No one has done more to shape the
consumer electronics revolution more that Steve Jobs and it appears he steps
down from a company designed to maintain the momentum. The best days of consumer electronics are yet
to come.
We all know he would only step
aside at this time because of the energy been drained from him by his ongoing
fight with cancer. It is unfortunate and
there is little more to say when anyone in his prime is so challenged.
I have posted a couple of times
that cancer is plausibly a solved problem choked by a grossly corrupted medical
science establishment. I now suspect
that all victims are been short changed inexcusably. It is why I am lobbing to begin a health
restoration movement that taps the several strains of alternative care
protocols as well as obvious empirical science.
Note that I am not interested in curing anyone, but am interested in
restoring health to an optimum level to resist the attack of any disease.
Steve Jobs achievement is
monumental and it is absolutely clear that he has created a better tomorrow
with his actions.
The business legacy of Mr. Jobs
By Vincent
Rice
21:48 August 29, 2011
Revered by many, hated by some, but respected by most, the indisputable
fact remains that Steve Jobs is the most successful business leader of his
generation and quite possibly of all time. The numbers are impressive in
themselves but the most remarkable aspect of his success is how it was
achieved. Though he remains at Apple, the end
of his tenure as CEO is the end of an era and an opportunity to try
and grasp just exactly what it is he did and what lessons there are for all of
us "trying to make a dent in the universe."
The 41 year old Steve Jobs who arrived back at Apple in 1996 had
already had a lifetime's worth of business experience. Due to the success of
the Apple II personal computer he had a multi-million fortune by the age of 25.
Doubtless he felt that he could do no wrong. The next fifteen years however
were a series of tumultuous mistakes and betrayals that saw Steve being thrown
out of the company he created and suffering significant failures at Pixar, the
computer graphics division he bought from George Lucas, and NeXT, the business
computer company he created. These were crucial experiences in Steve's
transition from entrepreneur to business leader.
Failure
Neither company could make a profit and in both cases the problem was
hardware. Pixar were involved in the creation of very high-end rendering
machines for their animations but they weren't selling any and the cost was
killing them, or rather Steve, since they were operating solely off his bank
account. His pride couldn't let them fail. Eventually Steve stops the hardware
development, fires half the workforce, keeping only the Renderman (CG rendering
software) programmers and crucially John Lassiter's animation department - the
only department making any money.
At the same time the beautifully designed NeXT Cube computer was simply
too expensive for individuals to buy and could not compete with the likes of
Sun Microsystems and IBM in the enterprise market. In a devastating blow The
COO of NeXT tried to sell the company from under Steve's feet to Sun. It didn't
come off but the writing was on the wall. NeXT closed their manufacturing
plant, losing 300 workers, and became a small software company, licensing the
excellent NeXT operating system that they had developed in tandem with the
hardware. This was the lowest point and by 1993 Steve Jobs had virtually
retired to be with his new young family at the age of 38.
Big Bucks
John Lasseter at Pixar was recognized as one of the finest animators in
the business and had won several awards for adverts and short films. Jeffrey
Katzenburg at Disney tried to lure him to the "Magic Kingdom
Jobs swiftly took over the reins at Pixar and brought on board a CFO
with Wall Street credibility to prepare for an IPO (Initial Public Offering) on
the Stock Exchange. It seemed a ridiculous idea - Pixar had never made a profit
- but Jobs was convinced that Toy Story was going to be a massive hit
and timed the IPO for a week after the film's release. Sure enough the film
opened at $28 million and went on to gross $127 million. The IPO was a massive
success and Steve Jobs was suddenly worth $1.5 billion. Controversially, most
of the Pixar workers got nothing. Jobs went back to Disney and demanded a new
50/50 deal for the next two films - and got it. Incredibly, in 2005 when Disney
boss Michael Eisner was finally fired, Pixar and Jobs engineered a
"reverse-takeover" of Disney Studios that cost Disney $7.5 billion
and put Pixar's Ed Catmull and John Lasseter in charge. Steve Jobs remains
Disney's largest shareholder.
Apple 2.0
Apple in 1996 was in a poor state. Windows 95, Mac clones, an ageing
operating system, a lacklustre roster of products and an equally uninspiring
CEO meant that Q4 1996 was one of the worst financial quarters ever.
