July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

And if simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, iOS 7 is very, very sophisticated.

The most powerful man in the room doesn’t need a loud voice. The securely rich don’t need to flaunt their wealth. The cool kids are the ones who aren’t trying to be cool. The truly elegant realize that understatement is the essence of sophistication.

Source: http://www.brianroizen.com/blog/ios-7-beta-screenshots/

iOS 7 camera app

And the ultimate interface is the least obvious to the user.

The latest version of iOS is the culmination of Apple’s six-year journey with iPhone, and that journey mirrors the changes that successfully brought Apple back from the brink of death in the late 1990s. The product that saved Apple was the iMac, and Steve Jobs threw it like a grenade into the the computer industry. Where the industry was grey, iMac was color. Where the industry was separate pieces wired together, iMac was unified and singular. Where the industry was opaque, iMac was translucent.

But the original iMac was also a little childish — a little young — before it became the singular objét d’art that it is today. And like iMac’s 15-year transition from fruity to elegant, iOS has now crossed the user interface Rubicon from Microsoft Bob to the Bauhaus — from decoration to design.

Versions 1 through 6 were Apple’s mobile juvenilia; iOS 7 is Apple at the zenith of its design zen.

Less inter, more face

By definition, an interface is a bridge. A connection. Something that takes one thing and attaches it to another. A user interface takes what we want out of the machine and supplies it to us in a format we can see, understand, and use.

Source: http://www.brianroizen.com/blog/ios-7-beta-screenshots/

Siri in iOS 7

Glancing back at former iOS versions after using iOS 7 is an interesting experiment. As revolutionary, incredible, and praised as it was, old iOS seems obvious, heavy-handed, and almost crude in comparison. Buttons are massive, messy objects that just beg to be interpreted as old-world meatspace buttons that physically depress with a ker-thunk! as you hit them. Borders surround chunks of information like arm-in-arm security staff holding back the outside world from some very exclusive event.

Now, iOS 7 is much more authentically digital and much less representationally physical.

We’ve all grown up, Apple is saying, and we no longer need these real-world touchable referents in order to understand digital information. And, in fact, they’re holding us back, restraining us and surrounding the content we want with gimmick and gewgaw.

Who among us has ever used a rolodex? Do you keep a pad of paper handy at all times to jot down notes with pen and ink? Do we really need green felt, as Apple’s Federighi joked about in the recent WWDC keynote, to make us think of games and fun? And do we all have smoking jackets, cee-gars, and snifters brimming with brandy as we amble back to the snooker table, one hand in our houndstooth jackets?

No, no, and no.

One of the key values in iOS 7, Apple says, is deference. The user interface is there to help users get, understand, and work with the data and information they want, not to compete with it. Interface should be underneath, Apple is saying. It’s kingmaker, not king; servant, not master. Background, not foreground.

Elegant doesn’t mean somber

In spite of its elegance, iOS 7 isn’t standoffish or unapproachable. Not dark and distant.

Rather — and this is why some have likened it to Windows Phone and the new Windows design language — iOS 7 is light, approachable, even colorful in places. In other words, Apple’s not trying for an affect here. It’s not trying so hard to make iOS the nth degree in haute couture so that it becomes elitist or arrogant. Rather, Apple is looking for the best way to present and offer up experiences enabled by the device in your hand — a style so unstyled it’s not really a style but an expression of humility to the text, images, data, voices, and fun that will flow through to the user.

And that’s done in living color.

Minimalism is sometimes very minimal

While I’m happy with Apple’s overall direction, let’s keep in mind that this is a beta operating system and not a universally released, fully available product. And there’s room for improvement.

Which button is pressed? Is there a button? Can you press it?

Minimalism is a language that not everyone speaks, and sometimes less is just … less.

Just one example is in Apple’s phone app, which indicates that yes, you are on speaker mode with a very subtle light effect under the volume icon. It’s not nearly as obvious as iOS 6′s speaker mode — which is the point, after all — but the question is, is it obvious enough?

In other words, can you be so simple, so restrained, and so tentative in what you put into your user interface that you’re actually increasing the cognitive load on your users?

In a word, yes, and I think that there are some in the iPhone user camp who are going to be astonished but not delighted with some elements of the new operating system. Microsoft is going through its own challenges as users are being forced through a massive update in its desktop design language, and I think Apple will see something similar.

 Going somewhere good

That said, I like iOS 7. In fact, I really, really like iOS 7.

Source: http://www.brianroizen.com/blog/ios-7-beta-screenshots/

Photos in iOS 7

I have been using it for the better part of a week now, and despite the bugginess inherent in a beta operating system (sometimes the phone app hangs, sharing photos and videos doesn’t work in all cases, and so on), I would not go back.

We give bright, noisy toys to kids to hold their attention, and juveniles drive loud, flashy cars to reinforce the image of themselves that they desire to project, but we don’t need that.

We’re all grown up — mostly — and we know that simplicity is the core of sophistication.

Apple knew that back in the 1970s, when Steve Jobs adopted that as one of the company’s marketing slogans. Leonardo da Vinci knew it when he first said it.

And, I think, most Apple fans know it, too.

Image credits: Most: Brian Roizen, top, John Koetsier

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Steve Jobs was very upfront about the fact that good artists copy, and great artists steal. According to former Palm CEO — and former Apple SVP — Jon Rubinstein, the company Steve started is still a great artist.

As is Google, and as is Microsoft.

Speaking to Fierce Wireless about HP’s long-ago purchase of Palm, Rubinstein was asked about similarities between iOS 7 and Palm’s innovative-but-doomed WebOS:

It’s not just mobile platforms. If you look at the notifications on Mac OS X, it looks just like webOS, too. We did a lot of things that were very, very innovative. Obviously, multitasking, notifications, Synergy, how we handled the multiple cards. There’s a long list of stuff we did that has been adopted by Microsoft, Apple and Android.

Multitasking on iOS 7 is a massive update from iOS 6. Instead of simply seeing the icons of apps that are currently running, iOS7 shows users a screenshot of each running apps in a horizontally scrolling interface. That’s very reminiscent of Palm’s WebOS, which also had a horizontal scrolling view of open applications:

Source: http://the-gadgeteer.com/2009/12/11/palm-pre-six-months-in/ and http://www.brianroizen.com/blog/ios-7-beta-screenshots/

WebOS versus iOS: multitasking.

