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How Apple Could Survive Without Steve Jobs
ThousandStars writes "The Wall Street Journal asks How Apple Could Survive Without Steve Jobs: 'Speculation about the continued reign of Mr. Jobs — which has popped up from time to time since his 2004 treatment for cancer — underscore how closely Apple's fashion-setting products are identified with its co-founder.'"
Meh... Same thing could be said about Oracle or Microsoft. Answer is; it depends.
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"The Wall Street Journal asks How Apple Could Survive Without Steve Jobs
That's not a question. It's a statement - or a hypothesis at best.
Help a man when he is in trouble and he will remember you when he is in trouble again.
Apple was doing quite poorly until Steve Jobs stepped in after the purchase of NeXT. Apple's executive management was literally running them into the ground. Their products seriously lacked vision and were withering on the vine.
Jobs breathed new life into Apple.
My blog
How Apple Could Survive Without Steve Jobs
No, I'm sorry, it's just not possible.
You see, cancer was also a chance to have an operation where they inserted a tiny chip into his body to track his heart beat. In turn, it relays a message of his heart beat to his iPhone which is always on him. That relays it to a satellite receiver which sends the message back down to earth to the triggers on 4 pounds of C4 placed carefully around the support base of each Apple building telling it not to blow up. If it doesn't receive that message, no more Apple.
A bit eccentric, I know--but most geniuses are.
My work here is dung.
I remember reading in Freiberger's Fire in the Valley , his chronicle of the birth of the PC in the 1970s, that Woz and Jobs formed an almost ideal partnership, with Woz creating sublime technical solutions and Jobs knowing how to work people to make them sell. With Jobs, Apple might not have gone anywhere, but rather would have disappeared like so many hobbyist PC projects of the era.
While initially it may go down with any news of him leaving Apple, I think the talent pool they have is great.
Whoever should succeed Jobs should be very aware of this talent pool and be sure to keep things running as smoothly as possible to ensure a bright future. In essence I wouldn't be too worried about Apple being Jobs-less.
i.e. Not well at all. They company floundered from 1967 to around 1987 until a new CEO with vision arrived on the scene.
I suspect Apple would do the same, gradually returning to a state akin to how it was in the early 90s. Ultimately it might end-up in the same state as Commodore (which also lost its visionary CEO and slowly but surely died-out).
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
Someone is fighting his cancer and the media is already choosing a coffin?
She kenna take much more of this!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
It's simple. All they have to do is port Ninnle Linux for Mac. It'll work better than they ever thought OS/X could.
To be honest, they don't even have to do the port. Ninnle Linux will already run nicely on a Mac.
Which crashed and burned after its leader, Ed Land, died. Part of this of course was the film/digital transition, but even so, the collapse of polaroid was spectecular.
One thing apple employees might take particulare note of: polaroid employees had a lot of their pension in polaroid stock, and the CEOs afte Land screwed them royally beyond belief.
Apple survived from 1985 to 1996, didn't they?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Ah yes, nothing like journalistic scummery. Begin with offensively ludicrous theory, slowly injecting more and more practicality (if tabloid, do not bother) into the scenario being portrayed until such a time that the reader has read the article, clicked on the ads on the page, finally realising that what he/she read was a whole lot of nothing.
Rinse and repeat
I record my sleeptalking
Everytime I see a new Apple discussion - like before (and after) the iPhone introduction or now on various products - I see a big set of geeks just not GET IT. By it, I mean the popularity of Apple products, by doing a checklist feature comparison like the back of a software box - as if all checkmarks indicated the same quality. Not all checkmarks are created equal;)
Anyway, I would suggest that Apple look at how Fashion powerhouses handle succession, and not the typical technology company. Perhaps it would give them a better idea how to handle transistion in a creative enterprise and not just a purely technical one.
Already people are discussing Apple's time-line, and how poorly they did without Jobs. The real point is the product that turned Apple around was not a computer, but a music player. The reason the iPod did not exist sooner was because the technology did not exist. Hard drives could not be made that small, color LCD panels were too expensive for consumer use, battery life was too short, etc. So did Steve Jobs merely come back to Apple when the iPod was simply an inevitability? Was he responsible for that inevitability ending up under Apple's control instead of Sony or Pioneer, etc?
Better known as 318230.
He's an excellent businessman, but let's look at what brought Apple back, in order:
1) The iMac, which was just a heavily consumer-oriented Mac desktop. This wasn't really a big innovation for Apple, but was the sort of smart business move they needed.
2) The iPod--which wasn't Jobs' idea.
3) MacOS X
4) The fairly high quality of the MacBook and MacBook Pro Line
5) The transition to Intel
6) The iPhone
I love my Apple TV, but it's not a very successful product, over all. Time capsule is probably about the same. The Cube was a failure, and quite frankly the MacBook Air ONLY has its form factor going for it (otherwise it is so hellaciously overpriced that it's like a time warp back to the mid 1990s for Apple).
