Apple After Jobs

recoiledsnake writes "The connection between Apple and Steve Jobs is unlike any other brand and CEO relationship in corporate America, maybe the world. While Bill Gates has successfully transitioned himself away from his day job at Microsoft, can Apple do without Jobs at all? Once word started circulating that Jobs may be ill, Apple stock took a considerable hit, dropping more than $10 a share. And when Mr. Jobs was absent from last week's quarterly earnings conference call, the questions started again — and the stock fell again. What does this mean for corporate users of Apple for whom switching costs are high? Can Apple continue innovating in Job's absence?"

Comments

Come on, guys.

[bigstrat2003]

Get this through your heads already: Apple is not Steve Jobs. He does not personally do all of the stuff Apple does. Assuming Apple's engineers (the people who actually matter) don't quit when Jobs leaves, Apple will do just fine after Jobs.

Re:Come on, guys.

[mini me]

Jobs' vision for the company, and the computer industry as a whole is what sets Apple apart from other technology companies. I'm sure Jobs can be replaced, but what happens if the wrong person takes over his job and wants to turn the company into another Microsoft?

Thinking Jobs does everything at Apple would be silly, but Jobs does enable those who work at Apple to do the kind of work they do. If, for example, Steve Balmer took over the reigns, it wouldn't be long before Apple was putting all their efforts into web searching.

Re:Come on, guys.

[Higaran]

He may not do everything at apple, but he is the heart & soul of the company, he makes sure everyone there shares a single vision. He already left once, and the company almost went bankrupt, without him no one over there really gives a krap about anything.

Re:Come on, guys.

[EastCoastSurfer]

Get this through your heads already: Apple is not Steve Jobs. He does not personally do all of the stuff Apple does. Assuming Apple's engineers (the people who actually matter) don't quit when Jobs leaves, Apple will do just fine after Jobs.

I disagree. If there is one company that is its leader it's Apple. Of course Jobs doesn't personally do the engineering, but what he does is get people to work long hours for normal pay to be part of something that they feel is bigger than themselves. He also inspires tons of people to buy products for the simple reason they are cool. I obviously don't know him personally, but from the stories I've read he has an exacting, perfectionist personality that he uses to drive all of these engineers and thus the products.

Re:Come on, guys.

[MBGMorden]

He's not the source of their innovations, but a lot of public perception is tied to Jobs being Apple (whether or not that is accurate or not is really inconsequential).

The bottom line is that if the public refuses to accept an Apple without Jobs at the helm, then they will falter.

Re:Come on, guys.

[Lord_Frederick]

Someone coming in after Jobs will be more concerned with not becoming "the guy that killed Apple" than in creating innovative products. Jobs plays to win. His successor will play to not lose and that will hurt Apple.

Re:Come on, guys.

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm it already is another Microsoft. They ripyou off when you buy one of their machines and you cant use their software how you like.

Re:Come on, guys.

[ceoyoyo]

Jobs set up the culture at Apple, and does do a lot of stuff that the average CEO wouldn't. I think the secret to Apple after Jobs will be to look within for a new CEO, or at least to a closely related company. Promote someone from the ranks, or maybe from Pixar, but don't go shopping for one of the usual business school grad CEOs that other companies seem to end up with.

Re:Come on, guys.

[Frosty Piss]

Jobs' vision for the company, and the computer industry as a whole is what sets Apple apart from other technology companies. I'm sure Jobs can be replaced, but what happens if the wrong person takes over his job and wants to turn the company into another Microsoft?

Remember where John Scully took Apple? Without Jobs' return, Apple would be what HP/Compaq are today - shitty printer ink companies.

Re:Come on, guys.

[Bandman]

I don't know what his life insurance policy coverage is, but it should probably be tripled.

Aside from his vision and stubborn bullheadedness, Steve's reality distortion field is probably Apple's biggest asset.

Re:Come on, guys.

[CastrTroy]

Normal Pay? Steve Jobs only gets a $1 salary from Apple. Mind you, he's fantastically rich, and probably likes his job enough that he doesn't care if Apple pays him one way or the other.

Re:Come on, guys.

[Firehed]

I'm sure Jobs can be replaced, but what happens if the wrong person takes over his job and wants to turn the company into another Microsoft?

