What is Apple Without Steve Jobs? 281
necro81 writes "David Pauly at Bloomberg has written a piece that asks 'Does Apple Inc. Have a Future Without Steve Jobs?' He writes in the context of Jobs' latest success in launching the iPhone, set against the backdrop of stock backdating troubles. In Pauly's worst-case-scenario, the SEC prosecutes Apple, and the board is forced to oust Jobs.Even without resorting to such scenarios, it's an interesting question to ask the fanboys and detractors out there: could Apple succeed and continue to innovative without Jobs at the helm?"
they'll find a way (Score:5, Insightful)
They'll just bring him back as an "independent consultant" and it'll be business as usual.
Re:they'll find a way (Score:4, Interesting)
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Killing the Goose that Lays the golden Eggs (Score:5, Insightful)
The LA Times has a We Hate Gates series. Most of the press seems to have a similar crusade against Apple. One wonders if some press consortium has sold Apple stock short and is working to make it come true?
Because whatever irregularities in the stock option of many years ago, Jobs has taken Apple from a struggling company to a major player, and the stockholders were rewarded with a 1200% stock value increase.
Why regulations designed to protect minority stockholders are now being used to smear Jobs is a story someone with more resources than I have should dig into. I doubt it's really coincidence.
No Problem (Score:4, Funny)
Re:No Problem (Score:5, Funny)
Apple needs a superstar CEO (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't necessarily have to be Jobs, but I have a hard time imagining who else could be as effective. The Reality Distortion Field is a very real thing and must be taken into account. Anything Jobs says is automatically newsworthy. The black turtleneck has become an icon of geek chic. Apple and Jobs are, in the minds of the believers, inseparable.
Regardless of who sits in the big chair, that person must positively sweat charisma. People have to want to believe them. And whatever else is true, they must never ever have worked for HP :D
Re:Apple needs a superstar CEO (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Apple needs a superstar CEO (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Apple needs a superstar CEO (Score:5, Insightful)
I think after 10 years of The Steve back at the helm of Apple, the next CEO needn't be anywhere near as hands-on as The Steve is. They just need to avoid hiring someone as clueless as Spindler. The technological team Apple put together is good enough and strong enough to carry on unless a Spindler-level fuckup winds up at the reins. Amelio started the rebirth of Apple, The Steve kicked it into high gear. Apple will never be Dell. Perhaps that's for the best.
Re:Apple needs a superstar CEO (Score:4, Insightful)
The root problems behind the Spindler-era failures did rest with Sculley. Sculley was the one who initiated the change to PPC, expanded the product line beyond all reason (the Performa started under the Sculley era as the home equivalent of the Quadra, while the LC became the education version), botched the Newton, and lost control of the company. Yet Sculley wasn't all bad. His conception of what computers would sell was more reality-based than Jobs, who opposed introducing hard drives to the Macintosh. If it wasn't for repeatedly falling on his face at NeXT, Steve Jobs would be as dangerous to Apple now as he was in the mid-80's.
As for Amelio--absolutely. He did everything that was necessary to return Apple to profitability and ensure its future survival as a computer vendor. Amelio (and Fred Anderson, his CFO) made history by floating the largest bond issue yet at the time, but as a testament to the gamble, Apple shortly moved to a state of holding no long-term debt. Amelio also inaugurated the practice of slaughtering unnecessary and unfocused projects, eliminating a lot of Apple product lines. But if it wasn't for Jobs, there would have been no iPod or iPhone, no iTunes, dozens of clone vendors cannibalizing Apple's market share, and none of the marketing to underly these successes. Amelio gets a bad reputation because he lost a billion dollars in a single quarter, but that billion dollars has long since earned itself back in profit. About half of that went to buy NeXT, after all. Steve Jobs alone is probably worth a billion dollars to Apple--throwing in what would become Mac OS X is just gravy.
Re:Apple needs a superstar CEO (Score:5, Funny)
I come from the future, bearing good news: Steve Jobs is still CEO!
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WEll he sweats... [youtube.com]
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Not too many of those around though.
Re:Apple needs a superstar CEO (Score:5, Funny)
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I hear Gene Simmons isn't doing much right now...
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We already know the answer (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:We already know the answer (Score:5, Insightful)
--jeffk++
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Re:We already know the answer (Score:4, Insightful)
Although I don't think Apple could be the same, I think there are a number of people who could lead Apple well. Sculley, Spindler and Amelio drove the company into the ground, that doesn't mean everyone else would as well. Apple's identity is arguably stronger now, and their technology is definitely stronger. Microsoft, meanwhile, is floundering. The landscape is totally different.
