Steve Jobs was ousted from his position with Apple Computer in 1985, too early in my life to pay attention or give much care. Not until his return to the company in 1996, when he rescued the then-flagging company and over the next fifteen years, built it into the corporate juggernaut we know today, did the man fall into my sphere of attention.

It goes without saying at this point that Apple Computer, now Apple Inc., has not seen a successful time without its electric co-founder, Steve Jobs. It remains to be seen how the company will fare without the man, without him to be able to make a dramatic return and save it, should Apple need saving in the future. But the general indication is, at least, that thanks to the strong foundations that Jobs spent his years building and then reinforcing, that won’t be necessary.

Why is that? What is it about Steve Jobs that makes Apple Inc. invincible for the foreseeable future? And what can we learn – or at least, what have I learned – that is worth emulating in my own business?

First, don’t fear failure. When Jobs was ousted from Apple in 1985, he called it devastating at first, but looking back on it, he referred to the process as “freeing.”

“I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me,” said Jobs during a commencement address at Stanford University back in 2005. “The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.”

The world will keep turning, even if you don’t succeed. The sun will continue to rise and set, the moon will revolve around the earth, and none of them never need rest on your shoulders. You can turn your failures, however public or private, into an opportunity to do something new, or something better.

Next, there’s the importance of doing your utmost. Obviously this is a lesson that you can learn nearly anywhere, but as a craftsman, in the technology space, there’s no better man to learn from than the guy who’s selling computers at two or three times the price of his competitors, and winning. In talking to Playboy magazine back in 1985, Jobs had this to say:

“When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.”

Don’t cut corners. Your quality will suffer, and your customers will be able to tell.

On perseverance, well, that’s important too. In building a business, it’s not a rare thing to come up against adversity. You’re going to struggle. Sometimes, it’s going to hurt.

Jobs says, “There are many moments that are filled with despair and agony, when you have to fire people and cancel things and deal with very difficult situations. That’s when you find out who you are and what your values are.”

And he’s right, you know. This is an easy lesson to get away from, for me, for several reasons. Suffice to say that a big key to both personal growth, and growth in one’s business, is to learn to best analyze the hardship, to learn from it and extract the lessons you need to move forward, better and stronger.

Oh, and one more thing.

I’ve long been aware of mortality – both mine and those around me. But rarely do I have to face it. Of course, that’s not really the point of things in the first place.

“No one wants to die,” said Jobs in that Stanford address. “Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

The point of it is this: Courage. The courage to achieve what you want, the courage to do what you will. When you combine that with a dedication to quality, and a fearlessness when it comes to failure – knowing that you can learn from your mistakes and do better next time – I believe you can achieve a success that you can be proud of.

This is the education that I have taken from Steve Jobs. It may have only started tangentially on an Apple IIe, but it grew to encompass so much more than that little tiny green screen could have possibly done, all those years ago. He died today, at the age of 56. But his legacy lives on, as a business leader, a creative visionary and an entrepreneur whose drive and spirit, we can all learn from.

Thanks, Steve. So long.

Snyder makes several arguments as to why he put the program under fire – and from the earliest periods of his campaign he’s made no secret about his intentions. Snyder has often claimed that incentive programs cause the state to play favorites, and it has been his position that the government shouldn’t be in the business of picking “winners and losers.”

Except by pulling the rug out from under a developing industry, the governor has done exactly that.

Already, Michigan workers are feeling the hurt. Several films that had been slated to be produced in Michigan, including Marvel Entertainment‘s upcoming big-budget blockbuster “The Avengers” have cancelled their shooting appointments in the state, which has in turn shut down all the necessary support staff and ancillary workers that would have had work as a result. With one announcement, Governor Snyder has cost about 1,000 people their jobs.

Since April 2008, Michigan has been offering media creators up to 42% back on their Michigan-based expenditures, on the basis that the money spent would circulate through and help revitalize Michigan’s struggling economy, as well as create fantastic PR for the beleaguered manufacturing state. On Monday, a new Ernst & Young study was released which found that every dollar spent in these tax breaks in the state lead to $6 in economic activity.