I don't really see a whole lot in that list that is unique to Jobs. What Apple needs is competent management that are aggressive and willing to take risks. That is what has made Jobs a success, more than anything else. People tend to forget that some of his ideas have't gone anywhere, but many of them have because they were calculated risks that only a non-risk averse CEO would make.
If Apple continues to aim at the people who think that they are part of the technological elite, and not worry too much about people who actually are part of the technological elite, they will probably continue to do well. The first group tends to have a lot of disposable income, and is so much larger than the second group, that sales should not be a problem for Apple. The real question is can they continue to come up with innovative products that the first group will want. There is no way to know if that will happen.
Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
I dont really care as long they just OpenSource Mac OS X if things go bad...
I don't know how fair TFA is but...
Apple would do a lot better in my department (one of the biggest departments at one of the biggest universities in the world) if they would get serious about enterprise support.
My gripes:
1) If my Xserv fails, I need to call Apple, they will possibly send parts or repairmen but they really want me to fix it myself using my spare kit. I just don't feel that is optimal compared to IBM server support.
2) Their volume discount is a total rip-off. Again, I am at a major university and our discount is basically the same as the Apple Education Store discount. It is really hard for me to justify my purchases and commitment to Apple.
3) On a related topic, I know months in advance what machines are coming out and can thus plan accordingly. Apple, with its flair for the dramatic, wants to keep all this hidden and secret. Again it really hurts my efforts when compared to IBM, Dell, and HP.
4) The Apple support network is a total joke compared to Microsoft or even Novell. Basically I have the same support that non-enterprise Linux has. My best sources are AFP548, MacEnterprise, and sometimes the Apple Support forums.
5) For those of us that have to integrate with a Microsoft world, AD-OD integration still has a long way to go. Apple seems to break their AD support with every other service pack. I can't believe this couldn't be done better. I know Microsoft has issues with their service packs, but honestly, does it have to be this bad?
Basically I feel that Apple is such a consumer company rather than enterprise. This hurts Apple penetration, bottom-line sales, and future buy-in from potential customers who want to use the same platform at home that they use at work.
Steve Jobs just can't get out of his own ego's way to let the correct thing happen. Matt Feeman, our sales rep, is a total waste yet has carried his job for many many years now. There really is no fun left in Apple and only diehard fanboys (myself?) can continue to run what is, IMHO, the Unix-like distributions.
That's the real question!
Godwin's Law
. . . to which I reply, "Sig heil, mein Furher!"
The most efficient form of governance is a dictatorship. This is not to say that it is a universally ideal form of government -- for every example we have of an autocrat who was able to get what he wanted and happened to be correct, we can find many other examples of autocrats who got what they wanted and were dead wrong.
It is easier for a man of singular vision, foresight, and ambition to stand out as a dictator than as one of a committee but men of singular ignorance and venality tend to do less harm in committee form because they're like crabs in a bucket and it's hard for one to rise to preeminence and control.
By all accounts, Jobs is a bastard to work for. What makes it all the more galling is that is judgment calls are usually right so when your design needs more work, he'll tell you you're a fucking piece of shit, get the hell out of his sight, don't you fucking come back until you have something that doesn't make him want to vomit you cocksucker, you'll want to punch him in the throat. Yes, he could have been nicer about it, but by the time you finally come back with a design he likes, it'll also be the one the customers will go nuts for.
It's very rare to find that kind of person. When Jobs was booted out the first time, they brought in an airline executive as CEO. He didn't know anything about the industry and said all of Jobs' ideas weren't sticking to the knitting, were going out into left field and would waste money. Pragmatic business people agreed. Hell, I thought going into the music business when they were already struggling making computers was a bad idea. Looks like I was wrong.
What's driving Apple right now is a productive cult of personality. There's simply not a viable line of succession. Alexander the Great dies, the empire falls apart. Stalin dies, the empire lurches on but nobody in the party leadership will ever again risk letting someone gain that much power again. It's possible for a leader to rise up within the ranks of an existing organization and take it over with such force that you would think he was the founder. Jack Welch did that with GE. Because the market value went from $14 billion to $410 billion under his watch, he's lauded as a genius. Personally, I think he was more like an asshole who got lucky, got some breaks, and knew how to shaft the right people at the right time. He'd been picked as the golden boy to succeed to the leadership role by the previous CEO who later came to regret that decision because Jack poisoned the corporate culture much like a Carly Fiorina. Wall Street didn't seem to care because he made the trains run on time and that's all that mattered.
What's interesting is Microsoft seems to be struggling from both the lack of vision and the bureaucratic bloat that paralyzes large organizations and prevents meaningful action. This kind of strategic paralysis is usually the opening needed for a competitor to swoop in and steal the market. Apple would normally be in that position except for the huge questions concerning Jobs' prospects for this world. If both companies become wadded up with stupidity, will it finally become Linux's year for the desktop by default?
