How Apple Could Survive Without Steve Jobs 331
ThousandStars writes "The Wall Street Journal asks How Apple Could Survive Without Steve Jobs: 'Speculation about the continued reign of Mr. Jobs — which has popped up from time to time since his 2004 treatment for cancer — underscore how closely Apple's fashion-setting products are identified with its co-founder.'"
I'm glad I didn't recently buy any Apple stock... (Score:5, Interesting)
Whoever should succeed Jobs should be very aware of this talent pool and be sure to keep things running as smoothly as possible to ensure a bright future. In essence I wouldn't be too worried about Apple being Jobs-less.
About as well as Disney survived with Walt (Score:5, Interesting)
i.e. Not well at all. They company floundered from 1967 to around 1987 until a new CEO with vision arrived on the scene.
I suspect Apple would do the same, gradually returning to a state akin to how it was in the early 90s. Ultimately it might end-up in the same state as Commodore (which also lost its visionary CEO and slowly but surely died-out).
Re:About as well as Disney survived with Walt (Score:3, Interesting)
Disney without walt has exploded.
They own almost everything now, they plaster themselves on everything and almost every child has the "go to disney" zombie mantra imbedded in them.
If Apple does that, they WILL become bigger than microsoft.
look at polaroid (Score:4, Interesting)
Which crashed and burned after its leader, Ed Land, died. Part of this of course was the film/digital transition, but even so, the collapse of polaroid was spectecular.
One thing apple employees might take particulare note of: polaroid employees had a lot of their pension in polaroid stock, and the CEOs afte Land screwed them royally beyond belief.
Re:How, indeed. (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe when Steve is gone, somebody else will take the steps necessary to introduce a little fresh air into that unhealthy (and unholy) position.
Re:How, indeed. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The same way they survived before? (Score:3, Interesting)
OpenSource Mac OS X (Score:3, Interesting)
I dont really care as long they just OpenSource Mac OS X if things go bad...
How Steve Jobs Could Survive Without Apple (Score:1, Interesting)
That's the real question!
Re:How, indeed. (Score:5, Interesting)
It may go against the typical Slashdot mentality, but being closed hasn't hurt them at all since Steve's return. It seems as though the general public, and tech crowds in particular, have a hard time getting it when it comes to putting a finger on the thing(s) that make Apple successful. What you describe as unhealthy and unholy (talk about zealotry) have given Apple a reputation of excellence in user experience and now in consumer electronics. They're far from perfect, and yes they don't always offer checkbox-to-checkbox parity when it comes to features, but they're very good at figuring out the core functionality of a product or workflow and making it as easy and unobtrusive as possible - and users respond to that.
To say they're completely closed is not entirely true either - they do use, and contribute back to, open source projects. That they don't do it in exactly the way that a vocal percentage of posters here would want them to doesn't mean they're putting themselves in an unsuccessful position. If anything, Apple has demonstrated that they're willing and able to use whatever tools are most appropriate in delivering the kinds of products they want - and that a lot of other people want, too, judging by the sales numbers.
Re:How, indeed. (Score:4, Interesting)
No, they were doing badly because the Mac suffered from stagnation. Open or closed doesn't matter so much when your product is obsolete from the start. There was very little reason to use a Mac in the 90's unless you were very specifically working in the print industry, or making music with Pro Tools. The Mac held very little appeal to the average home user.
Steve Jobs was the kick in the nuts management needed at the time, but after a decade of success, I'd think the tie-throttling imbeciles learned a thing or two about manufacturing popularity. They've been strategically acquiring 3rd party tech that fits their market, bringing all the profit in-house. They have strong relationships with the manufacturers and a retail model that sells itself with minimal effort.
Steve could retire tomorrow, and after the "ZOMG he's sick" Wall Street asshats find themselves a new zillionaire to stalk, the company will continue to do just fine. They will find a new spokesmodel, he/she will be completely forgettable, but they will be making money hand-over-fist, and that's really all that matters to them.
Re:How, indeed. (Score:3, Interesting)
But it is really Steve Jobs which, paradoxically, is holding Apple in the position of being the MOST closed company out there.
But is this unhealthy to the commercial result of Apple corp and the satisfaction of most Apple customers? Being closed also means that Apple has vertical control of everything from their online services to operating system to hardware, and Apple has generally been very good at using that control to deliver products that work very well if you stay inside Apple's garden.
I suspect most of us on /. (me included) would be pleased if Apple opened up more, but how much would Apple gain by doing that and risk alienating those that are perfectly happy in Apple's garden?
