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.'"
This goes for many companies (Score:4, Insightful)
Meh... Same thing could be said about Oracle or Microsoft. Answer is; it depends.
Re:This goes for many companies (Score:5, Insightful)
More than preparation (Score:5, Insightful)
I worked for an organization which was carved out of the main organization by the sheer force of will and vision of a single manager who became it's head. She then made life impossible for every type-A person in her organization and put very skillful and considerate but not type-A people in as her subbordinates.
everything worked great till she left for the next job. Then for ten years nothing got done, no initiatives lasted longer than 6 months everthing was adrift. A succession of managers drawn from her subborindates got us no where. Finally someone from the outside was brought it and things got a bit better.
The thing about imperious leaders is that they really get the job done. It matters less that they make perfect decisions but that they make a series of connected decisions related to a driving vision. if some decisions are sub-optimal they still are part of the path forward because no one is second guessing the slow progress and everybody is working as a team.
Jobs had both visions, aggression and a sense of style. Apple sells style but does john Ives have the cojones to command?
I can only judge shiller and Ives by their brief appearances but they seem a bit too jolly to me.
It's also not enough to be a tough guy. You actually have to have skills too. That's what happened when Jobs got forced out by the mangerial power plays. Tougher guys without jobs skill and understanding took over and ran it into the ground.
You need the whole package. Jobs is that guy. The question is not if he's trained his subordinates, but if he scared off all the type-A guys with real skill?
What about that dude that wrote Beos? Maybe he'd be someone with some vision and force of personality? How about some of those Execs that started TransMeta?
Or maybe Fake-Steve.
Re:More than preparation (Score:5, Funny)
maybe Bill gates would like a second chance without all the MS baggage to try out his visions.
Re:More than preparation (Score:5, Funny)
You owe me a new keyboard.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm picturing Bill Gates, in a black polo neck, with spectacles designed by Johnathan Ive.
No you got it all wrong. The only way for Apple to survive post Steve Jobs, is for Steve to hand pick the type of successor that will urinate on his grave as soon as he is gone. The idea is not to share Steve's vision, but to have a vision as grand as Steve's and go about realizing it in aa Steve like manner.
If Bill Gates were to take over, he would take the company in a very non apple and non Microsoft like direction. He should also continue to get his haircut at the lemon tree and fly coach. If he doesn't
Re:This goes for many companies (Score:5, Funny)
I think Microsoft or Oracle would get along just fine without Steve Jobs.
Absolutely not! (Score:5, Insightful)
Everytime I see a new Apple discussion - like before (and after) the iPhone introduction or now on various products - I see a big set of geeks just not GET IT. By it, I mean the popularity of Apple products, by doing a checklist feature comparison like the back of a software box - as if all checkmarks indicated the same quality. Not all checkmarks are created equal;)
Anyway, I would suggest that Apple look at how Fashion powerhouses handle succession, and not the typical technology company. Perhaps it would give them a better idea how to handle transistion in a creative enterprise and not just a purely technical one.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Absolutely not! (Score:5, Funny)
No.
Chanel, Hilfinger and many more have thrived or even gotten bigger after the death of the founder. Valentino also comes to mind and if I go look at a copy of Vogue I could give you a half a dozen other names.
But I'm not going to do that because I'm not gay. Really.
Honey, come here and tell these guys I'm not gay.
Re:Absolutely not! (Score:5, Informative)
Er,... Hardy Amies?
Versace? OK, so Donatella's still flogging crap but doncha wish she wasn't?
Yves St Laurent?
Ironically, I am a bit of a poof, but I don't own a stitch of designer clothing.
Re:Absolutely not! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Absolutely not! (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean not all check marks are as shiny as others?
No, I don't get it. The iPhone is not a quantum leap in smart phones. It's pretty, sure, apple design their stuff well, but it's not revolutionary. Neither is/was the iPod. More than that, apple take steps to lock people in to their software and hardware interfaces.
So yes, pretty, generally a good UI. However I'm damned if I'm running iTunes or letting Steve decide what I can do with my phone.
