Steve Jobs Resigned!

[CUBBYJR1]

kind of curious what direction there go now without steve.

 

[Mike_Ryan]

:-( very sad

 

[Behrluvr]

I don't think Macs are any better or worse than any other computer manufacturer. What they are is sold at a price point which is pumped up into the gouge level for what you get. We whine and complain about the oil companies with their measly, what? 8% profit margins, yet there is no breast beating over Apple's what? 30% margin? (guessing there).

Especially since their parts are made in the same sweat shop factories like Foxconn where the hopeless workers jump out of windows in despair. I can see Apple's rarified prices if they were made in US factories with US wages. But if their labor costs are at slave rates, how do they justify prices pumped up in the stratosphere? Especially when the competition does it for 1/4 to 1/2 the Apple price points.

If you think there is nothing more to a laptop than RAM and CPU then you're best to stick with Dell, they'll suit you better.

If you care about more than that, then you start to see the value in a Mac.

All my Macs have lasted at least 5 years, my 6 year old MacBook Pro still gets admiring looks, and people still ask me how new it is!

With the last statement, you agree Macs are a fashion statement. Who gives an admiring look to inanimate objects? Fashion hounds. No different then what Abercrombie does.
Lets face it, a 6 year old piece of hardware (including Mac) is very dated looking. There is no way anyone would ever possibly think its new. The whole point of Apple is to sell new hardware as frequently as possible, yearly for the iphone. Apple knows full well the lure of a pretty new bauble. Especially for the hordes of Apple Faithful.
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Any of my computers have also lasted 5 years, especially the one Dell I've ever owned. I bought it in 2003, it got slammed around for 3 years through various indignities at airports, hotels, rental cars, and cab rides. Survived various spills, drops, and other miscellany, and kept on ticking. That one got passed on to a buddy who still uses it today. never a hiccup from that one, not even a virus. Same with my first Acer, my old HP, and my recently retired Acer. Same with the various desktops, and homebuilts I've acquired over the years. They all work pretty much indefinitely.

 

[Behrluvr]

All that while being very light and having massive battery life. Try that with a $450 Dell!

Actually may last Acer went for $399 and lasted me for 3 years 'til it was retired 2 weeks ago. My current Toshiba sold for $450US. (Although the Acer was working fine, it was essentially obsolete, time for me to move on to Win7 and all that).

The new laptop is on today's bleeding edge AFA CPU, cores, memory, display, other features, and "computer friendliness", and I expect to get 3 years use before it too is obsolete.

It just so happened that Toshiba had the best combination of features to hardware to price at this point in time. I have no loyalty to any brand. I go for value as all computers are commodity items today. They are tools not works of art. I don't intend to fall in love with it. If Apple offered a good value I'd consider them too. Currently they are shamelessly overpriced.

 

[gb2000ie]

I don't think Macs are any better or worse than any other computer manufacturer. What they are is sold at a price point which is pumped up into the gouge level for what you get. We whine and complain about the oil companies with their measly, what? 8% profit margins, yet there is no breast beating over Apple's what? 30% margin? (guessing there).

Have you been reading this thread at all? Myself and other posters have laid out in detail exactly what you get for your money. As always, you are just ignoring reality when it's inconvenient, and carrying on regardless.

Especially since their parts are made in the same sweat shop factories like Foxconn where the hopeless workers jump out of windows in despair. I can see Apple's rarified prices if they were made in US factories with US wages. But if their labor costs are at slave rates, how do they justify prices pumped up in the stratosphere? Especially when the competition does it for 1/4 to 1/2 the Apple price points.

So the only cost in hardware is labour? Materials don't factor into it? There is a reason Macs last for years, while cheaper computers fall apart, Apple use better materials and put them together in a more robust way.

Most laptops are made from cheap plastic and are as rigid and robust as you'd expect from a piece of cheap plastic - Apple etch their laptops out of solid slabs of Aluminium, and use glass rather than plastic for their screens. You have to pay for those better materials and processes!

