Bites from the Apple: Onward...

You may have heard the news that Steve Jobs is taking a 6-month medical leave to get himself back on track to good health--whatever that may entail, which we don't know because ultimately health is a personal issue, even for a man who's at the head of one of the most recognizable companies on earth and the center of a huge cult of personality. I, like everyone in the gadgetosphere, wish Jobs well and admit that should he decide not to return as CEO of Apple, it will be a sad day. But it won't be the end of Apple. I agree with Walt Mossberg (seen in this interview with the Fox Business Channel) that Apple has an excellent team at the top that share many of his traits--from vision to perfectionism. And for the next six months (and possibly longer), Tim Cook will be the point man for Apple. While he might not have the magnetism of Jobs, Cook (seen at the far left with Jobs and Phil Schiller from a 2007 iMac roll-out) seems to be a good fit as the interim CEO (and possibly longer). Wired's Gadget Lab profile of Cook, who first took the reins of Apple's inventory managment and then the Mac line before becoming the chief operating officer, includes the following:

(P)eople familiar with the company say Cook has had a very strong voice on the design and development table because of his responsibility for manufacturing the products. "Steve didn't make up the iPod, iPhone or iTunes all by himself," says Janes.  "To get the manufacturing right you have to get the design details right and Tim has been there through the whole development process."

For nervous Apple investors, that should help soothe their worries about the transition.

You can learn a bit more about Cook via this Macworld profile, which includes some good links to other profiles, but I think my favorite tidbit comes via this reminder from John Gruber at Daring Fireball, who points to this passage from a Fortune article from last year:

One day back then, he convened a meeting with his team, and the discussion turned to a particular problem in Asia. "This is really bad," Cook told the group. "Someone should be in China driving this." Thirty minutes into that meeting Cook looked at Sabih Khan, a key operations executive, and abruptly asked, without a trace of emotion, "Why are you still here?"

Khan, who remains one of Cook’s top lieutenants to this day, immediately stood up, drove to San Francisco International Airport, and, without a change of clothes, booked a flight to China with no return date, according to people familiar with the episode. The story is vintage Cook: demanding and unemotional.

Ultimately, though, this weekly Apple update is more about cool new products coming down the pike, how to get the best from the Apple hardware and software that we use daily, and odd bits of ephemera. So let's move onward to review the bits of Apple-y goodness from the week that was.

• One of the (several) missing debuts from Apple at Macworld was the long-gestating renewal of the Mac mini, but the hardware rumor of the week has it that a new Mac mini or possibly a refreshed Apple TV) will be powered by the new NVIDIA Ion platform and come out in the March timeframe (via Tom's Hardware). Ars Technica offers some technical tidbits:

  The Ion platform pairs NVIDIA's 9400M chipset, which includes an integrated, OpenCL-capable, multi-core GPU, with the dual-core Intel Atom 330. Running at 1.6 GHz, the dual-core Atom is no slouch—even if it's not as powerful as Intel's Core 2 Duo, it's still a serviceable processor for common computing task

  The 9to5Mac blog thinks the Atom processor is a step down, leaving Apple with a hole between the mini and its professional-grade Mac Pro, and they suggest a Core 2 Duo or i7-powered machine and a couple of 3.5-inch drive bays. Personally, I like Gizmodo's idea that the Apple TV and the Mac mini should be combined into a single entity.

• Other rumors floating about this week include the possibility of a 15-inch MacBook Air and continued speculation about the existence of an iPhone nano based on chip manufacture.

• Looks like iLife '09 is on track for distribution at the end of the month, with 9to5Mac reporting that the Gold Master of the DVD was being sent to printers and should be shipping next week.

• Still awaiting shipment is the new 17-inch MacBook Pro, but The Apple Blog notes that one mystery has been cleared up--the replacement of its non-swappable battery. At the end of the battery's life (which is estimated by Apple to be 5 years) or should the battery go defective during its warranty period, a same-day replacement can be done at an Apple Store.

• Chomping at the bit to try out Google's Chrome browser on your Mac? CNet's Webware blog reports that versions for both the Mac OS and Linux will be available by the first half of the year (and it looks like Google is laying the groundwork for Firefox-like browser extensions, with some initial support for Greasemonkey scripts).

• Speaking of Mac OS X, Apple has apparently dropped the word "Mac" from its "OS X" trademark. In other OS X news, the new 10.6 Snow Leopard refresh might be getting an overhaul of the user interface, changing the current "Aqua" theme to "Marble"--which brings the OS interface more inline with the latest Apple iTunes and iPhoto UIs (via MacRumors and Powerpage

  

• I grabbed the beta of Google's Picasa for Mac photo management software last week, but haven't had time to try it out, but Giles Turnbull at Cult of Mac has taken it for a spin and has a few observations, including good coexistence with iPhoto and no-fuss locating of photos on your hard drive.

• Two interesting Apple product placements on TV in the last week--appearing on Gossip Girl with blacked out logos (due to Verizon's sponsorship) and NCIS (with a clearly labeled Macintosh Classic confusingly referred to as a Mac SE... what's up with that?)

• And finally, a very cool pop-up concept Mac along the lines of the late, great Apple Cube (via Cult of Mac):

  
  Mac Tower from Sait Alanyali on Vimeo.

One more thing... my Macworld reporting got waylaid last week by my own health issues (caught the annual Macworld cold while I was there, and it was a bit of a doozy), so I'll be catching up on some of my final Macworld posts over the next few days.

--Agen G.N. Schmitz

Comments

[Mister Snitch on January 17, 2009 at 06:27 AM]

Apple doesn't need Jobs to conceive products. They have a zillion users doing it for them.

[Harmon on January 17, 2009 at 07:03 AM]

Two words:

Airbook Tablet.