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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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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!!!
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.
Maybe when Steve is gone, somebody else will take the steps necessary to introduce a little fresh air into that unhealthy (and unholy) position.
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
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
Said openness was part of the reason why the company was doing badly. Unless he picks a fool, I doubt a successor to Steve will open things up significantly.
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.
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.
It may go against the typical Slashdot mentality, but being closed hasn't hurt them at all since Steve's return. It seems as though the general public, and tech crowds in particular, have a hard time getting it when it comes to putting a finger on the thing(s) that make Apple successful. What you describe as unhealthy and unholy (talk about zealotry) have given Apple a reputation of excellence in user experience and now in consumer electronics. They're far from perfect, and yes they don't always offer checkbox-to-checkbox parity when it comes to features, but they're very good at figuring out the core functionality of a product or workflow and making it as easy and unobtrusive as possible - and users respond to that.
To say they're completely closed is not entirely true either - they do use, and contribute back to, open source projects. That they don't do it in exactly the way that a vocal percentage of posters here would want them to doesn't mean they're putting themselves in an unsuccessful position. If anything, Apple has demonstrated that they're willing and able to use whatever tools are most appropriate in delivering the kinds of products they want - and that a lot of other people want, too, judging by the sales numbers.
Obvious exits are NORTH, SOUTH, and DENNIS.
No, they were doing badly because the Mac suffered from stagnation. Open or closed doesn't matter so much when your product is obsolete from the start. There was very little reason to use a Mac in the 90's unless you were very specifically working in the print industry, or making music with Pro Tools. The Mac held very little appeal to the average home user.
Steve Jobs was the kick in the nuts management needed at the time, but after a decade of success, I'd think the tie-throttling imbeciles learned a thing or two about manufacturing popularity. They've been strategically acquiring 3rd party tech that fits their market, bringing all the profit in-house. They have strong relationships with the manufacturers and a retail model that sells itself with minimal effort.
Steve could retire tomorrow, and after the "ZOMG he's sick" Wall Street asshats find themselves a new zillionaire to stalk, the company will continue to do just fine. They will find a new spokesmodel, he/she will be completely forgettable, but they will be making money hand-over-fist, and that's really all that matters to them.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
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
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.
But it is really Steve Jobs which, paradoxically, is holding Apple in the position of being the MOST closed company out there.
But is this unhealthy to the commercial result of Apple corp and the satisfaction of most Apple customers? Being closed also means that Apple has vertical control of everything from their online services to operating system to hardware, and Apple has generally been very good at using that control to deliver products that work very well if you stay inside Apple's garden.
I suspect most of us on /. (me included) would be pleased if Apple opened up more, but how much would Apple gain by doing that and risk alienating those that are perfectly happy in Apple's garden?
If J.K.R wrote Windows: Puteulanus fenestra mortalis!
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!
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.
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.
I count at least two high profile OSS projects: webkit & darwin. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's two more than MS.
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,
ipod: six generations and 3 variations of this piece of shit and you can't get ogg playback support???? wtf?
OGG is not going anywhere, sorry. If you're lucky it'll be the standard web audio format, but even that's doubtful. I'm not knocking the format itself, this is just the way it is.
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.
Yes these would be nice but, really, no one cares.
apple TV: apple what?
Yeah you're right. But the problem with ATV isn't style over function, it's control over function.
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.
Sounds like you want Linux. Oh look, you ARE running Linux. So what's the problem? Aqua sucks? What, are you afraid of clicking blue, rounded buttons?
Intel Chips: Oh what happened to the "technically superior" PPC chip? Welcome to the rest of the world you stuck up assholes.
Guess this was a no win situation eh? I suppose they should have said "well these chips suck, but wait a couple years and we'll start using Intel ones."
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.
Oh yeah, the masses are clamoring for SSH support. As for apps, look at how it works: you could run any app on WinMo, but apps weren't so popular. You get Apple-approved apps in an easy to use store and sales are through the roof. Which do people want?
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.
Good, fine. Obviously you shouldn't have gotten a Mac in the first place and you've saved yourself the agony of having an iPhone. You're falling into the common trap of not realizing that your geeky needs are far different than the average person. Stylish, easy to use devices will continue to be popular and sell well because they're....stylish and easy to use. Even if they are less feature filled.
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.
Pretty much.
Its a format the replicates the functionality of something we already have. It may be technically better, it may be less restrictive, but honestly, who cares?
There are very few times in my life where I had to do anything with an OGG, and to be honest, it didn't do anything more that make me hate the person cramming it down my throat so I could listen to what I wanted to hear.
No one needs it, no one is clamoring for it except a small fraction of fanboys, so why does anyone get the right to complain when mainstream devices don't support it? I have always been of the opinion that if you want a format out there, make it truly worth the effort, and then make a case for it being a useful replacement. All I hear is whining about why people don't instantly support the "obviously" better codec. Perhaps its not obviously better to 95% of the population?
The same thing goes for open-source/closed-source. Just let the closed source shops crash and burn, if they are going to. If they don't, well maybe closed source does have some uses after all? Heresy, I know.
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
If Apple continues to aim at the people who think that they are part of the technological elite
In reality we are. Full UNIX system that also runs photoshop.
I used to do things like repair ethernet drivers in Linux, and write code that spanned eight different flavors of UNIX as well as both VAXen and MPE. Are you SO sure you are the "elite" dude you think you are? Or are you just secretly unable to use the best tool for the task because it comes from a company you have a grudge with.
A truly elite technologist is willing to use any tool, from any company.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
maybe Bill gates would like a second chance without all the MS baggage to try out his visions.
...he needs new glasses first.
If limewire could sync up an iPod, most of my friends would be happy to never use iTunes.
I know the first thing my wife did when she got her iPhone was bitch about what a poor SSH client it was... Oh.. no, wait... She obsessively played with the web browser for an hour, ignoring the large screen laptop right in front of her, just because it was SOOO cool that she could surf the web that well on a phone. Then she started playing around in the app store. She still hasn't mentioned SSH, now I come to think of it.
Had she done so I might have shown her the SSH app I got from the app store which works perfectly adequately. The transparent on screen keyboard and zoom and scroll function mean that that it actually has a much larger usable screen area than SSH clients I've use on other smartphones with "real keyboards". Of course I still prefer a terminal window on a real computer for most of my SSH needs, but for quick "OMFG it's broke!" SSH access in from the mall or parking lot, it works quite as well as any other phone based SSH. Better than the one I had on my Treo that had 4 point fonts and incessantly warned me that my phone was incapable of real encryption so I was probably being spied on by half a dozen men in trench coats.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
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.
I will take it one step further. Most of the whiners on here won't be happy until they can get OS X for free. According to them software is worth $0 and what really peeves them off is that Apple is gaining marketshare with product that is closed source (oh the pain) and that actually costs money to buy (heresy!!) and can't be obtained legally for free.
There has been no evidence that desktop market share is influenced by how open a platform is. If openness was the dominating factor then Win wouldn't have >90% of the desktop market with Apple growing at a very healthy rate while Linux gains virtually nothing.
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.