Jobs/Apple Speculation Frenzy
Some of the wild speculation surrounding the health of Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, has been shameful. He's a human being, and now that he's stepped aside as Apple CEO for a while, he deserves some level of privacy and respect. The speculation about Apple's future has also been rather bizarre, and I'll be discussing some of that in this rant.
The revival at Apple since Steve Jobs returned as CEO has been in large part due to his efforts, both direct and indirect. He's assembled a great team of talented people, for example: Jonathan Ive, Tim Cook and Phil Schiller. Obviously, having such an influential CEO stand aside will have an impact on Apple's day-to-day operations. But there are about 35,000 other employees who've had a hand in producing great products too.
Some may point to what happened to Apple after Jobs was ousted in 1985. There are several factors that need to be considered, however: Jobs went on to start NeXT Inc, "taking several Apple employees from the SuperMicro division with him" [Wikipedia]. Then-CEO John Sculley didn't waste time reorganising (de-Jobsing?) Apple. Other top Apple personnel also left around that time (notably chief Macintosh engineers Andy Hertzfeld and Burrell Smith). And in 1987, co-founder Steve Wozniak left Apple. Quite a brain-drain, I'd say.
The current situation is quite different. Jobs has stepped aside, but his hand-picked team remains in place. As has been noted recently, "although the co-founder has been critical to the company's resurgence, his spirit and drive have since been instilled in thousands of other Apple employees".
Perhaps a more appropriate guide is Pixar. Steve Jobs is no longer CEO of Pixar, yet WALL·E (released last year) did rather well. "It grossed $521 million worldwide, won the 2009 Best Animated Film Golden Globe Award and is nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Animated Feature" [Wikipedia]. After the acquisition of Pixar by Disney in 2006, most of Jobs' creative team has retained control.
In stark contrast, Microsoft's situation does seem to have greatly deteriorated since founder Bill Gates left the company. The past few years have been rather underwhelming for the company: Vista, Zune, Xbox 360's "red ring of death", SPOT, Windows Mobile, Origami/UMPC, PlaysForSure (to name a few problems, failures and missteps).
[Would you believe, another hot day in Adelaide. Today's maximum temperature was 41.1 degrees Celsius (106 degrees Fahrenheit)!]
The revival at Apple since Steve Jobs returned as CEO has been in large part due to his efforts, both direct and indirect. He's assembled a great team of talented people, for example: Jonathan Ive, Tim Cook and Phil Schiller. Obviously, having such an influential CEO stand aside will have an impact on Apple's day-to-day operations. But there are about 35,000 other employees who've had a hand in producing great products too.
Some may point to what happened to Apple after Jobs was ousted in 1985. There are several factors that need to be considered, however: Jobs went on to start NeXT Inc, "taking several Apple employees from the SuperMicro division with him" [Wikipedia]. Then-CEO John Sculley didn't waste time reorganising (de-Jobsing?) Apple. Other top Apple personnel also left around that time (notably chief Macintosh engineers Andy Hertzfeld and Burrell Smith). And in 1987, co-founder Steve Wozniak left Apple. Quite a brain-drain, I'd say.
The current situation is quite different. Jobs has stepped aside, but his hand-picked team remains in place. As has been noted recently, "although the co-founder has been critical to the company's resurgence, his spirit and drive have since been instilled in thousands of other Apple employees".
Perhaps a more appropriate guide is Pixar. Steve Jobs is no longer CEO of Pixar, yet WALL·E (released last year) did rather well. "It grossed $521 million worldwide, won the 2009 Best Animated Film Golden Globe Award and is nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Animated Feature" [Wikipedia]. After the acquisition of Pixar by Disney in 2006, most of Jobs' creative team has retained control.
In stark contrast, Microsoft's situation does seem to have greatly deteriorated since founder Bill Gates left the company. The past few years have been rather underwhelming for the company: Vista, Zune, Xbox 360's "red ring of death", SPOT, Windows Mobile, Origami/UMPC, PlaysForSure (to name a few problems, failures and missteps).
[Would you believe, another hot day in Adelaide. Today's maximum temperature was 41.1 degrees Celsius (106 degrees Fahrenheit)!]
posted by Bruno at 9:46 PM [permalink]
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