Synergy was Palm’s innovative way of merging contacts from multiple contexts: Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, your personal digital rolodex, and more. Apple has been doing that for some time with Facebook contacts, of course. In addition, Palm pioneered over-the-air operating system updates, which most of the major smartphone platforms have now adopted.

Rubinstein clearly indicates that Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows Phone have both benefited from WebOS as well. I wonder if the important point here is how much the entire mobile industry owes to Palm, WebOS in specific, and the entire lineage of Palm products since the original Palm Pilot in general.

The reality is, we probably don’t pay as much homage to the predecessors of our amazing modern smartphones as we should. And, that WebOS’s ignominious end as a forgotten and neglected red-headed step-child in the melting-down HP family home was a tragic, crying shame.

Photo credit: ross_tt via photopin cc

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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The JOBS film will be released to theaters nationwide on August 16 — four months later than expected.

After it prereleased at the Sundance Film festival to ho-hum reviews, Open Road Films delayed the launch ostensibly to do a better job of marketing the film — but possibly also to tighten up the editing and make some adjustments prior to national release.

Last-minute tweaks? That would be a very Jobs-ian thing to do.

The film follows Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak from 1971 to 2001, detailing the rise and fall and rise again of one of America’s business and technology heroes. It stars Ashton Kutcher as Jobs, Dermot Mulroney as Wozniak, and other actors including Josh Gad, Lukas Haas, J.K. Simmons, and Matthew Modine.

I’m pretty sure all Apple fans will want to see the movie, but others might be tempted as well. After all, in the words of Steve himself:

“How does somebody know what they want if they’ve never even seen it?”

 Image credit: Jobs movie

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Not political. Collaborators. People who really don’t care who gets credit. Those are the type of people that Apple looks for in new employees, Apple CEO Tim Cook said recently.

In other words, if Steve Jobs was applying for a job at Apple today, he’d probably get shown the door double-quick-time.

Cook was speaking at the 25th reunion of his class at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. He was asked about collaboration — and the types of people that Apple wants to hire.

Here’s the full video:

There are certainly a few qualities that Jobs’ and Cook’s wish list would match up on today, with intelligence at the top of the list. Another is what Cook put as Apple’s specialty: the magic of merging hardware, software, and services into one compelling product strategy.

“You look for wicked-smart people,” Cook said. “People that care enough that they have an idea at 11 at night and they want to call and talk to you about because they’re so excited and they want to push the idea further.”

Apple CEO Tim Cook.

Cook also said that he never met anyone so incredible that they can do something by themselves in a global enterprise. Which means that Apple employees need to collaborate, work together, and share the credit without taking the spotlight. Jobs, of course, was known for co-opting others’ ideas and claiming them as his own — part of his all-encompassing reality distortion field.

Cook’s philosophy, I suppose, is also one of the reasons that Jobs’ favorite Scott Forstall, who refused to apologize for the Apple Maps fiasco, was fired. Forstall was known for being — shall we say — difficult.

“You look for people that are not political … people that don’t really care who gets credit,” Cook said.

There’s no question that Cook himself fits the bill. He’s shared the stage willingly with other Apple executives at company events, and he’s humble almost to a fault. In his recent 81-minute interview at AllThingsD, Cook was calm, reserved, collected … not exciting, passionate, or amazing. For which, unsurprisingly, he’s taken a significant amount of flack.

You want people who can privately celebrate an achievement, Cook said, without having to see their name in lights. That doesn’t sound like Jobs.

The question is whether Apple needs those kinds of hands at the helm — and in the engine room — right now. A little more driving type-A break-eggs-to-make-omelettes employees might not do the company too much harm in the long run. It’s certainly the kind of passion and character that its founder and spiritual leader Jobs brought to the company.

And given that over time followers become leaders and employees become managers, directors, and CEOs, Apple might want to consider if it is shutting out the very type of employee it needs most right now.

Hat tip: Cult of Mac; Image credit: Jobs (the movie)

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013 San Francisco, CA

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Apple iCloud services for identity, Game Center, account creation and sign-in, iTunes store purchases are experiencing service failures this morning for some users, Apple says on its system status page.

iCloud is Apple’s cloud service that stores data like calendar events, mail, bookmarks, photos, and iPhone and iPad backups in Apple’s datacenters, and then syncs it across all your Apple devices. It also includes critical services like Find my iPhone, which helps you locate lost devices, and Back to my Mac, which allows you to access your laptop or desktop for critical information while using a mobile device like an iPad.

According to Apple’s system status page, the iCloud failures have been occurring this morning from 4:30AM PST to now. But they may go back farther than today — yesterday my events from Calendar, Apple’s built-in scheduling tool, were not syncing with the calendar on my iPhone.

Apparently I’m not the only one.

AppleID failures are critical issues, since if you cannot sign into your Apple identity, it’s difficult to do anything with iCloud, including setting up a new device, or simply signing into your own account. According to 9to5Mac, Apple’s iCloud services have been experiencing major outages every couple of weeks.

The current outages remind me of Apple’s original cloud and syncing service, MobileMe, which was notoriously unfriendly and unreliable … and of how Steve Jobs dealt with the situation in 2008:

Jobs walked in, clad in his trademark black mock turtleneck and blue jeans, clasped his hands together, and asked a simple question: “Can anyone tell me what MobileMe is supposed to do?” Having received a satisfactory answer, he continued, “So why the fuck doesn’t it do that?”

For the next half-hour Jobs berated the group. “You’ve tarnished Apple’s reputation,” he told them. “You should hate each other for having let each other down.” The public humiliation particularly infuriated Jobs. Walt Mossberg, the influential Wall Street Journal gadget columnist, had panned MobileMe. “Mossberg, our friend, is no longer writing good things about us,” Jobs said. On the spot, Jobs named a new executive to run the group.

