Apple minus Steve Jobs = ?
Hello everybody. I'm visiting back at my old alma mater and am very disappointed to see that no one here has bothered to continue the old legacy we left in place years ago.
At any rate, I'll kick off a topic. If it has already been beat to death - forgive me - I've been long ago and far, far away. = ) Good to be back home - even if its for a short while. I like what y'all have done to the site - a lot more topics. Interesting. Like I said, it's good to be back for a visit and to relive old times! BTW, Where's Mark? Is he still here? Looks like the mods are all different - natch. Well, here goes...
Dual PPC; OS X; iPod; Mac Mini; Intel; Podcasts etc. etc. etc. There is certainly evidence of a seachange in the air these days. Onward and upward is the marked trend for Apple and its hardware offerings.
But to what extent is the present manifestation of Apple as both a corporate presence and a marketing tour de force a direct extension of the personna of Steve Jobs? Granted he is absolutely indispensable with respect to what Apple is today. And granted, with respect to Spindler and Amelio, he is certainly beyond comparison. But is he indispensable to Apple?
What would happen to all of our investment in the Apple Way if he suddenly died? Is all of this really hanging by the merest thread of Jobs' existence as Apple CEO? If so, what a sword of Damocles we have!
Or, would the company be able to continue on, catapulted to even greater heights from the firm footing he re-established as the present CEO?
Is it even possible to delegate the chutzpah force Jobs emanates?
And is it possible to have an Apple without Jobs that continues on with it's present trend, with small changes like 2-button mice?
Would Apple, without him, have managed a different manifestation of the Apple mystique, given the eventual success of abandoned projects like PINK or Taligent, and multiple vendors of Apple-based computers?
What do you think?
At any rate, I'll kick off a topic. If it has already been beat to death - forgive me - I've been long ago and far, far away. = ) Good to be back home - even if its for a short while. I like what y'all have done to the site - a lot more topics. Interesting. Like I said, it's good to be back for a visit and to relive old times! BTW, Where's Mark? Is he still here? Looks like the mods are all different - natch. Well, here goes...
Dual PPC; OS X; iPod; Mac Mini; Intel; Podcasts etc. etc. etc. There is certainly evidence of a seachange in the air these days. Onward and upward is the marked trend for Apple and its hardware offerings.
But to what extent is the present manifestation of Apple as both a corporate presence and a marketing tour de force a direct extension of the personna of Steve Jobs? Granted he is absolutely indispensable with respect to what Apple is today. And granted, with respect to Spindler and Amelio, he is certainly beyond comparison. But is he indispensable to Apple?
What would happen to all of our investment in the Apple Way if he suddenly died? Is all of this really hanging by the merest thread of Jobs' existence as Apple CEO? If so, what a sword of Damocles we have!
Or, would the company be able to continue on, catapulted to even greater heights from the firm footing he re-established as the present CEO?
Is it even possible to delegate the chutzpah force Jobs emanates?
And is it possible to have an Apple without Jobs that continues on with it's present trend, with small changes like 2-button mice?
Would Apple, without him, have managed a different manifestation of the Apple mystique, given the eventual success of abandoned projects like PINK or Taligent, and multiple vendors of Apple-based computers?
What do you think?
Comments
But to what extent is the present manifestation of Apple as both a corporate presence and a marketing tour de force a direct extension of the personna of Steve Jobs?
That is the six billion dollar question.
Hope Springs Eternal,
Mandricard
AppleOutsider
Apple will have to make some fundamental change in how they run their business. They are now competing on an even level with PCs in hardware. It's going to be interesting.
Originally posted by theblackhat
What do you think?
There is no doubt that Apple needs a strong leader with vision. I hope, when Jobs steps down, that there is someone in place to give them that leadership.
The problems at the old Job-less Apple came from going too many directions at once, and a lack of faith in any one long-term strategy. Apple's CEO needs to be focused on long-term vision--things like operational efficiency and investor relations can be handled by other executives.
As long as someone with vision is at the helm, and has the support of the board, I think Apple would do okay post-Jobs. But if they go back to the way things were before Jobs second term, then they won't last long.
On to qualifying and even quantifying the Apple essence if we can. Surely there is no better board anywhere to mull this one over and arrive at the correct take. I'm sure Steve would find what we think on the matter interesting as he is undoubtedly aware of this grand ol' board. (Hi Steve!).
