According to those ever-quotable "people familiar with the matter," Steve Jobs is still "closely involved" in "key aspects" of running Apple, reports the
Wall Street Journal. While
Tina Fey's favorite keynote-giver has remained incognito ever since
he took a medical leave in January, the
WSJ has learned that he's been working hard from home, involved in strategy and key products -- including some nitty gritty of the new interface elements in iPhone 3.0. The article also makes mention of a jumbo-sized iPod touch of sorts (an iTablet, if you will), but it's hard to tell if that word is from these same people familiar with the matter, or if the
WSJ is just picking up that
perennial rumor from less reputable sources. Apple's of course remaining tight-lipped, merely stating that "Steve continues to look forward to returning to Apple at the end of June." All we know is that we're looking forward to putting all this rampant speculation behind us, and an Apple-involved Steve seems like a great step in that direction.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
posted Apr 11th 2009 at 12:58PM
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
gareth @ Apr 11th 2009 1:02PM
steve is god
JAmerican @ Apr 11th 2009 1:18PM
If he's God, why's he following Microsoft. I mean they were the first ones to make a Tablet PC :).
Sektor @ Apr 11th 2009 1:26PM
Then, after it comes out, all the iFanboys will say existing tables are ripping off Apple.
Sektor @ Apr 11th 2009 1:26PM
Then, after it comes out, all the iFanboys will say existing tablets are ripping off Apple.
Marcus @ Apr 11th 2009 1:39PM
Microsoft did the first tablet? What's it called?
gouken85 @ Apr 11th 2009 2:04PM
No. But Bill Gates is.
Neha @ Apr 11th 2009 2:10PM
Who cares what the emaciating Syrian is up to? He's just another CEO of a high margin corporation.
P.A.C Man @ Apr 11th 2009 2:11PM
Steve Jobs did start Pixar, after buying George Lucas's computer special effects division from Industrial Light and Magic. So Steve was practically invented computer animated films, and along with Woz made the first personal computer with a keyboard and monitor. He was behind the Mac, which had a GUI which was copied by Microsoft. He was also behind the iPod, iTunes and the iPhone and the App Store, which he called the biggest launch of his career.
He's had an impressive life. No surprise he's still in the background pulling strings.
Gerardo Calixto @ Apr 11th 2009 2:19PM
Steve Jobs DID NOT INVENT animated films, are you crazy? He invested in a CG firm that's all, and they didn't even invent it. Steve Jobs a regular man with a talented team of thinkers, from whom he takes all the credit for.
Law 7
Get others to do the Work for you, but Always Take the Credit
Use the wisdom, knowledge, and legwork of other people to further your own cause. Not only will such assistance save you valuable time and energy, it will give you a godlike aura of efficiency and speed. In the end your helpers will be forgotten and you will be remembered. Never do yourself what others can do for you.
P.A.C Man @ Apr 11th 2009 2:33PM
@Gerardo Calixto
By your rational, Bill Gates didn't invent Windows. If you read any biography of Bill Gates you will know that the only thing that Gates ever coded was BASIC on the Altair. DOS was bought outright and Windows was coded by programmers paid by Gates. Of course, I think he deserves credit because he had the vision for Windows (after seeing it on the LISA of course).
If you read any biography of Steve Jobs, it will tell you that before Steve Jobs bought the company, which was called Graphic Groups at Industrial Light and Magic, Pixar did special effects for movies like Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan. When Steve Jobs bought the company, he tasked them with making the first fully computer animated feature. I think he deserves the credit for the result, which was Toy Story almost a decade later.
I almost forgot to mention that Steve Jobs was also indirectly responsible for the World Wide Web.
The world wide web was created on a NeXT computer, the company that Steve Jobs created after he left Apple in 1985. Tim Berners-Lee was able to invent the World Wide Web because of a hypertext program and a text editor used in NeXTStep.
I also have Tim Berners-Lee's book "Weaving the Web," which states on page 28-29, "The NeXT interface was beautiful, smooth, and consistent. It had great flexibility, and other features that would not be seen on PCs til later, such as voice e-mail, and a built-in synthesizer. It also had software to create a hypertext program... I still had to find a way to turn text into hypertext, though. This required being able to distinguish text that was a link from test that wasn't.