About $163 million in incentives were approved for 2010 alone. Considering that the money isn’t paid out until the completion of the project, meaning that Michigan pays nothing up front, that 600% return should be looking pretty good.

Of course, Snyder and his advisors aren’t looking at it that way – critics of the program claim that the incentives cost the state more than the revenue they bring in. Perhaps in a black and white, 1-to-1 ratio of income to expenditure, that may be the case. Michigan’s program is the most generous in the world. However, without taking into account the circulation of the money that’s paid out, and the taxes paid on each transaction that money makes, it’s not the whole picture.

In 2010, the media incentives were responsible in large part for creating 3,860 full time jobs for Michigan residents.

“The caterers, the florists, the furniture providers, event companies, tent companies that were only seasonal, all of a sudden they’re hiring people,” Ken Droz, consultant for Michigan-based Maxsar Studios and formerly of the Michigan Film Office told The Detroit News. “It’s an industry that has tentacles all over the place that you don’t necessarily see, especially on a spreadsheet.”

The study was reportedly presented to Snyder before his budget presentation, but clearly its findings were considered inconsequential. Opponents of the program and the study, like Mackinac Center for Public Policy, claim that the system is altogether flawed.

“We think (Snyder) should go further and eliminate the program wholesale,” said Michael LaFaive, the Mackinac Center’s director of fiscal policy. “Every dollar used to incentify film production is one dollar deprived to entrepreneurs and other people across the state for their own use.”

This however, begs the question. Other people like whom? Like Philippe Martinez, founder and CEO of Maxsar? How about Brad Wardell at Stardock? Maybe the several investors behind Hangar 42 in Grand Rapids? Or Sean Hurwitz at PixoFactor Entertainment in Royal Oak? They’re all entrepreneurs – but of course, that’s just one industry. Mr. Snyder has said nothing about Michigan’s incentives for venture capital and angel investment, which benefits the investment groups Avalon Investments and Ardesta LLC, both of which he founded. I’m sure we’ll hear something about this sooner or later, since the governor is so very interested in creating a “level playing field” and not letting the state pick “winners and losers.”

Here’s the bottom line. Rick Snyder knows business – he would not be the successful guy he is today if he didn’t. But breaking the back of a new and booming industry in a state that sorely needs one or three, is not the way to economic recovery. Any Michigan citizen is well aware of the budget woes facing the state, and the governor is required by law to balance the budget. Certainly Snyder has some tough decisions to make in the coming months, and I for one, appreciate that he has the stones to make them. But this at least, is a move in the wrong direction, and will hurt far more than it will help.

I’m joining my colleagues in the creative media industry in urging Governor Snyder to rethink his plans regarding the incentive program. We’re all aware that it needs tweaking and can use some adjustments, but to cripple the program means crippling an industry sector in its growth stages – and in a state that is itself crippled by unemployment and a deserting population, it’s not something that we can amiably ignore.

More information and ways to take action can be found at www.rickswrong.com.

Update – July 12: According to The Detroit News, Governor Snyder has officially capped the program at $25 million across the board, starting in the upcoming fiscal year beginning this October. Moreover, a project can now be offered lower than the originally promised 42% with no floor mentioned. It will be interesting to see if the state offers anybody anything other than the generally solid percentages offered by other state programs elsewhere. This, the day after Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal signs a bill that enhances his own state’s programs, is a clear demonstration that the State of Michigan will only work with the automotive industry.

Maybe we can arrange for them to have a chat at the next Republican Governors Association meeting or something.

The first thing to consider whenever talking about any law regarding the regulation of games is the medium’s First Amendment protection. This was first called into question back in 2002 when a U.S. District Court judge, Stephen Limbaugh, ruled that they did not in fact, deserve such protections. This was overturned in 2003 when the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed, citing other unusual works and their First Amendment protections, and the simple fact that video games are a “novel medium” does not negate the right to First Amendment protection.

