On October 4th, Apple unveiled their new iPhone, the 4S, and the world saw that it was the same. Bloggers derided it for not being the 5, for not having a new body, and for… I’ve forgotten^[1].

On October 10th, Apple provided the opportunity to pre-order the new phone, and the world was underwhelmed (if you read Reddit that day). And yet, by some biblical miracle, they managed to sell over a million of the damn things in the first 24 hours of it being on sale in a few select countries. Consumers couldn’t actually touch an iPhone 4S at this point, but they were keen to be the first to do so.

I, on the other hand, waited. I waited first because I didn’t yet have a buyer for my iPhone 4, preloaded with iOS 5, which also wasn’t out yet. A buyer was found, and then I waited some more because there weren’t any models in stock. Hurry up and wait.

I purchased my 4S on November 2nd, a year-and-a-day after I bought my old 4. It’s 64 GB, because I need that extra space for photos, video, and other media. It’s a white one because it looks like an original iPod. It’s beautiful.

After two weeks, I have a few thoughts on some of the newer aspects of the phone, and some thoughts on technology that isn’t new to the 4S. And, to assist organisation of this bit of writing, I’m copping the “S is for x” format from a bunch of other writers.

S is for Speed

It still blows my mind that my phone has a dual-core 1GHz (ish) processor and 512 MB of RAM. Those specs would be astonishing on a desktop PC of just a few years ago. The speed isn’t exactly noticeable until you switch back to an iPhone 4, which feels sluggish by comparison. Rotating the 4S is effectively instantaneous (except in Music, as usual). Rendering is so fast and ever so smooth. Every application opens that little bit quicker, every touch is that little bit more responsive. 

Of course, a valid rebuttal is that I shouldn’t be surprised by this. It should be responsive to touch, otherwise it provides a crappy user experience. Rotating absolutely should be instantaneous. This is something the original iPhone could do really well, and it ran a 400 MHz single-core off-the-shelf ARM stack. But OSes aren’t the same as they were five years ago. iOS isn’t anywhere near the same, as is evident by the OS file sizes. As a result, the performance hasn’t necessarily kept up with the increase in complexity. Remember the iOS 4/iPhone 3G fiasco? Apple partially supported the former on the latter, and it caused all sorts of havock. Numerous customers reported the update made their phones so slow as to render them unusable. This was repeated recently with the iPhone 3GS and iOS 5, though not nearly to the same extent. However, I predict iOS 7 will work as well as iOS 5 does on the iPhone 4S, despite not knowing what that future OS might hold. The 4S is a powerful phone (a really goddamn powerful phone) and likely will stand the test of time.

S is for Shutter

The primary reason I upgraded to a 4S is for the improved camera. The iPhone has been my primary camera since I got my 4 last year. The camera system in the 4S isn’t just a little bit better than that of the 4; it’s in a whole different league.

In terms of still quality, the 4S camera exhibits significantly less noise, a dramatically crisper image and better depth of field. The 2.4 aperture produces some wonderful bokeh in the far background of photos. They also changed the lenses, making for sun glare that looks far less cheap. Apple has noted that they would like to see the iPhone 4S compete with a dedidated point-and-shoot as the camera you’d choose to take with you on a day around town. The resulting photos are good enough in bright daylight that this is a reasonable proposition. There are still shortcomings, obviously, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the 4S replaced a point-and-shoot for most people most of the time.

Video is an even better story. Never mind the upgrade to 1080p resolution — that isn’t too important. The main story is the built-in stabilisation with the gyroscope. I’ve shot more video on my 4S in the last two weeks than I did on my 4 in an entire year purely because of this enhancement. It’s almost like a mini Steadicam, but not quite. Having said that, it is a welcome addition.

S is for Siri

It’s funny that Siri is the most-discussed, most-publicised new feature of the iPhone 4S, and I have yet to use it properly and with any frequency. 

As a non-driver, I have no relation to the advantages it presents while operating a vehicle. It should be less distracting than driving and sending a text message, of course, but I cannot relate.

As the owner of an alarm clock, I do not use the iPhone as one except when travelling. I was away this past weekend and did use Siri to set my alarm, which was much, much nicer than the Clock interface. But I don’t use this on a basis of frequency or regularity.

