You mean like when Jobs told the MOT reps to "Get the **** out of my office"?
I like the tale about Jobs throwing a phone across the room while talking to high-level Moto executives. Ahh, to be a fly on the wall during Steve Jobs' finest moments.
I like the tale about Jobs throwing a phone across the room while talking to high-level Moto executives. Ahh, to be a fly on the wall during Steve Jobs' finest moments.
As long as he isn't throwing the phone at the fly. You know how he hates leaks.
Is this really the guy shareholders want leading the company at a time when its future is very much being shaped by current actions?
Yes. Because this is the same guy who then picked up said phone and called IBM with an offer they couldn't refuse. It is now 2 years later, and we are just about to see the fruits of all of their labor.
Would you rather he meekly said "Thank you" to Motorola, and politely hung the phone up and did nothing? You have to take the bad with the good. The same fury that got him pissed at Moto is what motivated him to tell them to screw off.
I'll take his mercurialness over a pansy any day of the week.
Is this really the guy shareholders want leading the company at a time when its future is very much being shaped by current actions?
Speaking as another shareholder, I'd also like to say YES.
1) The 'RDF' is Steve-o-centric.
2) The guy has charisma - even PC folken will nod & listen & get enthusiastic at webcasts.
3) The guy is _c-o-n-n-e-c-t-e-d_. You don't swing the iTMS deals with the big five unless you were already friends with some of the movers/shakers. (Or unless the product was an obvious home run - which the iTMS wasn't)
4) Vision. There are only two areas where I (or we, whatever) can point to Apple and really point out 'you missed that'. 1) Price-to-buy (and not a lot that I think can be done there), and 2) _TV_interactions. Steve doesn't like TV -> there's some bits that Apple's probably overlooked/shot down there.
Is this really the guy shareholders want leading the company at a time when its future is very much being shaped by current actions?
Geeze, I don't want to sound repeative, but Yes; emphatically.
I want a person with passion, and the desire to make the perfect product. If he gets "upset" (ok, so that is going real soft with him) as the vendors that Apple relies upon because they are not holding up their end of the bargain, that is just fine with me.
Please remember, business is very much like Chess. You must stay at least five moves ahead of your opponent to become victorious. Honestly, I think Steve is somewhere arout 12 - 15...
Please remember, business is very much like Chess. You must stay at least five moves ahead of your opponent to become victorious. Honestly, I think Steve is somewhere arout 12 - 15...
And Gates keeps knocking the &*%(@#@ pieces off the damned board...
Is this really the guy shareholders want leading the company at a time when its future is very much being shaped by current actions?
Just to jump on the bandwagon: Yes.
Perhaps some context will help: in about the same timeframe, Mot's senior CPU engineers all defected to Intel at once, citing poor treatment and poor pay, and Mot's shareholders revolted and threatened to throw out the CEO (taking control from the Galvin family that founded it for the first time in company history - yes, Virginia, Motorola is a family business) and the rest of the top level management unless things were turned around now.
Steve might have been the only one to throw phones around, but he was far from the only person angered and impatient with Motorola's incompetence.
I like the tale about Jobs throwing a phone across the room while talking to high-level Moto executives. Ahh, to be a fly on the wall during Steve Jobs' finest moments.
Look what you started
Let me remind everyone that we don't actually know if Steve threw a phone.
He could have swatted it a couple feet across the table while pressing a button to cut the conference call. Or... if he was using a receiver, he may have angrily tossed it in the general direction of the cradle.
Then again... maybe he yanked the cord out of the wall, wound it around the phone, and did a fast-ball wind-up in perfect form.
These stories can get blown out of control, especially with a such a love/hate figure like steve. Its my bet that Steve's phone abuse was on par with what all of us have dished out at least once. Or maybe you save your vengence for vending machines which step out of line?
the end of the MB quoted passage about "strained silicon" sounds like the longitudanally aligned long crystal stuff we've heard is almost grown as much as stretched. very conductive with a lot less heat. good for things like .09 um.