From what I've read, Jobs has a pretty decent plan in place to arrange the right successor when that time comes. As I'm sure most of us know or can determine, Apple uses their software (practically as a loss leader) to sell hardware, whereas Microsoft primarily leverages other people's hardware sales to sell its own software. Regardless of your thoughts about either approach, you need to remember that they're completely different and almost completely incompatible with each other. Microsoft's goal, as (primarily) a software company is to make it as easy as possible to get it on each and every piece of hardware in existence, and all things considered they do a pretty good job with it. As Apple makes nearly all of their money on hardware, their competitive advantage is Mac OS X, so it's obviously in their best interest to keep it limited to their own hardware.

Point being that the two business models are so fundamentally different that there would have to be a screw-up of monumental proportions in order for Jobs' successor to try using Microsoft's business model with Apple. Ballmer would obviously be a terrible choice, but that has just as much to do with Apple employees sitting on bouncy balls and rainbows instead of chairs as Ballmer's complete inability to strategically run a company.

Of course, if by "turn the company into another Microsoft" you mean creating a monstrously profitable giant - well, isn't that the goal of every corporation out there?

Re:Come on, guys.

[samkass]

Yeah, but remember what happened when he left before?

As I recall, Apple grew for a decade afterwards, while Jobs went off to form NeXT which struggled to survive and faced imminent demise before being bought back out by Apple. It's true that Apple faltered for the few years before Jobs re-joined the company, but it had a pretty good run from 1985 (when Jobs left) to 1995 (when Apple lost its GUI IP fight on a technicality and Windows 95 cemented Microsoft's GUI dominance).

I'm not saying that Jobs hasn't been wonderful-- much better than I would have expected-- for Apple and its shareholders. But bringing in another Sculley wouldn't exactly be the worst thing in the world, although I'd much prefer an Ive.

Re:Come on, guys.

[S-100]

Of course Apple is Steve Jobs. Nothing major comes out of Apple without Jobs' supervision and guidance. He's known within the ranks as a demanding and cranky boss, which helps create high quality products (as long as the auroa holds out).

And having an anointed "visionary" at the helm has allowed Apple to switch gears like no other company. And if they find a profitable segment (music players: yes, tablets: so far, no), they then exploit it. Only Google stands as the only other large technology company that has the freedom and ability to branch off in different directions. And in Apple's case, that's due to Jobs.

Re:Come on, guys.

[peterdaly]

Assuming Apple's engineers (the people who actually matter) don't quit when Jobs leaves, Apple will do just fine after Jobs.

Really? Leaders matter. I have two words for you:

John Scully

Re:Come on, guys.

[Austerity Empowers]

I'm all "power to the engineers" but let's say this another way.

You can work for a company that micromanages your time to 5 minute intervals. You will help coworker A debug his system for 2 hours. You will then work on a cross-team initiative to replace the corporate tools with duct tape and sandpaper. Then you will innovate for exactly 1 hour, on the subject of how to make product U enclosure shinier without adding cost. Etc. In this environment you're just turning the corporate crank, any creativity you may have had will be replaced with cheap corporate synthetic. You're doing what your CEO thinks he needs to succeed. You may have this idea for a cool smart phone, but it doesn't help your CEO meet his OPEX goals, or it doesn't give a 5% Y/Y increase in business unit Q's gross margin, or whatever. You present your idea, people give you weird looks like "WTF is that", maybe ask "How much money will this make?" and you don't know, because no one has built it before, so it sounds like risk and we don't like risk. Marketing doesn't help you, because they spend all their time doing the same thing you do, and the idea is lost.

Or you can work for a company that insists you develop a product. They don't know what product, figure it out. You, your teammates or that really clever guy in the basement says "Hey, we can make a really awesome phone, all we need is a major cellular telco, and a few million dollars". The idea flows upstream, someone sees the vision and potential, the idea gains momentum and voila you're funded. You do your design thing, probably get some user interface stuff wrong, probably miss some polish. You get a proto, the CEO works out a deal with otherwise impossible to approach cellular telco's and they agree to support the project. Managers sit in your lap to get you to behave for a few months to a year doing disciplined design and engineering, but out comes a nice product.