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I am afraid another sugared water John Sculley will come and blew it, but this time there will not be any jobs to rescue the company.
Steve Wozniak maybe. No to easy I think, he is quite a different character.
A combination of salesman and visionary like job is hard to come by.
Doubtful times in Apple are coming.
I don't pretend to understand Brannigan's law, I merely enforce it.
Jobs does not do anything magical. It might have been his idea to make a better phone, but he did not design the iPhone.
Rather, he had the vision of how a phone would fit into the ``iLife,'' he held designs to high standards, and he made sure that everyone focused on integration with existing products and the consistency of the experience.
Standards and focus are what most people view as his ``dictator'' personality.
This is pretty much what, I feel anyway, Microsoft has always lacked.
They have no vision. Remember Ballmer scoffing the very notion that the iPhone would have any success at all, let alone surpass WinMo as it just did.
I cannot say that they have low standards per se. Rather, their standard is to let the user design their software (the focus groups that designed Vista; something about which Gates was proud).
They lack any sort of focus. Vista is a prime example of this. It is obvious when using Vista that no one had a plan. No one provided any focus. Compound this with the myriad of products Microsoft makes which barely even work each other...even in the same product family (incompatibilities between Mac Office and Win Office).
So, yeah, those are the three qualities I want to see in a successor to Jobs. There should be plenty of people at Apple with those qualities. Actually, there are plenty of those people anywhere...people like Ballmer just do not recognize them or think they are important. I trust Jobs to find an appropriate person to replace him.
Also, let's not forget to embrace change. Even someone like Jobs needs to be replaced eventually. They just have to be replaced carefully.
IANYL, IANAL, TINLA, IANAMD, IANAP,
I suspect the ending of these big "look at the next big thing" conferences Apple runs on a regular basis are part of transitioning Jobs out of the public eye. They need to disconnect Steve Jobs from the "ergonomic/chic/cool/it just works", brand. His presentations enforce the assumption that Jobs and his product line are inextricably linked.
Is exactly the same as yours.
I'm the IT director for a small private school, and my "enterprise issues" are identical to yours.
My favorite question by Apple support, when calling about our xserves, is : "Is your xserve in a basic or advanced configuration?"
What does it matter? You sold me the product, support it no matter what the configuration.
Apple really needs to get their head around the enterprise. Why bother selling Xserves, and Xsans if you aren't going to support them properly?
-ted
How could any company survive without an egotistic megalomaniac perfectionist anal retentive button hater at the helm? Well Jobs doesn't design the computers Jonathan Ive does, so designs are covered. He doesn't manage the hardware engineering, Bob Mansfield has that responsibility. Operating system is Bertrand Serlet and applications is Sina Tamaddon, with Scott Forstall managing iPhone software, so we're covered on those. Phil Schiller is the marketing brain behind Apple's recent successes, so that's okay. Retailing is covered by Ron Johnson and let's not forget that Tim Cook handles DTD operations. There's also a few 'heavy-set' bean counters around to rearrange the cash loaf they've acquired after Steve plays naked in the pile, so the money is okay, too.
So, why does Apple need ST_VE? Do they need him to run around all day screaming, "Your designs suck, Jon! Make them MORE minimal!", "Bob, your code is SHIT! Fix it!", "Ron! Sell more STUFF!", "The rest of you, if you can't make everything INSANELY GREAT, no more free Jolt Cola in the cafeteria!"? So Apple needs him, how, to survive? If they need a 'visionary', they can always find another crazy 'Steve', here. In the long run, the company is well manned to maintain it's position and 'grow the brand' even if Jobs is relegated to prowling the dark halls at 1IL in his bathrobe and Birkenstocks.
Sig this!
fine. If no one else will say it, I will. If Apple got rid of Steve Jobs maybe we could finally get some products that are designed with more than style in mind. I think most of the things Jobs has brought to apple in the last 5 years are marketing successes not technical marvels. Let's be fair if it didn't have a giant apple on the back/side/bottom no one would buy this crap. I say this cause I fell for the hype and bought a mbp. Now I wish I had bought a real laptop. So lets go down the list:
ipod: six generations and 3 variations of this piece of shit and you can't get ogg playback support???? wtf?
mac laptops: sleek form factor but overpriced and WTF why is apple so obsessed with their keyboard layout? It's not 1985 anymore give me a print screen, home, pg up/dn, insert and delete keys already. Stop being snobs and just give me a real keyboard already.
apple TV: apple what?
Mac OSX: ok it's decent. But it still needs a package manager and real window manager. Aqua sucks and it makes my mac a real pain in the ass.
