Steve Jobs Dead

[RednekF350]

I don't have any Apple products myself but my oldest son is a major fan.
Quite the genius.

http://news.yahoo.com/steve-jobs-dies-56-003900379.html

Rest in Peace.

 

[Teegate]

All Apple fans like myself are concerned. Hopefully, he has made the proper decisions to keep them on the right track.

Guy

 

[Boyd]

I was listening to CNBC on XM radio when they broke in with the news earlier this evening. What a shame, he was still young. Sadly, this isn't much of a surprise. He wouldn't have resigned as CEO unless the end was near. Anyone who looked at pictures of him recently could see how bad his condition was. I've always admired him myself - ever since I bought my Apple ][ computer back in 1978 (mine was one of the first 5,000 computers that Apple made).

If you're interested in Steve Jobs, I recommend that you watch The Pirates of Silicon Valley - I think you will find it in multiple parts on YouTube. It follows his and Bill Gates' careers from the early days up into the Mac era. Very well done. Noah Wiley played jobs and completely nailed the part. Jobs was so pleased, he had Wiley come out on stage dressed like him and start doing his presentation at MacWorld as a gag. Bill Gates was not amused and refused to comment on the movie. But it wasn't entirely flattering to Jobs either, it showed his ugly side.

For me, Apple has changed to the point where I hardly recognize it. I use my Mac less and less these days, and Final Cut Pro is really the only software that I still need it for (no Windows version). Unfortunately, they are becoming the polar opposite of what Apple originally stood for - something cool and unique that stood apart from the crowd. Now they are the norm - a mega corporation where every big fund owns their stock. They have become the "new Microsoft" with a near monopoly on digital music, tablet computers and smart phones.

Don't get me wrong - their products are still good, I love my iPhone - but I don't know how long they can keep the lead. Wall Street like Tim Cook (new CEO) but I'm not so impressed. There are so many people that own their stock, it's hard to find anyone who is critical of the company. I was sad when he resigned and it had almost no effect on the stock price - it seemed disrespectful almost. Will be interesting to see what happens in the market tomorrow. They disappointed everyone by announcing the iPhone 4s yesterday instead of the iPhone 5. I bought Apple stock at about $13, sold it all at $150 about 3 years ago. Maybe I should have held on, considering how much higher it went, but I put the money to good use.

So long Steve, I will miss you.

 

[46er]

What I find truly sad is all the condolences I've seen mention nothing about the man, just his work. To me, if that is all his life was about, it is very sad.

 

[dogg57]

What I find truly sad is all the condolences I've seen mention nothing about the man, just his work. To me, if that is all his life was about, it is very sad.

His gene pool was intriguing. His biological parents were Abdulfattah John Jandali, a Syrian immigrant; and a graduate student named Joanne Simpson. Unmarried when her son was born on February 24, 1955, Simpson gave him up for adoption. She later married Jandali and had another child, award-winning novelist Mona Simpson. Jobs grew up in a middle-class suburb with two loving parents, Paul and Clara Jobs. (He had a sister, Patti, who survives him.) Though he did make a successful effort to find his birth mother, he never seemed to warm to the theory that his drive was a subconscious reaction to a conjectured rejection. He always spoke highly of the family that raised him. “I grew up at a time where we were all well-educated in public schools, a time of peace and stability until the Vietnam War got going in the late sixties,” he said.
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/10/jobs/

 

[Boyd]

To me, if that is all his life was about, it is very sad.

Really! It also makes me sad that nobody ever talks about how much Rembrandt liked playing with his grandchildren, that Mozart loved puppies or that Thomas Edison organized the annual bake sale.

His work was his life. Some men are just like that and I fail to see any "sadness". Nevertheless, he was still human...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203476804576613732041665792.html

After his liver transplant, while he was recuperating at home in Palo Alto, Steve invited me to catch up. It turned into a three-hour visit, punctuated by a walk to a nearby park that he insisted we take, despite my nervousness about his frail condition.

He explained that he walked each day, and that each day he set a farther goal for himself, and that, today, the neighborhood park was his goal. As we were walking and talking, he suddenly stopped, not looking well. I begged him to return to the house, noting that I didn't know CPR and could visualize the headline: "Helpless reporter lets Steve Jobs die on the sidewalk."

But he laughed, and refused, and, after a pause, kept heading for the park. We sat on a bench there, talking about life, our families, and our respective illnesses. (I had had a heart attack some years earlier.) He lectured me about staying healthy. And then we walked back.

 

[dogg57]

Its just like anything else the news media reports on. They all write about it differently

 

[Teegate]

Even though he made the company what it is, he had a dark side. When Apple first went public years ago, he kept some of the original employees who were with them from the beginning from getting stock. Steve Wozniak who was a cofounder with Jobs was not happy about that. Job basically told him that is the way it was going to be. Imagine you working at a start-up and when the money starts rolling in you were not given any.

So Steve Wozniak being the nice guy that he is, sold some of his stock to many of the employees at a low cost so that those who were left out were able to try and catch up. Obviously, if you did not have any money to buy in you were out of luck.

Guy

 

[Boyd]

You really need to watch Pirates of Silicon Valley if you haven't. Just looked on YouTube and all of the posts have been pulled due to copyright issues unfortunately. It will probably show up on TV again now. Just dusted off my old DVD and plan to watch it again tonight. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0168122/

It definitely shows the dark side of Steve. Several years ago, I watched it with a friend who didn't know anything about him. By the end, she thought he was an egomaniac and a real jerk.