As a non-American, I cannot use any of the direction features, and that’s very strange. As far as I’m aware, Siri uses Google Maps, which are available in Canada, yet all Siri location services are disabled here. I’m sure there’s a valid reason as to why this is the case, seeing as I can’t think of a reason why Apple would deliberately piss off Canadians. But as a mere consumer, I don’t know why this is the case.

The biggest hurdle, however, is not technical. It’s mostly because commanding a virtual assistant feels very odd, even if it’s in plain language. I’m sure it’s a bit quicker for me to reply to a text message with my voice, or tell Siri to call someone as opposed to finding their name in my list of contacts. But I really, really do not want to. I’m also the kind of person who will find a secluded area to call someone in public, rather than trying to chat while walking down the street.

If, on the other hand, I were the operator of a vehicle who travelled frequently within the United States, I’m sure I’d use Siri a whole lot more.

S is for Summary

The iPhone 4S, then, is a good phone. It probably isn’t a compelling upgrade from a 4, but then again most people are on two- or three-year plans, so it doesn’t need to be. It’s one hell of an upgrade from a 3GS. It’s that little bit better than a 4. It’s a great addition to the family.

1. The EPA? Oh, a four-inch display. Oops. [↑]

— November 16, 2011

Platform wars are stupid. Trying to convince everyone that one OS, one phone or one game console is better than another is preposterous, as everyone is looking for a different set of features. If you’re someone who wants to endlessly customize your phone, you probably won’t be as happy with an iPhone as compared to an Android device, at least in an out-of-the-box kind of way. If you want to run a new version of the OS that isn’t officially supported on your phone you will, again, be happier with Android. And if you want an unregulated free market of apps, you have to go for an Android phone.

It is against Google’s morals to monitor or curate the apps that appear in Android Market. That’s fine; that’s their call. But copyright and trademark holders would likely appreciate a cursory glance at submissions to ensure their intellectual property isn’t being ripped off and re-sold by some jerkoff.

In a few minutes’ search of the Android Market, I found a Tron theme (and another, and another). I couldn’t find any indication on Disney’s site, the app pages on Market or on the developers’ sites that these are licensed applications. Likewise for this Toy Story app, this Disney songs app and this throwing Coke in a trash can app. If you visit the last one, you’ll note that the developer has a number of similar apps available with different company logos.

Apple is, of course, not spared. This live wallpaper depicts an Android logo peeing on an Apple logo. Very clever. So clever, in fact, that someone ripped him off with a slightly different version. There are also a number of iPhone themes available that use the original iOS icons.

This is a bit of a problem by itself, but I would side with the recent Canadian Supreme court decision that merely linking to something does not constitute collusion or liability. But these applications are being hosted by Google. Google is paying for any hosting fees and transaction fees that may be incurred. But what makes this especially infuriating is that Google takes a 30% cut of application sales. You’ll note that throughout this post I’ve only been linking to paid apps. Google will happily take 30% of the sales of applications that infringe upon copyright and trademark. I can’t even see ignorance as a defence here. Google knows what’s in their store, and they’re not taking reasonable steps to ensure infringing material isn’t allowed.

The sixth point on Google’s company philosophy states that they “can make money without doing evil.” They don’t seem particularly attached to that notion. Now that Android is no longer some pet project, Google has something of an obligation to make the official market for it free of malware and property infringement. Android is the most popular smartphone operating system, and Google should act like they know what that means for users.

— October 30, 2011

The ever-increasing progress of humanity over the last few centuries is remarkable. The difference in where we are today as compared to a hundred years ago is scarcely believable, to say the least. All of those “visions of the future” videos made in the 1950s are, by and large, reality. A newspaper, a friend’s face and your favourite song are just a click away.

I’ve been thinking a fair amount about similar projections of the future by Microsoft and RIM (and the other) in this context. These are broad ideas of the future and, while I may joke about the lack of basic physics in each, I genuinely think there are many approximations of where things are headed (unlike Microsoft’s old “visions” video).