I’ve asked Apple for a comment on the ongoing situation and will update this post as I learn more.

photo credit: Sean MacEntee via photopin cc

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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If you thought Pirates of Silicon Valley was inaccurate, just wait until you see what the Funny or Die folks have done with its recounting of Steve Jobs’ life, iSteve.

The comedy site last night released the 80-minute film — its longest project yet — for free viewing online. At the time of this post, iSteve has already racked up more than 123,000 views.

The film stars Justin Long as Steve Jobs, and Lost’s Jorge Garcia as Steve Wozniak (who I’m sure finds this all hilarious). Personally, I’m more excited to see James Urbaniak’s take on Bill Gates.

Even though it started out as a simple idea for a fake Steve Jobs movie trailer, iSteve may end up becoming one of Funny or Die’s most important releases. The film was written and shot in eight days, so expect things to be a bit rough. But the fact that it actually exists shows that the Internet isn’t just a place for short cat videos.

Funny or Die was founded by comedian Will Ferrell and director Adam McKay, who’ve collaborated on such classics as Anchorman, Talladega Nights, and Step Brothers. The site saw viral success early on with The Landlord, a short featuring McKay’s pint-sized daughter berating Ferrell. So far, that video has been viewed more than 80 million times.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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The edifice complex is alive and well in Silicon Valley, as Apple’s new solar-powered spaceship campus is expected to cost 66 percent more than initially planned, and Apple’s move-in date has been pushed back a year.

Costs have ballooned since the full plans for Steve Jobs’ anticipated $3 billion futuristic office building were published by Cupertino’s city council, according to a new report from BusinessWeek. And as previously reported, the move-in date has been pushed back again from 2015 to 2016.

This is a project that Apple cannot cancel, for two good reasons, but it is also a project that is a massive problem for the leadership of the Cupertino company.

Apple seems under constant sales, revenue, and market share pressure, which has pushed its share price down hundreds of dollars and its market capitalization down hundreds of billions of dollars, so building a massive and incredibly expensive monument in which to work seems like the wrong focus.

In other words, it has bad optics.

But Apple can’t cancel the project because this is its spiritual leader’s legacy. It’s the building that Steve Jobs helped design and the building he said he hoped architecture students the world over would come to see and learn from. As such, canceling the project would be brand suicide.

And Apple can’t cancel the project because it absolutely needs the space. Head count has grown from just 10,000 in 2002 to over 50,000 in the U.S. alone, and Apple has been leasing buildings and building satellite campuses to house all those workers.

So the company is looking to shave a billion dollars from the cost, BusinessWeek says, by being a little less detail-oriented about the fit and finish of the building, which was to have been built to iPhone-level quality standards.

The question is, does that cut also compromise part of Steve Jobs’ legacy.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Anyone else who wants to make a Steve Jobs movie? Get in line and take a number.

In case we needed yet another A Bug’s Life vs. Antz reminder that filmmakers and independent thinking are incompatible concepts, there’s yet another Steve Jobs biopic coming out. Ashton Kutcher plays Steve Jobs in Jobs, Aaron Sorkin is producing an as-yet-unnamed Jobs movie, and now Funny or Die announced that has already made its own iMovie.

Actually, that would be iSteve. And they probably didn’t use iMovie to make it.

The New York Times reports that the Funny or Die movie stars Justin Long and, at over an hour, is the longest film the online comedy site has ever made.

“In true Internet fashion, it’s not based on very thorough research — essentially a cursory look at the Steve Jobs Wikipedia page,” Ryan Perez, who wrote and directed “iSteve.” told the Times “It’s very silly. But it looks at his whole life.”

Knowing the site, I’m sure the movie will be funny. But Ashton Kutcher has Justin Long beat by a landslide in actually looking like a believable Steve Jobs.

This movie, however, is all about speed. The script was written in five days, and the movie was shot in three days. And, it will hit the market sooner than Sorkin’s film, which is still in development, and Kutcher’s, which does not have a general release date set yet.

Apparently, the movie escalated from a newsroom prank, as writers for Funny or Die were thinking about creating a fake Steve Jobs movie trailer. Turns out they may have made an entire fake Steve Jobs movie.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Total global music sales reached $16.5 billion in 2012, up .3 percent, with digital revenues jumping 9 percent.

That’s not a huge move, but given that it’s the first increase in more than a decade, the music industry has a legitimate reason to scream and shout, and let it all out.

“It is hard to remember a year that has begun with such a palpable buzz in the air,” Frances Moore, the CEO of the IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) said today in a statement. “The music industry has achieved its best year-on-year performance since 1998. The direction of travel toward growth is clear.”

Just two years ago, Moore said, the major digital music services such as iTunes and Spotify only were in 20 international markets. Now, they’re in over 100 countries, including Brazil, India, and Russia. Digital music sales are clearly where the growth is, and markets as diverse as the U.S., India, Norway, and Sweden, digital revenue has overtaken physical revenue.

Source: IFPI

Global digital music revenue

Music still has a long way to go: digital revenues were 34 percent of the music industries revenues. And they’re growing fairly slowly, too. Digital revenue of $5.6 billion in 2012 is up only about 10 percent from 2011′s $5.1 billion.

But the trend is, finally, up.

And it’s not just downloads. The IFPI says that subscription revenue is up also. In fact, it’s growing quicker than the download business: up 44 percent from 2011. In some countries like Sweden, South Korea, and France, more people subscribe to music than download it, a trend that appears to be catching on in the U.S as well.

Of course, the IFPI says that illegal and pirated songs are still a major roadblock to music industry nirvana. Megaupload figures prominently in this narrative, and the IFPI says that FBI estimates of “damage to the creative industries” by pirating on Megaupload was in the region of a half billion dollars.

All told, the IFPI and its national affiliates found and requested removal of 15.9 million infringing music files in 2012, a process that it says “remains an unsatisfactory and inefficient remedy to tackle massive online infringement.”

All told, however, the music industry is finally going up and to the right in revenue as well as impact, with 68.9 billion legal streams of music in North America alone in 2012, along with 1.6 billion albums sold.

One thing that doesn’t appear in the IFPI’s massive 36-page report?

Any mention of the man who dragged the music industry kicking and screaming into the digital age: Steve Jobs.

