Even though this has been expected after the evident deterioration of his health in the last few months, it is hard to accept that the man who is behind a slew of creativity and innovation that has changed our life forever is now gone. From the first Apple computers that introduced the term GUI to the world over thirty years ago to the iconic i-prefixed devices family – this is the man that almost single handedly brought a company written off to be the world’s most valuable company with a market value of $350 billion.

He had a very colorful life.

He was born out of wedlock to a Syrian father, Abdulfattah John Jandali, whom he never met or even speak with and Joanne Simpson. The parents gave him up for adoption. He grew up in California, and was very much a product of that place and time. He took drugs. He got into phone hacking.

He is a prodigy who never finished college. He explained this in the famous Stanford University commencement speech in June 2005 – an inspiring speech that urged youngsters to pursue their dreams against setbacks in life.

His first career was with Atari where he met Steve Wozniak. In 1975 he convinced Wozniak to quit his job at Hewlett Packard and start Apple in a garage. They built Apple I, the world first true fully built up personal computer. By 1980, they have 3 improved versions and launched a succesfull IPO which made him a multi-millionaire by the age of 25 (a great achievement at that time).

When the Apple III and Lisa computers that debuted in 1980 and 1983 were flops – Apple’s Board of Director often disagree with him and in 1984, he was shoved out of his own company by the chairman, John Sculley, a man he brought in from Pepsi.

Never a man to despair, he developed NeXT computer. It was a commercial failure and during this 11 years he was written off as a has been by the industry. However NeXT operating system was instrumental in object-oriented programming, PostScript, and magneto-optical devices and later form the the underpinnings of Apple’s OS X, and iOS.

In 1986, he bought the computer graphics arm of Lucasfilm, Ltd. which became Pixar Animation Studios. Pixar’s films were innovative and pushed the boundaries of CGI to such an extent that even today its early films still look great. Steve understood that great technology alone is not enough – Pixar movies tell stories. They make grown men cry. 20 years later (2006) he sold Pixar to Disney for $7.4 billion after producing blockbusters such as Toy Story (1995); A Bug’s Life (1998); Toy Story 2 (1999); Monsters, Inc. (2001); Finding Nemo (2003); and The Incredibles (2004).

By 1997, Apple situation nosedived as they fared badly against the WinTel (Microsoft Windows and Intel) coalition. Apple board was made to eat humble pie and invited him back to lead the company ~ and he made sure they paid for it by getting Apple to acquire NeXT at a substantial amount. He famously declared that as a CEO he will only take a $1 salary – a gesture that won the hearts of his fans and investors alike.

In 2001, the music industry that was mired in illegal downloading was rocked by Apple’s iPod which made listening to music intuitive and through iTunes, sell songs online for only 99 cents. This became a runaway success despite initial sceptical reviews by the industry – by today 300 million iPods sold and 16 billion songs downloaded. Steve repeated this kind of against-the-grain success many times over and emphasized that the industry should not rely too much on focus group or market study.

“A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”

In 2007, he transformed the cell phone. Apple’s iPhone, with its iconic touch screen, was a handheld computer, music player, messaging device, digital wallet and — almost incidentally — cell phone. Again it was a wild success as consumers love the easy to use powerfull smartphone with hundreds of thousands of apps -all for a low price from $99. The touch screen revolution started by iPhone caused the once mighty Nokia to lose market position and resulting with the unthink-of-before coalition with Microsoft Windows.

“Every once in a while a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything. … One is very fortunate if you get to work on just one of these in your career. Apple’s been very fortunate it’s been able to introduce a few of these into the world.” [Announcement of the iPhone, January 2007]

By the end of 2009, the tech world is a buzz with rumor of Apple’s impending tablet computer. By now the industry is familiar with Steve Jobs (seemingly miraculous) ability to churn out hit success out of nowhere. Of course, tablet computing has been around since late 1990s but was largely dubbed as a failure.

In April 2010, Steve Job gave his famous product launch presentation for iPad which he dubbed as ‘a magical device’. The rest is history and we all know how iPad recorded the fastest growth product ever and turned PC-less computing into reality. From gaming, publishing to broadcasting industries have been affected by consumer changing usage pattern because of iPad.

Like all geniuses, Steve had his flaws, too.

When Atari hired Jobs and Woz to write the code for the iconic Atari game Breakout, the pair earned a $5000 bonus for completing the work, largely done by Woz. But Jobs kept the bonus a secret, and only paid his partner $375.