Many of the technologies in these films already exist. Real-time collaboration, video chat, dictation and remote hotel check-in are all with us here, today, now. But the real magic of these videos is in the seamless integration of these things. This idea is one that seems to work best on Android devices. Since any application can tap into a contextual menu, it becomes trivial to move documents around between apps on the same device. But Apple is more in tune with seamless integration across devices; iCloud can sync everything down to the position of the text insertion cursor. The other aspect of the videos that I noticed was the forward-thinking user interfaces. Many of the interfaces shown are completely impractical and utterly inefficient, but there’s an overwhelming sense of flatness ^[1]. There’s no texture in the future, no gloss and no opacity. Everything is flat, geometric and simple. This seems to be a common thread amongst the current technology companies: Microsoft and RIM show it in their videos (and Microsoft is implementing it in Metro) and Google is building it into Android 4. Apple, however, is moving in a more tactile direction, increasingly using real-world, realistically-rendered textures (as I’ve previously discussed). It remains to be seen which is the better approach. Also a constant across these future visions videos are frameless, print-quality displays. All the pieces exist to make these displays today, including non-reflective glass, high-DPI panels and optical lamination to fuse them together. It’s an expensive prospect right now, but within a few years these monitors will start appearing.

The technology is all there. This is a shippable, reasonable prospect. But it won’t happen because Microsoft is bent on legacy support. Windows 8, for example, has a Metro interface for touch input and is a complete re-think of what Windows should be. But some nosy accountant decided that it needed to support old Windows applications, which is such a shitty idea. It compromises the focus of the OS and renders any attempt at progress null and void. For some reason, the management at Microsoft can’t wrap their head around the idea that revolutionary change doesn’t have to carry the burden of history. Users who need to run old Windows applications should run an old version of Windows. Users who have a touch display and want a new experience should run the new version of Windows. In fact, scrap the Windows brand and call it Metro, to make it less confusing. Don’t stop at the desktop OS, either; brand everything Metro that resembles this new look. Metro and Metro Phone. It doesn’t have to run the old stuff because it’s new. They can keep selling Windows — they have enough manpower to support both paradigms — but there’s no reason to provide Windows users with anything more than security updates and bug fixes.

Once you start removing the Minority Report-esque sheen, the underlying technology of these visionary videos is broadly here already. It just doesn’t work as perfectly as a rendered, rotoscoped, post-produced interpretation. It also can’t exist in a legacy, constantly backwards-compatible world.

1. And Gotham. In the future, everything is Gotham. I guess Segoe isn’t timeless. [↑]

— October 29, 2011

“There’s this thing that’s happening right now in user interface design that I find kind of shackling. The faux wood paneling trend, […] — Matias Duarte

At that big Android event yesterday, Matias Duarte and Company made great pains to show the world how their new release – dubbed Ice Cream Sandwich – is different from the worlds of Windows Phone and iOS. What the team at Google built is not entirely unique, as it reads as a blend of Apple’s attempt at an idealised photorealism with Microsoft’s purely digital environment. Duarte emphasised what he sees wrong with iOS in an interview with Josh Topolsky, noting that Apple’s user interface is “not photorealistic, [but] illustrations”. Apple has fully embraced real-world materials, right down to a bullet-point in their Human Interface Guidelines (HIG):

When appropriate, add a realistic, physical dimension to your application. Often, the more true to life your application looks and behaves, the easier it is for people to understand how it works and the more they enjoy using it.

Apple’s emphasis on idealised realism is not a recent trend. This is the same section from the Mac OS X HIG:

When appropriate, consider adding the appearance of real-world materials. In some cases, real-world textures, such as wood, leather, metal, or paper, can enhance the experience of an app and convey meaning to users.

This approach is known as skeuomorphism. The term describes the imitation in newer products of historical or traditional materials, in a non-functional, decorative manner. It’s often used to add familiarity to a newer product. It’s the reason why there’s often grain added to digitally-shot movies, and why there’s faux cork printed onto the filter end of some brands of cigarettes.

In many cases, skeuomorphic user interfaces imitate reality to increase the ability for new users to know immediately what they’re using. The Compass application that began shipping with the iPhone 3GS is a perfect example. There is no doubt as to what that application represents, and what it does. This is also true of Calculator, Notes and iBooks. The latter would be difficult to interpret as an ebook application without the use of shelves, and the shelves themselves would be unclear without the wood texture.

Sometimes a skeuomorphic user interface doesn’t enhance usability, but adds a sense of depth to an otherwise dull UI. Consider Reminders, an application that began shipping with iOS 5. I created a version without texture and where many of the real-world paradigms are removed. It isn’t necessarily less-readable as a to-do list, but it’s less engaging. It looks like it lacks detail; it looks unfinished.