I delved into the files that defined the internal workings of the text editor, and happily found a spare thirty-two-bit piece of memory, which the developers of NeXT had graciously left open for future use by tinkerers like me. I was able to use the spare space as a pointer from each span of text to the address for any hypertext link. With this, hypertext was easy. I was then able to rapidly write the code for the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), the language computers would use to communicate over the Internet, and the Universal Resource Indentifier (URI), the scheme for document addresses. By mid-November I had a client program---a point-and-click browser/editor---which I just called WorldWideWeb.... Like the first client, the server actually ran on my desktop NeXT machine."
superhobo @ Apr 11th 2009 2:40PM
I think Paul A Chapel man should just shut up.
Saad Rabia @ Apr 11th 2009 2:53PM
Guys, Steve Jobs deserves credits on everything that came after his decisions. Being a leader of even a small group and making sure that this group will work hard, respect each other then accept a distant vision from a man that had no university degree is by far the hardest thing anyone could ever accomplish in such world and time. Jobs did it and still doing it right, as well as Gates. Both are great in their own ways, both screwed up a little and both have done more than any of us have done or will do.
Richard @ Apr 11th 2009 3:18PM
How the hell can you people be so fanatical in your support of companies like Apple, Microsoft? You seem blind to the flaws in your operating system of choice and instead to worship them as if they were Gods. Personally I don’t think any of the three major consumer operating systems, or the companies behind them, are particularly great:
-Apple sell high priced products based largely on image rather than substance. I don’t know if OSX is any good since I’d pay the prices required to try it.
-Microsoft have single-handledly destroyed the computer industry, stiffing competition and innovation while producing bloated, inefficient and often poorly designed software.
-Linux is too hard for most people to use and many aspects of the various distributions don’t work well. If you don’t know what you’re doing you can easily destroy your system and have to reinstall everything.
The blind fanaticism towards operating systems is absurd. Can’t you simply use the one you like best and shut up about it instead of trying to tell everyone how great it is?
Bryant @ Apr 11th 2009 3:31PM
"Microsoft did the first tablet? What's it called?"
Microsoft invented the concept and marketed it to various OEMs. Windows XP Tablet Edition was the first OS to implement this concept.
comments4cheap @ Apr 11th 2009 4:23PM
@P.A.C Man
Bible says God created the world...If steve jobs called you personally and told you his life story, by all means go ahead and talks about it like concrete cuz it came from his mouth. If not, STFU and don't beleive everything you read.
Jon Graft @ Apr 11th 2009 5:04PM
@ P.A.C Man
Thank you for proving your point. You, unlike 99.999% of the Engadget readers, provided hard facts that can't be denied. The only little extra thing you could have done was add a link to your sources, and if you did that, it'd be good enough for a college paper (a little sarcasm to the morons who I KNOW would say something about how my college must suck if that was a college worthy paper)
@ comments4cheap
You are an idiot. P.A.C Man obviously did his research. You just posted a comment that you illegibly typed out in about 10 seconds. Go on Google, search up both Steve Job's and Bill Gate's biographies...and to ensure you have FACTS and not a laid out story, look for multiple biographies...until you do that, I believe YOU should be the one shutting the fuck up.
CraigJ @ Apr 11th 2009 5:18PM
GRiD computing marketed and sold the first commercial pen top computer in 1989 called the Grid Pad. It ran on MS DOS, but Microsoft had nothing to do with it's development.
The Palm Pilot also predates the "Tablet PC", but of course, a Palm Pilot IS a small tablet PC, albeit with a limiter set of functionality as compared to something like Windows.
All Microsoft did was add some APIs to Windows to make it work a little better on a touch screen.
I'm not saying it was bad, (although using an early table, i found it to be painful for anything other than casual web surfing) but saying that Microsoft invented the first Tablet PC is like saying Apple invented the touch screen smart phone.
comments4cheap @ Apr 11th 2009 5:59PM
@Jon Graft
I DON'T CARE WHO WROTE WHAT, YOU DUMMY. You believe everything you read then fine, that's your business. Next time read the Bible and kill your parents as revenge for making you dumb.
Shyam D @ Apr 11th 2009 7:55PM
Paul, just because the world believes FUD doesn't mean people who know better will. If you want to tell CNN that Jobs invented the world, they would probably believe you. There are on the other hand plenty of people who know there were people who know that while just like other great men, Jobs did a lot, he did not do everything.