With the last statement, you agree Macs are a fashion statement. Who gives an admiring look to inanimate objects? Fashion hounds. No different then what Abercrombie does.

I agree that Macs look good - that does NOT mean that the ONLY have looks - I'm getting that typical dejavu every time I bother replying to you. My point was that Apple is MORE than just looks, your interpretations of that is the inverse.

Lets face it, a 6 year old piece of hardware (including Mac) is very dated looking. There is no way anyone would ever possibly think its new.

Wow - a new low, calling me a liar!

The whole point of Apple is to sell new hardware as frequently as possible, yearly for the iphone. Apple knows full well the lure of a pretty new bauble. Especially for the hordes of Apple Faithful.

I'm an active member of the Mac community, we all expect our Apple stuff to last a long time! Yes, we buy new iPhones, but we don't bin the old ones - they get handed down to our less tech-loving family members. My iPhone 3G (not 3Gs) is still in use today. And Apple computer users do not get a new computer everytime Apple update their line - if that were true I'd have 2 new desktops and 2 new laptops a year!

One of the many reasons I love Apple is that THEIR HARDWARE LASTS - IT'S NOT CHEAP CRAP THAT FALLS APART IN A YEAR.

Any of my computers have also lasted 5 years, especially the one Dell I've ever owned. I bought it in 2003, it got slammed around for 3 years through various indignities at airports, hotels, rental cars, and cab rides. Survived various spills, drops, and other miscellany, and kept on ticking. That one got passed on to a buddy who still uses it today. never a hiccup from that one, not even a virus. Same with my first Acer, my old HP, and my recently retired Acer. Same with the various desktops, and homebuilts I've acquired over the years. They all work pretty much indefinitely.

Then I must be a complete brute, because I find that plastic latops have wobbly screens after just a few months of use, and invariably those cheap crappy hinges get looser and looser to the point that the screen only works in certain positions.

I look after a lot of computers for family members, and have done for a long time, I've also owned many many computers myself, and it is a fact that I have directly observed that Macs last longer than cheaper computers. If you spend the same or more money then it's not that big of a surprise that those PCs also last long. A good ThinkPad will last as long as a MacBook Pro, but a ThinkPad is in the same price range, so that's hardly a shock, or proof that Apple is over-priced.

B.

 

[gb2000ie]

I have no loyalty to any brand. I go for value as all computers are commodity items today. They are tools not works of art. I don't intend to fall in love with it. If Apple offered a good value I'd consider them too. Currently they are shamelessly overpriced.

I go for value too, but for me, quality is a part of what determines value. I spend 12 hours a day in front of computers - so small improvements in user experience multiply up MASSIVELY. As I've said before, there is no such thing as a subjective "best computer". If all you do is surf the web, check your email, and use MS Office, then it makes sense to sacrifice better build quality, better design, and a better OS to save a few hundred dollars. In fact, I often recommend people do that in those situations, but there are many people for whom Macs offer better value for money than PCs.

Let me give three examples (and there are many more):

1) you are not computer savy, you have simple needs, and you just want a computer that works. You could save some money and get a PC that you won't be able to keep safe, you could save the same amount of money and get an iPad (easy to use and to keep safe), or you could get a Mac, a little more work to keep running than an iPad, but a lot easier to keep on the straight and narrow than a PC. You could legitimately choose to exchange some more money for a reduction in headaches. That would be an intelligent value-for-money judgement.

2) You are a home user, you want to do the obvious stuff like surf the web, check email, chat to friends on Skype or IM or what ever, manage your music, and keep a library of family photos and videos. In that case, what would your extra money above a bargain-basement machine buy you? It would get you the same ease of use and comparative safety that it would get the novice, as well as Apple's fantastic creative suite that comes free with every Mac (iLife). iPhoto, iMovie etc have given my Dad so much pleasure, and it's helped him to share family events with family members who can't be there. My Dad is a hard-nosed business man who buys cheap PC laptops in work because "all they have to do us use Word", but for the family computer he recommends Macs to all his friends.