Intel Chips: Oh what happened to the "technically superior" PPC chip? Welcome to the rest of the world you stuck up assholes.
iPhone: OMG I can't stand this piece of shit. Earth to apple - a smart phone without a real keyboard is just retarded. I can't believe that people shelled out 300,600,800 dollars for a phone whose screen is about half an inch tall while typing. This makes using it as an ssh client impossible. plus what's up with those keys being so close together? Steve please think of the men who might like to buy your products next time you say "oh we'll have a soft keyboard it'll be awesome!!!" Idiot. The screen is way too fragile and oh big surprise still no ogg support. and what the hell is the deal with app store? What makes apple think they know better than me what apps should be on my phone? I can't stomach this level of a God complex from a singe corporate entity.
Btw, apple, thanks for bringing us the graphic user interface, the adults can take it from here.
Disclaimer: my phone is a G1 and my computer is a macbook pro running gentoo linux.
You apparently have no idea what Godwin's Law is so I'm guessing you bought that low userid rather than earned it.
They'll be fine, he wrote down the secret recipe in pencil on a piece of paper which is locked in a heavily secured safe....
Hire Willy Wonka!!! If there is any character that is on par with Steve Jobs and his showmanship, it is Willy Wonka... preferably the Johnny Depp version, but even the Gene Wilder version would suffice.
isn't suicide by definition a voluntary act?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Jobs foresaw the potential for his reign to end years ago. The good news is that (in typical Jobs fashion) he has a technological answer for this perceived dilemma! His clone should be ready to take the reigns within the next few years... C'mon folks, MS will exist without Bill, and Apple will fade into obscurity again without Jobs. The problem of possible weak leadership, or leaders who won't listen to the innovators, will remain for both companies. MS just has a better shot of weathering the storm due to it's widespread use and popularity (don't slam me for that, I am not a MS fan... but I live in the real world where windows is still the rule).
That their relationship is more like "Sauron and Orcs" than "Head vampire and his minions"?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I worked for an organization which was carved out of the main organization by the sheer force of will and vision of a single manager who became it's head. She then made life impossible for every type-A person in her organization and put very skillful and considerate but not type-A people in as her subbordinates.
everything worked great till she left for the next job. Then for ten years nothing got done, no initiatives lasted longer than 6 months everthing was adrift. A succession of managers drawn from her subborindates got us no where. Finally someone from the outside was brought it and things got a bit better.
The thing about imperious leaders is that they really get the job done. It matters less that they make perfect decisions but that they make a series of connected decisions related to a driving vision. if some decisions are sub-optimal they still are part of the path forward because no one is second guessing the slow progress and everybody is working as a team.
Jobs had both visions, aggression and a sense of style. Apple sells style but does john Ives have the cojones to command?
I can only judge shiller and Ives by their brief appearances but they seem a bit too jolly to me.
It's also not enough to be a tough guy. You actually have to have skills too. That's what happened when Jobs got forced out by the mangerial power plays. Tougher guys without jobs skill and understanding took over and ran it into the ground.
You need the whole package. Jobs is that guy. The question is not if he's trained his subordinates, but if he scared off all the type-A guys with real skill?
What about that dude that wrote Beos? Maybe he'd be someone with some vision and force of personality? How about some of those Execs that started TransMeta?
Or maybe Fake-Steve.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
A visionary leader that understand technology and gets its user base is like hens teeth.
Without it decisions will once again be table by people with MBAs who base their decisions on the basis of finance and personal opinion. I am not saying there is no use in a firm for them (before I get flamed) but I think all genuinely innovative and successful firms need balanced representation in the boardroom.
I see time and again the wrong decision taken by those who have the power and responsibility but none of the technical insight and forward thinking. In some cases the people deciding on future product lines do not even use the current one.
I know this might be an inflammatory post (no insult is intended here), but it is really what I think.
They brought Steve back because the company was in a death spiral and desperate times called for desperate means. Steve is Apple and Apple is Steve.
How will Disney survive without Steve Jobs? Where will our children go for disneyfied stories and cheap-shit tie-in merchandise?
WON'T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?
Apple is creating lock-in on a scale undreamed of even by Microsoft, above and beyond file formats and user training: DRM and online services.
Even if iPods, iPhones and Macs start to suck (which they, one day, will, Steve Jobs or no Steve Jobs; depending on the criteria you choose, they may already do), you'll be stuck with them because of iTunes, iLife, appleTV.
Steve Jobs got that strategy well on track. The only issue is to keep the products appealing, and the lock-in efficient. And to keep the company nimble, which may be the biggest challenge (MS used to be a useful, progessive company... nowadays they seem to be unable to develop a tool to Sync PCs).
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
How well do they do after their own cannibal king thief goes to jail? The answer is pretty much the same as before.
Ok, sure, Eddie Van Halen (Jonathan Ive) is making all the music and providing the real artistic genius behind the band. But David Lee Roth (Steve Jobs) made everybody listen to it.
Don't discredit the value of man with a vision and a big mouth.
