So Who's Running Apple Now? 399
An anonymous reader writes "With Steve Jobs stepping down from heading Apple for at least six months who's running the company that he resurrected? This article names the three people who will try to keep things running. But you have to wonder whether they'll have the charisma needed to keep Apple cool..."
It's not charisma (Score:5, Insightful)
It's vision. Steve Jobs was able to lead his teams to build products that people wanted. Through constant focus on the user and the user's experience, Apple was able to grab a huge majority of the portable music player market. Their focus on ease of use and "just works" capabilities garnered them a significant chunk of the PC market.
These are not because Jobs is especially charismatic (though he is). He was simply able to get his employees to stop thinking about features and capabilities. He got them to think instead about the tasks that users would want to do and then find the best way to let them do it.
stevejobs != apple (Score:2, Insightful)
How is Apples "cool"? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think once we get outside the little geek and nerd demograph of Slashdot you'll find that a majority of Apple's cashflow has less to do with Jobs and more to do with that little logo. Hell, if it was up to Slashdot "cool" they would bring back Woz!
Apple doesn't need cool, they just need Itunes. (Score:5, Insightful)
During Jobs last tenure at Apple, he did something incredible. He convinced a majority of record labels, artists, and producers to sell music electronically. Remember, this happened *AFTER* the music industry got a swift kick in the ass from the first round of P2P apps.
Though not the first to do it, it was the amount of music available on Itunes that got everyone else to do the lemmings thing, and jump aboard. Apple has secured themselves as a modern day music distributor.
Thank you for making it less sucky to get music Mr Jobs. I think it will be hard for anyone to screw up the perpetuating awesomeness that you created. Have a nice rest sir.
Re:Did I miss the news? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It's not charisma nor vision (Score:1, Insightful)
Don't forget his amazing arrogance and brutal manners. He single-handedly broke Apple's MacOS licensing agreements. He's responsible for the Intel transition, and the fact that Intel Macs don't run Classic (or any older Mac software from 2004 or earlier). Without his arrogance, Apple may actually start really listening to their users. They might allow people to select font sizes and colors in the user interface, for example. They might even come out with products that people want, like a mini-tower and a tablet. It wouldn't be the Apple we know today.
Re:Did I miss the news? (Score:5, Insightful)
as long as they keep concentrating on things they're good at, and not wandering aimlessly into dozens of disparate and mundane product areas
...like a portable MP3 player, an online record store, a UNIX-based operating system that runs on Intel processors, and a cell phone. Wandering into those areas would definitely be bad for the company.
Oh wait.
Sometimes wandering into new areas is a good thing - you just have to know which new areas to wander into, and which ones to avoid. Jobs has been good at that.
I bought stock (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Did I miss the news? (Score:5, Insightful)
Often on slashdot we read comments about how Apple is just selling commodity hardware. Nobody who actually owns an macbook pro would say that, or an ipod touch or an iphone. The reason is that they can look beyond just the processor speed and ram and actually see the magsafe connector, or the firewire 800, or the accelerometer that shuts down the hard drive when the laptop falls or whatever $FEATURE that the competition left out of their $500 notebook. The best way I can put it, is that watching those keynote addresses in the 2000s has been like the early days of computers, when they were fun, rather than a mundane commodity. (E.g., here's one of Phil Schiller jumping from ~20 feet up up with a macbook [tuaw.com] to demonstrate the accelerometer.)
The question is, how much did Steve jobs have to do with that? Obviously, the same hardware engineers and programmers are still working at Apple. How much did Jobs need to persuade the board of Apple to put the time into being innovative rather than pursue more short-term gains that would be good for the quarterly results? I don't know. I do know that at least one board member, Al Gore, does have the vision and the patience for long-term gains. (Al Gore trolls, you can go straight to hell.)
two problems (Score:3, Insightful)
2) WOZ lost some of his mental capabilities in a near-fatal airplane accident. He cant really concentrate long enough to repeat his fantastic inventions. He has a good heart and tries to help people.
Re:It's not charisma nor vision (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure. Marketing. That's all it is. So that's how Apple came to dominate the MP3 market.
See really the other players like the Nomad were light years ahead but failed to due to marketing. Never mind that its interface was cumbersome. Never mind that it was larger than a portable CD player. Never mind that the Nomad could not be used as portable HD. Never mind it took many steps and hours for it to sync up. Never mind that it had a 45 min battery life. The iPod beat it on pure marketing.
