Grove

Ranking Steve Jobs among the great innovators

The death of Steve Jobs has led to the inevitable debate over just how important a figure he was. An undeniable master of consumer taste, Jobs transformed the tech industry and helped define the digital age. But where, ultimately, will he stand as an historical figure?

The comparisons to Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison seem a bit of a stretch. While Jobs has his name on hundreds of patents, he was not an inventor in the classic sense. What he was was an innovator and a business leader, with an unparalleled ability to bring people together to execute his … Read more

The 404 780: Where we throw the trolls a bone (podcast)

The 404 Digest for Episode 780

Scott Stein sits in for Wilson. Jeff feeds trolls in his Nintendo 3DS blog post. Check out the 3DS review in its 4,000-plus word entirety. TL;DR? The gist: 3.5/5 stars for impressive 3D experience with a weaker-than-usual launch lineup and inactivated online features. Check out this bamboo iPad 2 case by Grove! Video voice mail by Luke from Austin.

Record your own video voice mail on YouTube and send the link to the404(at)cnet(dot)com or leave an audio voice mail by calling 1-866-404-CNET (2638).

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Episode 780 Subscribe in iTunes (audio) | Subscribe in iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more

Obama speaks at Intel plant, praises Grove

President Obama spoke at an Intel chip manufacturing facility in Hillsboro, Ore., today and praised company co-founder Andy Grove for his commitment to America.

Obama toured a cutting-edge Intel manufacturing facility with host Paul Otellini, CEO of Intel. The president made a stop in the San Francisco Bay Area yesterday and met with Silicon Valley tech leaders, including Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

"We just had an amazing tour. One of my staff said it's like magic. I had a chance to see everything from an electron microscope, to the inside of the microprocessor … Read more

U.S. chip manufacturing in the age of the iPad

Behind the fly-off-the-shelf popularity of products like Apple's iPad and iPhone are hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs--mostly overseas. Is it possible to create more of those jobs here in the U.S. to combat chronically high levels of unemployment?

Personal computing is moving rapidly beyond the laptop. And there's no better example than Apple, whose most popular products are arguably now the iPhone and the iPad. The surging demand for anything Apple is causing a seismic shift in chip manufacturing to Asia, the hotbed of new silicon ecosystems. Though companies like Hewlett-Packard and Dell also play a … Read more

Intel's Andy Grove on manufacturing in America

Among the scores of fabless chip companies and product design houses in Silicon Valley, Intel is a standout. It's an American high-tech company that not only creates but builds some of the most sophisticated tech products in the world here. That contrasts with others, like Apple and Hewlett-Packard, that consign virtually all product manufacturing and assembly abroad.

Last week, I asked Intel co-founder Andy Grove how the chipmaker became one of the last, great high-tech manufacturing giants in the U.S. and why many Silicon Valley icons haven't done the same. Grove was Intel's chairman from May 1997 to May 2005 and served as chief executive from 1987 to 1998.

Intel's manufacturing strategy was underscored by a recent announcement to invest as much as $8 billion in new factories and facilities in the U.S. That's in addition to the roughly $34 billion it has already invested in its U.S. factories, including investment in a joint flash chip manufacturing venture with Micron Technology.

Grove says Intel has been making, or "fabbing," chips in the U.S. since its founding in 1968--for practical reasons, mind you. "That was not a result of us wanting to be patriotic. Operationally that was the most logical thing for us to do," he said, in a phone interview.

Why, historically, has it been practical for Intel? "The people doing the technology manufacturing were highly trained, highly disciplined staff. And there was a lot of desire to not start manufacturing operations willy-nilly all over the place," he said. … Read more

Why Andy Grove is right

commentary Former Intel CEO Andy Grove is dead on about the dire need to come up with policies to create more manufacturing jobs in the U.S. Look no further than the bustling economies in Asia if there is any doubt.

Here's a key point Grove makes in the Bloomberg piece. "Our fundamental economic beliefs, which we have elevated from a conviction based on observation to an unquestioned truism, is that the free market is the best economic system--the freer, the better...So we stick with this belief, largely oblivious to emerging evidence that while free markets beat planned economies, there may be room for a modification that is even better."

And, in a corollary, he says that the relentless push by U.S. companies to move manufacturing overseas breaks the innovation and job-creating chain, what he calls "scaling up" where companies "work out design details, figure out how to make things affordably, build factories, and hire people by the thousands. Scaling is hard work but necessary to make innovation matter."

Grove continues. "Not only did we lose an untold number of jobs, we broke the chain of experience that is so important in technological evolution. As happened with batteries, abandoning today's 'commodity' manufacturing can lock you out of tomorrow's emerging industry."

Grove is right. I lived in Japan for 10 years (until 1993). I worked mostly as a journalist, covering the Japanese high-technology industry. In one job, I translated and rewrote reams of articles from the Japanese industrial dailies (covering machine tools, cars, chemicals, computer components) over a three-year period (which, by the way, we sent to clients like AT&T, Motorola, and IBM), giving me pretty good insight into Japan's vaunted manufacturing system.

The underlying philosophy--monozukuri (making things)--was so beneficial to the Japanese economy… Read more

Parents take away Xbox; boy dials 911

There is a view that removing all 15-year-old boys from this earth would not only help global warming but also our cultural horizon.

Supporters of this view will then be heartened to hear the story reported by the Chicago Tribune of a 15-year-old boy who suffered a serious trauma. His parents took away his Xbox.

The boy, a resident of Buffalo Grove, Ill., which sounds like the sort of place where discipline is imparted along traditional lines, decided to express his feelings and exert his identity. He called 911 in order to ask the police whether his parents were, indeed, … Read more

Intel's Grove: Something foul in Silicon Valley

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--At a star-studded event in Mountain View, Calif., Saturday night, former Intel CEO Andrew Grove criticized the current state of the patent system in Silicon Valley, comparing it to the financial instruments that led to the collapse of Wall Street.

"As we celebrate the accomplishments of the last 50 years, I can't help but wonder if the next 50 years will be equally productive," Grove told a crowd at the Computer History Museum. "I'm dubious."

Grove spoke after receiving a lifetime achievement award at the 37th annual National Inventors Hall of Fame … Read more

First GM, now Silicon Graphics. Lessons learned?

It was to be expected. When a one-time tech powerhouse winds up bankrupt and sold off for chump change, that's bound to ignite the daily bloviation fest.

So it was that one and all are today offering their dutiful ruminations on the cosmic import of SGI's acquisition by Rackable Systems for a paltry $25 million.

This is not so complicated. SGI was a comet, soaring through the tech firmament during its brief moment of glory. But it's only one in a list of former high-flyers to come crashing back to earth, a roster that includes the likes … Read more