Life isn't just about checkmarks, but releasing a product with less checkmarks and then hyping it as the way forward gets to some folks.
Re:Absolutely not! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
I'm not a fan of their computers, and I don't think much of their design decisions there. But take the iPod vs Every other music player, and it's just sad. Sure, other had more space, sure others supported more codecs, but the iPod blows them away in usability and style (except in the never-to-be-sufficiently-damned annoyance of having to get a third party app to get music off the iPod on to a new computer.)
Likewise the iPhone. It's slick and intuitive. Sure there were more functional crackberries and palms out there, but they didn't have the full touchscreen, and they didn't have the same sort of development environment...Crippled as it is, people are lining up to make apps for the iPhone.
And what happens after the iPhone comes out? Everyone else gets a touchscreen phone. They look similar. They have the same or better features. And they just don't work as well. The Blackberry "Storm" is a dog...The software support is terrible, and it's not as responsive.
They make decisions that cause problems for high end users, but we are the niche, not everyone else. And techies are still getting the iPhone, they're just bitching about it.
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:Absolutely not! (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? It's normal. You aren't a lawyer, but you must obey and make choices about the law. You aren't a doctor, but you mush make choices about your health. You aren't a chef, but you must cook your food (or spend a fortune in restaurants, I guess). We are all required, as part of daily life, to make choices about things that we understand imperfectly or not at all. This is one of the reasons that corporations and governments seems more powerful than individuals. They can afford to higher one or more experts in many fields and make their decisions based on expert advice from those people. People who are not programmers or systems administrators are often forced to make decisions about their own personal IT, despite the fact that they understand it imperfectly. For that matter, even people who are "experts" in a field often make choices which are either arguably bad or demonstratively bad even in their own "expert" field (doctors who smoke, lawyers who get caught :-P, etc).
Some might argue that as a programmer/sys admin I made such a choice when I bought an iPhone myself. Personally I'm happy with the choice, the device does what I want in the way I want it to most of the time (it's hardly perfect, but it works for me much more often than not). Never the less, according to many people on this site and others I made a bad choice, and all the worse for being an "expert" in the field. Really though, when you think about it, even with non-experts making the choices absolute crap rarely prospers in the face of stiff competition unless the absolute crap has some sort of entrenched advantage (even then it fades eventually).
Even the most obvious example, Windows, shows this. Despite the huge advantages Windows has in the OS market, the really poor releases rarely proper. Bob, Me, and Vista all show this. Even XP failed to gain traction until the worst of its problems had been well and thoroughly resolved. I'd still rather have Linux or OSX on my boxes but XP isn't complete crap. I use it here at work and it does what I need it to the vast majority of the time without being to horribly slow or difficult. There are always exception of course, sometime crap beats out the better choice, but mostly the better choice gets adopted eventually.
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.
Re:Absolutely not! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
No, you really can't. For example, the iPod, which you mentioned, isn't anything particularly special (for the vast majority of models).
See, you completely miss the point. The innovation with the iPod wasn't the iPod, but iTunes. 99-cents a song for a very large selection, just plug in your iPod and the friendly interface guides people to put music on it. Other companies made you purchase music elsewhere and import it into their syncing software. What Apple saw was a gap--not one in the mp3 player technology, but in the hurdles people had to jump over to get music on them.
Re:Absolutely not! (Score:5, Insightful)
Because they had it when it mattered (Score:5, Insightful)
Disclaimer: I'm not an Apple fanboy, I don't even like Apple, and the Cult Of Jobs makes me want to puke. But even I can see why the iPod ended up on top.
See, I actually wanted to buy an MP3 player waay back then, and honestly, the iPod was the only sane choice. I actually got a CD-based one instead, but if I had decided to go with a HD based one, it was iPod or nothing.
Let me tell you some of the other offerings were as big as a freaking brick, for a start. (I seem to remember an Archos like that, for example.) They looked like two 3" HDD's stacked on top of each other. It made my old high-school cassette player look positively sleek by comparison. And I'm not even talking about one of those newfangled small Walkmen, but about a big old thing.
