Steve Jobs: "Google wants to kill the iPhone!!!!111 Adobe suxx0rz!!1111"

[Syt]

http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/01/googles-dont-be-evil-mantra-is-bullshit-adobe-is-lazy-apples-steve-jobs/

Google's 'Don't Be Evil' Mantra is 'Bullshit,' Adobe Is Lazy: Apple's Steve Jobs (Update 2)
    *

After a big public announcement of the sort Apple had this week for the iPad CEO Steve Jobs often takes time in the day or two afterwards to have a Town Hall at One Infinite Loop, making himself available for questions from employees bold enough to stand up and take one right between the eyes.

This time, the big topics included Google and Adobe — no surprises there. Google recently unveiled its own Android-powered handset, the Nexus One, whose release Jan. 5 prompted Jobs to perhaps over-react by announcing on the same day that the iTunes store had served up three billion apps and that "... we see no signs of the competition catching up any time soon." Apple's billionth iPhone app download was greeted with great fanfare, but the two billionth not so much, so it felt a tad like Jobs was feeling some heat.

And the absence of Adobe Flash support on the iPhone for three years and counting, and now on the iPad, is either celebrated by users as a poke in the eye of one of the web's most dextrous tools, or the most over-rated and overused crutch for decent design.

Jobs, characteristically, did not mince words as he spoke to the assembled, according to a person who was there who could not be named because this person is not authorized by Apple to speak with the press.

On Google: We did not enter the search business, Jobs said. They entered the phone business. Make no mistake they want to kill the iPhone. We won't let them, he says. Someone else asks something on a different topic, but there's no getting Jobs off this rant. I want to go back to that other question first and say one more thing, he says. This don't be evil mantra: "It's bullshit." Audience roars.

About Adobe: They are lazy, Jobs says. They have all this potential to do interesting things but they just refuse to do it. They don't do anything with the approaches that Apple is taking, like Carbon. Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy, he says. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it's because of Flash. No one will be using Flash, he says. The world is moving to HTML5.

The world, of course, includes Google, which last week in a somewhat more modest development bypassed Apple's iPhone app blockade by unveiling an html5 version of Google Voice, which takes full advantage of mobile Safari on the iPhone. Wired.com found it to be an impressive variation of the app Apple has neither approved nor officially rejected.

And it is, of course, in keeping with Google's stated view (Android app marketplace notwithstanding) that the future is really in web-based applications and not in mobile apps at all. Web-based applications of the sort html5 makes much more viable.

So, great work rallying the troops, Steve — but be careful what you wish for.

(Update, 1/31 2:00 pm ET: In a post on macrumors.com Arnold Kim adds some more details from the Town Hall, including tough talk from Jobs about a blistering pace of iPhone updates, the LaLa acquisition, the next iPhone and (ahem) another candid assessment, of Blu-Ray.)

(Update, 1/31 4:20 pm ET: Another member of the audience, who also requires anonymity because this person is also not authorized to speak to the media, disputes the "bullshit" quote and says Jobs actually said: "Don't be evil is a load of crap," as first reported by Daring Fireball. This source also asserts that Jobs had nice things to say about how Adobe, or at least how the company used to be, as John Gruber's "little birdie" also told him first.)

So, Jobs complains about others moving into the mobile phone market, something he himself did with the iPhone?

[derspiess]

Hilarious.  Jobs's arrogance & dishonesty in regards to Flash, Blu-ray, and anything else that Apple does not currently do, is astounding.

[grumbler]

Hilarious.  Jobs's arrogance & dishonesty in regards to Flash, Blu-ray, and anything else that Apple does not currently do, is astounding.

Doesn't astonish me in the slightest.  He is a businessman (and a very successful one) and successful businessmen don't advertise detrimental truths and they emphasize favorable half-truths.  Anyone expecting anything else out of him is delusional or naive.

