Steve Jobs lives on in endless Apple stories, marketing schemes

By Bob Brown, Network World |  IT Management/Strategy Add a new comment

Although it's been nearly four months since Apple co-founder Steve Jobs died, there has been little slowdown in Steve Jobs news since then. In fact, some days there seems to be more than ever.

The first wave of stories stemmed from the authorized Walter Isaacson biography on Jobs,  and stories based on anecdotes from that book have continued to gain individualized attention months later.  More Jobs headlines surfaced in the wake of his death based on memories and comments shared in various venues by those knew him, such as wireless industry legend John Stanton, who said in November that Jobs had wanted to build an iPhone-only wireless network

PICTURE THIS: Steve Jobs gets bronzed 

This past week, it was revealed that a dying Jobs kept a recent letter from Microsoft's Bill Gates at his bedside, suggesting that the much discussed rivalry between the two had softened quite a bit in recent years.  Also in the news: Virgin America dedicating one of its airplanes to a popular (and borrowed) Steve Jobs quote - "Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish" - by emblazoning it on the nose of an Airbus A320. 

Rock legend Neil Young also revealed last week at an industry conference that Jobs preferred to listen to music on vinyl rather than the iPod, enjoying the higher fidelity. 

This week we hear that Jobs' influence from beyond the grave inspired electronics retailer Best Buy to ditch celebrities such as Ozzie Osbourne and Justin Bieber, who appeared in its Super Bowl ad last year, in favor of highlighting tech innovators such as Kevin Systrom, founder of Instagram, in an effort to stress Best Buy's tech chops vs. other retailers such as Wal-Mart.

Not all advertisers are going such a noble route.  A Taiwanese company has been featuring in its commercials for a tablet computer  an actor impersonating Steve Jobs and donning  angel wings.  Another Jobs impersonator, in the form of an eerily lifelike 1-foot-high action figure, was squelched last month after the manufacturer felt the heat from Jobs' family and Apple lawyers. 

Circle Bob on Google+ 

Read more about anti-malware in Network World's Anti-malware section.


Originally published on Network World |  Click here to read the original story.

ITworld LIVE

IT Management/StrategyWhite Papers & Webcasts

White Paper

The Cloud: Reinventing Enterprise Collaboration

Collaboration and content sharing are not, of course, new concepts. But cloud computing has changed the nature of collaboration, content sharing, document storage and project management to enable more efficient, faster-acting and cost-effective enterprises. According to a new study by IDG Research, the vast majority of knowledge workers (86%) placed a very high level of importance on collaborating with internal coworkers and external stakeholders, and having access to the most up-to-date corporate information. Read how organizations are realizing massive productivity gains by transitioning their content management solutions to cloud-based models.

White Paper

Empowering Your Mobile Worker

Today's most productive employees are mobile, and your company's IT strategy must be ready to support them with 24/7 access to the business information they need across a range of mobile devices.See how corporations are meeting the many needs of their mobile workers with the help of Box.

White Paper

Market Landscape Report: Online File Sharing and Collaboration in the Enterprise

The trend toward "consumerization" marches onward in IT; more and more end-users are choosing their own hardware plaforms and software applications in lieu of the IT-sanctioned business tools provided by their companies. These end-users are looking to tackle issues like data sharing, portability, and access from multiple intelligent endpoint devices, creating a conundrum for IT as it needs to balance business enablement, ease of access, and collaborative capacity with the need to maintain control and security of information assets. This need for balance is one of the drivers of the fast growing online file sharing and collaboration segment of the SaaS market. This paper examines the market drivers, inhibitors, and top vendors in this segment, including Box, Citrix Sharefile, Dropbox, Egnyte, Nomadesk, Sugarsync, Syncplicity and YouSendIt.

White Paper

Sharing Simplified - Consolidating File-sharing Technologies

Employees need to share content with colleagues within their organization and outside. Yet, ECMs make it hard to share content within a business and impossible between organizations. Read how one company consolidated multiple file sharing technologies to increase productivity and reduce complexity.

White Paper

Content Sharing 2.0: The Road Ahead

A growing number of companies are taking advantage of the natural synergies that exist between cloud-based IT services and content access and sharing. Legacy content management and collaboration systems simply weren't designed to meet the evolving requirements of today's IT and business managers, as well as the needs of content users. Box provides cloud-based content storage, access and collaboration services that require virtually no user training and supports file access and delivery on almost all popular PC and mobile devices. Read how Box let companies rapidly implement a cost-effective and secure content storage and sharing system that can easily expand to accommodate any size and number of files.

See more White Papers | Webcasts

Ask a question

Ask a Question