So yes, the CEO and the middle management he chooses, matters a whole lot, even if you believe your company has a lot of smart engineers.

Re:Come on, guys.

[mgblst]

Your is an idiotic statement. Who makes the big decisions about where Apple should head? Who came up with the ipod or the iphone? Do you not think Apples stock will go down if something happened to Steve?

Re:Come on, guys.

[RDW]

'Johnathon Ive is the best person to replace Steve. Anyone who can spend months testing materials just so the click wheel on the ipod has the right feel is a good choice.'

Though it's kind of a pity he didn't spend a couple of hours testing other materials so that the back of the iPod wouldn't get scratched to hell just by looking at it...

Re:Come on, guys.

[Anpheus]

The average joe blow's experience with HP is, "Those guys that make cheap computers and laptops?" or, "Those %!@#ing ink cartridges cost an arm and a leg."

Not, "Wow, what fantastic load testing and server software suites they have!"

Re:Come on, guys.

[speedtux]

Without Jobs' return, Apple would be what HP/Compaq are today - shitty printer ink companies.

Comments like those just demonstrate the typical ignorance of a Mac fanatic.

HP had $104 billion in revenues in 2007, Apple had $24 billion.

HP had 309000 employees in 2007, Apple had 17000.

Re:Come on, guys.

[quickbrownfox]

Exactly. The man is a latter-day Willy Wonka. He has an artistic temperament, mad clout, and a lot of money and engineers to steer as he sees fit.

Re:Come on, guys.

[vegiVamp]

Which lets Apple make $1.411.764 per employee, while HP made only $336.569.

Re:Come on, guys.

[not already in use]

Jobs already is turning Apple into another Microsoft. Releasing buggy OS's, vulnerabilities, vendor lockdown, bait and switches, etc. Apple fanatics will vehemently deny all these things, because they perceive Apple as being perfect. Once Steve Jobs is gone, their perception will change, even though business practices and company direction likely will not.

I will give Steve Jobs credit though. He is a marketing genius. He understands presentation. This is what got Apple back on track, and unless somebody comes and completely derails Apple, they will do just fine.

Re:Come on, guys.

[Cecil]

The Wii has sold more units than the XBox 360. The Wii is sold at a higher profit margin than the XBox 360. The Wii was released a year later than the XBox 360. The Wii continues to outsell the XBox 360.

The Wii is the clear winner of this race. The XBox 360 may be quite successful from a consumer point of view, but from a financial point of view, it is not a smashing success. It doesn't hold a candle to the Wii. It has in fact been blown right off the playing field.

Also, a single example, even if it were valid, hardly disputes the grandparent post's point.

Re:Come on, guys.

[Anonymous Coward]

Without Jobs' return, Apple would be what HP/Compaq are today - shitty printer ink companies.

Comments like those just demonstrate the typical ignorance of a Mac fanatic.

HP had $104 billion in revenues in 2007, Apple had $24 billion.

HP had 309000 employees in 2007, Apple had 17000.

speedtux,

Looks like you forgot to calculate which company has a vastly superior sales per employee.

Re:Come on, guys.

[TheRaven64]

He sold Pixar to Disney for $7.4b (I don't know how much he got out of that, but he was majority shareholder before the sale and might have been sole owner), so I think he's now got enough money that he is never going to have to think about money again. He's running Apple because there are some things money can't buy, such as the ability to walk down a street, see a load of people wearing white ear buds, and think 'I caused that.'

Re:Come on, guys.

[ragefan]

Without Jobs' return, Apple would be what HP/Compaq are today - shitty printer ink companies.

Comments like those just demonstrate the typical ignorance of a Mac fanatic.

HP had $104 billion in revenues in 2007, Apple had $24 billion.

HP had 309000 employees in 2007, Apple had 17000.

Those figures don't mean anything. On their own it says to me that HP only made 4 times as much in revenue than Apple while having 18 times the manpower.

Re:Come on, guys.

