A nice compilation of Steve Jobs emails by Charles Arthur at The Guardian. But the title “the great communicator, though maybe not via email” seems a bit off. Arthur adds:

[W]hile Jobs might have been known as a great communicator when up on a stage in front of an audience, when dealing through email, “terse” barely begins to describe it.

Communications adapt to various mediums. On stage, Jobs is part showman, part salesman, part proud father of Apple products and also the company itself. He’s efficiently communicating a lot of new information in a fairly short space of time, drumming up enthusiasm.

Via email, he’s curt, but then I prefer to receive a curt, to-the-point email answer to any message I send rather than a load of waffle; and even if you do find Jobs’s replies terse, it’s worth bearing in mind one simple fact: he replies. He communicates. Most CEOS of massive companies don’t.

Lovely story from Marc Hedlund, remembering an 1999 internal Apple meeting:

In 1999, I think right after the iMac came out in a range of colors, I happened to sit in on an internal meeting at Apple, one in a large theater filled with employees. Steve Jobs came out and the whole theater burst into applause, and the clapping went on for minutes, with people standing and cheering.  The success of the iMac was just becoming evident – the first act of Steve’s big return, leading from there to what Apple is now.

Steve let the applause go on for a little bit, then, with much effort, settled down the crowd. When things got quiet, the first thing he said was: “That’s an awful lot of applause considering that you guys are the ones who do all the work.

“Everyone leapt to their feet and applauded again for several minutes more, this time with Steve egging them on, applauding each other as a team.

Dear all other CEOs in the tech industry: learn from this.

The Wall Street Journal has revealed that Apple CEO Steve Jobs has resigned. The CEO position will be filled by former COO Tim Cook and Jobs has been elected as chairman of the board.

Two things will now happen: idiots will say nasty things about Jobs and speculate on his health, and Apple’s stock will nose-dive. Here’s what I think:

• Jobs was a visionary for Apple. Twice. And he was a visionary for NeXT. For all we know, he may still have many more products to be involved with and inspire Apple on to further greatness.
• If Jobs has pretty much no further role in Apple, the company pretty much is Steve Jobs. Jobs has turned the company into a gigantic version of himself, demanding quality and innovation and the best for the consumer. With Jobs gone, that is not going to change.
• Cook has pretty much been the CEO of Apple since January. In that time, AAPL has gone from lows of $322 to highs of over $400. Apple is now battling with Exxon Mobil for the prized position of the world’s largest company. This was under Cook’s watch. He has already proved himself in the industry, although I suspect the market won’t—initially at least—see it that way.

Regardless, I’d like to say a public thank-you to Steve Jobs. Much of my working life has been heavily based around Apple and while I bitch and moan about all kinds of Mac- and iOS-related issues, I truly love technology and the potential it brings to improve life. I strongly believe Apple is the finest company in its field, and that Steve Jobs was instrumental in making that happen.

I’ve no idea what the future holds for Steve Jobs and I don’t really care to speculate on his health; but whatever it holds, I sincerely hope he has time to see Apple’s continued success and also to spend his days doing what he loves best, whatever that may be.

FOSS Patents reports on a truly bizarre curveball in the Samsung/Apple case:

Ever since Apple started to assert the design of the iPad against other manufacturers, many people have been wondering whether there’s actually prior art for the general design of the iPad in some futuristic devices shown in sci-fi movies and TV series. And indeed, Samsung’s lawyers make this claim now in their defense against Apple’s motion for a preliminary injunction.

Samsung then offers a picture of iPadish designs in 2001: A Space Odyssey. I’ll be amazed and slightly horrified if Samsung gets away with this, because it appears pretty damn clear Samsung ripped off Apple and is now using every tactic possible to try and distract everyone from that claim.

And what if Samsung is successful? Will every tech company accused of copying another company’s products have its legal team sift through classic sci-fi movies and 2000 AD comics, just in case something similar exists? Will it totally obliterate the ability to patent anything remotely futuristic, because it’s all been seen somewhere before? (As Stuart Alexander Arnott wryly pointed out on my Facebook page: “In today’s news, Paramount Television sue Motorola for their Razr phone copying the ‘clamshell’ Star Trek communicator.”)

Still, this could be a shot in the arm for the beleaguered Hollywood movie industry: rather than spending time suing the pants off of people downloading movie torrents, or, for that matter, making movies, studios could instead trawl through their back catalogues for sci-fi and spend the rest of their days in court, claiming prior art on everything from TVs and electric cars to the internet and robot pets. I CAN’T SEE HOW THIS CAN GO WRONG AT ALL.

Smart editorial from Tap! magazine editor Christopher Phin on why people buy iPads. His arguments are in part a rebuttal to a piece on Engadget that bangs the ‘tablets have no obvious use-case’ drum:

But there’s something I see time and again with the iPad: people often don’t have, as Darren implies, a clear practical use in mind when they’re buying one; but over weeks and months, they start using it more for all kinds of both predictable and unexpected tasks, and using traditional computers less.

I fully admit I’ve so far bought two iOS devices for purely work-related reasons: my old (since sold) iPhone 3G and my iPad. I bought them because I figured I could write about them, not because I thought they would become devices used for anything other than testing the odd app and then writing about it. In fairly short order, the iPhone became my primary games machine, a mobile web browser, a musical instrument and a pocket book. The iPad did similar tasks but was also handy for comics, creating artwork, messing about with photos and for writing articles. And, yes, I use computers less, very rarely bothering with a laptop at all these days.

But while this is a fine argument (and Phin adds that a tablet is more suitable for a relaxing environment than a ‘proper’ computer, and notes that apps can rapidly enhance an iPad’s abilities), I was more drawn to the editorial’s conclusion:

[W]hat kind of joyless monochrome world would this be if we all made decisions based solely on the grounds of practicality and productivity?

This can be read two ways. I suspect detractors will yell: “SEE! I knew Apple fan-boy idiots just liked the shiny shiny and don’t care about anything else, the dolts!” But it can also be read that sometimes it’s fine to be drawn to something that seems exciting, even if you don’t know exactly why.

Only by embracing new technology and then seeing what we can do with it can we ensure we don’t remain stuck in the past. And for everyone moaning about the lack of obvious utility in tablets, people once said the same thing about computers—and look where that got us.