Steve Jobs says Gizmodo tried to extort Apple | Hacker News Reader

Steve Jobs says Gizmodo tried to extort Apple

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18 pointsjaybol13 comments

In passing, the (Palo Alto) Daily News, which does not put its content online but is a legit newspaper, reports that Chen's computer gear has been transferred to the FBI's computer forensics lab in Menlo Park:

http://sfppc.blogspot.com/2010/06/gizmodo-editors-computers-...

I love Steve Jobs but sometimes based on his statements he seems to take many normal things as a personal attack. The Google comments also reminded me of this. He seems deeply upset Google went into mobile. Google is in the advertising business and that means they need a huge presence in mobile since any numnuts can tell that's where the business is going. Google didn't go into mobile to hurt Apple or Steve Jobs; they went in because that's where the business was going. Google is not perfect, but in this case if an apology is owed anywhere it's to Google.

Anybody who's in business knows that business is highly personal. After you spend too many hours and too much work on something you cannot help but care about the final results. Take the edge off Job's personality and you'd get a completely different person.

Given that Schmidt was on Apple's board of directors we can safely assume that he did not tell Jobs his plans. If he had, he never would have served on Apple's board. By joining Apple's board of directors Schmidt essentially promised he wasn't going to invade Apple's territory. Then he decided to do so anyway. So I think Jobs has every right to be upset with Google.

In my opinion Schmidt should never have posed as an ally and Jobs should never have accepted Schmidt on the board in the first place.

The biggest thing I took away from his comments on the Gizmodo thing last night is that Steve Jobs took the whole thing very personally.

Considering how Gizmodo basically stole the spotlight out of the new iPhone announcement (the highlight of Steve's keynote) and wrote petulant "we have your phone, you want it back?" emails to him, I'm not surprised how Jobs has a vendetta against Gizmodo.

Considering how Gizmodo basically stole the spotlight out of the new iPhone announcement

I don't get this. The sum total of Gizmodo's reports were that there's a new iPhone coming with a slightly different appearance. Well, duh. The actually interesting and not utterly predictable details like the 960x640 resolution were released by "legitimate" sources like John Gruber, but nobody seems to be outraged about that.

Considering what we now know about the iPhone 4G, the spotlight would have been a waste of time; it would just been another moment for Steve Jobs to give the fanboys an aural reason for an orgasm.

"And I thought deeply about this, and I ended up concluding that the worst thing that could possibly happen as we get big and we get a little bit more influence in the world is if we change our core values" -Jobs

As they get big?

Apple is still 17% smaller than Exxon: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=apple+market+cap,+exxon...

Exxon is a special type of company.

It was one of the largest, most-profitable companies in the world 100 years ago (then known as Standard Oil).

Exxon is still one of the largest and most-profitable companies in the world today.

And, given that many of their existing oilfields will continue producing for the next 100 years, Exxon is likely to still be one of the most-profitable and largest companies in the world long after we are all gone.

The same is true of the oil industry. The oil industry was one of the largest and most profitable industries in the world long before we were all born. It is still one of the worlds largest and most profitable industries today. And it will still be so long after we are all gone.

Interesting fact: many oilfields in the San Joaquin basin of Southern California have been producing oil since the 1890's. Continuously.

It's hard to think of many industries where the risk-capital that you invest today will still be paying dividends 100 years from now.

I wasn't being serious. The subtext was precisly that it's a little surreal that Apple is the second largest American company by market cap, and from the graph I linked to before, well on their way to top a company like Exxon.

Yeah, CA is an oil-producing state. #3 on the list, in fact.

http://www.statemaster.com/graph/ene_pet_pro-energy-oil-prod...

Steve Jobs tortured my kittens. It's true because I say so!

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