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Apple's CEO Soap Opera
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Let's not overlook the little detail about Scully driving Jobs out.
Given what's he's accomplished since his return in 1997, imagine what Apple may have accomplished if Jobs hadn't been missing in action for 12 years.
Given what's he's accomplished since his return in 1997, imagine what Apple may have accomplished if Jobs hadn't been missing in action for 12 years.
I would argue that we have seen more innovation over the past year under jobs than any other time.
iTunes music store, is extremely successful and apple is really pioneering the 'digital hub' ideal in a profitable way. They are going to gain a lot of market share in my opinion on a lot of fronts. Primarily i would imagine from the fact that they are now advertising the mac as more than a computer but the cener of a digital life style. It would appear to be paying off.
The OS is pulling in hard core UNIX guys like myself and developers.... Giving away full development suite with OS X is clever in itself. The more apps written the more macs sold. You need to buy Visual Studio . Net if you want to create modern windows apps, on the other hand you get XCode for free. Furthermore with Panther introducing Apples X11 and having an OS based on Unix opens the doors to thousands of quality apps written for the Unix and Linux platform.
As for hardware, i disagree with only pulling even with intel. In any tests we have undertaken at work against comparable AMD and Intel systems the G5 has proved to be far in excess in terms of performance. if anything i would say apple are being very humble about their performance claims. Try running apps recompiled with a G5 friendly compiler such as XLF and XLC and you will see double the performance if not more than you get from current 'optimized' GCC 3.3. Completely untapped performance presently in my opinion.
I know in my country apple are now doing mass marketing at the street level. this is another good thing... people can now actually see these machines in person and play around with them.
As far as the form factor is concerned of Apple laptops; the powerbook is extremely innovative... 1 inch thin, extremely light, huge connectivity, great screens.... here's hoping next year they innovate a bit more with some more umph and power in them though 😉
Currently in x86 land everything is not as rosy as we would be led to believe. In terms of x86 hardware, the present technological leader is clearly AMD, however with such a small market share it will be interesting if they can push widespread accecptance of x86-64.... not least because Intel does not want to go down this route. Then there is Microsoft, will MS provide longterm support for two different versions of 64 bit windows... Itanium, and Athlon 64... will hardware manufacturers of modems, video cards graphics cards etc... jump on the 64 bit bandwagon???
As far as windows is concerned, there is another 2 years to go before longhorn, and even then longhorn will take time to mature.
I think this year and going forward Apple are in a unique position to grab more and more market share from Wintel.
iTunes music store, is extremely successful and apple is really pioneering the 'digital hub' ideal in a profitable way. They are going to gain a lot of market share in my opinion on a lot of fronts. Primarily i would imagine from the fact that they are now advertising the mac as more than a computer but the cener of a digital life style. It would appear to be paying off.
The OS is pulling in hard core UNIX guys like myself and developers.... Giving away full development suite with OS X is clever in itself. The more apps written the more macs sold. You need to buy Visual Studio . Net if you want to create modern windows apps, on the other hand you get XCode for free. Furthermore with Panther introducing Apples X11 and having an OS based on Unix opens the doors to thousands of quality apps written for the Unix and Linux platform.
As for hardware, i disagree with only pulling even with intel. In any tests we have undertaken at work against comparable AMD and Intel systems the G5 has proved to be far in excess in terms of performance. if anything i would say apple are being very humble about their performance claims. Try running apps recompiled with a G5 friendly compiler such as XLF and XLC and you will see double the performance if not more than you get from current 'optimized' GCC 3.3. Completely untapped performance presently in my opinion.
I know in my country apple are now doing mass marketing at the street level. this is another good thing... people can now actually see these machines in person and play around with them.
As far as the form factor is concerned of Apple laptops; the powerbook is extremely innovative... 1 inch thin, extremely light, huge connectivity, great screens.... here's hoping next year they innovate a bit more with some more umph and power in them though 😉
Currently in x86 land everything is not as rosy as we would be led to believe. In terms of x86 hardware, the present technological leader is clearly AMD, however with such a small market share it will be interesting if they can push widespread accecptance of x86-64.... not least because Intel does not want to go down this route. Then there is Microsoft, will MS provide longterm support for two different versions of 64 bit windows... Itanium, and Athlon 64... will hardware manufacturers of modems, video cards graphics cards etc... jump on the 64 bit bandwagon???
As far as windows is concerned, there is another 2 years to go before longhorn, and even then longhorn will take time to mature.
