“This is partly a story about a company called Apple Computer. It’s also partly a story about a fancy new iPod that plays videos as well as music and that could dramatically change the way people entertain themselves. But it’s mostly a story about new things and where they come from, about which there are a few popular misconceptions.”
nice to see that Time considers Apple the most innovative company in the world.
is this true?
That article is shockingly correct in many ways!
/me bows to him and his elite skills.
I’ve just seen the new Nano iPod at Best Buy yesterday and lemme tell ya that it’s HOT! And I thought the Mini was pretty slick.
Now if only they can offer Heavy Metal music and Anime episodes on iTMS. lol *wink*
“/me bows to him and his elite skills.”
“blows”… that’s how you spell it.
He might be a nut-job and control freak, but you’re right, Jobs is responsible for Apple being the company it is. That concept car thing in the story is absolutely right. Companies put out some really awesome prototype, and never really deliver on the device.
Apple seems to be the company that really delivers on its good ideas.
Korn and SOAD are not heavy enough for you?
DO you mean Heavy like Cannibal Corpse?
“DO you mean Heavy like Cannibal Corpse?”
This is not Heavy, this is Thrash/Death Metal. Iron Maiden is Heavy Metal.
Iron Maiden is my favorite band. And Apple is my favorite computer. 🙂
Korn and SOAD are alternative music.
Cradle of Filth, Slayer, Dimmu Borgir, etc… those are real metal bands.
Dimmu Borgir sounds like Popeye singing death metal in their latest album. (Progenies of the Apocalypse).
actually those bands are black metal bands i think he is talking about bands like Maiden, Judas Priest, King Diamond, Mercyful Fate etc etc etc
Korn is soooo 90s…
Steve is teh 3l337 M@rK3Tdr0idz0r!!!!!!!!11111oneoneoneoneone
Well, I don’t think there is anything called right and wrong in regard to business tactics.
If you just want to sell, it’s wrong to do everything yourself.
If you want to secure the best possible quality on all levels (in your mind), you have to do all yourself, or keeping partners under strict control.
Jobs don’t want quick money – he rather appears to have certain visions, and they are more important to him than anything else. This is also the reason why he has a RDF
… it’s something that simply comes along – a part of human nature.
Look at Mac in 1985 and PC in 1985: Jobs vision was right. However, the product isn’t perfect and I can see room for many improvements (but hey.. it 2005 now. 20 years should be enough to find possible improvements).
Jobs don’t want quick money
I really think this is a problem with many companies. You’re either in it for a quick buck or your in it for the long haul. Fast-money people make their money, sure, but when people realize they’re being scammed and sold crappy products, the market will (sooner or later) turn against them.
There’s something to be said for long-term planning, quality products, and fair business dealings. It’s good for business to keep your customers happy.
“I really think this is a problem with many companies. You’re either in it for a quick buck or your in it for the long haul. Fast-money people make their money, sure, but when people realize they’re being scammed and sold crappy products, the market will (sooner or later) turn against them. ”
Apparently not as witnessed by the growth of big-box retailers like Wal-Mart (as satirized by the latest Jib-Jab cartoon). Thing is, people want “crappy products”. They could have purchased from those mom-and-pop retailers that sell “non-crappy” products, but they didn’t and they went out of business.
“There’s something to be said for long-term planning, quality products, and fair business dealings. It’s good for business to keep your customers happy.”
But customers ARE happy. I find your argument a tad hollow for the simple reason that people have had plenty of opportunities over the years to vote with their dollars, and they decided to vote for “made in China”, and a “disposable convienence” society. Even “counterfiting” and regular “IP violations” show were societies priorities lie.
Yipes! The people at TIME have drunk the Kool-aid too. (Note how much I love my iBook before you think this is bashing.)
What’s the bottom line here? Control? Yes. Nobody likes change. Nobody. Not unless it’s pain free and offers a smooth path to bliss and eternal glory. This is where you have to bite the bullet and make things happen.
Lets take a look at Linux. It’s a fragmented ugly mess that few people outside of a narrow bunch of fan boys and cost accountants want to have anything to do with. Why? Too many cooks spoil the broth. Control.
