Steve Jobs (1955-2011)

“A mind forever voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone.”-–William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

On October 5, 2011, Apple Inc. announced that co-founder Steve Jobs had died.  He was 56 years old.  The news exploded all over the world.  People were in a state of shock.  The man who was able to merge artistry with technology with a touch of gusto was longer amongst us.

Steve Jobs was a patron who could appreciate artistry and knew how it could be interwoven with technology and commerce.  Artistic creativity energized him, especially when it was connected to technology.  Jobs was enamored with beauty and wanted to reflect it in all his products.  His passion for perfection was so obsessive, that he would demand that even the parts inside the products out of the view of the consumer, had to be perfect as well.  Of course his clashes with people around him were classical.  He was abrasive, rude, cold, ironic, arrogant, narcissistic and a whole lot of other negative attributes.  But one thing you can’t deny is that he had a taste for beauty.  He used to say that “Great art stretches the taste, it doesn’t follow tastes.”

Jobs squeezed as much as he could the concepts of the minimalist movement.  Minimalist is one of the most significant movements of the 20th and early 21st century.  It isn’t the flashiest, or the most popular, but it arguably penetrated more fields than almost any other art or design trend.

Everything from user interfaces, to hardware designs, to car, to films and games, to the web and visual designs of today—all those fields and more were influenced by minimalism.  Industrial design should be simple, yet have an expressive spirit.  The Bauhaus movement emphasized rationality and functionality by employing clean lines and forms.  “God is in the Details” or “Less is More” were words often said by Ludwig Mims van der Rohe and Walter Gropius of the Minimalist movement.

Minimalism has been a business strategy for Apple Inc.—and maybe their most successful business strategy of all.  Minimalism built the brand that made their gadgets lust-worth to begin with.

I’m currently reading in my Amazon Kindle Fire, Steve Jobs’s authorized biography written by Walter Isaacson, dubbed Steve Jobs.  Many of the passages of his book are familiar to me, since I have been following Apple since the early eighties, when I acquired my first computer.  It was an Apple II-e.  Since then I have been an ardent follower of Steve Jobs and his roller-coaster ride both inside and out of Apple.

I still have an Apple pin which was given to me by the manager of Xerox Panama, which was the main distributor of Apple products in Panama.  He found out I was a heavy user of the Apple II-e and asked if I could provide seminars to their dealers about Apple’s hardware and software.  I was appalled at the request, and immediately accepted.  They paid me generously.  Apple products sold in Panama were in my hands before they went out to the dealers.  It was a most rewarding experience.

Below is a picture of this Apple pin which is very dear to me.  I later sold my Apple to a friend of mine after it couldn’t handle the workload I had as a Comptroller at Compañía Azucarera La Estrella, S.A. (a large sugar mill in the countryside).  I still have with me a spreadsheet program dubbed Multiplan, which Microsoft elaborated for Apple IIs.  Lotus 1-2-3 and Excel were not even on the drawing board.  During those early days of personal computers, the spreadsheet everybody used was Visicalc, conceived by Dan Bricklin and refined by Bob Frankston.  Visicalc was the first spreadsheet program available for personal computers. It is often considered the application that turned the microcomputer from a hobby for computer enthusiasts into a serious business tool.

Snapshot of an Apple pin which was given to me by the manager of Xerox Panama when I was selected to provide seminars for Apple dealers in Panama. It is a cherished treasure for me. Photo by ©Omar Upegui R.

Apple’s famous colorful logo was designed by Rob Janoff, art director working for Regis McKenna.  Janoff came up with a simple apple shape in two versions, one whole and the other with a bite taken out of it.  The first looked too much like a cherry so Jobs chose the one with a bite.  He also picked a version that was striped in six colors, with psychedelic hues sandwiched between whole-earth green and sky blue, even though that made printing the logo significantly more expensive.

Thank you Mr. Steve Jobs for making a dent in the world and proving to us that “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”  Leonardo da Vinci and you were right.  Both of you belong to the same exceptional breed—Masters of the Universe.

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A Great Visionary Call it Quits

Credit: Apple Inc./Gizmodo

Totally out of the blue, Steve Jobs announced its departure from Apple Inc. This unexpected announcement shocked Apple zealots around the globe.  After several years of failing health and medical leaves of absence, Steve Jobs said succinctly, “I hereby resign as CEO of Apple.”   Since the announcement, Apple stocks have tumbled seven percent as of 7:15 P.M. EST.

Jobs has been on medical leave since January 17, but unveiled the iPad 2 in March for the company. The former Apple CEO has suffered from pancreatic cancer.

Steve Jobs suggested that the best man to replace him is Tim Cook, the chief operating officer.  Apple’s Board of Directors have taken heed.  Mr. Cook has been Apple’s acting chief executive since Mr. Jobs went on medical leave. When he joined Apple in 1998 he quickly began upgrading Apple’s supply chain. Mr. Cook closed many of Apple’s production factories in California and outsourced manufacturing to suppliers in Asia. He became chief operating officer in 2007.

With the more recent introduction of the iPod, iTunes, iPhone and iPad, Apple has shaken up a range of industries. Mr. Jobs has been awarded much of the credit for turning Apple into one of the world’s most valuable companies. Last month Apple briefly became the most valuable company in the world in terms of market capitalization.

Below is the text of Jobs’ resignation letter:

“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.”

