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Today's Poll: How did you learn about Steve Jobs death?

By Howard B. Owens
Tom Gilliatt

My first computer I ever learned anything on was an Apple about 25+years ago with those big 5 and 1/4 inch floppys year and still got that computer, Last I knew it still worked to

Oct 6, 2011, 11:09am Permalink
Bob Harker

Irony: Less than 2% of respondents in this poll read about his death in a newspaper - the very industry that Jobs' life works helped defeat.

Oct 6, 2011, 1:39pm Permalink
Doug Yeomans

I've never owned an iAnything. I'm a PC, no contract kind of guy and just recently joined the ranks of Android users when straighttalk offered one. I build my own computers and love the ability to flex them and tweak them any way I desire, something that can't be done with an iAnything. The free apps available to the Android more than meet my needs..oh yeah..and they're free..did I mention that?

Oct 7, 2011, 6:08am Permalink
Howard B. Owens

You can thank Steve Jobs for your graphical user interface. You can thank Steve Jobs for your Droid. As I wrote in a tweet the other day, even if you've never touched an Apple product, you can thank Steve Jobs for making your computer easier to use and nicer to look at and your mobile communications easier and better. Apple is the leader, always has been. Everybody else follows.

Oct 7, 2011, 7:52am Permalink
Bea McManis

Doug wrote, "(Yes, I still use IRC)".
I didn't even know IRC was still around. I had clients that insisted on using it. I used PIRCH and other colleagues liked Mirc. Are they still out there? Wow, a real blast from the past.

Oct 7, 2011, 11:01am Permalink
Doug Yeomans

Bea, a friend of mine runs a private IRC server out of Austin Texas. It's a gathering place for a bunch of guys who have known each other for at least ten years and I'm still using the same mIRC client I was using 10 years ago.

Howard, I work for Xerox and the GUI, is an invention of theirs. Are you giving credit to Steve Jobs? Maybe Steve Jobs saw its true potential but Xerox invented it so I think I'll give my thanks to the company I work for and to Steve Jobs for delivering it to the masses? So many inventions came from Xerox that others take credit for.

PARC (Palo alto Research Center) has been responsible for such well known and important developments as laser printing, Ethernet, the modern personal computer, graphical user interface (GUI), object-oriented programming, ubiquitous computing, amorphous silicon (a-Si) applications, and advancing very-large-scale-integration (VLSI) for semiconductors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PARC_(company)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox

In 1970, under company president Charles Peter McColough, Xerox opened the Xerox PARC (Xerox Palo Alto Research Center) research facility. The facility developed many modern computing technologies such as the mouse and the graphical user interface (GUI). .

In 1979, Xerox threw open its doors to anyone in the industry and press, who might be interested in seeing their developments. Several Apple Computer employees, including Steve Jobs, visited Xerox PARC that day. Jobs and the others saw the commercial potential of the WIMP (Window, Icon, Menu, and Pointing device) system and redirected development of the Apple Lisa to incorporate these technologies. Jobs is quoted as saying, "They just had no idea what they had." In 1980, Jobs invited several key PARC researchers to join his company so that they could fully develop and implement their ideas.

So, in effect, he snagged key Xerox employees to make "his" company successful. It kind of gives me a bad taste to give him too much credit for anything at all except for having an idea and using someone elses inventions to make it work. Cudos for having an idea but other people were way ahead of him already at that point.

Howard, using your logic, I guess Apple loses it's market share when other people improve on their ideas? You did say that Apple has always lead while others followed even though they really just stole other ideas/inventions. Why is it that they always seem to be trailing? Apple computers have a tiny share of the market and the iPhone is losing ground at an astronomical pace, being overrun by the Droid.

Oct 8, 2011, 6:44am Permalink
Howard B. Owens

Doug, of course I know about PARC. The point is, none of us would even know what a GUI is if not for Steve Jobs. It took somebody of Steve's vision to take a cool idea and turn it into a consumer product.

Oct 8, 2011, 7:33am Permalink

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