Some had an interface that was plain old crap and unintuitive. E.g., it took Creative _years_ to fix their bloody interface into something actually usable.
A lot were actually more expensive than the iPod. Some could actually justify it by having included some extra features... that nobody wanted, or not at that price. Some were more expensive than a freaking laptop. For some, I'm not even sure WTF was their excuse. They seemed to be just bigger, uglier, clunkier and more expensive for it. That was a tendency that continued for _years_: trying to be the iPod killer by costing $1000 or close to that. Heh.
Etc.
The iPod may not have been the absolute best in any one given category. But on the whole it sucked the least. As debatable compromises went, Apple hit the sweet spot with their product. It was the compromise that looked the most palatable.
Basically, sure, you can blame it on fashion and (thus) ubiquity _now_, but think of it this way: it had to start from zero at some point. You can't use your market leader position until you actually win that position in the first place. And back then, IMHO Apple won it fair and square.
Re:Absolutely not! (Score:4, Insightful)
Apples key selling feature is usability.
Not the looks, not the tech, not the numbers features or anything else.
Usability.
Their stuff is the easiest to use.
That's the core of the Apple magic. It's a combination of targeting the right market, ergonomics and interface design.
Their goal is to make devices that you never struggle with to get them to do what you want. They often succeed.
After having used Windows and Linux for decades, I'm since a year an Apple convert. And being a software developer myself, I am amazed again and again how well designed it is and how well it works and how good it is at not annoying me.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm going to try something bold, a car analogy.
Linux is like a classic 60's car and OSX (and iPods, iPhone etc.) is like a modern bmw (and let's just say the Windows is like a mazda, or ford, or whatnot). The gear heads love the classic 60's car because they can tinker with it and play around with the guts to truly enjoy the car just as Linux people love their systems because they can tinker with them and make them do exactly what they want. Conversely, most people that aren't gear heads would hate to own
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Just because something is popular, doesn't imply it's popular on its creative merits. Britney Spears is a lot more popular than Sonic Youth, for example.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
She looks better than sonic youth
Have you seen her lately?
Re:Absolutely not! (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you're right, that in some sense Apple is more a fashion company than a tech company.
But I also think they're something else. Fashion usually wants to do it different and is often not very usable.
In contrast, what makes Apple good is the focus on usability over anything else. Yes it usually looks nice, but I feel that's often a by product of trying to make the most useful appliance not the goal.
I don't really know what to compare them to, I don't think there is a company in the world that focusses so much on usability as Apple does.
Not Possible (Score:5, Funny)
How Apple Could Survive Without Steve Jobs
No, I'm sorry, it's just not possible.
You see, cancer was also a chance to have an operation where they inserted a tiny chip into his body to track his heart beat. In turn, it relays a message of his heart beat to his iPhone which is always on him. That relays it to a satellite receiver which sends the message back down to earth to the triggers on 4 pounds of C4 placed carefully around the support base of each Apple building telling it not to blow up. If it doesn't receive that message, no more Apple.
A bit eccentric, I know--but most geniuses are.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Been reading Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash [amazon.com] , have you?
It was also in the 1997 movie Spawn.
Captain! Reality Distortion Field buckling! (Score:3, Funny)
She kenna take much more of this!
Re:Not Possible (Score:5, Funny)
Uh (Score:3, Insightful)
isn't suicide by definition a voluntary act?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I see you are unfamiliar with ancient Rome. Or shogunate Japan. Pity the CEOs of the banks we bailed out don't have that sense of honor.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
But Microsoft is going to parachute in on us! They're going to shoot some of our innocent babies. They'll torture our children! They'll torture some of our people here! They'll torture our seniors! The ones that they take captured, they're gonna let them grow up and be dummies! We didn't commit suicide, we committed an act of revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an inhumane world.
Re: (Score:2)
I think Apple could survive for a while if they stockpiled on enough black turtlenecks. However, I'm afraid the RDF will pose a greater risk as its effect will steadily diminish after death, in a manner similar to radioactive decay. So the main question at this point is what's the RDF's half-life?