Is this really the guy shareholders want leading the company at a time when its future is very much being shaped by current actions?
Man! Such unanimity! Am I the only shareholder around here who is not so sure. Let me make the case against Steve. Sure this whole vision thing is good and important. But Steve's ego definitely causes some problems for the company and Steve definitely doesn't put the interests of shareholders first. On the first point, unfortunately all of my sources are a couple years old. However I used to have a very good friend working at Apple (she quit) and thus used to go to parties with many Apple people. After Steve came in, these were almost always gripe sessions about the wacko secrecy measures and micromanagement. You can have a product ready to ship and Steve will walk in and say the headphone jack needs to be in some other position and suddenly you have another month's work to do. Steve has also filled management positions with his cronies. While Avie is great, my impression is that Rubenstein and Schiller are really only there because they know where Steve likes to feel their noses.
And of course (to come to the second point) all these people get to do their little insider trading things because there is no oversite from the board (which is just more of Steve's crony friends). For Steve, it isn't about shareholder value, it is about His place in history. That is why he can kill the Newton program after they have invested the money in making a viable product but before they actually start selling them. That is why he kills the program rather than sell it.
...
calm down... check blood pressure....
...
I didn't really mean to start ranting like that. I do see that, for many of the reasons you guys are stating, Steve has been overall a good thing for Apple. But it has not been all good.
Running the risk of continuing to hijack this thread...
Engineers hate it when the company visionary walks in, says he doesn't like something or asks for a minor change. I know, I'm an engineer and it has happened to me a couple of times. What is really odd, however, is that in many (not all) cases he was absolutely right and the products were better for it. SJ is that kind of guy and Apple's products are better off with his influence than they are without. Is he infallible? No, but nobody is. He does have a pretty good hit:miss ratio.
I'm a shareholder in Apple too and frankly I would much rather have somebody like SJ at the helm than some business flunky who bends over for the "all powerful shareholders". The fact is that the shareholders don't know $hit about the business they've invested in, they don't know all the details, and they don't know all the plans and issues involved. Look back at the years when there were business types running Apple and you'll see that they pretty much ran it into the ground.
As for the Newton, which is always held up as an example -- personally I think Steve was right and he made the hard call to kill the product. A product isn't just about what is making money right now, its about the future as well and since the Newton was Steve'd the handheld market has been a bloody mess leaving wounded companies strewn across the battlefield. Apple, on the other hand, focussed on its core strengths and now has a good position if they can just deliver that new processor everybody says is coming soon (and which this thread is about <-- see, relevance!).
Lastly, about the "wacko" security measures and micromanagement. The employees always hate that stuff, so take their gripe sessions with a big grain of salt. I gripe about those issues too, but I also know from a fair bit of experience that they are sometimes very necessary. Apple is a company often copied, and their differentiation is their edge. If they leaked information like they used to then the copies would make it to market before the Apple products and the perception of Apple as "different", "revolutionary", or "leading edge" would rapidly dry up. And as for micromanagement -- this is almost always a direct result of an engineering team's tendency to lose focus, wander around, and not deliver the right product at the right time. Yes the engineers hate it, but most soldiers don't like marching and they wouldn't be a very good army if they never went anywhere.
Comments
Originally posted by moki
You mean like when Jobs told the MOT reps to "Get the **** out of my office"?
So that really did happen?
Guess it was before the raise ...
Originally posted by moki
You mean like when Jobs told the MOT reps to "Get the **** out of my office"?
I really hope that some day, when all the NDAs have expired, some journalist will write the definitive book of the AIM wars ...
Originally posted by moki
You mean like when Jobs told the MOT reps to "Get the **** out of my office"?
I like the tale about Jobs throwing a phone across the room while talking to high-level Moto executives. Ahh, to be a fly on the wall during Steve Jobs' finest moments.
