To Yours and You, Christmas Merry.

 

The world has lost a visionary. And there may be no greater tribute to Steve’s success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented.

I was sitting at my desk in my home office, working on my MacBook, watching an episode of Haven on my iPad, when I heard the familiar Tri-tone of a text message.

You can’t help but wonder if this is going to be one of those moments that people ask you about years from now.

Where were you, when you heard Steve Jobs had passed?

 

Can you imagine the mood in Apple land yesterday?  Surely the management team knew how close it was, and yet they still delivered their usual magical show.  Can you imagine how it would have been had this happened Monday?

Your legacy is in good hands, but you will still be missed.

I wonder how many black turtlenecks will be worn tomorrow in his honor?

 

WTF?  Seriously?  Is this a Windows box?  Is there really some shared resource between Firefox and Office?

 

image from Apple.com

Yesterday, Steve Jobs resigned as CEO of Apple Inc.  Apple posted his very thoughtful resignation letter to their media site.

To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community:

I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.

I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.

As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.

I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.

I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.

Steve

Although not unexpected, it was still a bit of a shock.  As Steve recommended, Apple immediately announced Tim Cook as the new CEO.  Tim has been acting as CEO since Steve took his most recent medical leave of absence.  Many of our recent conversations have been around how they have been able to build these fantastic devices which no longer cost more than the competition.  Tim Cook is behind all that supply chain optimization.

My first reaction was that it was too early. I thought for sure we would see an iPhone 4Gs/5 (depending on the rumor you believe) before this came official. But now that I’ve had twelve hours to think about it, and I’ve been able to see what Apple has done in after hours trading, this makes sense.

Apple isn’t a single man. The next iPhone is in the bag.  Their next two to three years of development is detailed out.  Their next five years of strategy is set.  Tim can drive Apple to execute. Jony and team will continue to design fantastic stuff.   Phil and team will continue to understand who their customers are, way better than the pundits do. Scott and team will continue to deliver fantastic mobile hardware and software.

Cringely makes a good point.  We don’t know who the next visionary is.  But at this point, we don’t need to.  The visionary will be revealed, and Apple will continue to success.

If you believe in Apple, like I do, today might be a good day to buy Apple stock.  It’s currently trading down 2% from yesterday (at $368 a share), and seems to be in a freefall.  It’s still way up from a small dip it took two months ago ($315 on June 20th), and has done nothing but grow since the recession hit in late 2008 (looks like a low of $85 in early March 2009.)

data from Google.com

I think I’m buying, its just a matter of waiting until the bottom.

 

If you need an invite, you can get one here.

 

On both my Mac, and my PC, I use a mouse with a scroll wheel.  I do often use the two finger scroll on the trackpad, but just as often, I will scroll with the scroll wheel.  I’ve finally gotten used to scrolling in the natural direction, and am now finding myself scrolling in the wrong direction at work.

I thought to myself, why don’t I just change the scrolling direction for the mouse, but not the trackpad.  Assuming that works for my brain, I’ll use the same scrolling direction on the Mac and the PC (with the wheel) and natural scrolling on the trackpad.

I head into System Preferences to make the switch, and all looks good.

The Trackpad preference says “When using gestures to scroll or navigate, move content in the direction of finger movement”.  Ok, let’s leave that checked.

The Mouse preference says “Move content in the direction of finger movement when scrolling or navigating”.  Let’s leave that unchecked.  Double checking the Trackpad preference, and it stayed checked.

Unfortunately, when quitting System Preferences, they align.  It seems that despite the difference in wording, these are in fact a single preference, and you can only have one.

Back to square one.  If only I could use a Mac at work, all would be solved.

 

Interestingly enough, I still don’t see the Scan tab in System Preferences.

 

I haven’t been able to watch the Apple keynote today, but I did read some of the coverage.  It all sounds pretty exciting.  I really hope iOS actually runs ok on my 3Gs.  I really wonder if my 3 year old MacBook will be able to take Lion.

I was pretty surprised to see that some of the iCloud bits are already implemented.  The Update pane of the App Store on an iOS device already shows you all the items you own, and gives you the option of downloading what isn’t on the device.

Cool.