That's Steve Jobs, not like in the economy. I was reading this fascinating article about Steve and his vision to unite the work products of Pixar and Apple. As most of you know, Pixar decided not to continue its deal with the Walt Disney Company (which required it to split profits from the seven films it contracted to make with Disney--after Disney had subtracted its marketing costs).
This news was surely greeted with elation by every other film production company in the world. Now Pixar's products will be available to the highest bidder--possibly on a film by film basis. I can only imagine what Steve might be able to do with the marriage of Apple and Pixar.
Possibly provide unique content on Macs, or maybe make on-demand video downloads available as he has with done with music and iTunes?
The article expounds on Job's purported vision of creating a Disney-like creative enterprise and how he is first individual with enough power to bring about the digital convergence of Hollywood and high-tech. We have already seen the early stages of this in the replacement of conventional animation (Disney) by digital animation (Pixar). Notably, OSS (open source software) has played a role in this, both in the technology of the render farms used to create the digital films and special effects and in the applications used to actually create the special effects.
I haven't heard of Macs being used in a render farm yet (though they have been used in a supercomputer) but with Jobs running both Pixar and Apple it would seem to be a forgone conclusion.
nb: Pixar is apparently trying to put together a consortium of buyers in an attempt to buy Disney (rather than having Comcast succeed).
Posted by artandscience at February 19, 2004 07:40 AM