I was especially interested to learn that though Wozniak had confidence in Apple’s ability to rise out of the depths in 1996 when Jobs returned to the company through the purchase of NeXT, he admitted that he was initially skeptical of how Jobs would accomplish that. He then goes on to state that Jobs’ success in doing so was due in large part to his ability “to keep secrets where you need to keep secrets” and “to make sure you’re not overbuilding a bunch of junk you can’t sell.”

It’s also interesting to see the role that Wayne played, which was explained by both in what are obviously fairly diplomatic terms. It was pretty harsh when Chang reminds Wayne that he’s “not a wealthy man” after selling his stake in Apple at a very early stage, which comes at around 6:50 mark in the interview. Take a look at the full interview below and let us know what you think.

Video courtesy of Boomberg Televison.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• Connected consumer first-quarter 2013: Analysis and outlook
• Research In Motion: future scenarios for its fate

(Click to enlarge)

Update: This infographic has been updated to fix the errors in the original version.

Infographic courtesy of Column Five Media. This graphic originally appeared at

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Forecast: Tablet App Sales To Hit $8B by 2015
• Connected consumer first-quarter 2013: Analysis and outlook
• Flash analysis: smart watches

• Value of 100 Apple shares: $1,369 in 1997 vs. $150,590 in 2011, for a difference of $149,221.
• Number of times Jobs listed as inventor on Apple patents: 313.
• Number of times Jobs listed as lead inventor on Apple patents: 33 (For perspective: Google founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin appear on around a dozen patents total).
• Apple market capitalization: $2.3 billion in 1997 vs. $342.9 billion in 2011.
• Mac computer shipments: Around 2.6 million in 1997 vs. 13.66 million in 2010. Add in iPads, and estimates for 2011 sales approach 54 million.
• Apple cash reserves: $1.2 billion in 1997 vs. $75.9 billion in 2011.
• Apple retail stores: The first opened in 2001, and by the end of that year, there were 27 vs. 339 in 2011.
• iPhone shipments: 3.7 million in 2007 vs. an estimated 95 million in 2011.
• iTunes Store songs sold: 100 million in 2004 vs. 10 billion in 2010.
• App Store downloads: 10 million in 2008 vs. 15 billion in 2010.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Who and what to watch in the new era of the living room
• Flash analysis: Steve Jobs
• Where new opportunity lies in the mobile operating system space

Team:

I am looking forward to the amazing opportunity of serving as CEO of the most innovative company in the world. Joining Apple was the best decision I’ve ever made and it’s been the privilege of a lifetime to work for Apple and Steve for over 13 years. I share Steve’s optimism for Apple’s bright future.

Steve has been an incredible leader and mentor to me, as well as to the entire executive team and our amazing employees. We are really looking forward to Steve’s ongoing guidance and inspiration as our Chairman.

I want you to be confident that Apple is not going to change. I cherish and celebrate Apple’s unique principles and values. Steve built a company and culture that is unlike any other in the world and we are going to stay true to that—it is in our DNA. We are going to continue to make the best products in the world that delight our customers and make our employees incredibly proud of what they do.

I love Apple and I am looking forward to diving into my new role. All of the incredible support from the Board, the executive team and many of you has been inspiring. I am confident our best years lie ahead of us and that together we will continue to make Apple the magical place that it is.

Tim

Ars says the email is from a trusted source with a solid track record, and has also verified the email headers itself independently to confirm its veracity.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Flash analysis: Steve Jobs
• Mobile Q2: Smartphone growth surges; iPad’s rule continues
• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era

The device that became an industry

The iPhone (and now the iPad) are unique among similar devices in that only they have spawned sprawling industries dedicated solely to their support and supplementation. Sure, people make accessories and software for other smartphones and tablets, but they don’t make them in such volume specifically for what essentially amounts to a single new annual device from a single manufacturer each year.

According to one count, the iPhone has 71,890 active developers, and the iPad has 51,677. That’s an industry of more than 120,000 content producers targeting a platform that sustains itself on just one new product a year from one company, and I’m not even including the various accessory makers that also cater to Apple devices. Payout from Apple to developers to date is $2.5 billion, which is higher than the GDP of some small developing countries.

Talent flocks to and begets greatness

When Jobs took a medical leave in January of this year, still retaining the title of CEO, I wrote about how the company has a deep executive bench with people who are all individual industry leaders in their own right. Erica wrote yesterday about Tim Cook, a figure who has guided Apple through Jobs’ absence in the past, even amid some of the scariest economic turmoil we’ve faced, and still managed to lead the company to multiple record quarters. Michael Grothaus at TUAW has an excellent first-hand account of Tim Cook that says more for his ability to take over as CEO than I ever could.