There is one application, however, that throws a big-ass wrench into Apple’s traditionally focused sense of interaction, and it’s appalling: Contacts, otherwise known as Address Book. The current incarnation began on the iPad and it spread like a gangrenous wound to the Mac. The metaphor of a book is, in theory, a sound one. Contact information has traditionally been stored within a little book. But this paradigm breaks in the digital realm, and especially in Apple’s implementation, because any book-like interaction is missing. It’s not that book-like interaction can’t, or doesn’t, work (look at iBooks on the iPad for instance), but that this cannot exist when there is no reason to flip pages. As a result, the stylised book fails to behave like the object it represents, creating a disconnect.

Realism in user interfaces can be a way to add familiarity and ease-of use to an application. There are times, though, when something of an invisible line is crossed, making the application harder to understand. Isn’t it ironic?

I think that’s what Matias Duarte feels, but I don’t think the Ice Cream Sandwich approach works. It doesn’t scrap enough of the nearly-photorealistic elements. Note, for instance, the icons on the home screen. The camera, phone and browser icons sit in an awkward spot between skeuomorphism and digital non-representation. It strikes me as half-assed, especially since the solution is sharing the same real estate. Why not use glyph-based icons, as with that used for the application drawer and the navigation buttons? It seems like it would solidify their commitment to their refreshed user interface. The lock screen in Ice Cream Sandwich fully embraces this to great effect. You can either commit to an interface, or look foolish.

Commit.

— October 19, 2011

Quieter, Less-Obvious Features:

I’ve been using the iOS 5 betas since June and I’ve found a few features which aren’t widely-publicised (they aren’t as cool as a dramatically less shitty notifications system).

• One can now set custom sounds for everything except lock and keyboard clicks. Some will no-doubt be annoyed that they can’t make their phone say “giggity” every time a key is tapped.
• Speaking of notifications, you can swipe left and right within the weather and stocks widgets. Also, tapping the UI in the Weather app will pull up an hourly forecast.
• Autocorrect is a hell of a lot smarter. Typing “thenext” in iOS 4 would produce just that, but it corrects to “the next” in 5. Furthermore, it now recognises shorthand. Typing “oz” followed by two spaces now results in an inserted period, followed by a space, and the keyboard will be in lowercase mode. Smart.
• The Usage screen in Settings has been dramatically redesigned, with a breakdown of how much data is being used by which application. This is carried over into the iCloud usage screen.
• Swiping left-to-right in Camera will show your most recent photo. You can swipe through to check if the last shot was in focus, for instance.
• There’s a neat little shortcut menu under Settings: General: Keyboard. You can easily set text expansions (the predefined one is “omw”, which expands to “On my way!”). Also in Settings (under Sounds) is a menu for changing the vibration pattern for phone calls. Very weird.
• When using an app that hides the status bar, Notification Centre won’t display unless you drag twice from the top, not just once. A nice touch, presumably to prevent accidentally triggering it while in a game.
• Scrolling an iframe, text area or other small nested scrolling area is now done with a single finger, not two as before.

Complaints:

Just two regarding iOS 5, specifically.

• Battery life is comically bad on my iPhone, but unchanged on my iPad. I can watch the battery drain in real time on my phone. For instance, while writing this, I left it unplugged for about 30 minutes. It began at 53% remaining, and that has since dropped to 39% remaining. I’m guessing it was uploading photos to Photo Stream or something, because that is remarkably bad. Update: I recently reset my network settings to fix the disappearance of Personal Hotspot. After doing so, the battery life on my phone has improved dramatically. It’s probably a coincidence, but give it a shot.
• Reminders is a great little application, but there’s still no way to set an arbitrary address. I don’t go to the airport that often, but I’d like to set a reminder upon arrival there to grab one of the bags for liquids. In order to do that, I still have to create a contact with the address of the airport. I say “still” because I filed this as a bug in July.

— October 12, 2011

I gathered a few of my favourite quotes recognising the passing of Steve Jobs. I would like to share them with you.

From designers and writers:

There are no words for a day like today. I left work to people silently placing flowers outside 1 Infinite Loop. I could only hear cameras.

Taylor Carrigan

Gutted. I’d so hoped that Steve had another comeback within him. His innovations have made my career possible, and I’m so grateful for that.

Meagan Fisher

Steve Jobs did what he wanted to do, and left the world a better place. I can’t think of a better eulogy than that.

