During the annual Webbys award show nearly a dozen high profile celebrities, politicians, and people of note gave a huge tribute to the late Apple co-founder, Steve Jobs. The tribute was shown on a huge video screen and simultaneously streamed over the web.

John Hodmgan and Justin Long introduced the segment, paying homage to their long-running series of Get a Mac ads, with Hodgman pretending he'd never heard of any other ads from Apple. They then introduced Richard Dreyfuss, who'd narrated the famous Think Different ad.

Dreyfuss preceded his tribute with the internet equivalent of a political statement, telling Mark Zukerberg and Eric Brin [sic] that if they want to take our privacy away, they should tell us all the private details of their private lives, and if they want to change the world, they should pay for it because it's "theft". He then told the audience he wasn't kidding. He returned to that theme later, casting Google and Facebook alongside politicians, car companies, home renovators, and other high tech companies as part of a world "drowing in fraud". He contrasted them with Steve Jobs, who Dreyfuss said "go it". In a world of senselessly, dishonesty, denial, and ignorance, where words are shared by the good and the bad, Dreyfuss said, the difference with Steve Jobs is that he meant it and did it. Again and again. He finished with the five words -- "exception that proves the rule".

Hodgman and Long returned to introduce the video tribute, which featured former U.S. President Bill Clinton, George Lucas, Vint Cerf, Arianna Huffington, Bono, Buzz Aldrin, Sarah Silverman, a group of school children, former U.S. Vice President and Apple board member Al Gore, Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, and U.S. President Barack Obama all expressing their thanks to Steve Jobs.

Jobs was thanked for a hand held internet, for saving lives with Product Red, for spreading American ingenuity world wide, and for exploring beyond our reach. Al Gore called Jobs "insanely great". Jimmy Fallon said Jobs "made turtle necks sexy again". Stephen Colbert said Jobs thanked Jobs for a "meticulous attention to detail". Barak Obama thanks Jobs for "thinking different", and said that when it came to Jobs only one word was needed -- "amazing".

The Webbys tribute to Steve Jobs is the latest of many that have already seen in the past. We have witnessed similar tributes given at the Grammy's in February and at the 84th Academy Awards ceremony. You can see the video below, unfortunately it is Flash only.

Source: CNET

The unofficial, independent Steve Jobs biopic starring Ashton Kutcher, has gotten an official name -- jOBS -- a website, and has released some new details about the production.

The film chronicling the life of Steve Jobs, the Apple Inc. co-founder and charismatic master of innovation, begins principal photography in June and in keeping with the project's commitment to accuracy and authenticity, will film early scenes in the actual Los Altos home where Jobs grew up and in the historic garage where he and Steve Wozniak founded Apple.

jOBS is produced by Mark Hulme and Five Star Pictures and directed by Joshua Michael Stern of Swing Vote and Neverwas.

jOBS chronicles the 30 most defining years of Steve Jobs' life, as seen through his, colleagues', and friends' eyes. Dark, honest, and uncompromising, jOBS plunges into the depths of his character, creating an intense dialogue-driven story that is as much a sweeping epic as it is an immensely personal portrait of Steve Jobs' life.

On the film's website, thejobsmovie.com, Hulme elaborates on his motivations for making jOBS.

One of the great innovators and futurist patriarchs of our time, Steve Jobs was somehow simultaneously a prophet and a pariah for millions of consumers. His is a truly fascinating story that cannot properly be told in such a short space, and that is why we are determined to bring his tale –both the good and the bad, the regrettable and unforgettable, the villainous and heroic– to the big screen.

Just recently Ashton Kutcher was seen out and about in his Steve Jobs wardrobe.

jOBS current has the tagline "Get inspired" and is scheduled for a late fall, 2012 release. That should be well ahead of the official biopic produced by Sony and based on the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson, which just hired Aaron Sorkin of The Social Network and The West Wing to pen their script.

Source: thejobsmovie.com

Sony has hired Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak to advise on its upcoming film based on the book  Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacsson. Woz will be there to consult on Jobs and on technical aspects of computers. Sony has already hired Aaron Sorkin to write the film and he was also responsible for the recent film based on Facebook, The Social Network as well as television's The West Wing. Unfortunately this project does not seem that straight forward for Sorkin.

"I know so little about what I am going to write. I know what I am not going to write. It can't be a straight ahead biography because it's very difficult to shake the cradle-to-grave structure of a biography, " Sorkin told reporters at a news conference for his upcoming  HBO drama "The Newsroom." Sorkin noted that "The Social Network" saw the Facebook story through the lens of an acrimonious lawsuit that pitted CEO Mark Zuckerberg against his Harvard friends over the creation of the social media network. "Drama is tension versus obstacle. Someone wants something, something is standing in their way of getting it. They want the money, they want the girl, they want to get to Philadelphia - doesn't matter ... And I need to find that event and I will. I just don't know what it is," Sorkin said.

Source: Chicago Tribune Image: Bloomberg

According to J. Crew CEO and current Apple board member, Mickey Drexler, Steve Jobs didn’t just want to re-invent the personal computer, mobile phone, and music industry -- he also wanted to take a stab at the car industry too. In an interview at Fast Company’s Innovation Uncensored conference earlier this week, Drexler said that Steve Jobs wanted to build... an iCar.

"Look at the car industry, it's a tragedy in America. Who's designing the cars?" Drexler said. "Steve's dream before he died was to design an iCar and I think it would've been probably 50% of the market. He never did design it."

You can imagine how great that iCar would have been had it come to fruition and you wouldn’t bet against it becoming the leader in the car world either. There would have been no ugly buttons inside, everything would have been simple to operate and elegant. Of course the integration with other Apple devices would have been a thing to behold; sadly it wasn't to be.

Drexler also claimed that Apple would be dealing with the living room in the "near future"; which could be taken as a hint about the often rumored Apple HDTV.

However, neither Drexler no any Apple board member would likely leak real information about unannounced Apple products, so we'll take this as what it is -- a vague, confidence boosting comment with context informed solely based on existing rumor and speculation.

He also went on to say that he wouldn't like to be in Tim Cooks shoes as taking over a successful company is more difficult than taking over one that is failing. (Though Tim Cook certainly seems to have done well enough for Apple so far...)

You can see the full interview in the video below, unfortunatley the video is flash only.

Source: Busines Insider, Apple Insider, Image: Mercedes

According to the latest rumor, Apple's co-founder, Steve Jobs, worked one the next generation iPhone 5 design prior to his passing last October. Bloomberg claims 3 sources familiar with the matter say there will be a redesign, 1 claims the redesign will involve a bigger screen, and 1 claims the redesign involved Steve Jobs.

Apple, based in Cupertino, California, has placed orders from suppliers in Asia for screens that are bigger than the 3.5- inch size now on the smartphone, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans aren’t public. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs had worked closely on the redesigned phone before his death in October, one person said.

iMore previously heard that Apple had implemented a smaller micro-dock for the next generation iPhone but hadn't yet decided on a new screen size or aspect ratio. Yesterday the Wall Street Journal and Reuters claimed Apple had settled on a 4 inch screen size.

We went through a wide range of possible 4-inch iPhone variations, how Apple could implement each of them, what advantages each would bring, and what problems each would bring with them.

Given Steve Jobs' passion for Apple and involvement with the product roadmap, it's not hard to believe he would have kept himself involved in future projects even years out. Depending on the manufacturing and performance realities at the time of production, we could be seeing bits and pieces of Jobs ideas for a good long while still.

Whether or not it's ultimately true, it's reassuring to people who place stock in the "Steve Jobs was Apple" story. Regardless, Jobs created the best team in the business and with Scott Forstall running software, Bob Mansfield running hardware, and Jony Ive running design, it's more than likely we have nothing to worry about.

Given the spate of iPhone 5 rumors recently, however, one thing is clear -- Apple is starting to get things in place for the product ramp up. As we get closer to the expected fall release, more and more decisions will get made, parts will be ordered, factories will be set up, and units will begin to be produced.

Until then, all we can do is enjoy the pre-game show.

This is me putting my hands in my pockets, turning my head, and smiling. And it's because Sony Pictures has announced that Aaron Sorkin will be writing the script for Steve Jobs, adapted from Walter Isaacson's best-selling biography.

Aaron Sorkin is legitimately brilliant, and the writer behind TV's Sports Night, The West Wing, Studio 60, and the upcoming The Newsroom, as well as the movies Malice, A Few Good Men, The American President, and the recent The Social Network about Mark Zuckerberg and the founding of Facebook.

"Steve Jobs' story is unique: He was one of the most revolutionary and influential men not just of our time, but of all time," said Amy Pascal, co-chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment. "There is no writer working in Hollywood today who is more capable of capturing such an extraordinary life for the screen than Aaron Sorkin; in his hands, we're confident that the film will be everything that Jobs himself was: captivating, entertaining, and polarizing."

Sorkin's crackling dialog, smart comedic moments, and skill in building dramatic tension should serve the movie extremely well. Yes, this is basically the biopic equivalent of getting Joss Whedon on The Avengers.

It's hard to believe Hollywood is getting so much right for a change.

I haven't seen anything firm about a release date yet, and it will probably be a while still before we hear anything about casting. (This is a completely different project than the one Ashton Kutcher is attached to.)

Portraying Steve Jobs from Apple's inception to his final days, if that's what they choose to cover, will be a momentous undertaking for any actor. Having Sorkin on the script, however, should provide an excellent foundation.

If you want to indulge in a little fantasy casting, head on over to our iMore Movie Forum and let us know who you think should play Steve Jobs.

17 more American states have joined the class action lawsuit against Apple and publishers for e-book pricing collusion according to amended court documents. That makes it a total of 31 states involved, plus the case from the Department of Justice which is running in parallel. The new docs also revealed an e-mail from the late Steve Jobs describing how he saw the situation to the parent company of one of the conspiring publishers.

As I see it, [Conspiring Publisher] has the following choices:

1. Throw in with Apple and see if we can all make a go of this to create a real mainstream ebooks market at $12.99 and $14.99.

2. Keep going with Amazon at $9.99. You will make a bit more money in the short term, but in the medium term Amazon will tell you they will be paying you 70% of $9.99. They have shareholders too.

3. Hold back your books from Amazon. Without a way for customers to buy your ebooks, they will steal them. This will be the start of piracy and once started, there will be no stopping it. Trust me, I’ve seen this happen with my own eyes.

Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t see any other alternatives. Do you? Other evidence shows a back-and-forth between Apple's Eddy Cue and MacMillan CEO John Sargent where Apple shot down requests to lower the 30% standard cut. Still, there are signs of obvious collusion, particularly in one set of e-mails where the publishers in question referred to themselves as "The Club" when discussing staggered releases of print and digital editions.

iBooks isn't particularly huge right now, but Apple is clearly aggressive about it, and their approach to competing with Amazon will make or break their success in the world of e-books. In the worst case scenario, Apple and their publishing partners will have to pay some fines, and odds are their prices will have to go down, which, though potentially painful for the industry, is all gravy for end consumers.

Here are all of the ammended legal documents if you're interested in taking a look.

Source: PaidContent

Ashton Kutcher was caught walking around in full on Steve Jobs movie garb. Either that or Kelso just Punk'd TMZ in his turtleneck.

FINE!

Source: TMZ, Pacific Coast News, via TNW

Disney is testing iPads and looks set to use them for its next generation FastPass park system. The current FastPass system allows park guests to receive their passes and avoid lines for popular attractions. The new system is being tested now with selected guests being asked to pre-book attractions in the near future.

Workers going around earlier were using iPads for RFID testing. Coordinator has an iPad training CMs with RFID at Mansion.

After guest scans card, the Cast Member uses a waterproof iPad to see the information from the card (including FP time & other Q&A).

They then select next guest on the iPad if it lights up green or direct them to one of four kiosks if it lights up blue.

Seeing a Haunted Mansion cast member with an iPad is a bit... strange.

The information comes from an unofficial Disney twitter account that claims to to know the various Disney projects going on at the theme parks. It should come as no real surprise that Disney is looking to Apple and the iPad for its new systems. The two companies have always had a close relationship, Steve Jobs served on Disney's board and Disney's Bob Iger is currently a member of Apple's board too.

Source: @DisneyProjects via 9to5 Mac

According to yet another Steve Jobs biography, Apple's late CEO wanted to hide a golden ticket with the millionth iMac computer and fly the winner out to Cupertino for a tour of the facilities. Jobs said he would even wear the Willy Wonka outfit for the whole thing. This was revealed by Ken Segall, an ex-Apple employee who handled the Think Different campaign back in the day, and helped design the original iMac. His book, Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple's Success, just came out today; here's the excerpt detailing Jobs' golden ticket plans.

Steve's idea was to do a Willy Wonka with it. Just as Wonka did in the movie, Steve wanted to put a golden certificate representing the millionth iMac inside the box of one iMac, and publicize that fact. Whoever opened the lucky iMac box would be refunded the purchase price and be flown to Cupertino, where he or she (and, presumably, the accompanying family) would be taken on a tour of the Apple campus. Steve had already instructed his internal creative group to design a prototype golden certificate, which he shared with us. But the killer was that Steve wanted to go all out on this. He wanted to meet the lucky winner in full Willy Wonka garb. Yes, complete with top hat and tails.

Unfortunately, such a contest would require a purchase to enter, which is against California law, so it never happened. For all of the press heaped on Steve Jobs for being a relentless taskmaster, it's easy to forget sometimes that he actually had a pretty good sense of humor. If you've read Walter Isaacson's official biography, you will have heard about some of the shenanigans Steve Jobs got up to when he was younger, but it's good to see the playful streak lived on later in his career as well.

Still, it's kind of hard to imagine Steve Jobs in a top hat, isn't it?

You can order your copy of Insanely Great now from Amazon.

$16.95 - Buy now

Source: Insanely Great via MacRumors

Brent Schlender, a veteran journalist that has been covering Apple for the last 25 yeras, has recently published new snippets of interviews with Steve Jobs. One quote in particular from 1998 sharply counterpoints recent rumours of a full-blown Apple TV set.

I don't really believe that televisions and computers are going to merge. I've spent enough time in entertainment to know that storytelling is linear. It's not interactive. You go to your TV when you want to turn your brain off. You go to your computer when you want to turn your brain on. Those are not the same thing.

