPad, and while it is an impressive little toy, it's still just that. Outside of running small apps, the iPad really can't do all that much. It won't even come close to touching the laptop's functionality for several more years now.
The only thing he's made Apple good at is taking old technology, making it look new, revolutionary, and cool, and tripling the price of it. To this day I can find a Laptop that's just as (if not more) powerful than a top of the line Macbook Pro for literally half the price. Don't even get me started on the PowerMac. http://arthurseverythingblog.files.wordpress.com/… < Says it all right there.
I don't want to start noting. But i had many "Smart Phones" before the iPhone ever thought about showing its head. Motorola MPX200 and a TMobile MDA to name a few.
Jobs just made it better. Microsoft was first to the race IMO. The Compaq iPaq was the starting point. iPaq not iPhone not iPad. iPAQ! I had one with a custom SilverSlider Compaq Flash, WindowsMobile OS. I even had a PCMCIA adapter for Wifi. From that birthed the (smart) Phone version by HTC/HP
Well I get your point, and I totally agree that Jobs had an important role in all of this, and I don't want to question his abilities as a CEO and as a marketing guy. Still, all of the things you mention are not really his merit alone, Apple has always been great at selling stuff, but they have made really few inventions, if at all. And all of the things you mention are no revolutions, merely the incremental evolution of the IT sector. What I want to say is just this: marketing makes no revolutions, it just sells products. And while that is fine, I'd just like things to be called by its name.
Don't expect the iPad to kill of laptops anytime soon (Apple still wants to sell Macbooks), but Apple's success with the iPad may be killing off laptop manufacturers.
The top 2 PC manufacturers are in serious trouble, because there's no profit in selling generic Windows laptops.
HP just announced it's leaving the PC business & Acer says it's going to lose money for the year (200+ million) because of the popularity of iPads.
Apple is very discipline about focusing on the profitable areas of the computer business and not trying to compete against generic solutions.
"PC's have like 80+% of the market place for a reason. "
Most people choose cheap over quality.
You may downgrade him and say he never invents, takes other peoples ideas and makes them work. What good is a new technology that nobody can figure out? Ford never invented the car, Edison didn't create the first electric light, but they knew how to make the tech accessible to the general public.
Look at touchable interfaces, Microsoft's Surface table is huge and needs a dark room, Apple's iPad is so genius you can even create real music with it, even on stage (wirelessly). Neither company invented the touch tech, one hobbled expensive junk together without a coherent system, the other spent huge amounts of time perfecting it so you can use it without thinking about the system.
Isn't that what technology should be, staying in the background so you can focus on the task at hand. For that, Steve Jobs is a genius and the computer industry will be forever indebted to him.
I disagree with that notion. If it wasn't Apple, some other company would have addressed the needs of the consumer. I'm curious if you saw that excellent series Everything Is a Remix that was plugged here on Synthtopia. http://vimeo.com/14912890
I wish Steve Jobs and his family the best. I just went through something like that myself with a family member.
Apple's success has been largely because they did these things better and earlier than other companies.
People like to attribute Apple's success as product styling or marketing, but it's more attributable to excellent management practices. Otherwise, they wouldn't be able to outperform other very aggressive and even entrenched competitors over more than a decade.
It's hard to imagine any other company that could have pwned the phone industry like Apple has over the last 5 years.
That Everything is a Remix link is apt.
Apple's success has been largely because they did these things better and earlier than other companies.
People like to attribute Apple's success as product styling or marketing, but it's more attributable to excellent management practices. Otherwise, they wouldn't be able to outperform other very aggressive and even entrenched competitors over more than a decade.
It's hard to imagine any other company that could have pwned the phone industry like Apple has over the last 5 years.
And how many companies are copying Motorolla or Microsoft phones? I used to have a Nokia smartphone and it was junk. There's a reason these companies are roadkill!
Apple's less interested in being the first company to do something than being the first company to do something really well that people are willing to pay for.
We thank God for giving you such wisdom and may you get well.
How about performance?
How about cost per gigabyte, per mhz, per bit?
How about modification? Upgrades? Out with the old and buy a whole new system for top dollar, no thanks.
Let's face it, a lot of people buy out of materialistic impulse.
Charge that card, I'll pay it off just about when it's time to buy another one in 3 years.
What the new ones are shinier and thinner? I've gotta have that, all my friends have one!
Some people like all the software options available too, like 90+% of the developers out there.
Your little ios apples and your little itune downloads are nothing more then over inflated phone games from 1990.
What now you have a bigger cell phone, that plays bigger games, oh wait thats an ipad. That's a cool gadget for those who can afford to be robbed blind.
PCs are for those who know what a computer can really do.
Mac are for those who need others to know what a computer can really do.
"Do you know Bill Gates introduced the tablet PC in 2002?"
http://www.winmatrix.com/forums/index.php?/topic/…
And years later, they still don't have it right.
They've been coasting on corporate Windows sales for 15 years. Their biggest success other than Windows & Office has been XBox, which has a horrible record of reliability.
Is it any wonder Apple runs circles around Microsoft? It's like Microsoft isn't even trying anymore.
You ever hung out @ the Apple store?
You'll hear all about your real reliability.
Apple users hold onto this myth that their machines are built so much better.
The fact is they are built under a single standard and a closed system.
The benefits you think you are getting are simply lifelong subscription rates.
Ignore my post above. My girlfriend was pissed at me and wrote that, lol.
lol so there is wither praising jobs or wanting him dead?
Nice troll post, troll. "Your little ios apples and your little itune downloads are nothing more then over inflated phone games from 1990."
/Really? You call 70% market share in digital downloads, according to NPD, little?
Can you pass some of that super weed you're smoking?
+1 for the super weed!
Consumer Reports actually rated Apple’s MacBooks as the best in every category:
http://www.loopinsight.com/2011/05/24/apple-macbo…
Of course, Blah will probably say that Consumer Reports are a bunch of fanboys!