In the workplace he’s often been described as temperamental and even petulant. He could be arrogant and unforgiving. It was said he had a habit of calling employees or their ideas “dumb” when he didn’t like something. He was even more combative against foes like Microsoft, Google Inc., and Amazon.com Inc. When Adobe Systems Inc. waged a campaign against Apple for not supporting Adobe’s Flash video format on its iPhones and iPads in April 2010, Mr. Jobs wrote a 1,600-word essay about why the software was outdated and inadequate for mobile devices.

Whether you love him or you hate him, you can’t help to admire him. Words like ‘aura’ ‘inspiring’ ‘creative’ and ‘innovation’ are subjectives often used to describe him. Many best sellers titles have been written around him – including one about the Presentation Secret of Steve Jobs that yours truly had really enjoyed. Geeks like us thanked him for turning around the term nerd and geek to be a cool one to have.

In 2004, he beat back an unusual form of pancreatic cancer, and in 2009 he was forced to get a liver transplant. After several years of failing health, Jobs announced on 24 August 2011 that he was stepping down as Apple’s chief executive.

Goodbye Steve. This world will be a bit less exciting and colorful without you. We are going to miss you.

“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me.” [Steve Jobs in The Wall Street Journal, May 1993]

Yes… we’re talking about Apple’s newest product tagged by them as ‘Our most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price‘. Heavy isn’t it… not only is it most advanced technology and revolutionary – it is also magical

. BTW, it is also unbelievable.

I’m not going to do a review, since I’m sure CHIP team will soon dissect and make a thorough review soon. But I can’t resist making a few notes.

1. I’m happy to report that my prediction in the earlier posting has been mostly accurate. Smug . Except the part of a revolutionary new GUI.
   
    
   
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2. Our new blogger, C3PO, must be a mighty confused droid right now. Just two days ago, he was hankering for a Nook eBook device. I wonder whether this shiny new iPad will cause a change of heart.

It seems that the media critics today are not sure what to make of this new iPad. Most of them are left disappointed though. Like alien worshippers that have waited for years for an alien mothership to come and bring them to a wonderful sanctuary. Only to find that when the alien do come, other than the sleek mothership with cool maneuvering techniques, they look just like us and their home planet is no less screwed than planet earth.

In a way, the new iPad (thank god it’s not called iSlate) is just like that. It’s a sleek tablet PC that look and work like a oversized iPod and/or iPhone. It’s no geek nirvana but geeks don’t bring in billions of ringgit to Apple’s coffers – mass consumers do. Even when Apple’s biggest product, iPod, was launched, nobody think twice about them. “Bah.. MP3 players… plenty of them in the market

” so thought the critics.

I believe that the crux to iPad’s success or otherwise will be down to one key ingredient usability. This has often been Apple’s strength and also the achilles heel of run-of-the-mill tablet PC. So we’ll have to wait and see till March when the product will actually be made available and for the general public to get their hands on the latest shiny gadget coming out from Cupertino. Two months… plenty of time for Apple’s PR machine to flex their muscle and for developers to beat the queue to build new apps for iPad.

So… how do we look at this? In my mind, the greatest desire for a tablet PC is to enable us to enjoy computing in the living room, bed room and on the throne. Bill Gate’s dream of ‘a PC on every table‘ is so 80′s. Today, we, the 21st century citizens, want it everywhere now. As any hardworking career executives would testify, after a solid 10 hours staring at the office’s PC or notebook, you want something enjoyable that wouldn’t remind you of work.

Socialising

With its sleek 1.1cm thin profile, dainty 1.5lbs and 10 hours battery life, I can imagine myself taking this sexy thing to bed and spend hours of fun with it. No wires, no keyboard, no mouse. Just my fingers to get my iPad do stuff that I’ve never had in bed before. Facebooking, Twittering and emailing….

If only it has a built in camera… that will open up another dimension of socialising I can do.

Showing Off

One of the reasons why people like me still prints photos is because digital photos are just so damn difficult to show off to other people. Getting uncles and aunties to squint at the 4″ screen of the phone or camera is so cumbersome to them. Passing around your notebooks to show your last holiday pics in a party is so not cool.

But I can imagine me (or most probably my better half) showing off this sleek tablet AND the photos to friends and family in the living room or at the porch. Pinching at the screen to zoom in and out… My cool-geek status would be considerably increased. Oh ya.. it will be fun to them as well.