[Caliga]

Nobody is going to kill the iPhone.  Tons of people who have iPhones have them just because Apple makes them.  Google could make a phone with ten times as many features, better coverage, and at half the price, and Apple's fanboitards wouldn't make the switch.

I hope college marketing professors everywhere are studying Apple's marketing efforts, which overall have got to be some of the most effective ever, right up there with Starbucks ("sure, I'd be glad to pay $5 for a paper cup full of bean juice that cost you a total of 9 cents to produce!")

[derspiess]

Well I guess I'm more astounded that he's able to get away with it.  But I think you're giving him too much credit with the "half-truth" thing.  It's closer to flat-out lying.

[derspiess]

I hope college marketing professors everywhere are studying Apple's marketing efforts, which overall have got to be some of the most effective ever,

I hope for their sake they're not-- replicating Apple's formula for success would be tricky if not impossible.

[Neil]

I hope college marketing professors everywhere are studying Apple's marketing efforts, which overall have got to be some of the most effective ever,

I hope for their sake they're not-- replicating Apple's formula for success would be tricky if not impossible.

I don't know.   Form over function is an old trick.

[derspiess]

I don't know.   Form over function is an old trick.

Not to this degree or longevity, unless there's an example I'm missing.

[Barrister]

Hilarious.  Jobs's arrogance & dishonesty in regards to Flash, Blu-ray, and anything else that Apple does not currently do, is astounding.

Doesn't astonish me in the slightest.  He is a businessman (and a very successful one) and successful businessmen don't advertise detrimental truths and they emphasize favorable half-truths.  Anyone expecting anything else out of him is delusional or naive.

There's a quote out there from Jobs putting down the Kindle because "nobody reads any more".

And now the major selling point of the iPad is the online bookstore. 

I'm not sure if he's lying, per se.  The best salesmen are the ones who passionately believe in what they are saying, at the time they say it.

[Barrister]

Nobody is going to kill the iPhone.  Tons of people who have iPhones have them just because Apple makes them.  Google could make a phone with ten times as many features, better coverage, and at half the price, and Apple's fanboitards wouldn't make the switch.

You're sadly mistaken if you chalk up the iPhone's success to being sold to "Apple's fanboitards".  Most iPhones are sold to people who have never owned an Apple product besides an iPod.  Apple is expanding its base, and not just selling to the same old fans.

And by all accounts, the iPhone is a very good smartphone.  Others may beat them on specific features, but as a whole the iPhone is amongst the best smartphones on the market.

[Berkut]

Well, I am a well known Apple fanbois, so my views are rather suspect, but I sure liked my iPhone.

Replaced it with a Droid, but that was 100% based on AT&T, not the iPhone, which I really liked.

Not sure I could go back to it though - now that I am enjoying DRM free music and such, I am not sure I could tolerate iTunes again.

[Barrister]

iTunes is now DRM free.  If you have music from 2+ years ago however it may still have DRM on it.

[Josquius]

Its funny really, everyone loves Apple because they're the little guys but if they were the big guys...damn. They'd make microsoft look absolutely lovely. Their policies are fascist.


The iphones success: It is because it is an iphone.
Not that apple fanboys flock to it (there aren't enough of them for that) but that it has a reputation as THE phone...even though there are now many better alternatives out there.
Like with the ipod...just...good marketing saw it win out over equally good or better rivals.

[Caliga]

Please note that I never said the iPhone is a bad phone, nor that everyone who buys one is a retarded fanboi. 

[Barrister]

The iphones success: It is because it is an iphone.
Not that apple fanboys flock to it (there aren't enough of them for that) but that it has a reputation as THE phone...even though there are now many better alternatives out there.
Like with the ipod...just...good marketing saw it win out over equally good or better rivals.

The iPhone is only 3 years old though.  How do you think it developed a reputation as "THE phone"?

Until the last year or so, it was undisputably the best smartphone on the market, and the one everyone else has been chasing.  Even now, at best, companies have caught up with, but not passed, the iPhone.