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What is Apple Without Steve Jobs?
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?"
In Pauly's worst-case-scenario, the SEC prosecutes Apple, and the board is forced to oust Jobs.
They'll just bring him back as an "independent consultant" and it'll be business as usual.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
No problem. They just need to replace him with someone else that's exactly the same.
It doesn't necessarily have to be Jobs, but I have a hard time imagining who else could be as effective. The Reality Distortion Field is a very real thing and must be taken into account. Anything Jobs says is automatically newsworthy. The black turtleneck has become an icon of geek chic. Apple and Jobs are, in the minds of the believers, inseparable.
Regardless of who sits in the big chair, that person must positively sweat charisma. People have to want to believe them. And whatever else is true, they must never ever have worked for HP :D
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
No, that's what Apple would have been with Steve Wozniak.
History says no. Apple without Steve was not the same...
Successful launch of the iPhone? What launch?
They've only announced a future product, and the general sentiment seems to be that it won't be a hot seller. That's a far cry from being a success.
What is Microsoft without Steve Ballmer?
For me the more interesting question is how much of Apple's success can be ascribed to Jobs' leadership style. Perhaps that should be in quotes because he is rumored to be an asshole to work for. Did his uncompromising behavior and standards create the iPod? Would it have been less of a hit if his vision didn't push it in the right direction? Or did it require a perfectionist?
Clearly he won't settle for less than best in him employees--but viewing from the outside, it's hard to say if that helped or hindered Apple's success.
(Jobs) I loved Mac's in the 80's. High-res screens. Mice. Cool apps.
(No Jobs) I hated Mac's in the 90's. Slow. Ugly (my opinion). No cool apps. Crashed as often as PC's (I worked at a graphic design firm, macs at work, pc's at home)
(Jobs) I love Mac's in the...2000's(?). Beatiful. Fast. Tons of cool apps + lots of OSS stuff.
So, anecdotally I'd say that Jobs makes a huge difference. That being said, I think Apple would still have a good chance if the Jobs appointees stayed in power after he left.
Apple without Steve Jobs would be like what De Lorean was without John De Lorean. No one really wanted De Loreans after John De Lorean left either.
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?"
As the first result for a google search on mac fanboy, I feel qualified to answer this.
Answer yes. Last time Jobs left, Apple was left with mediocre CEOs (who seemed determined to run Apple to the ground). It entirely depends on who replaces Jobs.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Today, he has produced a new phone with deliberate limitations, much like the Mac of 22 years ago. There's the chance it won't take off. Will that destroy Apple? No. All businesses strike out sometime or other. The good businesses have more successes than failures.
If at this point, with the stock options stain, he has developed a sense of entitlement and therefore expects to get extra special treatment, then he will be a drag on the company, and he must go. The graveyards are full of tombs of irreplaceable men. Someone will step up and fill the void. As for innovation, do you think that the hordes of Apple designers and engineers are just a bunch of dodos?
Jobs is certainly a more charismatic figurehead than Gates or Ballmer, but plenty of companies do just fine without a reality distortion field, so why shouldn't Apple? I believe the key man behind Apple's current run of success may well be Jonathan 'Jony' Ive, not Steve Jobs.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
I'm sure Steve's influence on the company's success is overrated. They did just fine without him, launching many successful products under the wise leadership of their brilliant interim CEOs.
Wall Street will punish Apple in a huge way if Jobs goes, either by choice or force. For many people Jobs is Apple, and the useless analyst at places like Gartner will paint awesome forecast of doom when Jobs does go.
They would survive without Jobs since they now have some momentum in certain areas such as digital music and consumer electronics. As long as they make incremental, evolutionary improvements to their already-existing popular products, they will do fine. Now that they have a name with things like the iPod, they just need to make sure that it remains perceived as "cooler" than the other devices which means making small changes (bigger screens, touchscreens, higher capacity, smaller size, etc.). They might get in trouble if Jobs was replaced by someone who wanted to take the company in a "completely new direction". Just look at HP as an example of what new directions can do to a good company. Or look at what almost happened to Apple when they let Steve go before.
"Oh dear, she's stuck in an infinite loop and he's an idiot" -Prof. Farnsworth (Futurama)
He's good, he's smart, he's richer than Cresus. He's the master of drama and slick stuff that works. He did very little himself, however, except running a tight ship.
Apple is not a marketleader, save in one very popular segment. Don't mistake that for being IBM-- they're less than 1/10th the size. He knows how to talk to Hollywood, because he IS HOLLYWOOD-- that's where Pixar and Disney get their $$ from.