Image credit: IFPI

jOBS stars Ashton Kutcher as, of course, Steve Jobs, and Josh Gad as Steve Wozniak, telling “the story of Steve Jobs’ ascension from college dropout into one of the most revered creative entrepreneurs of the 20th century,” as the movies’ producers have framed it on IMDB. Matthew Modine has a small role as well, playing ill-fated Apple CEO John Scully.

The jOBS movie, following on the footsteps of The Social Network just two years ago, shows the increased importance technology and those who create it have in popular culture. No one made a movie about Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard in the ’80s or IBM founder Thomas Watson — who led IBM for a staggering 42 years — in the ’70s.

Of course, it helps that Steve Jobs was crazily charismatic. Even though Bill Gates is one of the richest people in the world, and now one of the foremost philanthropists of all time, no one has ever produced a biopic of the Microsoft founder.

While most of us will have to wait almost three months to see the movie, the worldwide premiere is actually in just three days at the Sundance film festival in Park City, Utah. (If you’re attending and want to provide a review for VentureBeat, let me know.)

Meanwhile, the rest of us will just have to settle for a one-minute clip released to Entertainment Week this morning.

Source: Entertainment Weekly

Jobs and Wozniak arguing in an underground HP parking lot

Image credit: jOBS movie

It’s MacWorld’s 29th year, and it’s the fourth year since Apple unceremoniously took its ball and left. But it could just be the best MacWorld yet, with star power, fan power, and … ecosystem power.

“The show really has become the ultimate iFan festival,” MacWorld general manager Paul Kent told me last week. “We have training classes, celebrities, noted experts, tips and tricks … before it was really a platform for Apple, but now it’s really about the ecosystem.”

Kutcher and Gad will provide some of that celebrity star power, but not all of it.

Will.i.am will also be present to talk about technology, gadgets, and creativity with Intel futurist Brian David Johnson. And the NASA team behind the Mars rover Curiosity will also be in the Moscone Center, home of so many of Apple’s iconic product announcements, to talk about their use of Apple products.

“But perhaps the most interesting story is going to be the innovation in the products,” Kent said. “We have the accessory companies, over 100 app companies … it’s like walking into an Apple store, except that the products kind of come life at MacWorld.”

Forty percent of the companies demoing products are new to the market, Kent said, adding that MacWorld was sort of like “CES for Apple fans,” and perhaps the last great consumer-focused technology convention.

MacWorld/iWorld 2013 starts on Jan. 31st, in just over a week. IDG World Expo, the company behind the convention, expects “more than 25,000″ attendees.

Image credit: The Jobs Movie

Venus is 80 meters long — over 250 feet — and has living quarters to accommodate 12 people. Its equipment and living space, according to SWNS.com, can be controlled from seven 27-inch iMacs. The ship has a very unusual design, with a very straight bow and gently sloping stern, and a profile dominated by the horizontal lines of its waterline, windows, deck, and cabin roof.

Source: SWNS.com

Steve Jobs’ yacht at sea off Rotterdam, the Netherlands

Philippe Starck created the yacht with complete carte blanche from the founder and CEO of Apple, as he recently told Super Yacht Times. That was extremely unusual for Jobs, who was notoriously detail-oriented, but this demonstrates the respect he had for the legendary European designer.

Of course, that was simply for the major, exterior design. For the interior, Jobs had more to say. As SYT recounts, Starck and Jobs spent considerable time over those details:

“We spent just one day every six weeks, for five years, on refinements. Millimeter by millimeter. Detail by detail.”

As the photos show, the result of the collaboration between Starck and Jobs is extreme simplicity.

Starck said that “there is not a single useless item inside. … Not a single useless pillow, or a useless object. In that sense, it is the opposite of other boats. Other boats try to show off more and more. Venus is revolutionary. It is the extreme opposite.”

The sad reality, of course, is that Jobs never got to sail in the boat that he built.

Top image credit: Super Yacht Times

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

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Apple is attempting to start a Pandora-like Internet radio service, according to the Wall Street Journal, which says that Apple executives have been talking to music industry players to negotiate licensing.

Pandora is a personalized online radio station. Tell it what you like, and it will create a playlist just for you, customized to your tastes. You can subscribe for free if you don’t mind a few ads, or you can pay to get the music without commercial interruption. If you particularly like a song or album, you can purchase it via various retailers.

That would seem to contrast strongly with Steve Jobs’ view of music. Jobs resisted the subscription model in favor of iTunes’ purchase model. Famous Jobs quotations include ”People want to own their music,” and ”The subscription model has failed so far,” and ”Never say never, but customers don’t seem to be interested in it.”

Of course, Jobs could also tell you that the sun was going to shine at midnight.

Pandora, which is primarily focused on the U.S., has spectacularly failed so far to make a viable business out of subscriptions and advertising, losing $1.8 million on $136 million in revenue last year and exceeding that loss by a factor of five in just the last quarter, despite growing revenue by 50 percent.

In other words, the we’ll-lose-money-on-each-transaction-but-make-it-up-on-volume model ain’t working.

Potentially, however, Apple would have a better shot at making it work, since many customers already have a payment relationship with iTunes and are used to buying music with Apple. In addition, Apple may believe that it’s time for the primary mode of music discovery to shift from terrestrial radio — still the king, with a 48 percent share — to online radio, while also making a preemptive move on YouTube, which 64 percent of teens use to listen to music.

Landing deals with the labels would help Apple retain its crown as the king of music purchase — and salve some of the pain of failing to acquire enough TV content to create a great online TV replacement.

photo credit: emanuela franchini via photo pin cc

In December Apple fired Wayne Goodrich, the man behind the curtain of the exquisitely produced Apple events that helped Steve Jobs make presentation magic so many times. Now, according to Business Week, he’s suing Apple for wages, benefits, lost stock options, and, of course, emotional distress.

The reason for the termination?

According to Goodrich, Apple fired him so that the company could avoid paying restricted stock benefits that would have seen him be able to scoop up $600+ shares for just $97 — the price of the stock when it was awarded in 2008.

Goodrich also claims that Steve Jobs promised him a job for life.