3) people like me - very serious power users. I'm a Unix/Linux sysadmin, I expect a lot from my OS. I expect to run a lot of apps at once, and to be able to do so without getting lost in a sea of windows, I expect to be able to interact with every kind of computer on the network without needing to install a bunch of extra software, I expect to have all the development and admin tools I need to do my work, and I expect to be able to automate as much of my work as possible. For me, Windows is a toy - plain and simple. One desktop to keep all my 50 windows? Seriously? Nothing newer than telnet and FTP, seriously? No posix commandline, no high-level scripting languages, no OS-wide scripting language? Feature-wise Windows is stuck in the early 1990s, sure, there's been a lot of polish to the looks, but very little has been added to the substance. For me, just the difference between OS X and Windows is worth the difference in price between a Mac and a PC, but for that extra price I also get better designed and built hardware, and powerful bundled software that I use a lot, which all makes the decision even easier.

I can make my Mac do things using only built-in features and a few clicks that I'd need 6 months programming to get done on Windows. My time is worth money to my employer (and to me), so it makes sense to spend an extra $100 a year on my computer so I can get a lot more work done!

For the extra money a Mac delivers extra under four headings (which will matter to different people to different degrees):
1) hardware design and build quality
2) operating system ease of use and power features
3) included software
4) looks

You've decided that because Apple deliver under heading 4, they must be ONLY delivering under heading 4, which is a complete non-sense, and misses the three much more significant headers that they also deliver under.

B.

 

[NYDude25]

Yea, this is a real shame. He must not have much time left, he will be missed.

 

[rftk1]

really sad

 

[Behrluvr]

It's humorous that people feel Apple is better because it uses better parts. They use Foxcon as their subcontractor. Foxcon is notorious as a sweatshop which treats its employees as dogmeat. The employees are so despondent over their hopeless deadend lives at Foxcon that they jump off the roof. Foxcon (and Apple, and others) were embarrassed by this. The solution was to install suicide netting on the building exteriors, not to institute reforms.
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I used to play a little game with online buddies. We challenged ourselves to a contest. Who could build the cheapest, fully functional desktop. I built several at ridiculously low prices. I used Foxcon parts. Whats funny is they do work despite being so inexpensive. All you gotta do is hold a Foxcon power supply in your hand. Even a noob can see how shoddy they are made. I am astounded they work, but they do , and work well, that is well enough.

The electrical performance characteristics of Foxcon ps's is , err, shocking:rofl: -subpar. Yet they work well enough, and its been my experience they actually outlast more mainstream suppliers like Kingwin.

And thats all that counts. No one sees inside. All you see is the outside. This is true of so many things. You can put a few denari into exterior appointments be it cars, clothes, cell phones or laptops/desktops. People will buy because they look pretty. All the while the interior is questionable. Who knows? A geek would but certainly not 'Joe Internet'.

 

[gb2000ie]

It's humorous that people feel Apple is better because it uses better parts. They use Foxcon as their subcontractor. Foxcon is notorious as a sweatshop which treats its employees as dogmeat. The employees are so despondent over their hopeless deadend lives at Foxcon that they jump off the roof. Foxcon (and Apple, and others) were embarrassed by this. The solution was to install suicide netting on the building exteriors, not to institute reforms.

So materials don't matter? Only where they are put together matters? Cheap plastic, strong metal, no different? You're just trolling now!

I used to play a little game with online buddies. We challenged ourselves to a contest. Who could build the cheapest, fully functional desktop. I built several at ridiculously low prices. I used Foxcon parts. Whats funny is they do work despite being so inexpensive. All you gotta do is hold a Foxcon power supply in your hand. Even a noob can see how shoddy they are made. I am astounded they work, but they do , and work well, that is well enough.