Apple ought to break up into three companies: entertainment systems, computer systems, and software. Each would work nicely on their own, and be able to then attack their respective marketplaces less encumbered by the other. If they actually opened up things (no, don't look at the iPhone stupidity), they'd get the best of both worlds, as their BSD 'pedigree' is a bit of a sham.
Jobs ought to retire while we still like him, after choosing someone without a pony tail (sorry, Jonathon).
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
If Steve Jobs left Apple now, it is conceivable that the first thing that would happen is that he would become CEO of Disney. If Steve Jobs became CEO of Disney, the first thing he would do is buy Apple Inc - business as usual. Why - quite simple. Sony makes films and also makes consumer electronics. There are considerable benefits in doing both, so by buying Apple Disney get in on the market. It is something called Vertical Integration - an old business model that coming back into fashion.
MAN!
I guess the Apple fanboys are out in force early.
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.
The attempt to quash my opinion by modding it down just validates it.
Somebody within Apple (strongly rumored to be Jobs) who has a lot of power has exceptionally high standards for design an usability, and this is why we get iPod+iTunes from Apple (killer app - even my little sister can rip CDs onto it) and Media Player+Some strange OLED WMA player from others.
Thats the key, somebody who will say no to an average product which would make a fair amount of money until its even better. If they lose that, they're the same as everyone else and they can't command premium prices anymore.
"XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, use more." - Anonymous Coward
The one thing Steve Jobs has been is ruthless in getting well-thought out design and integrated software projects working across multiple product teams, so that the final user experience is a unified one across most of Apple's products.
Compare this to Sony's reported "silo" approach to developing hardware, software and services, music and video--where many times individual managers within Sony actively squabble over the right approach to take, each fueled more by the individual needs of each division within Sony rather than the needs of the overall company. Such a "silo" mentality is inevitable at any large company unless someone at the top actively forces people to work together for the benefit of the entire company rather than for the individual gains of a particular division.
I don't know if there is a technologically savvy enough uber-geek asshole out there which could replace Steve Jobs if he were to leave Apple--which means Apple would eventually fall back on the habits it had under Spindler and Amelio, where every division internally competed without any sort of unified direction, beyond the imperitive that the sell something.
When he dies, they'll just replace him with another guy in a turtleneck. No one will know the difference. Mac users are more emotional than logical anyway. ;)
I'm an investor in Apple and I also work in the investment industry. My take is that Apple would lose about 40% of its market value immediately if Jobs got the boot. At today's price that's about $37 Billion of equity going poof, supposedly in the name of protecting Apple's shareholders. Sure, some or all of that value might come back eventually. But the point is, it's never going to happen. The regulators might find some way to publicly reprimand him, but he's too important to the company --- and he's added too much value to the company --- to be pulled out for this. Technically speaking it shouldn't matter, so there is something of an ethical dilemma. But the market ultimately is more practical than that. It wouldn't serve anyone's good. Of course, I may be completely wrong. But my portfolio hopes that I'm not.
>
> Contrast to IBM and M$, 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?
It is actually exciting to live in a time where we have a CEO like Jobs. He's the only example of a true living Willy Wonka in my lifetime.
I can't think of one more individual like Steve that inspires me to not only pull out my wallet and hand over thousands of dollars, but do it with a smile.
Apple without Jobs showmanship really wouldn't be the same. Apple is a company that profits by pushing envelope to develop products and then requiring high price for it. That business plan is inherently unstable yet Apple thrives with it. The only reason that works is because Jobs has a good technical background to define a direction for a product and the showmanship to get people excited about it. The iPhone announcement illustrates this beautifully. He took the spotlight off CES, had the attention of major news outlets, and generally had people excited with a product that might be fraught with too many limitations for its price. Steve Ballmer can't do that, but that is exactly Apple's bread and butter. I don't think Jobs has any formal college degrees, yet, he undeniably has the qualities needed to be a good "Apple" CEO. Apple with any other CEO would not be what is Apple today. We will one day have to accept that ineveitable change.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
Is Jonathon Ives.
I've got to remember to save all these posts. They'll be as amusing as all the iPod is a flop posts in a few years - and those were priceless! Great content!
Then put Woz at the wheel. The man is incredible, when you meet him you cant not like the man. He has great ideas, Is an incredible prankster (we need a CEO prankster to shake up the industry) and actually knows what he talks about.
Problem is, Woz will never EVER do it.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
the same IBM that let the clones out of the closet...
If you jump in front of a parade that doesn't mean you organized it.
KFG
I seem to have adopted a new role over the past few days; Apple Fan boys Advocate. But is that about to come to an end?