Unfortunately, this occurred in a one-on-one meeting, and there’s no word on whether any documentation exists. Goodrich’s lawyer, San Francisco-based Phil Horowitz, had no comment.

To anyone who followed Steve Jobs’ career or read the Walter Isaacson biography, of course, Jobs saying something and it actually being true — or true for more than a few days — are completely different things.

We have yet to hear how much compensation Goodrich is seeking.

Image credit: You’re fired/ShutterStock

At least, that’s what Samsung thinks.

According to Reuters, a Samsung attorney told a San Jose judge that excessive use of Steve Jobs’ image was “prejudicial” and that he didn’t want jurors to see 15 pictures of the former Apple chief executive.

“It shouldn’t be a popularity contest,” the lawyer said.

Source: Amazon

Steve Job’s biography – #48 on Amazon

Steve Jobs is extremely well-known and popular, of course. A Google search for his name turns up an astounding 487 million results. He is the iconic former CEO of two great U.S. corporations, Apple and Pixar, in a legal fight against a Korean competitor in a California court.

And he’s the chief executive who was most responsible for bringing Apple back from the brink of oblivion with a value of only $5 billion in 2000, to the most valuable company on the planet today with a market capitalization of $572 billion.

In addition, Steve Jobs’ authorized biography by Walter Isaacson is still ranked #48 at Amazon, having been on the top 100 books sold list for an astounding 332 days.

Whether that all adds up to unduly influencing the jury, who knows.

Steve Jobs’ words were potentially actually harmful to Apple’s case in previous lawsuits — Samsung wanted to bring his “thermonuclear warfare” comments, referring to Android, into evidence. Obviously they believed in that case Steve Jobs would help them.

The Apple-Samsung legal soap operas continue …

Magnetic is a leader in the search retargeting industry, an industry that allows advertisers to aggregate audiences and market to them based on prior web usage. For example, surfers who on Friday browsed Xboxes on Amazon.com might later see ads for Xbox-related merchandise on many other sites.

Today Magnetic is announcing a new round of funding: $10 million from a group of investors led by Edison Ventures. Six other investment groups participated in the round, all of which were initial funders in the seed round. That’s usually a sign of confidence in a company’s progress.

CEO James Green, who once reported directly to Steve Jobs at Pixar, attributes Magnetic’s success to one thing: a great product.

Magnetic CEO James Green

“I don’t mean to be glib, but it’s largely because the product works,” he told VentureBeat yesterday. “In advertising, that’s the key.” Since online advertising can be so intricately measured, what works wins. And winning has translated to the quick growth of the team: T he company has doubled staff in the last half year, and plans to grow to 60 in the next few months. The company has tripled the development team, and there are already more people in sales at Magnetic than were in the entire company when Green joined in October of 2011.

The new funding will help accelerate that growth. The retargeting category is exploding, and Green doesn’t have a lot of patience as Magnetic moves to exploit the opportunity. “We want to move really really quickly. The people who will win are the people who will make the right decisions faster than anyone else.”

One of the interesting things about Magnetic — a company self-described as the “leader in search retargeting” — is that they do not work with Google or Bing. Instead, they work with a host of other partners. ”40 percent of all searches are actually done outside search engines,” says Green. “In fact, one of the reasons we’re so successful is that very rarely do you buy something the first time you go out and search for it.”

An initial search may take place on Google, but there are at least three other levels that Magnetic targets: product review sites, price comparison sites, and the actual e-commerce sites where sales eventually happen. Magnetic calls these searches “lower funnel searches,” in reference to the tradition sales funnel. Google and Bing are higher up the funnel; Magnetic is closer to the actual sale.

Competitors in the hot retargeting space abound, including Simpli.fi and Chango. To be successful, Green will have to utilize all of his experience, and the $10 million in new funding. But Green has a lot of experience guiding companies. He’s led four separate companies in the online advertising space to exits via acquisition, including Giant Realm (sold to Burst Media), PVI (sold to Cablevision and Televisa), GiantBear (sold to InfoSpace), and Sabela Media (sold to 24/7 Real Media).

Piloting is obviously in his blood: In 2010 he lived out a life-long dream by captaining his 55-foot yacht, Ondine, in a year-long voyage through the world’s oceans.

Part of Green’s experience in leading companies and learning how to market was gained during his time at Pixar, where as a marketing VP he reported directly to Steve Jobs.

“My favourite thing to say about Pixar is that I taught him absolutely nothing about marketing, and he taught me that I should run my own company,” Green told VentureBeat.

And on the topic of the famous Steve Jobs reality distortion field? It was real: “He’s the only guy I’ve ever walked into a room with that, if we were debating whether the sky is blue, he would convince me it was purple. There was no way I could ever persuade him of anything.”

Magnetic is based in New York City, with offices in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Detroit. Participants in this round of funding included IA Capital Partners, NYC Seed, NYC Investment Fund, Jonathan Kraft, Neu Venture Capital and Charles River Ventures, all of whom were involved in Magnetic’s initial seed funding, and the lead investor, Edison Ventures.

Image credit: ShutterStock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

Technology teaches us to forget the past. Last year’s tech news seems like it has no use whatsoever. Thankfully, historians beg to differ, and they have begun to preserve the history of the tech industry as it becomes more and more important to the evolution of our lives and world. Those who understand the history of technology and the people who made it happen can probably figure out more quickly how to build on the shoulders of giants and advance technology further. Here’s some books that are great fun to read because they either relate great ideas that influenced a generation of technologists or because they chronicle the lives of people who changed the world. This list includes books that have stood the test of time and are worth a look for the history lover. And it includes new books, such as Walter Isaacson’s tome on Steve Jobs, that are likely to be the new classics. It doesn’t, however, include any tech textbooks. My focus is on books that deliver not just a technical understanding of how something works today, but hard-earned wisdom.

1. Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson (2011). This 571-page tome captures the key moments and thoughts of Steve Jobs, c0-founder of Apple. Isaacson built a moving portrait of the life of the tech icon after 40 interviews with him. Aware of Jobs’ reality distortion field, Isaacson also interviewed more than 100 key players about what Jobs told him, getting a full picture of the man from many points of view. All of the key players in the life of Jobs — his ex-girlfriends, former employees, board members, wife and children, and industry luminaries such as Bill Gates — talk about their interaction with Jobs, from his days growing up in Silicon Valley, to his pot-smoking days at a commune with an apple orchard in Oregon, until his death from cancer in 2011. Isaacson’s book captures the complexity of a man who could be a tyrant at one moment and an emotional wreck the next. Whatever you think of Jobs or his accomplishments, it is a must-read for anyone remotely related to the business of technology. The book makes you feel like you know the man behind the legend by the time you’re finished. It is so well done that it inspired me to write this list.

2. The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen (1997). It took a Harvard Business School professor to see why new technologies can cause great companies to fail. After studying industries from steel to hard drives, Christenson discovered that listening to customers can cause a great executive to misread the market. Typically, customers ask for new features, and the most enthusiastic customers ask for lots of new features. The managers who accommodate requests and put them into the next version of the product run the risk of failing because they make their products too complicated. They don’t notice that for ordinary customers, the technology is good enough. When a technology becomes good enough, the market leader may fail to notice, only to be disrupted by a competitor who comes into the market and offers a good enough product. Too many companies are afraid to disrupt their own products, and so they are disrupted instead. At the same time, businesses that routinely improve their products often miss the boat when a new technology comes along and becomes a huge wave. While the book focuses on business strategy, it offers a lot of insights and it had a huge impact on the tech industry. And Christensen’s “Innovator’s” series of books became a cottage industry. For innovators of any stripe, the whole series is worth reading.

3. The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder (1981). This is the classic tech product creation story. Kidder writes the book so that you feel like you are a fly on the wall in the meetings at Data General, a minicomputer vendor in the 1970s. The author chronicles the turf war that takes place between two internal design groups within the company that are trying to create the great next-generation machine. The two teams are pitted against each other and they test whether a “quick and dirty” computer made by recent college graduates will make a better product or one that is painstakingly designed by an elite group. The book won a Pulitzer Prize in another era, but what hasn’t changed is difficulty of dealing with egos in team dynamics or the frenetic pace of product innovation. The book has inspired countless other business tales, including my own books on the history of Microsoft’s Xbox video game business.

4. Andy Grove: The Life and Times of an American by Richard S. Tedlow (2006). Before we move on to making a god out of Mark Zuckerberg, it’s good to remember who came before him. No one had a more remarkable rags to riches story than Andy Grove, the former chief executive of Intel. He was born a Hungarian Jew in 1936 and he survived the Holocaust while his father did not. During the bloody Hungarian revolution of 1956, he fled the country, crawling across the Austrian border in the mud. He arrived in America penniless, found help and managed to work his way through college. He graduated in time to catch the wave of change sweeping through the new Silicon Valley with the creation of seminal chip companies such as Fairchild. He was the third employee at Intel and became its CEO, taking no prisoners along the way. Grove became a statesman of the valley and a feared boss for those who didn’t have their act together. Among his decisions: engaging in a strategic retreat, where he and Gordon Moore decided to exit the memory chip market to focus on microprocessors. Then came IBM, looking for a microprocessor to put in its first personal computer. After that, Intel was golden and Grove was a key reason that Intel became the world’s biggest chip maker.

5. The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story by Michael Lewis (2001). This tale showed how all roads led to Jim Clark, the founder of Silicon Graphics, Netscape and Healtheon. Lewis, the author of Liar’s Poker, swept into Silicon Valley and cozied up to Clark, the brilliant graphics expert who became the most important technology entrepreneur of the 1990s. The tale shows how the boom surrounding the internet turned the geeky Clark into one of the valley’s first billionaires. Clark rewrote the rules of Silicon Valley and capitalism itself. Lewis also chronicled Clark’s creation of Hyperion, a high-tech yacht that was more complex than a 747. Like Kidder, Lewis is a great storyteller who captured the poignant moments of Clark’s life. Clark didn’t set the world on fire with Healtheon, but his protegé, Marc Andreessen, has inherited the mantle of the uber-entrepreneur and investor of Silicon Valley.

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Attention Apple zealots: An eerily lifelike, unofficial Steve Jobs action figure set is slated for late February release, and can be yours for just $99.99 plus shipping. That is, of course, if Apple doesn’t issue a cease-and-desist order first.

The “Super Realistic Steve Jobs 12″ Collectible Figure,” as it’s called, was unveiled by toy companies In Icons and Dragon in Dream Corporation on New Year’s Day, and is the almost-perfect (some might say, freaky) reincarnation of the late Jobs in doll form — wrinkles, pores, veins and all.

The set features the deceased icon’s preferred uniform of black turtleneck, blue jeans and sneakers, along with two pairs of glasses, three pairs of hands, one black leather belt, a pair of black socks, two apples and a “One More Thing” backdrop. The figurine is pictured with (adorable) mini Mac, iPad and iPhone accessories, but those are not included in the set.

Want one? In Icons is currently accepting a “limited quantity” of orders via PayPal (the site is experiencing slow load times due to the onslaught of media attention). Be advised, though, that Apple will likely do everything in its power to prevent the doll’s production and distribution. The company previously quashed the sale of an unsanctioned Steve Jobs doll made by Chinese manufacturer MIC Gadget.

[via CourierMail]

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Tickets On Sale Now

What do Japan’s earthquakes and tsunami, the royal wedding, and the passing of Steve Jobs have in common? They were all hugely popular topics on StumbleUpon in 2011. The link discovery website had quite a year — in October it reached 20 million users, December brought a complete site redesign, and it now averages 1.2 billion “stumbles” per month.

In the above infographic, you can see how much the popular events of 2011 influenced StumbleUpon’s activity. During the Super Bowl, there were 41 mobile stumbles per second. And after Steve Jobs passed away in October, StumbleUpon recorded a 199,500 percent increase for searches of “Steve Jobs.”

StumbleUpon rounded up the most popular, inspiring and adorable links from the approximately 14 billion stumbles the site saw this year. The resulting Best of StumbleUpon 2011 post is a three-page list that includes the top stumbles for men, women and mobile users. Below is sampling of the stumbles that made the list.