Or the other flash based players like the Diamond Rio were far superior. Never mind it could only hold maybe a dozen songs. Never mind that the software was buggy and the interface was poor. Never mind that newer models didn't really offer any more features except more capacity and flawed USB compatibility. Yes, Diamond lost because of poor marketing.
I admit that Apple has good marketing but to attribute the entire success of Apple to marketing is to ignore that they've succeeded by designing geek gadget to non-geeks. The majority of the population is non-geek who want their stuff to work well right out of the box.
Re:Who cares? (Score:3, Insightful)
Because great products are more than just a list of features. And your quality argument is absurd.
You confuse Average with Simple (Score:5, Insightful)
He has always tried to get the technical side to understand that Apple has to design for average people.
Actually, that is overly simplistic and not a good analysis of why Apple succeeds - though it's a common misconception. Let's look at your list.
Macintosh: OS and UI designed for an average person not wanting to type in commands.
Actually, the UI is designed to have sensible common defaults and an easy to use UI, but someone "wanting to type in commands" also has the whole UNIX subsystem to access for more flexibility.
iPod: portable media player with a UI designed for an average person. Form factor dictated by what an average person would want.
Designed from the ground up to simply play music, but move most of the song management features off the device and onto the computer. The fact is there are a lot of more advanced features the "average" person might not use (like random play of albums, on the go playlists, sped-up audiobook playback).
iTunes: music (and later other media) software and distribution system designed for ease of use to an average person.
Designed to minimize the amount of actions required to give Apple money and get something back in a usable form (just talking about the store here since management features really belong with discussions about iPod/iPhone).
iPhone: smart phone with a UI designed for an average person. If you've ever used another smart phone, you'd know how maddeningly simple an iPhone is compared to other smart phones.
Designed to make all of the common smartphone operations as direct to use as possible, and again move more complex management of core data off device. I've used other smartphones, thanks, which is why I have an iPhone - because the others offered "maddingly" complex interactions with the system to do the simplest things.
What do all these items have in common? It's not designing for the "average" user. It's looking at what the device is meant for, and simplifying operation as much as possible before then building complexity back on top once you arrive at the core of purpose for the device/software. There is a huge difference in that in understanding this, you can somewhat predict product evolution after initial product delivery in a way you could not if you were saying "well what does the average user like". If Apple designed for the "Averge" user they'd have the same checklist-drived designed by comitte products most other competitors spit out, instead of being a thought leader in virtually every area they enter.
Take for instance the G4 Cube. Rumors has it that was Steve Job's personal favorite. But it didn't sell well at all and was replaced by the Mac mini. The former Steve Jobs might have kept it in the market longer despite poor sales. The newer one allowed it to be retired.
Why would the old Steve Jobs have done that? Being forced out and then coming back with Apple in tatters only reinforced his core belief that his own views on how to run product lines were correct. When did the old Steve Jobs hang onto a product line for emotional reasons? Early accounts don't seem to indicate emotion was involved in decisions much at all.
Re:stevejobs != apple (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's not charisma nor vision (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple sells integration. Integration is a feature that MOST people want. The iPod IS missing the feature to play OGG or $FOSS_AUDIOFORMAT. But if you ever break out of your cube you'll see that no one cares other than slashdot. Not everyone wants to spend the time keeping their digital library sorted. With iTunes (and properly tagged files) I can sync what I want. Podcasts, Movies, TV shows, all sync. Shows I've watched unsynced. Watch/listen counts etc.
The same with the iPhone or even OS X. When my cousin went to Israel to study they all got iSights. iChat 'just worked'. Not AIM, not Skype not anything else, iChat. No fighting with firewalls or the such.
The same with Bonjour/ZeroConf. Yes it's an open standard but Apple was one of the first people to actually start using it widely. If you get 5 Macs in the same room, turn on wireless everyone can see each other. No fighting with an internal ip addresses. All Bonjour enabled applications just show up. iChat contacts, HTTP servers, SSH machines, etc. I can't even get Windows XP at work to MultiHome correctly without doing stupid stuff with routing. On my Mac it works. I can set two internal network addresses and ping computers on both with on problem.