Re: (Score:2)
I see what you did there.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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: (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.
Re:About as well as Disney survived with Walt (Score:5, Funny)
Thats because it is owned by Steve Jobs. [Humor]
Re:About as well as Disney survived with Walt (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
>>>Disney without walt has exploded.
Did you even bother to READ WHAT I WROTE? I was specifically discussing Disney between the time of Walt's death, and the mid-1980s. I then specified that AFTER the mid-80s, they got a new CEO with vision who restored the company to what it is today.
Read the fucking article...er, posts.
>>>If Apple does that, they WILL become bigger than microsoft.
Yes but if it follows the pattern of the Disney Company, it won't happen until 20 years after Steve Jobs' de
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I think we give Steve Jobs a bit to much credit. A hidden key part of Apples growth in Mac Sales, is the simple fact most of programs we run today are via (mostly, kinda sorta) open standards AKA the Web. Think about all those crazy applications that you had way back then before the late 90's. An Encyclopedia and Full dictionary, other resource applications all needed to be on physical media which you put in your system and run by your system. A slew of games even ones of cheap quality (even for the
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Ultimately it might end-up in the same state as Commodore (which also lost its visionary CEO and slowly but surely died-out).
If being directly responsible for the computer industry crash of 1983 is what passes as "visionary" to you, well I have a C64 to sell you for the low low price of $99. Jack Tramiel was a loose cannon, so desperate to beat everyone that he beat his own company, by bargaining it out of existence. At that point, everyone was bleeding money, so he did the unconscionable and bought Atari's dying corpse for a song, and then used it as leverage to dick around with Amiga through his creative interpretations of co
WTF? (Score:2, Insightful)
Someone is fighting his cancer and the media is already choosing a coffin?
Re:WTF? (Score:5, Informative)
It's actually very few forms of cancer that can be completely cured, which is why people working in medicine talk about cancer survival rates rather than the percentage cured. You're talking about the percentage of patients who survive the first 5 years after being diagnosed - after that, all bets are off.
It's quite heartbreaking to hear people talking about fighting their cancer and how it has been cured - when you have been treated successfully, your cancer goes into remittance, but chances are that it'll be back; usually the best you can hope for is that you've postponed the inevitable for a few more years. And when it does come back, it's often more aggressive and systemic than before; frequently to the point that all that can be done is treat the symptoms to ease the patient's passing.
Even though Jobs' form of cancer has an extremely good survival rate, he wasted time before getting treatment, increasing the opportunity for it to grow and metastasize. I'm not saying it will definitely come back, and no doubt his prognosis is better than many other forms of cancer - but it has been 4 and a half years since he was diagnosed, so shortly the published survival rates will mean very little.
We the public are not privy to his medical records, so all we can do is talk about odds - and the odds are rarely good when dealing with cancer. Although planning his funeral may be premature, talk of the future of the company is only fair, especially for a company that appears to owe so much of its success to just one man.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, Lance's cycling team - Cofidis - gave him up for dead, too. In hindsight, I'm sure they still support that decision.
Re:WTF? (Score:5, Informative)
Lance should have been dead. if Lance was literally anyone other than Lance he WOULD have been dead. The treatment plan IIRC was "we'll give you enough chemo to kill any two ordinary people and count on the fact that you're Lance Armstrong to keep you alive long enough for it work". Somewhat to everyone's surprise this turned out to be a highly effective plan. Lance's survival was mostly due to the fact that his cardio/vascular system practically qualifies him as an X-Man.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Seeing as what happened to his balls, I think you meant EX-Man.
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: (Score:3, Interesting)
The same way they survived before? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
They did, but only barely. I recall hearing that shortly before they acquired NEXT that the chief executives were shopping the company around, hoping to get bought out. However no one even wanted to buy them.
