Consumers have short memories. *sigh*
It's a damn shame Steve Jobs died at age 56. The world would have benefited considerably by his continuing at Apple's helm for the past 6 years.
A lot of people knock Steve Jobs, but he really was genius at looking into the future. A quote attributed to him “Innovation is only way to succeed in these businesses. You can’t stand still.”
Back in 1983, he made some wild observations that came true.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/03/steve-jobs-1983-speech_n_1935815.html
Keep in mind that he said this in 1983, even before the Mac was released let alone the WWW.
“Apple’s strategy is really simple. What we want to do is we want to put an incredibly great computer in a book that you can carry around with you and learn how to use in 20 minutes."
“And we really want to do it with a radio link in it so you don’t have to hook up to anything and you’re in communication with all of these larger databases and other computers.”
Jobs stated that we will “spend more time interacting with personal computers than cars.”
Jobs imagined a world where “people could be walking around anywhere and pick up their e-mail.”
Job's goal was to provide tools “to distribute that intelligence” for something useful, that could be “possess-able by everyone.”
Jobs recognized the difficulty of voice recognition early on.
In an excerpt from Walter Isaacson's book "Steve Jobs", in a 1983 discussion between Maya Lin and Steve Jobs, she asked Steve Jobs "Why do computers look like clunky TV sets? Why don't you make something thin? Why not a flat laptop?" Jobs replied that this was his goal, as soon as the technology was ready.
Without Steve Jobs, Apple might become another Microsoft and that would be sad indeed. Innovation keeps you from standing still.