Microsoft couldn't/didn't even get the Zune to work with THEIR "Plays for Sure" DRM.
Re:Disney & Jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple is going to either need someone with a vision and business acuity equal to Jobs, or someone who is able to channel Jobs like Eisner did Disney. ;-)
Eisner channeled Disney like Stalin channeled Lenin. (hey, at least it ain't a Hitler reference!) He may have returned the company to profitability but he helped ruin what made Disney special.
Here's a good case in point: Epcot. Originally this was supposed to be a world showcase and a city of tomorrow and a living test lab for future tech. The vision was grandiose and many people had no idea where Walt was going with it. Those who knew where he was going weren't even sure if it was practical. After he died, management had no idea what to do with it. Rather than follow through with his vision, they just turned it into another Orlando theme park. "Hey, it's a people trap built by a mouse. We understand this!"
Dreams and vision have to have a practical side to pay the bills, big ideas ain't supported by pixie dust and wishes alone, but the ruthlessly pragmatic can suck all the life and energy out of something beautiful in the quest for money.
Apple's biggest danger is entering an era of bean counter mediocrity. Live for the quarterly earnings statement, have no vision beyond that point, maximize profit at the expense of doing anything else with the company, play it safe with unambitious ideas, and become what Microsoft is today. (yeah, I know some wags will say "What, insanely profitable? You anti-MS fag" and the like, but I think Microsoft is in serious trouble and when people look back with perspective, the Vista era is when the leaks started to spring. It'll be a long time in sinking but I think we've seen the MS high-water mark.)
Re:stevejobs != apple (Score:5, Insightful)
You could say the same of Fidel Castro. He's just one person in a country.
But if it comes down to accepting or rejecting the design of the iPod, the iPhone or any of the Macs then yes. It does matter.
He didn't figure out how to make a laptop out of a single piece of a aluminum, but he's the one that dictated that he wanted it done.
Re:It's not charisma nor vision (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't buy on features and price. I also do not buy on "hip" and "cool". I buy on effectiveness. For me, Apple's products always seem to have way higher effectiveness/effort ratio. I've owned a lot of phones, but the 3G iPhone is one of the only ones I've used almost all the features on. My Mac has a really nice suite of software from Apple and smaller third parties and always seems to just do what I want. Each version of MacOS X has been unequivocally better than the last and arguably one of the best on the market. The iPod integrates really easily with iTunes and the Music Store, as well as a zillion clock radios, cars, exercise machines, airplanes, etc.
Their products answer needs. Yes, their margins are higher which means you can probably buy a cheaper knock-off elsewhere. But I'm willing to pay a little bit more to not have to spend time thinking about all the complications.
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. All those things make it harder to design a cohesive interface that does what people want.
Most people don't give a flying fuck about removable SD cards, OGG support, voice recording, FM tuners or a particular PC software player. They want something they can hook up to their computer and get music they got from something they put a CD in to get music, or clicked a button to get music. That is what 90% of the people buying players want, and they want it to be easy.
Which is why they buy iPods, not other players that come with shitty PC software and are full of hard-to-navigate menus full of features they don't give a crap about.
I've used a number of other players. I've tried the Walkman, the iRiver and a Sansa. I mean, really tried. I used the iRiver for a year and a half. And the iPod is hands down, *much* easier to use than any of those.
Re:Apple doesn't need cool, they just need Itunes. (Score:0, Insightful)
less sucky to get music? are you serious? if i'm going to buy music, i'm getting a physical copy. buying mp3s makes no sense to me at all. the band makes a few pennies and you get nothing but a couple of files on your computer. if i'm not supporting the band and only supporting the record companies and apple i'm going to get something i can physically have and hold and has a lot more value to me.
haha. less sucky. you're crazy.
give it a rest (Score:3, Insightful)
And what is that crap about Intel Macs not running software from before 2004? That's just a lie, and you probably know it.
Additional bullshit correction is left as an exercise to the reader.
Re:It's not charisma nor vision (Score:3, Insightful)
Great! More power to you.
Now, does it bother you when others form their own opinions and choose differently? Really?
-dZ.
Re:two problems (Score:2, Insightful)
Woz was at IDF in San Francisco last summer. He spoke insightfully and lucidly for around an hour, then hung around for another hour or more signing copies of his book, iWoz, and chatting to delegates. Maybe his concentration was affected by the plane crash, but these days he's more switched on than most of the people in my office...