Apparently, the iPad will also double as a digital photo display whilst it’s being charged and docked.

Me time

Again, with its spec mentioned above, the iPad would make a great company for the all important ‘Me time’. e.g. when you want to sit in your favorite chair in a corner on a nice Sunday morning, reading the newspaper or a nice book. The only question is about content and availability of it. How many titles can you get – and whether Apple will limit to just titles from its iBookstore (likely) or can you download your own titles? Can I read local content like NST, The Star or Business Times in iPad optimised version?

It seem light enough to bring to the small-room’s throne. That will help to avoid the clutter of mags there.

Family Time

The iPad is also claimed to be able to play movies and videos – including an apps for YouTube. In other words, it’s a portable media player as well.

This is great news. The balik kampung this year will be a peaceful one as the little passengers at the back will be busy with Upin & Ipin movie. 10 hours battery time will buy me time from KL to Alor Star easily.

Of course, I can’t forget the Apps Store. Apparently the iPad can play almost everything that the Apps store has. All the 100,000+ titles. However, I’m not an iPhone user and have no first hand experience in this matter, so can’t really say how excited I’m with this prospect.

So what’s your take? Will you be queuing for it or wait see first?

Fast Tube by Casper

Related articles:

• Apple Ipad – Will you buy it? (trak.in)
• Three Things Apple Needs To Do To Make Its Tablet A Breakthrough Device (paidcontent.org)
• First Impressions of the new Apple iPad (Walter S. Mossberg /Mossblog) (techmeme.com)
• Apple Tablet iPad Features and Specification (shoutmeloud.com)
• The Goldilocks device (speedcommunications.com)

It all started with the frenzied rumor that Apple is coming out with a new device that is said to be a tablet PC.

As many of you may remember, about 5 years ago tablet PC is touted as the next hot thing and most PC manufacturers came out with their version of tablet PCs. They did find take-up in niche market but the general consumer didn’t embrace them. Underpowered, unwieldy, inefficient use of stylus and tablet PC fizzled into oblivion.

In fact, if I’m not mistaken I still have that piece of Fujitsu tablet gathering dust somewhere in the shelves.

So why would anyone bet on them making a comeback this year?

For one, the idea of a computer device that can be operated by natural human movements is still very much in favour. Think of Tom Cruise’s hand controlled computer operation in the film Minority Report and you will get the idea.

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Tom Cruise in the sci-fi film Minority Report

But why now? I suspect, they would not want to be a laggard to a market that the oh-so-trendy Apple is planning to go into. Especially after being caught napping with the runaway success of iPod and iPhone, Microsoft especially do not want to be left behind and play catchup again.

It was rumored that Apple will lift the veil later this month though Apple, as usual, has been very secretive and give little away.

So what should they do? Potong jalan of course. Steve Balmer must have decided that the best way is to steal the thunder. On Saturday at Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, he showed off 3 models of tablet PC from HP, Pegatron and Archos that will be launched soon. To add impact to the presentation, a new term ‘slate PC’ was introduced. Unfortunately, not much details were released other than the PCs will be using (wait .. wait..) Windows 7! How very exciting… not.

Fast Tube by Casper

Personally, I don’t think the Microsoft approach is going to make much impact. It really is just an old horse in new makeup. Do you know that Microsoft has also another touch-screen-PC line called ‘Surface‘? You don’t? There you go…

My prediction is that Apple’s tablet PC will resemble more like a bigger, more powerful iPod Touch rather than a small one-piece Macbook. It will probably sport a new GUI that make heavy use of muti-touch-tactile-screen operations. Like iPhone and iPod, it will not be designed to be an all-singing multi purpose equipment but designed for limited specific uses only (but do it very well).

I may not opt for an iPhone and I have not converted to the Mac. But I do like my iPod Touch and if Apple’s track record is anything to go by – I will soon be queuing in line for Apple’s new tablet thingy (iSlate?).

Related articles :

• What is a tablet, anyway? (cnn.com)
• CES 2010: Gadget show begins ‘year of the tablet’ (telegraph.co.uk)
• Microsoft CEO unveils new HP tablet (canada.com)

So is it worth the hype?

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Peter Chou, CEO of HTC, holds the Google Nexus One phone during a news conference at Google headquarters Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2010, in Mountain View, Calif.

