Farewell, Steve Jobs (1955-2011)
Steve Jobs, the visionary behind some of the world’s best loved technology, has passed away at the age of 56.
One of the most important and influential figures of our time, the name of which could be found in the credits of all Pixar movies, left us peacefully, surrounded by his family members, early today (Malaysian time).
Thank you Mr. Jobs, thank you for everything we have today – personal laptops, mp3 players, touchscreen smartphones, all-in-one desktops, legal music downloads, etc, the list goes on! There is no area of technology that Steve Jobs’ work has not directly influenced and profoundly transformed. He built products that transcended technology and dealt in meaning and wonder rather than hardware and software.
Jobs, along with his engineer friend Steve Wozniak, was the man behind the first popular, low-cost computer. Jobs created the concept of an all-in-one computer in the Macintosh, which lives on today in the iMac, and hundreds of millions of smartphones and tablets. In 1997 Jobs returned to Apple, and in 2001 he launched the iPod — a device that drove the revolution of the antiquated, analog music industry into the digital beast that it is today. This paved the way for the iPhone and then the iPad, two products that forever changed the course of consumer technology.
In his own words (something he wrote recently):
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, putatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancrefine now.
This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
Steve Jobs will be sorely missed by his family, his friends, his comrades in Cupertino, and of course all of us.
Rest in peace, and farewell, Steve Jobs.
Tags: Apple, Apple Computers, Apple Inc., iPad, iPhone, iPod, Steve Jobs, Steven P. Jobs
Steve Jobs declares victory over rivals
Filed under Tech
With Apple posting record profits amid zooming sales of iPhones and iPads, CEO Steve Jobs declared victory over main rival and BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM).
“We have now passed RIM, and I don’t see them catching up with us in the foreseeable feature,” Jobs told the Canadian media in a conference call after Apple’s astounding results Monday.
“We are out to win this one,” Job said.
Jobs also thrashed Google’s Android and its growing market share, something he doesn’t acknowledge of anyway. Surprisingly, he however mentioned of Nokia as a strong and healthy competitor, a company worthy of admiration likewise.
On tablets of other manufacturers, he also said “The current crop of 7-inch tablets are going to be DOA, dead on arrival,” before also stating “Their manufacturers will learn the painful lesson that their tablets are too small.”
Source: Various
Tags: Android, Apple, Blackberry, Google, iPad, iPhone, Nokia, RIM, Steve Jobs
Robert Sloss predicted Smartphones in 1910
The original article was titled “Robert Sloss predicted the iPhone in 1910″ but I found this to be bullsh*it, since iPhone still can’t achieve many of the things listed therein. It’s only fair to everyone that it should be titled this way!
Well, coming back; the article claims that in 1910, Robert Stoss published an essay called “The Wireless Century,” intending to predict the world of 2010. In this world everyone carries around a “wireless telegraph” which:
1. Serves as a telephone, the whole world over.
2. Either rings or vibrates in your pocket.
3. Can transmit any musical recording or performance with perfect clarity.
4. Can allow people to send each other photographs, across the entire world.
5. Can allow people to see the images of paintings, museums, etc. in distant locales.
6. No one will ever be alone again.
7. Can serve as a means of payment, connecting people to their bank accounts and enabling payments (Japan is ahead of us here).
8. Can connect people to all newspapers, although Sloss predicted that people would prefer that the device read the paper aloud to them (not so much the case).
9. Can transmit documents to “thin tubes of ink,” which will then print those documents in distant locales.
10. People will have a better sense of the poor, and of suffering, because they will have witnessed it through their device (not obviously true, at least not yet).
11. People will vote using their devices and this will empower democracy (nope).
12. Judicial testimonies will be performed over such devices, often from great distances.
13. People will order perfectly-fitting fashions from Paris; this guy should be in the Apps business.
14. Married couples will be much closer, and distance relationships will be closer and better.
15. Military targeting and military orders will become extremely precise.
Interesting eh? Anyway, don’t know who’s Robert Stoss? Google for it 
Tags: iPhone, iPhone 4, Robert Stoss, Robert Stoss' prediction, smartphones
iOS4 – 10 Hidden Features
Filed under Tech
Apple’s iOS 4 (formerly known as iPhone OS 4) goes live today, with the phone shipping tomorrow onwards. Steve Jobs have talked extensively about the new OS, but there are still a lot of things remaining unexplained. So what’s so special about this new OS? Here goes a list of some 10 hidden features.
- Support for Bluetooth Keyboards
- Rotate and resize photos
- Wikipedia and Web search
- Switching off cellular data
- Orientation Lock
- App-specific location settings
- YouTube rotate and zoom
- Custom Dictionary
- Calendar events from e-mails
- Persistent Wi-Fi
Go get your update today!
Make sure you’ve got iTunes 9.2 installed, hook your phone up to your machine and click on update if it doesn’t already prompt you to download iOS 4 for free. Then, sit back, enjoy and let us know in the comments if you’ve found a few touches of genius of your very own. If you’re wondering why it’s not available quite yet, it might be that we’re all having to wait for Uncle Steve to get up and have his cornflakes first.
