Getting Used to Apple Without Steve Who?
April 7th, 2009I’m sure many of you won’t be surprised to learn that there’s a growing perception that Steve Jobs will never return to Apple, at least to his full-time job. The best compromise appears to be that he’ll select someone to be permanent CEO, perhaps acting CEO Tim Cook, and that Jobs will assume some sort of supreme advisory role to set the company’s product direction and marketing strategy.
That might sound somewhat like the role that Bill Gates played at Microsoft in the years before he retired from his full-time position to become the full-time philanthropist. Of course, when it comes to Gates, it’s questionable just how innovative he’s ever been. He used innovation more as market-speak rather than as a genuine goal.
As far as Wall Street is concerned, it appears they may have already digested the potential impact to Apple if Jobs’ sabbatical proves to be permanent rather than temporary. What is evident is that the company’s ongoing performance as a maker of cutting-edge gadgets has evidently not changed. It’s also evident to them that other people at the company are perfectly capable of demonstrating new products and getting plenty of media coverage.
In retrospect, maybe they don’t possess the legendary Steve Jobs “reality distortion field,” but it’s also quite possible that maybe he didn’t totally deserve that label either. Having a skilled marketing department actually designing the promotional strategy, the slide presentations, and perhaps even writing the scripts used in those legendary keynote addresses may have been mostly responsible for their impact. This isn’t to say that Jobs isn’t a good performer, but it’s foolish to think he did it all alone.
Indeed, if the rollout of the iPhone 3.0 SDK was an example, the forthcoming update contains plenty of goodies to talk about without talking about Jobs. The coverage the event received at the time barely scratched the surface in exploring the possibilities, and I’ve tried to go further on the radio show.
This isn’t to say that Steve Jobs was nothing more than a figurehead. Lest we forget, he assembled the staff that created great things first for NeXT and Pixar, and later for Apple when he returned to the company and became its chief executive. The illusion fostered in part by the media that Jobs is the one-man-band that did everything significant at Apple is clearly false. The people who surround him design the products, develop the software and then go out and sell all that stuff.
I firmly believe that this is where Apple has a huge advantage over Microsoft. Apple’s staff demonstrates extreme dedication and functions like a well-oiled machine. There are few missteps and they don’t waste money building products that are unsuccessful; well, except perhaps for the Apple TV. Then again, that’s supposedly a hobby and maybe by sheer perseverance they’ll figure out a way to give it some stature in the marketplace way beyond where it stands now.
With Microsoft, it doesn’t seem as if anything ever changes, however often they proclaim the intention to do something new and different. It’s almost as if they’re stuck in a time warp, believing that Apple’s ascendancy in different markets strictly represents a temporary phenomenon. Some day soon, they believe, Apple will falter, Firefox will fail, and Microsoft will again hold 95% of the browser and operating system markets.
They also evidently believe that they can succeed by throwing tons of money at a problem. Consider how much cash has been invested in developing Windows since the early days. Just Vista alone cost them billions, whereas Apple manages to prosper with a fraction of that investment. So why the disparity?
More to the point, Apple is organized in such a way that, if Jobs never returns to the company, they can continue to move in the same direction with cutting-edge products for many years. Permanent success is never guaranteed, but the current leadership clearly knows what it’s doing. I suppose that can be regarded as the lasting legacy of Steve Jobs.
The legacy of Bill Gates, in contrast, threatens to take the company down. Executives have changed, but the company still can’t deliver the goods on time and with all or most promised features intact. Microsoft still dumps loads of cash on worthless products, such as the Zune music player. Yes, it’s decent enough, but in a sea of decent-enough media players, the iPod took control. There’s nothing that forces Microsoft to continue to build gear most people simply don’t want, but they don’t understand when it’s time to drop an unsuccessful product and move on to something else.
In any case, yes, I would like to see Steve Jobs return to Apple as scheduled in late June, or perhaps even earlier to deliver a surprise keynote at the forthcoming WWDC. That would certainly comfort the Apple skeptics and, if nothing else, perhaps provide a further psychological boost to the stock price. Besides, Jobs is far too young to be sent out to pasture just yet, and I do hope he is on the mend and will remain healthy for a long, long time.
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Although I would like to see Mr. Jobs return to Apple, I hope that he assumes a different role than the one he has traditionally take whereby he micromanages everything in a way that is sometimes disruptive. I think he would be of greater use to the company in such a modified role. It would also serve to emphasize the company of which he is a part rather than just him. According to public reports, the company has continued to function in his absence, which is one of the responsibilities of the senior management team, the continuity of the organization.
An Apple with a reduced Steve Jobs is a wash.
I don’t really get the press freaking out about Jobs’ and intimating that
he is the oil the makes the machinery go. Jobs is a fantastic marketer. He
always had the knack for being a computer guy that didn’t sound like a computer
guy. He’s got the gift of gab and that goes a long way for good presentation style.
Somehow the Press has made Jobs’ the “cult of personality” when in fact he’s the figurehead
leading a swarm of very talented people. Jobs doesn’t create things he has a knack for
knowing what things will sell and what things won’t and he’s successful %70 of the time.
His weakness though is an insatiable desire for small and thin and that makes Apple have to
over-engineer products. iMac’s could be cheaper to make and offer more power if they weren’t
hamstrung by using mobile computing parts which are more expensive.
An Apple without Job’s is going to make mistakes but the DNA that company has been infused with
goes beyond one employee.
I find very weird that news channels and the blogosphere in general have ignored the guy lately. Maybe they are waiting to see what happened this summer when he plans to come back. I hope he’s healthy and that everything is going well with his health but I don’t think I’ll miss him if he decides to retire. I wish him the best.
And they’ll be even quieter after the quarterly results.
I remember when I first heard Steve had done a Fletcher Christian and had overthrown Gil Amelio and the old guard in ‘97. At that time, based on Steve’s history since being ousted from Apple, I really wasn’t sure he was the right guy to get Apple off of life support and healthy. Well, no sooner had he taken control, he did all the right stuff, pulled the troops in line and most importantly made those hard but necessary business and product decisions that nobody else prior to him seemed willing or had the ability to make. And he brought the ‘cool’ factor back that’d been lost for sometime.
Since then, under his leadership we’ve seen a different Apple – not always for the best, but certainly the proof’s in the pudding with their current position. I agree that you’d be a little lost to think it’s a one-man show (hello Wall Street!). Jobs has retained enough clout throughout his career that he’s not only been able to surround himself with a great, like-minded management team, he’s also one to acknowledge the support players as well. If for whatever reason he didn’t come back, at this point I’d feel confident in Apples future. Even more so when Microsoft have a Captain like Ballmer at the helm, who just seems lost at sea.
There is a WSJ article, reported elsewhere, which reports that Mr. Jobs is simply holding court at home and that nothing much has changed.
I guess that the net result is that only a few people, who can be trusted to keep their mouths shut, actually see him and hence there are no reports that he has gained/lost weight, looks good/bad or whatever.
The Board of Directors are supposedly waking up to their responsibilities…an unlikely proposition.