Steal my band's record! Seriously,
Jobs had a Whipple procedure -- a major operation that removes part of the pancreas and re-wires hit guts. The 5-year survival rate is around 25%, and Steve is right at the 5 years. I could not find 10-year survival stats, but even with a successful surgery and claims that he is "cancer-free", a Whipple means a shortened life span. Weight loss is a known complication. But who is he kidding? He's skipping the keynote because of his health. He's probably skinnier and more sickly-looking than before, and any other excuse is just that: an excuse. Warren Buffet knows he is not immortal, and while he has not named his specific successor, he has made numerous statements that it is taken care of, and Berkshire Hathaway is fully prepared for his eventual death. Jobs needs to do the same, and now. I hope he stays at Apple for a long time, but realistically he could be dead in a year.
1) Black turtleneck
2) "One more thing...."
3) ?
4) Profit!
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
On one hand, Steve Jobs is actually kind of irrelevant... he doesn't design new Apple products. He might suggest additions or changes, implement UI guidlines, etc but he is far from being the key to the iPod, iPhone, or numerous other Apple innovations.
On the other hand, Apple is a publicly traded company, and I can picture a massive stock drop if he did leave the companny.
I think it would really depend on if the media got histrionic about it.
I frankly do not care about Apple after Jobs.
Even if they would survive, I'm not going to buy it.
The Apple survives now as it is solely because Jobs is there to fend off shareholders drooling over turning Apple into low risk franchise akin Dell.
Or in other words: Jobs is the driver of the innovation. Without such creative and authoritative person in charge, company would turn into one of the bleak gray box producers out there.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
The old Apple bre'rs will remember the uber evangelist. You can always replace one icon with another...
/\/\icro/\/\uncher
Mac OSX is pretty much NeXT, which was Job's idea. That was the main reason they brought him back. They knew the old OS needed to be replaced so Apple bought NeXT and took their ideas that they couldn't quite pull off, but were good ideas.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Each of the Alexander the Great commanders was good or great military and political leader. But without Alexander they tear empire apart in several years. It usually take a strong and outstanding personality to successfully manage group of others outstanding personalities.
I don't think comparing Jobs's succession issues to Stalin or Al the Great is fair. I think it may be more of a Nelson or Jackie Fisher issue. Men of tremendous insight to cut right to the core of the problem and always managed to extract simple solutions that motivated people.
My expectation is that Apple becomes like BMW or Mercedes. Not for the masses but for people who want to pay more for quality.
'running smoothly'... What?
Jobs runs Apple smoothly the way a tank runs smoothly over the debris. If Apple replaces Jobs with a Camry, they will watch the company fail again.
The advice to look at how creative companies handle succession is spot on. Jobs is first and foremost the leader with the creative vision. The next leader needs a similar type of vision. And still needs Jobs' attitude - as in 'do it right, and right is what I say it is, ok?'.
And right, as in 'right design', for Apple, is about things that can be used, and appreciated, not necessarily to be edgy or too clever by half. If you want to see failed usability, the Toshiba S-series is a good example. If the battery dies, ya gotta go get the AC adapter; USB won't revive it. Not usable. Or any number of clever little players that really aren't so easy to use. Or Windows. Many examples. The next 'one more thing' from Apple needs to be excellent, that's all. Apple should hire a fashion leader.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Wait, Steve Jobs is Hitler? I know he's not the most popular guy on slashdot, but come on--he's no Hitler :-)
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
Apple has business successors. whether they have an upcoming visionary has not been released. you can bet that person would be targeted for hire by every company under the sun if his/her name WAS released.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Same for the iPhone: from a pure functional point of view it's not a very good phone, and it has a few issues that we would not accept from any other manufacturer
That's completely false. I would have gladly accepted the iPhone as is lock, stock and barrel from any other manufacturer - especially Palm. Think of all the people that accepted more limited functionality with worse for factors in smart phones for years, just to get the functionality they offered...
You are right that design (which encompasses usabIlity AND form factor) is a key thing for many people - and people are willing to tolerate other flaws if on the whole something basically works really well for what they mostly do. It's when a company can find that balance that they can find long-term success with a product.
People ascribe Apple's success to marketing but there are plenty of things that get marketing out the wazoo only to fade away. Marketing is not enough to drive a bad (or even mediocre) product to success, people have to basically connect with a product and find it truly useful before it can gain large scale adoption.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
And what is his talent pool? Is he a 0/55/16 metalock?
Hell, I thought going into the music business when they were already struggling making computers was a bad idea. Looks like I was wrong.
Except that was only your perception. For years before the iPod Apple was making money hand over fist, and had billions of cash stocked away in the bank. Success is not measured only by marketshare.
It was success in product design that led of course to being able to produce a music player that was so widely adopted, and then eventually a phone as well when so many people said there was no way a new player in the market could make headway against those with years of experience.
That's why you were wrong then.
What's driving Apple right now is a productive cult of personality. There's simply not a viable line of succession.
You even said why Apple went wrong before, they brought in an Airline Executive.
Well Jobs is not training an airline executive for transition. He's training people that understand technology, and the directions it can go. And more than one - Ives, Schiller and others.
