The Heavy Chef Project » apple

The Apple Website in 1983

Fred Roed — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 09:20:11 +0000

apple

The sales team at World Wide Creative have probably used the Apple website in a few of our client pitches as an inspiration piece for a combination of great design and usability. Nice, squeeky clean and conversion-focused. So, check out this classic piece of reinvention from a guy called Dave Lawrence that’s doing the interweb rounds right about now…

[Via Flickr... and email and Twitter and Digg, etc.]

Steve Jobs’ influence governed by his absence

Fred Roed — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 05:05:33 +0000

If you don’t know yet, Apple announced today that Steve Jobs has taken leave for a period of 6 months. It is highly likely that he has pancreatic cancer, an extremely serious condition and a recurrence of the diagnosis that he has suppressed once before.

Internet celebrity of sorts, Robert Scoble, had this to say: ”It’s too late to sell your Apple stock. If you sold it today, you are a genius. But tomorrow? You’ll be the biggest loser. Why? Apple has the best team, the best distribution, the best supply chain, the best management in the business. Everyone, from Palm to Microsoft to Google wants to be like Apple. Hint: they can’t. Hint: they won’t (although Palm got very close by hiring a ton of key iPhone execs and developers and PR people away from Apple). Apple is more than just Steve Jobs. Now you’re about to find out just how much more.”

I’m not so sure that they will sail on without their team and its direction losing focus for some time. The impact this guy has had is immeasurable. I don’t think the company will fold, but it will certainly take a knock (and not just in stocks).

Check out this video to get an idea of the man (It’s his address to the Stanford Graduates in 2005 – well worth a watch, also because he talks about his illness):

Great leadership is a very hard, very, vary valuable thing. The question now is whether Jobs is a ‘Level 5′ or a ‘Level 4′ leader. In other words, has he created an organisation whose growth is sustainable with or without him?

And by the same token, don’t discount the guy from beating this thing. At Heavy Chef (and World Wide Creative) we’re praying for you mate.

More here.

An trip down Apple’s memory lane

Mike Perk — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 15:52:10 +0000

I saw this first on Apple ambassador Guy Kawasaki’s blog first – a trip down Apple’s memory lane. It’s a timeline of their products from the first Apple 1 more than 30 years ago. Amazing – I remember learning to design on the Macintosh LC (1996) at the Technikon Graphic Design School.

Click here to view the graph. – via this blog