At the D5 conference in 2007, Jobs explained why the Apple TV wasn't anything more than a hobby, and again in 2010 that there wasn't a viable go-to market strategy that wouldn't produce "just another TiVO".

That's not to say Jobs didn't want to try to make a great TV set; his official biography cited Steve Jobs as saying that he had "finally cracked" a solution that would avoid all of the disconnected experience with cable providers and peripherals like DVD players. With Jobs gone, maybe Apple will be able to pursue its ambitions in television more freely. After all, the latest update to Apple TV sported a user interface that Jobs vetoed, so that shows some added amount of flexibility -- but that doesn't necessarily mean that it will be done right or be the right thing to do.

Then again, 2012 or 2013 isn't 2010, 2007, or 1998. As is often cited, Steve Jobs at one point said no one wanted to watch video on an iPod, or read books, and that Apple wasn't making a phone. Times and go-to-market conditions change.

Ikea recently launched their own integrated TV set solution (see the video, below), which I think looks great. Could Apple do something similar? What would your ideal Apple TV look like? How much overlap should there be between TVs and computers?

Source: Fast Company

The late Steve Jobs referenced the quote "good artists borrow; great artists steal" and since then it's been weaponized and used to both condemn Apple for a perceived lack of creativity, or to excuse or justify competitors feeding off Apple's creativity, or both.

There was Xerox PARC before the Mac, critics say. There were Palm Treos or LG Pradas before the iPhone. There were Tablet PCs before the iPad. Nobody copied Apple and if they did, Apple copied other people first! Great artists steal!

Except that's not what the quote means, and it's not at all what Apple does.

Great artists steal inspiration not implementation.

Therein lies a monumental, industry defining difference. Apple, namely Steve Jobs, saw a mouse and graphical UI, but he didn't make a copy of Xerox's STAR, he made the Mac. He didn't look at it and see what it was and then copy it -- he looked at it and saw what it could become and then created that.

The Mac was inspired by the same fundamental user interface concepts as the STAR but it implemented those concepts in a far more consumer-friendly way.

Same goes for the iPhone, which was certainly inspired by the ideas of the Palm Treo -- a connected, multifunctional device with a touch screen -- but once again implemented those ideas in a way far more accessible for far more people.

I wrote about this yesterday in the comments to the post about Larry Page dismissing Steve Jobs' anger towards Google and Android as "a show".

Apple’s singular talent is taking existing technologies, putting them together in ways that are elegant and sensible, well packaged and integrated, and making them mainstream.

Henry Ford didn’t invent the car, he invented a way to make the car for everyone. Apple didn’t invent the elements that went into the iPhone, but they absolutely invented it. They invented how it looked and felt, how it was manufactured and how it worked in relation to the carriers. As the sum total of its bits and atoms, they invented the iPhone.

And not just the iPhone.

Again, it's why Apple made the Apple II and not IBM, why Apple made the Mac and not Xerox, why Apple made the iPod and not Sony, why Apple made the iPhone and not Palm, why Apple made the MacBook Air and not HP, why Apple made the iPad and not Microsoft.

Any one of those would have been an achievement. All of those together, from one company, over the span of one lifetime, is something much more.

It's great art.

It's Google CEO Larry Page in the blue (and red and yellow and blue again and green and red again) corner, and Steve Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson in the correct share of white corner in a battle for the ages -- was Steve Jobs genuinely ticked over Google copying the iPhone for Android, or was that just a lot of sound and fury to rally the Apple faithful?

Page kicked it off with comments in a recent Bloomberg interview:

I think the Android differences were actually for show. [...] I think that served their interests. For a lot of companies, it’s useful for them to feel like they have an obvious competitor and to rally around that. I personally believe that it’s better to shoot higher. You don’t want to be looking at your competitors. You want to be looking at what’s possible and how to make the world better.

Using an "enemy" as a way to focus and motivate your troops is an age-old strategy, and it works. Of course, Android had to be looking at its competitors to shift from a BlackBerry and Windows Mobile Standard-style device to an iPhone-style device shortly after January 2007. But Isaacson cries foul on the spin as a whole. Speaking at the Royal Institution, Isaacson said it was a repeat of Microsoft and the Mac UI all over again. And it wasn't just the copying of ideas but the "promiscuous" licensing of those copied ideas to others.

[The Microsoft Windows situation was] almost copied verbatim by Android. And then they licence it around promiscuously. And then Android starts surpassing Apple in market share, and this totally infuriated him. It wasn't a matter of money. He said: 'You can't pay me off, I'm here to destroy you'.

Jobs previous quote read, in part:

I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this. [...] I don’t want your money. If you offer me $5 billion, I won’t want it. I’ve got plenty of money. I want you to stop using our ideas in Android, that’s all I want.

Steve Jobs passed away last year so can't set the record straight, if indeed the record on something like this even needs to be set straight. Tim Cook runs Apple now, so he and his board and his executive team now determine Apple's response to Google and Android. (Hint: He's often said he's in favor of competition, but prefers them to come at Apple with their own innovations.)

It is interesting to hear Page's account, however. If nothing else, it shows what the person currently running Google wants us to think, and maybe that means a better relationship could once again be possible?

Source: Bloomberg, Macworld

Steve Jobs had Apple halt iPhone production to make the display more prominent, halted iPad production to make the edges more scoop-able, and continuously, relentlessly, stopped Apple in mid-stride to cut what wasn't necessary and simplify what absolutely was. This singular insight is brought into sharp focus once again by biographer Walter Isaacson, writing for the Harvard Business Review on the subject of Steve Job's leadership.

Here are some examples:

The initial design [of the iPhone] had the glass screen set into an aluminum case. One Monday morning Jobs went over to see Ive. “I didn’t sleep last night,” he said, “because I realized that I just don’t love it.” Ive, to his dismay, instantly saw that Jobs was right. “I remember feeling absolutely embarrassed that he had to make the observation,” he says. The problem was that the iPhone should have been all about the display, but in its current design the case competed with the display instead of getting out of the way. The whole device felt too masculine, task-driven, efficient. “Guys, you’ve killed yourselves over this design for the last nine months, but we’re going to change it,” Jobs told Ive’s team. “We’re all going to have to work nights and weekends, and if you want, we can hand out some guns so you can kill us now.” Instead of balking, the team agreed. “It was one of my proudest moments at Apple,” Jobs recalled.

A similar thing happened as Jobs and Ive were finishing the iPad. At one point Jobs looked at the model and felt slightly dissatisfied. It didn’t seem casual and friendly enough to scoop up and whisk away. They needed to signal that you could grab it with one hand, on impulse. They decided that the bottom edge should be slightly rounded, so that a user would feel comfortable just snatching it up rather than lifting it carefully. That meant engineering had to design the necessary connection ports and buttons in a thin, simple lip that sloped away gently underneath. Jobs delayed the product until the change could be made.

And it extended into Steve Jobs' plans for the future of Apple as well:

Even when he was dying, Jobs set his sights on disrupting more industries. He had a vision for turning textbooks into artistic creations that anyone with a Mac could fashion and craft—something that Apple announced in January 2012. He also dreamed of producing magical tools for digital photography and ways to make television simple and personal. Those, no doubt, will come as well. And even though he will not be around to see them to fruition, his rules for success helped him build a company that not only will create these and other disruptive products, but will stand at the intersection of creativity and technology as long as Jobs’s DNA persists at its core.

This exemplifies why Jobs was rightly considered the best product guy of his generation, arguably in the history of computing and consumer electronics. No other company could produce what Apple produced over the last decade, and none really seem intent on trying. It's not just the software -- it's everything from the materials used to produce casings to the buttons left off of them.

Apple made the iPod and not Sony, Apple made the iPhone and not Palm, Apple made the MacBook Air and not HP, Apple made the iPad and not Microsoft.

Steve Jobs gave Apple a remarkable insight, and there's every indication they're running with it. Hopefully they have several canny team members asking the impertinent questions and wielding the knives of simplicity.

Hopefully as well the rest of the industry is catching on -- they need to compete based on innovation and accessibility, not just price and ancillary complexity. Apple needs it, and consumers deserve it.

They can start by reading the article below, it's chock full of the insanely great.

Source: Harvard Business Revue via 9to5Mac

Ashton Kutcher looks set to play the role of Apple's co-founder, the late Steve Jobs in an indie film which will be called simply “Jobs”. Kutcher who currently stars in "Two and a Half Men" is believed to have been cast in the main role according to a report by Variety.

The film will chronicle Steve Jobs from wayward hippie to co-founder of Apple, where he became one of the most revered creative entrepreneurs of our time.

This film is not to be confused with the Sony film which is based on the recent best-selling book Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson; this is an entirely independent venture.

Source: Variety; Image: Wikipedia

Dag Kittlaus, creator of Siri, recently gave a keynote at Technori Pitch and talked about how much Steve Jobs disliked the name Siri. Only after he couldn't think of a better alternative did he finally succumb to using the name.

Dag insisted the name was great and continued to explain the meaning to Jobs. For those that don't know, Siri actually translates in Norwegian to "beautiful woman who leads you to victory". Kittlaus had previously worked with a woman named Siri when he first learned of the name and the origin. He was particularly fond of the name and even contemplated naming his first daughter Siri. When his first child ended up being a boy, the name didn't quite work out the way he pictured. It did, however, find its way into a product we all know and love today.

Kittlaus had worked with Jobs for about a year before he became sick after Apple decided to purchase Siri.

"...he talked about why Apple was going to win, and we talked about how Siri was doing. And he was very excited about the fact that.. you know, he was very interested in this area in general but, you know, they're patient, they don't jump on anything until they feel they can go after something new and he felt that we cracked it. So that was his attraction.

I ended up very lucky, timing wise. I got to work with him for a year before he got real sick. And he's pretty incredible. The stories are true. All of the stories."

Up until this past October, Kittlaus worked with Apple on Siri in Cupertino. He recently has moved back to Chicago to be a part of other opportunities and be closer to his family. Hit the link below to read more.

Source: iOnApple

The new Apple TV user interface designs, which debuted alongside the new 1080p Apple TV, are actually 5 years old and were originally tossed out by the late Steve Jobs, who didn't like them. This according to Michael Margolis on Twitter, who claims to have "implemented much of the AppleTV 2.0 UI years ago".

The comment was made in response to Aral Balkan, who asked, "Wtf happened, Apple, did a rainbow throw up at one infinite loop while having sex with a designer from Samsung?" Margolis added, "The new home page UI makes me cry."

Thanks, though most of the product is the same. I also don't like the top-bar-navigation on the app store UI.

Fun fact - those new designs were tossed out 5 years ago because SJ didn't like them. Now there is nobody to say "no" to bad design.

Margolis closed out the exchange by saying, as far as he knew, "that whole team has left/been replaced".

Seth Weintraub from 9to5Mac checked into Margolis on LinkedIn, and found him listed as both former Senior Software Engineer at Apple, and Professional Hobbyist, AppleTV. He's currently listed as iPhone Software Connoisseur at Massive Health.

The new Apple TV user interface has been somewhat controversial, with some liking it and believing it hints at a future where apps can run on the Apple TV as they do on other iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad. Others feel the icons are inelegant and poorly organized.

However, citing the lack of Steve Jobs being there to say "no" to bad design is somewhat specious. Some of the user interface decisions made by Jobs were just as controversial, including pinstripes and brushed metal on OS X, the new iTunes icon, and the skeumorphic trend on iOS involving plush leather, green felt, and various shades of linen.

Update: It occurs to me that 5 years ago was iOS 1 (iPhone OS 1), which consisted of a Home screen interface with nothing but a collection of static, unorganized, unorganizable icons. The ability to move and organize apps on the Home screen wasn't added until iOS 1.1 in January of 2008 when Apple created Web Clips (web app icons on the Home screen). Jobs obviously okayed the iPhone UI, and later evolutions thereof. Since you can't directly interact with the Apple TV like you can the iPhone and iPad UI, however, it's not quite the same.

Personally, I'd prefer some hierarchical organization -- News, Sports, Videos, etc. instead of just all the icons (some rather less than appealing to look at) splattered all over the screen.

If you've tried out the new Apple TV software, what do you think of it? Designed fine, or design crime?

Source: @yipe, @aral, LinkedIn via 9to5Mac

Following its introduction last week, the idea that the new iPad was "unbeatable" began to get a lot of attention, primarily due to an article in Slate with that very title. Indeed, when seeing a product like the new iPad, it's easy to get swept away -- there's just so much technology wrapped in so beautiful a package for such an unbelievable price that it's almost impossible not to. I get that. But it's not true.

Nothing and no one is unbeatable. Not the iPad. Not Apple.

In an industry of titans, no one has ever seen the next big transition coming. IBM didn't. Microsoft didn't. Sony didn't. HP didn't. Yahoo didn't. Google won't. Facebook won't. And neither will Apple.

The only advantage Apple has is that they've been there before, prior to the second coming of Steve Jobs, when Michael Dell was suggesting they turn off the lights and return the money to the shareholders.

The Mac was beaten. Apple was beaten.

Because of that, I don't think Apple considers themselves or any of their products unbeatable. I think they actively fear the complacency that comes with that kind of thinking.

It's dangerous.

Apple literally wants to stay hungry and stay foolish in so far as they never settle for what they're doing now and relentlessly explore what they could be doing better in the future. The near future.

Apple is like Balboa after Clubber Lang clobbered him early on in the third Rocky movie. Microsoft took the PC championship from them. They'll never forget that beating and they're working their collective asses off to make sure the same doesn't happen in the rematch.

Like Steve Jobs said in his famous Stanford address, once you know you're going to die, you achieve an amazing clarity. Once you know you can be beaten, you likewise develop an amazing freedom.

They're naked. Not trapped into defending the revenue streams of the past at the expense of future success. Rather they're relentless, almost to a reckless degree, about embracing it.

They ditched the floppy drive in favor of USB and the internet. They obsoleted the iPod with the iPhone. They cut into Mac sales with the iPad.

They've done everything every one of their competitors is terrified to do. And they've done it because they not only know they're beatable, but because they're intent on proving it again and again, year in and year out -- by beating themselves.

Tim Cook said as much during the new iPad keynote, and Steve Jobs has said it before.

That's what makes Apple dangerous.