[TheRaven64]

A bit part of Apple's success is how they develop new products. A company like Microsoft sets up committees to develop each new feature, with focus groups comprised of users, people from various industries, and so on to determine how it should appear. At Apple, people develop features they think are interesting. If Steve Jobs likes them, they go in. If Steve Jobs hates them, they don't. The end result is a load of products that Steve Jobs wants to use. Apple basically exists now as a company that makes toys for Steve and funds this by selling copies of them to other people. The fact that Steve Jobs has quite good taste means that there are a lot of people willing to buy them.

Re:Come on, guys.

[vegiVamp]

Are you really blaming Apple for being an efficient, well-run company ?

Re:Come on, guys.

[darkwhite]

HP is a company that leverages its buyouts and established product lines. They may have a huge R&D budget but they don't get any results out of it. They used to have a big high-tech instrumentation division but I understand they no longer do. They utterly lack vision, and for their huge size, I can't think of any market where they hold initiative except maybe for imaging. Even their server and storage offerings are mostly the result of acquisitions.

I suppose they're a good company if you care about market share and financials. But in terms of initiative, they have nothing on Apple, which has a track record of shaping the personal electronics industry.

Re:Come on, guys.

[nsayer]

The bottom line is that if the public refuses to accept an Apple without Jobs at the helm, then they will falter.

Everybody but the fanbois on /. could give two shits about whether Jobs is at the helm or not. It's all about the products. If Apple doesn't continue to make desirable products - with or without Jobs at the helm - THEN they'll falter.

Re:Come on, guys.

[furball]

I didn't realize the purpose of companies was to provide jobs. Here I am thinking the purpose of companies was to make profit.

How do their profits stack up?

Re:Come on, guys.

[Xest]

Woah, hold your horses there. You missed the important part. The most important thing in console sales is software, this is where money is really made, I'm not saying the 360 has made up for per performance compared to the Wii in other areas with software but it has sold around twice as many titles per unit as the Wii.

It's probably not on as much of a loss compared to the Wii as one might think when it's shifted something like 7 games per console compared to the Wii's average of roughly 3 games per console last time stats were released about software sales a couple of months ago.

The PS3 has even sold more units than the Wii albeit only by a small amount.

I'd wager a bet the profit margins between the Wii and 360 are a fair bit closer when you factor software in and focus on more than just hardware.

Re:Come on, guys.

[Bob Uhl]

By your own numbers, Apple makes $1,400,000 in revenue per employee while HP makes only $330,000. That's roughly 3 times the revenue per employee.

Which is the better company?

Re:Come on, guys.

[afabbro]

In fact, the purpose of corporations is the public interest, including jobs, nothing else.

Providing the opportunity for profit is merely a means to that end.

In fact, there is no universally accepted theory of the purpose of corporations. You present one. "Just make a profit" is another and is equally valid. You could just as easily say the purpose of corporations is to limit personal liability, since that is, in fact, why they were invented.

The reality is that corporations exist to enrich their stockholders. Period. Anything else is blue-sky "shoulds" that have no grounding in either universal thought, practical experience, law, or common tradition. The idea of a "good corporate citizen" is purely marketing.

(And yes, I like it that way.)

Perception -

[Recovering Hater]

Perception is everything. I think most people remember how Jobs came back and restored Apple to what they once were and how without him Apple seemed to fade a bit. So naturally, it *superficially* appears that Apple needs him more than he needs Apple and if he leaves, becomes terminally ill or dies so does the innovation at Apple. That may or may not be the case but it seems so on the surface.

Re:Perception -

[jandrese]

Lets face it, under Scully Apple was within a hairsbreath of becoming another Windows beige box shop. Computer industry CEOs all seem to want to be Dell, except for Jobs who knows that there is a better way. For another example, look at what happened to SGI when they got a "seasoned" CEO. Sadly, in that case the CEO left the dagger in their back when he left and they've never recovered.

Re:Perception -

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets face it, under Scully Apple was within a hairsbreath of becoming another Windows beige box shop.

True. A power struggle in the board room removed the visionary from Apple. Scully was an awesome marketeer, but at the end of the day he was clearly expert only in the design of sugared water, and was not up to the task of running within a quickly-changing industry.

Clearly the board now knows that having a visionary is important these day. Certainly some computer companies did want to be Dell. But most are now looking to do things differently than Dell, and more like Apple - as Dell, at the end of the day, is an applier of labels and a shipper of generic computer equipment.

