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The Forgotten Apple CEO
Sabah Arif writes "Michael Spindler was supposed to be the savior of Apple. After four years at Apple, he was an executive vice president and had built Apple Europe to the point where it was providing 25% of Apple's revenues. Just the same, at the end of the day Spindler couldn't handle the stress or control the Apple organization. Low End Mac has an extensive biography of this figure in Apple's History." From the article: "Apple Europe ran out of a cramped 100 ft. office in Brussels and had only a few employees. Spindler had never worked at the startup before, but he liked it a lot. He had freedom to try almost anything he wanted. There were problems with working for such a young company, though. Spindler went without payment for almost six months because Apple didn't know how to move funds from California to Belgium."
It's still sad that the European headquarters moved from Brussels to Paris.
Now the (european) Apple expo is held in Paris and is therefor deeply french, which leads to the UK and the Netherlands (and maybe others, I don't know) having their own unofficial apple expo's. Having stayed in Brussels, maybe the expo could have been held there and be truly European.
for what I see Jobs ideas is getting old and they wont keep apple up together. Watch what happens when in a year from now apple hand out press releases to another Special Event and nobody turns up. Spindler had this long term strategy and Jobs sadly lacking there.
So, Jobs' strategy of meeting the market's needs before they realize they have those needs is not a long term strategy? Methinks that you need a serious reality check.
Putting aside Spindlers abilities, Jobs has shown explosive growth in BOTH companies he currently acts as CEO for. (Apple and Pixar.) Under his reign, BOTH companies have continued to produce products that have continually upped their market share. Under Jobs, BOTH companies have continued this upward climb for decades. Sure, Jobs' tenure was broken up, but while he was CEO the company has always thrived.
Love him or hate him (probably some of both), he does a bang up job as an executive leader. There's no one I would trust more at the helm of Apple. Or any other company, for that matter.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
-Kurt
"We can categorically state we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - UK military spokesman, July 2007
Under Jobs, Apple has only once, in the most recent quarter, surpassed Gil Amelio's revenue record.
Respectfully, I have to wonder aloud if you aren't one of the better trolls on Slashdot.
I worked for Spindler, Amelio and Jobs.
Spindler shipped a LOT of product, and under him, the confusing gobbledygook of naming conventions like "Performa 6225" was born. Now, if you can tell me the difference between Performa 6220 and a 6225 off the top of your head...imagine what it was like in support when Apple had 40-some odd machines based on four logic boards and varying form factors, markets...
Actually, it was a lot like HP/Compaq's naming conventions these days - mention a product name, and you had to go look up the feature list, which sub-species of logic board, what processor speed, disk capacity, etc - and some machines had quiet revisions. A far cry from the 2X2 product matrix Jobs introduced and far removed even from today's multi-market, multi-tier product line.
Under Spindler, Apple shipped a lot of product though. Unfortunately, they were declining very fast in quality because Spindler was racing to the bottom, commanding engineering to ship low-cost products on schedule no matter the quality.
I remember the KROM (Apple sales comm. "radio show") tape in which the PowerBook product manager proudly crowed about how the 5300 series was going to ship on time, with features no PC laptop had. For the next eight years, Apple was replacing those machines - every 5300 took at least one ride to the service depot (I'm not exaggerating) and a great deal of them were repaired multiple times or outright replaced...with another 5300 that had bugs and needed repair. The product didn't actually work until six months after it shipped - and after it was already EOL'd. Thanks, Mike "Diesel" Spindler!
Spindler is best forgotten. Underhim we got the PowerBook 5300, Performa 52 and 62xx series, the Performa 6400 series, crappy peripherals that took several replacements at times to get a working unit, etc.
Amelio was the "fix it guy" who was supposed to turn us around with motivational talks, koffee klatches (yes, I really did work there) and a management team that included Silicon Valley's best...or at least the best who weren't smart enough to be working for startup Internet companies like Yahoo, Lycos, etc.
He flat-out told us during a comm meeting that we were stupid and lazy and generally tried to be the strict daddy for a company of people that he thought were just lazy slobs - people who, if they'd just cut their hair and wear a tie would somehow make the company sing again.
Needless to say, this didn't go over well with employees. Thank God Fred managed to eke a $25 Million profit one quarter from those "record revenues" Amelio generated. Apple was taking in lots of money - sure - just like a drowning person takes in a lot of water.
Fred and Steve were the only guys Amelio hired that ended up doing much good for Apple. Fred cut costs by NOT laying everyone off at once (this was after March 17, 1997) and Steve had the balls to knock a few walls out of our haunted mansion and start renovating.
Apple today may not sell as many computers, but they're far more influential and relevant because Jobs returned - and you can give Amelio that kudo if you want.
Under Jobs, Apple has only once, in the most recent quarter, surpassed Gil Amelio's revenue record. I think a fair way to look at Jobs is that he's a company builder and marketer whose ability to actually produce economic results is approximately on par with the best CEO from Apple's history.
Or, you could look at it this way: Amelio was so inept at fixing the damage Spindler wrought, stood by while the clone makers whupped Apple's ass, and drove so many smart people from the company that it has taken Jobs this much time and almost ten years' worth of focussed engineering effort to regain the former revenue level.
Perhaps it makes more sense when you consider that we were