The knowledge that they're beatable.

In response to: Slate

CBS CEO Leslie Moonves mentioned in an interview recently that Steve Jobs had approached him about syndicating television content on Apple TV. Jobs pitched the partnership as a subscription service, but there aren't many details beyond that. Moonves shot down Jobs, citing concerns about disrupting the traditional CBS revenue stream. Specifically, Moonves said "You know more than me about 99 percent of things but I know more about the television business." As you might expect, Jobs vehemently disagreed with Moonves about the revenue situation. In the interview, Moonves reiterated that they full support digital distribution of content, having played a huge role in Hulu's earlier days, and being a Netflix partner.

While this headline might be getting Moonves some attention, he's hardly the only person ever to have said "no" to Steve Jobs. Verizon did as well, landing the iPhone exclusively on AT&T for 3 years. Given Jobs' track record, and his ability to see the future of consumer demand, it might not be something Moonves is smart to be shopping around. But hey, if Apple launches their rumored television set, and it takes off anything like the iPhone and iPad has, at least we'll be able to link back to this in a few years and see, right?

Meanwhile Apple TV is seeing a refresh with 1080p video quality, but for most TV, that's overkill. There's already a wealth of CBS content available on Apple TV through Netflix, but If Apple is still interested in this sort of a setup, a subscription-based premium Apple TV service may still be in the cards. In any case, this kind of thing has been rumoured for awhile, so I wouldn't be holding my breath to see a launch any time soon. Would you guys be interested in a $10/month Netflix competitor from Apple? What would they need to do differently to stand out?

Source: Hollywood Reporter

Apple co-founder, guiding mind behind the iPhone, iPad, iTunes, Apple Retail, Pixar, and literally a lifetime of other culture- and industry-changing innovations, Steve Jobs was born 57 years ago today. He passed away last October right after the introduction of the iPhone 4S and Siri, leaving Apple under the guidance of Tim Cook.

Under Cook, the iPhone 4S and iCloud has shipped, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion has been announced, and the iPad 3 launch is all but upon us.

But the man who shaped consumer electronics this generation, who relentlessly drove the mainstreaming and democratization of technology, who made form matter to function, and who smiled and wrung his hands on the keynote stage as he prepared to announce "one more thing..." is no longer here to enjoy it with us.

Apple enthusiasts wishing to remember and celebrate his life will be gathering at prominent Apple Stores and similar locations. He was just a man. But he dented a lot of universes.

Happy birthday, Steve. And thanks again.



• End of Act Two
• Steve Jobs: 1955 – 2011
• One more thing...
• iPad Live 77: Requiem
• Celebrating Steve Jobs event

Apple senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, Eddy Cue accepted the Recording Academy Special Merit Grammy for contributions to the music industry on behalf of his late boss, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. The Trustees Award, presented yesterday, was in recognition for Jobs' accomplishments including the iPod and iTunes music store.

On behalf of Steve's wife, Laurene, his children, and everyone at Apple, I'd like to thank you for honoring Steve with the Trustees Grammy Award. Steve was a visionary, a mentor, and a very close friend. I had the incredible honor of working with him for the last fifteen years.

Accepting this award means so much to me because music meant so much to him. He told us that music shaped his life...it made him who he was. Everyone that knows Steve knows the profound impact that artists like Bob Dylan and The Beatles had on him.

Steve was focused on bringing music to everyone in innovative ways. We talked about it every single day. When he introduced the iPod in 2001, people asked "Why is Apple making a music player?" His answer was simple: "We love music, and it's always good to do something you love."

His family and I know that this Grammy would have been very special to him, so I thank you for honoring him today.

The Recording Academy has also published a tribute to Steve Jobs by Yo-Yo Ma, a 16 time Grammy award winner and personal friend of Jobs.

Music was always been a passion of Jobs' and a theme in most Apple products and events. With each new release of an iPhone or iPod, Jobs aimed to make music more easily accessible and enjoyable than ever before. Visit the link below to watch a video of Eddy Cue accepting the award.

Source: MacRumors

Steve Jobs' FBI file has been released and is now available for public viewing on their web site. It contains information from a background investigation conducted in 1991 when Jobs was being considered for an appointment to the President's Export Council during the Bush I White House. It also includes information relating to a bomb threat against Jobs in 1985.

The link comes via Gawker who pulled a lot of quotes from it about Jobs' character and personal behavior. The issue of Steve Jobs' character has come up on numerous occasions including his autobiography by Walter Isaacson. To many Apple fans his tendency to be abrasive and aggressive probably isn't anything new.

Creating an empire like Apple and products like the iPhone and iPad isn't typically done by killing everyone with kindness and constantly deferring to the needs and opinions of others. He was an entrepreneur, not someone running for sainthood, and I'm sure most of us, if we ever became that popular or successful, would get our fair share of the same treatment.

Hit the source link below for the full file.

Source: Jobs FBI file via Gawker

Former Apple product manager, Bob Brochers, recently gave a lecture to students where he spoke about how the original iPhone was realized by a small team of engineers put together by the late Steve Jobs. MacNN went over some of the talking points:

"What's interesting is that the challenge Steve laid out for us when we created the iPhone wasn't to make a touch-screen device that would play apps and do all of this stuff," Borchers told students. "His [charge] was simple. He wanted to create the first phone that people would fall in love with. That's what he told us." [...] "Now if you're an engineer, like I am by training, you're like 'what the heck does that mean?'," he said. "But he was right. The idea was, he wanted to create something that was so instrumental and integrated in peoples' lives that you'd rather leave your wallet at home than your iPhone."

Brochers went on to talk about how Apple's idea of success with the iPhone was initially rooted in a small handful of tightly focused concepts, breaking the rules of the game while paying attention to detail and helping people "think differently" about the way they associate with their smartphones. It wasn't about wiz-bang capabilities of the device like GPS or ground-breaking apps from the App Store, but instead simplicity in design and overall usability and user-experience.

But the hardware and software combination wasn't the only thing they changed about the business. Brochers described how Jobs and his team wanted to setup a different relationship with their customers -- a direct relationship -- instead of allowing the carrier to control the rules.

"[We said] 'no, we don't want to do that,'" Borchers said. "We want to be able to sell the iPhone. We want to be able to talk directly to the customer. That was a big, big change for the industry.”

Another interesting aspect of the discussion was the oft-heard story about Apple making the switch from a plastic touchscreen to a glass display after Jobs confronted the team with his own iPhone screen, scratched by the keys in his pocket. They called up Corning and convinced them to jump back into their abandoned Gorilla Glass efforts shortly before the iPhone was announced -- a great pivot at the last minute. (Interestingly, while Gorilla Glass is a feature now touted by many rival manufacturers and devices, neither Apple nor Corning to this day will confirm its use on the iPhone.)

The discussion was recorded and uploaded to YouTube, however it has since been removed. Overall, it's a great look into how Apple brought the iPhone to the world and ended up changing the way we think about our smartphones.

Source: MacNN

Canadian musician Neil Young has claimed in an interview that Steve Jobs preferred listening to music played back on vinyl rather than digitally via an iPod. Speaking to Peter Kafka and Walt Mossberg at the D: Dive Into Media conference, he told them that he discussed the prospect of offering higher quality digital music downloads with Steve Jobs.

“Steve Jobs was a pioneer of digital music, and his legacy is tremendous,” Young said. “But when he went home, he listened to vinyl. And you’ve gotta believe that if he’d lived long enough, he would have eventually done what I’m trying to do.”

Source: Macworld, Image: All Things D

Apple is continuing to enculturate the legacy of Steve Jobs, this time by placing memorable quotes and iconic images of their late co-founder around their Cupertino campus. The images include everything from the original Mac to the lasted MacBook Air, from Jobs' earliest days to his final appearances.

Mark Gurman from 9to5Mac reports that they're meant to serve as guidance and motivation for the next generation of Apple employees.

I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else wonderful, not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what’s next.

Previously, Apple recruited prominent business school professors to compile and teach case studies on Apple, for Apple, and to Apple, to ensure future management would share the same vision -- the same stance at the cross-roads of technology and liberal arts -- that Apple was imparted under Steve Jobs. Termed Apple University, it was intended to keep the unique start-up-like mentality first and foremost at Apple, now as Tim Cook has taken over as CEO, and one day when he's succeeded as well.

Most companies don't endure, at least not at the heights of their influence, power, relevence, and growth. It will be interesting to see if Apple's conscious, focused efforts to productize themselves and institutionalize their co-founder's values lets them avoid the same pitfalls IBM, HP, Microsoft, and others have faced.

Check out more posters via the link below.

Source: 9to5Mac

He and I always enjoyed talking. He would throw some things out, you know, some stimulating things. We’d talk about the other companies that have come along. We talked about our families and how lucky we’d both been in terms of the women we married. It was great relaxed conversation.

Gates also commented on how Steve Jobs' death impacted him.

Well, it’s very strange to have somebody who’s so vibrant and made such a huge difference and been … kind of a constant presence, to have him die. It makes you feel like, ‘Wow, we’re getting old.’ I hope I still have quite a bit of time for the focus I have now, which is the philanthropic work. And there’s drugs we’re investing in now that won’t be out for 15 years — malaria eradication, I need a couple of decades here to fulfill that opportunity. But, you know, it reminds you that you gotta pick important stuff, because you only have a limited time.

Indeed.

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Source: ABC News

Steve Jobs, the late founder and CEO of Apple, was mentioned tonight by U.S. president Obama during the 2012 State of the Union address. As Laurene Powell Jobs watched on from the First Lady's box, Obama said:

we should support everyone who is willing to work, and every risk-taker and entrepreneur who aspires to become the next Steve Jobs

A beautiful tribute and a fitting one, no doubt. Though we bet any entrepreneur with that type of universe-denting ambitions have no desire to be the next anybody, even Jobs. They want to be bigger, better, and have even more of an impact. They want to be the first of their kind.

UPDATE: The republican response from Gov. Mitch Daniels batted the Steve Jobs references right back, including a frankly awkward play on the name "jobs".

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Virgin America has named one of its planes in memory of Steve Jobs. The plane has a well known Jobs quote emblazoned across it from his 2005 commencement address at Stanford University, “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish”.

On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Source: MacRumors

According to Adam Lashinsky, author of the upcoming book, Inside Apple, the late Steve Jobs arranged a meeting with Ren Ng, a Stanford graduate and the CEO of the incredible Lytro light-field camera company.

The company’s CEO, Ren Ng, a brilliant computer scientist with a PhD from Stanford, immediately called Jobs, who picked up the phone and quickly said, “if you’re free this afternoon maybe we would could get together.” Ng, who is thirty-two, hurried to Palo Alto, showed Jobs a demo of Lytro’s technology, discussed cameras and product design with him, and, at Jobs’s request, agreed to send him an email outlining three things he’d like Lytro to do with Apple.

Lytro, if you've not heard of them, uses radical new imaging technology that involves capturing the entire light field into one single file. Edits can then be made post-production, including refocusing the image or any portion of it.

Given the nature of their technology and how it works, it all seems like something Steve Jobs would have been interested in, especially when you consider the amount of attention Apple gave to how the iPhone 4S camera worked.

According to Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs had three things he wanted to reinvent - the television, textbooks and photography. We've bared witness to the beginning of one of those things at Apple's education event with the introduction of iBooks 2 and  iBooks Author for Mac OS X. And Apple Television has been rumored for a while now.

One could argue that Steve Jobs and Apple have already changed the photography world with each iteration of the iPhone, as the cameras got better with each new release. The the iPhone 4S has an 8 megapixel camera equipped with a fast f/2.4 lens, and is certainly capable of taking great shots and that photo taking ability has caused some folks to drop their point & shoot cameras and strictly use their iPhone for shots as needed.

Could we see a portion of Lytro's camera technology in the some iteration of the iPhone and possibly even the iPad? It's quite possible - but we'll have to hold on for that. One meeting does not a next-generation iPhone 5 camera make.

• Inside Apple - Amazon link

Source: 9to5Mac

5 years ago today, Steve Jobs took to the Macworld 2007 stage and introduced 3 new products -- a widescreen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone, and a breakthrough internet communicator. An iPod, a phone, an internet communicator. We got it. They weren't 3 seperate devices. They were one device.

They called it iPhone.

Now that iPhone 4S has come and launched, iPhone 5 (or whatever Apple ends up calling the next generation iPhone), concept designs are once again starting to pop up. This one comes from designer Antonio De Rosa, who created the above iPhone concept and has given it the title of iPhone SJ, as it is Steve Jobs inspired. He imagines it having an A6 processor, a 10 MP camera, and a polycarbonate body. I don't particularly feel that an A6 processor or a better camera are out of the question for the next iPhone.

I don't think polycarbonate would be a bad choice for the body as it's extremely lightweight. It would allow Apple to create an even larger device and subtract weight. I'm not sure I would want a larger screen as that has its disadvantages too. Overall, I think the design is great but I'm not sold on Apple making a larger screen that would inhibit one-handed use. You can visit ADR Studio's site for more images of his design.

Source: ADR Studio

It didn't take long, but according to The Telegraph, Apple has sicked their lawyers on In Icon, the company behind the life-like Steve Jobs action figure we reported on earlier this week.

But 'their efforts have reportedly met with' a legal challenge with Apple allegedly threatening to sue the toy maker unless they cease trading. The legal wrangle is over the likeness of the doll to the late Apple founder, the rights of which the company claims it owns.

This wouldn't be the first time Apple put a stop to unapproved production of related goods. Late last year, M.I.C Gadget in Hong Kong put out a similar molded figurine of Steve Jobs, which was subsequently halted at the behest of Apple.

If you were planning on getting one of these ultra-realistic action figures from In Icon, you better hurry quick before it's no longer available.

Source: The Telegraph

Forbes reports that a new Steve Jobs action figure from In Icon is so realistic, the photos actually make it look real. The action figure comes with the following details.

• one realistic ‘head sculpt;’
• two pairs of glasses;
• a ‘highly articulated body;’
• three pairs of hands;
• one tiny black turtleneck;
• one tiny pair of blue jeans;

You can purchase the action figure from In Icon's website, however, we're not exactly sure how long Apple's hordes of lawyers will let this one last -- go grab it while it's still up!