The man behind the creation of Toy Story was not Jobs, but rather John Lasseter. Toy Story was his vision, as was PIXAR as an animation studio. Jobs saw it as a hardware company, in the same way that Apple is today. Very similar business model, bad timing. In fact Jobs was considering selling the company UNTIL Disney agreed to publish Lasseter's idea. So sorry, Jobs did not create the first fully animated feature film. Let's also not forget the fact that there is controversy to this day as whether it was Toy Story or Cassiopéia that was first full CGI film. Pixar made clay models and scanned them into CGI. Cassiopéia was made from purely Virtual Models, but did come out after Toy Story.
The web is not just HTTP, in fact there is a lot out there that isn't just HTTP. If you want to say he was indirectly responsible for HTTP because he owned a company that happened to leave something open for another tinker to sort through and convert into HIS idea. Then yes, he indirectly invented HTTP. But, by that standard, Bill Gates invented the modern computer and the Web, both of which he played larger role in shaping then Jobs did. In fact, by that standard, I would agree that Al Gore invented the Internet. Funny how you think it should only apply to one person huh? Why not go further back, Tesla invented the 21'st Century. After inventing Wireless transmission, he had the grand idea of a global power and information network. He invented WiFi, Bluetooth, the Cellphone, Satellites, oh, and don't forget, your iPhone. Sorry Jobs, it was really Tesla.
Honestly, Jobs is good, not a god. Apple is a company that makes a good product, not the only product, and definitely not the perfect product or everyone would only own Apple products. Quit being such a suck up douche bag.
To you Anti-Apple Fan boys, you stfu as well.
Kwikit @ Apr 11th 2009 10:03PM
Richard,
Your trifecta reminds me of another which also collects fanbois and blind faith:
Judaism
Christianity
Islam
Funny that. :)
American @ Apr 12th 2009 4:21AM
Steve is jesus
Jack Storm @ Apr 12th 2009 3:49PM
P.A.C. Man is just an Apple troll. The other day he was telling about how Steve Jobs was indirectly responsible for creating Oxygen.
FoxKenji @ Apr 12th 2009 5:06PM
@ CraigJ:
"The Palm Pilot also predates the "Tablet PC", but of course, a Palm Pilot IS a small tablet PC, albeit with a limiter set of functionality as compared to something like Windows."
True about the Palm Pilot, but also consider that the Apple invented the PDA when they came up with the Newton. The Pilot followed and MS turned on the photocopy machine again and came out with a joke called WinCE.
iphonerulez @ Apr 12th 2009 11:09PM
Rumors say Steve is stuffing fried chicken and pasta down his gullet while fine-tuning the tablet. He's not only hungry for food, but hungry for dominating the tablet market while the rest of the industry has their pants down trying to copy the iPhone and open on-line stores.
Microsoft may have been the first to make a tablet PC, but they were also the first to screw it up by probably using some stylus-based interface. What'd they sell, about a couple of dozen of those things. When the Apple tablet hits the streets, there'll be lines around the block just to get to touch one. They'll sell a million of them in a month. Since it'll run the same OS as the iPhone and iPod Touch, people will be downloading apps from day one. Sorry, this is not going to be like your typical Windows tablet. The Apple logo says it all.
Paul a. Chapel @ Apr 14th 2009 1:26PM
LOL, PAC, nice job.
Mark Anderson @ Apr 11th 2009 1:02PM
Shock news just in: Pope is a Catholic.
PhiPhi @ Apr 11th 2009 2:01PM
News just in: Mr. Anderson took the blue pill.
CraigJ @ Apr 11th 2009 5:20PM
Jesus kills Pope, makes Snowball leader of Catholic Church.
thetinguy @ Apr 11th 2009 1:04PM
THANKS CAPTAIN OBVIOUS!!
Shank @ Apr 11th 2009 1:05PM
he will definitely drive innovation.
JohnTitor @ Apr 11th 2009 1:13PM
http://img73.imageshack.us/img73/9940/touchu.jpg
The Dude @ Apr 11th 2009 1:24PM
That makes me wonder if the iTablet will get relegated as a me-too device after the CrunchPad. Probably not, as inconvenient facts that get in the way of praise are simply disregarded.
