By John Gruber
WorkOS launches auth.md — an open protocol for agent registration.
Linked List: March 5, 2008
Wednesday, 5 March 2008
- Peter Elkind’s ‘The Trouble With Steve Jobs’ Epic in Fortune ★
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Summary of the “trouble” Apple has with Steve Jobs, uncovered by Fortune editor-at-large Peter Elkind in a 7,500-word piece: he waited nine months before having surgery for his pancreatic cancer (a six-hour “brutal and complex” procedure where 1 in 20 patients die), the stock options backdating saga, and he’s an asshole.
I liked this bit best:
Jobs is notoriously secretive and controlling when it comes to his relationship with the press, and he tries to stifle stories that haven’t received his blessing with threats and cajolery.
This story is one of them. While Jobs agreed to be interviewed by my colleague Betsy Morris on the subject of Apple’s selection as America’s Most Admired Company, he refused to comment for this story, which had been in the works for months.
So refusing to talk to a reporter who is (a) digging into the details of Jobs’s personal life, and (b) writing what is, without question, a negative piece — that constitutes “threats and cajolery”?
- Talk About Dumb ★
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Did you know there were people who profess to prefer dumb quotes to proper ones? You only need working eyes to realize there are many people who don’t care, but to flat-out prefer them? But yet here’s a whole thread on Metafilter from anti-smart-quoters. These people should be issued IBM Selectrics and have their computers taken away. (Via Mike Essl.)
- Fortune Interview With Steve Jobs ★
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As part of their “America’s Most Admired Companies” package (Apple placed first), Fortune has a rare interview with Steve Jobs. The format is horrible — 3,000 words spread over 15 web pages, averaging just 200 words per page. Shameless page-view-inflation at its worst, but it’s worth it. A few highlights:
“We do no market research. We don’t hire consultants. The only consultants I’ve ever hired in my 10 years is one firm to analyze Gateway’s retail strategy so I would not make some of the same mistakes they made.”
“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.”
“So what we do every Monday is we review the whole business. We look at what we sold the week before. We look at every single product under development, products we’re having trouble with, products where the demand is larger than we can make. All the stuff in development, we review. And we do it every single week. I put out an agenda — 80% is the same as it was the last week, and we just walk down it every single week.”
- OmniGraffle 5.0 ★
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New features include bézier lines, an in-window inspector bar, improved Visio file format compatibility, and more.
- This Guy Must Be New Here ★
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Gregory Ng:
So Steve Jobs says that Flash is not fast enough for the iPhone. Well that’s just great Steve. Way to make the decision for everyone. Here’s a novel idea: why not let the users decide whether it is “sluggish” or not.
This is a joke, right?
- Litmus Day Passes ★
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Speaking of web browsers and compatibility, Litmus — a web app that lets you test web pages and email newsletters for compatibility against a slew of HTML rendering engines — now offers day passes.
- Zeldman on Microsoft’s IE8 Version Targeting Reversal ★
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When it comes to anything regarding IE and standards support, I’ll believe it when I see it. But I do think the IE team deserves credit for having floated the idea for opt-in version targeting rather than just going ahead and implementing it.
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Good summary from Tom Krazit.
- Steve Jobs on Flash for iPhone ★
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Asked at yesterday’s shareholders meeting whether Apple plans to add Flash to the iPhone:
Jobs used the Apple shareholders’ meeting to publicly dismiss the full-blown PC Flash version as “too slow to be useful” on the iPhone. He then went on to describe the mobile version — Flash Lite — as “not capable of being used with the Web.”
I love to say “I told you so.”