There was something Steve Jobs had said to Steven Levy 30 years ago that stuck in my mind: ”You know we’re constantly taking. We don’t make most of the food we eat, we don’t grow it, anyway. We wear clothes other people make, we speak a language other people developed, we use a mathematics other people evolved and spent their lives building. I mean we’re constantly taking things. It’s a wonderful ecstatic feeling to create something and put it into the pool of human experience and knowledge.
The retirement of Steve Jobs from active management at Apple has been commented on by many. Paul Saffo’s comment about the reconceptualization of the Internet experience resonates with much that LIRNEasia has been talking about. The other point about not anchoring innovation on how consumers actually live their lives is more problematic. As the NYT says: Mr. Jobs did not so much see around corners; he saw things in plain sight that others did not.
It’s nice to know we’re in the post-PC world. It’s just two years since we were being asked to participate in debates about mobile vs PCs. And just one year since Steve Jobs called the PC a truck. Now the debate has shifted. We know what world we live in.
As a result of our work on Mobile 2.0 we are very interested in the future ways in which people connect to the Internet. Here are the thoughts of one of the great visionaries of our time: Mr. Jobs also predicted that the ongoing shift in technology away from the PC and toward mobile devices will continue. But rather than disappear, the PC will become a niche product, he said.
Apple is facing a potential antitrust probe into whether the software underpinning its groundbreaking iPhone unfairly locks out competitors. The US Federal Trade Commission became curious when a dispute that broke out between Apple and Adobe over the latest version of the iPhone software, which was unveiled last month. Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs has explained why the company’s devices don’t support Adobe’s Flash, a widely used video streaming technology. “Adobe claims that we are a closed system, and that Flash is open, but in fact the opposite is true,” he wrote. Adobe’s Flash has become a de facto standard for the industry to create web games and present video, with about 75% of video served on web sites using Flash.
Global Telecoms Business, a journal for communications service providers around the world, has named Tata Communications (formerly VSNL) CEO N Srinath has been as one of the 10 most influential telecom personnel. Among the top 100 telecom personnel named by the magazine, N Srinath has been positioned at number 8. He has been credited for transforming Tata Communications in an international company and for the acquisition of networks like Teleglobe and Tyco Global Networks. The list tops with Google Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt, and Apple CEO Steve Jobs at number two. Other Indians in the list are Bharti Enterprises Chairman and Group CEO Sunil Bharti Mittal (at number 35), Bharti Airtel CEO and Joint MD Manoj Kohli (number 39) and CEO of Motorola’s mobile services division Sanjay Jha (number 41).
Miguel Helft October 11, 2007, New York Times For more than two years, a large group of engineers at Google have been working in secret on a mobile-phone project. As word of their efforts has trickled out, expectations in the tech world for what has been called the Google phone, or GPhone, have risen, the way they do for Apple loyalists before a speech by Steve Jobs. But the GPhone is not likely to be the second coming of the iPhone and Google’s goals are very different from Apple’s. Google wants to extend its dominance of online advertising to the mobile internet, a small market today but one that is expected to grow rapidly. It hopes to persuade wireless carriers and mobile-phone makers to offer phones based on its software, according to people briefed on the project.
The New York Consumer Protection Board (NYCPB) is acting on a barrage of complaints being made by many owners of the most hyped mobile handset in history – iPhone. The powerful regulator is taking Apple to task over the sealed battery the company insists in placing in the iPhone. The chairperson of the NYCPB, Mindy Bockstein, has written to Apple CEO Steve Jobs requiring him ensure that the design of the iPhone is changed to allow owners of the device to gain easy access to its battery so that they can change it for themselves. Read more.