the death of the Apple master "Steve Jobs"

From Paul Gil, your About Computers Editor Whether or not you like Apple products, you have to respect how much Steve Jobs influenced the modern computing world. He passed away this last week, after fighting pancreatic cancer. Millions of people are grieving across the internet, and rightly so: Steve Jobs truly was a great pioneer and visionary.  teven Paul Jobs, the co-founder, two-time CEO, and chairman of Apple Inc., died October 5, 2011, after a long battle with cancer. He was 56. He was is survived by his wife and four children. The achievements in Jobs' career included helping to popularize the personal computer, leading the development of groundbreaking technology products including the Macintosh, iPod, and iPhone, and driving Pixar Animation Studios to prominence. Jobs’ charisma, drive for success and control, and vision contributed to revolutionary changes in the way technology integrates into and affects the daily life of most people in the world. Steve Jobs’ Early Life Born in San Francisco in 1955, Jobs was was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs of Santa Clara, Calif. Jobs attended high school in Cupertino, Calif., the city where Apple is based. In 1972, he briefly attended Reed College in Portland, Ore., but dropped out after a semester. Jobs returned to California in 1974 and landed a job with Atari, where his friend and eventual business partner Steve Wozniak also worked. Apple – Rise and Eventual Ouster Jobs co-founded Apple, then known as Apple Computer, with Steve Wozniak to provide a circuit board for hobbyists who built their own computers. Despite that homebrew beginning, Apple helped usher in the age of the personal computer with the introduction of the Apple II line in 1976. Those machines soon gave way to a revolutionary change in desktop computing – the Macintosh. The Mac OS was the first commercially available and widely embraced system to use the graphical user interface that is common today and a mouse for interacting with the icons on the screen. The Mac was a giant success and rocketed Jobs and Apple into position as one of the world’s most important computer companies. The company made a huge splash with its 1984 Super Bowl commercial that introduced that Macintosh, which played on George Orwell’s novel 1984 and positioned IBM as Big Brother, while Apple represented heroic rebels struggling for freedom. By that time, Jobs had lured John Sculley, an experienced executive, away from PepsiCo to be Apple’s CEO. But, in 1985, amid a sales slump, Jobs lost a corporate power struggle to Sculley and the company’s board of directors, and left Apple. NeXT – A New Challenge Upon leaving Apple, Jobs founded NeXT Computer, a computer company that took the graphical lessons learned from the success of the Mac and married them to the computing power of Unix. The stylish and technologically advanced, but expensive, NeXT computers never caught on in the way that the Apple II or Mac lines did, though NeXT maintained a steady business from 1985-1997. And, come 1997, NeXT would take on a new, and much more central role -- at Apple. Pixar – A Hobby Becomes a Powerhouse While at NeXT, Jobs purchased a computer graphics division of Lucasfilm Ltd. in 1986 for $10 million. That division became Pixar Animation Studios, with Jobs as its CEO and majority shareholder. Though originally intended as a computer hardware company aiming high-end machines at Hollywood, when that business failed to take off, the company transformed into a maker of animated movies with a contract with Disney. Under Jobs’ leadership, Pixar became a dominant movie-making force in Hollywood, churning out a string of smash hits, including Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and Wall-E, among others. In 2006, Jobs engineered the sale of Pixar to the Walt Disney Co., a deal which landed him a spot on Disney’s board and made him the company’s largest individual shareholder. After the conclusion of that deal, Fortune Magazine named Jobs its Most Powerful Businessman of 2007. The Return to Apple - Triumph Jobs earned that title not only due to his role at Disney but also because, by that time, he had returned to Apple as its Chairman and CEO. In late 1996, Jobs had overseen the sale of NeXT to Apple and returned to a leadership position in the company he co-founded. The technology underlying NeXT’s hardware and software was acquired in a $429 million deal in 1996 and became the foundation of Apple’s next-generation Mac OS X operating system. When Apple CEO Gil Amelio was ousted by the company’s board of directors in 1997, Jobs returned to the company as its interim CEO. At that time, Apple was foundering under low marketshare, a confused licensing strategy, diffuse product line, and lack of focus, all of which led to much speculation in the press and online that the company would either merge with another or go under. In order to keep the company afloat, Jobs immediately began a series of sometimes-unpopular cuts, including paring from Apple’s product lines middlingly successful but passionately followed products like the Newton PDA. The first major hit product of Jobs’ second tenure at Apple was the iMac, an all-in-one computer introduced in 1998, which continues in production today. The iMac was followed by a string of hit laptop and desktop computers, though some failures - such as the Power Mac G4 cube - were mixed in. Under Jobs’ leadership, Apple returned from the brink of bankruptcy to again become a stable, successful company. But, thanks to the introduction of a small gadget, the company would soon skyrocket.

iPhone 4S Specs and Definition

The iPhone 4S, the successor to the iPhone 4, is marked by a number of under-the-hood improvements, as well as major software additions. The iPhone 4S is also the first iPhone to work officially on the Sprint network.