You see, I think Apple without Steve Jobs is like Virgin without Richard Branson. Branson is the Spirit of the Virgin group, know for his wacky publicity stunts and appearing to be a harmless, benign hippy, while in reality, being an unlikely corporate billionaire. Indeed, one of his business rivals so underestimated him that he referred to Branson as "The grinning pullover".
Not that Jobs has that image, it's just the close association each man has with their companies product which is where I'm making the comparison. Branson is still pretty much Virgin, while Jobs is definitely Apple. He's the one who appears to have the vision and drive which is taking the company forward.
Apple without Jobs would definitely be perceived differently by consumers.
This is a tad OT but i thought I'd mention that for some reason the iPhone is available for pre-order at Amazon in Germany. It's 999 for the 8Gb model and already tops Amazon's top 10 sellers list. http://www.amazon.de/gp/bestsellers/ce-de/ref=pd_t s_c_th_head/028-5061788-4808524
Contrast to IBM and M$, who let the IBM PC clones freak flags fly, welcoming any and all third party developers and apps.
Uh, not hardly. They had a proprietary BIOS and they wouldn't share it with anyone. Compaq reverse-engineered the BIOS so as to make clone, and IBM sued them for copyright infringement. Seeing as this was pre-DMCA, and Compaq did a good job of clean-room reverse engineering, they won the lawsuit, and were able to start manufacturing IBM-compatible machines.
That wouldn't have been the end of it, except IBM made a strategic error in not signing an exclusive license with Microsoft for MS-DOS. So Microsoft started selling DOS to Compaq and all the other clone makers that cropped up like weeds. Now the thing that made a PC a PC was not IBM, but Microsoft, and overnight control of the market switched to MS. Oh, and the market exploded as the clones became cheap and popular.
Make no mistake about it: IBM "allowed" clones only under duress. It was only after being beaten up badly in the 80s and early 90s that IBM started to learn some lessons about openness.
The enemies of Democracy are
Uh... the programmer's key was not a key like you insert into a lock. It was a key like a key on your keyboard. It was a button that stuck out the side. And there were two of them: one to reset, one to drop into the debugger. Those two buttons persisted on all Mac hardware until well into the reign of the PowerMac G4.
Perhaps you're thinking of the custom case cracking tool that the early classic-style Macs required to get inside the case....
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
After the shocked reaction to the iPhone, various Wall Street institutions have done their best to play up the options issue, claim Steve Jobs is about to go on a leave for health reasons, and generally spew FUD from every direction. As a general rule, if you introduce a story from Bloomberg or the WSJ having financial implications for a stock just days before an earnings report (next Wednesday for Apple), you're likely just carrying water for someone with a special agenda.
NASDAQ up.
AAPL down.
Good team work guys!
As Jerry Pournelle (long of Chaos Manor from Byte Magazine in ages past) has noted
The LA Times has a We Hate Gates series. Most of the press seems to have a similar crusade against Apple. One wonders if some press consortium has sold Apple stock short and is working to make it come true?
Because whatever irregularities in the stock option of many years ago, Jobs has taken Apple from a struggling company to a major player, and the stockholders were rewarded with a 1200% stock value increase.
Why regulations designed to protect minority stockholders are now being used to smear Jobs is a story someone with more resources than I have should dig into. I doubt it's really coincidence.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Oh, really now. Why is it that everyone always seems to start dropping their panties the minute somebody mentions the name Steve Jobs? I mean, I'm as much (or more) of an Apple (and Steve Jobs) fanboy as anybody you care to name, but the fact of the matter is that it's quite well documented that Steve Jobs can be a complete and utter dickhead and/or spiteful jackass when it suits him. Not that he has anything even remotely approaching a monopoly on that sort of behavior.
Is he a genius? In some ways, yes, in others, no. But very often, Steve has proven that concepts which really ought to be, and sometimes *are*, obvious to most people are very often concepts which they will either willfully ignore, or are too terrified to embrace. What makes Steve special is the fact that he doesn't accept the current state of technology (ever), and he brooks very little in the way of compromise when it comes to product design. As the saying goes, Steve wants everything he has a hand in making to come out "insanely great". Sometimes he misses the mark, but he's right more often than not because it's clear that he gives a shit about the product (and in his own small way, the people) rather than just wanting to make a load of greenbacks. Not that Steve doesn't want to make money, because obviously he has, but he does it by making some really cool shit happen.
Aside from the considerable mystique that Steve has built up over the years, it really wouldn't be all that hard to replace him. In fact, I will only semi-jokingly propose that Apple replace Steve Jobs with *me*. Seriously. I'd love to have the job, and I'd even do it for a modest salary because I think it would be one of the coolest jobs on the face of the Earth and I don't really *need* all that much money, in the end.