Windows is a badly designed and coded mess, but it has the same advantage Apple has. Control. It may not be perfect but Microsoft have kept it together and navigated their way to 95% of the worlds desktops.
Microsoft doesn’r have 95% of the world’s desktops.
Heres another instance of a person interchanging market share with install base.
Microsofts percentage of the worlds desktops is roughly 90%.
Microsofts percentage of the worlds desktops is roughly 90%.
No, it’s 93.5%.
No, it’s 93.5%.
No it’s 100%, oh wait i’m using osx myself.
Microsoft doesn’r have 95% [blurb] is roughly 90%.
You are all wrong. It’s 92.236476237827646657836736%.
Don’t nitpick.
Its an important point to drive home because otherwise people will continue to believe the myth that Linux and Macintosh occupy less than 2.5% of all computers in use.
Its telling that you of all people are inclined to marginalize this point.
“Heres another instance of a person interchanging market share with install base.”
How do you know that he has confused the 2 parts? Perhaps (s)he has some incorrect figures or old figures. Who is to say that their estimates are correct? Calculating the number of desktops in the world is a rather difficult task; and as most studies state; its a rough estimate. Some studies list the deviation and other studies do not list their confidence index.
PS: Sorry if I used the incorrect (calc / stats) phrases; it has been some time since I have used them.
Windows is a badly designed and coded mess, but it has the same advantage Apple has. Control. It may not be perfect but Microsoft have kept it together and navigated their way to 95% of the worlds desktops.
For this statement to make any sense, Apple would also have to have 95% of the worlds desktops. So much for the “control” theory.
You’re neglecting the fact that Microsoft achieved that status through illegal business practices.
“You’re neglecting the fact that Microsoft achieved that status through illegal business practices.”
It’s probably more about being at the right place at the right time. MS grabbed such a large chunk of the market over a decade ago. At the time they had the best option which would run on inexpensive non-proprietary hardware.
I ran OS/2 at the time believing it would prove to be the winner. It didn’t turn out that way for many reasons other than illegal business practices. The number one cause being miscalculations and mistakes by IBM themselves.
With a few slight changes we could all be complaining about OS/2 and whining about IBM.
Well, IBM lost the lead BECAUSE they wanted to control the market, like they did in the beginning.
When IBM realized their mistake, it was too late.
The same is happening for Microsoft now.
Having said that, people would probably not whine about OS/2. People whine about MS mostly due to stability issues – something which wasn’t an issue on OS/2 (nor was hardware compatibility in the beginning – this has changed as hardware has changed, and OS/2 has not).
“Having said that, people would probably not whine about OS/2. People whine about MS mostly due to stability issues – something which wasn’t an issue on OS/2 (nor was hardware compatibility in the beginning – this has changed as hardware has changed, and OS/2 has not).”
People whine about MS because they hate the corporate personality, dominate market share, and because they like to whine.
The release of Windows 95 sent OS/2 to heaven before God even knew it was dead. Any of the current projects dealing with what remains of OS/2 are akin to an alien autopsy.
Not too mention that OS/2 never did really fix the Single Input Queue problems that made it frequently ‘hang’ visually, all while the underlying systems kept running. While the system was stable, that didn’t mean it was always usable. So long as the SIQ problem existed, it was going to have issues with consumer desktop usage.
And yes, people did complain about OS/2, I was one of them.
The short version is ever OS Sucks, each in thier own special way 🙂
By giving out lots of Kool-Aid and relying on the “there’s a sucker born every minute” mantra.
With every iteration of the Apple marketing circle-jerk, I always say to myself “No way are the Mac drones so retarded that they’ll actually buy this shit!” But I’m proven wrong each time.
I think the same of PC users:No way are the PC drones so retarded that they’ll actually buy this shit! To each his own…………
No yuo.
With every iteration of the Ubuntu release cycle, I always say to myself “No way are people so retarded that they’ll actually use this shit and sing praises about it”, but I’m proven wrong each time.
With every iteration of the Ubuntu release cycle, I always say to myself “No way are people so retarded that they’ll actually use this shit and sing praises about it”, but I’m proven wrong each time.
