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So Who's Running Apple Now?
An anonymous reader writes "With Steve Jobs stepping down from heading Apple for at least six months who's running the company that he resurrected? This article names the three people who will try to keep things running. But you have to wonder whether they'll have the charisma needed to keep Apple cool..."
Did Steve Jobs die?
What's that? He didn't?
With all the breathless coverage about whether Apple can survive, you could have fooled me.
Just because he's not releasing hourly reports of his health doesn't mean he secretly has a recurrence of cancer with a vengeance, or that he's on his deathbed.
At some point, though, Apple will have to overcome the (incorrect) perception that "Steve Jobs is Apple", and that without him, Apple will most certainly fail (though the Apple haters have the gloat machine in full swing). No doubt he's a visionary and apparently an effective CEO, but Apple can survive without Jobs...as long as they keep concentrating on things they're good at, and not wandering aimlessly into dozens of disparate and mundane product areas, as was the case under Amelio.
The main thing Jobs did was streamline the business to a few things Apple is good at. Sure he's got charisma by the truckload, cachet as a Silicon Valley luminary, and sway with media heavyweights in Hollywood and elsewhere. But arriving at a sensible business model was his main achievement -- and one that has worked remarkably well for Apple, with nearly all metrics breaking records for several years now.
That said, Jobs' condition -- not being able to absorb protein from food -- is an extremely common result for the type of procedure that he had. In the Whipple procedure, part of the pancreas and duodenum are removed. As a result, enzymes required to allow the body to digest proteins and fats are reduced. Thus, the weight loss that is extremely common in persons who have had this procedure.
Unfortunately, Jobs' first course of action is to do things like eating raw vegetables and consulting Eastern practitioners, rather than actually getting medical care that can solve this issue. (I also think he meant "enzyme imbalance", not "hormone imbalance", given what we know about his condition.)
Apple will continue to be successful, with or without Steve Jobs as CEO, as long as it doesn't lose sight of doing what it's good at.
The main issue Apple will have to overcome is the perception issue surrounding Jobs. Case-in-point: on the NBC Nightly News last night, Brian Williams talked for several minutes about dismal news about the economy, devastating job losses, thoughts from economists about how this won't end in 2009, dreary report after dreary report, a ceaseless drumbeat of doom and gloom...until he said (paraphrasing, here) this: by far the most shocking news, shocking I tell you, was that Apple CEO Steve Jobs would be stepping down for a medical leave of absence, and a dedicated story segment followed, complete with Maria Bartiromo from the Exchange floor.
When you've got a cult of personality like that, how can you escape it?
It's vision. Steve Jobs was able to lead his teams to build products that people wanted. Through constant focus on the user and the user's experience, Apple was able to grab a huge majority of the portable music player market. Their focus on ease of use and "just works" capabilities garnered them a significant chunk of the PC market.
These are not because Jobs is especially charismatic (though he is). He was simply able to get his employees to stop thinking about features and capabilities. He got them to think instead about the tasks that users would want to do and then find the best way to let them do it.
Reader Bastian227 adds a link to this letter from Steve Jobs on Apple's website, which also says that Tim Cook will be responsible for daily operations, though Jobs will remain involved with major strategic decisions.
Less than 24 hours ago on Slashdot, emphasis mine.
Hello, are you stupid, people?
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
During Jobs last tenure at Apple, he did something incredible. He convinced a majority of record labels, artists, and producers to sell music electronically. Remember, this happened *AFTER* the music industry got a swift kick in the ass from the first round of P2P apps.
Though not the first to do it, it was the amount of music available on Itunes that got everyone else to do the lemmings thing, and jump aboard. Apple has secured themselves as a modern day music distributor.
Thank you for making it less sucky to get music Mr Jobs. I think it will be hard for anyone to screw up the perpetuating awesomeness that you created. Have a nice rest sir.
I mean seriously.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
This whole thing reminds me of how Walt Disney's passing affected his company.
Basically Disney lost direction, stopped making new animated movies, and hoped that revenues from merchandise and attendance at Disneyland kept the bills paid.
All of this changed of course with Michael Eisner's taking the reins. How did he do it? Aside from his business savvy (something that shouldn't be minimized) he looked back at the way Walt ran the show and continually asked himself what would Walt do.