Its interesting to think of just what comprises the absolute core of the Apple experience, human-wise, given that everything we see and feel today that is Apple was the result of a number of deliberate spins someone at sometime put "on the ball."
One might posit that Jobs himself, although essential, is not in and of himself enough. After all, with the backing of no less than the likes of H. Ross Perot, he went and did something truly remarkable - a backward glance we today refer as "NeXt", from which our beloved OS X came - but it was not enough.
NeXt was very interesting as it was perhaps an even greater extension of the raw Steve Jobs essence since it was entirely (or at least romanticized to be) his baby. I believe it had a 2 button mouse (someone please check me on that) which in and of itself is interesting. Additionally, I believe it ran on Motorola 68040 and, as surely as Rosebud was the sine qua non for Kane, the cube is likewise for Jobs (NextCube, Cube G4, mini mac, etc.).
How many people at Apple today are truly the "core and essential - not to be disturbed - brain trust" for the Apple phenomena? Jobs and Ives for sure - but I'm positive that is not all.
Could they be identified and lured away - one by one - until the Essence of the Apple BorgCore is transformed to something much lamer - despite Jobs still being there?
In an imaginary world, what if some major player understood this effect and tried to compromise it by strategically hiring off certain core people that would result in a warp in what we understand to be the Apple RDF today? Or better, could the essence of Apple be lifted out of Cupertino - en masse - and plunked down in another culture where - like a virus among viruses - it would either eat or be eaten?
Granted the effect would be shifted to some degree by the mere virtue of these core people now living and driving to another place to work. But the old nexus would still be there because they would all be used to working together to create the "magic." If the outer company nurtured them and let them grow - voila! - could some entity like Sony - who seems to have their great moments but no eras - use them to turn the corner?
Or are the high priests at Apple untouchable - aware of who they are - cloistered away serving at the high altar of our preoccupation?
The "leader" does not need to decide EVERYTHING like Jobs probably does, but they do need to put everything on the table for examination from a new angle. They also need to expand the notion of what is possible. In other words: demanding.
Jobs is not the one who dreams up all this technology. But he is the bridge between the tech nerds and the consumer. Innovation on a more "global" level always comes from a bridging of seemingly separate spheres. Though most of us don't remember it, computing used to mean huge, room-sized machines confined to the elite. Jobs and others essentially said no, only to recreate the system everyone was comfortable with. The Apple coupe wasn't just about technology-- it was about challenging the status quo (and finding elegant solutions for that change).
If Apple feared offending its loyal fan base, it would be dead in the water.
The next leader of Apple would need to be someone who says, "Why not?" instead of findings market-driven reasons to justify incremental change. Apple would need someone technically literate, but intellectually annoying enough to irritate/create a pearl.
Increments are good, especially if they're made of leaps and bounds.
My 2 cents.
Originally posted by theblackhat
What would happen to all of our investment in the Apple Way if he suddenly died? Is all of this really hanging by the merest thread of Jobs' existence as Apple CEO? If so, what a sword of Damocles we have!
indeed, the intel transition has made me rethink my faith
due to financial constraints and iBooks being grossly overdue for updates, i have revived an old pentium-2 333mhz 196mb ram 20gb hard disk with windows2000. windows 2000 pro and various apps (web surfing and web video) is only given 2gb of partition space. alias season 4 is taking up some of the other partition space
i may very well depending on as and when my paychecks come in, to start to build up an AMD system.
currently i ripped out all the pentium-2 stuff from an old pC casing, dumped the serial and parallel ports, dumped the cd-rom drive...
yeah i maybe going to a dualie-type setup, with my dad's iBook g4 in the evenings (he uses it in the clinic in the mornings) and what my family has nicknamed the 'darth vader' pc
just gotta cover my bases....
at this stage internet broadband access and macromedia flash mx and a few other web/design apps are critical to my income generation, and i can't afford to blow a few $k (in my country) on Apple
... OR, too much DOGMA !!! Personalities generally just screw things up in the long run.
This is an interesting fact considering that soon computers will have enough power to emulate personalities.
This actually could be a an USA, UK western world kind of problem.
I certainly don't want to trade this in for Chinese style family rule biased nonsense.