What launch? (Score:4, Insightful)
They've only announced a future product, and the general sentiment seems to be that it won't be a hot seller. That's a far cry from being a success.
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Dude, you're killing my hard-on! Can we leave the facts for later? I need the Macworld high to last at least a couple of weeks so I can count the moments until I get my iPhone(tm) in the summer?
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More interesting question! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:More interesting question! (Score:5, Funny)
What is Microsoft without Steve Ballmer?
A corporation that employs fewer chair repairmen?
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Re:More interesting question! (Score:5, Funny)
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Maybe the Stooges without Curly??
Investor confidence (Score:5, Interesting)
For me the more interesting question is how much of Apple's success can be ascribed to Jobs' leadership style. Perhaps that should be in quotes because he is rumored to be an asshole [typepad.com] to work for. Did his uncompromising behavior and standards create the iPod? Would it have been less of a hit if his vision didn't push it in the right direction? Or did it require a perfectionist?
Clearly he won't settle for less than best in him employees--but viewing from the outside, it's hard to say if that helped or hindered Apple's success.
Re:Investor confidence (Score:5, Insightful)
Before Jobs returned, Apple still made some cool stuff, and I'd imagine there were still plenty of smart, perfectionist engineers and such working there. But they were producing about 12 billion different projects, and there's just no way to get that many things right. The old Apple may have had all the technical and design oriented staff they needed to design the iPod, but it never would've happened, because an mp3 player project would've been competing with too many others for resources and talent.
Steve Jobs' cult of personality and RDF are certainly a benefit. It gets them a good bit of free advertising and makes following Apple that much more fun. But his best contribution to Apple is his ability to focus the company's efforts in just a few directions, and usually in the right directions.
If Jobs was out tomorrow, and they replaced him with a guy who was as boring as a stump in the ground, they'd still do alright as long as the replacement kept the company on task. There'd definitely be a short-term stock slump as investors got worried, and Macworld keynotes would probably be far less amusing, but Apple could survive, and continue to churn out cool stuff.
Re:Investor confidence (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a peculiar argument to make that a greater tolerance for mediocrity could have in some way helped Apple's success.
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The question is if his way of managing people makes a better product or not. Can product excellence be achieved without inspiring terror in your employees?
Use Gordon Ramsey as a parallel, in the restaurant business--whic
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Anecdotally... (Score:5, Insightful)
(No Jobs) I hated Mac's in the 90's. Slow. Ugly (my opinion). No cool apps. Crashed as often as PC's (I worked at a graphic design firm, macs at work, pc's at home)
(Jobs) I love Mac's in the...2000's(?). Beatiful. Fast. Tons of cool apps + lots of OSS stuff.
So, anecdotally I'd say that Jobs makes a huge difference. That being said, I think Apple would still have a good chance if the Jobs appointees stayed in power after he left.
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Just like... (Score:4, Funny)
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Still love those Brits - they never say surrender eh-wot?
As the number one fanboy... (Score:5, Funny)
As the first result for a google search on mac fanboy [google.com], I feel qualified to answer this.
Answer yes. Last time Jobs left, Apple was left with mediocre CEOs (who seemed determined to run Apple to the ground). It entirely depends on who replaces Jobs.
He's Not Indispensible (Score:3, Insightful)
Today, he has produced a new phone with deliberate limitations, much like the Mac of 22 years ago. There's the chance it won't take off. Will that destroy Apple? No. All businesses strike out sometime or other. The good businesses have more successes than failures.
If at this point, with the stock options stain, he has developed a sense of entitlement and therefore expects to get extra special treatment, then he will be a drag on the company, and he must go. The graveyards are full of tombs of irreplaceable men. Someone will step up and fill the void. As for innovation, do you think that the hordes of Apple designers and engineers are just a bunch of dodos?
Jonathan Ive (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Jonathan Ive (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple is as much about convincing you that their products are the best as they are about making good products, maybe more. How many Apple products without horrible flaws of some type can you come up with? Mostly it's a handful of laptops, like the second-gen iBook, the intel-based macbooks, some of the powerbooks, and a handful of their 68k machines... For example iPod has perhaps the best user interface of any mp3 player but the battery problem is a real problem and more to the point was totally unnecessary - and you have to use Apple's software. (I realize there's third party software with Apple support these days.) They could have put a door on the unit and specified a cellphone battery for chrissakes - In fact I have a cheesy little "digital camcorder" (glorified digital camera) that takes a Nokia battery, OR some AAA batteries.