Here's what you need to be the next Steve Jobs:
1. The ability to see beyond what technology has become to what it ought to be. This is the most essential aspect. Steve Jobs ranks up there with the greatest figures in the history of computing when it comes to a vision about what the role of technology should be in our lives.
2. A black mock turtleneck. Simple, understated, not quite elegant, highlights your face on camera, and makes you look slimmer, to boot.
3. Friends and associates like Steve Wozniak, Jonathan Ive, Andy Hertzfeld, Avi Tevanian, etc (not to mention a whole bunch of people over at Pixar). Go take a look at the list of people who have worked for Apple and/or Pixar and what they've done. It's freaking shocking. Apple alone has, over the years, made both Microsoft and Google combined look like a bunch of kindergarteners. And Pixar? Do I even need to go into it?
4. The willpower not to accept a compromised design. Don't settle for less than "insanely great". Money isn't everything, you know, and it's not even the only thing.
5. And, of course, target the high end of the market, and make no apologies for it. Quality over quantity.
That's it, really. It's not all *that* difficult. Unfortunately, even most people involved with technology tend to forget that it's not all about the actual techie bits. It's also about design and philosophy, and a whole lot of other fuzzy ideas about Life, the Universe, and Everything that most brainiac gearheads have a difficult time wrapping their eggheads around. Those of us who can *do* exist, though we may be a extremely small subset of the population.
Good post.
My sense is that in some ways as the overall telecommunications market converges over IP, Apple is facing many of the same stresses with regard to openness as Apple is now. It will eventually have to face up to the diversity of an already oversaturated market and the trend to more open standards necessary for interoperability in a multinetworked environment. I think this is why the iPhone fiasco seems to have created a disturbance in the force for many inhabitants/captives of the Apple universe. It creates a realization that simply being "cool" and PR savy doesn't necessarily equate to strategic longterm viability and market influence in a universe of coliding universes. The iPhone fiasco only drew attention to the strategic weakness of proprietary platforms such as Apple's. If its gravitational pull is small a proprietary platform has little chance to hold its elements in orbit.
In this sense Cisco with its enormus size is much more stragically and centrally placed. Its size provides the gravitational pull in the marketplace and the fact that given its position is essentially pure networking and hence, TCP/IP at its core. Hence, it is platform agnostic and able to coexist with multiple platforms that it draws into its orbit. Having TCP/IP at its core creates a more general form of an "open platform" than is available to Apple.
My sense is that overtime, "smaller" players, such as Apple, will only become buisness elements embedded in much larger corporate entities either merged or in strategic alliances. Apple doesn't extert enough influence in telecommunications to alter the direction of the overall market over the longer term. The iPhone "launch" shows the Apple's weakness and just how constrained and squeeze it is in attempting to enter the larger telecommuncations market. I do wish them luck as a consumer, we need as many choices as possible. However, also as a consumer, I must also recognize that with convergence comes the essential need to scale up in order to address market diversity and interoperability. Otherwise, I will simply be hostage to $500 phones (that do not even include the fees to access the network).
A more interesting question is whether ATT, which now owns Cingular and upon which Apple's phone will live or die, will use its constraint on Apple to ultimately swallow it whole or just place it firmly in orbit, as ATT girds to battle other corporate titans, who seek global control in a converging telecommunications/multimedia universe. In that sense who replaces Jobs might be a moot question, as the next CEO might be simply a VP in a much larger enterprise. My own sense is that this won't happen over the next few years, as the air must clear to determine how much damage has been done to Apple's financials over the stock options problems.
Has Steve Jobs become the Willy Wonka of the Computer Industry?
;)
Yes I'm refering to the childrens story/movie "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", but think about it... sure Willy Wonka was a very private individual, but there are quite a few parallels that can be made between Steve/Apple and Willy/Wonka's Chocolate Factory
They both started off famously...
Steve was forced out, and the competition started to catch up supposedly (I think probably, but thats a matter of opinion) by stealing ideas from Apple
vs.
Wonka's chocolate ideas were stolen by the competition so he closed the factory
When Steve was brought back he brought back his new company NEXT with him, to which much of OS X can apparently be accredited
vs.
Wanka Reopened his factory with the help of "Oompa Loompas" he brought back with him from where he dissappeared while his factory was closed
and now we get to the storied question, who will replace Steve Jobs (Willy Wonka) after he is gone?
or better yet, is Steve/Apple going to do a lottery to find a successor? (-- ok this is a joke question, but it helps to point out the issue