Uncharacteristically Jobs had refused to take up the offer of a hostile
takeover of the company by Oracle's Larry Ellison in 1995 but when Apple went
shopping for a new modern operating system Steve managed to convince the board
to buy NeXT for $400 million and he became an "informal advisor" to
the CEO Gil Amelio. While Amelio stumbled and mumbled through his presentation
at the WWDC of January 1997, Steve Jobs ended the developer conference with a
remarkable one hour Q&A session in which the roots of everything we see today
from Apple are plain to see. Within months Amelio had been sacked and Jobs
agreed to take the position of "Interim CEO." Apparently he was
concerned about being CEO of two public companies but one suspects that there
were deeper psychological effects at play. It's as if Jobs felt he had to earn
his place at Apple again and not just be handed the keys.
Steve launched himself into Apple's turnaround with extraordinary
energy. A deal was done with Microsoft to end all hostilities, guaranteeing MS
Office for Mac for five years and securing a symbolic $150 million share deal.
Jobs famously remarked that the PC wars were over and that Microsoft had won.
This deftly stopped the constant market-share comparisons and allowed Apple
room to get quietly profitable. A new advertising company was engaged and a
series of cool black and white photos of iconic people with the slogan
"Think Different" were produced to play on the notion of Apple as the
maverick underdog capable of changing the world. Jobs interviewed every product
team and asked them to justify themselves. Gil Amelio had got the number of
Apple projects from 350 down to 50 - Jobs got it down to 10. Life at Apple
quickly changed - smoking was banned and a fantastic new cafeteria created. A
policy of absolute secrecy concerning product development was introduced and
strictly enforced. Porting the NeXTSTEP operating system to the Mac platform
began and a product strategy consisting of only four segments was devised: Pro
Desktop, Pro Portable, Consumer Desktop, Consumer Portable.
iMac
A quiet Brit, Jonathan Ives was working on a side project at Apple for
a network computer. He wasn't happy and wanted to leave but Steve Jobs was
impressed with his ideas and sensibilities and made him Head of Industrial
Design. They worked closely together on the design of the "Internet
Mac" for the consumer desktop segment and this became the original Bondi
Blue iMac. It was launched in the same room as the original Mac was 14 years
earlier in an occasion heavy with symbolism and emotion, and the clear message
that Apple was back and reconnected to its roots. It was of course a massive
success.
All Steve's experience and the lessons learned in the previous years
had come to this point, and from this point the seeds of all Apple's subsequent
successes were sown. He had seen a talent in Jon Ives and immediately put him
in a position to exploit that talent. They worked on a design that was unique
yet true to the physical essence of the computer, which of course at that point
was the CRT inside. They developed a new plastic composition to take the heat
of the processor while allowing them translucency and color. The machine had a
cute face and a rounded form to make the emotional connection that was so
important for the success of the first Mac but had consequently been lost at
Apple. They also worked hard to ensure that the machine was actually
affordable, in part by removing a bunch of legacy connectors and the floppy
disc drive. A move that shocked the tech community but delighted customers - a
common theme to come. The iMac was also noteworthy for introducing the mass
market to USB, a connection technology invented by Intel that was frankly
dying. With Apple committing to it as their only peripheral connector on
consumer machines there was an explosion of activity by peripheral
manufacturers wanting to standardize on USB. Here was a new phenomenon - a vast
ecosystem of subsidiary manufacturers emerging around the popularization of a
standard.
A few months later the G3 PowerMac was introduced in a new Bondi Blue
plastic case, the iMac now came in five fruit colors and the brightly colored
iBook was launched. The share price rocketed and in two years the turnaround
had been achieved. Steve now entered what might be called the visionary phase
at Apple.
Millennium
At the beginning of the new century a number of significant things
occurred; Steve now felt able to call himself CEO, the first iteration of Mac
OSX was released, the "Digital Hub" strategy was conceived and the
first Apple retail store was opened. The last two are particularly interesting
in that they flew against all the received wisdom of the time. Everybody was
obsessed with the Internet. PC's would become simple "thin clients"
to remote servers and all computers would be bought on-line. Jobs disagreed
vehemently. In fact he had to disagree because if that was indeed the future
then Apple was undoubtedly doomed. Even with all the talk about market-share
being irrelevant Apple was still stuck at 5 percent and needed a strategy to
push consumers to switch from PC's to Macs. Steve positioned the Mac as the center
of your "digital lifestyle," connected to your still cameras, video
cameras and music players. Apple started to produce software to allow mere
mortals to edit their photos, video or make a DVD. Apple also noticed, a little
late in fact, how the craze for downloading music from Napster or from your own
CD collection was snowballing. iTunes was created in just a few months to allow
you to rip from CD's and organize your music library.