“The board has been preparing for this eventuality,” said Michael Gartenberg, research director of Gartner, an IT research company, according to ABC News Radio. “Mr. Cook has shown remarkable leadership in the two times that he has taken the reigns when Jobs was out on medical leave. And there is no reason to think he simply won’t continue that pattern of excellence.”

That’s it; one of the greatest visionaries of all times is calling it quits.  His name belongs to the exclusive club of Thomas Alva Edison, Walt Disney and Henry Ford.  As of today, Apple Inc. enters a new era.

Trip Chowdhry, an analyst with Global Equities Research, said Jobs’ maniacal attention to detail is what has set Apple apart.  “Apple is Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs is Apple, and Steve Jobs is innovation,” Chowdhry said. “You can teach people how to be operationally efficient, you can hire consultants to tell you how to do that, but God creates innovation. … Apple without Steve Jobs is nothing.”  Do you agree?  Let’s wait and see how Apple evolves without the creative mind of a genius.

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The Innovative Corporate Culture of Google

(Credit: Google Inc.)

No other company in modern times has had such a meteoric performance  as Google.  In a little more than a decade, it leaped from a modest garage company,  into a global Internet behemoth.

Google was born under the umbrella of the Web.  It swims like a fish in this dynamic electronic eco-system, unlike other software companies who were born inside the rotating plater of a magnetic hard disk.  The most widely recognized one is of course Microsoft.

The conception of Google by its founders is “bigness.” They were interested in creating a company as big as the universe itself, thus the name Google.

Founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin named the search engine they built “Google,” a play on the word “googol,” the mathematical term for a 1 followed by 100 zeros. The name reflects the immense volume of information that exists, and the scope of Google’s mission: to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.  This they have accomplished with the accuracy of a dedicated mathematician.

Page and Brin went after the gold that hid inside the search engines coffers, dethroning both Microsoft and Yahoo, and rapidly becoming the undisputed king of the hill.   Their dominance of the industry is so strong, that Google is now a commonly used verb by mainstream computer users.

Then, then forayed into the web browser’s territory, and so far are doing very well.  Chrome’s current global market share is 3.17 percent; holding a solid fourth place behind Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari.   Google’s intention with Chrome is to transform it into a high-speed vehicle to transport all online applications.  This blazing vehicle is intended to surf the cloud which will eventually hover above the whole planet. We are all familiar with web applications such as Google Docs, Google Mail, Google Talk, Google Desktop, Google Earth, Google Search Engine, and a long continuous so forth.

With time, Chrome will evolve into the operating system of the web.  This is why the Google whiz kids are doing everything they can to make it better and better.  For example, Google announced last Friday, that their latest version of Chrome, identified as 4.0.220.1, is  loaded with a number of fixes and features, including the debut of Native Client on Microsoft’s Windows OS.

Native Client, or NaCl for short, is an ambitious Google project that, if successful, will help close one gap that separates Web applications from those that run natively on a computer’s operating system. That would improve the competitive position of Web applications such as Google Docs compared to Microsoft Office-–and thereby boost Google’s Chrome operating system project in comparison with Windows.

Most Web browsers run programs written in JavaScript or perhaps Flash, both of them running on a programming foundation that makes those programs slower than native software. But Native Client lets programmers write software that directly taps into x86 chip models such as AMD’s Athlon or Intel’s Core.  A powerful web browser will wipe out the difference between online and desktop applications.  When this takes place, the traditional operating systems like Windows, Linux, and Mac OS will go the way of the Dodo.

How is Google able to harness such intense creativity and innovation in a short lapse of time? I believe they encourage their employees to think outside of the box all the time.  Their working atmosphere is totally different for other competing companies.  Let’s take a quick tour at their offices called “googleplexes”.

Google’s corporate headquarters, fondly nicknamed the Googleplex, is located in Mountain View, California. Today it’s one of their many offices around the globe. While their offices are not identical, they tend to share some essential elements.  Here are a few original things you might see in a Google workspace:

• Local expressions of each location, from a mural in Buenos Aires to ski gondolas in Zurich, showcasing each office’s region and personality.
• Bicycles or scooters for efficient travel between meetings; dogs; lava lamps; massage chairs; large inflatable balls.
• Googlers sharing cubes, yurts and huddle rooms—and very few solo offices.
• Laptops everywhere—standard issue for mobile coding, email on the go and note-taking.
• Foosball, pool tables, volleyball courts, assorted video games, pianos, ping pong tables, and gyms that offer yoga and dance classes.
• Grassroots employee groups for all interests, like meditation, film, wine tasting and salsa dancing.
• Healthy lunches and dinners for all staff at a variety of cafés.
• Break rooms packed with a variety of snacks and drinks to keep Googlers going.

With a lean mean machine highly tuned like this, it’s almost impossible to beat them out of the market.  This is something   Steve Ballmer can’t understand.  He belongs to a past due era of computing.  Good Day.

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Apple Says, “Small is Beautiful”

In an effort to keep its innovation juices flowing, Apple is making another change to its cute musical gadgets.  This time they decided to shrink its already tiny iPod Shuffle.

On Wednesday, Apple unveiled a 4GB Shuffle that’s half the size of the current model.  It’s smaller than an AA battery yet holds up to 1,000 songs, Apple said, and adds a new VoiceOver feature that can recite song titles, artists, and playlist names. Battery life is said to be 10 hours.

The price tage of this minuscule gadget is $79 and comes in silver or black.  Yep, according to Apple, “Small is Beautiful”.  Good Day.

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