Steve Jobs' Reaction to MobileMe Launch, Life at Apple After Jobs and Other Anecdotes

[MacRumors]

MacStories details a new feature story from Fortune about Apple's management including a number of previously unknown anecdotes about Steve Jobs. The story is presently only available as an in-app purchase in the Fortune Magazine App [iTunes], but should appear online and in print shortly.

One interesting story is about Steve Jobs' reaction to the poor MobileMe rollout in 2008 which was marred with slow services and downtime.

In Fortune’s story, Lashinsky says Steve Jobs summoned the entire MobileMe team for a meeting at the company’s on-campus Town Hall, accusing everyone of “tarnishing Apple’s reputation.” He told the members of the team they “should hate each other for having let each other down”, and went on to name new executives on the spot to run the MobileMe team. A few excerpts from the article.

"Can anyone tell me what MobileMe is supposed to do?” Having received a satisfactory answer, he continues, “So why the ******* doesn’t it do that?"

Jobs was also particularly angry about the Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg not liking MobileMe:

"Mossberg, our friend, is no longer writing good things about us."

Jobs reportedly appointed a new executive on the spot to run the MobileMe team. Jobs reportedly appointed a new executive on the spot to run the MobileMe team. Another particularly interesting piece was the fact that Apple is actively planning and teaching its employees for "life at Apple after Jobs.":

Steve Jobs hired dean of Yale School of Management Joel Podolny to run the Apple University, an internal group also featuring business professors and Harvard veterans that are writing a series of case studies to prepare employees for the life at Apple after Jobs. These case studies focus on Apple’s recent business decisions and internal culture, they are exclusive to employees and taught by top executives like Tim Cook and Ron Johnson.

MacStories also summarizes some of the other anecdotes from the feature article.

Article Link: Steve Jobs' Reaction to MobileMe Launch and Other Anecdotes

[neko girl]

I wish that picture was a bit bigger.
Edit: still too small in the linked article.

[backinblack875]

Originally Posted by neko girl

I wish that picture was a bit bigger.
Edit: still too small in the linked article.

click on it here: http://www.macrumors.com/

oh woops, just saw ur edit

[Ipad2ALLTHEWAY]

If you arent an ******* then people and companies are going to run all over you. Look at bill gates and how he acted. It's unfortunate but Steve had a lot of pride in his company that he built from the late 70's.

[Eddyisgreat]

Originally Posted by Steve Jobs

"Can anyone tell me what MobileMe is supposed to do?” Having received a satisfactory answer, he continues, “So why the ******* doesn’t it do that?"

As a paying customer from the start of MobileMe, I find this incredibly amusing and wish I could've been in the room when this smack down was being hand delivered hot and fresh.

[Master Atrus]

I'm on board ... I use MobileMe because it keeps everything in sync so nicely and easily ... but I would have loved to be a fly on that wall when Steve roasted the launch team.

[meli]

It's been three years and MobileMe isn't much better. I still miss being able to access bookmarks remotely, a feature that was dropped when MobileMe was introduced.

[Steve Mobs]

This is awesome.

[alphaod]

I like MobileMe and I do hope they improve on what it is now.

[scottgroovez]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_2 like Mac OS X; en-gb) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8H7 Safari/6533.18.5)

I thought Jobs oversaw everything to the extent of it being OCD. The fact something he wasn't happy with was released into the wild was more an embarrasment to himself so took it out on the team.

What really is mobileme anyway? Is that a failure of marketing...

[Jaro65]

Originally Posted by Master Atrus

I'm on board ... I use MobileMe because it keeps everything in sync so nicely and easily ... but I would have loved to be a fly on that wall when Steve roasted the launch team.

Sure would have been entertaining.

[macduke]

MobileMe has improved somewhat, but it still has plenty of room to improve. iDisk is often painful to use. Also MobileMe is a stupid name. It hasn't grown on me. I'm glad I got my first Mac in March 08 and had a free trial of .Mac. I was able to revive that account on MobileMe and use my @mac.com address. But for the first few months I didn't realize I could do that, and I was embarrassed every time someone asked for my email address. They would always ask twice, questioning the goofy name I just told them.

What was that? At...

AT ME DOT COM! Can we just move on now?

I wish Apple would let me use my business email address on their servers.

As for the story about Job's reactions, it isn't exactly surprising. Should make for some juicy reading once it hits the web. I'll Instapaper this for later.

[Stella]

Talking to employees like that is a good way for them to leave. A company that treats employees badly get a reputation, unfortunately, larger companies get a way with it. For example, EA. But they can still hire because who they are.

Perhaps the MobileMe problems were further up the chain?

Sounds like Apple has a culture of blame. A kind of company any employee wants to avoid like the plague.

[Rustus Maximus]

Originally Posted by MacRumors

Another particularly interesting piece was the fact that Apple is actively planning and teaching its employees for "life at Apple after Jobs.":

One need only look at the past to find a possible future regarding what will happen at Apple without Jobs. Unless they find another leader with the same driven attitude, the same micro-managing zealotry, the same beautiful insanity that Jobs appears to sometimes suffer from, then I fear the future might look a lot like what happened before. A company slowly slipping into mediocrity on its way to oblivion.