When you’re a raving zealot it doesn’t matter how much crap something is, you’ll still eat it all up. The sad thing about Ubuntu is that for all the money pumped into that thing, its really mediocre at best.
Linux is poo… you are trolling again.
… and their fake facts.
Like: MS has superior hardware detection when the fact is it doesn’t.
It didn’t recognize my Compac P70 monitor, it didn’t recognize my graphics card (Geforce 2 MX400 – slightly old crap), it didn’t recognize my NIC (VIA Rhine II), it didn’t recognize my PCI soundcard (SoundBlaster 4.1) – and we’re talking about a brandnew windows-release.
I still have to find a GNU/Linux-distribution who has failed so far – except from LFS, which doesn’t really do hardware detection, since it’s a homebuild.
Another fake fact: GNU/Linux is superior on the desktop on all levels. No matter what Windows can do or the Mac, linux can do it better *puhleaseh*
Linux suffers in regard to multimedia. Movie playback needs a bit of tweaking and ck_sources before it works properly.
The Facts(tm) are: All the screwed up systems are mediocre. And I hate that!
. o O ( The latter one being a real fact… I hate mediocre systems, here there and everywhere! )
*LOL*
Now… was it a windows zealot or a GNU/Linux zealot who modded this one down?
First point is wellknown failures on the Windows platform – second point is wellknown failures on GNU/Linux.
Since I’ve benn running both platforms for many years I believe I have some knowledge about these issues, as can hopefully be seen in the post.
Some persons are a tad loose with those mod points
Like: MS has superior hardware detection when the fact is it doesn’t.
I don’t remember anyone claiming that Windows’ hardware detection was the best there was. When people say that Windows has better hardware support, what they mean is that it is trivial (for non-newbies) to get a random piece of hardware to work, because a driver disk comes with the hardware.
actually, i remember it being claimed quite frequently.
Maybe people mod your comments because they are off-topic. As they should. As should my own.
And because it’s off topic, I’m not even going to bother telling you what I think of your post.
And Gates doesn’t feed his minions Kool-Aid?
No, he respects people’s intelligence.
Man you HAVE been drinking the Gates Kool-Aid.
If apple controls everything to do with their computers then they know exactly what’s going on. Apple probably just spend more time and money on designers and marketing than other IT companies.
It’d say that the reason why they’re able have an OS that’s miles ahead of the competition is because they’re standing on the shoulders of giants. All the ground work for Mac OS X has already been done in Next. All they needed to do was make the UI a bit more flashy and gradually add on features over the years.
All the ground work for Mac OS X has already been done in Next. All they needed to do was make the UI a bit more flashy and gradually add on features over the years.
Which, again, shows that the success of Apple would not really be possible without Steve Jobs. His visions were what made Apple a well known company in the first place. Then he went away creating NeXTstep, a dream OS way ahead of its time, mostly by the help of ex-Apple engineers. When this new company was bought by the old one, big improvements were done to the system, and its full power was unleashed under the name Mac OS X.
Besides some pretty good overall design (and been in a position to be able to deliver the company’s designs), it’s about “Marketing 2.0”
Google for the meaning of it…
I’m not saying I’m against or in favor of… not taking sides, just telling what it is…
…We’ll see (actually, we’re already seeing…) a LOT of companies doing this kind of “evangelisation” pretty soon.
the mots important bit of the article is right at the end
The new iPod’s potential is so huge, it inspires even Jobs to a burst of understatement. “There is no market today for portable video,” he says. “We’re going to sell millions of these to people who want to play their music, and video is going to come along for the ride. Anyone who wants to put out video content will put it out for this. And we’ll find out what happens.”
Yes, he who laughs last, laughs longest… so they say
Why the video iPod is almost as useless as any other handheld video playback device.
320×240 video sucks. Playing this back on a regular TV will suck. playing it on a regular monitor will suck.
The idea is moderately useful, under really limited situations. Until such time as even regular tv quailty can be pushed across the net the idea will flounder.
I wouldn’t watch TV on any handheld device. But I would walk up to my tv attach the device(ipod, etc) and press play.