But even leaving the executives aside, Apple has managed to build a team that includes some of the best and brightest engineers, product managers and marketers the world has ever seen. In a Wired story from 2008 about the invention of the iPhone, we get a glimpse behind the scenes at the dedication of individuals committed to creating a quality product that lives up to the company’s reputation. Apple is the most valuable brand on earth, and the company’s employees respect that as much as Jobs does, and are no less excellent at what they do for his departure.

Products designed for a lifetime

Apple’s products aren’t casually created based on whatever technology happens to be available at the time. You can tell that because the company doesn’t overreach and pack in features like 4G radios and NFC chips just because they happen to exist, the way many Android handsets do. Apple products represent a measured balance of tech and simplicity that caters to how the largest number of buyers are or will actually be using their devices on a daily basis.

Part of achieving that balance is knowing what you’ll need to include next. That’s part of the frustration of being an Apple device buyer, since sometimes we can see what should come next, too — like a camera for the iPod touch — and are disappointed when it doesn’t arrive as early as we expected it to. But Apple is smart about including these things when it needs to, rather than when tech enthusiasts think it should. It’s not a mistake when they arrive, and you can bet Apple engineers are aware of what tech is and will be available before you are; Apple devices are in this way designed with a roadmap for the duration of the life of the product.

Deviations from that roadmap are possible if market conditions or changing expectations call for it, but the existence of such a roadmap means that products coming out of Cupertino won’t disappoint in the near-to-mid future. For more detail about Apple’s process, a May 2007 article by the MIT Technology review illuminates the amazing depth in Apple’s hardware design guidelines, another thing which won’t disappear with Jobs out of the top seat.

Creating a culture, not a company

Steve Jobs won’t yet be leaving the company entirely, and even when he does, his influence won’t. Jobs hasn’t merely built a company during the past decades; he has infused the people he works closely with and those who work under them with a cultural ethos that strives for excellence. If Jobs was the only one at Apple who required perfection and consistent, high-level performance, you’d have a very frustrated guy in a black turtleneck and we’d all still be using Motorola RAZRs.

Apple’s stock prices will shudder at the news of Jobs departure, and countless tech pundits will wring their hands and cry doom, but in the end Apple shares will rally, we’ll get a new iPhone this fall that propels Apple to more record quarters, and we’ll get back to doing what we do best: watching in wonder as Apple continues to change the world.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Who and what to watch in the new era of the living room
• The new IT manager, part 1
• Tablet market to hit over 377 million units by 2016

Steve Jobs dropped a bombshell on the tech world Wednesday night, when the iconic founder and CEO of Apple Corp. announced that he was stepping down as chief executive because he could “no longer meet [his] duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO.” The news sent shock waves through Twitter and the blogosphere as tech-industry heavyweights and ordinary Apple fans alike expressed their feelings of shock and sadness at Jobs’ departure. As Om said in his post, although Jobs remains chairman of Apple, it is the end of an era (Erica Ogg also has a post about what Apple might look like under its new CEO Tim Cook).

Here’s a selection of some of the other responses to Jobs’ announcement:

Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of Salesforce, said that:

Steve Jobs is the greatest leader our industry has ever known. Its the end of an era.

Long-time Wall Street analyst turned merchant banker Frank Quattrone said on Twitter:

A salute to Steve Jobs for revolutionizing the computer industry, transforming how we communicate, play and work, and inspiring the world!—
Frank Quattrone (@FrankQuattrone) August 25, 2011

Apple blogger John Gruber said at his blog Daring Fireball that Apple remains the same company it has been for some time, since the transition to new CEO Tim Cook has been fairly obvious ever since Steve Jobs took his last medical leave:

Today’s announcement is just one more step, albeit a big and sad one, in a long-planned orderly transition — a transition that no one wanted but which could not, alas, be avoided. And as ever, he’s doing it his way.

Googler Matt Cutts, the head of the company’s anti-spam team, said on his Google+ page:

Really sad to hear that Steve Jobs is resigning. He’s an incredible guy and has led Apple to launch amazing products that have changed the world. I hope he’ll be okay. Sending good wishes his way.

TheStreet.com founder and CNBC host Jim Cramer said:

Very sad news about Steve Jobs at $AAPL. He is America's greatest industrialist. Perhaps the greatest ever.—
Jim Cramer (@jimcramer) August 24, 2011

Veteran technology writer Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal said in an essay on Jobs’ departure:

Most people are lucky if they can change the world in one important way, but Jobs, in multiple stages of his business career, changed global technology, media and lifestyles in multiple ways on multiple occasions.