So fast forward seven years to today. Since that time, several states have tried to pass legislation to restrict the sale of violent games to children, and spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to do so, and each time these states have failed to make it stick. Why is that?

Well, it goes back to the very first thing to consider – games as protected speech under the first amendment. We may not like gory, schlocky, ham-fisted violence carnivals, but we as citizens have every right to produce them. To stop this would require the United States to create an exception in the First Amendment for games, which to date has only been done for porn, which one would be hard-pressed to equate games to porn. After all, if there are no Federal regulations on films, or books, why should games get set up for a metaphorical headshot?

Of course, no law as presented tries to restrict this: That’s true enough, but here is the sticker. Under the Fourteenth Amendment, we are guaranteed that no state may make a law that deprives citizens of our general rights, which we can interpret to include our entrepreneurial freedoms and freedom of enterprise. So logically, no state may enact a law that stops a store from selling unregulated material to whomever they want.

Further, to this point every law proposed suggests that government regulate these sales based on the Entertainment Software Ratings Board’s E through AO rating system. This goes against the Federal code of ethics, in which the government may not endorse a private enterprise. So that’s right out.

With the legal status of the laws or potential laws established, let’s look at the practical side of things.

One wonders how states or districts would enforce such laws, with many police departments stretched thin already, especially here in Detroit. Things aren’t as cushy as they look on Detroit 1-8-7. It’d be a waste of time and resources.

And further, the gaming industry does everything it can to make families aware of the content in the games they buy for their children. The ESRB has websites, pamphlets, point-of-sale documentation, shelf liners, all of which they distribute and are placed in stores to help parents make good decisions for their kids. It doesn’t take a whole lot of time or energy to take a look at what one’s son or daughter is asking after and determine whether it does or if it doesn’t have a place in the home. Of course, if one DID take more time on the subject, it could be a great jumping off point for some rather potent discussions between parent and child, and provide some great opportunities for parents to get involved and create some learning opportunities for kids. Everybody wins in that situation.

The fact of the matter is that legislating against games, whether they be violent or otherwise, is not possible from a legal standpoint. The furor that arises from this issue is the same that showed up when rock music first appeared, or TV and movies actually depicted couples kissing and Rhett Butler told Scarlett that he didn’t give a damn. It’s the same threat to our nation’s “family values” that was posed by Gangster Rap, and that “dilemma” was solved with a sticker.

Certainly there are games out there that kids should – perhaps even must – not be allowed to play. However, the answer to the problem does not lay within creating new laws, and new restrictions on our Constitutionally-declared freedoms. The answer lies in education, and a little bit of dedication and interest on the part of our families. Retailers as well, could do better in observing the ratings suggestions and in many cases – following their own corporate policies by keeping sales within those guidelines. Our legislators however, and our judges, need to keep out of it. They’ve got bigger and better fish to fry.

If you haven’t, then let me elaborate just a little bit.

So it turns out that there’s this magazine called “Cooks Source” who claims to have somewhere between 17,000 and 28,000 readers, publishing in both print and online. In their recent “Pumpkin fest” issue, their staff went ahead and copied an article on medieval apple pies from godecookery.com, a website of interest to medieval (food) enthusiasts. This was done without knowledge or permission of the author, one Monica Gaudio, who posts as illadore on the website Livejournal.com.

When a friend of Monica’s discovered this, she contacted the magazine hoping for an explanation. Thus began an exchange with the publication’s managing editor, Judith Griggs, who finally asked what Monica wanted, anyway. Since she was asked, Monica requested to be paid for her work – at the rate of about ten cents a word, and have it donated to the Columbia School of Journalism, and a printed apology in the magazine.