320×240 video sucks. Playing this back on a regular TV will suck. playing it on a regular monitor will suck.
Pretty interesting claim since VHS video’s and VCD’s you’re watching have resolution of 352×288 (PAL). And you’re sometimes watching this resolution from 32″ screen. So just imagine how sharp it looks on iPod’s 2.5″ screen.
For contrast – DVD has resolution of 720×576 so I think 1/4 of DVD’s resolution is pretty_damn_good.
“Why the video iPod is almost as useless as any other handheld video playback device.
320×240 video sucks. Playing this back on a regular TV will suck. playing it on a regular monitor will suck.”
Nobody’s talking about playing the video on normal TV (though the iPods resolution isn’t far off that of VHS)
The videos from my iRiver H340 are great to watch on the bus home from work, and the iRiver’s resolution and frame-rate are below that of the video iPod. Think of episodes of Seinfeld or The Family Guy.
If Jobs is giving iPod video a free ride then all-the-better. You buy a music player and get the extra capability for free.
“Until such time as even regular tv quailty can be pushed across the net the idea will flounder.”
It already can, although the TV companies are a bit slow to catch up with the enthusiasts. Every week, a couple of hundred thousand people around the world watch the latest episode of Naruto translated into several languages, just a few hours after it airs in Japan. Thank volunteer capturing, encoding, translation and distribution. Fox will catch up eventually.
“It already can, although the TV companies are a bit slow to catch up with the enthusiasts. Every week, a couple of hundred thousand people around the world watch the latest episode of Naruto translated into several languages, just a few hours after it airs in Japan. Thank volunteer capturing, encoding, translation and distribution. Fox will catch up eventually.
”
The quality is both highly variable, and much less than the same delivered latter on DVD. Why push a lesser model, when the one presently in place delivers a better product?
The quality from high quality groups is extremely high and consistent (most front-line shows are taken from digital sources in Japan and encoded very professionally; there’s several shows being distributed in high defintion these days). The distribution network presently in place generally delivers a product that may be slightly better in one category (video quality) but is almost always worse in terms of quantity, release date, and translation.
I really don’t any enlightening comment on this article besides the fact that it is very well written. Rarely do I read such nicely done articles in this age of the blogosphere.
…Except to say this: if one extends the ideas presented here to mean that market share is inversely proportional to some measure of vertical integration, then the free software economy is destined for incredible success. Until a few years ago, the Windows strip mall was the least integrated, most open economy producing a viable general purpose computer. But the Linux bazaar puts that to shame in terms of disintegration and amorphism.
The Koolaid is a different formula between the three. The Apple flavor makes you give them your precious money, the Linux flavor makes you give them your precious time, and the Windows flavor makes you give them your precious ass.
No, I di’n’t!!
Actually I have to agree that the article was a good read. It really shines a new light on a seemingly over-discussed topic.
I also have to agree with your 3rd paragraph. Having done all three, I know what you mean.
Oh, yes you did!!
LOL
“Apple makes its own hardware (iBooks and iMacs), it makes the operating system that runs on that hardware (Mac OS X), and it makes programs that run on that operating system (iTunes, iMovie, Safari Web browser, etc.). It also makes the consumer-electronics.”
“If you smooshed together Microsoft, Dell and Sony into one company, you would have something like the diversity of the Apple technological biosphere.”
Ok, I do not want to ruin the show here, but I think this courting of Jobs is too uncritical. How much of the Mac hardware has Apple actually developed lately? In terms of chip design, memory management for instance. And how much have they relied on companies like Motorola and IBM to get things going? I think it is more fair to say that they very strictly specify and configure the hardware platform on which their products operate, for better and worse. I can admit that they seem to bring some new and interesting features to their OS, but again, remember that it is a Mach microkernel and BSD UNIX system under the hood (not exactly revolutionary stuff). I do not know to what extent their iPackages are their own products written from scratch, but at least Safari has a LOT to thank KHTML and Konqueror for.