And of course, let's not mention that OSX is just about the most inconsistent OS I've ever seen short of Linux with athena widget, wxwindows, qt, and gtk apps all running at the same time. Some context menus will open on a click and let you click open submenus, some of them will close when you click on a submenu. Apple themselves uses three different widget sets. The OS may be relatively virusproof (an argument we could have all day, but I'm not going to) but it's not especially reliable and it's easy to get into a state where you have to reboot for things to work properly. The Dock resizes itself, destroying any use of muscle memory, but looking awfully pretty!
I'm not saying that the competition is dramatically better or anything - and in many areas Apple has the best idea going, such as in their preferences system which I think is less opaque (especially to a new user) than anyone else's. But again, they are at least as much about style as they are about substance, and you need a salesman to sell style. Substance sells itself, although granted, to a different crowd - and some Apple buyers ARE buying based on functionality. Maybe even the majority.
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You don't like OS X; lots of other people do. I've never had a problem with Mac hardware; I changed my own battery in my first-generation iPod--after four years of life--and thanks to the upgrade get 20 hours of battery life.
Can you name another corporation that has thrived because it convinced people its product was good and it really wasn't? If people didn't like iPods and Macs the company wo
Re:Jonathan Ive (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing is, it simply isn't a real problem for the majority of customers. Hard-to-replace batteries were all over the news for a while, but Apple still sells iPods by the bucketload. Apple realised that a sleek exterior and minimum size and weight sell much better than inconvenience a few years down the line. For most customers, a battery cover you can remove with your thumb or a coin is an unnecesarry cost (in terms of style and weight, not cash). I bet Apple have figures on how many replacement batteries are sold for consumer electronics (generally, not just iPods). I'd like to see those figures, but my guess is few are ever sold. You get them for mobile phones and laptops, though I suspect that market is more about increasing runtime than replacing ageing batteries. When I walk into an electronics store I do not generally see racks of replacement batteries for non-Apple MP3 players. Where I have seen replacement batteries they are right next to the kits to replace your iPod battery.
Part of Apple's success comes from challenging the conventional wisdom. There's no point making the sleep light pulse, is there? There's no point adding a speaker so the click wheel actually clicks, is there? Nobody would want an all-in-one PC & monitor that they couldn't upgrade, would they? Well, it turns out that when you do lots of those 'silly' things and get rid of 'essential' features like no-tools battery replacement the result is devices that people want to buy.
Oh I don't know. (Score:5, Insightful)
You're kidding, right? (Score:2)
Forced, how? Because if they oust Jobs, Apple's future looks brighter? It's stock goes up? You're kidding, right?
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Steve Jobs is needed (Score:2, Insightful)
Without steve jobs they still have long way to go , but slope will change direc
One thing is certain... (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't Change Course (Score:3, Interesting)
Personality cults aside, Jobs is replaceable (Score:3, Interesting)
Apple is not a marketleader, save in one very popular segment. Don't mistake that for being IBM-- they're less than 1/10th the size. He knows how to talk to Hollywood, because he IS HOLLYWOOD-- that's where Pixar and Disney get their $$ from.
Apple ought to break up into three companies: entertainment systems, computer systems, and software. Each would work nicely on their own, and be able to then attack their respective marketplaces less encumbered by the other. If they actually opened up things (no, don't look at the iPhone stupidity), they'd get the best of both worlds, as their BSD 'pedigree' is a bit of a sham.
Jobs ought to retire while we still like him, after choosing someone without a pony tail (sorry, Jonathon).
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Oh... you mean like Sony.
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Disney would buy Apple (Score:3, Interesting)
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High standards (Score:5, Insightful)
Thats the key, somebody who will say no to an average product which would make a fair amount of money until its even better. If they lose that, they're the same as everyone else and they can't command premium prices anymore.
Seems unlikely for now (Score:2)
Jobs himself seems to be clean with respect to the stock-options fiasco, so I have a hard time seeing how he could be "forced out". And it seems highly unlikely at this point that Apple's board (which is a lot friendlier toward Jobs than the board which ousted him way back when -- these days, Apple is controlled almost entirely by friends of Steve) would ever want to get rid of him in the absence of legal force requiring it. A better hypothetical to pose is what would happen if/when Jobs ever decides to ret
Same without Jobs? Probably not... (Score:3, Interesting)
Compare this to Sony's reported "silo" approach to developing hardware, software and services, music and video--where many times individual managers within Sony actively squabble over the right approach to take, each fueled more by the individual needs of each division within Sony rather than the needs of the overall company. Such a "silo" mentality is inevitable at any large company unless someone at the top actively forces people to work together for the benefit of the entire company rather than for the individual gains of a particular division.