In response, Ms. Griggs replied that she had been editing magazines for thirty years, and that she knows about copyright laws. She continued onward:

“…honestly Monica, the web is considered “public domain” and you should be happy we just didn’t “lift” your whole article and put someone else’s name on it! It happens a lot, clearly more than you are aware of, especially on college campuses, and the workplace. If you took offence and are unhappy, I am sorry, but you as a professional should know that the article we used written by you was in very bad need of editing, and is much better now than was originally. Now it will work well for your portfolio. For that reason, I have a bit of a difficult time with your requests for monetary gain, albeit for such a fine (and very wealthy!) institution. We put some time into rewrites, you should compensate me! I never charge young writers for advice or rewriting poorly written pieces, and have many who write for me… ALWAYS for free!”

It’s worth a giggle, to consider this response. Anybody who’s aware of anything with regard to publishing or copyright knows that no, the Internet is not in fact public domain. It is absolutely copyright infringement to take somebody’s material and just slap it up there without permission. Does it happen? Absolutely – and the penalty for that on college campuses and the workplace is strict. Automatic course failure in academia, if not immediate dismissal altogether in both avenues.

Also, “as a professional” Ms. Griggs should know that the article she lifted was illustrating medieval cooking, and demonstrated everything from its sourcing including the antiquated old English spellings. Fortunately for everybody else, you don’t need to be a professional to realize this, all you have to do is just read the article.

Since word on this has gotten out, Cooks Source has been getting absolutely slammed, both on their website – which is buckling under the strain of traffic – and their Facebook page, which is getting a deluge of folks signing up to leave nasty commentary and then signing back off so as to not inflate the number of “Likes” that Cooks Source has. It’s also attracted the attention of the websites Reddit and 4chan, and even author Neil Gaiman and NBC show creator Dan Harmon have been discussing it via Twitter. More than this, Internet users have begun to dig up other instances of alleged plagiarism by Cooks Source, from such sources as NPR, Martha Stewart Living, the Food Network and even Weight Watchers, among several others, which if proven true might bring about bites from bigger jaws than Monica and the Internet might bring to bear.

It’s staggeringly bad judgement on the part of Ms. Griggs, and her barely-there grasp of copyright law will land her in some serious hot water – perhaps forming a base for a batch of foot-in-mouth soup, if you will.

The lesson from this is pretty clear, but more than just “don’t steal,” it’s worth admonishing all writers out there to be vigilant. Protect your work. You never know who’s reading, or who’s writing a fly-by-night ripoff rag.

So the good folks at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers have really been on a roll over the last few years, throwing down some serious cash on technology bets which, it seems, have come up big. Two years ago, they kicked off the $100 million iFund, focused solely on businesses developing products for the iPhone, iPod and iPad. This March, they doubled that amount. Now today, Kleiner Perkins got together with Amazon, Facebook and Zynga to announce the new sFund, $250 million focused on social applications.

It’s interesting to note that Google and Yahoo! were not present for this gathering, whatsoever. According to KPCB partner John Doerr, Facebook is the social platform to focus on. “Facebook is it,” he said.

This isn’t saying that Kleiner Perkins is a kingmaker or anything, I’m not saying we’ll be seeing Facebook eclipse Google anytime soon. But it’s been pretty clear over the latter portion of the decade that KPCB seems to know how to pick winners. Other companies that WERE present and are partners in the fund included Comcast, Liberty Media and Allen & Company, LLC.

The fund has already invested in one company, Cafébots, who announced a $5 million round this morning – it’s not precisely clear what they do, but they claim to be working on a product involved in “Friend Relationship Management.” That sounds pretty social. They expect to have a product ready by the end of the year.

The thing about “social” is that is kind of a nebulous term. Obviously, it means involving other people, but just about anything can involve other people.

Could it be that this is just another tech bubble, like the dot-com bubble of years past? Kleiner Perks put down $250 million saying it isn’t. What do you think? Are you out to grab a piece of that for yourself?

