Did Steve Jobs just sacrifice Phil Schiller? | Hacker News Reader

Did Steve Jobs just sacrifice Phil Schiller?

16 pointspedalpete41 comments

I just read the MacWorld Keynote on TechCrunch, and maybe Phil just isn't the showman that Jobs was, but I'm thinking that Jobs didn't host the keynote because there wasn't anything to say?

What do you think? Was there just nothing news worthy? or was it that Schiller just didn't carry the event?

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Did you watch the keynote?

* A 17" MBP with an 8 hour battery.

* iWork.com for document sharing

* New Pages, Keynote, and Numbers; Pages links with Numbers now, which is huge

* Garageband has guitar and piano lessons built in (!)

* iMovie stole a bunch of features from FCP and has real camera stabilization

* iPhoto has face detection

* And oh yeah they got rid of DRM on iTMS

This keynote is bigger than any number of Stevenotes. Snow Leopard didn't even rate.

I didn't watch it, I read the TC coverage after it was finished. This is the reason I asked the question. I'm not convinced that any of these items are ground breaking, though very cool features.

The coverage didn't seem exciting which is why I was asking the question did Steve Jobs not do the keynote because there was nothing worth reporting? or was it just not carried off with his panache and excitement? The coverage made it seem quite ho-hum.

And I still believe that none of these things are really news worthy. An 8 hr battery on 17" device is pretty cool

iWork gets document sharing - about time, and they aren't going to become a leader with that product as a result

*Getting rid of DRM on iTMS means now they can are equal to amazon and everybody else

again, I don't see this stuff as really exciting and ground breaking. Cool, yes. Good business decisions, sure. Amazing! no.

Agreed. They all seem like pretty logical upgrades for most of the things.

An 8 hr battery on 17" device is pretty cool

They always inflate this number and I wouldn't be surprise if it loses its charge quickly like most other macs. plus, integrated battery? no thanks.

No-DRM was more of a 'Finally!' than a 'Wow!'

Don't get me wrong, they're newsworthy, but I feel like there was no climax. nothing too surprising

Inflated or not, 8 hours for the 17-inch is better than 5-hours for the 15-inch.

In addition to getting a claimed 7-8hrs per charge, they also claim to be getting 3x as many charge cycles.

To someone like me, who uses their laptop+battery for a few years before replacing either, this is more important than usage/charge.

I've always wondered why there isn't a secondary battery or large capacitor to hold a few seconds of charge once the main battery is topped off, to avoid overcharging the main battery.

It's an interesting theory and some validity to it. Personally that's to minical for my tastes, but I did think the 8GB was a great engineering feat. I was just saying to a coworker a few minutes ago, probably 10 years ago I was on a 386p... with I dunno how much ram, now we're pushing 8GB's! Awesome.

Most of the Stevenotes aren't amazing.

'08: * The Air * Time Capsule * Movie Rentals

'07 * The iPhone (ok, ok)

'06 * Intel Macs * iWeb

'05 * Tiger, potlight * iWork * Shuffle

'04 * iLife * The iPod Mini

'03 * New iMovie, new iDVD * Safari * Keynote * 17" and 12" TiBooks

Was '09 as big as '07 or '06? No. But it's bigger than '03 and on par with '08 and '04. iPhone and iMovie are a big deal, the 17" MBP is their flagship computer (and some of the thunder from the MBP was stolen by the Q4 MacBook refresh --- which was a big deal), and the iTMS DRM thing is the biggest news on iTunes since Video.

07 iphone - yes that was huge (sorry if I sound like a fan !). Mobile computing went mainstream (lots of attention).

06 - intel Macs - that was a big one (macs platforms went "mainstream" in their source of components).

I remember in 06 the world flipped - Apple went to intel. Microsoft went PowerPC for XBOX 360 !

So I think those 2 years kind of lifted the bar - so 08 and 09 seem like a relative let down.

In other words, '09 fits kind of right in the middle of all the MWSF's, and Apple is transitioning out of MWSF and into WWDC and its own special events. I don't think they phoned this in.

The 17" TiBook was huge. I switched for essentially that reason alone in mid-2003... the fact that OS X was unix made it seem reasonable to switch, but the 17" laptop made me want to. :)

So just like in '02 there was a 15" TiBook and in '03 there was a 17", in '08 there was a 15" MBP, and in '09 there's a 17" with a new battery, new graphics, and more memory.

