Jobs, health and the future of Apple

The latest piece of second-hand gossip about Steve Jobs’s health from “a previously reliable source” (who, of course, cannot be named) provoked a (temporary) drop of 4 per cent in Apple’s share price. Even as I write, business reporters are frantically tapping out speculative articles on the subject whether Apple could survive the demise of its charismatic CEO.

There’s something deeply neurotic, nay pathetic, about this. It’s the journalistic equivalent of that mysterious phenomenon, “stock market sentiment”, which is just a fancy way of describing the way a flock of sheep acts when one of its members fancies that she might have seen a wolf.

That’s not to deny that people and personalities matter. Steve Jobs brought Apple back from the dead: he took a company that had become incoherent and gave it a sharp focus. He then helped it to re-invent itself. If he hadn’t returned from NeXT and Pixar when he did, Apple would now be just a fond memory, or perhaps just another trophy acquisition of HP like Compaq and DeC.

Similarly, without Bill Gates in the 1980s Microsoft would never have become the ferocious, paranoid, single-minded corporation it was. It became, for a time, literally a corporate extension of its co-founder’s weird personality. And indeed that fact nearly caused its break-up in the Netscape anti-trust case, from whose consequences it was saved only by a fortuitous change in the US Administration.

But that was then and this is now. If Steve Jobs were to die or to stand down because of ill-health, Apple would undoubtedly be affected (and its share price would undoubtedly fluctuate). But it’s a different outfit now from the demoralised one that Steve rescued. It’s a much more mature company — indeed, like Microsoft, it’s approaching corporate middle age. It more or less owns the online music business. It’s on its way to doing the same in video downloads. And it is causing havoc in the mobile phone business which — if the industry isn’t careful — it will also come to dominate.

So while Jobs would be a big loss to Apple — and an even bigger loss to the feature writers and columnists who feast on the Reality Distortion Field that surrounds him — I’ve no doubt that the company would weather the storm, just as Microsoft survived the departure of His Billness to the charity business.

iTasteful

From The Register.

An application that allows iPhone users to wobble a pair of breasts has been rejected by Apple's application store, denying iPhone geeks the nearest thing to sex they'll get this holiday season.

The application was rejected on the grounds of "objectionable content", though with the caveat: "If you believe that you can make the necessary changes so that iBoobs does not violate the iPhone SDK Agreement we encourage you to do so."

Pre-emptive celebration

The Register believes in getting its celebration in first

In two short months, Apple’s Macintosh will turn 25 years old. My, how tempus doth fugit.

To mark the awesome inevitability of January 24, 2009 following January 24, 1984 after exactly one quarter-century, tech pundits will bloviate, Apple-bashers will execrate, and Jobsian fanboyz will venerate the munificence that flows unabated from The Great Steve. The din will be deafening.

To avoid the crowds, we at The Reg decided to go first…

At the moment, Apple has $24 billion in cash reserves. Shouldn’t be surprised if they were up to $25 billion on the anniversary.

The G-phone: first review

David Pogue has had a good look at the first G-phone to roll off the line. It’s a useful review. His conclusion:

So there’s your G1 report card: software, A-. Phone, B-. Network, C.

So here’s what will happen. 1. The software (done by Google) will improve rapidly. 2. Phone manufacturers will eventually produce a suitable handset. 3. The phone will be available on all networks in due course. All this will take a while, so my hunch is that the iPhone has a clear run for the time being.

I’m still tempted to try a G-phone when it arrives in the UK next month, though.

That Esquire profile of Steve Jobs

Hmmm… Just finished reading Tom Junod’s profile. A bit contrived and over-written. And it concludes lamely by asking what peaks remain to be scaled by Jobs now that he has transformed the mobile phone business? “Well”, Junod writes.

there is the “cloud,” as it’s known in geekspeak — the treasure trove of our disembodied data, the digitized version of ourselves that exists beyond ourselves, the next step in the virtualization of the human experience. It’s being posited as the basis of a mobile Internet, or what some people call “a new Internet,” but its lure is the lure of finding a way out of our bodies and into the invisible, and that’s the oldest of human dreams. And so, while everybody else wonders how to get there, how to gain purchase on the ether, Jobs, with his iPhone, offers the same possibility he always has, the possibility of getting there one glittering box at a time. But his soul is in those boxes; it’s never been unlocked, and the service he introduced at the June keynote — a service called MobileMe, which staked his claim on the invisible, or at least announced his readiness to compete for control of it — was deemed, upon its launch a month later, a “disaster” . . . “a failure” . . . “Apple’s worst product launch in the ten years since Jobs returned from exile.” The digital ether would seem as uncongenial to Steve Jobs as heaven itself. But still it beckons, and still he has to answer its call. What other choice does he have? He is already halfway there.

