Gr8insurance salutes Steve Jobs (RIP)

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, a pioneering businessman in the microcomputer, animation, music, and mobile phone industries -- several products have made significant inroads recently in the legal industry -- died last night from an extended battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 56.


Born on Feb. 24, 1955, and adopted by a Mountain View, Calif., family, Steven Paul Jobs' legacy will be his profound impact as the Henry Ford of our time. He was a man who did not personally invent things, but saw the potential of existing inventions, and possessed both the marketing chops and business acumen to transform them into world-changing products and services. Jobs was unfortunately similar to other 20th-century titans in being widely disliked for his management style, yet unique among them for being just as widely beloved by his customers -- something Microsoft chairman Bill Gates and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg can only dream of.

Steve Jobs

Among his stated secrets for success, Jobs often said that his team built technology in response to great product ideas, not products in response to great technology ideas.


Jobs' friend Steve Wozniak, in 1976, designed a personal computer on a single circuit board. Wozniak, at the time a calculator engineer for Hewlett-Packard, was reluctant to form a company, thereby inspiring Jobs to have Wozniak's friends and family persuade him by proxy. Jobs was himself an engineer, but his true talent was in marketing and selling Wozniak's computer, the Apple 1. Its original price: $666.66. Approximately 200 units were sold, of which roughly 50 are known to exist today, easily fetching $20,000 or more among high-end technology collectors. One unit sold for a mind-bending $213,600 a year ago.


Apple's first smash hit was the Apple II, a preassembled consumer-oriented desktop computer, in 1977. It was far from being the first such computer and had stiff competition in the Commodore PET 2001 and Tandy TRS-80 Model 1. Commodore had the only design with built-in mass storage, and Tandy had the advantage of its Radio Shack retail stores. But it was Apple that conquered the education market by offering steep discounts, and then invaded the business market thanks to the third-party VisiCalc program, which was a popular early spreadsheet. By the time the IBM PC launched in 1981, the Apple II had dozens of competitors, but by far the largest dealer network and the biggest selection of aftermarket software for any purpose. Apple later became the first company to sell mainstream microcomputers that used graphical interfaces and mouses for input, starting with the little-known and poor-selling Lisa in 1983, and then blooming with the refined Macintosh in 1984 and beyond.


Commodore, Tandy, and even IBM are all now out of the personal computer business, and even market-leading HP, where Wozniak once begged his managers to produce his personal computer design, is heading out of the field, as well. Meanwhile, Apple today is the Mercedes of the personal computer and smartphone businesses -- a leader in products that combine luxury and performance, sold in elegant showrooms -- although it will never be the best-selling company in those fields. Apple has managed to be a best-seller in the smaller markets for personal music players and mainstream tablet computers. Music players are now being subsumed by smartphones such as the iPhone 4S, and the future of tablets is open to debate, but the modern Apple led by CEO Tim Cook and Senior Vice President of Industrial Design Jonathan Ive is sure to remain influential in whatever fields it enters -- even in fields where it failed, such as the mid-1990s PDA market, and where it chose to delay its own entry, such as in smartphones.


Jobs has been just as famous in related fields, namely the iTunes music download service and his stake in the Pixar animation studio. The iTunes service gave legitimacy to its field, causing music industry executives to eventually embrace an idea that would destroy their traditional distribution methods, where previously Napster was loathed by the same companies. Pixar made animated feature films return to their past glory via digital techniques. In both situations, Jobs was backed by large and highly paid teams of experts, but deserves immense credit for his leadership and vision.


Then there are lawyers. Microsoft Windows has a stranglehold on law firms' desktop computers, but the iPhone has largely blown away Research In Motion's BlackBerry smartphones, and what savvy counselor doesn't use an iPad? Lawyers love their Apple gadgets for being easy-to-use, feature-rich, reliable, and packed with techno-sex appeal. "Major legal software company announces iOS edition" is something we routinely consider solid news.


Jobs changed our lives, our childrens' lives, and the greater world around us. It was on an Apple II that this reporter, in sixth grade, was impelled to put down his Atari joystick, learn BASIC programming, and start writing about technology for his middle school newspaper. There were always jokes about Jobs' Reality Distortion Field and minimalist wardrobe, but it's no laughing matter that he is already sorely missed.


Source : http://www.law.com
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Apple shares fall as Steve Jobs resign

Apple Inc. (AAPL) shares declined after the resignation of Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs, who transformed the company he started at age 21 from a personal- computer also-ran into the world’s largest technology company.