Furthermore, IF we lumped together Microsoft, Dell and Sony we would get a much more diverse and company. Of all the companies mentioned here, Sony is clearly the leader in developing consumer-electronics. Dell produces printers, cameras, projectors, desktop and laptop computers and what have you. And Microsoft, well, lets say they make nice keyboards 🙂
My point is that maybe Apple have been better than the competition to bring a variety of IT technologies under one logo, but these technologies and concepts themselves are hardly unique.
I have a great, stable, powerful and easily administrated OS on my machine. Debian GNU/Linux.
I have a perfectly customized desktop environment with which I interact with my computer. KDE and Fluxbox.
I can connect my camera to my MP3 player and watch videos on it as well, and that player can play a great variety of audio formats. iRiver H320.
These things above are so well integrated that I do not even need to rely on special harware or sofware to get them interact.
It’s all about choice and preferences I guess, but do not buy Apple stock because you think that ONLY THEY can be innovative…
Very fair points.
Perhaps you are a little optimistic about the integration of Linux distros, but yes, spot on about the extreme over-estimates of Apple’s innovation.
You are right too about Sony, that is a stream of innovation over many years, a real track record of performance. Apple has nothing like this to show.
A good rule is that any phenomenon which is endorsed on the cover of Time or Business Week has just peaked. So, the famous Death of Equities cover marked the end of a great bear market.
This article fairly thoroughly misunderstands the strengths and weaknesses of Apple. The first thing to look at is revenues and financial performance. Take a look at
http://quicktake.morningstar.com/Stock/Income10.asp?Country=USA&Sym…
where you will see that revenues over 10 years show a decline with some pickup over the last few years. This is not a growth stock, whatever the hype is. You can find out elsewhere that PC shipments this year have been about 1.2 million. Ten years ago they were about 1 million. This has been a stagnant product line.
Now, you can say its a real achievement to still be in the PC business, and it may be, but this doesn’t affect the point. Any other company with a similar record in any other product area would be looked at as ho-hum, an indifferent performer.
The article reveals the extraordinary illusions that evidently exist about this in the mind of the people who work there. We hear, for instance
“The historical way of developing products just doesn’t work when you’re as ambitious as we are”, that they jokingly think Sony is renting space over the street to spy on them, that “they have a strong sense that they are the chosen of the earth”. That “One reason Apple makes its own hardware and software is that when Jobs goes to the trouble of creating a piece of software, he doesn’t want it running on hardware built by a bunch of dudes he doesn’t know and can’t fire”.
You don’t know whether to laugh or cry. If they really think because they have succeeded with iPod, this makes them among the most creative product people on earth, they are nuts. If Jobs really thinks Apple makes its own hardware, he is delusional. If they think they are unique in their ambition, do they really see it fulfilled in the revenue and profit numbers which the world sees? If they really even think much of “their” design is their own, they can’t know anything about their bills to subcontractors, or what they are for.
What is the real story? Apple had one enormous opportunity back around 15 years ago in the PC business, and blew it. They then came out with a string of products which were neither innovative nor particularly good quality, and lost share and shipments fell. They were not ready for the competition presented by W95, W98 and finally XP. Part of the reason they were not ready, and part of the reason they produced such a string of duds, was that they really believed then what they evidently still believe, that they were among the chosen of the earth.
They have now managed a few seasons of rapid product introduction and share and revenue gain in the consumer electronics, music business. The computer business has recovered to some extent, but their essential strategy has been to treat it as a cash cow while diversifying into consumer electronics. The two together have produced a few years rising revenues and earnings. But what they have not done is demonstrate constant stream of innovative products, rising revenues and earnings. They have not shown they are any more than a company which has had a few brilliant flashes, a lot of duds, and little depth. They have not shown they are a growth stock worth paying a heavy premium for.
Now that they have made the cover of Time as innovators, we must fear the worst for them. The most dangerous thing any company in their situation can have, is the attitudes reported in this article. And very few survive such accolades by Time without a collapse of some serious sort, usually in months.
I’m sorry, have you been asleep for the last 3 years? Apple have been releasing products at a regular rate that everyone is trying to play catch-up with.
I’m not sure whether you noticed or not but Apple just reported a quarterly profit of over 400Million, their biggest quarter ever. They have also managed to accumulate over 10 Billion in cash, through guess what? A regular stream of profitable quarters.
