question fear said:
Has anyone read good to great by jim collins??
It's all about companies that remain successful over a span of years and improve upon those successes, and what makes them work...and across the board, companies with ceos that defined the company failed as soon as the ceo stepped down/died/retired etc. Companies who succeeded and bested themselves over the years were the companies whose ceo was someone who ran the company well, and who never lost sight of the fact that the biggest part of his/her job was finding their replacement.
I love apple, but I worry about their future sans Steve.
I don't understand the hero worship of Steve Jobs. I agree that Apple is succeeding with him at the helm, but I am not sure that his vision is the cause of the revival. It seems to me that his predecessors' lack of vision was the problem.
Steve's track record is hardly the greatest: NeXT? Pixar itself only succeeded due to the stubbornness of those in power, resisting his desire to axe the animation division.
Steve has a history of failure and success. I am amazed that the people on this forum are so confident about the future of Apple under his leadership. Do you not fear yet another dip?
We all claim to love Apple and sing the praises of recent success, but let's not forget that only 12 months ago the picture was not so great. Apple is still losing market share in the supply of computers to nearly all markets. Does nobody remember the days of 8+% market share. Apple is not even second on the OS market.
The computers they manufacture are not amazing. I paid $3,000+ for a 17" Powerbook about 15 months ago. The machine is beautifully made, but what exactly did I pay for. The screen is crap in any environment other than inside away from windows. The 1Ghz processor is feeble at best and the front side bus is a joke. I paid for the best that Apple had to offer because I wanted OSX and I wanted to get as close to PC performance as possible.
Now we are all extremely excited about the iMac G5: but the truth is that the 64bit power will mean nothing to most of us unless we upgrade to software that takes advantage of it. Next, a G5 iMac will not match the power of an equivalently priced, well chosen PC.
Apple's computer division is failing and don't let the hype around corporate image and the success of the iPod hide that from you. Steve momentarily appeared to change that trend with the success of the original G3 iMac, but the truth is that the development was well under way by the time Steve rejoined and Jonathan Ives was already on board designing the look of the machine. Steve's only real input was to push the machine towards being nothing more than a stripped down internet access station. He backed out from that and reverted to the original vision. So no gold star for Steve there.
Now let's look at the Apple advertising campaign. It's great for something like the iPod where the word of mouth advertising combined with the image projected through the adverts is cool and therefore people want one.
That won't work for a computer. Steve Jobs is convinced that projecting an image will work for Apple, but it won't. Many resellers don't have the selling patter required to convince people to switch platforms. Next, for many people the key piece of software required to make them switch is MS Office. The truth is that the cost of this software on top of an already expensive machine makes many walk away.
Steve Jobs has a history of making expensive machines and keeping the prices up. He wants the masses, but he wants them to want an Apple so much that they are willing to pay through the nose for it. One need only look at the ridiculous pricing of Apple's RAM to understand that they overcharge. The eMac is a well priced machine, but it is relatively ugly and most Apple users are too vain to use that as their machine.
To my mind there are 2 types of Apple consumer aside from the corporate side (publishing etc.) 1. The vain that want a stylised machine that has an air of exclusivity about it - for these users the idea of Apple being mainstream is not a comfortable one regardless of their claims. The other type of user is an OSX fan that sees the style of the machine as a bonus. I believe that a large group of these users get pissed off with the performance of the machines that they pay a small fortune for.
My next gripe about Apple is that they know best. We all like to think that Apple has our desires in mind but that is a fallacy: I know many Apple users and the majority of them want a 3 buttoned mouse, but Apple is ridiculously steadfast at resisting that idea. I believe that it is because of SJ's arrogance. Apple invented the mouse and it had one button. If it needed more than 1 button Apple would have developed it. They didn't therefore it is a Microsoft gimmick. SJ digs these holes from which he cannot climb out without losing face. He is too arrogant for that and so we still have a 1 button mouse.
Next we all get so hyped up about the new monitors. Unless I am greatly mistaken, they are again hugely overpriced and are not using the latest technology. We'll be suckers and go for them. I know that many of us will have seen the previous Apple monitors in the background of many a DVD extra interview, but they are always locked away in a darkened room.
Apple's forte is software and, to be honest, it ran on Intel processors I'd not hesitate to switch to an Intel/AMD machine. As it is I am stuck with the beautiful rubbish that Apple overcharge me for. To my mind I'd like to see the back of Steve Jobs and have a replacement with an obssession with quality in ALL areas including customer respect and pricing.
