I HAVE BEEN BEMUSED OF LATE ...

[Michael Grove]

 

BY THE CONTINUOUS DIATRIBE emanating from

the parallel worlds of the global financial markets -

concerning the Apple share price and whether or not

Apple will be able to continue to manifest its model

of innovation.

 

Whatever the markets decide, Apple has led the way - by way of the innovative process of producing products that the people "needed" rather than what "big brother" was willing to provide them with - and ever since the Apple II established itself as an electronic spreadsheet platform - Apple have launched the what you see is what you get (WYSIWIG) Macintosh, first in 4096x4096 black and white and then colour - the iMac in several evolving guises - and thence iPod, iPhone and more recently the iPad.   

 

Every one of these products established the

human interface mould for the available

technology of the time - which the rest of

the industry has either adopted, eventually

caught up with or launched their own

versions such as Microsoft's excellent 

XP Professional Tablet. I well remember the

disappointment of several thousand

Microsoft developers who were told by Mr. Balmer 

that ALL the promised development of that particular platform was to cease

and not two years later Apple launched the iPhone. Even at that time most of

the so called experts and pundits could not understand that the iPhone human

interface represented a vision of the future human interface for all 'personal 

communications' devices - gestures and ALL.

 

Steve Jobs said at the launch of the iPad that -

Tablets were the future of computing -

he didn't specify Apple manufactured tablets -

and despite the fact that 100 million plus

iPads have been sold to date - I am sure that

Mr. Jobs and his team realised, at that time,

that continuous development of the

human/machine interface would have to be contemplated until the Babel Fish 

implant had been successfully perfected.

"I think it's an understatement to say that

the iPad has been an overwhelming success -

the biggest technology shift of our generation"

                                                                                                     Tech.pinions

IF for no other reason IT IS the benefit/s which are being brought to the

education of the so called academically impaired  which have underpinned

Steven Aquino's statement that -

 

iOS’s  impact  on  those  with  impairments 

isn’t just a marketing slide - it’s profound.

 

“It’s inspiring to see what educators and students of all types are doing with iTunes U,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services.

 

“With the incredible content offered on iTunes U, students can learn like never before―there are now iTunes U courses with more than 250,000 students enrolled in them, which is a phenomenal shift in the way we teach and learn.”

  

 

As we see too often in politics, people fail to empathize with

those with different needs or priorities than their own.

 

 

 

One has to wonder IF this IS in fact total confirmation of the conclusions which Jaron Lanier has espoused in his epic wake up call - YOU ARE NOT A GADGET !!!???

 

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[Michael Grove]

One of the Greatest Speeches Ever 

Steve Jobs

CONNECTING THE DOTS

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so vefore i really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at ghe last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: „We've got an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?“ They said: „Of course.“ My biological mother found out later that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would go to college. This was the start in my life. And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no ide what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So i decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked far more interesting. It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for $0.05 deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example: Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, aobut varying ghe amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and i found it fascinating. None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But 10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. Is I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course, it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later. Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well-worn path and that will make all the difference.

LOVE & LOSS

I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents' garage when I was 20. We worked hard and in 10 years Apple had grown form just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation – the Macintosh – a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew, we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30, I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating. I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down – that i had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even though about running away from the valley. But something slowly began dawn on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been recected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over. I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life. During the next 5 years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world's first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at heart Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together. I'm pretty sure none of this would happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life is going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don't loose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. And don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking. Don't settle.

DEATH

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: „If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certanly be right.“ It made an impression on me. And since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: „If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?“ And whenever the answer has been „No“ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Steve Jobs

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[Michael Grove]