Sales on iTMS are growing exponentially and their market share in computers is growing at 4 times the market rate right now according to data from the quarter just gone.
Yeah, they are in BIG trouble!
I know 10 years ago people were suggesting that Apple got it all wrong because “it’s about the software stupid”. Turns out it might have been about the “content” and in that world the “whole widget” approach of Apple might turn out to be the way to go.
Have I been asleep for the last three years?
No. And I do not think Apple is in big trouble at present, other than that experience shows anyone acclaimed on the cover of Time or Business Week is almost certainly peaking!
What I and some others are saying is, look at the facts and look at the numbers. The rest of the world is not trying to catch up. What has happened is, Apple has at last caught up somewhat in the PC product line, and has developed one new leading product line in the music space. However, it is a long way as a company from consistent profitable growth based on innovation. It is a long, long way from the kind of innovation and growth that characterised the great days of, say, 3M. A three year recovery from financial disaster is a good performance. Jobs and the team deserve credit for it. Its doesn’t deserve all these hysterical accolades. It is not a reason for Cupertino to think they are the chosen of the earth. Its just what the general run of companies do, and its what good turn around CEOs do.
Look again at the morningstar numbers, and you’ll see this is right. While you are at it, look at Cisco and Dell performance. Look at IBMs fall from grace and recovery. This is a company like any other.
And a subcontracted box that allows people to watch Desperate Housewives at low resolution may make money. But it is not brilliant, creative, innovative and so on. Its just another product.
A company like any other? Cisco, Dell and IBM have not been “going out business” for 20 years.
If they truly were a company “just like any other” then they would be out of business now. They would be Commodore or Atari or any one of those others that were there at the start of the PC “revolution”, but they aren’t. They just had a 10 Billion+ year, DESPITE the fact that Windows has 95% market share.
It is remarkable that they are not only still here but still having big influence in the industry WELL in excess of the market share they possess. It is innovative products that allow that to happen.
“If they truly were a company “just like any other” then they would be out of business now”
Well no. Relatively few companies of the size of Apple go out of business. It is not a particularly remarkable feat to have stayed in business.
It is not, either they are great or they are zeros. Its rather, they have done quite well in some ways, not so well in others, just like many other companies. There are some companies that have done much better and some much worse. They are, really, just another company in the computer/consumer electronics market. Their performance is nothing special, as the Morningstar numbers prove.
The hysteria of their claque, now that is very special indeed.
You’re so right, alciblades.
Apple are just manipulating binary digits – the same ones and zeros used in Windows and Linux. They’re no better.
And the hardware they make – it’s all the same elements used in every other computer, and mostly in animals as well. Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, silicon… nothing new or interesting there. Where’s the interesting use of elements above 110 in the table? Or entirely new elements being synthesised at Apple? They’re so unoriginal it’s almost funny.
And why even *look* at the actual financial filings of Apple itself when there are other numbers where someone’s done all the work to reach a conclusion for you? Better to accept what they say rather than work it out for yourself or apply a modicum of thought.
And Jobs is an hysterical, power-hungry maniac. It comes across in the performances he gives. You can tell. Not in the way he says stuff, or the way he does things, but you can tell all the same. We all know that the rumours and hearsay matter far more than the actual perception of the man we might form ourselves in what limited dealings we have. He’s crazed and probably drunk or high.
Apple are nothing special. They’re just doing what everyone else is. They’ll be out of business by next week at this rate.
You need to look at the facts. The Morningstar stuff is just all the financials as reported, on line, in a convenient summary. It has no comments, its just what Apple filed with investors and SEC. Its not a conclusion that growth over the period 1995-2004 has been indifferent, its a simple factual description of the financial statements. If you want to see a better performance in the same industry, look at the Dell numbers. Or, look at Cisco. These guys are setting the standards for consistent performance. If you are not doing as well as this, you are only doing quite well. I’m sorry Apple is not in this league for consistent growth, I really am. But its a fact.