Apple of 1985 is very different from the Apple of 2008, however. I would say that Apple is much, much more popular now than it was then. While the Mac probably hasn't gained much marketshare since then, the popularity of the iPod and iPhone have given Apple a pretty solid foundation right now. In the sh
Lame half baked article with sliding premise (Score:3, Insightful)
Rinse and repeat
Inevitable (Score:4, Insightful)
Already people are discussing Apple's time-line, and how poorly they did without Jobs. The real point is the product that turned Apple around was not a computer, but a music player. The reason the iPod did not exist sooner was because the technology did not exist. Hard drives could not be made that small, color LCD panels were too expensive for consumer use, battery life was too short, etc. So did Steve Jobs merely come back to Apple when the iPod was simply an inevitability? Was he responsible for that inevitability ending up under Apple's control instead of Sony or Pioneer, etc?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
But none that captured the public's mind share quite as much and in such a great way.
Re:Inevitable (Score:5, Insightful)
It was a significant part of computer sales for a season, and Apple's first real stab into non-design for years.
The iMac is part of how Apple has been so profitable, market at every price point, but have your low end lack features, so nobody can make do that need a little more. The iPod shuffle for example has less features than the original MP3 player (no screen), yet it is Apple, and cheap.
If you want a real MP3 player, you need to buy the overpriced Nano (well it fluctuates between reasonable and overpriced, depending on where it is in life cycle).
The iPod already dominated before the color screens even, it was just better looking, and smaller. There essentially isn't even a competing HD based MP3 player market anymore.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well (Score:4, Informative)
The fact that a lot of people buy a MacBook Air despite its ridiculous price/performance ratio and solely for its form factor, is saying a lot about the importance of the package technology comes in. Same for the iPhone: from a pure functional point of view it's not a very good phone, and it has a few issues that we would not accept from any other manufacturer, but still people are literally lining up to get their hands on one. Despite some important areas where the iPhone performs poorly, there are other things like the form factor, design and ease-of-use where it outshines the competition.
And it's precisely design, form factor and ease-of-use where Steve Jobs has a lot of influence. Perhaps not directly as a designer, but as a (purportedly) insanely demanding critic. Someone ascribed Apple's success as a trendsetter in design to this; where other companies design for an identified or assumed market segment, Apple designs for Steve Jobs, a rich gadget freak who happens to have a decent taste.
Re:Well (Score:4, Insightful)
Minor nitpick, but I think it's misleading to speak of "functionality" separate from "ease-of-use." One of the roots of Apple's continued success is their understanding that for a very large percentage of consumers, if a particular function isn't easy to use, it might as well not exist. My cellphone technically has a web browser in it, but it's so awkward that it might as well not be there. I haven't used it in years, despite the fact that I've often been in positions where looking something up real quick would've been useful. The same goes for my phone's mp3 player. Despite the laundry list of functionality that was printed on the box it came in, my phone might as well do nothing other than make calls and display the time, because that's all I can use it for without it driving me crazy.
Not only Apple products where design is paramount (Score:3, Insightful)
Same for the iPhone: from a pure functional point of view it's not a very good phone, and it has a few issues that we would not accept from any other manufacturer
That's completely false. I would have gladly accepted the iPhone as is lock, stock and barrel from any other manufacturer - especially Palm. Think of all the people that accepted more limited functionality with worse for factors in smart phones for years, just to get the functionality they offered...
You are right that design (which encompasses us
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:Well (Score:4, Informative)
> the MacBook Air ONLY has its form factor going for it
That's like saying that the only thing going for drills is that you can make holes with them.
OpenSource Mac OS X (Score:3, Interesting)
I dont really care as long they just OpenSource Mac OS X if things go bad...
Apple would do a lot better if... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know how fair TFA is but...
Apple would do a lot better in my department (one of the biggest departments at one of the biggest universities in the world) if they would get serious about enterprise support.
My gripes:
1) If my Xserv fails, I need to call Apple, they will possibly send parts or repairmen but they really want me to fix it myself using my spare kit. I just don't feel that is optimal compared to IBM server support.
2) Their volume discount is a total rip-off. Again, I am at a major university and our discount is basically the same as the Apple Education Store discount. It is really hard for me to justify my purchases and commitment to Apple.