Bill Gurley, a venture capitalist with Benchmark Capital said on Twitter that:

Steve Jobs run at Apple is likely the very best CEO execution we will see in our lifetime. Amazing.—
Bill Gurley (@bgurley) August 24, 2011

Matt Linderman of 37Signals said:

The two greatest runs I’ve ever witnessed in my life: Michael Jordan and Steve Jobs.

And Matt Galligan, former co-founder of SimpleGeo, said:

Steve Jobs will always be an inspiration to me. He turned something plain into something beautiful. And in the process, changed the world.

California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said that:

Steve Jobs is one of California's greatest innovators. Very few achieved his impact over the last 50 years and probably the next 100 years.—
Arnold (@Schwarzenegger) August 25, 2011

Saul Hansell, former technology writer for the New York Times, called Jobs “The patron saint of perfectionists” in a post at TechCrunch:

We all know lots of people who are nice. We know many people who are smart. We’ve seen a bunch of corporate leaders who have the rare combination of skills to surf the waves spawned by Moore’s Law. But it’s hard to think of anyone besides Steve Jobs who through the sheer force of will, self-confidence, vision and perfectionism could upend the powerful forces of technology to make so many products that delighted so many people.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Connected consumer first-quarter 2013: Analysis and outlook
• The evolution of consumer-media cloud storage
• Facebook’s IPO filing: ideas and implications

All photos courtesy of Kuo Design

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Connected consumer first-quarter 2013: Analysis and outlook
• The evolution of consumer-media cloud storage
• Facebook’s IPO filing: ideas and implications

Steve Jobs at D8 by Asa Mathat | All Things Digital

Like many of my colleagues in Silicon Valley, I was having a fantastic day today. It is crisp in the shade, warm in the sun. The skies are a magical blue with puffy clouds floating like dreams. And when all seemed to be going well, an email in my inbox — without as much as the new message sound — arrived: Letter from Steve Jobs. It was as if the inbox was observing the solemnnity of the occasion. It is an end of an era.

The first thought that ran through my head was about Steve’s health, and I thought to myself that this cannot be good. I don’t care about him being the CEO or head of Apple. What I really do care about is his health. He wouldn’t be making this decision unless things were pretty dire.

It is incredibly hard for me to write right now. To me, like many of you, it is an incredibly emotional moment. I cannot look at Twitter, and through the mist in my eyes, I am having a tough time focusing on the screen of this computer. I cannot hear the sounds of the street or the ring of my phone. The second hand on my watch moves slowly, ever so slowly. I want to wake up and find it was all a nightmare.

And while I wish for him to have more time with his family, I am also being very selfish. I will miss the thespian who made inanimate objects like a computer become a thing to behold. A few years ago, I compared Steve to Howard Hughes using the line, “Some men dream the future. He built it.”

Steve Jobs, the maverick who has architected one of the greatest comebacks in the history of Silicon Valley, continues to prove that he is a modern-day Howard Hughes. Unpredictable, charming, loving, petulant, and perhaps more than anything deviously mysterious. But more than anything brilliant.

I have watched him from afar. I have learned from his decisions. And yes, there have been the products Apple has built — especially those in the most recent decade. Jobs has had an incredible influence on me.

Jobs (and by extension, Apple) has taught me (and I am sure others) a big lesson: If you want to change something, you have to be patient and take the long view. If Apple and Steve’s incredible comeback teaches us something, it’s that when you are right and the world doesn’t see it that way, you just have to be patient and wait for the world to change its mind.

Today, we are living in a world that’s about taking short-term decisions: CEOs who pray to at the altar of the devil called quarterly earnings, companies that react to rivals, politicians who are only worried about the coming election cycle and leaders who are in for the near-term gain.

And then there are Steve and Apple: a leader and a company not afraid to take the long view, patiently building the way to the future envisioned for the company. Not afraid to invent the future and to be wrong. And almost always willing to do one small thing — cannibalize itself. Under Steve, Apple was happy to see the iPhone kill the iPod and iPad kill the MacBook. He understands that you don’t walk into the future by looking back. If you do, you trip over yourself and break your nose. Just look at Hewlett-Packard, and you know what I am talking about.

As a founder of a company, Steve’s biggest gift to me is not the MacBook or the iPhone. Instead it’s the confidence to disrupt myself. Whitney Johnson, a founding partner at Rose Park Advisors recently wrote:

We typically define disruption as a low-end product or service that eventually upends an industry. But I’ve found that the rules of disruption apply to the individual too. Or as thought leader Jennifer Sertl writes, “innovation ultimately begins on the inside.”