Apple really is doing quite well. And Jobs has done quite a good turnaround. They won’t be going out of business any time soon. That’s what is so silly about this story, and about many of the comments. It is only quite well. There is nothing wrong with quite well. But there is something very wrong with pretending that it is insanely great, thinking different, wildly innovative, and an outstanding financial performance. Its just staying in business, like a lot of companies, with some ups and downs. Just as there is something very wrong with pretending that Jobs is only taking $1 a year in compensation. Its not that he is taking a ridiculous amount, relatively speaking. At least not now – 2001 was a different story. But it is not $1. So why say it?
Why is it so important to pretend that Apple is something its not? It isn’t. it is deeply desctructive. It remains my opinion, that an exaggerated idea of the merits of its own fairly good performance, in the minds of both Cupertino and its adherents, is one of the main dangers for Apple – a pretty good company, if people would just let it be that.
Was playing videos before the iPod. If you could slap Movix on there, you could watch any format.
I guess some people still get excited about portable music players. Oh well.
But the real story is that before OSX came out Apple didn’t have a preemptive mulitasking operating system and had fumbled around for years with failed OS projects until OSX.
Microsoft likes Apple’s strategy. When you have 90-95% of the desktop market, then how can you not. If the linux crowd had ever come up with a cohesive, unified, dominant desktop then Apple would be in a worst position than it is today – which isn’t all that great.
The big failure was not switching to Intel at the release of OSX and continuing on with the charade that PowerPC was able to match up to Intel for the desktop.
“With every iteration of the Ubuntu release cycle, I always say to myself “No way are people so retarded that they’ll actually use this shit and sing praises about it”, but I’m proven wrong each time.”
If Linux is too hard for you, you should just come right out and say it.
How do you know that he has confused the 2 parts? Perhaps (s)he has some incorrect figures or old figures. Who is to say that their estimates are correct? Calculating the number of desktops in the world is a rather difficult task; and as most studies state; its a rough estimate. Some studies list the deviation and other studies do not list their confidence index.
I wouldn’t bother with getting sucked into it. It’s a rough figure used to make a point and should be treated as such. If anyone wants to nitpick it to death for analytical or attention seeking reasons, they’re missing the purpose of the comments.
The whole point here, whether it’s Apple, Microsoft, or some other grouping, it all comes down to getting people deliver on a goal. Designers like their visions, engineers like their certainties, and getting people to work together, sometimes, needs a little coercion.
Just for a moment, I’m going to step out of character. OS News, for better or worse, has become riddled from top to bottom by premium grade assholes. Yapping egos that think their petty point of view is more important than the next, and it’s no more than a big time sink.
Steve Jobs is nothing special. Not in the slightest. Like Bill Gates he was the right man in the right place. Not all of us have that luxury but there’s an old phrase which says “the harder I work the luckier I get”, and it’s true. Some do. Others need a good kick.
B.S. on Steve Jobs not being exceptional.
I’ve worked for Steve at NeXT and Apple, as well as 4 other corporations since and I can tell you none of their executive staff and technical staffs come close to the same class and caliber of these Silicon Valley mindshare.
Former acquaintences at SUN would go to the NeXT and later Apple presentations by Steve and talk to the engineers to learn how they do it, from top to bottom.
Realistically: 99% of the decision makers in this industry are SHIT. Two main consumer players speaks volumes for how shitty the rest are and I’m not even going to credit Gates for his skills, other than his embracement coined by Robert Anton Wilson, “Reality is what you can get away with.”
Microsoft has had their reign. More talent is on the horizon, but very few if any have the Vision of a Steve Jobs and his Core Team. He has a core team of brilliant industrial engineers, designers and developers.
One of his greatest strengths is to assess talent and the Artist laying dormant within said pool of talent.
He brings out that talent through either encouragement or intense demand. He works differently with different engineers. He learned his lessons and Apple is seeing the benefit of his tempering ways.
Consumers are just beginning to really “Get it.”
I use OS X and Linux now exclusively. There is a broad pool of talent in both operating system camps with a lot of interaction between both.
Both “get it” but with differing perspectives on the object.
They both benefit the Consumer.