Road Map

[imstanny]

Before the iPod, there has been no distinct road map for Apple, at least no easily identifiable one. Now they have iPod/iPhone/Macbook/iTunes tied together in a very unique way. I'm sure with or without Jobs, they'll continue to build on the success of these platforms, though I expect more evolution than revolution... maybe come up with an iLCD TV, which would be derived from the iMac + iTV.

Innovation vs Confidence

[whisper_jeff]

I would contend that Jobs isn't the source of innovation at Apple (yes, he is _a_ source, but not _the_ source, imho) so, yes, Apple can still be innovative without him. Jobs is, however, the source of confidence. He ensures that investors are confident in the choices Apple makes which allows them to proceed the way an innovative company needs to - the engineers are given the room to innovate the way they need and want to. The company is allowed to develop products at the right pace and in the right way and investors remain confident that they are doing "the right thing." Would that same confidence exist in his absence? Would investors be as willing to allow Apple to proceed the way it currently does? That's a more accurate question. In my opinion, at least.

Re:Innovation vs Confidence

[moosesocks]

This is an interesting point, and seems to indicate one of Microsoft's serious shortcomings.

Tons and tons of cool stuff has come out of Microsoft's research division, who seem to be given a blank check to research whatever they feel is the next path forward in computing.

Unfortunately, Microsoft lacks the direction or confidence to tie these things together into a cool package, and their OS doesn't encourage this sort of thing.

Apple, on the other hand, has had about a 75% track record for seamlessly integrating their new products and technologies into their customers daily lives. That's seriously impressive, and they've designed MacOS to be easily extensible, thanks to its UNIX underpinnings and fantastic set of core libraries.

As one example, Time Machine is a seriously cool technology that even novice users can easily connect with. It's useful, intuitive, and the mechanism by which it works on the backend is embarrassingly simple.

Re:But more importantly

[Vexor]

Rumor != News. Steve Jobs is pretty much the heart & sole of Apple. That period of time where he wasn't with Apple (doing the Pixar thing because they fired him), Apple wasn't doing so hot. Apple might still make a decent product without him, but he sells it.

Innovate...

[RandoX]

I'm not trying to bash Apple here, but I'm not sure innovate is necessarily the right word to use. Product design seems more appropriate. So much of Apple's product line seems to be UI and attractive exterior, as opposed to Really New Ideas (tm).

Don't get me wrong. That's two things more than anyone else seems to be doing these days.

Re:Innovate...

[Dekortage]

Maybe it's be semantics. Innovation in UI and appearance, is still innovation. It doesn't matter if the hardware is the same: they have innovative ways of making the same hardware more usable. Especially if it means they succeed in a field where everyone else failed.

Re:Innovate...

[UnknowingFool]

The thing with Apple products is that they aren't really designed for the average geek here on slashdot. Thus to you and me, it's not "innovative". Average geeks care about hard numbers like CPU cycles and frames per second. Apple designs for general consumers not for us in particular thus Apple focuses on how things work and look and whether these every day consumers can use them.

Take for instance Time Machine. Pfft. It's just a backup and restore. We've had that for ages. Really all it is just:

#> tar -czvf back.tar.gz *.*

Yeah that and some fancy algorithms. I mean even Windows has Restore Points and Shadow Volume Copy. Sure you can look at a single file and directory and figure the difference and it's available on every new version of Leopard. But those are just details right?

While the idea has been around, no one has taken the idea and refined it like Apple to be as consumer friendly as it is. Remember, Apple is the largest seller of Unix machines in the world. To get everyday consumers to use Unix machines took lots of innovation on many levels.

Re:Innovate...

[mgblst]

I am a geek in every sense of the word, starting programming Z80 Assembly, then moved onto X86. Being a geek doesn't mean you don't admire what Apple does and how Apple hardware works. The interface of a device like the touch is something to marvel over.

Re:Innovate...

[Free the Cowards]

I think that a lot of people underestimate the utility of usability even for technical nerdy types.

I'm pretty nerdy. I can tell you the two things wrong with the tar command you showed and exactly why Time Machine is different. I can tell you how Time Machine works, the hacks that Apple has done on their filesystem to accommodate it and many other UNIXy things, and a great many deep system internals. I am perfectly at home with the UNIX command line.