Jonas Wisser

I am thankful for Steve’s life and what he accomplished. But I also remember that he was still just a man, like all of us. We continue by seeking to live with intention, by loving those around us, pursuing our dreams, trusting our gut, and remembering that life is fragile.

Shawn Blanc

[T]ruth be told, I never gave up hope that Steve would beat this again. What a life.

John Gruber

If you want to honor Steve, don’t mourn. Do your best work every day. Live your life to the fullest. Never settle. His spirit lives on.

Sebastiaan de With

From public figures:

We met Steve Jobs while he was at NeXT. I was awed by hearing his COMPUTER play a terrifyingly lifelike guitar recording. Bye, great mind.

Teller

His death is our huge loss.

Moby

Thanks for the tools, the inspiration, the possibilities… Miss you already Steve.

Trent Reznor

Steve was among the greatest of American innovators – brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it.

Barack Obama

The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come.

Bill Gates

— October 5, 2011

Manhattan has no choice but the skyward extrusion of the Grid itself; only the Skyscraper offers business the wide-open spaces of a man-made Wild West, a frontier in the sky. — Rem Koolhaas

In Installation Art, Michael Archer writes about architecture, noting “its aspirations to permanence [are] continually undermined”, and it is a truism never stranger. Personal architecture was once exclusively temporary — in fact, often designed to accomplish its movement as efficiently as possible. The chum and the tipi are two dwellings of noted transitory nature. Structures gradually became more permanent as new building techniques and materials were discovered and developed. It was less customary to reside in one location for a brief period and more common to stay affixed to one address, one home, one coordinate.

The 15^th through 19^th centuries clearly made this an issue of import. Structures from that era are still standing strong, made possible by innovations in materials that, when cared for, don’t disintegrate so much with age. But the recent trend is not in favour of a lasting building, but back to ones of a transient nature. Homes are increasingly assembled with cheap ply, constructed in close proximity so that, in the event of a fire in one home, the entire community goes into a sort of reset stage, rather like a forest. Skyscrapers are constructed of concrete and steel, sure, but that doesn’t stop them from being spectacularly demolished^[1]. The 30-story Landmark Tower was built in the 1950s in Fort Worth, and demolished in 2006, a lifespan of just 50 years. The Chrysler Building in New York was constructed 81 years ago, but that’s a mere pittance in the history of civilization.

There are examples of ancient architecture, such as those in Greece, Italy and England. But these are exceptions rather than rules. Surely some contemporary skyscrapers will be left standing in millennia, but the majority will not.

It strikes as surprising how temporary our most permanent of structures are. Our skyscrapers, institutions and historical architecture will all inevitably be removed and perhaps replaced at some point, or alternatively left to decay into a meadow in an ironic, yet appropriate gesture. In The End of Nature, Bill McKibben writes “[o]ur comforting sense of the permanence of our natural world, our confidence that it will change gradually and imperceptibly if at all, is the result of a subtly warped perspective.” This quote could just as easily be applied to the unnatural, man-made world of the city. We have seen it as always there, so we believe it will always be there. We couldn’t be more wrong.

1. This isn’t a decades-old phenomenon, by the way. The Gillender Building in New York City was demolished in 1910 after standing just 12 years. However, these are not demonstrably non-permanent structures. [↑]

— September 18, 2011

Sony launched a promotional website for their new tablet, inventively named the “Tablet S”, and I like the idea. The website is beautifully done, too, with that trendy parallax scrolling in heavy use. Something struck me upon reaching the Unlimited Music section. This is a shot of what the service looks like (click to enlarge any image in this post):

It looks an awful lot like iTunes 8′s genre view:

I failed to grab a screenshot of iTunes 8′s genre view when I had the chance, so all credit goes to Positive Feedback.

Now, of course, this is arguably nitpicking. Showing genres in an interactive, image-heavy way is not a unique concept. However, some of the genre-representative images on Sony’s device are quite close. In each, the foreground is the iTunes thumbnail; the background is the Sony version.

One may argue that the iTunes images are obvious representations, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the metaphors are the only ones Sony designers could have used. Why not use a saxophone for jazz, or a different font for dance? Sony has one of the better design teams in the tech world. There’s no reason they couldn’t have tried for something unique.