I think GE's style of management with market segment focus is the most healthy and would be the best fit for Apple. Apple should also have internally EXTREMELY ADVANCED software designer tools to build their software each market segment should have its own tool or set of tool.
Zcode would still be one tool just the public set of pieces taken from those designer tools, not much different from now accept the APIs might have a market focus. One part for games, one for business apps, one for publishing, another for graphics, another for work flows, ect.
IF SJ would raise up product directors to give vision to and lead market sectors in their respective pursuits THAT would be the BEST way to run Apple SJ could relax for a little while and then ...
... move to running Disney and take over the world of cinema !!!
I have been saying something like this since before SJ came back and Apple has done most of the things that I have suggested, therefore it is pretty likely they will continue in this direction.
Apple does NOT shape the computer industry ad hoc, Apple is the ONLY company that is shaped by computer tech so it survives a while longer, then EVERYONE ELSE who's shape IS ad hoc imitates Apple.
And you can know where Apple is going IF you know where computer tech is going !!!
could you clarify the following:
1. what are your thoughts on apple's current direction
2. what do you propose apple's direction is for the next 1-3 years
3. do you see them focusing more strongly on software while hardware is mainly targeted, 'ultra-cool' profitable iPods, Macs, iHome, powerMacinteshes, etc...?
The Apple of today is all about style, and this dude has been the driving force.
Whether he has an RDF to match Jobs is questionable, but I think Apple needs to get away from the cult-like aura Jobs has created.
If Apple is to survive, it needs to survive on its merits, not on the bullshitting capabilities of its CEO.
But while it is still easy for me under my old moniker, I wanted to mention - while reading through the other threads, I came across the essay "It's Dark Inside the Box" by Joe Palmer (re: BeBox). Among the things Palmer might have intimated was the notion that there may exist a dysfunctional relationship between an inventor's original idea and internalized organization of a concept ( and what eventually becomes the inventor's perspective about his project) and what the enduser conceives it to be.
In the essay he tries to better understand the Apple experience by reducing it to its elemental identity by redacting one component at a time ans testing what remains for the Cupertino Chutzpah. A different approach than what is usually attempted, wherein we analyze the Apple zeitgeist for hints and cues just beyond our event horizon - and actually analyze the anticipated attempt for inherent "worthiness" in the ongoing super-legacy we all know and love.
It is interesting to ponder whether Jobs (and Woz's) original insistence on the earliest parts of the Apple waveform - or at least early tremulos that have come down to us as Apple artifacts (e.g., data/resource forks, reduced instruction sets, one-button mice, closed system/architecture, etc.) was all done with a black box effect? Were these early gusts seemingly lost on us like the so-so moves of some local chess champion whose game, while good, are rarely worthy of archiving?
Or, was the Apple experience different? Not to belabor the metaphor, but for the Apple faithful - could it have not been the opposite? That for us, it was a light box effect, fully worthwhile to behold because the Bobby Fisher/Kasparov of the computer world just happened to be playing in our bailiwick.
It has been said that in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. Even so, it is interesting to note that one of the main differences in the quintessential PC/Mac user experience seems to be that PC users are generally dissatisfied (too harsh?) and a good number of them seem to constantly "have the hood up" on their rides in an effort to inveigle some fundamental change that was meant to be denied to them, but for which they have discovered a most curious "work-around."
The mac users, on the other hand, although dissatisfied in their own right, are generally content on the direction in which they are headed, they just want to get there faster and in more comfort.
If the world follows one with a vision handicap as king - what indeed would that make the man with two keen eyes, and insight, hindsight and foresight as well? While being worshipped by a world of the blind, would the one-eyed man be able to take his own eye off the fully-sighted one ... because he, unlike his constituents, would realize what he was seeing.
As such, is it perfectly understandable that the one-eyed man would want to emulate the other, even to the point of copying him? All blind subjects, of course, would all the while would be worshipping at the unsightly altar. Unable to tell, they would only sense more darkness inside as well as outside.
However, the others ... a small percentage of the supposed blind who, like the King, were born with sight, would be attracted to the light. Yet is it possible that the biggest moth of all - the one-eyed King himself - would secretly bend a knee at the altar of light - because he knows, as those few others also know, that it is not dark inside the Mac?