I feel like around '03 or '04 there was the introduction of GarageBand which I recall as being a pretty well put-together event. That may have been at the summer MacWorld expo.

"An 8 hr battery on 17" device is pretty cool" Until you try to replace it. Modular design is crying.

My subjective view is that the iTunes DRM thing is the biggest news by far. What happens to the old music though?

The new battery design is the best innovation announced today. It really doesn't make sense to carry around the extra casing material for a battery that I never remove from my laptop anyway. I don't think any of my non-techie friends or family have ever used their laptops without the battery, or replaced the battery, ever.

I think this battery design would be copied by more manufacturers if they had trustworthy retail centers like Apple does. I would take my Mac to the Apple store to replace the battery without any hesitation but I'd never take my ThinkPad to Geek Squad to do the same, and I'm not going to go laptop-less for days while UPS drop-kicks it to Lenovo's service center.

User-serviceability of computers is going to decrease as part of cost-cutting, size-reduction, and bullet-proofing by manufacturers. If Lenovo could make my laptop significantly smaller, lighter, more reliable, and cheaper than it is now, I would gladly give up the ability to easily take it apart or to easily swap out the battery.

Isn't it better when you can upgrade yourself as better components come out? It would be far better for Apple to come out with a 8 hour battery upgrade for current owners. You don't need a whole new platform to upgrade a battery, or a disk, or a video processor.

I agree on the service centers though, they are a huge apple advantage. I don't think I would ever want to go to one and waste my time. One hour at the store plus commute costs me almost the price of a battery.I prefer to click it on line and spend 30 seconds popping a new battery in.

I think that designing the battery such that it does not need to be replaced within the usable lifetime of the machine is a smarter approach than worrying overmuch about the average user's ability to replace it. It likely reduces manufacturing costs and benefits a larger number of users directly.

Yeah, and if 80% of Mac users were going to make a "Genius Bar" appointment for this anyways, "mandating" the Genius Bar window is also another sales touchpoint for them.

You can upgrade it for 30¢ a song.

Wow. So you found the twitteresque transcript pounded out by some guy desperately trying to keep up with live events from his seat on his laptop little dry, and you blame Phil Schiller? I thought Phil was positively engaging. The audience was on the edge of their seats for almost the entire keynote, and the "Ooos", "Aaas", and gasps were abundant. The products Phil highlighted all showed how Apple, once again, is innovating where everyone else is still working on getting a usable v.1. There's no one in iPhoto or iMovie's class, Keynote's iPhone integration just put another nail in RIM's coffin, and every laptop designer in the world just slapped themselves on the forehead, realizing that if they had only put some investment into stores and service, they too could have an 8-hour(!) laptop with no increase in size or weight.

It was a great keynote. You should try watching it and then come back if you have nits to pick.

"Pages links with Numbers now, which is huge" Publish & Subscribe returns! Now if only they could get the Finder as good as it was, we'll be up to System 7 standards shortly.

(Snark aside, I really like the Pages update. Proper bibliography is a great add)

Everyone in my office had the same reaction when I called this out; "oh, Pages is now almost as good as WordPerfect!". But we do a ton of data-driven reporting and documentation, and editing tables is a bitch in Pages.app and a breeze in Numbers.app; also, we have code to generate Pages documents, but it's extremely painful (for instance to size text fields properly); now we can import/export CSVs for the same purpose.

A lot of people (myself included) were expecting to see a revamped Mac Mini. Instead, about the most exciting thing was the non-glare screen option for the new 17" Macbook Pro.

You think the Mac Mini, a product that accounts for a tiny sliver of all of Apple's revenue, rates a slot alongside a new rev of Apple's flagship computer?

Yes! It's the cheapest entry into owning a Mac at a time when people are looking to spend less money (e.g. netbooks).

Portables do almost double the amount of revenue as the whole desktop category for Apple; the Mini is accounted for alongside the Mac Pro and iMac lines --- either of which surely dwarf the Mini. However important you think it is, I don't think Apple thinks it's as important as the MBP, or the 3.3Bn iTMS, or even the 2.2Bn Apple software line.

It's not really a new revision, though, is it? It's just a different size of the newest revision that has been out for a while. On top of that, it's a "release" that has been assumed for months. It strikes me as a bug-fix release, instead of a major new release, if you will.