— September 7, 2011

After Steve Jobs stepped down as CEO last week, Katherine Noyes wrote a particularly stupid piece on why Apple needs to embrace open source. 

 For business users, the company’s extreme vertical integration has not only created a daunting case of vendor lock-in, but has worked against the compatibility and interoperability that are most needed in this global and collaborative world.

Essentially, her argument boils down to the advantages that she perceives open-source to have, and why Apple is ultimately doomed with a closed-source strategy. 

 As far as I can surmise, Android is not winning based on some perceived merits of its usefulness, style or other subjective qualities. Rather, the reason it is (and will always be) beating iOS in market share is because it’s cheap to implement and free for third-party vendors to customise. 

Let’s examine two parallel realities in their neverending hypothetical. In the first, let’s assume Android were released on an exclusive piece of hardware anually. Here, Android is not open-source and manufacturing rights are licensed to a single hardware company. In this instance, Android probably would not be a serious iOS competitor. Note, for instance, the struggles of WebOS and Windows Phone 7. The former is a proprietary OS released on just a few devices over the course of its life so far. The latter OS exists on more phones, but is still largely irrelevant in the market. It’s a shame, as both of these are fine operating systems. 

In both cases, taking a vaguely similar strategy to the iPhone has failed. One may argue about whether it was marketing, implementation, hardware or whatever, but the reality is that a closed Android system would also probably be relegated to a similar scrap heap.

In the second scenario, iOS is released in 2007 to many manufacturers, with open, cheap (or free) licensing terms. My wager is that most vendors would opt to broadly install and promote iOS, even if Apple created the iPhone at the same time. Android would still arrive in 2008 with similar terms, but it probably  wouldn’t achieve anywhere near the success it has.

Noyes is probably right that open-source can dominate the market. But I don’t think Apple cares that much about their market share. See, although comScore’s recent report shows Apple with a 27% market share, Boy Genius Report reports Apple earning a whopping 66% of industry profits. At this point, market share isn’t that important to them. I think they’d like to increase a little by luring away BlackBerry customers, but they know they can’t win against a cheap operating system, especially when carriers and vendors can customise it as they wish.

Coming back to the Noyes piece, it’s worth noting that Apple does open-source some of their OS X developments. They also develop WebKit, the second-most popular browser engine around, and one that is open source. Apple does embrace this world of open and transparent, when it suits them. But it clearly does not serve them well in their mobile operating system. And, despite Android being on more phones than any other smartphone OS, it’s also not serving them well either.

— August 30, 2011

The Ex-CEO

It’s important to know what Jobs’ main function at Apple was before attempting to predict what the future of the company holds. Many news stories paint Jobs as an omnipresent micro-manager and, while that may have been the case when he took back the reins in 1997, Apple is a very different company now. It’s progressed from near-irrelevance to the trend-setting behemoth in the last 14 years.

In that time, Jobs’ role has changed. He afforded ever-increasing control to other executives, instilling them with the same mindset of elegance in simplicity that has defined the modern-day Apple. He has officially been on medical leave since January of this year, but has continued to oversee new deals and contracts, and unveil new products. His contribution is greater than the products he helped bring to market, and more over-reaching than Apple’s rise to marketplace giant. Steve Jobs leaves in his wake a company forged in his vision. That won’t change.

The New CEO

Perhaps this entire article could be replaced with, “Look, it’s going to be Tim Cook, and that’s that.”

“On Succeeding Steve Jobs” — John Gruber

It’s always been Tim Cook. He’s part of the Apple dream team^[1]. I’m surprised there was such frenzied speculation regarding Jobs’ successor, because it was so blatantly obvious.

Tim Cook is an executive that doesn’t really speak publicly, aside from at quarterly earnings calls and the rare keynote. That doesn’t mean his contributions aren’t felt. To give just one example, in 1996, Apple had 54 days of total retail inventory. Cook got that down to a low of 0.4 days. He is a machine.

The Future, Or Something Like It

AAPL is down a little over 5% in after-hours trading. Those who have the slightest whiff of respect for Jobs are concerned about his health. But at Apple, all will be well. I can only hope the same for Steve himself.

1. Steve Jobs, Tim Cook, Jonny Ive, Bertrand Serlet and Ron Johnson. Each has played an enormous role in defining Apple today. Only two of those five retain the positions that made the company, but their impact is greater than the bodies that remain. [↑]

— August 24, 2011