Steve Jobs steps down as CEO to focus on health

We all saw it, Steve Jobs looked like a skeleton at his last keynote. The man who conquered pancreatic cancer, was getting that thousand-yard stare and gaunt appearance.

Everyone began saying something was obviously wrong with the guy, and inquiries about Steve's health reached fever pitch. At first, he dismissed his rapid weight loss as a result of some medication, whatever. Now he says his health issues are more complicated than he thought.

And so, he's giving up the reins at Apple on a sort of medical leave of absence, he says until June.

I certainly wish the guy well. My thoughts go out to his family, and I hope he will make a speedy recovery.

Since 1984, Jobs has been my hero. As much as I friggin' CAN'T STAND OS X, I never really turned that into a dislike of the man at the helm. As much as I see Steve as a latter-day PT Barnum, somewhat of a master con-man, that doesn't mean I don't admire him. He's certainly changed personal computing forever. In some great ways, and lately in some not-so-great ways.

Maybe Jobs' health issues will be a wake-up call for some of the health issues of OS X. Maybe less will be more for Steve too. Maybe it's not how many medications you can stuff in, maybe it's picking the one or two MOST EFFECTIVE, and letting your body heal itself.

Just as a tumor can get bloated and grow uncontrolled, so too can operating systems grow out of all proportion and groan under their own bloated superabundance. Maybe it's time to carve out the tumors. Go on chemo. Get rid of the stuff that's killing the system, and concentrate on the health of the system itself.

Maybe a brush with the reaper will give my brother Steve a new perspective. When he's thinking about HIS legacy, maybe he will remember THE legacy, and recognize its brilliance in the world of computing. If I were him, I'd much rather be remembered for that, than the happy horseshit of OS X.

Somehow you managed to mix a true compassion for Steve Jobs with enough biting commentary to get you a job as James Spader's understudy on Boston Legal. I just heard from a good friend this morning that she's very sick. That sucks. It sucks to grow old and get sick, whether talking people or operating systems.

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It sucks to grow old and get sick

Yeah it does. My last visit with the doctor wasn't great either, as you know I've been trying to improve my health with diet and exercise. It's a long grind, and I hope I make some progress before any of my health problems get worse.

Oh man, sorry to hear about your friend.

I think, however, that our brushes with death sharpen our sense of destiny. Look at the other celebrity battling pancreatic cancer: Patrick Swayze. Of "Dirty Dancing" fame. He has stage 4, really aggressive. He's getting that gauntness too. A recent interview with Babwa, he was talking about MAYBE having 2-5 years left. But most people with what he has, drop dead in months. But it was clear he was going to LIVE those years, he considered them precious.

I love that attitude. I hope if I ever get news like "you have a week to live"... I turn that into wanting to live the best friggin' week known to man, as opposed to letting the news stop me from truly living that final week.

I'm sure Steve Jobs is going through a lot now. It's tough to face mortality... it's tough to face serious health issues. But on the bright side, it hones people. Focuses them. Jobs is wealthy, powerful, famous. If he croaks he'll be remembered fondly. He has achieved. But at the same time, it doesn't have to be over for him. I think if he were to EVER start going less-is-more on the Mac OS and its interface, going back to that minimal, smart, functionality that made the Mac great... abandon the stupid casual-use marketeering strategy, he could kick technology into a whole new era.

The era now? It's degenerate. It's bloated and greedy and a sham. Stuff pretends to work but doesn't. It's an era of conning rubes, roping retards, and basically keeping people down. Turning computer use into junk food. Another idiot-box, a symbol of consumerism.

But change that around, bring back toolness, bring back the GOOD human interface guidelines, and Apple could change the industry again. Truly for the better.

Jobs, heal thyself. Then heal the Mac OS.
Apple shares slump on Jobs health news

This message has been edited. Last edited by: thalo,

Somebody's health problems shouldn't make for such hilarious reading. I really do wish Jobs well, but if there is to be a roast (or eulogy), I pick you.

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As much as I friggin' CAN'T STAND OS X, I never really turned that into a dislike of the man at the helm.

I've never forgiven him for what he did to the great Mac interface, or for the big show he made onstage of burying OS 9 in a coffin. But I sure don't think he deserves capital punishment for that. And he did bring the GUI to the mass market and change the face of computing worldwide. I hope he recovers.
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Yeah, I'm definitely pissed off at the interface. I raged at the coffin stunt too. No doubt about that. But I see WHY he did it. Why he made OS X a re-tread of Nextstep, got rid of the legacy, changed to a casual user emphasis. It was cheaper, less of a development investment, lots of the technology is FREEWARE/OpenSource, and it's easier to make money off of newbies than it is discriminating pro users.

He's made his stockholders a lot of scratch. It's only pro users he let down... except for a few niche markets in music, video and film production. Oh, and Aperture is good.

But the OS and the interface needs to be better, and the only thing that will do it is a MacLash. A back-to-basics, less-is-more approach. The thing I've been howling about for years now.

I hope Steve's brush with death gives him an epiphany. Maybe he can read thalo.net while he convalesces, and un-sell his soul.

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He's made his stockholders a lot of scratch.