While together these people may not be quite the driving force Jobs is they also are not the clueless kind of folk that drive companies into oblivion. Apple can continue to do well, and introduce interesting new products even without Jobs for a long, long time to come.
That is why you are wrong now.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
And yet Microsoft, with it's equivalent pool of talent
Whoa buddy, stop right there. WHAT equivalent pool of talent?
Balmer? Please. Microsoft has a history of taking the smart people and putting them below chains of management who make inept and disconnected choices, not making them leaders. Microsoft has some smart people working there, sure, but none are at the level of the pool of people mentioned for Apple.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Which crashed and burned after Ed Land, not its leader died.
Ed Lander had nothing to do with Kodak but it took the same fall.
It's all about digital and the inabilty to transition.
Your argument about Polaroid being a major driver in LCD's just because of a few polarization patents doesn't make much sense to me, Kodak has just as many interesting patents that COULD have been applied in other ways like that, but the simple fact is that changing the entire companies focus is almost impossible. Kodak and Polaroid were too deeply rooted in film to really do much else.
Kodak at least has made a small comeback in consumer digital, but it's pretty small still...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's why Fanboi is spelled with an i .
Hehe, its just the Apple way
Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion, you must set yourself on fire.
Even if iPods, iPhones and Macs start to suck (which they, one day, will, Steve Jobs or no Steve Jobs; depending on the criteria you choose, they may already do), you'll be stuck with them because of iTunes, iLife, appleTV.
Bullshit. The real lock-in to the iPod is from the peripheral market. No other music player has the breadth and quality of peripherals that the iPod does, thanks to Apple's decision to stick to a stable interface. Oh, it hasn't been completely stable, but changes in the iPod interfaces and form factors have been mostly a matter of adapters rather than throwing out all your cables and speaker sets.
If you care about the quality of the music you're playing, you're already ripping it yourself or buying the DRM-free iTunes Plus version. If you don't, then "Mix, Burn, Rip" should be part of your music purchasing process. I've gone from a non-iPod to an iPod and back without losing any music... and you can too, if you actually care.
The main effect of Apple's proprietary DRM is that it keeps DRM in people's minds. If they weren't doing it we'd all be using Plays For Sure by now and those of us who are bothered by that would be out in the cold.
Video? I don't think people have ever been able to buy DRM-free digital video. You don't have to buy The White Album again, but you've had to buy Star Wars about four times by now.
maybe Bill gates would like a second chance without all the MS baggage to try out his visions.
...he needs new glasses first.
Apple really blew it when they didn't have a gift card for the app store. That little puppy could have made Apple millions. Steve, how could you have missed that one?
"Can there be a Klein bottle that is an efficient and effective beer pitcher?"
In my mind, the reason Steve Jobs is important to Apple was not because of his ideas, or whatever involvement he may have had in the development of products. He is important because of his role as a figurehead, because he seems to intimately understand the products his company sells, and because he doesn't preach a corporate philosophy so much as epitomize it. He's a leader, I suspect, is easy for employees to rally behind.
Compare that with the heads of many other American companies. Many of those guys have business and marketing backgrounds. They seem to barely know what their companies do and all information about the company is filtered through management.
Take the CEO of Chrysler, Robert Nardelli. The guy has a degree in business. Before taking his current position he was CEO at Home Depot, somehow landing that job with no retail experience whatsoever. But here he is running a car company, with no experience in this sort of business either. So, how much interest can he possibly have in the well-being of the company?
His primary goal must be making money. Now, only someone who is naive would think that Steve Jobs doesn't want to do the same. But I think the issue is priority. I'd like to think that Steve Jobs approaches his company from the standpoint of wanting to produce a superior product first, and then profit from that effort second. Whereas many of these other guys focus on money first. This makes it too easy to trivialize what the company does, outsource everything, lay off employees, cut corners. They'll do anything to ensure the company looks good to stockholders, but what they are doing is eroding any competitiveness and potential for innovation the company might have had.
I think it's one of the reasons Japanese companies make such good products. Engineers run their companies. They may not have the persona of someone like Jobs, but they still have an intimate understanding of the business they're in and are driven by the desire to make a good product.
My prediction is if Apple manages to find someone with a similar mindset as Jobs they'll continue to do well. If they replace him with yet another business idiot then they're likely to loose a lot of the ground they've gained. It won't happen overnight, but it will happen.
If limewire could sync up an iPod, most of my friends would be happy to never use iTunes.
...and that he doesn't fall in love, because if his heart skips a beat, he's going to have some very unhappy shareholders. Oh, and I hope that he's got the 3G in his iPhone off, because if the battery dies...
Disclaimer: I'm not an Apple fanboy, I don't even like Apple, and the Cult Of Jobs makes me want to puke. But even I can see why the iPod ended up on top.