Re:How, indeed. (Score:1, Interesting)
the company will continue to do just fine
They will do just fine for a little while. As back in the 80s they coasted on the mac for a long time. But eventually they 'ran out'. They need a prick who is willing to say 'yeah that is good/no that sucks'. It really is that black and white in that company. They tried crummy product after crummy overpriced product. Badly marketed and overpriced. Even their SDK was overpriced and hard to use. Even today much of the apple exp is not because the stuff is all that much better or worse than the competition. You are buying cool when you buy apple.
Eventually cool runs out. Without steve the cool runs out. For a consumer company that sells little fun toys (which is what the ipod/iphone/imac are) cool is VERY important.
I personally would be short (aprilish) in the stock at the moment. As they are going to take a beating next quarter as people currently dont have a lot of money to spend on cool.
Re:Well (Score:4, Interesting)
Jobs founded Next which created much of the technology underlying OS X.
The success of OS X has a lot to do with the fact that the core technologies were incubated for eight years. You can go on YouTube and see Jobs' keynote presentations from when he was at Next (someone posted them in comments on /. yesterday)./p.
Re:look at polaroid (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Absolutely not! (Score:5, Interesting)
It's easy to say that, but when you take Apples "Less functional" product and set it next to a "More functional" product you can really see a difference.
You're absolutely right. Apple products are not *always* the best product. However, something many techies and "nerds" don't understand is this - most people don't care.
My mom didn't ask me for any MP3 player for Christmas. She asked me for the iPod. Why? Because it has such a huge market saturation, it looks good, it's "cool" and, at it does what she needs it to do (and somewhat easily, I might add).
Apple focuses on making their products an experience for their users. They build an image for their product. Image is *extremely* important to most people (yes...even /.ers are typically concerned about their image). Image is why Apple wins and this is something Steve Jobs understands and follows through on. It's why he's so freaken nitty-gritty about the tiniest little details of his hardware.
Re:More than preparation (Score:2, Interesting)
"The thing about imperious leaders is that they really get the job done"
Huh?
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I can probably show you a list 10x larger of companies with imperious leaders that have failed vs. those with real talent. Just look at all those dotcom companies, the big 3 automakers, and wall street. A close example to me: SGI. All 100% ego (e.g. MY idea), 3/5ths successful, but was a recipe to go down in flames. And it did.
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As a former A-type, most big headed leaders either: a. leech off everyone to say ahead (providing 0-long term value), b. always makes short term choices, c. always pushes off work to others (greedy algorithm? true application of Charles Smith principles anyone?), d. bully their way into a high profile position (in search for that BIG raise) and e. always make it appear they did the whole job. Hmmm, could be why we're in this economic mess nowadays.
Basically, A-types are good salesmen--selling the appearance they are accomplishing something. That's why in the previous example, when your top honcho left, everything collapsed for months. She didn't build a proper organization--or (not to insult anyone) your co-workers are truly a bunch of lazy azzes?
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Sure hiring an A-type makes the choice easy: they usually make the choice for you! The world evolves around themselves. But does it get the job done, I think not. It's usually a leader (A-type, B-type, C-type, whatever) that has proper training and experiences to a. tap the strengths of their subordinates, b. champion the effort, and c. mitigate/balance the needs of the marketing & sales staff to keep their head stuck to reality on their products--e.g. don't polish a turd product.
Ellison & Gates were folks that had a good product and took advantage of the time (they were the 1st). Jobs takes advantage of 'time to market' and a huge, manipulative advertising campaign--case in point, look at how many commercials of the iPhone vs. the G1. Considering HTC will sell 1 million G1 in this quarter alone to near iPhone rates is pretty good in the sea of all those iPhone ads.
Re:More than preparation (Score:1, Interesting)
Well, while Jobs was splitting his time between Apple and Pixar, I think I saw him maybe once or twice a year on campus, max. The company pretty much ran without him then, and it can probably do the same thing for at least a few years if he left.
What Apple mainly needs in a replacement for Steve if/when he leaves is somebody who is a showman---somebody good at presenting products to the public. Bring in somebody who rules with an iron fist and you'll just have half the staff quit and lose what is working.
Re:Apple's Post-Jobs Future (Score:3, Interesting)
If Apple continues to aim at the people who think that they are part of the technological elite
In reality we are. Full UNIX system that also runs photoshop.
I used to do things like repair ethernet drivers in Linux, and write code that spanned eight different flavors of UNIX as well as both VAXen and MPE. Are you SO sure you are the "elite" dude you think you are? Or are you just secretly unable to use the best tool for the task because it comes from a company you have a grudge with.
A truly elite technologist is willing to use any tool, from any company.