Jobs is a perfect example of that. He could have settled for status quo and gone on as the chief executive. But why wait? After all, he is the man who can see the future better than most of us. And even if it means a full stop to what has been an incredible career.

Thanks, Steve.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Connected consumer first-quarter 2013: Analysis and outlook
• The evolution of consumer-media cloud storage
• Facebook’s IPO filing: ideas and implications

Though Jobs steps out of his role as CEO, he’ll remain as chairman of the board, Apple has confirmed. Though markets will likely react when they reopen Thursday morning — having already dipped about five percentage points Wednesday after market close — having Cook in the executive office isn’t a change likely to be felt immediately in terms of the way Apple does business and the types of products it makes. That’s because Cook and Jobs are said to be very much of the same mind in their philosophy of how to run the world’s most valuable technology company.

What can we expect from Cook?

The choice of Cook is no surprise. Though Apple hadn’t made its succession plans public, it’s been widely assumed that Cook would assume the role of CEO. He’s been a senior VP at Apple since 1995 and COO since 2005, and Jobs has entrusted him with the title of official acting CEO twice before. He’s also the man credited with turning around Apple’s manufacturing process and improving its inventory and margins, which are the envy of the industry.

When called upon during previous Jobs’ absences, Cook has been a calming, familiar voice on the company’s earnings calls for investors. That’s because he has overseen some of the most successful quarters in Apple history.

During his most recent six-month-long temporary CEO role, beginning in January, Apple has:

• Increased its cash reserves from $60 billion to $76 billion.
• At least temporarily become the most valuably public company in the world.
• Introduced a new iPad, dominated the tablet market, and sent industry heavyweight Hewlett-Packard running for cover.
• Had the iPhone remain the best-selling smartphone in the market, even after more than a year in release.
• Added more retail locations, including opening a fourth Apple Store in China, which has been a boon to the company’s bottom line.
• Been shepherded through a major new OS update, launching OS X Lion last month.

Despite Cook’s clear ability to lead the company, he won’t be the public face of Apple in the way Jobs as CEO has become. Cook is known for being an extremely private person, and he’s not known to possess Jobs’ salesman qualities. So will we see Cook emceeing Apple events in the same style and manner as Jobs? Very likely not. We have seen Cook on stage at Apple press events, but this role will likely be shared, as it has been recently during Jobs’ absences, among Cook and other Apple executives like marketing chief Phil Schiller, head of iOS Scott Forstall, and hardware VP Bob Mansfield.

Looking ahead

How will Apple look on an everyday basis? Probably the same. Cook will continue to oversee very much business as usual. There will very likely be a new iPhone in the next several months. Early next year, there will very likely be an iPad 3. And at some point in the next year, the company will also refresh its MacBook lineup, iPods, and perhaps Apple TV too for good measure.

In other words, the show will go on. Products will be released, and people will continue to buy them. Jobs not being CEO isn’t going to scare people off from the products Apple is making and the ecosystem he’s built while heading his company.

Longer term

Looking further ahead, several years down the road, is where Apple’s future is less predictable. Jobs is known for his demanding management style that has a particular vision for products. Cook, meanwhile, is a numbers guy, and hasn’t yet demonstrated — at least publicly — that he’s a creative force. That won’t really be necessary while Jobs’ product design guru VP Jonathan Ive remains at Apple. So don’t look for Cook to take on that same role as Jobs in regard to influence on design choices.

Where Jobs’ position in the driver’s seat of the company will be missed most is anticipating the gadgets consumers will want. Jobs was often able to do this even well before consumers themselves (see: iPad launch). It’s not clear that Cook possesses that same intrinsic ability. Keeping products moving through the pipeline and managing the day-to-day operations running a $350 billion dollar company, yes. Spending time pondering the “intersection of liberal arts and technology”? Probably not.

Still, Jobs has already been elected chairman of the company. That means his authoritative influence is going to continue to be felt as long as he chooses.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Flash analysis: Steve Jobs
• Connected consumer first-quarter 2013: Analysis and outlook
• The evolution of consumer-media cloud storage

Steve Jobs Introduces the iPod:

Steve Jobs Introduces the iPhone:

Steve Jobs Introduces the iPad:

Steve Jobs Introduces the Apple Store:

Steve Jobs Presents to the Cupertino City Council about Apple’s New Campus:

Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement Address:

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• 12 tech leaders’ resolutions for 2012
• Flash analysis: Steve Jobs
• Analyzing the wearable computing market