Low End Mac Reader Specials

TypeStyler For Mac OS X is Now Shipping! Download The Free Fully Functional 60 Day Tryout at www.typestyler.com

Poker Mac Don't install Parallels to play poker online! Poker Mac will show you how to download and install a native Mac poker application such as Full Tilt Poker Mac.

Laptop Hardware Provided by TechRestore - Overnight Mac & iPod Repairs.

Compare products like desktop computers, apple laptops, apple macs, and LCD Monitors side by side! All the information and reviews to make the best purchasing decision for new mobile phones, sat nav systems, or MP3 players. The Ciao online shopping community makes searching products easy for you.

Miscellaneous Ramblings

Time Magazine on Jobs and Apple

Plus: Jobs on Jobs, Quittner on the New iMacs

Charles Moore - 15 Oct. 1999 - Tip Jar

A couple of years ago, Time magazine was in the vanguard of mainstream media publications predicting Apple's imminent demise. This week (Oct 18 issue) Steve Jobs is on the cover of Time, which features a spread of four Jobs/Apple related stories.

In the main cover story, Steve's Two Jobs, Michael Krantz profiles Jobs' dichotomized focus as head of both Apple and Pixar Animation Studios. Krantz notes that Jobs really does show up for work most days in shorts and surfer Ts, and that he has problems with "anger-management issues," and also relates a number of fascinating details about Jobs' family life and workday scheduling.

An interesting window on Jobs' vision for Apple is provided in his quoted comment: "The roots of Apple were to build computers for people, not for corporations . . . The world doesn't need another Dell or Compaq."

Krantz also documents the division of management responsibility at Apple: Jonathan Ive at design; Avi Tevanian at software; Jon Rubinstein at engineering; Tim Cook at manufacturing; and senior vice president of worldwide sales Mitch Mandich pulling it all together.

As for Jobs' own personal division of labor, he says he rises at six a.m., works for an hour or so at home, sees his kids off to school, and arrives at Apple by eight or nine. "There's not a day that goes by that I don't do stuff for Pixar," Jobs told Krantz, "even if I'm not physically there. And there's not a day that I'm at Pixar that I don't do stuff for Apple."

As for Jobs' infamous temper, his friend John Patrick Crecine tells Krantz that while "Steve might be capable of reducing someone to tears . . . it's not because he's mean spirited; it's because he's absolutely single minded, almost manic, in his pursuit of quality and excellence."

Krantz says that Jobs' closest colleague at Apple is Englishman Jonathan Ive, the guy responsible for the paradigm-busting industrial design of the iMac and iBook. According to Ive, Jobs has been intimately involved with the design process of these Apple products.

I've relates how when he first used a Mac, his over arching impression was of painstaking attention to detail - the "elegance" factor that seems lost on the Wintel crowd. Ive recalls remarking to himself, "That's remarkable. Why did they care so much?'"

Of course this is the mainstream press, and no article about Apple in that milieu is ever complete without the obligatory musing over Apple's viability as a niche player in the computer marketplace. Krantz notes that while "Apple's 12% home-computer market share is a big improvement over 6%, it still leaves the Mac on the margins - a minority desktop operating system. . . ."

Nevertheless, this is overall a fair and captivating portrait of the man Mac-users tend to regard in complex love-hate terms. Personally, I'm glad Steve Jobs is at Apple's helm, and I hope the "interim CEO for life" quips are accurate.

Jobs on Jobs

In addition to the overview article, Time has also published a lengthy direct interview, Steve Jobs at 44, between Michael Krantz and Steve Jobs. Among topics discussed:

  • Differences and Similarities Between Apple and Pixar
  • His Role At Pixar
  • Apple's Product Lines (down from 15 to four since Jobs took over - "We've been working too hard")
  • Apple's Vertical Integration
  • Why He Isn't the Only Important Person
  • The Promise of the Broadband Web
  • The Apple Corporate Cafeteria
  • Palo Alto Development
  • The Word 'Broadband' ("My personal belief is that you shouldn't use a word like broadband.")
  • Reinventing Apple (" . . . there was nobody building computers for people")
  • The Question of Art. Vs. Technology ("I've never believed that they're separate")
  • The Apple II
  • This Exciting Moment in History
  • Whether He Has Changed As He Got Older
  • How Being a Family Man Changes Your Work Priorities
  • What His Typical Workday Is Like
  • How He'd Describe His Job ("My job is thinking and working with people and meeting and email.")
  • Managing All These People
  • Answering Apple Email
  • Hollywood and Silicon Valley

Great stuff!

