Team,
I am sure all of you saw my letter last week sharing something very personal with the Apple community. Unfortunately, the curiosity over my personal health continues to be a distraction not only for me and my family, but everyone else at Apple as well. In addition, during the past week I have learned that my health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought.
In order to take myself out of the limelight and focus on my health, and to allow everyone at Apple to focus on delivering extraordinary products, I have decided to take a medical leave of absence until the end of June.
I have asked Tim Cook to be responsible for Apple's day to day operations, and I know he and the rest of the executive management team will do a great job. As CEO, I plan to remain involved in major strategic decisions while I am out. Our board of directors fully supports this plan.
I look forward to seeing all of you this summer.
Steve
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Steve Jobs' condition is worse than he thought
He's taking a further six months off. It wasn't just an imbalance of hormones then? The investors aren't too happy about it and may sue. Apple shares are down as well. Yes, Jobs is an inspirational leader but who's to say that Apple can't survive without him?
Let's bring back Woz! (only joshing). Best wishes Steve!
Friday, January 09, 2009
Retro iPhone/iPod Touch backgrounds to download
Flickr user Synaesthesia has kindly designed some tasty retro backgrounds, so get them on your iPod touch or iPhone and relive those pre-G days.
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
Macworld 2009 Keynote ready for viewing
Get it here. Phil Schiller did a good job. He's as enthusiastic as Steve Jobs and you don't get the feeling that he would strangle someone if anything went wrong. Mr Jobs can rest easy.
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
Three New Things!
New iLife '09!
New version of iPhoto. New 'Faces' way of organising your photos...on cork! Miraculously uses face detection and recognition. Wow! (Looks like I'll be buying this NOW). GPS geotagging can now organise your photos into 'Places'. Faces & Places. Nice. It helps if your camera has geotagging - like the iPhone. You can also manually tag your untagged photos too. iPhoto used Google maps for this so that automatically makes it better than Flickr for placing your photos -they use Yahoo maps. Facebook and Flickr buttons are built in too - so now more having to use 3rd-party plug-ins. Slideshows get themes and use face detection to centre faces in the shots (but what about the rule of thirds?) Slideshows work on iPhone/touch. New printed book themes.
New iMovie '09. Basically they've given it an advanced mode which makes it more like iMovie '06. i.e. before they over-simplified it. Edits with more precision. Advanced drag & drop. Dynamic themes. Animated travel maps. Video stabilisation.
GarageBand '09The main new feature is Learn to Play - instrument tutorials. That guitar I bought three years ago will be dusted and retuned soon...and that USB keyboard. Artist Lessons from John Fogerty, Colbie Colbalt, Fall Out Boy bloke and Sting! Phil Schiller is very excited and that's just for the guitar. There's Sarah McLachlan, Ryan from One Republic, and the lovely Norah Jones for budding keyboard players. More will be added. Looks like the similar 'Now Play It' will be going the same way as Woolies.
iLIfe '09 is $79 to upgrade and is available late Jan.
New Keynote '09. Includes Magic Move. Object transitions. Text transitions. Chart animations. New Themes. iPhone Remote.
Pages '09. Full Screen View. Dynamic outlines. Mail merge with numbers. Math type and Endnote. 40 new Templates.
Numbers '09. Table Categories. Easy formula writing. New chart options. Linked charts.
iWork is $99 or $49 with a new Mac.
Mac Box Set. iLife, MAc OS X and iWork in one box. $169. Available late Jan.
iWork.com (beta) Mobile Me for iWork.
17" MacBook Pro. 0.98 inches thin. 6.6 pounds. Best display ever in a notebook. Comes in glossy or $50 Matte finish (good but you don't get a black border around your display). Up to 2.9 GHz Dual Core. GeForce 9400M and 9600M GT. 8GB DDR 3 RAM 320 GB HD or 256GB SSD. Up to 8 hours battery life. $2799 is the standard set up price. Available late Jan.
One Last Thing...
iTunes. New prices. Starting April. $99, $69 and $1.29. 8 million tracks are iTunes + (DRM Free) today and all by the end of the quarter (about time too!). Complete iTunes Store is available on iPhone and iPod touch.
Tony Bennett sings us a song at the end.
There you go. Where was the new Mac Mini?
So what will Phil reveal today?
Here's a list from Hardmac.com:
- New iMac powered by Intel Quad Core CPU and NVidia GeForce 9400M
- New Mac mini based on the GeForce 9400M, in a slick all metal enclosure, and with an option for 2 hosting 2 HDs.
- New MacBook Pro unibody with a non-exchangeable battery
- Refreshment of the recently released MacBook models
- Launch of on-line iApps (or web-iApps) from the iLife Suite
MacHEADS The movie!
It's the biggest Apple related film since Pirates of Sillicon Valley. MacHEADS The movie is a filmumentary about people like you and me. OK, perhaps a tad more fanatical. It's out this Autumn.
Stephen Fry's twitter rage
This is probably old news for some of you, but I've only just read about this in my MacUser mag that was delivered to work over the Christmas break. 'Funny man' and Mac evangelist Stephen Fry experienced a network problem with his recently purchased Sony Vaio (he needed one to review some PC-only gadgetry). Luckily for us, he felt the need to vent his spleen through his twitter feed.
I hate Vista so much I want to cry. Bought a Vaio. The most useless $4k ever spent. It just will not join a sec-enabled network. HOW???? 2:17 PM Dec 7th, 2008
The network is there. I press to join it doesn't even ask for a password! It just can't join. How insultingly dreadful can software be? 2:18 PM Dec 7th, 2008
I have nine macs!!!!!! I don't need another fucking mac. I just want ONE ARSING PC that isn't complete SHIT 2:18 PM Dec 7th, 2008
Too late. It's going out the window. I can't put up with this sort of arse. 2:21 PM Dec 7th, 2008
Listemn I have parallels, I have fusion, I have 2 distros of Linux. I need jsut one, just 1 of cunting Vista so that I can review things 2:22 PM Dec 7th, 2008
Forgive intemperate language, but every time I buy a PC they're worse, not better than they were before and it make me so angry I could kill 2:23 PM Dec 7th, 2008
How can I review certain PC only things if I don't have one? Anyway, I've calmed down now. Vista and PCs are so crap it's funny x 2:26 PM Dec 7th, 2008
Still taking deep breaths. Thank you all for your concern. The Vista devil spoke thru me and it wasn't pretty. x 2:56 PM Dec 7th, 2008
I get the same Windows rage every time I go 'out of office' with one of work's pool Dell notebooks. Once I lugged one all the way to Capetown and couldn't get it to connect for the whole week I was out there. The last time I went abroad I used my iPod Touch instead but now, after four years of asking DDB for a mac for myself, I have a brand spanking new 15" MacBook Pro being prepared for me as we speak. Send my Dell Optiplex GX620 to the knacker's yard! Stay tuned for the Flickr feed of flat and silvery Mac Porn.
Monday, January 05, 2009
Steve Jobs finds cause of thinness.
The cause of Jobs' weight loss was a mystery to him and his doctors but now they've concluded that it is down to a hormone imbalance and can easily be treated. Jobs will stay on as the Apple CEO for the foreseeable future. And there we were thinking he was about to die of cancer. Pity on us. See BBC News for more.
17" MacBook Pro coming soon
This has just popped up on 9 to 5 Mac. They say the new uni-body notebook won't have an easily removable battery. It'll be an extra slim battery fitted inside the case like the iPod. They can't do that, that's silly. Expect to see them at MacWorld 2009. There's also a mention of the plastic MacBook being phased out leaving no budget model. There's still hope for a MacBook Nano then?
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