Shops and Pods
Jobs felt that although they were now making a superior product, PC
users simply wouldn't get over their inertia and buy a Mac unless they saw and
felt how well designed they were and how easy to use. The retail strategy was a
risky and expensive one and Steve knew it. He drafted in retail heavy-hitters
from Gap and Target and built a dummy store in a warehouse to get the
meticulous design exactly right. At the same time an engineer, Tony Fadell, was
trying to sell a small mp3 music player that he had invented and nobody was
interested. Jobs immediately saw the potential and nine months later the
beautifully designed white
iPod with a unique click-wheel interface and a huge capacity was
launched. It was quite expensive but nobody cared. It was exactly what people
wanted for their new digital music collections and it became the new Walkman,
selling massively across the world.
Truth be told Jobs and Apple were shocked by the numbers but as per
usual they wasted no time in exploiting the phenomenon and all the logical
steps that followed. An iTunes for Windows, a whole range of iPods and
eventually the iTunes music store. Steve's experience with Disney was
particularly useful in persuading the record companies that they really had no
option but to offer their wares through the iTunes store. This symbiosis of
hardware and software that only Apple could do was finally the magic combination
that brought Apple products to the attention of the whole world. Mac market
share began to increase and the retail stores started to become the most
profitable pieces of real estate in the world. From 2004 on, Apple's profits
rose exponentially.
Intel
By June 2005 the transition to OSX was complete with 10.4 proving to be
the most solid and popular release. Apple had a problem however, the PowerPC
processors it was using, made by IBM, were too power hungry and hot to be used
in the smaller and lighter portable laptops that were becoming such an
important market segment. In addition they were perceived as slow by the tech
community. Jobs revealed to a shocked audience that they had been writing an
Intel compatible version of OSX in parallel all this time and that Apple would
be moving to an all Intel line up. It was a masterstroke. Life became much
easier for developers wishing to port to the Mac and in any case you could run
Windows on it if you really had to. Another psychological barrier to Mac ownership
had been removed.
iPhone
The iPod had re-kindled Job's interest in the possibility of a
hand-held computer. He hated the PDA's of the time and had famously killed the Newton port of Mac OSX
The iPhone was
launched in January 2007 and Jobs understood completely the significance of the
event. If Apple got this right, then rather than fighting a decades-old battle
of Mac verses PC they would be creating an entirely new computing market,
potentially dominating it for years to come. The launch of course was an
extraordinary success and again Apple were quick to iterate all the logical
steps that followed that success - the App Store and eventually in 2010 the iPad. What's
remarkable about the iPad is that although the operating system is exactly the
same, the form factor and the context in which it is used have created yet
another unique market segment that Apple continues to dominate.
Health and Legacy
It's no secret that since 2003 Steve Jobs has faced severe health
problems. It's no secret either that these problems seems to have taken a dark
turn since 2008 culminating in his resignation last week. An event timed to
perfection in typical Jobsian style at the point when Apple briefly became the
most valuable quoted company in the world. In many ways the past few years have
seen Steve preparing Apple for a future without him. Tim Cook has been with
Apple for 15 years and Steve's second in command since 2004 - there was never
any doubt of his succession. Steve has instigated an internal
"University" for the numerous Vice Presidents of the company run by
an ex-Yale business professor to teach them the "Apple way." In one
of his final acts as CEO he obtained planning permission for a quite
extraordinary new head office campus
building that should meet Apple's needs for at least a decade.
Lessons
So what can Steve Jobs teach us about success? Well there really is no
secret - the usual clichės apply - passion, vision and focus. In Jobs however
these qualities are turned up to 11 and certainly in his early career caused
much friction and upset to those around him. As some close to him have said, in
later life he learned how to "ride the beast within" and become an
extraordinary leader. Steve himself said, "you have to have a crazy
passion for what you do because without it you will never put up with what's
necessary for success". Steve is also famous for maintaining a vision of
how he believes the world will be in five, ten or even twenty years time and
planning accordingly, "we try to skate to where the puck is going to be,
not where it is". Apple is an extraordinarily focused company and this of
course comes from the top. Job's obsession with the slightest detail is
legendary and Apple prototypes many more products that are rejected than are
ever produced, "in a way we are prouder of the hundreds of products we
throw out than the few we make."
In a few years Apple will very likely become America
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