And yet, I think Time Machine is the best thing ever.

Why? Because it makes backups easy. Before TM, my backups were sporadic. Once a week, if I could remember. When Leopard was released, I went out and bought a new 500GB hard drive, pointed TM to it, and suddenly I'm getting backups constantly throughout the day with no human intervention. Sure, I could have set up a cron job, but it would have been annoying and error prone and it wouldn't have done the cool incremental backups that TM does.

I could duplicate a lot of what Apple has done for me. But that would mean that I would spend all day tinkering with my computer instead of actually getting things done with it. Since Apple has done it for me, and made it really easy to use, I can use their work and use my time to do more useful things.

The great thing about OS X is that it's powerful enough to satisfy a UNIX geek, but it offers enough usability that a UNIX geek who just wants to get some work done can do so.

It's not about Jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

The stock tanking may correlate with rumors of Steve's impending death, but really, any company whose products depend solely on the phenomena of social trends is more or less doomed. There's nothing really innovative about Apple's products. For the three top products from apple that pop into my mind (The iPod, the iPhone, and the iMac), I can immediately think of three far superior products that cost less (the View, the Blackberry, and my PC).

Philosphy

[jav1231]

I would think he is grooming someone that has a similar vision. That's what Steve brings. It's a unique view on the way the product should be. That's what was missing when he left.

Re:But more importantly

[a_n_d_e_r_s]

Actually he was doing the Next thing - Pixar was more or less just an investment.

Next wasn't a huge success. So one might as well ask if Jobs can do well without apple.

Either way this 'article' is just gossip.

Re:What it means is...

[mraiser]

Now is a good time to buy Apple stock. ;)

Maybe. That's a long term play tho, at this point. There may be some arbitrage dollars to be made if Steve bounces back into his regular role. But does anyone remember what happened when he left the company the first time? Without Steve's cult of personality, Apple will falter. Badly.

He's just this guy, you know.

[petes_PoV]

Let's face it, At some point SJ will no longer be running Apple. When that happens, just like when any visionary leader leaves a company, the stock will take a hit. However, providing he's not the only, single source of talent within the company, things will recover - maybe even be better without insiders having to deal with the cult of personality, as well as technical issues.

For those who think Steve is Apple, that is a pretty insulting thing to think about the dozens of other good people in the company.

Drive, Vision, and Engineers

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple's successful products, that not only turned around the company from the brink, but have put it in the spotlight today, have not been entirely orchestrated by Jobs as the media would have you believe. The iMac, the iPod, and so on, were all dreamt and refined up by talented engineers, and these engineers will still exist at Apple long after Jobs leaves.

Yes, Job's drive and vision have helped push the products above and beyond what someone might expect. But Jobs isn't the only person in the world with drive and vision. You can be sure that Apple will select someone when the time comes who has similar drive and vision, while those same engineers keep innovating the products that make Apple Apple.

Re:Stock movement != health indicator

[oahazmatt]

Except now there's a chance that this notion that Apple needs Steve Jobs in order to thrive will make it to some of the financial shows, and facts will be blown out of proportion and influence investors.

Example: "Now, as well all know, Jobs is the driving force behind Apple's success and rumours of prominent illness could explain several absences, including the most recent quarterly meeting. Can Apple survive without Steve Jobs? I don't think so."

Granted, that's pure FUD, and opinion and speculation, but if that were to be said on Mad Money or whatever finance shows people like to take advice from, it could drastically impact the casual investor's confidence in the company.

Don't forget about Microsoft!

[geekmux]

It's not ALL about Jobs. Vista is managing to push even more users towards Apple. Gotta give credit where credit is due, no matter how Balmer may take it (ducks for cover)

Why oh why? Here's why.

[Anonymous Coward]

While Bill Gates has successfully transitioned himself away from his day job at Microsoft, can Apple do without Jobs at all?

That's a poor comparison. Bill Gates left Microsoft. Microsoft, if nothing else, is substantially diminished. That may be "successful" from the Bill Gates point of view, but not from the shareholder's point of view.