(Note: Inicon seems to be down due to the large amount of traffic they've seen)

Source: In Icon via Forbes

The iMore staff picks their favorite devices, features, stories, and new or majorly updated apps and accessories of 2011!

The iMore editors, writers, contributors, forum admins and moderators, and podcasters have come together to nominate and select the winners of the 2011 iMore Editors Choice Awards. They were all tough choices, and a lot of things we love simply didn't qualify for consideration -- weren't new or weren't majorly updated for 2011. But a lot of really, truly great stuff was. These, then, are our picks of the year.

• Want an alternate take? Try our 2011 iMore Readers Choice Awards!

iOS device of the year: iPad 2

Last year we had a really tough time picking the iOS device of the year -- Apple introduced a new product category with the original iPad, redesigned their signature handset with iPhone 4, refreshed the iPod touch, and unveiled an all new Apple TV 2.

This year they didn't introduce a new iPod touch or Apple TV, kept the same design for the iPhone, and even the iPad 2 wasn't the most radical of refreshes.

Of the updated devices, however, iPad 2 got a new casing design, both thinner and lighter, two new cameras (lame as they may be), and was first to get the new, dual-core, Apple A5 system-on-a-chip.

iPhone 4S admittedly got the A5 as well, a new, better antenna and a much better rear camera, but it just wasn't as much or enough to take the title.

While visions of Retina display tablets, 4-inch phones, and 1080p TVs dance in our heads for next year, this year we give the nod to the best that we got.

The iPad 2.

iOS feature of the year: Siri

Sure, it debuted as iPhone 4S-only, but so did multitasking, so did video recording, so do many of Apple's new iOS features. It's the flagship device for a reason. Not just a simple voice control system -- we're told Nokia invented those in 1812 or somesuch -- it's an honest-to-Asimov digital personal assistant with a personality right out of Pixar. It's to previous voice control systems what multitouch was to previous resistive touch screens. It's Apple's next great mainstream computing interface. It not only remembers context but can understand relationships. It can remind you to call your mom or wear your jacket, it can find you a restaurant or find your friend. And it puts up with all your lame query jokes.

iMessage bypasses the exorbitant carrier text charges and brings iOS users, all over the world, one step closer to BBM-like instant messaging. Notification Center finally makes alerts almost as good as Android, if not as elegant as webOS. PC-free cuts the cord to iTunes and takes us to the iCloud, where all our data gets stored and backed up. All of those, and more, are great additions to an already great OS.

But Siri is transformative.

Story of the year: Steve Jobs

Heart breaking. Inspiring. Tragic. Triumphant. The biggest story of the year wasn't the untimely passing of Apple's co-founder, it was the full realization of his life, his vision, and his legacy.

In March he took the stage, in a way only he could ever take it, to introduce the iPad 2. He reportedly considered the tablet the most important innovation of his career -- a career that included the mainstreaming of the command-line interface with the Apple II, the graphical user interface with the Mac, the multitouch interface with the iPhone, and the revolutionizing of digital music with iTunes and the iPod, retail with the Apple Stores, the consumer electronics business with Apple itself, and even animated feature films with Pixar.

Relentlessly democratizing technology his entire life, his final Keynote appearance in June was to introduce iCloud, the server side of the mobile equation. His vision of the future was deeply personal, deeply connected, and deeply integrated. And his will made it manifest, not only for Apple and of Apple, but as influence for the culture well beyond.

He resigned as CEO and then passed away right after the introduction of the iPhone 4S, and just before the publication of the biography he himself set in motion. While Apple will go on, perhaps even reaching greater heights than ever before, we will never see his like again.

Thank you Steve.

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Epic fail of the year: Patent lawsuits

It seems as though there was an embarrassment of embarrassments to choose from this year. Yet even amid such a massive mountain of fail, one managed to rise above all the rest.

Intellectual property rights exist for a reason -- they encourage investment in innovation by ostensibly preventing others from simply copying the ideas of the innovators. Yet they've become a weapon used not to create competition but to stifle it by those who've often simply bought and paid for pieces of paper.

Apple didn't release new iPod touch and Apple TV hardware this year. Granted neither has much competition but Apple's mantra has always been to compete with themselves. Likewise the iPhone 4S didn't get a design update even as competing devices have seriously upped the handset game.

Privacy also took a swift, hard roshambo in the rights this year as everything from Apple's poorly coded location recording system to Google, Facebook, and Twitter being forced into decade, or double decade privacy oversight, to lack of disclosure surrounding Carrier IQ making headlines. On the flip side, the media earned more than their usual share of fail points for once again never missing a chance to linkbait and headline grab at Apple's expense.

But ultimately, from Apple and Android makers suing each other to Lodsys suing independent developers, one things brought fail to an all time abysmal low this year.

Patents, the patent wars, and the patent trolls

Productivity app of the year: Noteshelf 4.0

When the iPad first launched it seemed to take a while for everyone, including Apple, to figure out exactly what it was and where best it fit. Now, a year later, it's fitting in every where from the couch to the board room, the school to the planning session.

Screens 1.5 showed us our iPhones and iPads could be powerful, elegant windows into our PCs and servers. Agenda made the calendar ridiculously clean and elegant, and interfaced with Due to get more done, better and faster than ever. Instapaper got a full on facelift, and Apple brought iWork to the iPhone.

What caught our attention, though, from the corporate heads behind Mobile Nations to our our own editors and writers, was an app that not only made the iPad useful, but better than anything else. From taking notes in class to jotting down ideas while brain-storming big business, it took a lot of our iPads from nice-to-have to must-have.

Noteshelf

Arts & Entertainment app of the year: GarageBand

Just like last year, a previously desktop-only app was re-imagined for iPad and forced us to once again re-evaluate just how good tablet software could be. But Apple wasn't the only one wowing us this year.

Instagram mixed fun filters with simple social sharing to spectacular effect. Snapseed and Photogene2 made photo editing first class citizens on iOS. Apple brought iMovie to the big iPad screen.

It was what Apple did with music, however, that really blew us away this year. Introduced alongside the iPad 2, it's interface immediately is recognizable to anyone who has ever used iLife for Mac yet immediately accessible to anyone who has ever put finger to multitouch display. With built in smart instruments for novices and the ability to interface with real instruments for pros, and multitrack recording an editing, it's a studio on your lap or in your pocket. Very few people are making content creation software this robust for mobile, and very few, if any, other platforms can boast anything like this in their libraries.

GarageBand was music to our ears.

Social app of the year: Tweetbot

Twitter and the iPhone feel like they came into their own together, a blend of mobile device and social network as good as the richest peanut butter and darkest chocolate.

Path 2.0 made the smaller-scale social network drop-dead gorgeous, but does a world covered with the wreckage of Friendster and Wave and Buzz and Jaiku really need another social network? And if it does, isn't Google already cramming Google+ down as many throats as it possibly can? Facebook finally decided that the iPad was mobile enough to deserve it's own app and rolled out Facebook Messenger in case the normal app just wasn't fast enough to get your IM on. LinkedIn got a re-design, finally growing up into its own app, while Twitter for iPhone go a re-design to make it... um... better for Twitter to push #hashtags to new users intent on keeping up with celebrities?

But you don't always need to start a new network, or radically change a user experience that works. Sometimes you just need to make a damn good client, with solid features and finely honed panache, that respects long-established usage patterns but does so with character and charm.

Sometimes you just need to make something like TweetBot.

Hardcore game of the year: Real Racing 2

There's a difference between a great game and a game that not only stays great but gets even better. There were a lot of great hardcore games on iPhone and iPad in 2011. Modern Combat 3 was the best first-person shooter we've ever seen on iOS, and Dead Space took spooky, atmospheric, interstellar survival shooters to a whole new level. And Infinity Blade II... the new Unreal Engine 3 game looks so good you won't believe it's on mobile.

But the folks at Firemint just never stayed still long enough for anyone else to catch up. Every bit as fast as the cars on their virtual tracks, the moment Apple added a new feature to iOS, Firemint added it to their game. Whether it was better graphics for more powerful chips, multiplayer for more robust networking, and full on AirPlay Party Play for an almost hybrid console experience, Firemint was on it in a flash.

That's why Real Racing II won this year's grand prix.

Casual game of the year: Tiny Wings

If a game is incredibly simple and more than a little repetitive, it has to be really well executed to turn our well. It has to be phenomenally well executed to become our favorite of the year.

Tiny Tower was brilliantly realized and Cut the Rope: Experiments breathed new life into an already great game. DragonVale brought the creatures of myth to farm-style games of the present, Minecraft brought the classic constructor to iOS, and SPY Mouse brought the Firemint magic to puzzlers.

But it was a bird that not only wasn't angry but couldn't even quite fly, that was perpetually chased the setting sun, that was as exquisitely well rendered as it was well suited for the iPhone.

Because it proved once again that sometimes less really is more -- Tiny Wings

Jailbreak app of the year: IntelliscreenX

YouTube Link

While I've always been a huge fan of LockInfo by David Ashman I have to admit that the guys over at Intelliborn really stepped up to the plate with their new version of IntelliScreen for iOS 5.

When Apple "Sherlocks" your app -- basically incorporates it into the OS and built-in feature set -- you can either pack up and go home, or you can figure out that Apple's only providing the median functionality and double-down on doing it better for the power users.

LockInfo did just that, making a great app even better. SBSettings and BiteSMS kept doing what they've always done -- filled gaps Apple hasn't -- while integrating and improving at the same time. Dreamboard created an alternative to Winterboard, and iUsers provided for multiple logins on iPad. ATV Flash brought the same power to the iOS Apple TV that it did to the original, Mac OS version.

Not to be outdone by Apple's foray into Notification Center, however, Intelliborn rolled out an update that not only fully integrated with iOS 5, but provided so many features it became a veritable one stop functionality center.

IntelliscreenX

iPhone case of the year: Lifeproof

Apple didn't introduce a new iPhone design this year, which meant a lot of case-makers didn't have to worry about coming up with all new cases either. But what about all better cases?

Both DracoDesign and Element took their existing aluminum bumpers and added incredible new colors and finishes. Case-Mate did similar with their Barely There. BodyGuardz and DODOcase introduced great new sticker skins, one carbon fiber, the other rich leather. Pad and Quill brought iPad-style to a Little Black Book and mophie and Apple both made sure their already excellent battery case and bumper case fit not only the CDMA iPhone 4, but the iPhone 4S as well. And Otterbox introduced the Reflex case to their already industry-leading line.

There was something new this year as well, something that could protect against the weather -- rain, snow, ice -- but not be as big nor as bulky as past solutions.

Lifeproof

iPad case of the year: Smart Cover

iPad 2 was a design change this year -- thinner and lighter and with cameras on both sides. Again, we got a lot of great variants of already great cases, but we got some truly new cases as well.

ZAGGfolio bound a keyboard into their case, for those who still couldn't truly give up tactile typing for multitouch, and Case-Mate added a kickstand to their Pop Case. DODOcase rejuvenated their hand-made case and added new variants and new artist lines, while Pad and Quill created the Contega, adding new age features to old world craftsmanship.

Apple, however, had an unfair advantage. They built magnets into the iPad 2, and they were ready to take advantage of them on launch day. It's not that it kept the thinner, lighter iPad 2 as thin and as light as possible. It's not that it could be folded to keep the iPad 2 up and easy to type with or watch on. It's not even that it can turn on or off the iPad 2 display. It's all of that, together, in several elegant shades (that no longer include orange).

Smart Covers

Accessory of the year: Kickstarter

Beyond cases, there were a lot of great accessories this for iPhone and iPad both. There were amazing interfaces to let you plug instruments into GarageBand. There were fantastic bands to make iPod nano not only a working watch, but a gorgeous one. And there were all manner of chargers, docks, and camera peripherals and so much more.

And this year a lot of them came not from the traditional places, the large, established accessory makers, but from the same place -- a platform that let independent innovators find the finances they need to produce their innovations. It worked so well this year that many of the aforementioned docks and watch-bands and cases and camera peripherals came straight from its pages.

Kickstarter

Take this one with a 9.7-inch grain of salt, but Focus Taiwan is reporting that current Asian supply chains suggest that Apple might be trying to get the iPad 3 out on February 24th, Steve Jobs's birthday.

After the iPhone 4S successfully took the tech market by storm, the iPad3 is widely expected to be Apple’s first hit product to be released next year. Industry sources said the first shipment of the iPad3 could exceed 4 million units. Because it is a new gadget, it is taking time for makers in the supply chain to raise their yield rates. The sources said all OEM and ODM makers have exercised great caution in ensuring the smooth operations of their production lines.

A late February launch would likely mean an early February event to show off the new hardware (and new 5.1 or 5.2 version of iOS to go with it?). If you aren't as skeptical as we are on this one, you probably should be. Supply chain rumors are often more miss than hit, and you'll probably have just as much luck pegging the iPad 3 release date by flipping a coin.

Source: Focus Taiwan via 9to5Mac

The Recording Academy has announced they'll be honoring Steve Jobs with a Special Merit Grammy Award for revolutionizing the music industry based on the massive success of Apple's iTunes Music Store

As former CEO and co-founder of Apple, Steve Jobs helped create products and technology that transformed the way we consume music, TV, movies, and books. A creative visionary, Jobs' innovations such as the iPod and its counterpart, the online iTunes store, revolutionized the industry and how music was distributed and purchased. In 2002 Apple Computer Inc. was a recipient of a Technical GRAMMY Award for contributions of outstanding technical significance to the recording field. The company continues to lead the way with new technology and in-demand products such as the iPhone and iPad.

The Academy will be holding a special awards ceremony honoring other visionaries with Lifetime Achievement Awards as well as Technical Grammy Awards on Saturday, February 11th, including a special Trustee Award honoring Steve Jobs for his contributions to the music industry at the official Grammy event the following day.

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Source: Recording Academy via MacRumors

Rumors of an Apple Television just won't quit, and this new one from The Wall Street Journal pegs Apple ramping up for a release in the not-so-distant future with features like Siri voice-control, built-in AirPlay streaming and more.

Apple executives have discussed their vision for the future of TV with media executives at several large companies, according to people familiar with the matter. [...] In the recent meetings with media companies, the Apple executives, including Senior Vice President Eddy Cue, have outlined new ways Apple's technology could recognize users across phones, tablets and TVs, people familiar with the talks said. In at least one meeting, Apple described future television technology that would respond to users' voices and movements

Details remain extremely vague, of course, with specifics being left off the table to help keep the essence of the future product closely guarded.