Nevertheless, Steve loved it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIClAanU7Os

 

[Ben Ruset]

 

[Boyd]

Very funny. Mossberg wrote about that real interview in the WSJ article I linked to above.

For our fifth All Things Digital Conference, both Steve and his longtime rival, the brilliant Bill Gates, surprisingly agreed to a joint appearance, their first extended onstage joint interview ever. But it almost got derailed.

Earlier in the day, before Gates arrived, I did a solo onstage interview with Jobs, and asked him what it was like to be a major Windows developer, since Apple's iTunes program was by then installed on hundreds of millions of Windows PCs.

He quipped: "It's like giving a glass of ice water to someone in Hell."

When Gates later arrived and heard about the comment, he was, naturally, enraged. In a pre-interview meeting, Gates said to Jobs "so I guess I'm the representative from hell."

Jobs merely handed Gates a cold bottle of water. The tension was broken, and the interview was a triumph, with both men acting like statesmen. When it was over, the audience rose in a standing ovation, some of them in tears.

Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203476804576613732041665792.html#ixzz1a3JW5Jnw​

​

 

[bobpbx]

Jeez, they sit there all relaxed, as if they were each worth billions of dollars or something.

 

[dragoncjo]

Don't get me wrong - their products are still good, I love my iPhone - but I don't know how long they can keep the lead. Wall Street like Tim Cook (new CEO) but I'm not so impressed. There are so many people that own their stock, it's hard to find anyone who is critical of the company. I was sad when he resigned and it had almost no effect on the stock price - it seemed disrespectful almost. Will be interesting to see what happens in the market tomorrow. They disappointed everyone by announcing the iPhone 4s yesterday instead of the iPhone 5. I bought Apple stock at about $13, sold it all at $150 about 3 years ago. Maybe I should have held on, considering how much higher it went, but I put the money to good use.

So long Steve, I will miss you.

Boyd the stock price dipped 20 bucks after hours when Steve resigned and promplty rocketed higher at open the following day, that was just hedge funds stealing stock. Wall Street and traders price in alot of info into a stock when coming up with its trading value. In this case many traders (including me) took the resignation as a buying oppurtunity on the stock and that is why it went higher. Jobs end was priced in for a long time, that is sad and ruthless but so is Wall Street. The stock has 100% earnings growth year on year and traded at 13-16x earnings, Amazon trades at 100x and reported a loss last quarter, so you can point the depressed PE solely to the uncertainty of Stevie's health. Also on MLK day the stock ripped lower when he took a leave, so for most people this was not a suprise. I think Apple's stock price will reach a peak after the iphone 5 comes out. 50% of revenue comes from the phone and I'm not sure that is sustainable along with their earnings growth.

I was never an apple guy but became one after trading this stock for the last two years, the execution of the company is unreal and they are one of the few companies that determines what the consumer will buy, they tell you this is what you want.

 

[Boyd]

Yeah, this is certainly what I hear from most analysts, and it's probably all true. But I made more than 10x my original investment in AAPL and you know what they say about bulls, bears and pigs.

What I find amusing however is that everyone agrees that Steve Jobs was was a unique genius like the world has never seen before. But, at the same time, Apple Computer will be fine without him. I guess this will be the exception that proves the rule... you can actually have your cake and eat it too.

 

[dragoncjo]

I'm not sure apple will be fine as a company without Stevie, but I think their stock price will not suffer a big dip. There is often a disconnect between the company's health and its stock price (see nflx) It has essentially traded as if Steve Jobs hasn't been around in years. Any other company with their earnings growth would be trading much higher (see nflx- until recently). Its also hard to believe that aapl is the second largest company in the world because of a gadgets, I think that says something about our society and what Steve created.

Boyd your better then me, I would have sold at 26.

Disclosure I'm long aapl stock.

 

[Boyd]

I just get nervous when everybody says a stock is great, especially when everybody owns it. This market is crazy - we saw HP drop 30% in two days last month when they screwed up.

Al Pacino sums up my philosophy in Glengarry Glen Ross: "I subscribe to the law of contrary public opinion. If everyone thinks one thing, then I say: bet the other way."

 

[Ben Ruset]

Apparently Apple stock usually drops during keynotes, then bounces back after the event is done. Stocks are weird.

 

[dragoncjo]

Apple drops on phone launches and most new product roll outs. Its a buy on the rumor sell on the news mentality of the market.

4s set a one day record in sales stock up 13+ dollars.

Boyd, subscribing to that rule is one of the best investment strategies. I like buying stocks at discounts and selling at premiums. When the plumber starts telling me to buy a stock that means I short it. When the media is telling me move to cash I'm getting long stocks. When everyone is long there is nothing left to take the stock higher. This may prove right on aapl but unless they stop growing earnings it will only fall so far. As long as the companies you put money have sound balance sheets and you have bullets in the chamber it works great.

In regards to HP they had a tablet that totally flopped, made a bad hire at CEO (Leo), dimishing computer sales due to tablet boom, they may be a value trap.

 

[Teegate]

He is one of us. I always admired that about him.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/13/tech/mobile/woz-iphone-4s/index.html?hpt=hp_c1

Guy

 

[Boyd]

I always admired the Woz also. But he's not really one of "us" unless you are also worth $100 million.