Steve Jobs

The shares fell as much as 7 percent in extended trading in the U.S. yesterday after the announcement. Jobs, who will become chairman, was on medical leave since Jan. 17, following a 2003 cancer diagnosis and a liver transplant in 2009. He is succeeded by Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook, 50, who has been running day-to-day operations.


“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,” Jobs, 56, said in a statement yesterday. “Unfortunately, that day has come.”


Under Jobs, Apple became the second-most valuable company in the world, after Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM), by introducing devices that revolutionized the computer, music and mobile phone industries. Jobs left Cook at the helm when he was on leave in the first half of 2009, and Cook built confidence with investors during that stint, when the shares gained about 70 percent.


“You can expect that it’s going to take a hit,” said Kenneth Polcari, a managing director at ICAP Corporates, in an interview with Bloomberg Television. “After it all settles down, people are going to realize that Apple is not a company that didn’t have a plan in place, that didn’t realize at some point this was going to happen.”


Apple dropped as low as $350 following the announcement, after rising $2.58 to $376.18 at 4 p.m. New York time on the Nasdaq Stock Market.


Jobs’s Legacy


As CEO, Jobs’s attention to detail and emphasis on sleek, easy-to-use products helped Apple repel competition from rivals as varied as Google Inc. and International Business Machines Corp. (IBM)


“He’s always going to be remembered, maybe for the next 100 years, as the greatest technology business leader of our time,” Steve Wozniak, who co-founded Apple with Jobs, said in an interview on “Bloomberg West.” “Company culture doesn’t change overnight. He’s got tens of thousands of employees. The quality of the products reflects how good they are, too.”


The day of the announcement, Jobs was in Apple’s Cupertino, California, office for the entire work day, and he attended a regularly scheduled board meeting, according to a person close to Jobs, who was not authorized to speak about the executive’s health. While Jobs has been housebound for the past few weeks and his condition is weak, the resignation was not indicative of a sudden worsening, this person said.


‘Extraordinary Vision’


Jobs told the board he intends to be an active chairman, and he held an emotional meeting with his executive team afterward, according to another person familiar with the matter.


“Steve’s extraordinary vision and leadership saved Apple and guided it to its position as the world’s most innovative and valuable technology company,” Art Levinson, an Apple director, said in a statement on behalf of the board. “Steve has made countless contributions to Apple’s success, and he has attracted and inspired Apple’s immensely creative employees and world class executive team.”


Jobs was ousted by the board in 1985 amid differences over strategy. In his time away, Jobs ran movie animation studio Pixar, which he later sold to Walt Disney Co., as well as NeXT Software Inc., a company Apple acquired to return him to the company. Jobs is Disney’s largest shareholder, with a 7.4 percent stake. He will remain on the entertainment company’s board, a person with knowledge of the matter said.


When Jobs returned in 1997, Apple had run up $1.86 billion in losses over two years. It was 90 days away from bankruptcy, Jobs would later say.


Stock Surge


Apple stock surged 9,020 percent since July 29, 1997, the day before the San Francisco Chronicle broke news that Jobs would be interim CEO. Over that period, the market value rose to $348.7 billion from $2.06 billion.


Any slump in the shares may be short lived, said Daniel Genter, who oversees about $3.7 billion as president of Los Angeles-based RNC Genter Capital Management.


“Jobs has been a strong figure in the company historically, but he hasn’t been a driving force for the past two years,” said Genter. “It brings clarity. It shouldn’t have an effect on the overall market, but this market is so skittish so it may have a short-term negative impact.”






Transformation


Since his return, Jobs has led Apple’s transformation into a seller of everything from smartphones to music. He engineered the company’s comeback by honing Apple’s industrial design, tightly integrating software and hardware, and pushing into new markets.


The iPhone, introduced in 2007, has become Apple’s best- selling product and turned the company into the world’s biggest smartphone maker. After winning customers away from Research In Motion Ltd. and Nokia Oyj, Apple is now sparring with Google for leadership in the market for mobile-phone software.


“Under Steve’s leadership Apple has not only revolutionized the computer industry but also transformed how the world communicates, plays, shops and works,” said Frank Quattrone, CEO of Qatalyst Partners LLP, a Silicon Valley investment bank. “In the entrepreneur hall of fame, he is the charter member. He is, and will remain, an inspiration to the world.”


Cook joined Apple in 1998. As operating chief, his oversight included sales, manufacturing and distribution.


“The world will see in the next several years that Tim is a very uniquely gifted guy and Apple will be wildly successful under his leadership,” said John Connors, a venture capitalist at Ignition Partners, who serves on the Nike Inc. board with Cook.


Source -http://bloomberg.com
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