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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?"
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.
My humor is probably your flamebait
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.
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.
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.
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.
Just saying it like it are.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I would argue that NeXT has been a huge success since they re-branded themselves as Apple.
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?
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
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.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
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.
E pluribus unum
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.
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.
'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...
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!"
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.
Which lets Apple make $1.411.764 per employee, while HP made only $336.569.
What a depressingly stupid machine.
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.
Random and weird software I've written.
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.'
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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.
NeXT bought Apple for minus $400 million.
Circumcision is child abuse.
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.
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