Before Steve Jobs passed away in October, he told biography Walter Isaacson that he'd "finally cracked the TV". From user interface and experience to ditching the mountain of controls many of us now deal with, tons of speculation has followed. Some suggest an Apple Television will bring about new ways of communicating across multiple devices like the iPhone or iPad, where a users' content can be switched from the television and onto their mobile device for consumption on-the-go. Imagine watching a movie in your living room and deciding you want to take a quick run, but having limited time. With something like an Apple Television using new technology developed internally at Cupertino, you could watch the rest of your movie on-the-go without any hassle; with everything working seamlessly and with very little setup involved.

With Siri voice control, the possibilites of what a future product like this could do seem almost endless.

Source: WSJ

Fortune is reporting that Walter Isaacson, author of the official biography of Steve Jobs, may be planning an expansion of 630-page book in the future.

At an event in San Francisco hosted by the Commonwealth Club of California, Isaacson shared a number of gems about the two years he spent with Jobs writing the book and talked about the possibility of expanding the title in the future. Fortune senior editor at large Adam Lashinsky moderated the talk.

Being such an iconic figure, Isaacson believes the additions will be needed as many feel Steve Jobs' story to be such a historic mark on humanity, and the book in its current version doesn't give enough credit to the plethora of innovation he's brought to the technology space.

Steve Jobs went on to become the number one selling book on Amazon for 2011 after receiving mild reviews, which may be one of the reasons he's planning an annotated version of the biography. Another possibility is writing an addendum to get into the period of Steve's life shortly before his tragic passing.

Source: Fortune

Zeitgeist has published its annual list of top searches for 2011 and they include Steve Jobs, the iPad 2 and, interestingly, the iPhone 5 among the top ten.

Rumors of the iPhone 5 were running at full-force before Apple officially announced the iPhone 4S back in October. Apple likes to keep a tight lid on production and future product releases, which would be one of the reasons the iPhone 5 was among the top searches of 2011 as nobody really knew exactly what they'd be releasing right up until the announcement.

Here's the full top 10 list:

1. Rebecca Black
2. Google+
3. Ryan Dunn
4. Casey Anthony
5. Battlefield 3
6. iPhone 5
7. Adele
8. 東京 電力 (TEPCO)
9. Steve Jobs
10. iPad 2

Source: Zeitgeist

Forbes has published an interesting account involving the famous 1997 Think Different ad campaign, "Here's To The Crazy Ones", from Rob Siltanen, one of the advertising executives who helped put it all together. According to Stiltanen, Jobs was originally opposed to the TV spot.

CEO of TBWA/Chiat/Day Advertising, Lee Clow and I flew to Cupertino to play the spot in person to Jobs. Only the three of us were in the room. We played the spot once, and when it finished, Jobs said, “It sucks! I hate it! It’s advertising agency s--t! I thought you were going to write something like ‘Dead Poets Society!’ This is crap!”

At the end of the day, Steve Jobs ran with the campaign after Lee brought in Ken Segall -- someone whom Jobs had previously worked with -- to make a few minor adjustments to the spot.

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Source: Forbes

As reported by iPhoneincanada, Apple has submitted revised plans for the "mothership" campus they plan on building in Cupertino. The new renderings outline the internal layout and surroundings of the structure, and... They're absolutely gorgeous.

Apple originally sent Steve Jobs to the Cupertino City Council back in June to pitch the idea of building a new space for Apple employees since outgrowing their Palo Alto headquarters. They picked up the lot from HP back in 2010. The new plans detail the inner workings describing a restaurant and dining area, entrances and parking layout and more.

Check out some of the renderings below and let us know what you think in the comments!

Source: iPhoneincanada

The official biography of Steve Jobs authored by Walter Isaacson has made its way to number one among books sales from Amazon for the entirety of 2011, despite being released late in the year.

Originally slated for release in 2012, the date was moved up to October 24th after Jobs passed away and quickly rose among the ranks. By November it was already the #2 seller for Amazon before taking the top spot in December.

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Source: MacRumors via Amazon

Official Steve Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson has given an interview to the New York Times where he reveals what Steve Jobs was going to tackle next at Apple, including television, textbooks, and photography.

He had three things that he wanted to reinvent: the television, textbooks and photography. He really wanted to take these on. I didn’t go into details about these products in the book because it was implicitly Apple’s creations and it’s not fair to the company to reveal these details. But, he did talk about the television. He told me he’d “licked it” and once said, “There’s no reason you should have all these complicated remote controls.”

While an Apple television set has been rumored for a while now, and the iPad certainly seems part of a textbook plan, photography is interesting to see on the list. What about photography now is broken and in need of a Steve Jobs-style fix?

Source: NYT

Artist Aaron Kizer has made a painting as a tribute to Steve Jobs. What is so special about that? Well he did it live at the 11^th Hour Live Music and Arts Show in Kentucky and it was all captured on video in real time.

It starts off as a few white brush strokes on a black wall but soon starts to take shape. In just over six minutes, the painting is finished and it is all done to music too. I am sure you will agree, the end result is stunning.

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Source: TUAW

Nancy Gohring over at IDG/Macworld quotes John Stanton, Chairman of Trilogy Partnerships, as saying that, prior to launching the iPhone in 2007, he spent a couple of years with Steve Jobs trying to figure out how to do it without the likes of AT&T or Verizon.

He wanted to replace carriers. He and I spent a lot of time talking about whether synthetically you could create a carrier using Wi-Fi spectrum. That was part of his vision.

Jobs gave up on the idea and ultimately signed with Cingular which became AT&T, but Apple did manage to disintermediate the carriers to a large degree with the iPhone, and take back considerable control of the customer relationship with everything from software updates to apps to device design and release.

Stanton thinks carriers should be concerned about the "dramatic shift in power" that occurred. They should. They should emulate it with other platforms because it leads an equally dramatic shift in customer experience and satisfaction levels.

Just imagine if they'd been able to nail the carrier part too?

Source: Macworld

...And were suddenly silenced.

Have an idea for the next *iDoodle? Send it in to news@tipb.com!*

Former Apple board member and current Google Executive Chairman, Eric Schmidt, has denied that Android is a "stolen product", charges levied by the late Steve Jobs in his biography.

"I've decided not to comment on what's been written on a book after his death. Steve is a fantastic human being and someone who I miss very dearly. As a general comment, I think most people would agree that Google is a great innovator and I would also point out that the Android effort started before the iPhone effort," Schmidt said.

Apple announced the original iPhone in January 2007, saying it had taken 2.5 years of work. That places iPhone development (or iPad/iPhone development as it started off as Safari Pad) somewhere around July 2004. Schmidt joined Apple's board in late August, 2006.

Android was founded in 2003 by Andy Rubin, formerly of Danger (who made Sidekick, which was subsequently bought by Microsoft, and abandoned as the Kin) Google purchased Android in 2005 and showed it off for the first time in November, 2007.

The huge however in all this -- and something everyone but Eric Schmidt and Google seems to remember, and point out whenever they fail to remember it -- Android was originally designed to look like and compete with BlackBerry and Windows Mobile Standard. It was a front-facing QWERTY device with none of the full screen, multitouch, app-centric trappings... until iPhone came around.

Just like Apple and iPhone built on what came before with Palm and Treo, Google and Android built on what Apple brought to market. Google was smart enough to buy Android in 2005 and skate to where that mobile puck was absolutely going to be by 2010.

Whether Schmidt -- who reportedly recused himself from Apple board discussions about the iPhone and was deliberately kept in the dark about the iPad -- engaged in questionable ethics to get that positioning, that fast, and whether or not Google and their ODM partners violated any Apple intellectual property to implement it is a question for the courts and the bank accounts to decide.

Jobs was obvious livid at his perceived betrayal by Google, no doubt informed by his relationship with Microsoft over GUI interfaces on computers in the 1990s, and his desire to go "thermonuclear" highlights those feelings. While Schmidt and Google aren't (yet) involved in direct litigation with Apple, their ODM partners are, so he's presenting the facts as best suits their, and perhaps one days his, case. Apple is doing likewise.

But it remains that, absent iPhone, all our Droid and Galaxy and Nexus loving friends would be typing -- not tapping -- their their little thumbs off on tiny tictac keyboards to this day. Much like, without Google, all us iOS users would be searching Alta Vista and complaining about it over Yahoo! mail...

Source: Reuters

Bloomberg has offered some details on the advice Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg sought from Steve Jobs on how best to build the social network.

“I had a lot of questions for him,” Zuckerberg said in an interview with Charlie Rose that’s due to air today. The topics included, “how to build a team around you that’s focused on building as high quality and good things as you are.” [...] Jobs and Zuckerberg also talked about “the aesthetics and kind of mission orientation of companies,”

Apple is well known for focusing on tight product lines in order to create a clear path for consumers. Facebook has been narrowing their focus on products and design in similar ways with features like Chat and the new Timeline. Still, it's interesting that Jobs offered advice and Zuckerberg sought it after the obvious differences the two companies have had in recent year.

Source: Bloomberg

The once lost footage of Steve Jobs' 70 minute Triumph of the Nerds interview have been found in London, restored and enhanced, and is soon to be making its way to the big screen.

After Jobs died, Sen went looking for the interview because he thought it would be interesting to watch. He dropped Cringely a line telling him of his find and suggested that perhaps Cringely could put it on his technology blog I Cringely as a "gift to the world."

"He didn't see any commercial value in it," Cringely said. "I have three kids I have to put through college, so I thought maybe we could sell it."

Cringely sent Landmark Theatres co-owner Mark Cuban an email late one night to see whether there would be any interest in screening it on Landmark screens. Less than five minutes later, Cuban fired back that he was game.

The film will be titled Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview and will debut on November 16. This Paul Sen film has not yet been rated, but it is hyped as "best TV interview Steve Jobs ever gave", so don't let the opportunity to check it out pass you by.

Source: MovieCityNews, LA Times Blog

Computerworld has posted a 75 minute interview with Steve Jobs, shot in 1995 before he returned to Apple.

Jobs talked about everything from his childhood in California -- the area that later came to be known as Silicon Valley "was really paradise" -- to his early days at Apple, the iconic 1984 Mac TV ad, his plans for NeXT and Pixar, and his fears for Apple's future.

If you've read, or are still reading, the Steve Jobs biography, this is your chance to hear a lot of the early material from Jobs himself.

Watch: Computerworld

The New York Times has published Mona Simpson's eulogy for her brother, Steve Jobs.

None of us knows for certain how long we’ll be here. On Steve’s better days, even in the last year, he embarked upon projects and elicited promises from his friends at Apple to finish them. Some boat builders in the Netherlands have a gorgeous stainless steel hull ready to be covered with the finishing wood. His three daughters remain unmarried, his two youngest still girls, and he’d wanted to walk them down the aisle as he’d walked me the day of my wedding.

We all — in the end — die in medias res. In the middle of a story. Of many stories.

Heart rending and hopeful, all of it.

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Source: New York Times

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Rene, Georgia, and Seth talk using iPhones at work, what apps make the home screen, the Siri ad, iCloud and battery life issues, camera improvements, celebrating Steve Jobs, and Hal 9000. This is iPhone Live!

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Aaron Sorkin, responsible for everything from The West Wing TV series to The Social Network, is rumored to be somehow, someway, in consideration or talks -- basically being courted by Sony -- to write the movie version of the just-released Steve Jobs biography.

Sorkin is one of the smartest screen writers in recent times, with a pitch-perfect ear for dramatic dialog. He made the relatively boring subject of Facebook into a highly engaging movie (as opposed to terrible writing, which made a lot of fantastic looking movies painful to endure) and could likely inject similar sizzle in the Steve Jobs movie.

Let's hope they make this deal and get it done. Then all they have to do is cast Steve Jobs. What do you think, TiPb nation, Noah Wyle again?

Source: LA Times

Now that we have the iPhone and iPad, the next great unicorn to chase seems to be an Apple television. Not the Apple TV set top box, mind you, but a full on elegant glass and aluminium object de panel art from Jony Ive and co. Something to hang on our wall and banish cables and crummy cable boxes from our living rooms once and for all.

When last we got analyst-fueled Apple television rumors, it turned out to be the 27-inch iMac. This time, however, we have a nebulous passage from the just-released Steve Jobs biography to properly set the chase in motion:

“He very much wanted to do for television sets what he had done for computers, music players, and phones: make them simple and elegant. I’d like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use,’ he told me. ‘It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud.’ No longer would users have to fiddle with complex remotes for DVD players and cable channels. ‘It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it."

Interface is only one of the things Apple will have to crack, however. Content is called king for a reason. A gorgeously designed, cunningly coded TV set only goes so far if you can't get your sports, your specialty channels and special events, and everything else cable and satellite currently has an locked up in their oligopoly.

Bloomberg, however, has added another face to the chase:

Apple Inc. (AAPL) is turning to the software engineer who built iTunes to help lead its development of a television set, according to three people with knowledge of the project. Jeff Robbin, who helped create the iPod in addition to the iTunes media store, is now guiding Apple’s internal development of the new TV effort, said the people, who declined to be identified because his role isn’t public.

Now don't get me wrong -- from 2007 to 2010 I went from a Treo 650 to an iPhone 4S yet my TV has pretty much the same crappy Scientific Atlanta PVR. If any dinosaur of an industry needs to get hit by the Apple meteorite and turned into the fossil fuel of the future, it's television. The idea of an Apple engineered and programmed television is enticing -- though my wallet threatens to punch me in the nose at the mere thought of lining up every year for that multi-thousand dollar product launch. It's just trickier to see what an Apple television would be to a current Sony or Samsung set, as opposed to what an iPhone was to Treo or iPad to Tablet PC. It's tricky to see what it would do that an Apple TV box couldn't, aside from being neater and tidier.

Of course Apple probably has all sorts of products in the lab. Their success, however, has come from not shipping something until they knew how to go to market with it. The Apple TV is called a hobby for a reason, and at $100 it can easily afford to be. iPhone took Apple years to bring to market, after all. iPad years more. Conceivably Apple could pull the trigger on a television as soon as 2012, but until Tim Cook and co. show it off on stage, just like chasing unicorns, it's just flights of fun and fancy.