I don't know if there is a technologically savvy enough uber-geek asshole out there which could replace Steve Jobs if he were to leave Apple--which means Apple would eventually fall back on the habits it had under Spindler and Amelio, where every division internally competed without any sort of unified direction, beyond the imperitive that the sell something.
Apple would do just fine without Steve (Score:2)
Apple would do just fine without Steve, because the management under him understands why the company has been successful since Steve returned, and has enough common sense not to change the formula unless its obvious that the change makes the company stronger. These are not stupid people.
At this point, Steve immerses himself in product development because he has fun doing it, not because he doesn't trust the people under him to do a good job without his involvement. Does he think his presence in the proc
Apple will still be able to innovate (Score:2)
The main problem is that Jobs and the company are viewed primarily as symbiotic to one another. Can
He'd be a consultant (Score:2)
The truth (Score:2)
Apple needs Steve Jobs like a fish needs a bicycle. I think. Or maybe like a woman needs a man. No, that isn't right... when a man loves a woman... ugh forget it
Steve Jobs == Lassie (Score:5, Funny)
The SEC will not let this happen (Score:2, Insightful)
Just another gadget company (Score:2)
"Success in launching the iPhone" ? (Score:2, Insightful)
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One (Score:2)
Who needs The Real Steve Jobs? (Score:2)
Willy Wonka (Score:5, Interesting)
It is actually exciting to live in a time where we have a CEO like Jobs. He's the only example of a true living Willy Wonka in my lifetime.
I can't think of one more individual like Steve that inspires me to not only pull out my wallet and hand over thousands of dollars, but do it with a smile.
you people are all insane (Score:2)
It's like I've entered like a parallel universe where nobody remembers anything. Apple has ALWAYS struggled. Just because they succeed in one market doesn't mean they're some sort of divinely graced company. Even under Jobs' leadership they've had plenty of failures.
They'll Do Alright... (Score:2)
Oops - iPhone, not iPod (Score:2)
No, pretty much! (Score:3, Insightful)
The Next One (Score:4, Insightful)
Wanna Make Apple #1???? (Score:4, Insightful)
Problem is, Woz will never EVER do it.
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Imagine him negotiating with the RIAA.
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Jonathan Ive (Score:2)
If you don't know who he is, he's the designer who came up with the iMac, iPod and iPhone designs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Ive [wikipedia.org]
My new role de-rails? (Score:2, Insightful)
You see, I think Apple without Steve Jobs is like Virgin without Richard Branson. Branson is the Spirit of the Virgin group, know for his wacky publicity stunts and appearing to be a harmless, benign hippy, while in reality, being an unlikely corporate billionaire. Indeed, one of his business rivals so underestimated him that he referred to Branson as "The grinning pullover".
Not that Jobs h
Apple without Steve is, well, Apple. (Score:3, Insightful)
Is he a genius? In some ways, yes, in others, no. But very often, Steve has proven that concepts which really ought to be, and sometimes *are*, obvious to most people are very often concepts which they will either willfully ignore, or are too terrified to embrace. What makes Steve special is the fact that he doesn't accept the current state of technology (ever), and he brooks very little in the way of compromise when it comes to product design. As the saying goes, Steve wants everything he has a hand in making to come out "insanely great". Sometimes he misses the mark, but he's right more often than not because it's clear that he gives a shit about the product (and in his own small way, the people) rather than just wanting to make a load of greenbacks. Not that Steve doesn't want to make money, because obviously he has, but he does it by making some really cool shit happen.
Aside from the considerable mystique that Steve has built up over the years, it really wouldn't be all that hard to replace him. In fact, I will only semi-jokingly propose that Apple replace Steve Jobs with *me*. Seriously. I'd love to have the job, and I'd even do it for a modest salary because I think it would be one of the coolest jobs on the face of the Earth and I don't really *need* all that much money, in the end.
Here's what you need to be the next Steve Jobs:
1. The ability to see beyond what technology has become to what it ought to be. This is the most essential aspect. Steve Jobs ranks up there with the greatest figures in the history of computing when it comes to a vision about what the role of technology should be in our lives.
2. A black mock turtleneck. Simple, understated, not quite elegant, highlights your face on camera, and makes you look slimmer, to boot.
3. Friends and associates like Steve Wozniak, Jonathan Ive, Andy Hertzfeld, Avi Tevanian, etc (not to mention a whole bunch of people over at Pixar). Go take a look at the list of people who have worked for Apple and/or Pixar and what they've done. It's freaking shocking. Apple alone has, over the years, made both Microsoft and Google combined look like a bunch of kindergarteners. And Pixar? Do I even need to go into it?