3) On a related topic, I know months in advance what machines are coming out and can thus plan accordingly. Apple, with its flair for the dramatic, wants to keep all this hidden and secret. Again it really hurts my efforts when compared to IBM, Dell, and HP.
4) The Apple support network is a total joke compared to Microsoft or even Novell. Basically I have the same support that non-enterprise Linux has. My best sources are AFP548, MacEnterprise, and sometimes the Apple Support forums.
5) For those of us that have to integrate with a Microsoft world, AD-OD integration still has a long way to go. Apple seems to break their AD support with every other service pack. I can't believe this couldn't be done better. I know Microsoft has issues with their service packs, but honestly, does it have to be this bad?
Basically I feel that Apple is such a consumer company rather than enterprise. This hurts Apple penetration, bottom-line sales, and future buy-in from potential customers who want to use the same platform at home that they use at work.
Steve Jobs just can't get out of his own ego's way to let the correct thing happen. Matt Feeman, our sales rep, is a total waste yet has carried his job for many many years now. There really is no fun left in Apple and only diehard fanboys (myself?) can continue to run what is, IMHO, the Unix-like distributions.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree with you that Apple could do many things to better support the Enterprise but I don't think you have show that this support will help their bottom line. Apple is a fantastically successful company that makes consumer products. All of the things you are proposing cost money and take time and energy away from their highly successful consumer products. Ultimately it might not be the best move for Apple over all. Sure they could do much better in that particular market but we aren't talking about a company that is hurting.
But I think the GP's point still stands. Apple MAKES enterprise hardware, and they CLAIM they want a piece of that market. Given this it is a back eye for them (however small or large a black eye as it relates to their overall market penetration) that they fail to properly support the enterprise. If you don't want to take the enterprise market seriously, withdraw from it. Stop spending dollars to develop and market Xservers and Xsans that either don't work as people expect or aren't supported to the lev
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
At my office, I plug in: 1. power, 2. keyboard+mouse (thanks to the USB outlet on the keyboard, I only need one for both), 3. external monitor, 4. network (faster than the wireless), 5. usb-to-VGA adapter, 6. audio out to speakers
I really like the auto-sleep when I close the MacBook, but I don't take it to as many meetings as I would otherwise, because connecting & reconnecting is such a PITA.
a man with a plan for better or worse (Score:5, Insightful)
The most efficient form of governance is a dictatorship. This is not to say that it is a universally ideal form of government -- for every example we have of an autocrat who was able to get what he wanted and happened to be correct, we can find many other examples of autocrats who got what they wanted and were dead wrong.
It is easier for a man of singular vision, foresight, and ambition to stand out as a dictator than as one of a committee but men of singular ignorance and venality tend to do less harm in committee form because they're like crabs in a bucket and it's hard for one to rise to preeminence and control.
By all accounts, Jobs is a bastard to work for. What makes it all the more galling is that is judgment calls are usually right so when your design needs more work, he'll tell you you're a fucking piece of shit, get the hell out of his sight, don't you fucking come back until you have something that doesn't make him want to vomit you cocksucker, you'll want to punch him in the throat. Yes, he could have been nicer about it, but by the time you finally come back with a design he likes, it'll also be the one the customers will go nuts for.
It's very rare to find that kind of person. When Jobs was booted out the first time, they brought in an airline executive as CEO. He didn't know anything about the industry and said all of Jobs' ideas weren't sticking to the knitting, were going out into left field and would waste money. Pragmatic business people agreed. Hell, I thought going into the music business when they were already struggling making computers was a bad idea. Looks like I was wrong.
What's driving Apple right now is a productive cult of personality. There's simply not a viable line of succession. Alexander the Great dies, the empire falls apart. Stalin dies, the empire lurches on but nobody in the party leadership will ever again risk letting someone gain that much power again. It's possible for a leader to rise up within the ranks of an existing organization and take it over with such force that you would think he was the founder. Jack Welch did that with GE. Because the market value went from $14 billion to $410 billion under his watch, he's lauded as a genius. Personally, I think he was more like an asshole who got lucky, got some breaks, and knew how to shaft the right people at the right time. He'd been picked as the golden boy to succeed to the leadership role by the previous CEO who later came to regret that decision because Jack poisoned the corporate culture much like a Carly Fiorina. Wall Street didn't seem to care because he made the trains run on time and that's all that mattered.