Source: Bloomberg

"More powerful than you could possibly imagine..."

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Georgia, Seth, and Rene are joined by Jim Dalrymple of The Loop to talk Steve Jobs biography, sneak in some iPhone 4S, and dig through iOS 5, battery life, PlayBook 2.0, Ice Cream Sammich tablets, and more. This is iPad Live!

Steve Jobs

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iPhone 4S

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Walter Isaacson's authorized biography of Steve Jobs, is now available from both Amazon's Kindle Store and Apple's own iBookstore. Isaacson, who appeared earlier today on CBS' 60 Minutes, had unprecedented access to Jobs, his family, friends, colleagues, and rivals, and the book strives to show Jobs not only as one of the most innovative and influential people of his time, but also as a human, a family man, and more.

If you pre-ordered it, download and enjoy. If you haven't yet, here are the links.

• iBooks link
• Amazon link

If you want to read along with TiPb, we invite you to join us in our Forum Book Club...

Apple has made their special, internal celebration of Steve Jobs' life video available on their website. It included talks from Apple CEO Tim Cook, SVP of Design Jony Ive, board members Al Gore and Bill Campbell, and performances from Norah Jones and Cold Play.

Of course you can still submit your thoughts on Steve's passing to Apple, which are now also appearing on the Apple site.

You can go and watch the video at the Apple website, via the link below.

Source: Apple

60 minutes has just finished airing their interview with authorized Steve Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson, and has already placed the transcript and both segments as well as the extra Overtime video online.

Check them out after the break (requires Flash) or via the 60 Minutes iPad app [App Store link]

Source: 60 Minutes

Happy 10th birthday, iPod!

It's safe to say that without Steve Jobs, TiPb wouldn't be here, and many others may not be enjoying the careers or hobbies they enjoy today, at least not in the same way. So, in honor of the upcoming release of the authorized biography of Steve Jobs, TiPb is going to give away five (5) copies, on us.

All you have to do to enter is leave a comment below sharing your favorite story about Steve Jobs -- your favorite quote, your favorite keynote moment, your greatest inspiration, your fondest memory.

Winners will be picked and announced, and gifts sent out for the US iBookstore edition, on Monday, October 24.

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According to the latest excerpt from Walter Isaacson's authorized biography of Steve Jobs, HTC's introduction of what Apple considered iPhone-like innovations made Jobs "livid" and were equated with "grand theft".

"I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong," Jobs said. "I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this."

Jobs reportedly told then Google CEO and former Apple board member, Eric Schmidt:

"I don't want your money. If you offer me $5 billion, I won't want it. I've got plenty of money. I want you to stop using our ideas in Android, that's all I want."

The issue is still unresolved and Apple has filed high profile patent infringement suits against a variety of Android ODM's, including HTC, Motorola, and Samsung.

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson is available for pre-order now, and it wouldn't surprise me if we got more fiery - and marketable -- excerpts as the release draws near.

• iBooks link
• Amazon link

Source: AP

Walter Isaacson, the author of the upcoming authorized biography of Steve Jobs, will be sitting down with 60 Minutes on Sunday for an interview going over the new book. In a preview, he reveals:

"I've asked [Jobs why he didn't get an operation then] and he said, 'I didn't want my body to be opened...I didn't want to be violated in that way,'" Isaacson recalls. So he waited nine months, while his wife and others urged him to do it, before getting the operation, reveals Isaacson. Asked by [60 Minutes correspondent Steve] Kroft how such an intelligent man could make such a seemingly stupid decision, Isaacson replies, "I think that he kind of felt that if you ignore something, if you don't want something to exist, you can have magical thinking...we talked about this a lot," he tells Kroft. "He wanted to talk about it, how he regretted it....I think he felt he should have been operated on sooner."

The Steve Jobs is scheduled to go on sale Monday, October 24th after the date was moved up following the announcement that Steve Jobs had passed away.

Source: CBS News

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Georgia, Seth, and Rene talk Steve Jobs memorials, Apple Q4 2011 results, iOS 5 and iCloud on iPad, Android 4.0 and PlayBook 2.0 competition, and the latest tips and apps. This is iPad Live!

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Apple has posted a picture of their celebration of Steve Jobs' life, which included executives like Tim Cook and Jony Ive, board members like Al Gore and Bill Campbell, and performances from artists like Norah Jones and Cold Play.

Today, together, they bled in 6 colors.

Source: Apple PR

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PCMag notes that Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son revealed in an interview with the U.S. Ambassador to Japan, John Roos, that Apple CEO Steve Jobs was working on Apple's next big product up until the day before his passing.

"I visited Apple for the announcement of the iPhone 4S [at Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California]. When I was having a meeting with Tim Cook, he said, 'Oh Masa, sorry I have to quit our meeting.' I said, 'Where are you going?' He said, 'My boss is calling me.' That was the day of the announcement of the iPhone 4S. He said that Steve is calling me because he wants to talk about their next product. And the next day, he died."

Really, could it have been otherwise?

Source: PCMag

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As previously announced, Apple Retail Stores will be closed today so employees can share in Apple's internal celebration of their co-founder, Steve Jobs' life.

They'll be closed for 9am to 12pm PDT, 12pm to 3pm EDT.

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Apple has posted a new page on its site titled simply "Remembering Steve".  The page contains messages and tributes  it has received for Steve Jobs from all around the world. The messages have all been emailed through a special email address that Apple has arranged. The messages displayed are constantly changing on the page.

Over a million people from all over the world have shared their memories, thoughts, and feelings about Steve. One thing they all have in common — from personal friends to colleagues to owners of Apple products — is how they’ve been touched by his passion and creativity.

Source: Apple

Victoria Barret of Forbes profiles Dropbox today and reveals how co-founder Drew Houston was made an offer by Steve Jobs and Apple that it turns out he could refuse.

In December 2009 Jobs beckoned Houston (pronounced like the New York City street, not the Texas city) and his partner, Arash Ferdowsi, for a meeting at his Cupertino office. “I mean, Steve friggin’ Jobs,” remembers Houston, now 28. “How do you even prepare for that?” When Houston whipped out his laptop for a demo, Jobs, in his signature jeans and black turtleneck, coolly waved him away: “I know what you do.”

Houston and Dropbox didn't want a buyout, even a nine digit one. They wanted to build a company. Jobs told them they were a "feature, not a product" and at WWDC 2011 revealed iCloud.

The entire article is fascinating. Give it a read.

Source: Forbes

According to The Wall Street Journal, the private memorial held for Steve Jobs yesterday included moving words from family, friends and senior executives from the industry.

Steve Jobs’s widow Laurene Powell Jobs, sister Mona Simpson and three of his children spoke at the memorial service held for the Apple co-founder on Sunday, according to two people who attended [...] Both people who attended described the service as incredibly moving and a fitting tribute to Mr. Jobs, who was known as a tech visionary, demanding boss and a fanatic for design. One person mentioned that many speakers cracked jokes about Mr. Jobs, who died on Oct. 5 after a long battle with pancreatic cancer.

Others who were close to Jobs that also spoke during the memorial included Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and Apple Senior VP for Industrial Design Jony Ive. Bono from U2 also performed, along with Yo Yo Ma and singer Joan Baez, with Bono reading lyrics from an iPad during the performance.

Apple plans to celebrate the life of Steve Jobs on October 19th on the Infinite Loop campus.

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Source: WSJ

9to5Mac posted some thoughts on what they think happened with the more ambitious iPhone 5 update that some were expecting to be announced at Apple's Lets Talk iPhone event earlier this month.

The iPhone 4S as you see it was originally planned to be released at WWDC with iOS 5, like every iPhone before it [...] But something happened around February of this year that threw everything off. Apple was still integrating the Siri team and code into iOS and it was going much slower than planned. At the same time, Apple’s iPhone 5 (teardrop) plans were moving along on or ahead of schedule and the first prototypes were testing well. With mid-October being the earliest possible date of a Siri-fied iOS being ready – with “Apple-levels” of polish –Apple had to look at its options.

This could explain the iPhone 5 case leak-a-palooza we saw just before the iPhone 4S announcement.

TiPb's own sources are split on this, with some saying Apple had planned iPhone 5 as the new iPhone, and iPhone 4S as souped up iPhone 4 for the mid-range market. Others insist iPhone 4S was the plan all along, and no redesign was ever in the cards for this year (or at least, wasn't considered for long).

9to5Mac's sources expect the redesigned iPhone to be announced in summer of 2012. TiPb's still hearing fall 2012, but this far out Apple can and will keep plans as flexible as possible.

Hit the link below for a full breakdown.

Source: 9to5Mac

The folks at Timeflies have made a unique tribute to the late Steve Jobs for one of their Tuesday songs.

All of this was shot on an iPad 2 and edited using iMovie, recorded, mixed, and mastered on an iMac. The beat was made using samples from OSX and iOS - everything on a Tuesday.

Check it out, below.

According to The Wall Street Journal, a private memorial will be held for Steve Jobs on October 16, with invitees to include close industry friends.

The event will be held at Stanford University's campus Sunday evening, according to the invitation.

Guests to the invitation-only service were asked to respond to Emerson Collective, a philanthropic organization established by Laurene Powell Jobs, Mr. Jobs's wife.

California Governor Jerry Brown has also announced October 16 will official be "Steve Jobs Day" in the state.

Meanwhile, 9to5Mac reports that Apple's internal celebration of Steve Jobs' life on October 19 will include Apple Retail employees.

Apple Stores will be closing for one hour (1-2 EST, 10-11 PST) on that Wednesday in memory of Steve Jobs. Apple Store employees will use that one hour to view a live webcast of the Cupertino-based celebration.

The public continues to mourn by leaving cards, flowers, and notes at Apple Stores worldwide, and many wore Jobs' signature black tops and blue jeans to the iPhone 4S launch last Friday.

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Sources: Wall Street JOurnal, 9to5Mac, TUAW

Scott Forstall, the man in charge of Apple's Mobile Software Division and head of the iOS development team, was profiled by Bloomberg Businessweek, and they revealed a number of bits (facts or gossip, hard to tell) into how Forstall is an integral part of Apple's executive team.

Forstall is described as a "mini-Steve" who obsesses over the little details that make Apple products great and knows when to say 'No' when needed. But the similarities to Steve don't stop there.

Forstall is like Steve in one other important way: He can be, in what some of his co-workers might call an understatement, a polarizing figure. He’s won the intense loyalty and allegiance of many of his underlings, and his engineers are among the hardest workers at the company. At the same time, according to several former Apple employees, a number of high-ranking executives have left the company because they found working with Forstall so difficult [...] They say he has such a fraught relationship with other members of the executive team—including lead designer Jony Ive and Mac hardware chief Bob Mansfield—that they avoid meetings with him unless Tim Cook is present.

Despite some of these alleged relationship issues, Scott Forstall is considered to be the father of OS X Leopard, the Aqua interface, the App Store and the general principles of the iOS software that's installed on every iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. This has commanded a certain level of respect among Apple employees and is something of a feat for the 42-year-old (the youngest of the Apple executive team).

Forstall is also said to have been extremely close to Steve Jobs, one of his biggest mentors.

Forstall’s most recent triumphs are likely bittersweet. Over the last few years he watched as his biggest champion and mentor slowly lost an agonizing personal battle, all while products running his software have helped make Apple the most valuable company in the world. Apple has sold more than a quarter billion devices running Forstall’s iOS.

Interestingly, Forstall was the one who convinced Jobs to let engineers carry prototype iPhone units outside of the Apple campus for testing purposes, which ultimately led to the lost iPhone 4 debacle.

Before the iPhone 4 went to market, Forstall persuaded Jobs to allow dozens of his engineers to carry prototypes of the device to better test its network performance and minimize dropped calls, says a former Apple employee who was a manager at the time.

All in all, the profile on Scott Forstall is an amazing read and we'd suggest giving it a once-over to get an overall picture of how he's helped Apple succeed in the mobile software industry.

Source: BusinessWeek

“Someone once said that to follow the path that others have laid before you is a very reasonable course of action, therefore all progress is made by unreasonable men,” Savage said. “Steve Jobs was an unreasonable man. He didn’t simply give the public what they wanted, he defined entirely new ways of thinking about our lives in the digital space: productivity, creativity, music, communication, media and art. He has touched, directly and indirectly, all of our lives.”

The special will have interviews with many key people including Stevie Wonder, talking about how Steve Jobs' innovation impacted his career.  The show will premiere on Sunday October 16 across the Discovery networks in 210 countries and territories.

Source: EW.com

For everything.

Photo credit: @MaryTurner_

MacGenerations received a copy of an email purportedly from Apple CEO Tim Cook, announcing the date and time for Apple's celebration of their late co-founder, Steve Jobs' life.

Team,

Like many of you, I have experienced the saddest days of my lifetime and shed many tears during the past week. But I've found some comfort in the extraordinary number of tributes and condolences from people all over the world who were touched by Steve and his genius. And I've found comfort in both telling and listening to stories about Steve.

Although many of our hearts are still heavy, we are planning a celebration of his life for Apple employees to take time to remember the incredible things Steve achieved in his life and the many ways he made our world a better place. The celebration will be held on Wednesday, October 19, at 10am in the outdoor amphitheater on the Infinite Loop campus. We'll have more details on AppleWeb closer to the date, including arrangements for employees outside of Cupertino.

I look forward to seeing you there.

Tim

Jobs passed away last Wednesday at the age of 56. Since then, both Apple in Cupertino and Apple Stores around the world have been covered in flowers, post it notes, and memorabilia in a show of gratitude, inspiration, and sympathy.

Source: MacGenerations

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In this very special episode of iPad Live, Georgia, Seth, and Rene talk about the death of Steve Jobs, discuss what his life meant to our generation and our culture, and share some of his most memorable moments.

Hosts

• Georgia @GeorgiaTiPb)
• Rene Ritchie @reneritchie)
• Seth Clifford @sethclifford)

Credits

Thanks to the TiPb iPad Accessory Store for sponsoring the podcast, and to everyone who showed up for the live chat!

Music Hear me Roar by iPad Live theme song contest winner, DieselJesus!