4. The willpower not to accept a compromised design. Don't settle for less than "insanely great". Money isn't everything, you know, and it's not even the only thing.
5. And, of course, target the high end of the market, and make no apologies for it. Quality over quantity.
That's it, really. It's not all *that* difficult. Unfortunately, even most people involved with technology tend to forget that it's not all about the actual techie bits. It's also about design and philosophy, and a whole lot of other fuzzy ideas about Life, the Universe, and Everything that most brainiac gearheads have a difficult time wrapping their eggheads around. Those of us who can *do* exist, though we may be a extremely small subset of the population.
Re:Ummm, (Score:5, Insightful)
No, that's what Apple would have been with Steve Wozniak.
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I guess the Apple fanboys are out in force early.
Considering that the couple of folks that tried to clone the AppleII way back when were mercilessly hunted down and killed, (legalistically speaking), by Apple, and the short time Apple tried to license out their OS to clone makers was such a miserable failure due to their overly restrictive terms and high fees, I think my opinion is an honest one, not a troll.
Contrast to IBM and M$, who let the IBM PC clones freak flags fly, welcoming any and all third p
Re:Ummm, (Score:5, Informative)
>
> Contrast to IBM and M$, who let the IBM PC clones freak flags fly, welcoming any and all third party developers and apps.
It was a weird time in the industry. Everyone was trying to figure out whether or not to go with open or closed architectures, and changing their minds about it every couple of years.
Compared to the Mac, the Apple ][ was an exceptionally open platform. It not only had slots, when you bought an Apple ][, you got the schematics for the hardware, and you got a commented disassembly of the ROM in your documentation. Whereas the Mac needed a special Programmer's Key [wikipedia.org] just to reset the machine.
And as for IBM, the same IBM that let the clones out of the closet... was the same IBM that came up with the PS/2 and MCA (Micro Channel Architecture [wikipedia.org]). Sure the second generation of IBM machines had slots and ran DOS (whether it was PC-DOS or MS-DOS :-), but what good were the machine's slots if you had to sign a licensing agreement just to build hardware for 'em?
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If you jump in front of a parade that doesn't mean you organized it.
KFG
Re:Ummm, (Score:4, Informative)
Uh... the programmer's key was not a key like you insert into a lock. It was a key like a key on your keyboard. It was a button that stuck out the side. And there were two of them: one to reset, one to drop into the debugger. Those two buttons persisted on all Mac hardware until well into the reign of the PowerMac G4.
Perhaps you're thinking of the custom case cracking tool that the early classic-style Macs required to get inside the case....
Re:Ummm, (Score:4, Insightful)
Uh, not hardly. They had a proprietary BIOS and they wouldn't share it with anyone. Compaq reverse-engineered the BIOS so as to make clone, and IBM sued them for copyright infringement. Seeing as this was pre-DMCA, and Compaq did a good job of clean-room reverse engineering, they won the lawsuit, and were able to start manufacturing IBM-compatible machines.
That wouldn't have been the end of it, except IBM made a strategic error in not signing an exclusive license with Microsoft for MS-DOS. So Microsoft started selling DOS to Compaq and all the other clone makers that cropped up like weeds. Now the thing that made a PC a PC was not IBM, but Microsoft, and overnight control of the market switched to MS. Oh, and the market exploded as the clones became cheap and popular.
Make no mistake about it: IBM "allowed" clones only under duress. It was only after being beaten up badly in the 80s and early 90s that IBM started to learn some lessons about openness.
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Considering there is already a trademark dispute with Cisco over the term "iPhone" I think that should answer your question.
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Nintendo's Wii (now there is an original name) has real innovation as well in the WiiMote.
Sure, both systems have fanboys, and always have. However, both companies are selling a lot more units than they used to. That isn't because of fanboys, that is because of innovative and exci
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What happened last time was Apple fell downhill [...]
Well, depends on your timeline.
While Jobs was there, back in mid-1985, Apple had it's huge reorg and layoff. Apple was losing money on Macs--sales were nowhere near meeting expectations and Apple II sales were dropping. I think this is when Steve was stuck in the corner as Chief Executive in charge of nothing.
Jobs left Apple in late 1985. It wasn't until after Jobs left that Apple produced Macs that weren't completely closed (ie, Macintosh II). Apple had it's largest marketshare and highest profits aft
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WRONG! Without a mouthpiece, a horn is a dying corporation with stocks plummeting and thousands of layoffs.
I suck at metaphors