There’s a great article written by Mark Crump for The Apple Blog regarding using the newly announced iPad for business uses, that echo what I’ve often told people since the official announcement of the device. As somebody who uses Macs for daily work, business use on the iPad was indeed at the forefront of my considerations for such a tool. Certainly, there is more to it than just being able to run the iWork suite on it, though it is definitely a boon.

A lot of folks have been disheartened by the iPad, calling it little more than an oversized iPod Touch. And sure, it’s fair to make that comparison. Both devices use iPhone OS, and both devices share a large amount of functionality, as well as expansion protocols wrought by Apple’s proprietary Application Store.However, it’s important to remember that iPhone OS is still simply an embedded version of OS X, and as such it can handle a lot of what developers throw at it. Obviously nobody is going to be running Xcode or Maya on an iPad anytime soon, but for the traveling professional, this device may just be what we’re looking for.

It’s extremely portable – far more so than a comparatively bulky Macbook Pro, and decidedly lighter to boot. That makes it ideal for any kind of commute, or airline travel. It’s a very sexy piece of equipment for the folks who need to give presentations and conduct meetings, and since it’ll connect to most projectors, the effective usage of the device won’t be reduced.

And for folks who subscribe to the GTD model of productivity, it’s a great reminder to work lightly while on the go. Let’s face it, if you’re on the go, what are you REALLY going to work on? The iPad is great for email, keeping up on articles, a bit of word processing, Keynote-ing and spreadsheets. For most people, a Macbook Pro or other comparable laptop is just over the top, and creates distractions.

Anyway, take a look at the article for the more verbose read, but come on back here and let me know what you think in the comments!

Disclosure: I write this article as an Apple iPhone developer, but not as somebody privileged enough to receive advance information on the impending tablet device which we believe will be officially announced this month according to a Wall Street Journal report. I don’t have any other information aside from what most other tech bloggers and prognosticators have, it’s all speculation on my part.

I was pretty on the fence about Apple’s iPhone, when it was first announced. Truth be told I was pretty on the fence about smartphones in general. I had an iPod, I had a PDA, I had a cell phone. I liked using all of those devices, but thought that convergence was going to be a problem – why would I listen to music all day and then prevent myself from making phone calls? It just didn’t jive for me. Even when I finally did wind up with a smartphone for necessity’s sake – an HTC Wizard (Cingular 8125 for the locals) – it just wasn’t as good as I’d hoped. It was slow, the web browser never worked, it was bulky, it had a terrible OS and its software support was abysmal.

During the time I used this phone, I had come to use an Apple laptop at the urging of one of my programmers and good friend. Boot Camp had come out and he insisted that Apple machines would be just as viable of a development platform as any otherwise-built pure Windows machine and then some. I’d discovered that OS X and its associated programs (iCal, Mail.app, et al) fit my workflow so much more perfectly that I made that switch, and bought a Mac Pro as soon as it was feasible.

And then the iPhone came out – as a recent Apple convert I was interested, but it was a smartphone. I’d had a terrible experience with a smartphone – my 8125 refused to synchronize well with my Macs, even with a copy of The Missing Sync helping it out. But by this point I could see the promise.

I bought the iPhone almost on a whim. I hadn’t planned on buying one, but I was in the local Apple store on launch day and there was one left. With a “what the hell” and a swipe of the credit card, I was on my way.

I’ve never looked back.

I can honestly say, unflinchingly, that the iPhone absolutely changed my digital life. Everything works the way it should, it’s accessible, it’s extensible, and quite frankly it’s everything I could want in a phone.

Recently on a trip to Asia, I bought a netbook for some easy portable computing. I had a deal on a Dell, I didn’t spend a lot and I didn’t want to, I do believe I got what I paid for. Netbooks however, were another bit of tech that I was on the fence on. Less so than smartphones, I ‘got’ the netbook’s utility a lot sooner, but never took the plunge until I really needed one, as opposed to my usual stance as an early adopter.