What's interesting is Microsoft seems to be struggling from both the lack of vision and the bureaucratic bloat that paralyzes large organizations and prevents meaningful action. This kind of strategic paralysis is usually the opening needed for a competitor to swoop in and steal the market. Apple would normally be in that position except for the huge questions concerning Jobs' prospects for this world. If both companies become wadded up with stupidity, will it finally become Linux's year for the desktop by default?
Re: (Score:2)
I can be a bastard to work for. I'll succeed him. Jobs may not be a genius, but I am.
There... now a viable line of succession is available to Apple's shareholders. Apple is poised to continue their success.
One condition: I will not be wearing black turtlenecks during keynote speeches.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You just gave me the best idea ever to replace jobs. Hire Chef Gordon Ramsey, of Hells Kitchen and Kitchen Nightmares fame. He has no problem telling you that your finely crafted and prepared dish makes him want to vomit, and call the police on you for attempted murder. He's great at reducing people to tears! And, they could make it part of a reality TV series, to increase brand awareness even more!
Vision, standards, focus (Score:4, Insightful)
Jobs does not do anything magical. It might have been his idea to make a better phone, but he did not design the iPhone.
Rather, he had the vision of how a phone would fit into the ``iLife,'' he held designs to high standards, and he made sure that everyone focused on integration with existing products and the consistency of the experience.
Standards and focus are what most people view as his ``dictator'' personality.
This is pretty much what, I feel anyway, Microsoft has always lacked.
They have no vision. Remember Ballmer scoffing the very notion that the iPhone would have any success at all, let alone surpass WinMo as it just did.
I cannot say that they have low standards per se. Rather, their standard is to let the user design their software (the focus groups that designed Vista; something about which Gates was proud).
They lack any sort of focus. Vista is a prime example of this. It is obvious when using Vista that no one had a plan. No one provided any focus. Compound this with the myriad of products Microsoft makes which barely even work each other...even in the same product family (incompatibilities between Mac Office and Win Office).
So, yeah, those are the three qualities I want to see in a successor to Jobs. There should be plenty of people at Apple with those qualities. Actually, there are plenty of those people anywhere...people like Ballmer just do not recognize them or think they are important. I trust Jobs to find an appropriate person to replace him.
Also, let's not forget to embrace change. Even someone like Jobs needs to be replaced eventually. They just have to be replaced carefully.
MacWorld etc (Score:3, Insightful)
I suspect the ending of these big "look at the next big thing" conferences Apple runs on a regular basis are part of transitioning Jobs out of the public eye. They need to disconnect Steve Jobs from the "ergonomic/chic/cool/it just works", brand. His presentations enforce the assumption that Jobs and his product line are inextricably linked.
Apple without Jobs? (Score:5, Funny)
So, why does Apple need ST_VE? Do they need him to run around all day screaming, "Your designs suck, Jon! Make them MORE minimal!", "Bob, your code is SHIT! Fix it!", "Ron! Sell more STUFF!", "The rest of you, if you can't make everything INSANELY GREAT, no more free Jolt Cola in the cafeteria!"? So Apple needs him, how, to survive? If they need a 'visionary', they can always find another crazy 'Steve', here [microsoft.com]. In the long run, the company is well manned to maintain it's position and 'grow the brand' even if Jobs is relegated to prowling the dark halls at 1IL in his bathrobe and Birkenstocks.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If they need a 'visionary', they can always find another crazy 'Steve', here [microsoft.com].
And yet Microsoft, with it's equivalent pool of talent and far greater resources, comes up with products like Vista and the Zune. Congratulations on so effectively negating your own argument.
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
I have the answer! (Score:5, Funny)
Hire Willy Wonka!!! If there is any character that is on par with Steve Jobs and his showmanship, it is Willy Wonka... preferably the Johnny Depp version, but even the Gene Wilder version would suffice.