I think this year and going forward Apple are in a unique position to grab more and more market share from Wintel.
Re: Let's not overlook the little detail about Scully driving Jobs out.
Good point , but the layoff and the work with Next and with pixar may have laid a nice and new foundation for Apple that may not have come if Jobs had stayed at Apple. Even with Jobs Apple also got hit big time with the collapse of the market and the economy. Here below is a comarison of a few companies coming off the March 200 highs until today.
NT down 94%
MOT & AAPL down 74%
CSCO down 73%
MSFT down 49%
DELL down 40%
IBM down 21%
Apple made a great choice to hook on to the IBM PPC road map. It is very strong and still a lot the power is not fully utilized.
The G5 sales this Q will likely be Apple's best ever quarter for high end sales. These are spurred on by their installed base and a new and growing higher education base. ie York University upgraded multimedia to G5 and look at the High end schools doing the same.
The current people who support jobs such as Tevanian , Schilling and Bereskin etc deserve a huge amount of the credit.
For those of you who are looking to purchase some stocks I might suggest AAPL at this time.
Price $20
Cash on hand $13 per share
NAV is $11.50 per share
EMJ .. A canadian wholesaler in Toronto went through over 1000 iPods in a the last Q . They are a small source to Apples overall demand.
compare that to MSFT
Price $27
Cash $4.5 per share
NAV $5.60 per share
and IBM
Price $93
Cash $3.5 per share
NAV $13.30 per share
cheers
Good point , but the layoff and the work with Next and with pixar may have laid a nice and new foundation for Apple that may not have come if Jobs had stayed at Apple. Even with Jobs Apple also got hit big time with the collapse of the market and the economy. Here below is a comarison of a few companies coming off the March 200 highs until today.
NT down 94%
MOT & AAPL down 74%
CSCO down 73%
MSFT down 49%
DELL down 40%
IBM down 21%
Apple made a great choice to hook on to the IBM PPC road map. It is very strong and still a lot the power is not fully utilized.
The G5 sales this Q will likely be Apple's best ever quarter for high end sales. These are spurred on by their installed base and a new and growing higher education base. ie York University upgraded multimedia to G5 and look at the High end schools doing the same.
The current people who support jobs such as Tevanian , Schilling and Bereskin etc deserve a huge amount of the credit.
For those of you who are looking to purchase some stocks I might suggest AAPL at this time.
Price $20
Cash on hand $13 per share
NAV is $11.50 per share
EMJ .. A canadian wholesaler in Toronto went through over 1000 iPods in a the last Q . They are a small source to Apples overall demand.
compare that to MSFT
Price $27
Cash $4.5 per share
NAV $5.60 per share
and IBM
Price $93
Cash $3.5 per share
NAV $13.30 per share
cheers
pimentoLoaf
macrumors 68010
I really love the people who write Apple articles then go on to mis-predict the future by saying, "Does the Mac have another 20 years in it? Probably not."
I had a relative who, whilst being a VP of a bank's investment research division (he's now an Episcopalian lay missionary), couldn't bring himself to believe in Apple. "They only have a 3% market share," (making me wonder how old that claim is) and couldn't see anything else.
Considering the crap coming out of Microsoft -- IE is said to have 11 design flaws that haven't been fixed as MS "won" the IE/Netscape war, so why should they bother -- why would anyone imagine Apple is (perpetually 😉 ) on it's way out?
I had a relative who, whilst being a VP of a bank's investment research division (he's now an Episcopalian lay missionary), couldn't bring himself to believe in Apple. "They only have a 3% market share," (making me wonder how old that claim is) and couldn't see anything else.
Considering the crap coming out of Microsoft -- IE is said to have 11 design flaws that haven't been fixed as MS "won" the IE/Netscape war, so why should they bother -- why would anyone imagine Apple is (perpetually 😉 ) on it's way out?
weave
macrumors regular
Steve Jobs Rocks
I'm in charge of tech support at a large multi-campus college. For those who hate Jobs, consider my history, one of those mysterious platform decision makers.
I bought a 128K Mac original in April 1984 after seeing a demo of it two months earlier. I couldn't believe what I was seeing, and knew this was the future. I followed up with purchases of the fat Mac upgrade, Mac Plus, Mac SE 30, Powerbook 140.
My enthusiasm was spread around the college and we started to buy Macs and equip some labs.
