Apple made an announcement yesterday afternoon that Steve Jobs has resigned as the CEO of Apple Computers. He will remain as Chairman of the company and he will be succeeded by Apple’s Chief Operating Officer, Tim Cooks. Tim Cook is probably the best person to take over the role of CEO as he has been overseeing the company’s operation since Steve took a leave of absence due to his illness earlier this year. We believe Apple will be in good hands although the market has reacted by shedding more than 5% to $357.10 right after the announcement is made. Apple shares closed at $376.18 the previous day.

Steve Jobs has been the key person that has caused the major turnaround of the fortunes of the Apple Computers from the then ailing company. As a tribute to the great and outstanding person, the iPhoneMalaysiaBloggers would like to write a brief history about Steve Jobs, the man with the Midas touch.

The Story of the Great Legend, Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs was born on the 24th February, 1955 in San Francisco, California. His unwed mother actually was expecting a baby girl and hence decided to give him up for adoption. His mother has called up Paul and Clara Jobs in the middle of the night and asked if they would want to adopt her baby.

His mother’s wish is that Steve will be able to one day graduate from college. When she found out the Steve’s future parents were not college graduates themselves, she has refused to sign on the adoption documents. She later agreed to sign on it after Steve’s future parents gave her the assurance that they will send Steve to college.

Steve completed his high school in 1972 and attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon. He has decided to drop out from college because it was too expensive. Steve later joined a group called the Homebrew Computer Club in 1975. There, he met with Steve Wozniak who was trying to build a small computer. They later decided to form a computer company in 1976 which they called the Apple Computer Company. To raise the funds necessary to kick-start the company, they have sold their personal belongings to finance the initial start-up. The Apple Computer Company’s sales quickly grew to US$200Million in the first 3 years – a really amazing achievement for a start-up company!

Steve launched the highly user friendly Macintosh computer in 1984. Despite some of the great ease of use features that comes with the Macintosh, it did not do as well compared to their biggest competitor at that time, IBM. IBM computers are packed with more features for commercial use. This has also signaled the downfall of his career at Apple. After some disagreements over the vision and direction of the company with the board of directors of Apple, Steve Jobs was pressured to resigned as the CEO of the company that he has co-founded in 1985.

After leaving Apple, Steve has hired some of his ex-employees to start-up another company called NEXT in 1985. A year later, Steve has bought a small company called Pixar from George Lucas. Pixar is a computer animation company. 9 years after it was acquired by Steve, Pixar went on to launch a mega box office hit, Toy Story. Since then, Pixar has produced many more box office hits including A bug’s Life, Toy Story 2, Monster Inc, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars, Ratatouille, Toy Story 3, Up and many more.

Steve Jobs later sold the company Pixar to Disney and became one of the largest shareholder in Disney as well as a member of their board in 2006. In December 2006, Steve returned to Apple after Apple acquired Next Software. He then became the part time consultant to their CEO. In September 2007, he was named the interim CEO of Apple. In year 2000, the word “interim”  was officially removed from his title.

Since returning to Apple, Steve has launched the highly successful iPod, iMac, iTunes Store, iPhone, Macbook, iPad and many more.

Some of the major Milestones or Achievements that Apple has gained after his return are:-

1.  Becoming the largest seller of Music via its iTunes Store

2.  Becoming the largest Application seller via its iTunes AppStore

3.  Becoming one of the largest smartphone seller via its highly popular iPhone. Apple became the largest smartphone seller after it sold 20.34 million iPhones in the 2nd Quarter of 2011. For more details, the report here at Reuters.com

All these are certainly no small feat. He has also revolutionized the Tablet PC when he introduced the iPad. Many companies have launched the Tablet PC but failed in the past. But not Steve Jobs…..the iPads are one of the most successful Tablet PC launch after many failures. Now, everyone seems to be going into the Tablet PC market.

For all that he has done, we believe that he really deserves the title of Fortune Magazine’s “CEO of the Decade”.

Before we sign off, we would like to share one of the most interesting speech that Steve Jobs has shared at the Stanford University Graduation Ceremony in 2005 where he shared about his life, his career and his battle with cancer. There are many lessons to be learnt from this Marketing Genius….. enjoy.

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/steve-jobs-life-career-illness-love-001119381.html

There have been a lot of rumours lately on the exact launch date for the new iPhone 5 from the media news. A report by Boy Genius stated that one of the AT&T VP has told employees to prepare for the launch of the iPhone 5 in early October. There are also other reports that mentioned that Apple is planning to launch the iPhone 5 either on the 7th October or the 14th October. Anyway, all these will remain as rumour unless it has been confirmed by Apple.

Below are some additional rumours on how the iPhone will look like as reported by MacRumors.com. Below are some of the pictures published by them with the “anticipated” look of the iPhone 5. Let’s wait and see how true this rumour is.

i must say that these images of the potentially new look of the iPhone 5 do look pretty cool……

Personally, i am keeping my fingers crossed as to how this new look will really turn out. However, case manufacturers in China have been betting big on this design and is already manufacturing many of the cases based on the above dimensions. If the actual size and shape turns out to be different, it will be a big loss for these manufacturers.