It didn't last forever, but as everyone mac fan knows the cult of personality around Steve has a basis in the fact that Steve has vision and ruthlessly pursues that vision until it is achieved.
Apple is going to either need someone with a vision and business acuity equal to Jobs, or someone who is able to channel Jobs like Eisner did Disney. ;-)
I'm not seeing that in any of the people listed in the article.
BTW - isn't Steve on Disney's board?
I've been waiting for AAPL to come down in price. When I heard the news Wednesday (after trading closed), I figured there would be a nice discount on Apple stock at opening this morning, and so there was. We'll know in a couple of years whether my purchase was a good move or not.
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
Steve's younger brother, Raul, has taken over day to day operations.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
He has always tried to get the technical side to understand that Apple has to design for average people.
Actually, that is overly simplistic and not a good analysis of why Apple succeeds - though it's a common misconception. Let's look at your list.
Macintosh: OS and UI designed for an average person not wanting to type in commands.
Actually, the UI is designed to have sensible common defaults and an easy to use UI, but someone "wanting to type in commands" also has the whole UNIX subsystem to access for more flexibility.
iPod: portable media player with a UI designed for an average person. Form factor dictated by what an average person would want.
Designed from the ground up to simply play music, but move most of the song management features off the device and onto the computer. The fact is there are a lot of more advanced features the "average" person might not use (like random play of albums, on the go playlists, sped-up audiobook playback).
iTunes: music (and later other media) software and distribution system designed for ease of use to an average person.
Designed to minimize the amount of actions required to give Apple money and get something back in a usable form (just talking about the store here since management features really belong with discussions about iPod/iPhone).
iPhone: smart phone with a UI designed for an average person. If you've ever used another smart phone, you'd know how maddeningly simple an iPhone is compared to other smart phones.
Designed to make all of the common smartphone operations as direct to use as possible, and again move more complex management of core data off device. I've used other smartphones, thanks, which is why I have an iPhone - because the others offered "maddingly" complex interactions with the system to do the simplest things.
What do all these items have in common? It's not designing for the "average" user. It's looking at what the device is meant for, and simplifying operation as much as possible before then building complexity back on top once you arrive at the core of purpose for the device/software. There is a huge difference in that in understanding this, you can somewhat predict product evolution after initial product delivery in a way you could not if you were saying "well what does the average user like". If Apple designed for the "Averge" user they'd have the same checklist-drived designed by comitte products most other competitors spit out, instead of being a thought leader in virtually every area they enter.
Take for instance the G4 Cube. Rumors has it that was Steve Job's personal favorite. But it didn't sell well at all and was replaced by the Mac mini. The former Steve Jobs might have kept it in the market longer despite poor sales. The newer one allowed it to be retired.
Why would the old Steve Jobs have done that? Being forced out and then coming back with Apple in tatters only reinforced his core belief that his own views on how to run product lines were correct. When did the old Steve Jobs hang onto a product line for emotional reasons? Early accounts don't seem to indicate emotion was involved in decisions much at all.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Apple sells integration. Integration is a feature that MOST people want. The iPod IS missing the feature to play OGG or $FOSS_AUDIOFORMAT. But if you ever break out of your cube you'll see that no one cares other than slashdot. Not everyone wants to spend the time keeping their digital library sorted. With iTunes (and properly tagged files) I can sync what I want. Podcasts, Movies, TV shows, all sync. Shows I've watched unsynced. Watch/listen counts etc.
The same with the iPhone or even OS X. When my cousin went to Israel to study they all got iSights. iChat 'just worked'. Not AIM, not Skype not anything else, iChat. No fighting with firewalls or the such.
The same with Bonjour/ZeroConf. Yes it's an open standard but Apple was one of the first people to actually start using it widely. If you get 5 Macs in the same room, turn on wireless everyone can see each other. No fighting with an internal ip addresses. All Bonjour enabled applications just show up. iChat contacts, HTTP servers, SSH machines, etc. I can't even get Windows XP at work to MultiHome correctly without doing stupid stuff with routing. On my Mac it works. I can set two internal network addresses and ping computers on both with on problem.
Microsoft couldn't/didn't even get the Zune to work with THEIR "Plays for Sure" DRM.