CHIP team members have been checking their emails, IMs and faxes. Unfortunately, the good people at Mountain View has forgotten to send the invite to yesterday’s launch. And thus no first hand review to be had and we had to rely on modern-day sleuth technique – Googling…

Let’s get the facts straight:

• The phone is manufactured by the Taiwanese company, HTC
• It’s powered by the 1GHz Snapdragon CPU from Qualcomm
• It uses the same Android 2.1 OS that runs other Android phones
• It’s thin @ 1.15cm and light @ 130 gm
• On the front are four “hardware” buttons (just touch-sensitive spots on the display): back, menu, home, and search
• Navigation device is a trackball that lights up to tell you a message has come in, with different colors to indicate whether it’s an e-mail, text message, or part of a chat.
• Sports voice-recognition software that will transcribe spoken messages if you prefer reading to listening.
• It has a five-megapixel camera and (wee
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• You can buy it from Google’s Online Store
• They’ll ship to UK, Singapore and Hong Kong – unlocked – for US$529
• It featured built in GPS receiver which we assume will integrate well with Google Maps

Now tell me… any of that salivate you enough to take the next AirAsia plane to Singapore and make the order? Aside from the I-must-have-the-latest-gadget geeks, I suspect not many do. I know for a fact that I don’t.

The fact is: this Google Phone is no earth shattering, revolutionary iPhone killer that many have hyped it to be.

Look at this official picture from Google website. What does it reminds you of? Does Palm Pre come to mind?

I’ve nothing against Palm but the fate of the Palm series is not something that you aspire to be. Not if you’re the mighty Cloud King with billions of cash in your war-chest.

It has been said that Google has openly said that the decision to come out with its own Google Phone is largely down to an anti-Apple strategy. For all the resources that they command, is this all they can do? The stock market took note: Google stock dropped slightly after the announcement today. Apple’s stock went down slightly as the hour of Google’s announcement approached, but then recovered.

But then again – Google has always been a software company and not much of a hardware manufacturer. So I suspect that they have not really put in as much resources into it as they could have.

In light of their ongoing search-engine and online-apps running battle with Microsoft, this new battle in the mobile industry must be part of a bigger overall strategy. What i will call the “Our banner-ads kingdom will not last forever, look for new sources of income

” strategy.

After the veil was lifted last Tuesday, many has noted that the revolutionary part of the Google Phone is not the phone itself – but the decision by Google to go into retail and sell the phone itself. As was captured by a post in Arstechnica:

The real news at Google’s event this morning—news that could shake up the mobile industry just as thoroughly as the original iPhone announcement—wasn’t a phone at all, but a URL: http://google.com/phone. An online storefront that, if successful, could knock one of the major pillars out the current, much-reviled US carrier model and result in faster, cheaper, more flexible service for mobile users….

By offering a lineup of phones that is essentially carrier-independent (with the radio compatibility caveat), Google has separated the two previously interlocked parts of the phone/plan-buying experience—phone selection and carrier selection—and has done so in a way that threatens one of the most important enablers of carrier lock-in….In short, what Google announced today wasn’t just the Nexus One, but the world’s first carrier-independent smartphone store.

This sentiment is echoed by Good Morning Silicon Valley:

No single device is going to “kill” the iPhone, and that’s not really Google’s intent anyway, iPhone users being the heavy Web traffickers that they are. But Google does have a strong interest in fostering enough competition to keep Apple from dominating the mobile market, which is why it chose the strategy it did — providing a strong and improving platform that could support multiple manufacturers offering multiple models to multiple demographic segments across multiple carriers. Google doesn’t need to tear down the iPhone; it just needs to make sure there are plenty of attractive alternatives for smartphone shoppers who for various reasons don’t feel compelled to join the Apple-AT&T axis. As an Android flagship, unlocked but initially aligned with T-Mobile, the Nexus One fits as part of that plan.

It’s still early days. Reports have came out from lucky-testers in USA that have generally said that the Nexus One is ‘better than other Android phones’ buy have come out short of saying ‘this is better than an iPhone’.

I believe the real trick will be in the roll-out of 3rd party application developers. There are millions of iPhone apps available at AppleStore compared to 17,000+ apps so far available on Android platform.

Until one unit magically lands itself on my desk… not much I can say about user experience. Hopefully the day will come soon… eh So, I sneaked a visit to the Google phone store and was warmly greeted by the message ‘Sorry, the Nexus One phone is not available in your country.

‘.