Originally posted by RBR
Is this really the guy shareholders want leading the company at a time when its future is very much being shaped by current actions?
yes
Originally posted by Junkyard Dawg
I like the tale about Jobs throwing a phone across the room while talking to high-level Moto executives. Ahh, to be a fly on the wall during Steve Jobs' finest moments.
As long as he isn't throwing the phone at the fly. You know how he hates leaks.
Is this really the guy shareholders want leading the company at a time when its future is very much being shaped by current action
Yes.
Originally posted by RBR
Is this really the guy shareholders want leading the company at a time when its future is very much being shaped by current actions?
yes
Originally posted by RBR
Is this really the guy shareholders want leading the company at a time when its future is very much being shaped by current actions?
Yes. Because this is the same guy who then picked up said phone and called IBM with an offer they couldn't refuse. It is now 2 years later, and we are just about to see the fruits of all of their labor.
Would you rather he meekly said "Thank you" to Motorola, and politely hung the phone up and did nothing? You have to take the bad with the good. The same fury that got him pissed at Moto is what motivated him to tell them to screw off.
I'll take his mercurialness over a pansy any day of the week.
Originally posted by RBR
Is this really the guy shareholders want leading the company at a time when its future is very much being shaped by current actions?
Speaking as a shareholder, you betcha. Considering Moto's performance, I'd be worried if there weren't such stories out there.
Originally posted by RBR
Is this really the guy shareholders want leading the company at a time when its future is very much being shaped by current actions?
Speaking as another shareholder, I'd also like to say YES.
1) The 'RDF' is Steve-o-centric.
2) The guy has charisma - even PC folken will nod & listen & get enthusiastic at webcasts.
3) The guy is _c-o-n-n-e-c-t-e-d_. You don't swing the iTMS deals with the big five unless you were already friends with some of the movers/shakers. (Or unless the product was an obvious home run - which the iTMS wasn't)
4) Vision. There are only two areas where I (or we, whatever) can point to Apple and really point out 'you missed that'. 1) Price-to-buy (and not a lot that I think can be done there), and 2) _TV_interactions. Steve doesn't like TV -> there's some bits that Apple's probably overlooked/shot down there.
Picture michael dell in charge if you want scary.
goes out and does what he has to make it work!!!! But of course, that f....g !!! question is this!!!!!
Originally posted by RBR
Is this really the guy shareholders want leading the company at a time when its future is very much being shaped by current actions?
Geeze, I don't want to sound repeative, but Yes; emphatically.
I want a person with passion, and the desire to make the perfect product. If he gets "upset" (ok, so that is going real soft with him) as the vendors that Apple relies upon because they are not holding up their end of the bargain, that is just fine with me.
Please remember, business is very much like Chess. You must stay at least five moves ahead of your opponent to become victorious. Honestly, I think Steve is somewhere arout 12 - 15...
Originally posted by Mike Eggleston
Please remember, business is very much like Chess. You must stay at least five moves ahead of your opponent to become victorious. Honestly, I think Steve is somewhere arout 12 - 15...
And Gates keeps knocking the &*%(@#@ pieces off the damned board...
Originally posted by RBR
Is this really the guy shareholders want leading the company at a time when its future is very much being shaped by current actions?
Just to jump on the bandwagon: Yes.
Perhaps some context will help: in about the same timeframe, Mot's senior CPU engineers all defected to Intel at once, citing poor treatment and poor pay, and Mot's shareholders revolted and threatened to throw out the CEO (taking control from the Galvin family that founded it for the first time in company history - yes, Virginia, Motorola is a family business) and the rest of the top level management unless things were turned around now.
Steve might have been the only one to throw phones around, but he was far from the only person angered and impatient with Motorola's incompetence.
Originally posted by Junkyard Dawg
I like the tale about Jobs throwing a phone across the room while talking to high-level Moto executives. Ahh, to be a fly on the wall during Steve Jobs' finest moments.
