Inside Steve Jobs. His High Level Principals

I feel that this article needs writing. I've known it for a long while, but I think its important to point out what I feel that he thinks. Steve's actions do indeed follow rules and principals. Understanding of this may predict his overall actions.


Steve thinks that many people must be ruled in order to thrive.

Steve thinks that those people wish to have a leader who will cut the taller plants so the sun will reach them.

Steve thinks that no plant should be allowed to grow taller than the shortest, and in that way give light to all.

Steve thinks that people would rather be provided a guiding light, regardless of the fuel, than light a candle themselves.

Steve thinks people need an enemy to feel a sense of purpose.

Steve thinks its easy to lead people who have a sense of purpose.

Steve thinks that the sense of purpose is more important than the truth.




Many of these principals are correct in some sense, although I hold no judgement to the morality of them.

Apple bans the use of Scripting languages in iTouch, iPhone and iPad apps.

"Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited)."

While the intended target for this was Adobe, I think this also means that they may have unintentionally banned scripting languages.

lol... I mean seriously now. Banning scripting languages?

Does this mean that Unity is in violation? That cuts out a very large market I would think considering how great and prolific Unity is.

What does Apple have against Adobe anyway? Did they egg Steve Job's house or something? This is a little ridiculous.

Simple JPEG Encoder/Decoder

Its hard to find simple, single C/C++ file jpeg encoders/decoders with no dependancies on external libraries.

For decoding: http://keyj.s2000.ws/?p=137

So far thats the best I've found as far as simplicity.

For encoding: http://www.jonolick.com/code.html

I put this one together based on a javascript encoder. Its not optimized, but its functional and in a single file. Enjoy! :)

iPad and obvious flaws... the next iMac

One of the oldest tricks in the political book, is to put an obvious flaw into something so you can then control the conversation.

Perhaps (and I do stress perhaps) the next generation iMac, will be an iPad with Mac OSX on it and the internal guts of a MacBook Air. This way he can have tons of haters and free press about the iPad and its lack of user freedom and control. This is the kind of press money simply can't buy. Imagine an entire internet up in arms about the denying of iPad apps, raging madness from some about the closedness of the platform, only to then turn around and say a year from now... "we listened and here is the new iMac". Everybody in elation goes out and buys an iMac in much greater numbers than if he did it the straight forward way as more people than ever were aware.

Jobs isn't stupid. He knows that tablets, laptops, and portability at large is the future of personal computing. By limiting Apple to a closed solution like the iPad, he is simply waiting for some good competitor (google?) to come along and blast them out of the water. (and they will eventually, it is only a matter of time). He won't let that happen, so I think he will provide both closed and open solutions. The only question is when?

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Of course, the opposite argument is that a closed solution that you control entirely is what all capitalists salivate over. In general, control like this equals money. If he can pull this off, and do it while keeping everybody happy, then Apple will be absolute. de facto. save a few small-time competitors which take up the other 15% of the market. I don't really like this however.

I would like to hope that a computer revolution birthed in openness and freedom will stay free and open.

Batteries

I love portable electronics, but I hate batteries with a passion. My iPhone, I end up having to charge every 3 days or so, and for the last day and a half I'm always thinking, "I don't want to use the phone because I don't want to lose my battery if I really need to call somebody". Has there really been significant progress in batteries over the last 10 years? Seems like the best people can do is be more power efficient and use larger batteries. Its 2010... I'm supposed to have jetpacks by now, but I'll settle for a battery that lasts 2 weeks. I only hope that carbon nano-tubes will save me from my battery hell.

Has Steve Jobs lost his Mojo?

Maybe its just me but, the iPad doesn't really look very interesting. The hardware looks very interesting, but the software has come up very short. They really should have put mac-osx on it, but in their ultimate greed to control things for their own personal gain, they may have killed a beautiful product. Perhaps they went too far on the greed spectrum that it blinded them of what consumers really want. Consumers expect that a computer of that size to have more freedom. Freedom in applications, freedom in choosing to browse the web with flash, freedom to run many programs at once, freedom to run a development environment if they so choose. (I'm a bit biased with the latter obviously).

Of course, one of the most interesting things is to pay attention to the marketing campaign that they are doing for the iPad. The marketing is stronger and uses more intentionally subconscious cues than the iPhone or any other previous Apple product I can remember. I think this is very telling. They know that the iPad isn't very good, and they are scared.

JPEG Format Alpha Channel

I occasionally wonder why JPEG doesn't support an alpha channel. Its really quite a drag sometimes.