XGM @ Apr 11th 2009 4:13PM
iTablet, the iPhone scaled by 300% with OS X
Blooper62 @ Apr 11th 2009 1:20PM
What are the chances of him coming back and being close to 200lbs? Or is it going to be a return of Bone Jobs?
bill cant fart @ Apr 11th 2009 4:15PM
Bone Jobs? That sounds dirty.
Kaitian @ Apr 11th 2009 1:21PM
Let me guess. A 7" or so capacitive touchscreen iTablet. That sounds likely considering it's not going to be much different from the iPhone interface only w/ a shrinked down OSX designed for a tablet version.
RobCon @ Apr 11th 2009 1:25PM
Would Engadget have headlines if the question mark had not been invented?
Scott Xavier @ Apr 11th 2009 1:39PM
Just back in time for the new iphone release.
Alex @ Apr 11th 2009 1:35PM
way to provoke it, engadget.
ethana2 @ Apr 11th 2009 1:42PM
If I were Steve Jobs, I'd be reading engadget right now... maybe even these comments. In light of that, I begin.
..OS X, despite having the best default user interface of any desktop OS, doesn't have hardware support worth a darn.
The vast majority of people still use Windows. OS X is not supposed to be used, according to the EULA, in 'mission critical' applications. Hospitals, places where life is constantly on the line, rely almost entirely upon Microsoft products. People are sick of these games.
So tell us, Steve-- Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or are you going to change the world?
So long ago when Apple tried to license OS X, it was their only asset. Now they have hardware design that is without competition. Having taken apart a powermac G3, G4, my Inspiron 1420n, and many a non-Apple desktop machine, I know that 'thin and shiny' takes some design skills, and Apple has those skills. Times have changed. License OS X.
gouken85 @ Apr 11th 2009 2:12PM
Because Apple hasn't heard those comments before.
And clearly they must be idiots for not following them, judging from Apple's performance the last couple years.
What is great about os x is that it doesn't have to worry about being compatible with a zillion machines.
That means Apple can innovate in a rapid pace.
Most people think OSX would evolve just as quickly even if it was licensed to third parties. That is wrong.
ethana2 @ Apr 11th 2009 2:21PM
They don't have to do it the way MS does it. They can set standards-- for ACPI implementations, for firmware, so on. It could be that only a small number of non-Apple computers are 'OS X capable' machines. That's fine. If that's a feature people want, and it is, hardware manufacturers can get their butts in gear and meet those technical standards. They don't have to settle just 'cause they license.
JohnWesleyHarding @ Apr 11th 2009 2:32PM
What makes Apple so profitable is their hardware. People buy their computers for OS X (and some for the design), however selling operating systems on a wider, yet still limited scale (to allow for stability), would hurt their business. Their is a reason Apple is strongly fighting companies like Psystar, although that company legally bought the operating system.
ethana2 @ Apr 11th 2009 2:35PM
I don't doubt that the way Apple runs their business now is the best way to suck as much money out of people as possible.
I'm saying that if that's Steve Jobs' version of 'changing the world', it's not good enough.
gouken85 @ Apr 11th 2009 5:36PM
He changed the world with the original mac in 1984.
The pc wars are over. He said it himself.
Now it's about delivering a superior product.
ethana2 @ Apr 11th 2009 5:45PM
The x86 war is over.
The OS war is just getting started.
Skeezle @ Apr 13th 2009 9:12AM
"So long ago when Apple tried to license OS X, it was their only asset"
I think it was OS8 they licensed out.
LloydChiro @ Apr 11th 2009 1:42PM
I'm surprised Apple hasn't developed a Tablet Mac yet. It seems like a natural fit. I use to use my way underpowered TabletPC for video editing, and it was great for it. It's so much more fluid and natural to tap the screen with a pen than it is to use a mouse or, worse, a trackpad.
It bemuses me to see Mac owners ask, "why would I want that?" when it is obviously a much better interface for your portable computer.
gouken85 @ Apr 11th 2009 5:49PM
The way tablets are now isn't good enough. That's why they haven't been successful.
There shouldn't be a stylus. The os should be optimized for touch gestures and that creates problems with maintaining multiple os variations. If Apple wants to make a tablet, and they use the iphone os, they should release an ilife/iwork suit built just for that, plus allow compatibility with existing iphone os apps, and unlock background processes. Otherwise it is a big ipod touch with a larger screen and a better processor, and no one will buy that.
Major4Play @ Apr 11th 2009 1:43PM
I think iPad makes the most sense.