Jobs can leave Apple at any time. He can leave on his own will; the board can ask him to step down; or he can leave due to reasons outside of either of their controls. Undoubtably the board has a strong succession plan in place, which I am confident they are keeping close to their chest.

After all, if Apple has a great successor in mind, that person either has to wait for Jobs to leave (unlikely any time soon), or he/she may be recruited by another firm to step into a CEO spotlight tomorrow. You can't hand the reigns over to a replacement if the existing person is both doing a great job and isn't going to be leaving any time soon.

This is just standard stuff - that's why wall street doesn't really mind Job's appearing to be the leader of Apple... because he IS the leader of Apple.

Re:Stock movement != health indicator

[Sir_Real]

And the casual investor will get scalped. Don't be a casual investor. Be a trader, or find a less risky long position. News moves markets but only so far, and most casual traders play news totally bass ackwards anyway.

Also, you said it... "facts will be blown out of proportion and influence investors"

That's called an "opportunity" where I come from. The market is very information efficient. If it's blown out of proportion, it will be blown back into proportion.

Re:But more importantly

[mini me]

Next wasn't a huge success

I would argue that NeXT has been a huge success since they re-branded themselves as Apple.

quote..

[Anonymous Coward]

"The graveyards are full of indispensable men".
C. de Gaulle

so?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are other creative brains in the world.

If apple does not survive the loss of Jobs, it will be because Jobs has failed to take appropriate (and, to a large extent, obvious) preparatory measures.

Companies that survive in the long term are those that make their core competencies redundant. They hire and train duplicates of everyone that is important, so they can survive unexpected losses. If jobs has not been doing this, then the death of apple after his departure will have been his own personal failure.

No software

[Tony]

NeXT went belly-up because it was too innovative at the time. It was workstation-level hardware with high-capacity R/W optical drives, the stability and flexibility of Unix, and the ease-of-use of the Macintosh. They were excellent machines.

But, they were too expensive, so they didn't sell many units. The lack of hardware sales resulted in very few software products. The only great software for it was Lotus Improv (an extremely innovative spreadsheet program), Mathematica, FrameMaker, and Word Perfect. There was some other stuff, too, but those are the big ones I remember. (Other things, like WebObjects, never really took off, as they were also too expensive.)

But, NeXT still had a huge effect on the computer industry. The current Mac OS X is based largely on NeXTStep. Many of the concepts of the Windows 95/2000 interface came from the NeXT design. So, though NeXT the company wasn't very successful, NeXT the technology was a huge source of innovation that is still used today.

Simple Solution...

[file_reaper]

Bring in another dude with a massive Reality Distortion Field...

Re:Innovation

[mini me]

Jobs basically takes great ideas that have already been done and stylizes them to death.

Exactly. Great ideas are really not great until they are packaged in a fun and usable manner. Apple seems to be one of the only companies out there that understands that.

Re:But more importantly

[moosesocks]

One could also argue that Be had a better operating system.

Like NeXt, they got bailed out by a corporate overlord. Unfortunately for Be, that corporate overlord happened to be Palm.

Re:This is the problem with cult leaders....

[16K Ram Pack]

I don't think Microsoft has quite the same level of cult leadership as Apple does with Jobs.

Sure, when a new operating system is launched, Gates would have been there, but you don't have all that secrecy and "one more thing..." nonsense that paints Jobs as more like the Willy Wonka of the computer industry opening up his factory twice a year.

Re:Yes, but with a twist

[cowscows]

Agreed. For a company like Apple, a CEO needs to provide a few specific things, all of which can be summed up as a "vision". But when you break it down, there's a few main aspects of it. There's the quality control issue that you mentioned, having someone who has the authority to overrule the accountants and marketing and not rush a product.

  Also important is having a public figurehead for the company. It's extra important when you've got a company that's as secretive as Apple. If a new CEO was a more open about what was going on, then it'd be less of an issue, but if you're going to continue to severely limit the flow of information out, you've got to make sure that the person who does do the occasional talking does it well.