Yes, and his genius there was being willing to see outside the computer box and expand Apple's product line to the iPod and iPhone. And the halo from those even reinvigorated Mac sales. Lots of people, including myself, thought that Apple was doomed. But when he took it beyond the Mac he changed the landscape and saved the company. He made Microsoft, for all of its world domination, look like a bunch of clumsy retarded doofuses, like circus clowns piling out of a tiny car. Microsoft has NEVER been able to outdo Apple at ANYTHING Apple chose to do...except of course for selling the biggest number of computers.

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Maybe he can read thalo.net while he convalesces, and un-sell his soul.

Ha! And maybe I can flap my arms and fly to the moon!
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LOL,

And one other thing I noticed, is that Apple has always remained a trendsetter. As crappy and awful the design of OS X is, have you noticed that everything from Windows to new cell phone interfaces COPIES it??

This really would be a good time to turn the tables and go minimal. I think that's a pattern that does happen in the history of design. Eventually, people get fed up with all the nonsense, and want simple, functional tools. Lord knows I do.

I will always choose minimal over over-designed.

Non-sophisticated casual users, however, sometimes have a period where they're easily charmed by visual superabundance. But I think it gets dated fast, and eventually they become savvy enough to want function.

It does look like mission critical for Jobs. He is a young man. We can only hope for the best for him and his family.

There is no doubt the man is a visionary. Much more so than Gates. All this Mac OS X hoopla would be mute if Jobs was not booted from Apple in 1985. If they had followed his vision then the computing world would have been a different place. Apple remained a niche market for programmers and business applications until Jobs returned.

If I had chosen a different path I would be retired. I saw Apple as a great investment. At the peak around December 2007 from March of 2003 Apple shares were worth nearly 30 times more. This is really exponential rates of return.

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It's not so clear that the computing world would have been a different place if Jobs had stayed at Apple after 1985. Word has it that he wanted to keep the Mac closed and proprietary, so that third parties couldn't make hardware and, I think, software, for it. He also wanted to keep it expensive ("the computer for the rest of us"--if we have money). Of course Apple opened the Mac to third parties after Jobs left. But, fatally, they kept it expensive while crappy Windows machines took the market just because they were cheaper. I will NEVER understand why Apple didn't see that problem and cure it. If Jobs had stayed and kept both his policies, things would have been even worse. Would he have eventually recognized the mistakes and fixed them in time? We'll never know.
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Markle it is the opposite of everything you just said. We know exactly what Jobs wanted Apple to do. Apple executives rejected his ideas telling him he had to go. Jobs took what he wanted Apple to do creating Next. Next was conducive to open source. It was not a closed system. The code the Legacy was built on was a closed system. If Apple had taken the advice Jobs offered in 1985 to move the system software to the Mach Kernel things would have been much different both hardware and software wise.

Would this have made a difference with Microsoft and the marketing of Windows. I don't think so. IBM was paying Microsoft to supply the System Software to put on machines manufactured by IBM. IBM has the economies of scale well on their side to produce cheaper hardware. Apple was never going to be able to compete on sheer volume. IBM has operating budgets as large as entire countries.

Apple throwing Jobs out in 1985 held things back at the least 10 years probably more like 15.

Everyone involved wanted to keep the Mac expensive. They still do. Popular but expensive. They're doing the same thing with iPods. All Apple's stuff is worth about a tenth of what they charge for it. But stockholders love that.

The only way you can compete with Microsoft, Windows, and Intel is to beat them at their own game. And that means price wars. That would have been great for you and me, the consumer, but Apple was craftier than that. And I think that's mostly thanks to Jobs.

The only problem with it, is that it's not very HONEST. Again, what moving to the Mach Kernel meant, was free labor, a pool of untapped free talent, minimal R&D costs, lower overhead.

Apple could concentrate on being a hardware company, and work on marketing their stuff as gourmet, high end on the one hand, and "the people's computer" for everyone, on the other.

In this way they did an end run around Microsoft. Gate's brilliance in the industry was the idea of software as intellectual property which you license to corporate america, and once they are on the hook, you sit back and collect the money.

Jobs' brilliance was the idea of the MYSTIQUE of technology, making computers and gizmos lust items, status symbols. With one hand going: yeah, computers are for everyman... and with the other going: uh, but if you want to be a SPECIAL everyman, buy Apple.

The one thing that got lost in the shuffle: good interface design. I've said this a million times: you can't tap the great unwashed OpenSource geek talent pool, without taking on all of its quirks and dysfunction. And those are, namely, that these are COMMAND LINE guys, who disdain GUIs, think graphical interfaces are for retards... b) they are "spinning gears" and "intellectual everest" type of guys, meaning they'll spend years programming total bullshit like spinning gears animation, or following eyes, or other completely useless trivial crap that looks impressive for a second, but does pretty much nada.

We sacrificed a LOT of usability in the interface when we switched over to OS X. The legacy was a closed system, yeah, but it was tight. It was great at stuff that OS X needs fifty to a hundred times the computing power to even DO, and STILL doesn't do it as well as the legacy did with software that used to fit on friggin' FLOPPIES.