But then something happened. Really, nothing. I stuck around until System 7, which was my last personal experience. The instability of the OS at the time was becoming a support headache. NT 4 Workstation came out and it's OS model was far more stable. A single app couldn't bring down the computer. And those blasted cute INITs that people loved to load onto their office computers often made them unstable and caused even more support nightmares.
Our NT workstations were deployed using automated methods and the thousands of student accounts were generated automatically from student record systems. Separately, we had Mac labs with the appleshare file servers where lab-techs had to create and manage user accounts manually. A slow and error prone process.
While I'm sure there were automated methods out there for that platform as well, none of my staff knew much about them, and it became clear supporting two platforms was a large cost overhead. I had to maintain double the end-user support staff.
So we got rid of the Mac labs, consolidated all support staff over to the PC side, and set out to rid the campus of the rest of the Macs in offices.
The last holdouts were Marketing, who finally fell about a year or so ago. We bought them high-end Dells and I later sent down some techs later to confiscate their G4s.
Now, you may think me quite the nazi, but read on...
The confiscated G4s ended up being played with by my tech staff. I got my hands on one and loaded this new OS X (10.1) thing on it. Being quite the Linux lover for our servers, I thought this was the greatest OS of all time.
I went out and bought a flat-panel iMac for our living room, and found out I couldn't keep my wife off of it. The Dell I bought her a few months earlier remained unused in the other room. I then bought a then-new 12" G4 Powerbook. That thing is by far the neatest most used piece of computer equipment I own. (The combo of it, my t610, bluetooth, GPRS access that works around the world and that I can open it on a tray table in economy class on a plane is just the best!)
So, Steve Jobs turned me on in 1984, I lost interest during the Sculley years, and Steve Jobs charisma and efforts have bought me back. His dog and pony shows create far more enthusiasm than when Gates or Ballmer starts talking about their latest. The Office 2003 launch event was an absolute bore, for example.
When Apple makes a product or software announcement, I get excited. When Microsoft makes a product announcement, I am filled with dread at the thought of the deployment costs.
So, as time permits, and politics allow, I see the anti-Mac policies that I helped create to slowly start going away. For example, I have a Mac enthusiast on staff who is playing with integrating those confiscated G4s into our active directory domain. I see some positive Mac possibilities in the future for us.
(can't believe I wrote all this. Oh well, a nice lazy Saturday! 🙂
I'm in charge of tech support at a large multi-campus college. For those who hate Jobs, consider my history, one of those mysterious platform decision makers.
I bought a 128K Mac original in April 1984 after seeing a demo of it two months earlier. I couldn't believe what I was seeing, and knew this was the future. I followed up with purchases of the fat Mac upgrade, Mac Plus, Mac SE 30, Powerbook 140.
My enthusiasm was spread around the college and we started to buy Macs and equip some labs.
But then something happened. Really, nothing. I stuck around until System 7, which was my last personal experience. The instability of the OS at the time was becoming a support headache. NT 4 Workstation came out and it's OS model was far more stable. A single app couldn't bring down the computer. And those blasted cute INITs that people loved to load onto their office computers often made them unstable and caused even more support nightmares.
Our NT workstations were deployed using automated methods and the thousands of student accounts were generated automatically from student record systems. Separately, we had Mac labs with the appleshare file servers where lab-techs had to create and manage user accounts manually. A slow and error prone process.
While I'm sure there were automated methods out there for that platform as well, none of my staff knew much about them, and it became clear supporting two platforms was a large cost overhead. I had to maintain double the end-user support staff.
So we got rid of the Mac labs, consolidated all support staff over to the PC side, and set out to rid the campus of the rest of the Macs in offices.
The last holdouts were Marketing, who finally fell about a year or so ago. We bought them high-end Dells and I later sent down some techs later to confiscate their G4s.
Now, you may think me quite the nazi, but read on...
The confiscated G4s ended up being played with by my tech staff. I got my hands on one and loaded this new OS X (10.1) thing on it. Being quite the Linux lover for our servers, I thought this was the greatest OS of all time.
I went out and bought a flat-panel iMac for our living room, and found out I couldn't keep my wife off of it. The Dell I bought her a few months earlier remained unused in the other room. I then bought a then-new 12" G4 Powerbook. That thing is by far the neatest most used piece of computer equipment I own. (The combo of it, my t610, bluetooth, GPRS access that works around the world and that I can open it on a tray table in economy class on a plane is just the best!)
So, Steve Jobs turned me on in 1984, I lost interest during the Sculley years, and Steve Jobs charisma and efforts have bought me back. His dog and pony shows create far more enthusiasm than when Gates or Ballmer starts talking about their latest. The Office 2003 launch event was an absolute bore, for example.