This reminds me of my youth. I used to say I had the same computer for 10 years, every single part, even the case was replaced many times over those 10 years, but always one part at a time, so to me it really was the same computer. That was fun, and I, mostly, had a good working computer. I also learned a lot. But it took a lot of time an effort. Making the computer was the game then, now, I want to get other things done, so I don't want to spent time mothering my computer, I want to spend my time on my photography, blogging, podcasting, and historical research.

I could save a fortune in cash and built my own computers still, but it would cost me a fortune in time, which is even more valuable to me now. Times change, and so have my priorities, and hence the things I assign value to.

And thats all that counts. No one sees inside. All you see is the outside. This is true of so many things. You can put a few denari into exterior appointments be it cars, clothes, cell phones or laptops/desktops. People will buy because they look pretty. All the while the interior is questionable. Who knows? A geek would but certainly not 'Joe Internet'.

You're right that the wonderfully elegant design of the interior of the MacPro cases is lost on most people, but there is one important part of the 'inside' of a computer that does not go un-noticed, and that's the OS. That's the bit that frustrates, frightens, and infuriates so many. A good OS is so soothing to the soul!

I had no choice this week but to spend two afternoons wrestling with Microsoft Word - my stress levels were through the roof! I could have done it all so much quicker and more easily in Apple's Pages, but for bureaucratic reasons I had to use Office. It was just a little reminder of the world of stress I left behind when I said goodbye to Windows a few years ago.

B.

 

[Behrluvr]

I think what will happen with Apple is it goes into a slow decline. Lets face it the whole Apple cult is built around Jobs and his vision. With him out of the picture, Apple is running on inertia. Remember a while back when Jobs was pushed out of the boardroom, the company went to hell. Apple is one of those companies with a visionary leader, there have been others and they all meet the same fate when the leader is gone. They go into a tailspin.

Apple has a few products in the development stage no doubt, these still have the leader's handprint, But, when these are gone, the odds of the same energy and vision being maintained are slim to none.

Besides being a fashion oriented company it also depends on the cult-like status of its leader. Without the Jim Jones imagery, will Apple be the same? Will the Apple accolytes follow a lesser leader?

 

[SimplyJakeAndAlex]

Have you been reading this thread at all? Myself and other posters have laid out in detail exactly what you get for your money. As always, you are just ignoring reality when it's inconvenient, and carrying on regardless.
B.

And you are surprised :rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl: he doesn't read things, on another post I was going to reply using my researcher skills but yet he shut me down with the links I posted and never read anything I said, he focus on one little thing and forgets everything else. Like JeansGuyOZ said once on this board, some people just like to hear the sound of their own voices, no matter if what they are saying makes sense or not. I am an Apple shareholder and god do I know that Apple is doing fine I can see it in my bank account. Because of Apple I was able to buy a new jeep for my blondy locks, that's not little money taking in consideration that his choice of jeep is really the fancy 50k one LOL (I love the dude). He just come and throw an opinion which us little people should take as factual.

 

[Behrluvr]

To Jake and GB. All I can do is attempt to explain that the subject of this and other threads is laid out in the original post. I am not the subject . If you don't like my opinions feel free to skip reading them. No where is it written that you must even read them, let alone respond to them. Do yourself a favor, it is too emotionally trying for the both of you to read my opinions, skip reading them.

PS : Jake, if you have $50K to spend on a toy for your honey due to proceeds from Apple stock investments , why are you dl'ing porn off what would be in many countries a pirate web?

 

[gb2000ie]

I think what will happen with Apple is it goes into a slow decline. Lets face it the whole Apple cult is built around Jobs and his vision. With him out of the picture, Apple is running on inertia. Remember a while back when Jobs was pushed out of the boardroom, the company went to hell. Apple is one of those companies with a visionary leader, there have been others and they all meet the same fate when the leader is gone. They go into a tailspin.

Apple has a few products in the development stage no doubt, these still have the leader's handprint, But, when these are gone, the odds of the same energy and vision being maintained are slim to none.

Besides being a fashion oriented company it also depends on the cult-like status of its leader. Without the Jim Jones imagery, will Apple be the same? Will the Apple accolytes follow a lesser leader?

