jueves, 25 de agosto de 2011

Fin de una Era

Posted at 08:40 AM ET, 08/25/2011

Steve Jobs resigns: Reactions to the end of an era

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Steve Jobs is stepping down as Apple CEO. Apple has named COO Tim Cook as his successor. (Justin Sullivan - Getty Images) Steve Jobs has resigned as Apple's CEO, a position he's held since his return to the company in 1997, though he will stay on as chairman. Admired and hated by the tech industry, Jobs, 56, has rebuilt the company he co-founded in 1976, turning it from the brink of bankruptcy into a company responsible for the greatest hits in personal technology: the Mac, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad.

Apple's stock took a hit after-hours trading on the news that Jobs is stepping down as CEO, down about 5 percent before the markets open Thursday. But analysts have said that Apple will survive and that they have faith in new CEO Tim Cook, who has effectively been running the company while Jobs has been on medical leave.

According to a report from Bloomberg, Jobs will remain on the board of directors at the Walt Disney Corp.

Here's what people are saying about Jobs's announcement this morning:

In their words —

Steve Wozniak to Bloomberg: When he returned to Apple, I wasn't really sure how that would work out, and I've just been totally blown away. I feel that I'm one of the luckiest people in the world to have been able to know this incredibly great person and to have been a friend of his.

Google's Vic Gundrota: Since I was 11 years old and fell in love with an Apple II, I have dozens of stories to tell about Apple products. They have been a part of my life for decades. Even when I worked for 15 years for Bill Gates at Microsoft, I had a huge admiration for Steve and what Apple had produced.

Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg:

Most people are lucky if they can change the world in one important way, but Jobs, in multiple stages of his business career, changed global technology, media and lifestyles in multiple ways on multiple occasions.

He did it because he was willing to take big risks on new ideas, and not be satisfied with small innovations fed by market research. He also insisted on high quality and had the guts to leave out features others found essential and to kill technologies, like the floppy drive and the removable battery, he decided were no longer needed. And he has been a brilliant marketer, personally passionate about his products.

Robert Scoble: Today's news fills me with emotion. The kind you can't really explain. It's wrapped up in a lifetime of living in Silicon Valley and it isn't really explainable.

Love him or hate him, Steve Jobs changed my world in major ways. Not many people can say that. Which is why I'm feeling this strange emotion right now that I can't explain to you in words or actions.

Daring Fireball's Jon Gruber: Jobs's greatest creation isn't any Apple product. It is Apple itself.

And in his —

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.

Steve

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miércoles, 24 de agosto de 2011

Steve Jobs stepping down

Steve Jobs resigns as Apple CEO

By Michael S. Rosenwald, Updated: Wednesday, August 24, 9:23 AM

Apple chief executive Steve Jobs, who almost single-handedly changed the way people around the world consume music, the Internet and even TV, announced late Wednesday that he has resigned as leader of the company he co-founded in his parents' garage.

Jobs, who has suffered from pancreatic cancer and had a liver transplant in 2009, has looked increasingly frail in his cultlike appearances in front of Apple fans to introduce new products, but he did not explicitly indicate in a letter to the company's board and its customers whether his health was failing.

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Steve Jobs, the mind behind the iPhone, iPad and other devices that turned Apple Inc. into one of the world's most powerful companies, resigned as the company's CEO Wednesday, saying he can no longer handle the job. (Aug. 24)

Steve Jobs, the mind behind the iPhone, iPad and other devices that turned Apple Inc. into one of the world's most powerful companies, resigned as the company's CEO Wednesday, saying he can no longer handle the job. (Aug. 24)

"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," wrote Jobs, who has been on a health leave of absence since January. "Unfortunately, that day has come."

Although not entirely unexpected given the grave nature of his previous illnesses — he had surgery for a rare form of pancreatic cancer in 2004 — Jobs's resignation ends one of the most extraordinary runs in business history. This month, Apple briefly became the most valuable company in the world, surpassing oil giant Exxon Mobil.

Jobs has been replaced by Tim Cook, his longtime No. 2 and the company's chief operating officer. Cook has run Apple's day-to-day operations during Jobs's health-related absences. Jobs will be chairman of the board.

A volatile visionary, a detail-obsessed taskmaster, a lover of simple, understated design in hardware and in software, Jobs over the past three decades has had an outsize, iconoclastic influence on personal computing — first with the Apple II and then the Macintosh computers, then iPods, and now with post-PC devices such as the iPhone and iPad. No other electronics company in the world introduces products that spur massive lines of fans that snake around malls, sometimes for days.

"He's had a massive impact on personal computing — more important than Bill Gates or anybody else, I think," said Leander Kahney, editor of the blog Cult of Mac and a longtime computer industry observer. "He has made this company in his image. It functions almost as an extension of his unique personality. There's really nothing else like it."

In recent years, as Apple stores have popped up in malls around the country and in iconic locations on several continents — it has a mammoth store in London's Covent Garden — the company's reach has stretched beyond its fanboy customers, who disliked Microsoft's more geeky offerings, and into the lives of everyday consumers. They use the company's products in their offices, their cars, on their couches and in bed.

Even the stodgy federal government has recently embraced Apple products, deploying iPads, iPhones and Mac laptops to bureaucrats, criminal investigators and doctors. Company executives have said that interest in the iPad by government agencies, schools and colleges has taken them by surprise. Several other companies have tried to match Apple's recent success with the iPad, but most competing products have not caught on.

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