Steve Jobs Invented Your Dell PC and Your Android Phone

[A.Nonymous]

Apple may have been extremely successful in exploding the tablet market but what if they weren't the first out? I do believe there were Android tablets pretty far along in the planning stages when the iPad was released, they weren't an afterthought following the iPad, and I think they would have been just as big a hit had they been first.

As far as WinMo, I think it was far more prevelant than many people realize, I didn't notice myself till I got one. It is not as big of a success as the iPhone or Android by far, but it was more mainstream than people give it credit for.

Apple was not the first to the tablet market. MS had been there for years and years. They rolled out one sucky tablet after another running XP tablet edition and it didn't take off.

 

[alostpacket]

HEY, HEY, HEY . . . The Creative player was a good product, not a crappy product. Besides, the crappy ones were built on Cell 1, and they had issues.

Smiley.

Heh. Well in terms of storage space I think they were somewhere in the neighborhood of 128MB vs the Archos and ipod clocking in at 2-4 GB.

 

[9to5cynic]

It's a little known fact that RIM wasnt just about enterprise users -- but that they used that image to market themselves. They had (have?) huge numbers of teen and tweens as users.

I was a teenage blackberry user.

As for this topic, very interesting

I'd have to agree that Steve Jobs may have popularized a product (products really), but I think those products were on their way anyways (smartphones, mp3 players..)

Though, he really did a good job of making products 'cool'. Go to a parking lot and next to Jesus fish, you'll probably find more apple stickers than anything else.

 

[SamuraiBigEd]

Apple was not the first to the tablet market. MS had been there for years and years. They rolled out one sucky tablet after another running XP tablet edition and it didn't take off.

I was referring to the iPad release specifically and the popularization that followed (which is due in no small part to Android tablets as well), not tablets in general, sorry if there was any confusion.

I was a teenage blackberry user.

We feel your pain and shame, tell us all about it.

 

[zuben el genub]

I did. I liked the Palm platform. It was efficient and very easy to deal with. The current crop of companies could take a lesson from Palm Desktop. I still have the UX50 and might resurrect it for some programs.
In fact, depending on the stupid ATT/TMO merger, I might just drop Android altogether and get a phone only phone. I'll use the UX50 for Astromist.

Apple had the Newton and couldn't crack the market, either. It was either WinCE or Palm.

 

[quest7]

Coming to the defense of Jobs in a letter to the editor, Bono noted that Apple's contribution to fight against AIDS in Africa has been "invaluable." Bono is the founder of (Product)RED, a charity aimed at battling AIDS that Apple has supported with special red iPod models since 2006.


Bono said that Apple has been the largest contributor to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, revealing that the company has given tens of millions of dollars toward H.I.V. testing, treatment and counseling.

AppleInsider | U2 singer Bono praises philanthropy of Apple's Steve Jobs

 

[Drhyde]

Coming to the defense of Jobs in a letter to the editor, Bono noted that Apple's contribution to fight against AIDS in Africa has been "invaluable." Bono is the founder of (Product)RED, a charity aimed at battling AIDS that Apple has supported with special red iPod models since 2006.


Bono said that Apple has been the largest contributor to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, revealing that the company has given tens of millions of dollars toward H.I.V. testing, treatment and counseling.

AppleInsider | U2 singer Bono praises philanthropy of Apple's Steve Jobs

Why wouldn't they give a couple hundred million or a billion? I've always wondered why companies want to look altruistic, but give less than even a fraction of a percent of their money to charity. It's not like Apple doesn't have 60 or 70 billion lying around (probably more now). Nothing against charity work I just think if you really want to help Africa, you're going to need a lot more than tens of millions.

 

[9to5cynic]

^ I was thinking the same thing.

 

[JunBringer]

I had the Archos 20GB and 40GB (which was the generation after that) which both were before iPods came about. I only got an iPod once they came out with the 60GB iPod Photo. The Archos products were nice, but just didn't get popular.

 

[Stuntman]

Why wouldn't they give a couple hundred million or a billion? I've always wondered why companies want to look altruistic, but give less than even a fraction of a percent of their money to charity. It's not like Apple doesn't have 60 or 70 billion lying around (probably more now). Nothing against charity work I just think if you really want to help Africa, you're going to need a lot more than tens of millions.

If we're talking about being charitable, I think other people have given more than Steve Jobs. Still, I think that Jobs and Apple has given way more than I have, so I cannot criticise him for his lack of charity work.

If I were able to take a company to be amongst the biggest companies in the world, I cannot say for sure that I would donate more, less or the same amount as he. Unless I have been in a similar situation, I find it hard to criticise him for not donating more. It is easy to decide how someone else to spend his many billions of dollars. It's harder to get there yourself first and then decide how you spend that money.

 

[A.Nonymous]

I'll say it again, I'm never going to criticize a guy or a company for not giving. They came by their money honestly. What they do with it or how they spend it is their business, not mine. Apple or Jobs giving or not giving money to charities doesn't impact the bottom line in any way so it's not any business of the stockholders either. As long as they come by it honestly, I couldn't care less what they do with their money. They can put it in a pipe and smoke it if they want. I couldn't care less.

 

[Bob Maxey]

Why wouldn't they give a couple hundred million or a billion? I've always wondered why companies want to look altruistic, but give less than even a fraction of a percent of their money to charity. It's not like Apple doesn't have 60 or 70 billion lying around (probably more now). Nothing against charity work I just think if you really want to help Africa, you're going to need a lot more than tens of millions.

DISCLAIMER: I might be wrong! Or I might not be incorrect one darn bit at all.

So here goes. I do not know how much Apple has donated to charity and I do not know how much Jobs has donated to charity. Before we start talking about what these corporations should do, we should actually know some basic facts, like have they already done their part or how much have they actually donated in dollars and cents.

I believe Apple would require board/stockholder approval if they wanted to donate "a couple hundred million or a billion" dollars to charitable groups.

Remember, it is not Job's billions and he is not free to start cutting checks. Public corporations are owned by tens of thousands of stockholders -large and small- and he must answer to a board of directors.

Corporations are different than thee and me. They are constrained in many ways.

Ask Mr. Google about "The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation." Clearly, this small group of founders have given quite a bit. It is the largest privately funded group of its kind in the world. Some people of means do great things with their cash and they always have.

Even small corporations donate cash. Even though they are taxed when they earn a dollar, taxed when they spend that dollar, taxed when that dollar earns another dollar, and taxed when they die and they leave that dollar to their relatives and family and on and on it goes.

Corporations donate far more than people seem to believe.