The bright lining to the missing mini is that maybe they have to wait for the next round of processors from Intel. That would mean even better minis when they do get upgraded. (Alert: unwarranted optimism detected)

If I had to roll out a mini now I'd be of two minds: 1) take the price down so people will buy even in a depressed economy. 2) leave the price on the theory that the cost sensitive will buy horrible low end machines for $100 less anyway. If you choose 1 and the economy starts to rebound you have shot your profits for product lifetime. Maybe it is best to wait and see how the next month or two plays out before committing to an 18 month product cycle.

Well, the minis have used mobile versions of the "Core" CPUs in the past, and the "P" (25W TDP, 3M cache) and "SP" series (like "P" but socket-less, 6M cache) were only recently released to accompany the "Centrino 2" platform. There's even a quad-core mobile Core2 out. (except it's got a TDP of 45W, so calling it "mobile" is a stretch) On the desktop side, the Nehalems (Core i7) are brand new.

I doubt they're waiting for yet another iteration.

The last time they revamped the Mac Mini (to the Core 2 Duo processors), they didn't do a reveal at MacWorld or WWDC. The Apple store was simply updated to reflect the update. Be interesting to see if this happens again, given all the "leaks" about a new Mac Mini being imminent.

Steve didn't sacrifice him. Apple is having less to say. . .because their products are speaking for themselves. You have to have a lot to say anytime you're on the edge. You have to rile people to a cause that isn't popular. Apple is popular and strong. They are constantly rolling out new products as they become ready. It's wonderful! Before, they had to do big demonstrations of how the G4 could do gigaflops or how they were going to change the world. Now, they can stand up there and say, we've made a better 17" laptop and walk off stage knowing that they aren't a hard sell like they used to be.

I'm not bashing what Apple was. I've been a Mac user from the LC and Quadra days, but I'm much happier with the company now. They aren't some counter-culture scrappy thing. They're big, stable, mainstream, and consistent. And I love it!

iTunes going DRM free is a big deal. I'd say it marks the beginning of the end of DRM, at least in music (Amazon MP3 was first big store, but iTunes is the largest)

I think it's the end of DRM on music. It's going to be a lot harder to lose DRM on video- it's still making lots of money.

I think a LOT of the things they said were newsworthy.

Jobs said yesterday on Apple.com that he was spending the time recovering with his family. I think that's the main issue here, nothing else.

If he's been losing weight continuously since the last keynote --- where his appearance scared the press --- you can imagine the reason why Schiller did this keynote instead.

That you personally don't find any of it interesting does not mean it's not newsworthy.

You've had it too good for too long. Consider Apples innovation in the last three years compared to any (or all) of their competitors... even the glorious Apple can't deliver at the rate they're expected.

The batteries better perform as well as Apple is claiming or this could be a major fail.

He, he.. That's what I was thinking.. Picturing El Jobso talking about the battery for half hour, .. nah. Better call in sick.... :-)

You all can debate the merits of the keynote goodies but let me tell you why the answer to the question "Did Steve Jobs just sacrifice Phil Schiller?" is "Uhhh, no."

When the original clamshell iBook was introduced, Jobs did the keynote. And Phil Schiller's role in all this was to jump off a ladder into a stunt bag, holding the candy orange purse-looking thing, to show its sturdiness.

Do you think Steve Jobs would ever do such an undignified thing himself?

And this was what... 8, 9, 10 years ago?

Schiller is considered a joke. He always has been considered a joke. He looks and sounds more like he should be a cast member on Full House than a presentation guru.

Jobs claimed they were pulling out of MacWorld years ago, but went back on the idea for whatever reason. He doesn't have to "sacrifice" anyone. He's Steve Jobs, for crissakes.

Y'all don't have historical perspective on the man and the company. You can't make these kinds of assertions without it.

Note: Schiller has a tough row to hoe and he clearly works very hard to do a good job. I don't personally think he's a joke, but he's treated like one. "He's no Jobs" is hardly a damning statement.

The new Macs with their new software will make some thing easier than they were in their previous versions. They have added to their products innovations that have already showed up (better) other places: Lenovo's W700, Dell's "all day" laptops, image stabilization from video cameras, Office Live/Google Docs/Sharepoint document sharing, Picasa's face recognition, Amazon's DRM-free music, Geotagging from everybody associated with photography, their previous laptop designs. It is hard to make any of that second-comer stuff seem earth-shattering, even if they implemented and packaged it better than the companies that brought those features to market before them.

If they wanted to make me excited about their products then they need major first-to-market innovations. How about a 13" laptop with a 15" screen?

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