Most inspiring

In the category of most inspiring, A dog’s seeing-eye dog is the winner with one million views. It’s a post about a blind Great Dane, and another Great Dane companion that has been acting as her seeing-eye dog for the past five years. Inspiring and adorable.

Most popular on tablets

Expectations vs. Reality is a round up of 16 pictures that show how things really don’t always go as planned. The single-column all-images post was a natural for tablets. It had more than two million views on StumbleUpon — a rare case when reality probably topped expectations.

Most stumbled video

Out of all the videos shared this year, Super Sprayer scored the most stumbles. At first the video doesn’t look like much; just an artist spray painting a sheet of paper. But as he sprays and smudges the paint, a stunning space scene with a planet and stars emerge. It may not be as viral as Rebecca Black’s Friday Video, but the painting definitely required more talent.

Most delicious

Chocolate cupcakes with flaming strawberries — need I say more? This unique recipe of chocolate cupcakes topped with flaming, alcohol-filled strawberries became the most delicious stumble of 2011 with one million views.

And lastly, most shared

Draw a Stickman is a simple game; you draw a stickman and watch what happens to it, adding input here and there. How did it get so many shares? Likely because it’s a fun way to kill a few minutes and has a nice message at the end.

Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview will debut at select Landmark Theaters on November 16 and feature nearly 70 minutes of unedited dialogue between Cringley and Jobs first captured in 1995 for the PBS miniseries Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires.

The three-part documentary series was focused around the founding of the personal computing industry, and included bits and pieces of a colorful interview with Steve Jobs in which he lambasted Microsoft and its products.

“That candid, controversial, and funny interview with an old associate … was by far the best TV interview Jobs ever gave,” according to promotional materials shared with VentureBeat. “Yet less than 10 minutes were used in the series and the other 59 minutes were lost forever when the master tapes disappeared in shipping.”

The tapes were said to be recently recovered in London. Cringley then connected with Mark Cuban, co-owner of Wagner/Cuban Companies and operator of Landmark Theaters, to bring the footage to audiences.

The unrated program will air at Landmark Theaters across the the U.S. on November 16 and 17, with 7:15 and 9:00 p.m. showtimes at most theaters. Would-be viewers can catch a screening of the program in New York, Lost Angeles, San Francisco, Berkeley, Palo Alto, Seattle, San Diego, Denver, Dallas, Houston, Minneapolis, Chicago, Indianapolis, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Baltimore, Atlanta and Milwaukee.

[Image via IMDB]

Failcon is an annual event where people gather to talk about failing their way to success, a unique forum that celebrates mistakes.

Khosla (pictured) has had may successes, but he also knows about failure first hand. He was one of the founders of Sun Microsystems, as well as a partner at Kleiner Perkins, before starting Khosla Ventures, which has invested heavily in cleantech, web startups and social media.

One of Khosla’s many failures was with a product called Dynabook, which was like a 1980s version of an iPad with a pen. Prominent investor John Doerr was on the board, and the management team had an impressive set of credentials. The marketing team came up with the tagline “the pen is the point,” and, Khosla said, “we started believing that bullshit.” But while the management had been caught up in the technology, what mattered to users was actually mobility.

Knowing 90 percent of companies inevitably fail has never deterred Khosla from taking risks. Even though not all of his investments pan out, he knows it’s still important to take bold action.

“Most people reduce risk to the point that what you’re doing is so risk-less, when you succeed, what you’re doing is inconsequential,” Khosla said to the Failcon audience

He went on to point out that some of the Silicon Valley’s biggest successes also risked being its biggest failures.

The best thing to happen to Steve Jobs was Apple’s failure, said Khosla, and it was key to Steve Jobs becoming one of the most influential figures in the history of technology. While Jobs was crucial to Apple’s early success, he was forced out of the company, and his follow up venture, NeXT, was largely seen as a failure. However, when Apple brought him back, Jobs had the freedom to swing for the home run, because the company was on the verge of filing for bankruptcy and had nothing to lose.

Khosla Ventures recently raised a new $1.05 billion fund, with half devoted to cleantech.

The flags have been lowered to half-mast at Apple’s Cupertino headquarters (right).

Steve Jobs’ family has released this statement:

Steve died peacefully today surrounded by his family.

In his public life, Steve was known as a visionary; in his private life, he cherished his family. We are thankful to the many people who have shared their wishes and prayers during the last year of Steve’s illness; a website will be provided for those who wish to offer tributes and memories.

We are grateful for the support and kindness of those who share our feelings for Steve. We know many of you will mourn with us, and we ask that you respect our privacy during our time of grief.

Tim Cook‘s memo to Apple staff:

Team,

I have some very sad news to share with all of you. Steve passed away earlier today.

Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being. Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor. Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple.

We are planning a celebration of Steve’s extraordinary life for Apple employees that will take place soon. If you would like to share your thoughts, memories and condolences in the interim, you can simply email rememberingsteve@apple.com.

No words can adequately express our sadness at Steve’s death or our gratitude for the opportunity to work with him. We will honor his memory by dedicating ourselves to continuing the work he loved so much.

Tim

Official statement from President Obama:

Michelle and I are saddened to learn of the passing of Steve Jobs. Steve was among the greatest of American innovators – brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it.

By building one of the planet’s most successful companies from his garage, he exemplified the spirit of American ingenuity. By making computers personal and putting the internet in our pockets, he made the information revolution not only accessible, but intuitive and fun. And by turning his talents to storytelling, he has brought joy to millions of children and grownups alike. Steve was fond of saying that he lived every day like it was his last. Because he did, he transformed our lives, redefined entire industries, and achieved one of the rarest feats in human history: he changed the way each of us sees the world.

The world has lost a visionary. And there may be no greater tribute to Steve’s success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented. Michelle and I send our thoughts and prayers to Steve’s wife Laurene, his family, and all those who loved him.

Bill Gates sent the following email to AllThingsD:

I’m truly saddened to learn of Steve Jobs’ death. Melinda and I extend our sincere condolences to his family and friends, and to everyone Steve has touched through his work.