When Apple makes a product or software announcement, I get excited. When Microsoft makes a product announcement, I am filled with dread at the thought of the deployment costs.
So, as time permits, and politics allow, I see the anti-Mac policies that I helped create to slowly start going away. For example, I have a Mac enthusiast on staff who is playing with integrating those confiscated G4s into our active directory domain. I see some positive Mac possibilities in the future for us.
(can't believe I wrote all this. Oh well, a nice lazy Saturday! 🙂
IJ Reilly
macrumors P6
Well said. I voted for Spindler, too. I can't think of a single thing he accomplished during his tenure at Apple. As nearly as I can tell, he was a suit in a chair. It probably wasn't as bad as all that, but Apple was certainly rudderless during those crucial years when a strong hand was needed more then ever.
I'm not sure I entirely understand the beef against Scully. Sure, he wasn't a great technologist, but he wasn't entirely bereft good ideas either, and he did re-trim the Apple ship's sails, and made the company bottom-line responsible, which it hadn't been before. Apple was more profitable during the Scully years then it was before or it's been since. Apple desperately needed "adult supervision" at that time -- and let's not forget, Steve brought him in for just that very reason.
k2k koos
macrumors 6502a
did anyone notice the stament somehere here on the Forbes website that Apple wouldn't survive another 20 years?
My feelings are mixed, at the moment they have a CEO that is firmly in control and making Apple into what it is today, now take away Steve, put someone one else in control, they will need to find someone witht similar insights and feel as Steve, tht is going to be hard, but then again Steve is not the only Apple employee, he doesn't do it on his own, but he get's people motivated.
Apple will survive the next 20 years if Steve stays, OR is replaced by a similar talented/gifted person
Else I see a dark future, the past has taught us that much...
My feelings are mixed, at the moment they have a CEO that is firmly in control and making Apple into what it is today, now take away Steve, put someone one else in control, they will need to find someone witht similar insights and feel as Steve, tht is going to be hard, but then again Steve is not the only Apple employee, he doesn't do it on his own, but he get's people motivated.
Apple will survive the next 20 years if Steve stays, OR is replaced by a similar talented/gifted person
Else I see a dark future, the past has taught us that much...
I hope Jobs will not leave for a long time, but here's to hoping Ives is getting some CEO lessons.
alset
macrumors 65816
Re: Let's not overlook the little detail about Scully driving Jobs out.
He would likely have run Apple into the ground. Steve was not ready to head up a country. He had a real shot with NeXT (some of the best people in the industry working with him based on faith in his vision) and lost money at every turn. He tried to become involved at Pixar, but frustrated employees. Even before leaving Apple, Steve had pitted the Macintosh team against the rest of the company.
Steve needed a good dose of failure before he could approach such a position with maturity and wisdom. I'd say he's one of the greatest CEOs any tech company will ever know, but if he had been CEO in the 80s, Apple wouldn't have lived to see the 90s.
Dan
He would likely have run Apple into the ground. Steve was not ready to head up a country. He had a real shot with NeXT (some of the best people in the industry working with him based on faith in his vision) and lost money at every turn. He tried to become involved at Pixar, but frustrated employees. Even before leaving Apple, Steve had pitted the Macintosh team against the rest of the company.
Steve needed a good dose of failure before he could approach such a position with maturity and wisdom. I'd say he's one of the greatest CEOs any tech company will ever know, but if he had been CEO in the 80s, Apple wouldn't have lived to see the 90s.
Dan
I think steve has had the most DIRECT positive effect at apple. I also think the Mac platform will be around for another 20 years, x86 is dying slowly but surely and the powerpc is gaining slowly but surely.
It will finally get to a point where if you really want the fastest computer, you will be getting a mac, consumers will always remain in a pc world, i don't see that ever changing.
My personal hopes is that consumers will use OS X on intel, prosumers will use OS X on PowerPC.
My car analogy is that just because i have a VW, it doesn't mean I can't have heated seats like a BMW.
If i want the power of the BMW, or the sleekness of a BMW, im going to have to get the BMW. For now, I love my jetta. 😀
It will finally get to a point where if you really want the fastest computer, you will be getting a mac, consumers will always remain in a pc world, i don't see that ever changing.
My personal hopes is that consumers will use OS X on intel, prosumers will use OS X on PowerPC.
