Steve Jobs passed away!

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Computers as we know them would be far different today if it wasn't for Jobs and Apple.  

RIP.

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Agree, Haywire.  Was watching CNN earlier and Wolf Blitzer was crowing about how sad it was that Mr. Jobs passed away, since he just announced the "new ipad" yesterday.  Pretty slackassed reporting, considering there was no new iPad, and Jobs didn't announce squat, lol.

Sad when traditional media can't even get their interns to write accurate copy for them.

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So... am I the only one here who thinks he kept Apple from reaching it's full potential for killing the clone market?

Could be seen either way, really.  Had they not, the market would have been flooded with half assed Mac clones, tarnishing the whole name. Ever buy a POS PC with Windows on it, and curse Windows daily? - then build your own system and find out it's not half bad?  I have.  Apple having the HW on lockdown with the OS seems to have served them quite well, so who knows how it would have gone if Jobs didn't can the program in the late 1990's.  It's given them a pretty much universal user experience offering, anyways.

Apple is a HW company, and I think we can all agree the prices for their systems/devices are very high.  Apple has a high artsy fartsy fanboy appeal that I think may have been diminished by a clone market.

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Depends what you consider as "Apple being successful".  Clone market was peanuts to Apple financially, initially $50 a license.  Now they sell you $500 of PC parts jammed into their machines for $1200 (minimum, base model iMac).

It may however have got them more market share vs. MS, but I honestly think Jobs saw the nightmare the early PC users had happen to them with vastly varied hardware and the drivers, IRQ, and etc. problems back in the DOS days.  No doubt Jobs was a control freak, but there's something to be said for writing an OS for hardware you are 100% in control of.

I think Apple would have never become the "prestigious" brand that all the hipster fanboys love and all the press worships today if the clone program was kept going.

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It isn't terribly difficult to make a Hackintosh if you prefer to use OS X on non Apple HW.

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Jobs was only as good as the people around him, and I feel anyone thinking he was the only bright mind at Apple is insane.  Personally I give more credit to Jonathan Ive than Jobs as far as the fanboy/design cachet they now have.  While this started with the first iMac that came out after Jobs came back, it really took off after the iPod (all of which Ive designed).  Jobs always surrounded himself with bright people.

Going back to day one, Apple would not have been a speck on the radar, and much of where they are now goes back to the 70's when it was essentially just Jobs manning the press, smoke and mirrors, and Woz having a good (and playful) mind for hardware.  Not to mention good timing and a great amount of luck.  Who would have ever thought Jobs old desires to knock IBM out of the consumer computer marketplace would essentially come true, looking back to the 70's?

Jobs may have been the guy to put the seal of approval on products but I honestly don't think he had as much of a vision in the concept of said products as people give him credit for.  He was a hell of a showman, but I think the stories of the current breed of Apple products coming to him in a dream and him doing them solo from start to finish are extremely far from the truth.

Either way, it worked.  Even those that dislike Apple products can appreciate the usability and design aspects of what they sell to some degree.  The dude was a shrewd and sometimes cruel businessman, but you can't argue with his results even if you do not respect his methods (which I do not).

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The reports of terrible conditions at Foxconn aren't Apple's doing by any stretch, it's just the nature of the beast.

Apple do a LOT of business with them, but they certainly are not the root of the problem.  All the big names use Foxconn, and the problems there lie in the fact Foxconn itself has not improved working conditions despite many of their partners (including Apple) demanding better conditions.

All about profit margins for them, no different than any other overseas companies, whether it be outsourcing call centers or materials suppliers themselves.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn#Clients

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I didn't say I didn't care, lol.  I said it's the nature of the beast.  Outsourcing is a scourge but it's something we are extremely unlikely to get rid of now.  Apple is far from the only one with dirty hands on the issue, however - *ALL* sectors have been deeply affected by outsourcing, taking jobs from our own people for the benefit of corporate profits, and your medicine analogy is a very valid point.

A number of years ago I lost a job due to outsourcing - I was deemed too costly and my job was given to people overseas that could do the work cheaper remotely.  In retrospect was the best thing to ever happen to me because it forced me back into completing my education in IT, and I'm now making 5x what I was then.  

I'm well aware of the cause and effect of it, I was merely trying to illustrate that Apple is far from the only one behind it, and FWIW they have actually taken some measures to insist on better working conditions over there (though that way be a lot of smoke and mirrors and just PR hype).