Quittner On The New iMac

As part of the Apple/Jobs suite, there is also a short review of the new iMacs, Meet the New Macintosh, by tech journalist Jonathan Quittner, a former Mac user who backwards-migrated to the Dark Side a couple of years ago.

"With its overhaul of the popular iMac," says Quittner, "Apple has again created a masterpiece of design."

But is there substance under all that style? (As a former Mac user, he has to ask?) Answer: "I am generally pleased with the machine and would recommend it for most home users - especially any first-time buyer."

Hmmmm, sounds like a subtle variation on the old PC innuendo that "Macs are OK for women and kids, but real men use PCs."

To be fair to Joshua, he does note that "Under the hood, you get terrific value," citing the 128 MB of RAM, a 13 GB hard drive, DVD drive, and fast graphics card.

On the other hand, Quittner is skeptical about the new iMac's fanless convection cooling system, noting that while the silence is truly welcome, the machine seems to get pretty hot, and he wonders what this will do for component reliability.

He also dislikes the hockey-puck mouse - can't disagree with him there.

All in all a pretty fair take on the new iMac from a PC-convert, at least until Joshua insists on bringing up the old saw about problems finding enough software for the Mac as compared with the PC. It does get tiresome. LEM

Charles Moore has been a freelance journalist since 1987 and began writing for Mac websites in May 1998. His The Road Warrior column is a regular feature on MacOpinion, and he is a news editor and columnist at Applelinks.com. If you find his articles helpful, please consider making a donation to his tip jar.

Recent Miscellaneous Ramblings

Links for the Day

Recent Content on Low End Mac

Recent Deals

About LEM | Support | Usage | Privacy | Contacts

Miscellaneous Ramblings ©1999-2009 by Charles W. Moore. Entire Low End Mac website copyright ©1997-2009 by Cobweb Publishing, Inc., unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Advice presented in good faith, but what works for one may not work for all. Please report errors to .
  LINKS: We allow and encourage links to any public page as long as the linked page does not appear within a frame that prevents bookmarking it.
  Access our RSS news feed at http://lowendmac.com/feed.xml.
  Email may be published at our discretion; email addresses will not be published without permission, and we will encrypt them in hopes of avoiding spammers. If you prefer your message not be published, mark it "not for publication." Letters may be edited for length, context, and to match house style.
  PRIVACY: We don't collect personal information unless you explicitly provide it. For more details, see our Terms of Use.
  Low End Mac is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iBook, iMac, eMac, iPod, iPhone, PowerBook, MacBook, MagSafe, Mac Pro, Apple TV, and AirPort are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are hereby acknowledged.

Custom Search

Amazon.com

Navigation

Used Mac Dealers
Apple History
Video Cards
Email Lists

Favorite Sites

MacSurfer
MacMinute
MacInTouch
MyAppleMenu
InfoMac
Macs Only!
The Mac Observer
Accelerate Your Mac
RetroMacCast
PB Central
MacWindows
The Vintage Mac
   Museum
DealMac
DealsOnTheWeb
Mac2Sell
ramseeker
Mac Driver Museum
JAG's House
System 6 Heaven
System 7 Today
the pickle's Low-End
   Mac FAQ
Abandonware
   Petition
Mac vs. PC Info

Affiliates

The Apple Store
Mac Connection
B&H
MacMall
TechRestore
ExperCom
Crucial Memory
batteries.com

Advertise

All of our advertising is handled by BackBeat Media. For price quotes and advertising information, please contact at BackBeat Media (646-546-5194). This number is for advertising only.

Open Link

Problems viewing this page with Internet Explorer 5.5 or 6? It works fine in other browsers, including IE 7. We recommend Firefox for those using Windows, as it is standards based and more secure than IE 6 (and earlier). More LEM visitors use Firefox than any other browser.