If the iPhone 5 were to hit the US in early October, my guesstimate is that it will only hit our Malaysian shores sometime end of the year, just in time for a perfect gift for Christmas….

Apple finally became the largest company in the Unites States yesterday surpassing the oil titan Exxon Mobile. Apple’s market capitalization of US$339 billion managed to surpass Exxon Mobil market capitalization of US$337 billion because the oil giant has dropped more than 17% in the past 2 weeks due to the weakness in the crude oil price. Apple’s share has also dropped but by a much lesser percentage of only 8% in the past 2 weeks. Apple’s share has outperformed the rest of the tech sector which has dropped more than 12% ahead of the much speculated new release of the iPhone 5 in this coming Fall. With new versions of the iPhone and iPads to hit the market soon, investors are optimistic about the prospects of the Apple shares.

Looking back 10 years ago, the Apple share was only trading at a value that is below US$10 per share. How a company has changed in such a short period of time is indeed an amazing feat which many attributed to the golden touches of their CEO, Steve Jobs.

In fact, another amazing fact is that Apple is currently sitting on more cash than the Federal Reserve of the United States. This alone is a big testimony on how a well managed company has clearly outperformed the whole Administration of the United States of America in handling money.

Below is the Share Price and Market Capitalization Chart of Apple in the past 10 years. Anyone who has invested in this share must be smiling to the banks…..

Save Malaysia Stop Lynas

Today’s posting has got nothing much related to the features of the iPhones or news about the iPhone. The only reason why it has any relation to the iPhone is because the iPhone uses a type of rare earth metal in its Production. Although the iPhone uses the rare earth products, we the iPhoneMalaysiaBloggers are still very strongly opposing the move by the Pahang State Government to allow Lynas Corporation to setup the world’s largest rare earth refinery plant at Gebeng(about 25km away from Kuantan).

What are rare earth?

Rare earth metals or elements consist of a set of 17 chemical elements in the Periodic Table. They are not that rare actually. However, they are not normally found in concentrated and economically exploitable form and hence the name rare earth.

Why are we opposing this so strongly?

There are many reasons for it. Below are just some of them:-

1.  We simply do not want HISTORY to repeat itself. Knowing that there was a failed Rare Earth plant in Perak, Malaysia sometime back which was forced to be closed because of a court order. The company who setup the Asian Rare Earth plant in Perak is currently still spending millions of dollars to clean up the mess. There are marked increase in the number of people that suffered from leukemia and other birth defects after the plant started its operation. So, why in the world are we still considering another rare earth plant in Gebeng, Pahang? Do we not learn our lessons? or are there any other hidden agendas?

2.  While most rare earth elements are harmless in its natural state, they are normally mixed with radioactive elements(uranium and thorium). To extract these valuable rare earth metals, strong acids are used in the separation process leaving behind harmful wastes which will be dumped in areas surrounding Gebeng. There will be an estimated of about 100 tonnes of Thorium wastes that will be generated each year. In addition to that, Thorium has a half life of 14 billion years. Yes, it is billion and not million. What it means is that it will take 14 billion years for the substance to undergo the decay process to decrease to half. In lay man terms, we will not likely see any significant decrease within our lifetime and many generations to come.

3.  All these radioactive wastes disposal will have an impact on the local industries like the Fisheries, Agriculture, Tourism, Housing, Swiftlet and many others. Yes, the Lynas plant will employ about 350 local folks to work in the factory but what is this 350 new jobs compared to the damage that will be done to the many industries that will be affected. There is really no logic for this! Good Foreign Direct Investment will also not come in because of this causing many more potential jobs to be lost in the long run. In addition to that, Lynas will also enjoy a 12 years tax holiday which means that all their profits in Malaysia will be tax free for 12 years. Our country really earns nothing from Lynas for all the shit that they are going to dump in our country. i think this is really “Niamah” like what our Mr. Patrick Teoh used to say…..

To find out more about the potential hazards that may be caused by this rare earth refinery, please view the below video:-

There are many people around Gebeng and Kuantan who are very unhappy with this rare earth refinery plant:-

Below is the NTV7 coverage of the rare earth refinery in Gebeng(Mandarin) – Part 1 and Part 2:-

Below is the video coverage on Malaysian protest against Lynas:-

Below is the Aljazeera coverage on the Lynas rare earth processing plant in Malaysia:-

i think enough has been voiced out by Malaysians and it is now TIME to bring this to the attention of the internet world! Let’s spread the awareness about the Lynas rare earth processing plant in Gebeng to the rest of Malaysia. Together, we can avoid Malaysia to be used as a dumping site for Lynas.

Let’s Save Malaysia and Stop Lynas. Please share this with your facebook friends or if you are a blogger, please publish an article about this issue so that others in the blogosphere will also be aware of this issue. Together we can make a difference to our next generations!