And the final thing, which I think was the single most important thing that Jobs brought to Apple when he returned as CEO, is focus. When you've got a building full of a bunch of great designers and engineers, there's going to be a zillion ideas and independent thought processes going on all the time. And while that helps great ideas get born, it doesn't help them mature into something useable. Someone's got to be the filter, choosing not only the ideas that are most likely to work, but also that fit into some overall direction for the company. That means someone who's got the will and ability to make smart people ignore their own pet ideas and pour their energy into someone else's idea. In the mid-90's Apple was selling gazillions of products, from a large range of desktop models to printers, digital cameras, etc. When Jobs got back, one of the first big things that happened was that a lot of those projects went away, the product lineup was massively simplified, and those fewer products were more carefully designed. And since them, the product lineup has slowly grown, but in a very controlled and methodical manner.

straigth from the gut...

[Anonymous Coward]

... i `ll have to say that that guy would probably not have read enough of jack welsh`s management books and should be fired immediately.

you always play to win.

there is a different motivation in the hare and the fox during the chase: the fox will always run for his meal - the hare for his life.

motivation will win the day.

Re:But more importantly

[Stormwatch]

NeXT bought Apple for minus $400 million.

Revenue? Why not Profit?

[SuperKendall]

Speaking of ignorance, why post only revenue and not profit?

Apple reported in April 2008 a quarterly profit of $1.05 billion.

HP reported $2.1 billion of profit in May 2008.

Apple obviously has larger margins, and from your own post appears to have employees with an order of magnitude more productivity!

Transition plan needed

[Jim Hall]

One thing we in IT are typically very bad at is transition planning. I was discussing this with friends over the weekend - what Microsoft had going for it was a good transition plan after Bill Gates. While Ballmer isn't the best CEO for the company, at least the transition was long enough with Steve at the helm that Bill's departure this summer became a non-event for the company. Lots of interviews and "remember when" videos to be sure, but no one on Wall Street or in the press was left wondering who would lead Microsoft in a post-Gates world.

On the other hand, Apple has worked themselves into a corner. Effectively, Steve Jobs is Apple. Take away Jobs, and Apple suffers. I wasn't aware of Steve's health problems this week, but when I was discussing Apple this weekend I postulated that if Jobs were suddenly to become sick, or for some other reason suddenly be absent from the company for an extended time, Apple's stock price would drop dramatically. And now, catching up on the news I see that's exactly what happened.

Apple needs to create a transition plan, and make it clear to the community - investors and users alike. It doesn't matter if Steve plans to remove himself from Apple in a year or 10 years, there needs to be a clear #2 with the chops to effectively manage Apple in Steve's absence. Steve needs to project that person into the public consciousness by having the person back him up in presentations and public appearances, even to the point of introducing new products at MacWorld and CES, etc instead of Steve.

Apple is an innovative company, and Jobs is seen to lead that innovation, so this #2 person needs to be "leaderful" and innovative as well. That's a tough pair of requirements to meet, but if Apple is to survive Steve's eventual departure, he/she must be seen as Steve's spiritual equal among Mac geeks.

Re:Stock movement != health indicator

[Anonymous Coward]

The market is very information efficient.

That's more of an article of faith than solid fact.

Re:Someone like Steve is essential

[micromuncher]

Why do some Apple enthusiasts always discount Anyone But Steve's value to the company? (And Steve was not the CEO at the start.)

From Wikipedia;
Apple CEOs
1977-1981: Michael "Scotty" Scott
1981-1983: A. C. "Mike" Markkula
1983-1993: John Sculley
1993-1996: Michael Spindler
1996-1997: Gil Amelio
1997-Present: Steve Jobs (Interim CEO 1997-2000)

You can discount Sculley ( QuickTime started under his reign ), and Spindler ( OpenDoc, Pippin, Copland, and bridge technologies that were great ideas poorly delivered ) but these guys did have vision (not saying one person is responsible for anything; that in itself is flawed.)

Re:I like blow jobs

[hairyfeet]

I take it 4chan is still down. To the hackers that is DDoSing 4chan. Yes you,in the basement eating cheetos. Please stop with the DDoS so the channers can go back to lurking under the bridge at 4chan. They are quite irritating and they smell funny. Thank you for your cooperation. And if you want to DDoS somebody,please go hit Microsoft. We haven't had a good video of Ballmer doing his insane monkey ranting in a while and it would be very funny to watch him asplode. Thank you and have a nice day.