Apple = Van Halen (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't discredit the value of man with a vision and a big mouth.
He needs to plan succession (Score:3, Informative)
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: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: (Score:2)
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: (Score:3, Insightful)
I will take it one step further. Most of the whiners on here won't be happy until they can get OS X for free. According to them software is worth $0 and what really peeves them off is that Apple is gaining marketshare with product that is closed source (oh the pain) and that actually costs money to buy (heresy!!) and can't be obtained legally for free.
There has been no evidence that desktop market share is influenced by how open a platform is. If openness was the dominating factor then Win wouldn't have
Re: (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 alie
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I count at least two high profile OSS projects: webkit & darwin. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's two more than MS.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:the elephant in the room (Score:4, Informative)
ipod: six generations and 3 variations of this piece of shit and you can't get ogg playback support???? wtf?
OGG is not going anywhere, sorry. If you're lucky it'll be the standard web audio format, but even that's doubtful. I'm not knocking the format itself, this is just the way it is.
mac laptops: sleek form factor but overpriced and WTF why is apple so obsessed with their keyboard layout? It's not 1985 anymore give me a print screen, home, pg up/dn, insert and delete keys already. Stop being snobs and just give me a real keyboard already.
Yes these would be nice but, really, no one cares.
apple TV: apple what?
Yeah you're right. But the problem with ATV isn't style over function, it's control over function.
Mac OSX: ok it's decent. But it still needs a package manager and real window manager. Aqua sucks and it makes my mac a real pain in the ass.
Sounds like you want Linux. Oh look, you ARE running Linux. So what's the problem? Aqua sucks? What, are you afraid of clicking blue, rounded buttons?
Intel Chips: Oh what happened to the "technically superior" PPC chip? Welcome to the rest of the world you stuck up assholes.
Guess this was a no win situation eh? I suppose they should have said "well these chips suck, but wait a couple years and we'll start using Intel ones."
iPhone: OMG I can't stand this piece of shit. Earth to apple - a smart phone without a real keyboard is just retarded. I can't believe that people shelled out 300,600,800 dollars for a phone whose screen is about half an inch tall while typing. This makes using it as an ssh client impossible. plus what's up with those keys being so close together? Steve please think of the men who might like to buy your products next time you say "oh we'll have a soft keyboard it'll be awesome!!!" Idiot. The screen is way too fragile and oh big surprise still no ogg support. and what the hell is the deal with app store? What makes apple think they know better than me what apps should be on my phone? I can't stomach this level of a God complex from a singe corporate entity.
Oh yeah, the masses are clamoring for SSH support. As for apps, look at how it works: you could run any app on WinMo, but apps weren't so popular. You get Apple-approved apps in an easy to use store and sales are through the roof. Which do people want?
Btw, apple, thanks for bringing us the graphic user interface, the adults can take it from here.
Disclaimer: my phone is a G1 and my computer is a macbook pro running gentoo linux.
Good, fine. Obviously you shouldn't have gotten a Mac in the first place and you've saved yourself the agony of having an iPhone. You're falling into the common trap of not realizing that your geeky needs are far different than the average person. Stylish, easy to use devices will continue to be popular and sell well because they're....stylish and easy to use. Even if they are less feature filled.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Pretty much.
Its a format the replicates the functionality of something we already have. It may be technically better, it may be less restrictive, but honestly, who cares?
There are very few times in my life where I had to do anything with an OGG, and to be honest, it didn't do anything more that make me hate the person cramming it down my throat so I could listen to what I wanted to hear.
No one needs it, no one is clamoring for it except a small fraction of fanboys, so why d
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I know the first thing my wife did when she got her iPhone was bitch about what a poor SSH client it was... Oh.. no, wait... She obsessively played with the web browser for an hour, ignoring the large screen laptop right in front of her, just because it was SOOO cool that she could surf the web that well on a phone. Then she started playing around in the app store. She still hasn't mentioned SSH, now I come to think of it.
Had she done so I might have shown her the SSH app I got from the app store which wo
Re: (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 technol