Steve and I first met nearly 30 years ago, and have been colleagues, competitors and friends over the course of more than half our lives.

The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come.

For those of us lucky enough to get to work with him, it’s been an insanely great honor. I will miss Steve immensely.

“From the earliest days of Google, whenever Larry and I sought inspiration for vision and leadership, we needed to look no farther than Cupertino. Steve, your passion for excellence is felt by anyone who has ever touched an Apple product (including the macbook I am writing this on right now). And I have witnessed it in person the few times we have met.  On behalf of all of us at Google and more broadly in technology, you will be missed very much. My condolences to family, friends, and colleagues at Apple.” — Sergey Brin, Google

“Steve, thank you for being a mentor and a friend. Thanks for showing that what you build can change the world. I will miss you.” — Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook

“I am very, very sad to hear the news about Steve. He was a great man with incredible achievements and amazing brilliance. He always seemed to be able to say in very few words what you actually should have been thinking before you thought it. His focus on the user experience above all else has always been an inspiration to me. He was very kind to reach out to me as I became CEO of Google and spend time offering his advice and knowledge even though he was not at all well. My thoughts and Google’s are with his family and the whole Apple family.” — Larry Page, Google

“I want to express my deepest condolences at the passing of Steve Jobs, one of the founders of our industry and a true visionary. My heart goes out to his family, everyone at Apple and everyone who has been touched by his work.” — Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO

“True genius is measured by the ability to touch every person on the planet. Steve did that, not just once, but many, many times over his amazing life. We at Intel were privileged to have known him and worked with him as he brought his creations to life. Our hearts go out to his family and to his many friends and co-creators throughout the world.” — Paul Otellini, CEO of Intel

“Steve Jobs was an extraordinary visionary, our very dear friend and the guiding light of the Pixar family. He saw the potential of what Pixar could be before the rest of us, and beyond what anyone ever imagined. Steve took a chance on us and believed in our crazy dream of making computer animated films; the one thing he always said was to simply ‘make it great.’ He is why Pixar turned out the way we did and his strength, integrity and love of life has made us all better people. He will forever be a part of Pixar’s DNA. Our hearts go out to his wife Laurene and their children during this incredibly difficult time.” — John Lasseter, Chief Creative Officer & Ed Catmull, President, Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios

“Steve Jobs was a great California innovator who demonstrated what a totally independent and creative mind can accomplish. Few people have made such a powerful and elegant imprint on our lives. Anne and I wish to express our deepest sympathy to Steve’s wife, Laurene, and their entire family.” – Jerry Brown, Governor of California

“May Steve rest in peace. My deepest sympathy to his loved ones. No CEO has done more for his customers, employees, and shareholders than Steve. He changed the world–my world, your world, the entire world. His words to live by: “There must be a better way.” You changed our lives, Steve, and you showed us that there is a better way…we will miss you.” — Guy Kawasaki, CEO of Alltop:

“There aren’t enough words to describe what Steve has done, he defines a generation. I hope that everyone will respect his privacy and will respect his family’s privacy. For apple this will be business as usual. For all intents and purposes, we knew Steve was sick, but we had no idea he was this sick. This is a tremendous loss of an icon for the tech community, but it’s not the time to dismiss Apple.” – Michael Gartenberg, analyst at Gartner

“Even when I worked for 15 years for Bill Gates at Microsoft, I had a huge admiration for Steve and what Apple had produced.  But in the end, when I think about leadership, passion and attention to detail, I think back to the call I received from Steve Jobs on a Sunday morning in January. It was a lesson I’ll never forget. CEOs should care about details. Even shades of yellow. On a Sunday. To one of the greatest leaders I’ve ever met, my prayers and hopes are with you Steve.” — Vic Gundotra, senior vice president of Social at Google, on Google+

“Steve was one of a kind. For many of us working in technology and entertainment, Steve was a new kind of hero that lead with big, bold moves and would not settle for less than perfection. He is the best role model for a leader that aspires to be great.” – John Riccitiello, CEO of EA

“His death is a huge loss for the creative community. If you think about how many creative things that were made using Apple products… Steve Jobs is probably the biggest influencer there is.” — Joe Fernandez, Klout CEO

“As an immigrant, Steve Jobs personified everything that was great about America,” Vivek Ranadivé, a friend of Jobs and CEO of Tibco

“I’m shocked, and saddened. He’s obviously one of the century’s most important innovators and set the agenda for the tech industry for 30 years. I had mixed feelings about him as a man, as a manager. He was cool … his influence has been staggering.” — Leander Kahney, author of “Inside Steve’s Brain” and publisher of CultofMac.com

“There were few people who understood what people wanted and build something beautiful better than him. I tried to emulate him where I could, his Stanford graduation speech still rings with me to this day.” — Alexis Ohanian

“I feel crushed right now.” — Jason Calacanis via Twitter

Steve’s passion for innovation and creativity will carry on for decades to come. His legacy is enormous, touching millions of people around the world. Our entire industry and economy is better for his presence and incredible contributions. On behalf of Broadcom, we send our deepest condolences to Steve’s family and to Apple employees” — Scott McGregor, Broadcom CEO

“Steve was one of a kind.  For many of us working in technology and entertainment, Steve was a new kind of hero that lead with big, bold moves and would not settle for less than perfection. He is the best role model for a leader that aspires to be great.” – John Riccitiello, CEO of Electronic Arts

“For me, Steve’s legacy won’t be limited to these breakthrough products, however. More important than the products themselves, he changed the way we think —–and how we think about something is often the hardest thing to change. This makes Steve’s successes all that much more remarkable.” — Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay

Dmitry Dragilev, marketing lead of design firm Zurb, said Jobs had a great influence over the company. “Holy Crap. Such a shock. We have a Steve Jobs doll we pass around every morning at scrum [meetings]. Folks here are truly sad … He had a relentless pursuit of excellence: ‘My job is to not be easy on people. My job is to make them better.’”

“RIP Steve Jobs. Rest in peace homie.” — Snoop Dog

Boingboing.com has touchingly, awesomely changed the design of its homepage in honor of Steve Jobs (above).

Google.com has a direct link to Apple’s Steve Jobs page.