I hesitated, though, because I’d heard the rumor of Apple planning on releasing a netbook of its own – except not quite a netbook, but a tablet! Like an iPhone, only bigger! My mind whirled with the potential of such a device.

And it was my iPhone that sold me on the product: What the iPhone does for me in mobile connectivity and computing, I believe the iSlate will do on a larger scale.

It won’t be as powerful as a MacBook, but it won’t have to be. Certainly we will expect ports of existing iPhone apps – just shifting them over to the new device will cause the 480×320 pixel applications to look pretty darn ugly.

But much like how applications made the iPhone successful, the same model will apply here. When we find out precisely what hardware it’s working with later this month, we’ll know precisely how it’ll affect our lives, but after the iPhone, I’m convinced that it’ll be for the better.

You’ll find me in line on launch day.

It might be up your alley! Check it out!

As the Wall Street Journal reports, “the new 35% rate applies to what is known as “carried interest,” which is income that only materializes if fund managers wisely invest the fund’s capital and only after other investors in the fund have benefited. Venture and private equity fund managers already pay normal income taxes on their regular salary derived from management fees. The carried interest, no sure thing, represents a capital gain on a successful investment and has therefore been taxed that way.”

Even better, the whole thing was couched as an addition to a completely unrelated research & development bill. House Resolution 4213, otherwise known as the Tax Extenders Act, is billed as legislation that “renews a crucial research and development tax credit, as well as tax credits for middle class families and teachers.”

And lest the whole thing be dismissed as scaremongering by News Corp., the Coalition on Human Needs highlights the bill in their report from that week, and the press release from the House of Representatives is right here.

This is the kind of thing that has to stop. In the press release, it states that “the bill, which is deficit neutral, is paid for by closing tax loopholes that allow investment fund managers to pay a lower tax rate than other Americans, and by empowering the Treasury Department with new tools to crack down on tax evasion.”

Let me address our elected officials for a moment: Friend Representatives, reclassifying a category of income is not closing a loophole. It is not even a ‘crackdown’ on tax evasion. This is rejiggering the books, pure and simple, and to hide it in this manner is shameful, and wholly unacceptable. I do not expect all our elected officials to be economists, or even well versed in economics or investment-related things. However, when attempting to pass a resolution of this nature, some education is paramount to the creation of quality legislature. So if I may – a capital gain is a profit that comes from the investment into a capital asset, such as stocks, bonds or real estate. It is the very result of the axiom “buy low, sell high.”

Unless one wishes to claim that a fund manager is employed by the very companies they invest in, then this is not regular income and should not be classified as such. It’s basic stuff, really, but the need for clarification is apparent – so I’m just doing my part, my civic duty.

Thankfully the bill is only through the House, and it’d be great if this thing is nipped in the bud. But if the President is serious about stimulating small-business growth, especially in science and technology, then he needs to make that capital gains elimination permanent, instead of a mere one-year tease, and take steps to ensure that this kind of tax increase does not, and will not happen under his watch.

After all, the goal is to grow the economy, not frustrate it.

Update, May 2010: I wrote the President about it, and I got a response back. This is what it said.

Dear Friend:

Thank you for writing to me.  I appreciate hearing
from you and value your input.

Each day, I am moved by the messages I receive
from people across the country.  Far too many Americans
are struggling–falling behind on mortgage payments,
coping with illness, or losing a job without warning.  My
Administration is working to address the serious challenges
our Nation faces.  I am committed to taking immediate
steps that generate job creation and economic recovery, and
I am determined to make investments that lay a new
foundation for real and lasting progress.

As I move forward on key initiatives, I am making
my Administration the most open and transparent in
history.  Part of delivering on that promise is hearing from
people like you.  I take seriously your opinions and respect
your point of view.  Please know that your concerns will be
on my mind in the days ahead.

I hope you continue to explore
www.WhiteHouse.gov, which is regularly updated and
more interactive than ever before.  Thank you again for
writing.

Sincerely,

Barack Obama

I’m not entirely sure he read my letter.