Re:Jobs the magician (Score:5, Interesting)
Woz and Jobs formed an almost ideal partnership, with Woz creating sublime technical solutions and Jobs knowing how to work people to make them sell.
The industry and Apple itself have changed. I'm not sure Woz would fit in at Apple. If Woz was born a couple or few decades later he'd probably be more inclined towards an open architecture platform more like a PC-style system running something like Linux. Woz made engineering an art form--his designs were efficient, elegant works of art for those who appreciates them.
Alas, it wasn't only his accident that forced him to leave--had he not had the accident he would've left of his own accord anyways. By 1984 Apple was a 2-headed beast: There was the Apple II camp, with a simple and familiar but aging open system, and the Mac camp, who were revolutionaries tasked to design an "appliance" that was friendly but totally closed. Jobs made it clear the Mac camp was the "new apple" and that the "old apple" of the II line was a legacy destined to fade away.
In designing the Apple II platform, Woz made deliberate design decisions that were completely counter to what Jobs envisioned (with Raskin's inspiration) for the Mac. For example, The Apple I (and early Apple II IIRC) came with full hardware schematics so hobbyists and third parties could create hardware interfaces. The original Mac rivaled the Apple I and II for elegant, simple design but those inner workings were a closely held secret (especially the software/firmware on which so much of the original Mac's functionality relied).
It goes on from there: The Apple I was a bare board and the Apple II had a user-removable panel to access the mainboard and add cards. The Mac was completely sealed and cracking the case open voided the warranty. Woz deliberately added expansion slots to the Apple II because he saw the Apple I's lack of expansion slots as a shortcoming. Jobs issued a strict edict that expansion slots--especially internal slots but even external ones--were banned from the original Mac design.
Woz was essential to the company's early success for his engineering talent--he could make amazingly capable hardware that was amazingly simple and low cost. Jobs provided the motivating force to make it friendly. He insisted on an Apple II case with rounded corners with a colour similar to the inside of an apple. He presented challenges to Woz, who loved to take on challenges.
The thing is--there isn't a Woz-type engineer at Apple anymore, nor does there need to be. From an engineering standpoint, absolutely NOTHING Apple sells today is the least bit groundbreaking. The Mac is just a very attractive looking PC with DRM measures locking the software to it. The iPod is no more technically capable than the Zune or Archos or whatever.
Apple is primarily a leading marketing and industrial design firm. It makes beautiful products and successfully convinces people they are "cool". That is "Jobs territory" and is why engineering talent at Apple is secondary. Departure of Jobs will be painful for Apple, and the degree of pain will depend on whether a handful of VP-level people with "design" and marketing talents will stick around. Even if everyone sticks around when Jobs retires it will be painful. Jobs didn't come up with any of the successful products Apple now sells--he didn't design them or even come up with the idea. Crucially, however, he had an eye for picking winners. If Scully were at the helm, he'd have shut down the iPod project because music players were not Apple's focus, and macs would have all the style of a Dell with none of the compatibility. If they pick a Jobs replacement that lacks his talent for picking winning ideas Apple will flounder for years.
Re:Absolutely not! (Score:5, Interesting)
I think you have a narrow view of "real advances". The job of most devices is to be useful for their users. Often the real bottleneck for people getting things done with computers or similar devices is in the device's interface. If research and development work goes into making those interfaces better people will actually get more done. Tab completion, for example, is just polish on the old shell, but it saves me a lot more time entering many commands than a new processor would save my computer in executing them. Often a drag-and-drop GUI would save me even more.
I don't own a single Apple product, as it happens, and usually when I comment on Apple articles I get flamed for supposedly hating on Apple. I, probably like you, think that no product or company deserves love or devotion; I save those things for my friends and family. I think a lot of Apple fans misinterpret that attitude for malice. You're not wrong because you hate Apple, you're wrong because you don't appreciate the importance of user-facing design.
I would argue culture is effusive (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, that's exactly my point: the two Steves have completely different approaches to management, and there are as many different management styles as managers.
That's true, but Steve Jobs has a management style that lets individuals in the company succeed with good products, while Balmer (and those before him) have styles that for whatever reason basically trap the best R&D people in a prison of irrelevance. While Apple builds the next iPhone, Microsoft is busy preparing the next Surface.
No one persons style can easily overcome a company culture that has spent decades forming. That's why life under Balmer is essentially like life under Bill, and will remain so - and why life without Steve would carry forward for a long time on a similar path. Eventually change might come but you can't change a culture easily, especially not one baked in by someone with a strong personality who has picked people to lead that are intended to carry forth the vision they have.