[ghrossman]

Might be interesting to know that Podolny's expertise is on how firms can charge a premium when they position themselves strategically among high status collaborators --- obviously relevant to Apple's up-market niche. (See Podolny's book Status Signals). Podolny is very well respected among organizational scholars.

[/V\acpower]

I can't imagine what happened to the "Ping" team...

[AidenShaw]

Originally Posted by Stella

Perhaps the MobileMe problems were further up the chain?

Sounds like Apple has a culture of blame. A kind of company any employee wants to avoid like the plague.

The problem was at the top.

Originally Posted by Rustus Maximus

One need only look at the past to find a possible future regarding what will happen at Apple without Jobs. Unless they find another leader with the same driven attitude, the same micro-managing zealotry, the same beautiful insanity that Jobs appears to sometimes suffer from, then I fear the future might look a lot like what happened before. A company slowly slipping into mediocrity on its way to oblivion.

Oblivion - with a share price in the teens.
__________

The simple fact that Apple is running training sessions about "Apple after Steve is dead" is really frightening - Apple's board should never have permitted the "Jobs personality cult" to become so strong that de-indoctrination sessions were necessary.

[Stella]

Originally Posted by /V\acpower

I can't imagine what happened to the "Ping" team...

They were never heard from again!

[motulist]

Apple IS Jobs. We saw what happened to Apple when Jobs was ousted in the mid 80s. Apple continued to make superior products for the next few years, but by 10 years later Apple was really floundering. If Jobs leaves on his own terms this time, hopefully he'll be able to leave system in place that can keep Apple churning out products that are insanely great.

[Michaelgtrusa]

Well best of luck to them.

[mdriftmeyer]

Originally Posted by Stella

Talking to employees like that is a good way for them to leave. A company that treats employees badly get a reputation, unfortunately, larger companies get a way with it. For example, EA. But they can still hire because who they are.

Perhaps the MobileMe problems were further up the chain?

Sounds like Apple has a culture of blame. A kind of company any employee wants to avoid like the plague.

Horse crap. If you have to have your ass chewed to get motivated it's clear you didn't put your best effort into your projects. He takes all the heat for any decision that Apple makes and produces for his stock holders.

You think he's going to coach everyone up like a life coach or your best friend?

You think Google, MS, IBM, Intel, AMD, Nvidia, etc., don't do the same thing? If so, then you've never been in the trenches.

You either fold or focus. He is the best at getting people to focus and they have the lowest attrition rate in the industry.

From MacStories:

Other anecdotes from the story:

• Just two people wrote the code to convert Safari for the iPad
• At Apple there’s never confusion “as to who is responsible for what.” In Apple’s parlance, a DRI’s name (directly responsible individual) always appear on the agenda for a meeting, so that everyone knows who’s the right contact for a project
• Steve Jobs meets with executives on Mondays to review every important project. On Wednesdays, he holds a marketing and communications meeting

Every Friday we turned in our progress reports in QA at NeXT and later at Apple when I was in Professional Services.

When we stopped doing that is when several of us, myself included, left.

Keeping a running history of timelines and achievements motivated everyone, especially when our name was on the report.

Everyone's work was available for review.

[AidenShaw]

Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer

[apple] have the lowest attrition rate in the industry.

Link?

[Stella]

Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer

Horse crap. If you have to have your ass chewed to get motivated it's clear you didn't put your best effort into your projects. He takes all the heat for any decision that Apple makes and produces for his stock holders.

You think he's going to coach everyone up like a life coach or your best friend?

Grow up.

You think Google, MS, IBM, Intel, AMD, Nvidia, etc., don't do the same thing? If so, then you've never been in the trenches.

You either fold or focus. He is the best at getting people to focus and they have the lowest attrition rate in the industry.

Yes, he does take the heat. However, there are better ways of going about it... you don't *degrade* your employees. You'll loose them.

Grow up? No.. I've worked for long enough to know what you do and don't do to your employees. Sure, you don't wrap them up in cotton wool.... of course not.. but you don't go for the other extreme as well. You find out what went wrong and handle it *maturely* without lashing out. A *good* company will *learn* from its mistakes... Lashing out / degrading employees shows the culture of a company.

Also a good manager will take the heat and appropriately manage their employees.

[ethana]

Originally Posted by Stella

Yes, he does take the heat. However, there are better ways of going about it... you don't *degrade* your employees.

If the employees can't take it then they can quit on the spot and find another job. Simple as that.

[dmm219]

Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer

You either fold or focus. He is the best at getting people to focus and they have the lowest attrition rate in the industry.

All you are doing is making up BS yourself. Proof? Thats right, ou have none. All anecdotal evidence shows apple has always had quite a high overall attrition rate, yet manages to keep an "inner circle". Its proven bad management, because it eventually collapses when the current power regime ends. Apple will be really bad shape once Jobs is gone...period.