Steve Jobs: Well Enough To Sit Next To the President Of The United States

Though this photo from the White House Flickr page showed only Steve Jobs from the back, he certainly did not look like those horribly faked photos from the National Inquirer.

Good to see him in black. Kind of funny if you think about it.




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Steve Jobs Was Confirmed To Be At meeting With The President; Meeting About The Future (2012 To Be Precise)

Reuters has confirmed that Steve Jobs was indeed present at the dinner with the President of the United States in San Francisco tonight.

That is fantastic news. And I hope President Obama was able to have a serious conversation about America's technological lead and innovative energy. Earlier, I write that I hope some sort of discussion about green technology took place.

And it is interesting that Reuters dedicated a whole piece on Steve Jobs and nothing on the actual content of the night's discussion.

But as I read the post, I came to realized that this maybe nothing more than to provide the President political cover with those who believe he has lost the support of America's businesses. That this meeting is more about the President's future and 2012 than America's future.

I cannot understand what meaningful contribution the CEOs of Twitter and Netflix has to offer on maintaining America's technological edge and learning.

Nor can I fathom what Facebook's Zuckerberg can possibly offer the president on any number of issues that ail our economy, energy policies, or K-12 education. Seriously, what does violating privacy time after time have to do with innovation at all?

More likely, the presence of the heads of these social and media companies was merely to serve as a reminder to a segment of the electorate that the President Obama had dinner with the guys who designed a way to efficiently mail them their DVDs and offer a way for them to share their lives with anyone who will read about it.

But who knows. Maybe Zuckerberg was there for the political gravy and President Obama did get some serious advices from the likes of Jobs, Schmidt (Google), Chambers (Cisco), Ellison (Oracle), and Levinson (Genentech) that will help him to get America back to innovating and working over the next couple of years and beyond.


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President Obama's Meeting With Tech CEOs: We Need A Steve Jobs Or Henry Ford For Green Tech

At the moment, at the writing of this post, President Obama is meeting with a few of Silicon Valley's heavyweights, Apple's iconic leader Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt. And though there are many thoughts and conjectures about what the meeting could or should be about, there is one thing that I think many missed.

Green tech. And right now even with tens of billions invested by the federal and state governments in incentives and grants and private investments, we are still a long way from getting off foreign oil and those pesky climate warming (or changing) coal.

What we need is a Steve Jobs for green tech. What we need is for President Obama to ask one of those tech visionaries to leave his current position and take up post at a new company that would revolutionize energy conservation and renewable energy production.

Imagine a healthy Steve being talked into taking reign of this new company. And it would have to be a private enterprise, perhaps with some grants from the government. That is as far as governmental involvement should be.

As a matter of fact, the Obama Administration should clear a path for this Steve Jobs led endeavor to succeed.

And how would Steve Jobs be convinced by this challenge? Better question is why would he do this?

Because Steve is Steve. The man who revolutionized computers, brought us the iPod, unleashed on the mobile market a device unlike anything they have seen before, and has once change how we work and play with the iPad.

Because it not him, who? Zuckerberg? Exactly.

And most importantly, Because Steve Jobs' ego is big enough for the challenge.

And yes, I am optimistic that Steve Jobs will beat what ailment he is offering from and has a lot of milage left to change the world again. Maybe even twice over.


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Left iPad at Work...Uuugh

I left my iPad at work. Stupid I know. And thought it was going to come in hand for me to get some work done around the house with it playing video on Netflix or a podcast.

I am on the iPod touch now and that is probably why I am not suffering from withdrawals or hoping into my car to go get it.

Still, I had planned on using it to do some diagrams.

So what does that say about the state of the tablet? Well, I don't think I have established a workflow that require it on a daily basis.

Plus, the iPad in large part is a device for media consumption. Tonight, I've enough media diversions until I can get back on track tomorrow.


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Apple's Steve Jobs And Google's Eric Schmidt To Meet With President Obama Tomorrow

Okay. This is huge. Like him or not, Steve Jobs was put on this death bed hours earlier by the National Inquirer. Now, ABC News is reporting that the heads of these two tech giants will meeting with President Obama in San Francisco tomorrow night.

This meeting is a part of the President's agenda to bring closer businesses to help America stay ahead of the pack in research and innovation.

Honestly, who better to throw ideas with than the two most storied companies in Silicon Valley. And if anyone knows about being a visionary and coming from behind, it's Steve Jobs, like him or not.

And obviously, Schmidt's management of Google and turning it into search and mobile powerhouse, is likely to have a couple of ideas on how to make the US stay on top. Schmidt, like him or not, is on top of his game.

And I just want to say that ABC News could be wrong about this and there is an ever so slight possibility that the National Inquirer is right about Steve Jobs. And Maybe I just don't want to believe it. But man, if anyone can advise the President on education, innovation, and research, it's Jobs.

More at ABC News, MacDailyNews.

Note: Zuckerberg will be there but I can't think of a reason why.


-- Post From My iPad

Apple Subscription: Seems Fair

I am sure all the bitching, moaning, and crying to the adults helped but after reading the details of Apple's subscription policy, it seems to make a lot of sense.  And quite frankly, it's fair.

If you bring in your own readers/viewers, you get to keep all the money.  Your did all the work.  But if we helped you out, we get a cut of the pie.  For Apple, that's 30%. 

Oh, and with personal data, it's opt-in, not opt-out like Facebook or Google.  So, that means we have to actively say that publishers and whoever they sell our information to can have access to our personal data.  Good move, Apple.

My only issue is that the 30% seems a bit much and I'm sure with some content publishers like Rupert Murdoch, he is powerful enough to be able to call up Steve Jobs and ask for some kind of a special deal.  

So, I hope after this week, all this nonsense will stop.  And here's what so great about competition.  Google, Nokia, Microsoft, RIM, or HP can totally say to publishers can say we'll take nothing from you.  And that might further change things at Apple.  

So the more things change, the more things become the way they should be.

More at Apple.

Wifi Chips Need To Be More Battery Friendly

Over the weekend, I took my MacBook out for some time at Borders. I had to do work on the laptop that I cannot do on the iPad at this time.

And this is an older MacBook. Late 2008 and the battery life has been put through it's paces in the last couple of years. According to a battery utility, it's got 80% left of the original charge left. When it gets to 70% or less, I'll probably have to decide if I should get a other battery or invest in a new MacBook.

I turned it on and it attached itself to the free wifi. And the battery indicator said there was 2.5 hours of work I could do. But I wanted to spend my afternoon there working so I turned off the wifi.

It has been quite some time since I've done that. The long battery on the iPod touch, and specifically, the iPad has really spoiled me. The battery life jumped to four hours!

I was there for about four hours and got about three hours of work done so there was some change left in the battery had I wanted to stay longer.

But my point is the wifi chip. What a power hog! I hope today's wifi chips are more battery friendly. But if they are not, someone need to invest some time and research on making wifi use more efficient and the chips draw less and less power.

We'll be using wifi for years if not decades more. Bring mobile isn't just about more efficient CPU, display, or bettery batteries. It's about other components of the mobile devices or laptops. And it's also about programming for power management.

For now, wifi chip and its ubiquity is one area that I see that can help mobile warriors work longer and worry-free.


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