See, I actually wanted to buy an MP3 player waay back then, and honestly, the iPod was the only sane choice. I actually got a CD-based one instead, but if I had decided to go with a HD based one, it was iPod or nothing.
Let me tell you some of the other offerings were as big as a freaking brick, for a start. (I seem to remember an Archos like that, for example.) They looked like two 3" HDD's stacked on top of each other. It made my old high-school cassette player look positively sleek by comparison. And I'm not even talking about one of those newfangled small Walkmen, but about a big old thing.
Some had an interface that was plain old crap and unintuitive. E.g., it took Creative _years_ to fix their bloody interface into something actually usable.
A lot were actually more expensive than the iPod. Some could actually justify it by having included some extra features... that nobody wanted, or not at that price. Some were more expensive than a freaking laptop. For some, I'm not even sure WTF was their excuse. They seemed to be just bigger, uglier, clunkier and more expensive for it. That was a tendency that continued for _years_: trying to be the iPod killer by costing $1000 or close to that. Heh.
Etc.
The iPod may not have been the absolute best in any one given category. But on the whole it sucked the least. As debatable compromises went, Apple hit the sweet spot with their product. It was the compromise that looked the most palatable.
Basically, sure, you can blame it on fashion and (thus) ubiquity _now_, but think of it this way: it had to start from zero at some point. You can't use your market leader position until you actually win that position in the first place. And back then, IMHO Apple won it fair and square.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
If your company/corporation cannot survive the loss of one person then you are doing something, probably several things, woefully wrong.
Has anyone else noted that Mr. Jobs has been back about 12 years, from 1985 until 1997 and that sometime in 2009 he will have been back for as long as he was gone? Has anyone done a more precise calculation?
Well his daughter Lisa survived without him
I am sure Apple will too.
I just wonder if he'll start a new company and name their first product "Apple"
"No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame." Come on, how could you folks forget that? There were definitely MP3 players before the iPod. They just happen to do it well.
Seems to me that Apple gets by fine without the Woz, and since he was the Steve who could actually code a machine, Apple should be fine with or without Jobs.
I'm the IT director for a small private school, and my "enterprise issues" are identical to yours.
This surprises me. OSX Server is really a dream for a small school with a non-hard-core IT person running the shop. Sure, it corrupts itself every couple years, so you need good backups, but you don't need a highly-skilled admin ($80K+) on staff.
For a real enterprise shop, you've got those guys already, so running OSX in place of Linux or Solaris seems silly, given its availability challenges.
From what I've seen, OSX Server is only well-suited to small shops like schools and very small businesses but fills that niche nicely.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Ultimately everyone can be replaced, for the worse or the better. There was a time when Jobs recruited Sculley from Pepsi because of his Marketing skills. It nearly to bankruptcy, as Scully moved Jobs out of Apple and got Apple in a very awful financial shape.
Steve came back. The success started as Steve immediately decided industrial design was important for Apple. It is very hard to give design such an important role in a company. To be a serious creative and innovative company, it requires a different kind of leadership. The lack of innovative products proves this wisdom. You don't have to take my word for it. Ask Apple CEO Steve Jobs about it, and he'll tell you an instructive little story. Call it the Story of the Concept Car.
"Here's what you find at a lot of companies," he says, kicking back in a conference room at Apple's gleaming white Silicon Valley headquarters, which looks something like a cross between an Ivy League university and an iPod. "You know how you see a show car, and it's really cool, and then four years later you see the production car, and it sucks? And you go, What happened? They had it! They had it in the palm of their hands! They grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory! "What happened was, the designers came up with this really great idea. Then they take it to the engineers, and the engineers go, 'Nah, we can't do that. That's impossible.' And so it gets a lot worse. Then they take it to the manufacturing people, and they go, 'We can't build that!' And it gets a lot worse.
When the company becomes even more successful and scales up in size, it will be tempting to be to busy with the company and less with innovation. In a big bureaucracy it's hard to maintain a athmosphere where creatvity can flourish. Success can also lead mean the company loses it's identity and traditions. This can even happen now when Steve Jobs is still at Apple.. What Jobs Not Giving This Year's Macworld Keynote?
Running a much bigger company requires even more of a leader. Trying to scale up innovative power, many have tried but lost. However I think Apple set the mark. I surely hope Steve will be able to drive it much further, if not it will be extremely hard to find someone else that can. The challenge for leadership never has been bigger.
Its a bit like DVDS, my friend downloaded over 200 movies and gave them to me from his external HDD, they copied over and live on my computer now. If I want to change movies, I can close one and open the next file in seconds, no messing around ejecting discs, finding the case etc etc. I look at the 100+ DVDs I paid good money for and cringe.
How long until we get used to netbooks/MacBook Air's with no optical drives, just a good "always on" internet connection through cell towers/wifi, in contact with The Cloud? And of course Apple make the best looking gear around, you cant download a hack to make a Dell look like a unibody Macbook for example, so why not get behind Apple, and use your own OS on the best hardware around?
