Apple has sold 129 million iPhones and 29 million iPads. And in the decade since it revolutionized the music industry by offering "1,000 songs in your pocket," it has sold 300 million iPods, or roughly enough to outfit every person in the United States.
Famously devoted to Apple products -- and often mocked, it must be said, by people who are not -- even the acolytes of Jobs paused to reflect on how deeply his creations were enmeshed in their lives. Seamlessly, of course.
"I'm Apple everything," said Alison Brie, who plays Annie Edison on the NBC comedy show "Community." "It's changed the way we listen to music and watch TV, connect to fans. Twitter on my phone is -- it's huge."
In New York, a family visiting from Norway waited for the 9 a.m. opening of an Apple Store. Jorund Skurdal said his family owned about 15 Apple gadgets, including "a couple iPads, iPods, an iMac, an iBook, and some other things."
Five-year-old son Carsten already had his own MacBook, and 3-year-old Sanna was an iPod fan. Carsten had just bought a new app yesterday -- Life of George, an interactive Lego game.
"He was one of a kind," Skurdal, who lives in Oslo, said of Jobs. "He was able to take these boring computer items and make them accessible, usable and very sexy." His main interest now, he said, "is that the company survives, and thrives. I think it will."
Jobs' death came a day after Tim Cook, who took over as Apple CEO when Jobs stepped down in August, presided over the launch of the iPhone 4S. It was the first time in years Apple had launched a major product without Jobs to advertise it in his trademark jeans and black mock turtleneck.
Apple stock, which traded at about $5 a share when Jobs assumed the CEO job for the second time in 1997, passed $400 earlier this year. Investors have worried for years about what would happen to the company without him.
Because so many products that were graced by the Jobs touch are still in the sales pipeline, it will take years to measure the impact of his death. On Thursday, the stock fluctuated, but only by a couple of percentage points. It closed down 88 cents at $377.37.
In a measure of his impact on personal technology, Jobs was venerated by his fiercest competitors in the hours after his death.
Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, a company that Apple once treated as Goliath to its David and then blew past in market value, said it was "an insanely great honor" to have known Jobs. A statement of grief came from Sony, whose Walkman and Discman were buried by the iPod.
Google added a link to the Apple site on its famously minimalist search page. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, thanked him for changing the world.
To the extent that there is an online version of the old-time public square, it was overrun Thursday by remembrances of Jobs.
On Twitter, where the most popular "trending" topics change by the hour, "ThankYouSteve" and "iSad" were still high on the list a day after his death.
On Facebook, people posted revisions of the Apple logo, a stylized apple with a detached leaf and a half-moon bite taken out. One added a frown and tears to the apple. Another replaced the bite with a silhouette of Jobs himself.
Heads of state around the world added their thoughts. President Barack Obama said Jobs exemplified American ingenuity. Mexico's President Felipe Calderon bemoaned the loss of "one of the most visionary minds of our times." India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said he was "deeply saddened."
Associated Press writers Karen Matthews and Jocelyn Noveck in New York, Ryan Nakashima in Los Angeles and Zeina Karam in Beirut contributed to this report.
9 things you didn’t know about the life of Steve Jobs
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/technology-blog/8-things-didn-t-know-life-steve-jobs-172130955.html
No comments:
Post a Comment