Apple After Jobs

recoiledsnake writes "The connection between Apple and Steve Jobs is unlike any other brand and CEO relationship in corporate America, maybe the world. While Bill Gates has successfully transitioned himself away from his day job at Microsoft, can Apple do without Jobs at all? Once word started circulating that Jobs may be ill, Apple stock took a considerable hit, dropping more than $10 a share. And when Mr. Jobs was absent from last week's quarterly earnings conference call, the questions started again — and the stock fell again. What does this mean for corporate users of Apple for whom switching costs are high? Can Apple continue innovating in Job's absence?"

But more importantly

[JamesP]

Can the press, or maybe slashdot, stop speculating??

Maybe today is Apple trifecta day, you never know...

Re:Come on, guys.

[Da Fokka]

Don't be ridiculous. There is no doubt that the success of Apple has been closely tied to Jobs' involvement with the company. Jobs has been the creative brain behind most of the companies success products.

Re:Come on, guys.

[elrous0]

Yeah, but remember what happened when he left before? They ended up losing a huge amount of market share and got their asses handed to them by MS. Certainly Apple would survive, but would it ever again be the same kind of force that it was under Jobs' charismatic leadership? He's not just a CEO, he's a symbol. And much as I personally despise his smug attitude and heavy-handed leadership, it has given him a certain cache among Apple users that can't be replaced with just any old CEO in a business suit.

Yes, but with a twist

[wandazulu]

I did a research project on Polaroid and came to the conclusion that, like Jobs and Apple, Polaroid was essentially Land's company and after he died, it spiraled rapidly downhill. They had some amazing stuff and once their "vision" had been lost, they were caught short by all the tech that came after.

With Jobs and Apple, I think the situation is the same only insofar as, pointed out in the article and elsewhere, Jobs and Apple are synonymous. The difference, I see, is that Land was the chief guy people expected all tech advances to come; once Land left there wasn't any one person to keep their eye on the industry. Jobs, however, is not the tech guy; he has a *lot* of good people who are clearly making great stuff, only to be held in check by Jobs until he's satisfied they "have a product".

Apple without Jobs would probably put out more products quicker, and that is the problem; Jobs is the "great floodgate" for a company that probably is literally bursting with cool, but unpolished, stuff that, if put out in the marketplace, would get a lot of buzz, but then probably sink under the weight of bugs.

Obviously Jobs can't be there forever, but unlike Microsoft that has been happy to throw everything and anything at the wall to see what sticks (and promise it'll stick better in the next version), Apple needs that special someone who can tell when a they "have a product", as well as be the human face to the company.

So yes, Apple can continue and prosper without Steve Jobs, so long as they find someone who is just like Steve Jobs.

Any takers?

Re:Come on, guys.

[peragrin]

that's just it will it? in 1984 the Apple BOD fired Steve Jobs and the company nearly went out of business a decade later right until they brought Steve Jobs back.

While Steve doesn't design anything, he is the asshole who pushes products to be better than anything else. Johnathon Ive is the best person to replace Steve. Anyone who can spend months testing materials just so the click wheel on the ipod has the right feel is a good choice.

The iPhone isn't the first touch screen phone, or PDA. It is however the first one to get the UI right. I have handed my iPhone to computer nerds and neophytes. They all have picked up the UI in minutes.

Apple is very controlling and i don't buy DRM encumbered music. I will however buy a well designed product no matter who actually produces it.

Re:Come on, guys.

[Anonymous Coward]

If, for example, Steve Balmer took over the reigns, it wouldn't be long before Apple was putting all their efforts into web searching.

Balmer tries to pull some shit like that, he'll soon find out that he's not the only one who can throw chairs.

Re:Innovate...

[kTag]

AFAIK, Apple brought Airport and that was a Really New Idea (even if they didn't invent it). If Apple didn't license this technology from Lucent do you really think we would be using Wifi right now ?

And tell me more about this Really New Idea concept. What do you consider as being the latest RNI ?

counterproductive speculation

[reversible physicist]

Jobs is 53 and has no life threatening illness. The cancer he had in 2004 was of a type that usually doesn't recur, and both Apple and Jobs have said that it hasn't recurred. Thus the odds are that Jobs will be in charge for at least the next decade. There's no point in speculating on how Apple would do without him that far in the future. TFA is just "analyst talk" directed at manipulating the stock price.

Rob Enderle - Enough Said

[oh_my_080980980]

The majority of this article is based on opinion from Rob Enderle. Enough said. The man is an absolute pin-head. This is the man, who stated that SCO had a case against IBM.

Nothing to see here but the ravings of a lunatic.

Re:Come on, guys.

[DirkGently]

If you think he's there for completely altruistic reasons, I've got a bridge to sell you. Steve also has a metric fload of company stock. So if Apple does well, he's still seeing *significant* compensation.

Someone like Steve is essential

[RogueWarrior65]

Apple without Steve Jobs is like the Korean War without General Douglas MacArthur. You DO NOT leave the business of war in the hands of dumbass politicians. That bozo from Pepsi was a dumbass politician.

Once the company founders are gone...

[Anonymous Coward]

...it's only a matter of time:

Apple went downhill after Jobs was given the boot the first time. (And some would argue that without the Woz it still is a shadow of its' former self)

DEC's death certificate was signed when Ken Olsen left.