Almost all of Steve Jobs' appearances, talks, and keynotes are memorable in one way or another. Below are some of those that resonated with us the most over the years, the ones we've watched again and again, and the ones we've gleaned the most insight from, such as we can, into the mind of the man behind Apple.

Memory & Imagination: New Pathways to the Library of Congress: Computers are the bicycles of the mind.

1997 WWDC Q&A

1997 Think different spot, "Here's to the crazy ones", narrated by Steve Jobs

2005 Stanford Commencement Address.

2010 Special Event, Steve Jobs introduces the iPad

2010 WWDC Keynote, Steve Jobs introduces the iPhone 4

2011 Special Event, Steve Jobs introduces the iPad 2

2011 WWDC Keynote, Steve Jobs' last.

2003-2010 D: All Things Digital, full videos of Steve Jobs interviews (They don't allow embeds so click/tap the link and go watch them. They're extraordinary.)

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Sony Pictures is reportedly very close to securing a deal for the film rights to the Steve Jobs biography. The deal Sony is tabling is said to be $1 million against $3 million and that Mark Gordon will be in line to produce the film.

The book which will be called simply Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacsson was initially due for release in November. That date has now been pulled forward and it is set to hit shelves real and virtual on Oct. 24.

Sony Pictures has already made successful films from business related books so should be a good fit for the project. It has already had success with Moneyball and of course, Oscar nominated The Social Network.

Source: Deadline

The director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Glenn D. Lowry, has written and opinion piece on CNN about how Steve Jobs was the lynchpin of our tech generation, a way to define ourselves much like Bob Dylan or the Beatles helped define Jobs' own generation. Lowry explained how important efficiency and art were to Jobs' products, and how they allow us to identify with one another.

Jobs realized that the digital generation not only wanted access to an endless array of information and entertainment, it wanted it delivered in a way that projected the user's sense of self; that personal style mattered as much as function.

Apple has become an almost universal sign of belonging to a connected and open world that is deeply curious and innovative and is youthful in spirit.

It's undoubtable that Jobs' was influential to say the least. Without Jobs influence at Apple, all of these attributes that Jobs embodied and expressed through his products will be lost. It wasn't Apple making products, it was Jobs at Apple putting together a great team and almost willing the products into existence.

Apple was his brush and consumers, his canvas.

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Source: CNN

Steve Jobs' funeral is being held today according to The Wall Street Journal, and in keeping with Steve Jobs' life, it will be a very private affair with no public services. Those wishing to express their sentiments can email rememberingsteve@apple.com.

• Steve Jobs: 1955 – 2011
• Remembering Steve Jobs: Statements and stories
• One more thing...: The Mobile Nations staff honors Steve Jobs
• Steve Jobs: TiPb forums thread

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Source: WSJ. Picture credit: Jonathan Mak

Google and Samsung are delaying their CTIA launch event, widely expected to involve the introduction of their next generation Ice Cream Sandwich Android OS, and Nexus Prime handset, in deference to the recent passing of Steve Jobs.

"We believe this is not the right time to announce a new product as the world expresses tribute to Steve Jobs's passing."

Classy.

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Source: Android Central

Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple and the guiding mind behind iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, iTunes, and an astounding amount of other modern technological marvels, passed away yesterday at the age of 56.

Statements and stories have flooded in from around the world and all over the internet. Below, the staff of TiPb and the Mobile Nations network share their thoughts, memories, and respect for the man who shaped the modern consumer electronic world.

Georgia, TiPb.com

If there is anything that we can learn from the death of Steve Jobs it's that we need to make sure we live for the moment and do as much as we can with the time we are given. Though Steve is no longer with us, his legacy will carry on. I did not expect to be as affected by his passing as I have been. There is something that made me feel secure with having Steve at Apple, and his spirit can not be replaced.

We're here to put a dent in the universe.

You did, Steve. You did.

Seth Clifford, Iterate.tv

There isn't much I could say about Steve's influence on the world that hasn't been said better already. I wasn't expecting to be as impacted by his passing as I found myself last night and again this morning. But I was, and I started to think about why I felt the way I did. I came to the conclusion that everything I do today - from the actual work I do on a daily basis, to the way I think about the quality of what we create, to the places I want us to go as a company - has in some perceivable way been shaped by Steve. A child of the 80s, I loved Macs, and when I was old enough to afford my own, it was around the same time he came back to Apple and began to reshape the face of the company. Since that point, I've watched as his vision brought new life not only to Apple, but to the entire technology industry. My formative young adult years were spent in awe of the places he was taking us, and with each release, we inched closer toward a better way of doing things. There were hiccups along the way, stops and starts, but the vision always persevered in spite of everything. Now, with the mobile landscape looking the way it does, thinking back to those early machines and the original Macintosh's goal of bringing computing to everyone, it's clear that he succeeded in that intention. Every single day, the good things he wanted us to feel as we use our technology touch my life in quietly profound ways. And every single day forward, I will pause and think about how compromise was not a part of that plan. Steve's guiding principle was to do great things, and while we don't always succeed at that, neither did he - and it's the journey (and the willingness to keep pushing forward) that really matters anyway. I will genuinely miss him, and I thank him for everything he did in the name of the user.

Ally Kazmucha, TiPb.com

I've immersed myself in technology ever since I can remember. I was always fascinated by the way things work and how things could be better. Steve Jobs understood that things can "always" be better. He was a visionary and his own worst critic. I always admired that in him. Back in my college days I remember seeing the Stanford Commencement speech on the internet. One quote stuck with me from then until now -

"Everyday when I wake up, I look into the mirror and ask myself, "If I was going to die tomorrow, would I still want to do what I'm going to do today?", and if the answer is no too many days in a row, I know I need to change something."

It's a quote I've tried to live up to. Since then, I've almost completely turned a hobby and a passion into a career, I'd say that quote has impacted my life in ways I'm not even capable of explaining. So I'll continue doing what I love to do as that's the best way I know to honor one of most creative minds of this century. He may be gone but so many of the ideas and innovations he brought to life will continue to inspire generations to come. You will be sorely missed by all.

George Lim, TiPb.com

To Me, Steve Jobs was more than the Co-founder of Apple and the Co-founder of Pixar. He was a man, who took life with both hands and went for the ride.

Despite, being adopted, getting kicked out of his own company, and being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, he lived on, showing that no matter what the situation, you can remain positive and achieve great things.

As a result he went on to return to Apple and turn it into the company it is today, and found my all time favourite animation studio, Pixar.

His view on 'not wasting life' didn't really hit me until I watched his 2005 speech at Standford University when he uttered the words:

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.

It was at that moment I knew I needed to "do something".

Now, I haven't quite left my full time job in a shop, I now write for TiPb and host my own online tech show. Doing things I love, Video Production and Writing.

Thank You Steve.

Leanna Lofte, TiPb.com

In a job interview I had a couple years ago, I was asked that if I could meet one celebrity, who would it be? Without even giving it much thought, I promptly replied 'Steve Jobs'. The job-search committee was slightly taken aback by my response because he wasn't a celebrity in the conventional meaning of the term. Well, in my eyes, Steve is the greatest and most influential celebrity of my time. Unlike other celebrities, Steve actually had and will continue to have a great impact on my life.

I miss you, Steve. Thank you for not only being an incredible innovator, but for being an inspiration and example of perseverance and following your dreams.

Kevin Michaluk, Founder of CrackBerry.com

As much as we like to poke at Apple whenever we get the chance on CrackBerry, Steve Jobs was an amazing visionary and inspiring leader who made a significant impact upon the world in which we live. Our deepest sympathies go out to his family and loved ones.

Keith Newman, PreCentral.net

Say what you will about Steve Jobs... whether you loved him or hated him, it is undeniable of the impact he had on our modern society. His return to Apple marked a new era of design and functionality the rest of the industry wished they could capture and often tried to replicate. Sure he was known to fanboys as the savior and to the haters as the devil but his business savvy and cutthroat business decisions created an empire. You will always see his true friends speak dearly of him and that is what strikes me most. He was a guy who was doing a job that was fueled on his dreams and imagination; they might have been absurd to conventional thinking and against every fabric of sound business models, yet, he still prevailed on top of it all. I offer his family and friends my condolences during this hard time. Having lost my mother at 47 from cancer, the thing that helped me through it all was remembering her during the strongest periods of her life and always keeping that in my heart. Steve, thank you for your innovations that keep pushing our world closer together through technology.

Phil Nickinson, AndroidCentral.com

Explaining to my 5-year-old daughter what I was watching on TV (and, Jesus H. Christ is CNN horrible), Mia, who uses an old iPhone 3G as an iPod, asks me:

"Daddy, since he died, will my iPhone not work anymore?"

No, Mia, it most certainly will.

Chris Oldroyd, TiPb.com

Steve Jobs quite simply changed my life! His vision and astounding ability to give us what we needed even before we actually knew what we needed was amazing. The world has lost a gifted individual and is a much worse place today because of that. I will never forget the first time I heard him say "The iPhone". Little did I know what it would lead to. Thank you Steve.

Chris Parsons, CrackBerry.com

Between last night and today, I have heard so many people state what Steve Jobs meant to them and their lives and it has truly been amazing. I've always recognized that we all live and we all die but I never realized the passing of Steve Jobs would have this much affect on myself. I work on a MacBook Pro all day long, I write about iPhones and iPads often and much of my livelihood as I know it -- is because of the products him and the folks at Apple have created. Steve Jobs was simply put.. amazing. I encourage you all to donate to your local Cancer society.

Andrew Wray, TiPb.com

It's difficult to find the right words to describe some of the emotions that I've been overwhelmed with since learning of Steve Job's passing. Feelings of sadness, nostalgia, deep inspiration and happiness all come to the surface when watching some of Steve's greatest moments on stage. He had such a way about him. That all-too-magical reality distortion field. I don't believe we will have another opportunity to see a man as great as Steve Jobs emerge within our lifetimes.

For all of this, I am truly grateful that I was able to be on this earth to watch Steve work his magic with Apple, NeXT and Pixar, bringing amazing products to the world and truly revolutionizing the tech industry. And more than once. His legacy will live on forever through Apple and I'm sure we'll all think of Steve every time we use one of his products. We'll miss you, Steve. Thanks for giving us the world.

Rene Ritchie, TiPb.com

My first computer was an Apple II. My first website was created on the classic Mac OS. Day in and day out, my work, my play, and my life is enabled by Macs and iPhones and iPads and the apps they make possible. Steve Jobs inspired and informed all of that. He is indelibly and inexorably at the heart of modern technology.

We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

A master story teller, he methodically crafted a legend not of words or epics but of consumer electronics and software. He is why Apple is the brand and passion it is today, why industrial design matters, and why software is increasingly accessible to the mainstream.

He stood at the crossroads of technology and liberal arts, of glass and aluminum, of bits and bytes, and by sheer act of will forged them into something greater than any of their parts -- tools that work for us rather than requiring us to work for them.

Relentless visionary, consummate showman, genius businessman. His loss hurts but his life will inspire, always.

The end of act two came far too soon, and act three suddenly, brutally sooner still. Part of me wonders what another 30 years could have brought us, but the other part knows what Jobs himself elucidated so well:

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.

We'll never get another "One more thing..." from you, Steve, but you've left us the only thing that really matters. Your legacy. Thank you for that. For everything.

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Steve Jobs, the eponymous biography of Apple's late co-founder penned by Walter Isaacson, has been moved up and will now arrive on shelves real and virtual on Oct. 24. What's more:

According to a person familiar with the matter, Isaacson last interviewed Jobs four weeks ago, right before, and right after he stepped down from his post as the CEO of Apple. Jobs indicated at that time that he knew he was going to die soon. The scene will appear at the end of the book.

Needless to say, pre-orders are topping the charts.

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Sources: WSJ, AllThingsD

Since the time of Steve Jobs' passing yesterday, numerous statements have been issued by friends and rivals, by presidents and popular cultural icons alike. There have also been some remarkable stories shared. We'll collect them here, and please add any we might have missed, along with your own, in the comments below or in our forums.

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Stories

Be sure to click/tap the names to read the full stories.

Walt Mossberg of All Things D, on his many conversations with Jobs:

Sometimes, not always, he’d invite me in to see certain big products before he unveiled them to the world. He may have done the same with other journalists. We’d meet in a giant boardroom, with just a few of his aides present, and he’d insist — even in private — on covering the new gadgets with cloths and then uncovering them like the showman he was, a gleam in his eye and passion in his voice. We’d then often sit down for a long, long discussion of the present, the future, and general industry gossip.

Brian Lam, former editor of Gizmodo, on his regrets surrounding the iPhone 4 prototype:

Steve, a few months have passed since all that iphone 4 stuff went down, and I just wanted to say that I wish things happened differently. I probably should have quit right after the first story was published for several different reasons. I didn't know how to say that without throwing my team under the bus, so I didn't. Now I've learned it's better to lose a job I don't believe in any more than to do it well and keep it just for that sake.

Harry Knowles of Ain't it Cool News on being personally converted to Mac:

I would get periodic calls from Steve asking how the computers were working. I'd complain about the problems with expanding hard drives and program compatibility issues. Never really saying, IT JUST WORKS. I just never felt I could give him that. I miss some of those fights with my early computers. Yes, its nostalgic masochism. But I really don't. I'm a total convert.

Statements

Apple

Tim Cook, CEO of Apple:

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.

Disney/Pixar

John Lasseter and Ed Catmull Chief Creative Officer and President, Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios

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.

Bob Iger, CEO of Walt Disney

“Steve Jobs was a great friend as well as a trusted advisor. His legacy will extend far beyond the products he created or the businesses he built. It will be the millions of people he inspired, the lives he changed, and the culture he defined.

Steve was such an ‘original,’ with a thoroughly creative, imaginative mind that defined an era. Despite all he accomplished, it feels like he was just getting started.

With his passing the world has lost a rare original, Disney has lost a member of our family, and I have lost a great friend.

Our thoughts and prayers are with his wife Laurene and his children during this difficult time.

US Government

Barack Obama, President of the United States

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.

Microsoft

Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft:

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.

Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft

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.

Google

Larry Page, co-founder and CEO of Google

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.

Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google

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.

Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman of Google

Today is very sad for all of us. Steve defined a generation of style and technology that’s unlikely to be matched again. Steve was so charismatically brilliant that he inspired people to do the impossible, and he will be remembered as the greatest computer innovator in history.

