Around the world devoted fans mourned the death of Steve Jobs: the force of nature behind Apple. Apple’s high-tech products have inspired fervour defining cool consumerism for a world-wide tribe hyped by the man who personified the brand. Steve Jobs: Billion Dollar Hippy, BBC 2011
How did a drug-taking college dropout create one of the most successful corporations in the world? ibid.
This is the launch of the Macintosh computer in 1984. ibid.
Released in 1977 Apple II was the first home computer with colour graphics. ibid.
Jobs was determined the Macintosh would be easy to use. It would have a mouse and icons on screen. ibid.
Microsoft suddenly announced Windows I for the PC. ibid.
The Mac cost $2,500. ibid.
Jobs had been forced out of the company he had created. It was a humiliating taste of failure. ibid.
Toy Story was a blockbuster, and taking Pixar public made Steve Jobs super rich. ibid.
Apple bought Next for $400,000,000. ibid.
After renewing Apple’s sense of its own identity Jobs needed a product that could bring about the company’s financial revival. ibid.
The i was a stroke of deft branding ... The iPod could hold a thousand songs ... The iPod quickly became the number one music player in America and beyond. ibid.
In less than a year every major label had signed up to the Apple iTunes store. ibid.
Apple iPhone became the fastest selling handset on the market. ibid.
What made the iPhone different was apps. ibid.
Steve Jobs was a genius of the modern age. He gave us tools to change our lives and the way we communicate. Steve Jobs: iChanged The World, Channel 4 2011
When Steve Jobs first launched Apple, the computer industry meant mainframes and mini-computers. ibid.
One thing blew him away – a prototype mouse. ibid.
Apple’s history interweaves with Microsoft. ibid.
Jobs created a brand new product – the iMac. ibid.
Then Steve Jobs learned he had cancer. ibid.
‘I would love to live in a country where the government fears its citizens and not the other way around.’ Storyville: How Hacking Changed the World, Anonymous, BBC 2013
‘They called themselves Anonymous. They are hackers on steroids.’ ibid. Fox News
Scientology v Anonymous: Anonymous Declaration of War video. ibid.
There’s a lot of people in Anonymous who feel very deeply and very sincerely about their contribution towards democracy around the world. ibid.
The so-called Stuxnet worm is specifically designed to infiltrate and sabotage real world power plants, factories … Storyville: Zero Days: Nuclear Cyber Sabotage, news, BBC 2017
In Iran alone it was identified 30,000 times. A super computer virus has put on alert several countries’ secret services. ibid.
What was it about the Stuxnet operation that was hiding in plain sight? ibid. commentary
Multiple explosions of gas pipelines going in and out of Iran. ibid. expert
This was obviously the first, biggest and most sophisticated example of a state or two states using a cyber weapon for offensive purposes. ibid.
Israel asked US for green light to bomb nuclear sites in Iran. ibid. online news headline
There were probably only a few countries in the world that would want, that had the motivation to sabotage Iranian’s nuclear enrichment facility. There are no tell-tale signs. ibid. expert
Even civilians with an interest in telling the Stuxnet story were refusing to address the role of Tel Aviv and Washington. ibid. commentary
Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do. Apple Inc
I know there’s a proverb which that says ‘To err is human’ but a human error is nothing to what a computer can do if it tries. Agatha Christie, Hallowe’en Party
Well, Mr Frankel who started this program began to suffer from the computer disease that anybody who works with computers now knows about. It’s a very serious disease and it interferes completely with the work. The trouble with computers is you play with them. They are so wonderful. You have these switches – if it’s an even number you do this, if it’s an odd number you do that – and pretty soon you can do more and more elaborate things if you are clever enough, on one machine.
After a while the whole system broke down. Frankel wasn’t paying any attention; he wasn’t supervising anybody. The system was going very, very slowly – while he was sitting in a room figuring out how to make one tabulator automatically print arc-tangent X, and then it would start and it would print columns and then bitsi, bitsi, bitsi, and calculate the arc-tangent automatically by integrating as it went along and make a whole table in one operation.
Absolutely useless. We had tables of arc-tangents. But if you’ve ever worked with computers, you understand the disease - the delight in being able to see how much you can do. But he got the disease for the first time, the poor fellow who invented the thing. Richard P Feynman, ‘Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman’
There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary numerals, and those who don’t. Ian Stewart, Professor Stewart’s Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities
I really didn’t foresee the Internet. But then, neither did the computer industry. Not that that tells us very much of course – the computer industry didn’t even foresee that the century was going to end. Douglas Adams
The Googleplex Star Thinker is a super-computer from the Seventh Galaxy of Light and Ingenuity and has the ability to calculate the trajectory of every single dust particle during a five-week Dangrabad Beta sand blizzard.
The Deep Thought computer call it a pocket calculator in comparison to itself. Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
I am not the only person who uses his computer mainly for the purpose of diddling with his computer. Dave Barry
Experts agree that the best type of computer for your individual needs is one that comes on the market two days after you actually purchase some other computer. Dave Barry
The fantastic advances in the field of electronic communication constitute a greater danger to the privacy of the individual. Earl Warren
If you’ve never programmed a computer, you should. There’s nothing like it in the whole world. When you program a computer, it does exactly what you tell it to do. It’s like designing a machine – any machine, like a car, like a faucet, like a gas-hinge for a door – using math and instructions. It’s awesome in the truest sense: it can fill you with awe. Cory Doctorow, Little Brother
It was one thing to use computers as a tool, quite another to let them do your thinking for you. Tom Clancy, The Hunt for Red October
We conquer the Independence Day aliens by having a Macintosh laptop computer upload a software virus to the mothership (which happens to be one-fifth the mass of the Moon), thus disarming its protective force field. I don’t know about you, but back in 1996 I had trouble just uploading files to other computers within my own department, especially when the operating systems were different. There is only one solution: the entire defense system for the alien mothership must have been powered by the same release of Apple Computer’s system software as the laptop computer that delivered the virus. Neil deGrasse Tyson, Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier
Home computers are being called upon to perform many new functions, including the consumption of homework formerly eaten by the dog. Doug Larson
Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest. Isaac Asimov
If you put tomfoolery into a computer, nothing comes out of it but tomfoolery. But this tomfoolery, having passed through a very expensive machine, is somehow ennobled and no-one dares criticize it. Pierre Gallois