Much has been written about Mr. Jobs and Mr. Gates. We have been plied with endless media discourse of innuendo, snippets and bytes wherein a "public" picture has emerged. All well and good. However, I wonder, far away from the reporters, when each is stripped of the accoutrements (e.g., money, power, etc.) and made to stand naked and exposed to the other's judgment - I think that a quite different picture starts to emerge when considering what each secretly harbors about the other.
First, with respect to their own abilities as CEO - and here we must be allowed a working assumption - that both Apple and Microsoft are virtual extensions of the personna of each man - the question must be asked as to what would result if, tomorrow, each were to replace the other in their respective corporate leadership capacities. Let us discount the facade about Jobs not being compensated or Gates' "lapfestus" Steve Ballmerism charade). If each were allowed to do what they thought absolutely best (yes - let us assume each would have the chutzpah the other enjoys with their new board of directors) what would happen? And why? Would each outcome be a debacle or would either enjoy a sliver of success?
And more importantly - would it change the perspective each secretly holds of the other when the last shred of pretext - their corporate alter egos - were at last fully exposed to the other?
Everything, it seems, is ultimately a matter of degree. Microsoft has always been about adopting ideas and technology invented elsewhere. The man behind the curtain is solely one who embraces and extends ... but it has been said that Jobs did his own "borrowing" concerning the Apple interface from Xerox's Star project (but in fact this was probably overblown and is just a talkpoint for the PC crowd who don't want to look beyond the surface spin).
Jay Cocks once said "the genius of American design has been ... a refining of utilitarian utility into a kind of splendiferous native simplicity." Is this not the essence of what Jobs did, even with respect to what he may have thought he imagined elsewhere?
Should it ever happen (in a bizarro world twist) that these two would exchange roles (or even bodies as in the "bodyswap" flicks) I suspect one would be like the proverbial "kid in the candy shop", while the other would experience something akin to creative claustrophobia or passion torpor.
Bill Gates on Jobs and Allen:
"People tell you about their great vision. I honestly say that the only guy I've ever met -- well, I've met two guys. Paul Allen has some vision and Steve Jobs has some vision."
Steve Jobs on starting Apple:
"So we found every moment of our spare time taken up by helping our friends wire these boards up. And gradually we came to the understanding that what we ought to do is make a printed circuit board and of course have them for our own systems and maybe sell them for double the money it costs to make them, just the blank printed circuit boards. And maybe recoup our money in six to nine months. So I sold my Volkswagen van and Woz sold his HP65 calculator and we got 1300 bucks together and we went out and paid a printed-circuit-board artist to make up the artwork. And we were out trying to peddle these boards in advance of making any of them to see if we could sell 50 of them. So I was out trying to peddle boards and about the third time I walked into the Byte Shop -- the first Byte Shop in Mountain View -- Paul Terrell, who was the proprietor, told me that he'd take 50 of them. I saw dollar signs in front of my eyes. But he said that he wanted them fully assembled and ready to go, which was a new twist to the story. So we spent the next two days visiting distributors and convincing them to give us net 30 days credit on thin air, built the computers in 20 days, turned them around, Paul paid cash, and we paid off the distributors. So we built the whole company on float. And we continued to do that. I quit my job at Atari and Woz continued at HP for another six months working in the evenings at Apple."
Steve Jobs on naming Apple:
"I was actually a fruitarian at that point in time. I ate only fruit. Now I'm a garbage can like everyone else. And we were about three months late in filing a fictitious business name so I threatened to call the company Apple Computer unless someone suggested a more interesting name by five o'clock that day. Hoping to stimulate creativity. And it stuck. And that's why we're called Apple."
Original Apple "Newton" Logo
Steve Jobs on "the plan":
"We didn't do three years of research and come up with this concept. What we did was follow our own instincts and constructed a computer that was what we wanted, ourselves, refined it to where it was exactly what we wanted, and then sat back and watched what happened when we exposed other people to it."
I have my own rule, I call it the Roger Smith after the man who inspired it, that states that if a company CEO is not personally consumed by the business of the company he runs, the company is in decline. This goes for auto companies, salsa companies, computer companies, whatever. Obviously it doesn't hold for commodity-based companies that make things like toilet paper.
It seems pretty likely that Jobs has hand-picked whoever will fill his shoes, and that he has also hand-picked all of the VPs and even lower executives and designers at Apple. When Jobs goes, at first nobody will probably notice, but after 5-10 years we'll turn around and realize Apple has totally changed.