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My last Toshiba was P35-S609. Even with the unit plugged in, after a while the battery gets into a strange state and the machine powers off. Right in the middle of whatever it is doing. There doesn't seem to be a fix for this, so I have a several thousand dollar 3GHz Pentium 4 super-notebook with reliability of zero. It doesn't matter which operating system I run, it crashes half an hour later. The only good thing about it is that it didn't come with a "Vista Capable" sticker on it, aside from that, it was a total waste of money, and the last Toshiba product I will ever buy, which is sad because they built good stuff for a long time.
Oh yea the GUI is NeXT but I think the reliability and efficiency of the OS is FreeBSD based, and I have yet to decide whether cocao is great or a great heap of "stuff". Macs sell to two kinds of users... Ones that like the GUI and ones that can't wait to get the command line up, and happen to like the GUI also. The Mac is a great Platform for development, except the parts that have to do with the Mac.
I thought it would be fun to run an Apple server, seeing as I was running Apple desktops. Every time I launch into trying to use it seriously though, I get really frustrated. Although people may argue with me about this, I find it a lot like Windows Server. You turn everything on by default, and it seems to be working, for about a day then the error messages start piling up and you start to realize how little you know about what is going on under the hood and what has to be done to fix it. After a taste of Advanced configuration, you are ready for Basic, then you are wishing that machine was just running Leopard again because a linux server could so most of what you need. The podcast processing services on Server are neat, if you can figure out how to configure them properly. Aside from that, it is very unimpressive, IMHO.
Could Christianity survive without Jesus?
Replace him with someone who can create just as much hype for what would be an otherwise mundane party. Someone like David Tuttera.
Didn't anyone from the apple early days have kids... that lived? To continue the spirit of the company...
Didn't apple's PR allow any other corporate stars... to emerge?
Crap I still have my old apple //e, just turned 25 and time to dump it in a toxic waste site
Yes, that's exactly my point: the two Steves have completely different approaches to management, and there are as many different management styles as managers.
That's true, but Steve Jobs has a management style that lets individuals in the company succeed with good products, while Balmer (and those before him) have styles that for whatever reason basically trap the best R&D people in a prison of irrelevance. While Apple builds the next iPhone, Microsoft is busy preparing the next Surface.
No one persons style can easily overcome a company culture that has spent decades forming. That's why life under Balmer is essentially like life under Bill, and will remain so - and why life without Steve would carry forward for a long time on a similar path. Eventually change might come but you can't change a culture easily, especially not one baked in by someone with a strong personality who has picked people to lead that are intended to carry forth the vision they have.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Whenever people say about Apple as having no real original ideas and nothing more than perceived "coolness", or at most compliment it as just a good design firm, I have to wonder. So the same people admire and buy Dell purely because they are cheap? Certainly not because Dell is known for the tech inventions they contribute to hi-tech industry nor for the award winning designs. And for coolness - if people really wanted cool wouldn't half of all computer users use Linux? Isn't it being tech savvy and the geek really cool nowadays with dotCom billionaires and CSI?....
Yeah, I guess having worked in Windows/Solaris world for more than a decade, and played with Linux on the side for about as much, it finally dawned on me that "coolness" was what I needed... Funny with all the engineers and engineering force behind Windows and Blackberry that I'm equipped with in my day job, working in those environments are 90% frustration, as opposed to the consistency, efficiency, and reliability I've found with my own Mac and iPhone.
So according to people who have nothing better to do except write about technology, Jobs' only talent besides song and dance is that he dares to make the right decisions in critical moments? Sounds like a rare leader that you don't find in 99% of industry.
Sure, Apple didn't invent anything, and Jobs just picked up what others neglected and overlooked (GUI, firewire, touch screen, digital content, NeXT...) and made winners out of them, and set trends others are forced to follow - that's why people can't stand him. When the mouse finally gets replaced by touch pads, and GPU and ZFS become household terms, others will say hah they didn't invent any of it - but so what? It's the first time I will find them practical and usable. Refinement is just as much part of engineering as inventing the initial concept and prototyping.
Yes, in a small shop with a "basic" configuration, I can see how Mac OS X server would be the closest thing to a server "appliance" that you can get. Mac OS X server seems way easier to setup and maintain than Microsoft's Small Business Server.
Still, when you are a small/medium sized shop with an existing Microsoft Active Directory infrastructure, integrating Mac OS X server isn't easy - and Apple's support in these types of environments is lacking at best.
Leopard server had a bunch of issues when it was released, every issue I reported was greeted with "yup, it's broken - we'll fix it in the next service release". Unfortunately those releases are months apart. It took 6 months for Apple to give me Leopard servers that actually worked.
I have hope though - my contacts at Apple say they are evaluating the (support) needs of enterprise users.
-ted
No Mac for you!
NeXT!
12+1985+1997+2009/9 = 667
Neighbor of the beast.