I get the impression you know very little about Apple and how it runs.

If we assume for a moment that Apple is just Jobs, then you have to remember that he has not been involved in the day-to-day running of the company for the last 8 months at all, and if you bear in mind that when he went on his second leave he was only shortly back from his first, he has not really been running it in a day-to-day capacity for the last two years. He has really only been involved in the high-level stuff, a role he has not stepped down from, since he is staying on as Chairman of the Board.

But to say Apple is just jobs is pure folly anyway. When Steve was forced out last time the company was a very different place, and he had already lost power long before he left. The company was floundering, and it was being run by people who disagreed utterly with Steve's vision.

When Steve returned to Apple he did not resume running the company in the way he had in the olden days, he changed how he did things dramatically, and has been working on securing the future of the company for the last 10 years. He has been working on hand-picking and training a team to carry on his vision for the last decade at least. He has built a strong team that share his vision, and are in many ways better than Jobs himself.

The most signofficant rising star is Steve's replacement as CEO, Time Cook, who has been with apple for the last 14 years, and who has been effectively running the company for the last two years. The most shocking thing about the iPad is that it beats all competition on BOTH price AND quality. That stunning double-act was made possible by the genious of Tim Cook, who as COO revolutionised Apple's supply chain, as well as their purchasing and manufacturing. No one else can beat Apple on price, because Apple have locked in really good deals with all the suppliers, deals the competition can't compete on without selling their tablets at a loss.

The most obvious rising star is probably Johnny Ives, the head of design at Apple. Pretty much everything with an Apple badge on it since the iPod is Ive's work, and he's a young man at the prime of life still very much at his desk in Apple. If you pretend that Apple are just about design then Apple is about Ives, not Jobs.

Much more in the background is Bob Mansfield, he's the man behind the hardware engineering of the Mac, the man behind the unibody design where you carve laptops from blocks of solid aluminium. He's at the heart of one of the things I love most about Macs, their fantastic build quality. He's still at his desk.

A little less in the background, but probably only known to the Apple community is the young Scott Forstall who is the guy behind iOS, the OS that makes the iPhone the iPhone, and the iPad the iPad. He's very much a young man at the start of his career, and iOS is very much the future of Apple, so that's yet another safe pair of hands.

Finally, lets not leave out Eddie Cue, the man behind iTunes, the App Store, and the new iCloud. No sign of him going anywhere either.

This is a team of very capable people, all still with Apple, and all still working on their future products. At the helm is Steve's old right-hand-man, and still very much involved in the high level decisions, looking down on them all, is Steve Jobs as chairman of the board.

There is a reason Apple stock didn't take a nose-dive when Steve left, the business community are in no doubt that there is a very strong team running Apple, the same strong team that built the iPad!

Also - it is true that there are die-hard Apple fans who think Steve Jobs is a God, but those are not a majority of Apple users, those are a small minority, most Apple users are regular folks who like their iPods, iPhone, iPads, and Macs because they're easy to use, work well, and last.

Look at little deeper, or you're in danger of making an idiot of yourself like Michael Dell did a decade ago when he suggested Apple should give the money back to it's shareholder and close, because it had no future.

B.

 

[gb2000ie]

To Jake and GB. All I can do is attempt to explain that the subject of this and other threads is laid out in the original post. I am not the subject . If you don't like my opinions feel free to skip reading them. No where is it written that you must even read them, let alone respond to them. Do yourself a favor, it is too emotionally trying for the both of you to read my opinions, skip reading them.

PS : Jake, if you have $50K to spend on a toy for your honey due to proceeds from Apple stock investments , why are you dl'ing porn off what would be in many countries a pirate web?

The point of a discussion board is to discuss, not to pontificate. When people counter your arguments with evidence that you are wrong, you can't just ignore reality and expect people to think you are anything other than a troll who is incapable of changing his mind about any subject what ever. Reality matters!

B.