Re:Did I miss the news? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Did I miss the news? (Score:2, Insightful)
If Apple just want to get big among costumers all they need to do is to start selling the OS and applications for any computer.
You obviously don't understand Apple's business model.
Apple was never about market dominance in the computer industry since Steve Jobs returned. They have been about margins, incredibly lucrative profit margins. They achieved that by having superior customer service (especially in the eye's of the unknowledgeable computer user) and nice computers. They threw away the cheap variety that Dell/HP/Gateway etc. offered and decided they would make a select few systems and market and sell them like crazy. I don't know the numbers but I would assume that on a per-purchase basis apple spends considerably more on marketing than any other computer firm.
The iPod is a completely different beast but that doesn't really apply to your statement because you were talking about software, and that the iPod is not.
Re:Did I miss the news? (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree completely, but I would personally put greater emphasis on the fact that when Jobs re-took Apple's helm, they were in a desperate need of person who would be perceived as a phoenix-like leader who could resurrect their once powerful company from its impending doom. This is probably precisely why some people erroneously assume that the death of Jobs will mean the death of Apple, because he had so much to do with its rebirth. However, a majority of Apple's customer base knows no other Apple but the One Jobs Built Yet Know Not His Name. Does your average iBook wielding, iPod sporting college student really know who Jobs is, and how important he was to the revival of the company? No. Do they like their flashy toys? You bet. Will they buy another one when their last toy broke? Probably.
Oh, and Jobs & Co. managed to convince Microsoft to invest $150 million into the company in 1997, which was effectively announced as a "truce", and helps to underline the fact that Apple was not resurrected by only one man. Read this old Time Magazine article http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,986850,00.html/ [time.com] (about Microsoft's deal) and this one http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,986849,00.html/ [time.com] (focusing more on Steve Jobs) - both are in the same issue. I remember it pretty vividly as I was a teenager at the time who was the only kid in school with a Macintosh. At the time, the Apple fanatics (these were *true* apple fanatics, the ones that kept the company on life support for years who make many 'fanboys' today look like milquetoasts) booed at the decision, but I don't believe anyone except for perhaps Steve Jobs and a few others actually knew what it signified. It meant that Apple was essentially withdrawing from the big business game, and Microsoft would help Apple get more into the "Home" game by porting Microsoft Office to the Mac OS - the game that Apple originally started out playing in the first place. It also helped that Apple had a *lot* of good press from Time. I'm not aware of any large joint-stock holders that had large investments in both companies, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were true.
Personally I feel that Apple does not need Jobs any more - they have captured the attention of the market that they have always wanted to serve , casual users and people willing to shell out extra cash for fewer headaches at home. They will survive even in this horrific economy because while people are willing to take fewer risks these days, people will still need personal computers at home. This means that they will look more for reliability, and I will bet that they will be willing to spend a premium on a computer that they percie
Re:Who cares? (Score:3, Insightful)
And that would work for the same reason that people would buy a BMW if it had square tires and was fueled by candy corn, of course! Or for the same reason that people would buy a Volvo if looking at the car the wrong way would cause it to crash and burst into flames!
Does Apple do a great job of marketing? Absolutely.
Is the marketing overblown and hyperbolic? Often.
Would they be so profitable if there wasn't some substance to back up that reputation? Not a chance.
On a related note, without the Apple iPod, how would you be able to feel smugly superior to the sheeple who don't have the refined taste and discernment that you obviously do?
You are not your consumer lifestyle. Identifying yourself as "anti-Apple" is just as fucking ridiculous as defining yourself as "pro-Apple". If the product doesn't do what you want, spend your money on one of the many alternatives that has the feature list you want, and get some perspective.
Re:Did I miss the news? (Score:2, Insightful)
What Steve Jobs has been good at is saying that Apple would not be good at specific areas, then having people scream and shout about how much they want those products after Apple has said they would not make those products.
That man is above all else a showman. He is the PT Barnum of our time. I am not saying that Apple products are not top notch, I have all of them, but what I am saying is he knows how to get what he wants out of people and that is RARE in ANY industry let alone the tech industry.
Did you see the pud at the Pre launch? That guy had as much charisma as my bath soap.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)