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.

Yeah, yeah, I know. Long-range weather forecasting is hard. I get it. Even figuring out what the weather’s going to do tomorrow is an inexact science, and so predicting trends months into the future is nigh-on impossible. Some people will say “why bother, then?” but we all know that people crave to know how their summer is going to turn out. This year, Brits—like in a number of recent years—were mostly told to brace for a 1976-style heatwave. Instead, we’ve ended up with one of the most cool, grey, drab and damp summers I can remember. So here’s my tip to all British long-range weather forecasters next year:

Lie.

It really is that simple. Don’t bother spending many weeks fine-tuning your algorithms and massaging data. Just lie. And as we’re British, you really need to be pessimistic, because while Brits love a good moan, they’re secretly happier when bad things turn out good. For example, the following would be the wrong path for you to take:

• Prediction: heatwave and lots of “cor, what a scorcher!” headlines. Reality: like this summer.

What happened there is you told people the UK will get a summer and the reality is it didn’t get one. Net result: the bad summer is all your fault, weather forecaster. You somehow jinxed it with your scientific powers. Much better to take this route:

• Prediction: mediocre summer, with a lot of cloud and rain, with temperatures at or slightly below average.

Now, if the weather follows the pattern from the past few years, this will be accurate, and you’ll be hailed as some kind of weather genius, despite not having done any actual work. Yay you. If, by some small miracle, the UK actually gets a summer and people end up lobster red and baking in an utterly ungainly manner, in only the way Brits can, well, who cares? Things were better than you predicted, so no-one’s going to blame you. They’ll be too busy slapping aloe vera on their sunburn.

If you need to get more detailed, feel free to copy and paste the following to your research papers and websites. I’m sure it’s at least 50 per cent accurate, despite me typing it up while distractedly playing Strategery on my iPad.

Totally accurate long-range UK weather forecast for 2012

• January: Look, it’s winter, so it’s going to be cold. It’ll probably also snow a bit, causing the UK to grind to a standstill in shock and surprise, despite being a country in the north of Europe, where it tends to snow. There will, however, be sunny periods, most notably near to sunset, blinding drivers countrywide who thought “well, it’s January, so I won’t need any sunglasses in the car today”.
• February: See January.
• March: Winter’s done, so summer will do a quick sneak attack to see how well-prepared Brits are for heat. Within 24 hours, the weather will, at some random point, go from “brr, it’s a bit nippy” to “OMG HOTTER THAN THE MED!” Most people will turn off their heating, whereupon the sneak attack will withdraw. Most weather forecasters will now also predict a 1976-style heatwave summer, but you know better than that, don’t you?
• April: A mixture of coolish showers and quite nice sunny days. Since Easter holidays are at the start of April, predict with 99 per cent confidence that the nicer weather will start immediately after the kids return to school.
• May: Grey.
• June: Summer will try to get started rather like someone attempting to fire up an old, battered motorbike. You’ll think it’s going to fire, and it almost will. But then it will sadly die. By the end of the month, it will be slightly cooler and wetter than everyone would hope for, with clouds lurking menacingly.
• July: Because of the ‘jet stream’ and ‘high pressure in the wrong place’ and ‘low solar maximums’ and ‘sky genies’, the Atlantic will throw all its awful weather the UK’s way like a stroppy child flinging snot at a wall. There will be a glimmer of sunny weather the day before the kids break up from school, after which the weather will attempt to drown the entire British population by raining as much as possible.
• August: Cool, grey and rainy, bar in the evenings when it’ll annoyingly get quite nice and sunny right before sunset.
• September: People will want an ‘Indian summer’; they’ll get the end of a ‘British summer’. In other words, see August, but a bit cooler.
• October through December: As autumn turns to winter, it’ll get colder. Now and again, the sun will arrive for a quick look, which will make the nights very cold indeed. In December, it will snow. A lot. Dear Royal Mail: please make note of this last point, rather than acting all surprised that it snows in December and that people tend to send a lot of mail in December.

Totally accurate long-range UK weather forecast for 2013

• See “Totally accurate long-range UK weather forecast for 2012”.