 

[SimplyJakeAndAlex]

The point of a discussion board is to discuss, not to pontificate. When people counter your arguments with evidence that you are wrong, you can't just ignore reality and expect people to think you are anything other than a troll who is incapable of changing his mind about any subject what ever. Reality matters!

B.

To Jake and GB. All I can do is attempt to explain that the subject of this and other threads is laid out in the original post. I am not the subject . If you don't like my opinions feel free to skip reading them. No where is it written that you must even read them, let alone respond to them. Do yourself a favor, it is too emotionally trying for the both of you to read my opinions, skip reading them.

PS : Jake, if you have $50K to spend on a toy for your honey due to proceeds from Apple stock investments , why are you dl'ing porn off what would be in many countries a pirate web?

Did he just reached a new low. Wow :rofl::rofl::rofl: talk about a desperate way of attacking me oh now that is too funny. And why am I doing porn off, LOL that's the most interesting accusation I've ever seen, because I might have downloaded porn once on this site... I came here to discuss with other not for the porn since yes if I can spend 50k for my sweetie, I can also buy porn. But that is another stories which I never told and somehow some dude on a board decided that I was on this board for porn.

I also find interesting that he finally agrees that what he wrote is its opinion, therefore not facts and that makes the whole matter of discussion totally void since; where we are discussing something serious with proof on hands, he kept dwelling on its opinions and come forward telling us to skip his writing when he is in fact spreading his erroneous and or incomplete knowledge all over the forum and tell us to skip it. Yet again if I reply to him, I'm accused of being emotional, but it seems that the dude allow himself to make falsies assumptions about someone he doesn't know at all when it is quite clear that I tried in many message to have an explanation from him... why do you say that, what make you think that? And those questions remain with no response and only personal attacks come from him.

Yep we're to blame

 

[Behrluvr]

The point of a discussion board is to discuss, not to pontificate. When people counter your arguments with evidence that you are wrong, you can't just ignore reality and expect people to think you are anything other than a troll who is incapable of changing his mind about any subject what ever. Reality matters!

B.

I've got to chuckle here. Sir, If one reads your posts, awa Jake's posts, while keeping the terms "troll" and "pontificate" front and center, well, like I said, good for a chuckle.

Once again, is it possible to keep this thread on topic? Castigating those you disagree with serves no purpose. Again , I am not the topic here. Do make an effort to stay on topic.

 

[gb2000ie]

I've got to chuckle here. Sir, If one reads your posts, awa Jake's posts, while keeping the terms "troll" and "pontificate" front and center, well, like I said, good for a chuckle.

Once again, is it possible to keep this thread on topic? Castigating those you disagree with serves no purpose. Again , I am not the topic here. Do make an effort to stay on topic.

ROFL - so I write a big long post full of content, and a teeny short one commenting on your unique take on discussion, and true to form you completely ignore my big post with content, and instead accuse me of not contributing to the topic!

So - having laid on out great detail the team that runs Apple, and how Jobs has actually not been running the day-to-day stuff for 2 years, I say again, it is unreasonable to conclude that Apple is a cult of Jobs, and totally dependent on him.

Ford did fine without Henry, GE has done fine without Edison, Disney has done fine without Walt, and Apple will do just fine without Steve.

B.

 

[XMan101]

Why do so many discussions seem to end up like this lately ?

I'm not pointing fingers at any individuals, but a suggestion to ALL of you.

If you don't like something that is said then please don't keep responding to it !!! All it does is go round and round in circles, it may be fun for 5 minutes but it's making the threads very very boring watching all this pointless bickering.

You don't want to make me :angry: trust me :no:

Thank you in advance !

 

[topdog]

Yea, this is a real shame. He must not have much time left, he will be missed.

This doesn't necessarily mean that Steve is on his deathbed. The problem is that he has been on leave so long that it's handicapped the organization. Stepping aside so that the company leadership is clear is the right thing to do.

His leaving could be 100% for business reasons. He didn't say, so I wouldn't presume.