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Apple's Life After Steve Jobs
animusCollards writes "Slate ponders a post-Steve Jobs Apple, including possible successors, and the future is... boring. '..it's certainly true that Jobs' style is central to the company's brand and the fierce connection it forges with its customers. His product announcements prompt hundreds of millions of dollars worth of free press coverage and whip up greater and more loyal fans, generating ever-greater interest in the company. ... At some point, all that will end. Jobs will eventually leave the company. There are no obvious plans for succession; in addition to Schiller, observers finger Tim Cook, Apple's COO, and Scott Forstall, who helped develop Mac OS X and the iPhone's software, as contenders for the job. But Tuesday's keynote illustrated how difficult it will be for any of those guys to replace Jobs.'"
I don't know if it was just a lack of Jobs or a lack of innovation, but this was the first one of these that really lacked something new and fresh. Quite frankly none of it excited me this round.
There is a simple solution: just follow the mac rumour sites and skim the ideas which make sense (physical, technological, ergonomic, etc.) and turn them into products. Voila, instant fan-inspiring advertising, for free..
Part of me wonders if that isn't what they've been doing for the last couple years.
Of course, that's depending on whether Apple lasts. Apple has always ridden on top of the financial waves, so to speak, by catering to the upper financial strata... That strata might not be around much longer, and younger people, for the most part, don't regard computer differences with quite as much difference as we have in the past.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
The same thing will happen: Apple will devolve again and be directionless, perhaps again bringing in a big soda company executive for CEO. History repeats itself. Market share will drop.
The problem with many firms (in IT especially Microsoft, Apple and Dell) is that they were built around their founders and really can't perform as a corporate culture without them. And without a vibrant corporate culture, the firm stagnates or fails. Commodore or Wang anyone?
USA Today ran a story on it a few months back... http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/2007-08-21-founder-ceos_N.htm
46. The Hobo smiles, his eyes glaze over, and he burps. "Beware the man who has lived longer than the Wasteland."
Here are my qualifications:
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Well, someone other than just Mac fans must be buying Macs, since their yearly sales growth continues to outpace the growth of the computer industry at large.
You can assume that your standard Mac fanbase is buying as normal, but even they don;t have infinite purchasing power, or the ability to keep the growth in sales of Macs above that of PCs - if your userbase isn't expanding, you're not really going to see that sort of growth, especially in the turbulent financial environment.
It's anecdotal, but I introduced my friends to Mac when they upgraded their machines, but only when they were ready for it (ie, they were getting a new computer anyway). The lump-sum purchase of a new machine makes the uptake (and the risk of a platform switch) take a little bit longer, compared to an iPod or an iPhone.
Apple is in a *great* position with the iPhone and I can only see it driving more people to the Apple store for a Mac - using an iPhone is joy (mostly, and for most people) and works in a very "mac like way". A proportion of the people using it are going to want that same experience from their home machine, and the Mac is right there for them when they are ready.
I'm sure there is an element of the subculture, or 'cult' of Apple surrounding their products (I'm likely part of it since I waited in line at the first UK Apple store in Birmingham and I was about the 20th person inside), but you're going to see that sort of culture around any popular and "cool" product (or even not so cool - take a look at the Morris Marina club, or the Morris Minor club). Apple's club may be large, but I don't just have several Mac computers because that's what's expected of me, and put up with deficiencies in the product I use because it really must be Apple - I use Macs because they do everything I want them too (mostly) and are far more pleasant than the alternative.
To head off the "you can do it all for free with Linux and not have to deal with the heathen non-totally-OSS operating system" types, I have installed Ubuntu 8.10 on one of my Powerbooks, rather than upgrading it to OS X 10.5 and am currently looking at how well I can get Ubuntu and OS X to work for me as a multi-OS home environment. I have no Windows boxes anywhere in the house.
As a closer, I'll just add that while I'm probably the typical Mac fanboy (I have multiple Macs, have an iPod, buy music on iTunes, looking at changing to an iPhone when my phone contract is up, use Apple-designed peripherals rather than cheaper alternatives [bluetooth keyboard, igloo airport base station etc), I'm not totally blinded by the Apple cult - I dislike the Finder with the passion of a thousand burning suns because it sucks, I won't buy Time Capsule because it also sucks and I really would be buying the brand over quality/value if I did. I'm not going to just swallow that because it;s almighty Apple. However, at least the Finder is better than Explorer for windows (or whatever the file manager is called on vista nowadays).
The admirers of Apple's cult of personality forget how it was created: Jobs drove away those who didn't fit his whims. He had the first Mac designed around his choices for the Apple II that Woz over ruled. The very act of creating it was purposely divisive, with a skull and crossbones flag flying over the Mac building, and non-Mac people barred from entry except by invitation. Rather than complimentary lines, the Mac was intended to supplant the very successful and projected to be long-lived Apple II (16 bit version in production, 32 bit processor, machine and OS in design phase). After Woz got fed up and left*, Jobs shut down the Apple II line. At every step people who'd been loyal employees, customers, third party manufacturers or fans fell away -- literally by the millions. More than once, to a lesser but significant extent, severe and abrupt changes to the Mac line instigated repeat performances of the II exodus. "Love it or leave it" seemed to be the corporate motto.
Jobs' cantankerous ways with the remaining employees, manufacturers and fans drove away so many, including major players and stock holders, that he was taken out of the spotlight and replaced by John Scully. It took a decade for him to grow up enough to be given back the reins.
Those remaining fans view Jobs as charismatic. Ex-fans remember him as anti-charismatic, and view him that way still if they even bother to think about him at all.
I've recounted these and similar details before, and gotten modded down as flamebait and troll. I expect the same to happen now, despite the fact that while it may be in somewhat negative phrasing, it's accurate and verifiable in media archives and others' writings. In the spirit of full disclosure, I was an Apple II fan in the extreme, was senior/technical editor of an Apple II fan-zine (The Road Apple; the first computer media source published simultaneously in the US and USSR), and said much these same things back then. But I'm not the only one who said them. I'm just one of the very few who still bothers to recount the history that most have ceased to care about.
* Woz left Apple primarily due to a re-examination of his life following a private plane accident. However, his displeasure at the direction of things was no secret, nor was Jobs' efforts to marginalize him. Between those, had he not had the accident, he'd almost certainly have left anyway.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B