Commodore's end was nigh when Jack Tramiel defected and bought Atari.

HP went from being one of the best employers in the industry to being just about the worst when Bill and Dave both kicked the bucket.

As sad as it may be, people are inspired to work for, and purchase products made by companies with charismatic leaders who have a parental-like emotional investment in the company.

The only good that can possibly come from this is that Bill Gates has left the building, hopefully the Borg can't survive without their Queen.

Re:No software

[UnknowingFool]

To many people Steve Jobs hasn't changed that much from his days at Apple or NeXT. But he's changed enough. The old Steve only cared about his vision of what computing should have been and neglected practicality or cost. NeXT was probably the closest thing to his vision that he got. But it wasn't a financial success and I think Steve learned a bit of hubris from it. The new Steve cares about whether the products of his vision can be financially successful. Slight but important refinement.

Re:But more importantly

[Free the Cowards]

Getting bought out for a ton of money, getting their CEO installed as CEO of the purchasing company, and having their operating system become the #2 desktop OS sounds like a huge success to me.

I would love to have 10% of the success that NeXT had.

MS is stagnating

[Phantom of the Opera]

Apple is growing, Microsoft is stagnating.
http://quote.yahoo.com/echarts?s=AAPL#chart2:symbol=aapl;range=my;compare=msft;indicator=volume;charttype=line;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=on;source=undefined [yahoo.com]

Some investors do care about 'cool' and about producing good products, even if most are all about the money.

That being said, MS has the momentum, the marketing capital and sales skill to keep earning very nice profits. It big enough that it resists real innovation, but its stable enough that it will take worse than Ballmer to wreck itself. Even if it were to start to fail, it would be this huge beached whale that will feed scavengers for decades.

Evolving Apple

[Kildjean]

Apple has been how long out? 20, 30 yrs or more? Including the time jobs was part of apple, and the time he came back, can we think that the company has gotten or learned how to be successful? The company, engineers, shareholders should know by now what makes Apple great and in the abscence of Steve Jobs and in the control of his successor Apple should continue having the vision Steve Jobs and his crew have had on it. The same way this works for Apple, it should work for Microsoft, except I hope they influx a new vision so that their business model in the desktop environment trully evolves. Its an interesting question to wonder if Apple will be able to evolve after Steve Jobs steps down the same way Microsoft will evolve positively after Bill Gates has stepped down. Personally I think Steve Jobs is going to die working in Apple, they day he steps down will be when his body is found dead. Not meaning I want him to die... but that is what I think where the end of Jobs will be.

WTF

[gigamonkey]

Talk to an apple employee about what they think of Steve. Everyone I have ever talked to thinks he is a nut job. Everyone I have talked to is dearly afraid of him. No one wants to be near him for fear of losing their job. I think Apple needs to be rid of him.

Re:Come on, guys.

[TheRaven64]

At NeXT, he founded a company and went from nothing to a company he sold for around $400m. At Pixar, he started, once again, from nothing, and built a company he later sold for $7.4b. Between Steve Jobs leaving Apple and his return, the stock price roughly doubled, over a 12 year period - an average annual growth rate of around 6% - slightly ahead of inflation, but not much. Since his return, it has gone up by a factor of 75 over 11 years - around a 43% annual growth rate. If you'd invested $1000 in Apple when he left, you'd have had $2000 when he returned. If you'd kept that money in Apple, you'd have $150,000 now. If you'd had a time machine that let you see into the future, but not past 1997, and had sold it at the high point in the intervening years, you'd have around $16,000.

Re:Come on, guys.

[nsayer]

Nice troll, AC. I'll bite.

Apple captured a lot more than 5%. It's just that after Jobs got fired, the company he left behind lost the lead they had to a convicted monopolist. Now that he's back, they've gone from about 5% to nearly 20% in less than a decade. And the slope of the graph is going up, not down.

Re:Come on, guys.

[bigjarom]

So NeXT may not have had stellar success, but SJ's other little project making cartoons wasn't exactly a failure. You make it sound like Steve had nothing without Apple. The success he had with Pixar in itself was a huge achievement. He bought it for $10M and sold it for something like $8B.

Re:Come on, guys.

[sessamoid]

So NeXT may not have had stellar success, but SJ's other little project making cartoons wasn't exactly a failure. You make it sound like Steve had nothing without Apple. The success he had with Pixar in itself was a huge achievement. He bought it for $10M and sold it for something like $8B.

Pixar's success was partly accident. Steve wanted to grow the company by selling the hardware that they developed for animation. It was Lassiter who first pushed Steve into the direction of creating great animation.

Re:Come on, guys.

[Irish_Samurai]

The Wii generates a profit from every console sold. The 360 sells at a loss to make revenue up on software licensing later.

If this talking point is limited to hardware only, then the argument is valid. If this is supposed to be a blow for blow comparison, then it's kind of inaccurate. You won't really know how successful the 360 is until they quit selling it, and even then only once they stop collecting revenue from licenses. The same goes for the PS3.

Re:Come on, guys.

[mdwh2]

Shaping Apple products != Shaping the personal electronics industry. Give me an example if you disagree (and not one of the "Apple firsts" myths, please).