My Disagreements With Steve Jobs

Image by toprankonlinemarketing via Flickr(1) I am a Third World guy. As far as I was concerned he created the Rolls Royce. I never made peace with the premium price on the Apple products, I never bought one. And I am too much of a pirate to ever have wanted to belong to the Apple club. That is groupthink! Google with its free to use search engine speaks to me. That is the price that is right. I am a Google fanboy.

(2) The guy should never have left Apple in 1984. The history of the PC might have been different. But then that was a multi-dimensional event. I don't even have all the facts.

(3) What's up with launching the iPhone on one carrier?

(4) What's up with native apps? I am a HTML5 kind of guy.

(5) What's up with not jumping onto 4G for the iPhone?

(6) What's up with integrating with Twitter instead of Facebook? Facebook does social way better than Twitter.

(7) Does the Chrome browser operate different on a Mac? I am not so sure. Almost all of the action for me is on the Chrome browser. And I like my screen size big. And I like my keyboard physical. I never simply read. If I am not blogging, I am commenting, if I am not commenting, I am tweeting. Call me a power user. That is a crown.

Most Page Hits
Steve Jobs Stayed A Pirate
The Next Big Thing For Apple
And I Am Not Even An Apple Fanboy
Steve Jobs — 1955-2011

Most Page Hits

This blog is about to have its most visited day today at over 3,000 page hits. And this post is the most visited at this blog for this day, this week at 1500 and counting: Steve Jobs — 1955-2011.

Steve Jobs Stayed A Pirate
The Next Big Thing For Apple
And I Am Not Even An Apple Fanboy
Steve Jobs — 1955-2011

Steve Jobs Stayed A Pirate

Image by Earl - What I Saw 2.0 via Flickr"Why join the Navy . . . if you can be a pirate?"
- Steve Jobs

Apple for a few weeks was the most valued company in the world. A company approaching 400 billion in market cap has arrived. That is a navy like number. And, yet, Steve Jobs stayed a pirate through and through. His first and last products were both built for the consumer.

There are enterprise imitations of Facebook, but there are no enterprise imitations of the iPhone or the iPad. Steve Jobs create the iPhone and the iPad for the masses and those masses took over the corporate world on his behalf. If the CIOs of fatass companies were ever blindsided, it was by Steve Jobs.

I find that to be remarkable.

The life-work balance in the information age means you are the same person at work and elsewhere. You tap on the same iPhone at work as you do on vacation.

The Next Big Thing For Apple
And I Am Not Even An Apple Fanboy
Steve Jobs — 1955-2011

Fish Curry

Fish Curry @ Preminum Sweets And Restaurant

The Next Big Thing For Apple

Image via CrunchBaseThe PC/laptop is done. The smartphone is done. The tablet is done. I don't foresee any major transformations with any of those. What is not done is the TV screen. That is the next frontier. But I am not sure Apple - or any other company I know - is in a position to do it. The TV might get done by some startup not launched yet. Or it might get done by Apple and Google. Right now it is too early to tell. And the wrist watch might not see magic before nanotech really takes off. Which brings us to the big movie screen, but then the problem with movies is outdated business practices, less technology. People are okay watching movies on smaller screens.

And I Am Not Even An Apple Fanboy
Steve Jobs — 1955-2011
Seven Screens

Bill Gates retired, but Steve Jobs died. Tim Cook might be a better groomed successor than Steve Ballmer, but the guy still has a tough nut to crack. Ride the iPhone and the iPad wave for as long as you can. That is at least two good years ahead.

Occupy America

And I Am Not Even An Apple Fanboy

Image by The Seg via FlickrSteve Jobs — 1955-2011

I have never bought an Apple product. My first smartphone is going to be a Nexus Prime. I am so glad Amazon has finally given the iPad some genuine competition.

But my admiration for Steve Jobs is deep and genuine.

Steve Jobs' Departure
Steve Jobs At A City Council Meeting
How Steve Jobs Gets Things Done
Steve Jobs: iPad 2 Announcement
An Ode To Steve jobs
Steve Jobs Should Never Have Been Fired
Apple: Trillion Dollar Company?
Sculley: Scum
Apple Is A Cultural Phenomenon
Mideast Peace: Tech Industry Style

I have been reading up on the guy the past few hours. Few details of his life I have read are news to me. It's most amazing to me as to how he ran Apple like a startup even when he had turned it into the most valuable company in the world. Aren't you supposed to get "corporate" by then?

I find myself listening to Indian classical music after a long, long time.

Steve Jobs — 1955-2011

Image by Getty Images via @daylifeI just got back from an event near Times Square. I had some roadside momo - dumplings - with a ton of hot sauce. Usually I burn the midnight oil - it is a body clock thing. But today I was hoping to go to bed early and to wake up earlier than usual to work out some - I do freehand.

I guess I decided to log into my computer just as I gulped the last dumpling, and there was a Google Talk message from a friend out in the MidWest, someone I have yet to meet, a doctor from my hometown in Nepal. A few weeks back he mailed me a book he has written - Enduring Everest - about enduring ethnic prejudice as a Madhesi in Nepal.

"Steve Jobs died," the message said. It was not a new message. His status said he was idle.

My first reaction was disbelief. I expected the guy to retire, not to die. I felt sad. No, I did not see this coming. I was expecting him to stick around for years. This guy truly, truly stands out among the tech titans of my lifetime. It is going to take me days to digest the news.

Walt Mosberg: The Steve Jobs I Knew
Larry Page
Mark Zuckerberg
Bill Gates
The White House: President Obama on the Passing of Steve Jobs: "He changed the way each of us sees the world."
Dick Costolo

October 11

iPhone: Free Means $400

Image via WikipediaNow that Apple has a new iPhone it is going to give you the old one for free. That is the word. But is it really free? You get saddled with a two year contract, and an old phone. Free means you don't have to pay that first $200. But your monthly bill does not come down, as it would if the phone were really free. Money collected from that two year contract, well, Apple lays claim to part of it.

An iPhone costs around 600 bucks. But you don't feel the pain because you get tricked into thinking it costs 200 bucks, the upfront money you pay. But Apple gets 200 from you and 400 from the carrier.

From a "free" phone Apple will keep getting the 400 from the carrier. 70 bucks per month over two years is 1680 bucks. Apple gets 400 of that. Your monthly bill would be more like 55 bucks per month if the phone were truly free.

Larry And The Cloud Gods

ZDNet: Oracle vs. Salesforce.com's Benioff goes WWE: We're being played