Look what you started
Let me remind everyone that we don't actually know if Steve threw a phone.
He could have swatted it a couple feet across the table while pressing a button to cut the conference call. Or... if he was using a receiver, he may have angrily tossed it in the general direction of the cradle.
Then again... maybe he yanked the cord out of the wall, wound it around the phone, and did a fast-ball wind-up in perfect form.
These stories can get blown out of control, especially with a such a love/hate figure like steve. Its my bet that Steve's phone abuse was on par with what all of us have dished out at least once. Or maybe you save your vengence for vending machines which step out of line?
Originally posted by RBR
Is this really the guy shareholders want leading the company at a time when its future is very much being shaped by current actions?
yes. if anybody is going to be throwing phones, it should be Steve
bonus points if it was a Moto phone
Originally posted by RBR
Is this really the guy shareholders want leading the company at a time when its future is very much being shaped by current actions?
Man! Such unanimity! Am I the only shareholder around here who is not so sure. Let me make the case against Steve. Sure this whole vision thing is good and important. But Steve's ego definitely causes some problems for the company and Steve definitely doesn't put the interests of shareholders first. On the first point, unfortunately all of my sources are a couple years old. However I used to have a very good friend working at Apple (she quit) and thus used to go to parties with many Apple people. After Steve came in, these were almost always gripe sessions about the wacko secrecy measures and micromanagement. You can have a product ready to ship and Steve will walk in and say the headphone jack needs to be in some other position and suddenly you have another month's work to do. Steve has also filled management positions with his cronies. While Avie is great, my impression is that Rubenstein and Schiller are really only there because they know where Steve likes to feel their noses.
And of course (to come to the second point) all these people get to do their little insider trading things because there is no oversite from the board (which is just more of Steve's crony friends). For Steve, it isn't about shareholder value, it is about His place in history. That is why he can kill the Newton program after they have invested the money in making a viable product but before they actually start selling them. That is why he kills the program rather than sell it.
...
calm down... check blood pressure....
...
I didn't really mean to start ranting like that. I do see that, for many of the reasons you guys are stating, Steve has been overall a good thing for Apple. But it has not been all good.
Engineers hate it when the company visionary walks in, says he doesn't like something or asks for a minor change. I know, I'm an engineer and it has happened to me a couple of times. What is really odd, however, is that in many (not all) cases he was absolutely right and the products were better for it. SJ is that kind of guy and Apple's products are better off with his influence than they are without. Is he infallible? No, but nobody is. He does have a pretty good hit:miss ratio.
I'm a shareholder in Apple too and frankly I would much rather have somebody like SJ at the helm than some business flunky who bends over for the "all powerful shareholders". The fact is that the shareholders don't know $hit about the business they've invested in, they don't know all the details, and they don't know all the plans and issues involved. Look back at the years when there were business types running Apple and you'll see that they pretty much ran it into the ground.
As for the Newton, which is always held up as an example -- personally I think Steve was right and he made the hard call to kill the product. A product isn't just about what is making money right now, its about the future as well and since the Newton was Steve'd the handheld market has been a bloody mess leaving wounded companies strewn across the battlefield. Apple, on the other hand, focussed on its core strengths and now has a good position if they can just deliver that new processor everybody says is coming soon (and which this thread is about <-- see, relevance!).
Lastly, about the "wacko" security measures and micromanagement. The employees always hate that stuff, so take their gripe sessions with a big grain of salt. I gripe about those issues too, but I also know from a fair bit of experience that they are sometimes very necessary. Apple is a company often copied, and their differentiation is their edge. If they leaked information like they used to then the copies would make it to market before the Apple products and the perception of Apple as "different", "revolutionary", or "leading edge" would rapidly dry up. And as for micromanagement -- this is almost always a direct result of an engineering team's tendency to lose focus, wander around, and not deliver the right product at the right time. Yes the engineers hate it, but most soldiers don't like marching and they wouldn't be a very good army if they never went anywhere.