Androids and walled gardens

This morning’s Observer column

‘We are all,’ said Keynes, ‘the slaves of some defunct philosopher.’ The question that will increasingly preoccupy mobile-phone executives from now on is which deceased sage is more appropriate for their product. Up to now, the relevant thinker has been Lenin – who, you may remember, was a control freak. Given that most mobile operators had their origins in traditional telephone companies – which liked to think they ‘owned’ their customers – this is hardly surprising. These outfits have control freakery in their corporate DNA.

Last week, the first mobile phone based on Google’s Android operating system was released by T-Mobile in the US. (The network is bringing it to the UK in November.) The philosophy underpinning the device is radically different from anything we have seen thus far in the mobile-phone market. The world is about to become a more interesting place. And what happens next could have far-reaching implications…

CORRECTION: An observant reader, Duncan Thomas, has just spotted an error in the piece as published. The piece says that “the most important difference [between the Google phone and the iPhone] is that the Android software ecosystem will not be an uncontrolled, open space”. That ‘not’ ought to have been deleted. Drat and double drat.

LATER: Webmonkey’s five reasons why Android might do the business

1. It promises to run on most modern smart phones – More cell networks will support Android than iPhone does — the iPhone is bound to just AT&T. Mobile providers NTT DoCoMo, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile and more have committed to the project. Also, more handsets will operate on it. You might even get more life out of your old phone if it supports it. Handset manufactures HTC, LG, Motorola and Samsung have already signed on.
2. It’s open-source software – Any programmer can whip up some code to match popular features from any other phone. Under the Apache license, any programmer can take the code and port their own version of the OS.
3. It has support for Google products out of the box – The latest Android demonstration displayed the phone’s compass prominently in Google Maps. You can bet Google will have the latest and greatest features of their software running on Android before it hits other operators.
4. Third-party developers have more access – iPhone prohibits people from using its internet capabilities for things like VoIP or an alternative browser. Android’s API allows you to create an application for anything, even the dialing software. The evidence is in the 50 applications already developed for the Android Developer Challenge last May.
5. Android allows for ‘unlocked’ phones – Most handsets in America, including the iPhone, are locked by software to a cell phone provider’s network. While there are various ways to jailbreak, it’s not easy and might break your terms of service. The availability of downloading and installing your own unlocked OS might just change the game in respect to shopping for mobile phone providers and signing contracts. If this method gets more popular, it is conceivable phone networks may drop the contracts in lieu of (better) European pre-pay pricing.

Le G-phone est arrivé

Good Morning Silicon Valley is spot on. It’s not about phones, it’s about philosophies.

It comes down to closed vs. open. In political terms, the Apple environment is like Singapore, where some freedoms may be ceded in favor of providing a pleasant and orderly experience, and Google, with its Android platform, is like a loud and messy New England town meeting. Apple has one iPhone, a tightly controlled App Store for third-party programs, and a touchscreen design that favors consumption of iTunes entertainment. The G1 is but the first of many Android-based devices to come, all of which will be served by the wide-open Android Market, and its design, featuring a real keyboard, leans toward typing-oriented functions like mail, messaging and mobile search, not coincidentally all Google strong suits. If you’re already happy in the Apple ecosystem, or with an “it just works (most of the time)” approach to tech in general, and you’re in the smart-phone market, there’s probably not much that Android handset manufacturers can come up with that will tempt you away from the iPhone. If you’re already happy in the Google ecosystem, then the tight integration of Google applications and services and the breadth of third-party development possibilities will make an Android-based phone more appealing. At the core, the iPhone and the Android phones may not really be the direct competitors they’re made out to be, but rather comparable alternatives whose appeal depends mostly on whether your tastes and needs put you in the closed or open camp.

Walt Mossberg’s useful first impressions are here.

Meanwhile, Google has been posting demo videos like this on YouTube.

A billion iPhone App Downloads?

From TechCrunch

There may only be over 12 million iPhones in the wild, but that hasn’t stopped iTunes users from downloading more than twice as many apps as songs during the store’s first two months of availability, according to a report.

Steve Jobs said at Apple’s press event last week that users have now downloaded over 100 million apps. Assuming it maintains the same rate of 70 million app downloads it witnessed in August alone, it could hit 1 billion apps by the end of the store’s first year of availability, sometime in 2009. iTunes song downloads didn’t hit the 1 billion mark until its second year of availability.

But in reality, 1 billion downloaded apps could happen much sooner than the middle of next year. As apps become a key selling point for Apple going forward and more iPhones and iPods get out into the wild, more users will find reason to download apps and in turn, increase the download rate…

Another confirmation of John Doerr’s investment acumen.