Tags: Apple, iOS 4, iPhone, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4
iPhone 4 Revealed! With 1500 New features!!
Filed under Tech
Finally it’s out! With Steve Jobs taking the stage again, everything was wonderful as they were meant to be. Well, put aside all the hiccups they had of course!
Now for the phone, which comes in five flavours, and with 32GB of capacity (max). iPhone HD comes with a 960 X 640 px really high-res IPS display, with the same old excellent multitouch feedback. Now for a bit of technical specs in short:
- Glass on front and rear with stainless steel running around the side. Uses stainless steel for strength, uses glass for optical quality and scratch resistance.
- Really thin at 9.3mm! (Thinnest smartphone on the planet)
- external features: volume up and down, mute, front facing camera. Micro-sim tray, Camera with LED flash on back, and mic, 30 pin connector, and speaker at the bottom.
- The black seams we have seen? Shows that the stainless steel band is the primary structure of the phone, “Brilliant engineering, uses band as part of Antenna system.” One side is Bluetooth, WiFi, GPS, other is UMTS and GSM.
- Retina display! 4x as pixel density in same amount of space at 326 ppi, with 800:1 contrast ratio
- iPhone OS 4 – Apps automatically run full size but look even better because iPhone OS automatically renders text and controls in higher resolution, without developers doing any work.
- runs on Apple A4 chip – bigger battery plus A4 processor, 40% more talk time. 7 hours talk time. 6 hours of 3G browsing, 10 hours of WiFi browsing, 10 hours of video. 40 hours of music. 300 hours of standby.
- 32GB of storage, quadband HSDPA/HSUPA, and 802.11n now.
- a new hardware – Gyroscope! Gyro + accelerometer = 6 axis motion sensing. Rotation of 3D objects is smooth.
- Camera – 5MP (it’s not about the megapixels says Jobs!) with backside illuminated sensor. 5x digital zoom in camera app and tap to focus with LED flash. Demo pics were very good. Video: 720p at 30 fps! Tap to focus video with built-in video editing and one-click sharing (Record, edit, and share HD video right on your phone).
- iMovie for iPhone! Just like the desktop version, only smaller. For for $4.99!
- iPhone OS is now called iOS 4!
- Multitasking, as we already know.
- Google will remain as default search option. Bing added as 3rd!
- iBooks coming to iPhone 4 (and iPod Touch).
- iAds.
- and many more!
Off the hook, 100 millionth iOS device will be sold this month! Congrats Apple.
Tags: Apple, iPhone, iPhone 4, iPhone 4G, iPhone HD
Next iPhone (iPhone 4G) Found, Dissected, and Returned!
Filed under Tech
Quickpost!
The tale of the iPhone 4G. So much of this story was online in the past few days, I’m probably the last to post on it. Anyway, a prototype of the next-gen iPhone was lost in a bar, found by a stranger, who had later sold it to Gizmodo for $5000. Gizmodo gracefully dissected it, but eventually had to return the unit after a formal request from Apple Inc. So that proves that it’s 100% genuine.
Let’s go over the pictures fast.
And just for comparison with the 3GS:
The prototype dissected:
Now for the story.
What’s new?
• Front-facing video chat camera
• Improved regular back-camera (the lens is quite noticeably larger than the iPhone 3GS)
• Camera flash
• Micro-SIM instead of standard SIM (like the iPad)
• Improved display. It’s unclear if it’s the 960×640 display thrown around before—it certainly looks like it, with the “Connect to iTunes” screen displaying much higher resolution than on a 3GS.
• What looks to be a secondary mic for noise cancellation, at the top, next to the headphone jack
• Split buttons for volume
• Power, mute, and volume buttons are all metallic
What’s changed?
• The back is entirely flat, made of either glass (more likely) or ceramic or shiny plastic in order for the cell signal to poke through. Tapping on the back makes a more hollow and higher pitched sound compared to tapping on the glass on the front/screen, but that could just be the orientation of components inside making for a different sound
• An aluminum border going completely around the outside
• Slightly smaller screen than the 3GS (but seemingly higher resolution)
• Everything is more squared off
• 3 grams heavier
• 16% Larger battery
• Internals components are shrunken, miniaturized and reduced to make room for the larger battery
Tags: iPhone, iPhone 4G, iPhone Gizmodo, iPhone HD, new iPhone, next iPhone, next-gen iPhone
Purported iPhone 4G Images Surface [Updated: Fake!]
Filed under Tech
I can’t confirm on the authenticity of these images, but they look quite real.
If the above images are real, we are led to believe that the upcoming iPhone will support video calls through front-facing camera, will have a bigger screen, redesigned home screen (quite similar to the iPad), thinner and sleeker chassis, etc.
Update! It’s a concept!
Do checkout the second source below. It’s apparently a concept from a user named Seraphan, so that rules it as fake! Plus iPhone in multiple colours? I doubt it. And I can’t believe Mobile-Review bought it!
Source: Mobile-review and Spazio Cellulare
