Steve Jobs resigns as Apple boss

[DJ Stashman]

Jobs, 55, was the college dropout who co-founded a company in a garage 35 years ago and whose vertiginous rise to success saw him become a billionaire business icon.

He was the ultimate perfectionist who gave the world the iPod - the product that transformed popular culture and revolutionised the music business.

Product launch events for the his gadgets – which also included the iPhone, the iPad, and the iMac – were dominated by his exuberant personality but in recent years he had appeared increasingly gaunt as illness took its toll.

Jobs had survived pancreatic cancer in 2004 and a liver transplant in 2009. He had already announced in January this year that he was taking sick leave for a third time.

Last night in a letter to Apple’s directors and the “Apple community”, he said: “I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.”

Resigning as chief executive, Jobs said he would like to continue as the company’s chairman and in his letter he said: “I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it.”

Jobs’s number two, Tim Cook, will become CEO but whether the company’s star will continue to shine as brightly, without the man who led it to global success, remains to be seen.

The announcement sent Apple shares plunging by 7% down in after hours trading after the company initially suspended them for a short time.

It was Jobs who was seen as rescuing the company when he returned as boss in 1997, launching the iMac, whose sleek design made its products cool again.

Born in San Francisco, he founded Apple with Steve Wozniak, five years his senior, in 1976 and eight years later, the Mac home computer was born.

But inn 1985, Jobs was ousted in a boardroom coup and went on to form a new technology company, NeXT. The firm was bought by Apple and Jobs was soon back at the helm of the company he had started.

Today it is the world’s second biggest company, valued at $349 billion, a figure largely built on Jobs’s gift for innovation.

He once said: “You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/steve-jobs/8721509/Steve-Jobs-resigns-as-Apple-boss.html

[Zizouz]

pos'd you in anticipation of the cunts who will neg screaming that this is already in the eden

[CarltonLeach]

Sell those shares ladies and gentlemen

Its about to nosedive

[DJ Stashman]

apparently stocks are going up in china for apple

they must see an opportunity