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What is Apple Without Steve Jobs?

Posted by Zonk on from the different-colored-apple dept.

necro81 writes "David Pauly at Bloomberg has written a piece that asks 'Does Apple Inc. Have a Future Without Steve Jobs?' He writes in the context of Jobs' latest success in launching the iPhone, set against the backdrop of stock backdating troubles. In Pauly's worst-case-scenario, the SEC prosecutes Apple, and the board is forced to oust Jobs.Even without resorting to such scenarios, it's an interesting question to ask the fanboys and detractors out there: could Apple succeed and continue to innovative without Jobs at the helm?"

1 of 281 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Ummm, by Tackhead · · Score: 4, Informative
    > Considering that the couple of folks that tried to clone the AppleII way back when were mercilessly hunted down and killed, (legalistically speaking), by Apple, and the short time Apple tried to license out their OS to clone makers was such a miserable failure due to their overly restrictive terms and high fees, I think my opinion is an honest one, not a troll.
    >
    > Contrast to IBM and M$, who let the IBM PC clones freak flags fly, welcoming any and all third party developers and apps.

    It was a weird time in the industry. Everyone was trying to figure out whether or not to go with open or closed architectures, and changing their minds about it every couple of years.

    Compared to the Mac, the Apple ][ was an exceptionally open platform. It not only had slots, when you bought an Apple ][, you got the schematics for the hardware, and you got a commented disassembly of the ROM in your documentation. Whereas the Mac needed a special Programmer's Key just to reset the machine.

    And as for IBM, the same IBM that let the clones out of the closet... was the same IBM that came up with the PS/2 and MCA (Micro Channel Architecture). Sure the second generation of IBM machines had slots and ran DOS (whether it was PC-DOS or MS-DOS :-), but what good were the machine's slots if you had to sign a licensing agreement just to build hardware for 'em?