Thursday, May 27, 2010

Apple: Remarkable

Image representing Steve Jobs as depicted in C...Image via CrunchBase
Apple Passes Microsoft As World's Largest Tech Company Wired

This is a big deal. Wow. Fascinating. But then that is the Steve Jobs life story. His ups and downs and ups have been fascinating. His decade in the wilderness: he has more than made up for it. It was not a lost decade. He might have lost that decade (and a half) to Gates, but Gates had to play catch up after that all the way to his retirement, or rather a second career thinking for the bottom two billion people. Microsoft has been adding features to Windows when the new game in town is to take away as many features as possible from the operating system like Chrome OS promises to do.

Steve Jobs did the PC thing. He was not supposed to do the smartphone thing. A new generation Steve Jobs was supposed to show up. Steve Jobs did the smartphone thing. He was not supposed to do the tablet thing. A new person was supposed to show up. In that way the guy is like Fidel Castro. American presidents come and go, Castro stays on.

I have been angry about Jobs' ouster from Apple back in the days. That is what happens when dumb people get and exercise power. Like Mozart says in the movie Mozart, "Those people should not have that kind of power!" Apple finally got a PhD to come run the company until it finally gave up. Yeah, I read that PhD dude's Apple "memoir" a long time ago. It is a pathetic read.

Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison are best friends. (Mideast Peace: Tech Industry Style) Ellison has wanted Oracle to surpass Microsoft's market cap forever. When it looked like his umpteenth attempt might fail, he went ahead and called Bill Gates a name: "William Henry Gates III." I was born in Chicago's Jewish ghetto, not in the Seattle suburbs. (Larry And The Cloud) Ellison, now that is another fascinating life story. After Ellison bought Sun, I threw a challenge his way: create data centers the size of servers.

Larry Ellison
Oracle, Oracle
That Startup Mentality (2)
The $100 Computer

My love is for Google, not Apple. Apple pushes out BMWs, and I am a Third World guy fascinated by the Sam Walton (he launched Walmart when he was 42), Michael Dell type business models. The iPad passed me by; what I am waiting for is the Chrome OS Notebook. Make the screen big, yo. I want a cheap, light Chrome OS notebook to replace both the smartphone and the PC.

iPad
The iPad Is No Laptop Killer
Has Google Been Able To Scale Well?

But that does not affect my fascination with the Steve Jobs life story. He is an iCon. He is iLegend.

One does have to ask though, is the iPad Steve's final product?

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