iPhone 4S Hardware Features

Among the most significant new features in the iPhone 4S are:

• Apple A5 processor - the same processor used in the iPad 2, which Apple says will make the iPhone 4S about twice as fast as the iPhone 4
• New dual-core graphics chip, which Apple touts as up to 7 times faster the iPhone 4
• GSM and CDMA compatibility in a single phone, meaning that the same phone will work on both kinds of networks, rather than requiring separate devices for AT&T and Verizon networks, as the iPhone 4 did
• Two antennas which work independently, to improve call quality and reliability
• Improved data speed, at up to 14.4 Mbps download (HSDPA)
• 8 megapixel camera, with improved color fidelity and sharpness, better whites, a new light sensor, faster speed in taking both the first photo and subsequent ones
• 1080p HD video recording with image stabilization

iPhone 4S Software Features

Significant software additions in the 4S include:

• Siri voice recognition
• AirPlay Mirroring
• Cards app
• Find My Friends app
• iOS 5 & iCloud support

Other elements of the phone are the same as on the iPhone 4, including the Retina Display screen, A-GPS, Bluetooth, audio and video support, and more.
iPhone 4S Capacity
16 GB - $199
32 GB - $299
64 GB - $399
iPhone 4S Battery Life
Talk: 8 hours on 3G, 14 hours on 2G
Internet: 6 hours on 3G, 9 hours on Wi-Fi
Video: 10 hours
Audio: 40 hours
U.S. Carriers
AT&T
Sprint
Verizon
Colors
Black
White
Size and Weight
4.5 inches tall by 2.31 inches wide by 0.37 inches deep
Weight: 4.9 ounces
Availability
Release date: Oct. 14, 2011 in
U.S.
Canada
Australia
United Kingdom
France
Germany
Japan.
The phone will debut on Oct. 28 in Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lativa, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland.
Additional countries will get the phone by the end of 2011.
Unlike in the past, when the introduction of a new model meant the previous one was discontinued, as of Oct. 2011, both the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 are still being sold. The 8GB iPhone 3GS is now free with a two-year contract, while the 8GB iPhone 4 is $99 with a two-year contract.

Also Known As: 5th generation iPhone, 5G iPhone, fifth generation iPhone

Amazon Kindle Fire Tablet Amazon Sets Sights on Nook Color, iPad With Android Tablet

 Amazon’s worst-kept secret finally got a healthy dose of sunlight following the official announcement of the Kindle Fire tablet on Sept. 28, 2011 (with an official release on Nov. 15, 2011).
The use of the Android operating system, combined with Amazon’s name recognition makes it natural for folks to label the Kindle Fire as an Apple iPad competitor. But its $199 price tag also makes it a direct rival to Barnes & Noble’s Android-powered Nook Color tablet, which overtook the Amazon’s Kindle e-reader in sales prior to the Fire’s announcement.
Here’s a quick look at the Kindle Fire’s features and specifications:

• Display: The Kindle Fire features a 7-inch in-plane switching or IPS touchscreen display with protection provided via Corning’s popular Gorilla Glass. For spec geeks, screen resolution is 1024 x 600 pixels at 169 pixels per inch and capable of displaying 16 million colors.
  
• Dimensions: Size-wise, the Fire is 7.5 inches or 190 millimeters tall and 4.7 inches or 120 millimeters wide in portrait orientation. Thickness is 0.45 inches or 11.4 mm. Weight is 14.6 ounces or 413 grams.
  
• Brains and memory: Powering the Kindle Fire is a 1GHz dual-core processor backed up by 512MB of RAM. Internal memory is 8GB, which Amazon says is enough to hold 80 apps, plus 10 movies or 800 songs or 6,000 books. Free cloud storage also is available for Amazon content. The operating system is based on Google’s Android with a custom skin layered on it.
  
• Online and wireless features: The device supports connections to private and public Wi-Fi networks but not for ad-hoc or peer-to-peer Wi-Fi. Web browsing will be handled via cloud-accelerated browser Amazon Silk. The Kindle Fire also supports Adobe Flash. Users can automatically sync their library, last page read, bookmarks, notes, highlights and movies across their various Amazon devices via the Whispersync feature. Unlimited, instant streaming of more than 10,000 movies and TV shows is available for Amazon Prime members.
  
• Connectors and formats: Connections include a USB 2.0 micro-B connector and 3.5mm stereo audio jack. Android apps such as Angry Birds and Plants vs. Zombies are supported and can be downloaded via the Amazon Appstore. Supported formats listed by Amazon are Kindle (AZW), TXT, PDF, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively, AA, AAX, DOC, DOCX, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, non-DRM AAC, MP3, MIDI, OGG, WAV, MP4, VP8.
  
• Battery and charging: Battery life is rated at up to 8 hours of continuous reading or 7.5 hours of video playback, with wireless turned off. Charging time is 4 hours.