Carriers

Randall Stephenson, CEO of AT&T

We are saddened by the passing of Steve Jobs. Steve was an iconic inventor, visionary, and entrepreneur, and we had the privilege to know him as partner and friend. All of us at AT&T offer our thoughts and prayers to Steve’s wife, family, and his Apple family.

Competitors

Stephen Elop, CEO of Nokia

Steve’s passion for simplicity and elegance leaves us all a legacy that will endure for generations. Today, my thoughts, and those of everyone at Nokia are with the friends and family that he leaves behind

Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, co-CEOs of BlackBerry maker Research in Motion

Steve Jobs was a great visionary and a respected competitor. We extend our deepest condolences to his family and to all of the employees of Apple.

Michael Dell, CEO of Dell

Today the world lost a visionary leader, the technology industry lost an iconic legend and I lost a friend and fellow founder. The legacy of Steve Jobs will be remembered for generations to come. My thoughts and prayers go out to his family and to the Apple team.

Meg Whitman, CEO of HP

Steve Jobs was an iconic entrepreneur and businessman whose impact on technology was felt beyond Silicon Valley. He will be remembered for the innovation he brought to market and the inspiration he brought to the world.

Howard Stringer, CEO of Sony

The digital age has lost its leading light, but Steve’s innovation and creativity will inspire dreamers and thinkers for generations.

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon

Steve was a teacher to anyone paying attention, and today is a very sad day for everyone who cares about innovation and high standards.

More

Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corp

Today, we lost one of the most influential thinkers, creators and entrepreneurs of all time. Steve Jobs was simply the greatest CEO of his generation. While I am deeply saddened by his passing, I’m reminded of the stunning impact he had in revolutionizing the way people consume media and entertainment. My heart goes out to his family and to everyone who had the opportunity to work beside him in bringing his many visions to life.

Mark Zuckerberg, Founder of Facebook

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.

Apple is reporting that Steve Jobs passed away today. The co-founder of Apple and the guiding mind behind the Mac, iPod and iTunes, Pixar and Apple Retail, iPhone and iPad, Jobs was 56 years old, and is survived by his family, friends, colleagues, and an industry he helped innovate and inspire.

CUPERTINO, Calif., Oct 05, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- We are deeply saddened to announce that Steve Jobs passed away today.

Steve's brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve.

His greatest love was for his wife, Laurene, and his family. Our hearts go out to them and to all who were touched by his extraordinary gifts.

Apple has posted a page containing the following message:

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.

If you would like to share your thoughts, memories, and condolences, please email rememberingsteve@apple.com

Steve Jobs' family has issued the following 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 has sent out the following email to Apple employees:

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

We have no words, other than to express our deepest gratitude for everything he gave us, and our deepest sympathies to his family, friends, and colleagues.

• Remembering Steve Jobs: Statements and stories
• One more thing...: The Mobile Nations staff honors Steve Jobs
• Steve Jobs: High order bits - Our favorite moments on video
• Steve Jobs: TiPb forums thread

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I'm hearing that Apple is working on a new iPad app that looks a lot like DirecTV without the dish, too. Again, that app will have Steve Jobs' fingerprints all over it as it will be more expansive than the press is expecting in its content availability. There's a reason Apple built a 500,000-square-foot datacenter (about twice the size of a Facebook one, by the way) and that new datacenter is for video and the data that video causes to be shared with everyone.

Source: Robert Scoble Google+

In an interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, President Obama revealed some well placed connections managed to get him his iPad sooner than most.

"Steve Jobs actually gave it to me, a little bit early," the president said.

Obama used his early-access iPad to read newspapers that he previously read in print, along with skimming blog posts and other content on the tablet. He did mention, however, that he never comments on the blogs he reads because he has more important things to take care of.

Wouldn't it be cool if he hit TiPb while perusing the blogosphere?

Source: NationalJournal via Cult of Mac

To make a long story short, it sounds like iOS 4 was supposed to include the type of Facebook integration that iOS 5 will enjoy with Twitter but Apple and Facebook couldn't get the deal done. Subsequent squabbles over Ping, and a tempestuous visit by Steve Jobs to Mark Zuckerberg -- including a blow up over HP and their TouchPad -- only fanned the flames of discontent. According to Jennifer Van Grove at Mashable:

When Jobs learned of the webOS Facebook app during his summer visit to Facebook, he was livid. Zuckerberg vowed to get the app pulled. But Jon Rubinstein, the former CEO of Palm and then the GM of HP’s webOS division, refused to halt the release of the app. Facebook responded by restricting HP’s access to its APIs — just as it had done with Apple’s Ping, a year earlier.

Apple wanted Facebook on iPad first, HP wanted Facebook on TouchPad first, and Facebook played both sides to the apparent benefit of... nobody. Well done.

For the whole, long, sordid version of the tale, hit the source link below. Meanwhile let's hope Apple and Facebook really have unburned their bridges and we get Facebook for iPad on or around this Tuesday as rumored.

Source: Mashable

Fortune has released a Kindle eBook entitled “All About Steve, The Story of Steve Jobs and Apple from the Pages of Fortune. This is not to be confused with the authorized biography; that is not due until November. This book is written by the writers of Fortune and is based on past interviews and articles which appeared in the pages of Fortune.

Steve Jobs’ legacy is clear: The most innovative business leader of our time, the man FORTUNE named CEO of the Decade in 2009. Now from the pages of FORTUNE comes an anthology of 17 classic stories spanning the years 1983 to 2011 about the cultural icon who revolutionized computing, telephones, movies, music, retailing, and product design.

Source: Amazon

During a special appearance at a Los Angeles nightclub, Stevie Wonder took time out to thank Steve Jobs and Apple for making technology that is accessible for everyone. During his set where he was ad-libbing to his songs and playing other tracks, he stopped to talk about helping others with disabilities.

"I want you all to give a hand to someone that you know whose health is very bad at this time. But for someone who, and his company, took the challenge in making his technology accessible to everyone, in the spirit of carrying and moving the world forward: Steve Jobs. Because there's nothing on the iPhone or the iPad that you can do that I can't do. As a matter of fact, I can be talking to you, you can be looking at me, and I can be doing whatever I need to do, and you won't even know what I'm doing. Yeah!"

[TUAW]

After reading the news Precentral.net broke about Palm once again being split into separate software (likely to wither) and hardware (likely to die) units, it made me wish we could get a new show on FOX this fall called "Jobs' Business Nightmare". Just like the Gordon Ramsay cooking show, Steve Jobs could tackle another bumbling, downward spiraling tech company each week, shake them up, reorganize their product matrixes, and turn them back towards the path to success. Just like he did with Apple. And he could miraculously do it all in 44 min. Just like Ramsway.

HP could be the pilot.

"Apotheker, come here. 2 seconds. Listen to me. You're in denial. You're ruining webOS. You're ruining it. Donkey."

I'd watch.

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Georgia, Rene, Seth, and Matthew Panzarino of The Next Web talk Steve Jobs resignation fallout, Tim Cook's email to Apple, mobile malware, Acer's iPad fever, Samsung's Space Odyssey, and buh-bye TV rentals. This is iPad Live!

Hosts

• Georgia @GeorgiaTiPb)
• Rene Ritchie @reneritchie)
• Seth Clifford @sethclifford)
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Joseph Tame decided to map out and run a half marathon as a message of thanks to Steve Jobs for his awesome achievements at Apple. What was special about the route he chose to run?  Well it was in the shape of the Apple logo.

The route was recorded using the Runkeeper app and two iPhones. Joseph is no stranger to this type of running art. He has previously run routes which resemble the Twitter bird and an elephant.

Asked why he wanted to create an Apple logo, Tame said that having an iPhone had really changed his life in Tokyo. In Japan it is like a lifeline, even more so now that it can warn him when an earthquake is about to hit.

[Cnet]

Steve Jobs called up Google's Vic Gundotra on a Sunday morning to get an urgent fix for something they were working on, and Gundotra was gracious enough to share the story on Google+.

"So Vic, we have an urgent issue, one that I need addressed right away. I've already assigned someone from my team to help you, and I hope you can fix this tomorrow" said Steve.

"I've been looking at the Google logo on the iPhone and I'm not happy with the icon. The second O in Google doesn't have the right yellow gradient. It's just wrong and I'm going to have Greg fix it tomorrow. Is that okay with you?"

Of course this was okay with me. A few minutes later on that Sunday I received an email from Steve with the subject "Icon Ambulance". The email directed me to work with Greg Christie to fix the icon.

These are the eyes, and the attention to detail, Apple needs to fight to keep in place moving forward.

[+Vic Gundotra, MacRumors]

Apple has updated their corporate profiles page to reflect Tim Cook's new position as CEO and Steve Jobs' elevation to Chairman of the board.

Tim Cook is the CEO of Apple and serves on its Board of Directors.

Before being named CEO in August 2011, Tim was Apple's Chief Operating Officer and was responsible for all of the company’s worldwide sales and operations, including end-to-end management of Apple’s supply chain, sales activities, and service and support in all markets and countries. He also headed Apple’s Macintosh division and played a key role in the continued development of strategic reseller and supplier relationships, ensuring flexibility in response to an increasingly demanding marketplace.

Prior to joining Apple, Tim was vice president of Corporate Materials for Compaq and was responsible for procuring and managing all of Compaq’s product inventory. Previous to his work at Compaq, Tim was the chief operating officer of the Reseller Division at Intelligent Electronics.

Tim also spent 12 years with IBM, most recently as director of North American Fulfillment where he led manufacturing and distribution functions for IBM’s Personal Computer Company in North and Latin America.

Tim earned an M.B.A. from Duke University, where he was a Fuqua Scholar, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Engineering from Auburn University.

Apple has also updated Steve Jobs' bio to reflect his new position as Chairman of the Board.

Steve Jobs is the Chairman of the Board of Apple, which he co-founded in 1976. Apple is leading the consumer technology world with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, its family of iPod media players and iTunes media store, and its Mac computers and iLife and iWork application suites. Apple recently introduced iPad 2 which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.

Steve also co-founded and was the CEO of Pixar Animation Studios, which created some of the most successful and beloved animated films of all time including Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars and Ratatouille. Pixar merged with The Walt Disney Company in 2006 and Steve now serves on Disney's board of directors.

Steve grew up in the apricot orchards which later became known as Silicon Valley, and still lives there with his family.

And here's the newly updated executive team spread.

[Apple.com]

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Rene, Georgia, and Seth discuss Steve Jobs resigning as CEO of Apple, becoming Chairman of the Board, Tim Cook taking over as CEO, what it means for Apple and for end users, for partners and for competitors. This is iPhone Live!

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Former Apple CEO Steve Jobs giving the commencement speech at Stanford in 2005, and new Apple CEO Tim Cook giving the commencement speech at Auburn in 2010.

[Stanford on YouTube, Auburn on YouTube, thanks Dave.]

In resigning as CEO of Apple today, Steve Jobs takes on the role as Chairman of the Board. In that regard, tomorrow will likely be no different than yesterday. Not for Apple, not for us. Except it will be totally different. We'll still be able to buy iPhones and iPads, we'll still get iOS 5 and iPhone 5 this October, we'll still be delighted, and things will still be magical. They just won't be the same. Steve Jobs has ended the greatest Second Act in the history of a technology company, arguably of any modern business.

Act One saw Steve Jobs co-founding Apple and helping to mainstream the command line interface and the first successful personal computer with the Apple II. He went on to make the graphical user interface popular with Macintosh. Then Apple showed him the door.

Intermission was when Jobs founded NeXT and bought and nurtured Pixar.

Act Two began when Apple started to fail and fail hard and they bought NeXT and brought Steve Jobs back to the company. He went on to launch the iMac, iTunes and iPod, OS X, Apple Retail, iPhone and iPad.

Taken apart, any one of these accomplishments would be astonishing. Taken together, they're almost unmatchable. They're world changing, or as Jobs himself might put it, universe denting. He became the personification of Apple, the incarnation, every bit as iconic as the logo. They seemed almost inseparable.

But Jobs was and is not a force of nature, he's human. His health required him to take not one, but several leaves of absence. He survived pancreatic cancer. He survived a liver transplant. And like even the greatest of heavyweight champions, battles fought, even won, take their toll.

For all his taste and all his vision, one of Steve Jobs' greatest assets has always been his strategic genius. From the timing of product releases to the timing of his medical leaves, his positioning of Apple executives on stage and within the company has been as meticulously planned as any iPhone or iPad introduction. He's not holding onto power or position for their own sake. He's handing over the company in carefully considered steps. He's leaving on his own terms, even naming his successor -- Tim Cook.

Cook takes over one of the most successful, affluent, and influential companies in the world, and he takes it over at its prime. Apple right now is firing on all cylinders. It's earning record profits after record profits, and a lot of that is due to Cook. He is the best logistics guy in the business, the best COO. But CEO is not COO, and that begs the question -- does Cook continue on as COO with some CEO duties, or does Apple start looking for a new COO? It's often asked if Apple can go on without Steve Jobs as CEO, but equally important is can Apple go on without Tim Cook as COO?

Steve Jobs is the visionary, the man who almost willed into existence the consumer electronics future. Tim Cook is the man who made those visions manifest, who masterminded getting those products onto the shelves with as little waste and as much profit as possible. They've worked together in those roles for over a decade, and with spectacular results.

Will competitors see an opening? Will HP quickly un-cancel the TouchPad? Likely not, at least not for a while still. Changes at Apple do not miraculous make for new competing products. Will partners test for weakness? Will a carrier try to strong-arm some crapware onto the iPhone? Again, likely not, not without getting hit so fast and so hard their towers feel it.

Because Steve Jobs hasn't gone anywhere. He's changed titles and offices, moved from CEO to Chairman of the board, but he's still there to lend his vision to Tim Cook's implementation. He's still there as part of the strongest team in consumer electronics, with Jony Ive, Phil Schiller, and all the rest. He's still there to say no when he has to and to help guide Apple, not towards the second star on the left and straight ahead until morning, but straight to the center of liberal arts and computer sciences that has served them so well yesterday and will keep serving them well tomorrow and beyond. And the reason for that is simple:

For Steve Jobs, as much as this is the end of Act Two, it's also the beginning Act Three.