My car analogy is that just because i have a VW, it doesn't mean I can't have heated seats like a BMW.
If i want the power of the BMW, or the sleekness of a BMW, im going to have to get the BMW. For now, I love my jetta. 😀
apple secret
when jobs left in 1985, and scully went on being ceo, people still bought macs and apple suvived. as the products quality declined people STILL bought macs and apple really never died. apple secret? US (not me) but people who bought the original mac would tell people how good the mac was and more people would by it. this keep apple "alive" for the really bad years.
will the mac have another 20 years? only time can tell...
when jobs left in 1985, and scully went on being ceo, people still bought macs and apple suvived. as the products quality declined people STILL bought macs and apple really never died. apple secret? US (not me) but people who bought the original mac would tell people how good the mac was and more people would by it. this keep apple "alive" for the really bad years.
will the mac have another 20 years? only time can tell...
Re: apple secret
Who really knows, someone above said how innovative Apple are at the moment citing things like iTunes music store and the Digital Hub, well these are great innovations but they make Apple little if any money.
Apple used to have a small market share but a massive margin now they have an even smaller market share coupled with a much reduced margin and that leaves them vulnerable in the long term.
This is a golden era for Apple, they have new faster hardware coupled with a truly first class OS but we are reaching a stage where many people purchasing a computer today will not require a new machine for perhaps four or five years.
My personal opinion is that to survive in the long term Apple should consider splitting itself into two companies or two divisions that specialise in software and hardware
Who really knows, someone above said how innovative Apple are at the moment citing things like iTunes music store and the Digital Hub, well these are great innovations but they make Apple little if any money.
Apple used to have a small market share but a massive margin now they have an even smaller market share coupled with a much reduced margin and that leaves them vulnerable in the long term.
This is a golden era for Apple, they have new faster hardware coupled with a truly first class OS but we are reaching a stage where many people purchasing a computer today will not require a new machine for perhaps four or five years.
My personal opinion is that to survive in the long term Apple should consider splitting itself into two companies or two divisions that specialise in software and hardware
Re: Re: apple secret
Well Apple could do that but that would defeat some of the good things about Apple. The iSync , the Apps which are seamless. Now they might separate the Windows software division as they already a big Win App developer>
Well Apple could do that but that would defeat some of the good things about Apple. The iSync , the Apps which are seamless. Now they might separate the Windows software division as they already a big Win App developer>
pimentoLoaf
macrumors 68010
Sculley Jobs version 1
Both were so a**nine in their behavior.
If I was a Apple Engineer at the time of the birth of the Mac and Steve opend a can of beligerant crap on me. I WOULD HAVE BEEN HAPPY TO RIP HIS THROAT OUT WITH MY BARE HANDS AND WOULD BE NEVER HAPPIER ABOUT IT.
One thing I liked about Sculley is that it did make Stevie boy grow the f*** up.
Both were so a**nine in their behavior.
If I was a Apple Engineer at the time of the birth of the Mac and Steve opend a can of beligerant crap on me. I WOULD HAVE BEEN HAPPY TO RIP HIS THROAT OUT WITH MY BARE HANDS AND WOULD BE NEVER HAPPIER ABOUT IT.
One thing I liked about Sculley is that it did make Stevie boy grow the f*** up.
Others have already pointed out that Jobs wasn't exactly good for Apple back when he got ousted. Though I'll never forgive Scully for the Windows 1.0 thing: you'd think a CEO of the company the size of Pepsi could recognize a bluff.
I'm surprised nobody defends Gil for doing more than bringing back Steve Jobs. Dr. Amelio streamlined Apple's design and product chains and did all the custcutting to turned Apple on the course of profitibility long before Mac OS X could be made. Jobs benefitted greatly.
Those who remember the complexity of the product line, the sheer volume of products, the number of non-backward compatible parts, and the overstuffed supply channels do well to remember that Gil created a great environment that was ripe for Job's vision of the iMac and its subsequent "digital hub" strategy. I can't remember how many times it seemed Apple had more than enough of some part nobody wanted and not enough of something all the consumers wanted and would do idiot things like launch a product that burst into flames--Apple has a long history of battery nightmares, long before the current iPodDirtyWhiningSecret fiasco.
Think of how much balls it took to make the hardest decision of all: killing Copeland and shopping around for an outside vendor for operating system (with only one lesson from the past: to purchase the company outright). There would never have been an iPod at Apple if Gil hadn't got them over the "Not Invented Here".
Apple is a very lucky company.