The graphical interface is so taxing for a unix system, that you need a supercomputer to do it, and this leaves not much power to do the important crap.

Every time I have this discussion with my friends and colleagues, I have to remind them that these casual use computers we're all trying to make do with, are hugely, hugely powerful machines. They leave the machines of the 80's and early 90's totally in the dust. And yet they groan under the weight of the bloated operating system. Another thing I say all the time, if you want a real sense of how fast these computers are, boot into the command line, and use it WITHOUT Aqua. Don't run big software packages on it. Just play around with it as a unix box. Move scads of files around, copy stuff, rename shit. It's unbelievable. Even with having to type arcane gobbledygook.

The problem with OS X now, is that every little graphical thing you see on your screen, is being TRANSLATED into a really long command line, which the processor has to execute. Before, these graphical routines were closed, toolboxed, and abbreviated in a kind of shorthand. That's why the legacy appeared faster and more responsive with its interface.

Now, we've got drop shadows and over-rendered icons, and jolly jumping genie-sucking docks, transparency, desktop patterns that can change every five seconds... but moving files around in the Finder can choke the system. Stuff that used to be CHILDSPLAY for the legacy.

We used to be able to customize interface appearance with fonts, font sizes, colors, whatever. Now, still, after years and years of "development", OS X can't do even a tiny bit of that without destroying everything.

I won't deny there have been advances because of the way Jobs went with his Nextstep retread. But the big, giant, awful step backward was in the Mac interface. Which even with all this computing power, is still a big, honkin' overdesigned mess.

And it's stayed that way, because Apple considers it chimp-food. Crib-toy. A bloated, distracting interface impresses people who buy computers for no other reason that to show them off to non-mac people.

Uh, you may have a fast, wholly-functioning pro-tool, but LOOK, I can do slow genie-suck.

yeah, computers are for everyman... and with the other going: uh, but if you want to be a SPECIAL everyman, buy Apple.

Yep. You get to write the eulogy.

I do think, for better or for worse, Jobs played a part in the continued "fashionization" of all things consumer. Where once we would have bought an axe in order to chop wood, now we buy designer axes to have "the wood splitting experience." And where once nearly everybody eyerolled at such a notion, most of us have been worn down to not only accept it but to expect it. Thalo, frankly, is one of the crazy hold-outs. But he's not crazy. He just hasn't yet gone off the deep end.

Rush read an article on his program last Thursday or Friday. I never caught the name of the author, and if you know it, please link me to the article. But it was about how very large and imposing ideas can sweep through the culture like a virus. The author didn't use these words, but "cultism" would have been an appropriate choice of words. We're all prone to fads and such, but sometime uber-fads arise and basically change the entire mindset of the culture, and sometimes not for the better. Things eventually change back or change to something else, but while in the midst of such an uber-fad, only those with some kind of sense of personal identity apart from cultural artifacts and fads can even hope to see what's going on. Most just ride the wave, get on the train that has left the station, and pretend that doing anything else is abnormal, troglodytish, or backward. The "eyeroll" is likely the body's reflexive action to some of this stuff. It can potentially bypass all other mental obstacles we have thrown up against it. The eyeroll can usually be trusted. But many lose the capability.

I respect Jobs as an entrepreneur. But I don't respect his P.T. Barnumism. He was a huckster. But even then, I do defend his right to hucksterism, to do what any religious cult leader would do and promise that the Good Life is just around the corner if only you'll buy into what we have to offer.

Oh, absolutely Jobs is a huckster. But he's an A #1 super honkin' mother-of-all-hucksters.

As much as I disapprove of con men, when I see a master manipulator at work, I can't help but be impressed and somewhat in awe of it.

But with Jobs, I've always had a sense that he has a soul to save. Sure, he SOLD it... but back in his hungry days, he changed the world with some really wonderful ideas about humans and technology. That's some of the stuff I'd love, love, love to see come back into the industry.

A slavish, uncompromising quality when it comes to the user experience. The realization that without a good interface, all the hardware and software matters nothing. The thalo doctrine: you can't make a computer too easy to use or too high performance.

Shareholders may be pressuring the ruling bodies to have Jobs disclose in more detail his health problems.

Apple also posted record quarterly earnings over the holiday season beating Wall Street estimates.

Life would be boring without carnival barkers. As you no doubt know, I wouldn't regulate them out of existence or try, as liberals or religious fundamentalists regularly do, to forcibly implant my sensibilities in place of theirs simply because I'm offended. Only kooks and other nanny-staters want to do that. I mean, upholding the integrity of product warranties is one thing, but if some carnival barker (or politician, or minister) wants to market his product as the thing that will change your life and make you happy, so be it. Caveat emptor. Jobs has certainly made things interesting and some of the products have been very good.

But I agree that Jobs needs to save his soul. I can't promise you that Baby Jesus will be there to dry every tear, but if there is no more to life than over-the-top Scientologist-like marketing and buyers clinging to the latest products as if they were the modern equivalent of a Sacrament, we're screwed. There has to be a higher goal than just fooling people. I think unleashing people's creativity is one of those higher goals. Making them all clone-like zombies and apologists for billion dollar companies is not a higher goal.