True. But legally downloading Burzum, Mayhem and Dark Funeral from iTunes next to Shakira, Britney and Sugababes just doesn’t feel that EVIL. Bands courting the dark lord should accept that get fiendish fans with wicked urges :-[
Judas Priest
Rob Halford Band
DIO
Black Sabbath
Iron Maiden
Metallica [up-to-Black Album]
Mercyful Fate/King Diamond
Megadeth
Slayer
Anthrax
etc.
I agree that anything in reference to Linux is trolling.
Its another OS, another methodology.
People like it.
Get over it
Talk about Apple.
Anyways I do love my iRiver its a good product. Beats the IPod in every way. Thats my opinion.
The ‘ TIME” has long passed since TIME magazine’s opinions counted for anything. Been down hill since early 80’s.
Apple makes an inferior OS and inferior products that run on that OS.
yeah, and vista will be MORE then what has been on apple boxes for the last five years….
and the ipod STILL MIGHT being a market flop…..
apple is DEAD dammit!!! their profits are NOT increasing by leaps and bounds every year! they are NOT making more money then they were when they were the leaders in market share!
*puts fingures in ears and goes LALALALALALALALALA*
I think that this guy lives with Alice in Wonderland. What is the most acclaim thing that the Ipod has??? The interfase. There are a great numbers of portable music players. The difference or the mayor difference is the interfase. Who invented the Ipod interfase??? Microsoft. UHH that hurts!!!! Other innovation of use the computer with a remote… Hellooo did you know something called Windows Media Center Edition??? It has about three years in the market and is very kool. Apple does it hardware??? Ok or I’m crazy or IBM and Motorola don’t exist. OS X. Somebody knows what is free BSD ???? Is not about the money??? How a mac cost 3 times the price of a comparable pc. I’m lying lets go to notebooks for example. Why microsoft has the market share that it has and is not Apple???? What happen to the first generation of Ipods. It ends in a courts with a Class action suit vs Apple. The same thing that happen to the thousand of notebooks plagued with defects and they did not want to give the warranty. The new nano ipod is nice is very pretty especially with a craked window. HEHEHEHE Apple is a nice company with very bad quality control and is the worst company in customer support. Thats the problem when you read an article so full of lies or in the Apple language,full of the distortion reality field. Its that the reason that the switchers don’t exist… Excuse me, they exit but they are switchers from the PPC to the Pentium. Thats the reason why Apple has 3 percent of the total market. Some people are happy with the reality distortion field, but they are very very few. Other people like the things like they are, without lies without distortion.
From an outsider’s perspective, Apple hire extremely good people and treat them well, and Apple have a very focused idea of what they want to do and where they want to go. They avoid distractions and they don’t try to take on too much. It’s hard to imagine someone like Jonathan Ives thriving at Microsoft or Dell
🙂
Apple also have Steve Jobs. Like him or dislike him, business leaders like Jobs are very rare. He’s prepared to take risks that many more bureaucratic companies would never permit. That’s both a strength and a weakness, of course. If Jobs were running Sun, for example, it might be a different company from what it is now, but it wouldn’t be going round and round in ever decreasing circles, that’s for sure. Man am I tired of hearing the Sun brass talk the talk about open source but then fail to walk the walk other than on a token basis.
I can’t quite accept the ‘regular joe’ theory. Jobs makes $1 a year at Apple [at least that’s the last I heard about that, it may have changed, you will no doubt say so if it is].
Here is a guy who wants to be ‘right’ so badly he essentially works for nothing [of course, he is CEO of Pixar, he got an unconscionable amount of stock, he’s not going to eat a slice of bread less].
Any other run-of-the-mill CEO working for Apple would rake in tens of millions if not hundreds of millions in pay just because he was CEO of Apple. How many CEOs work for that kind of money? Name 3.
There are far more examples [sadly] of CEOs who charge obscene amounts of money for their ‘services’ when their services amount to running the company into the ground, providing crappy products and services, stealing from shareholders and robbing their employees in their tens of thousands of their pensions. These CEO types are not concerned about quality, they are not concerned about their people, they are not concerned about the well-being of their shareholders. They are only concerned with the amount of cash they can get away with before the house comes down. You will be able to provide ample examples yourself.
By contrast, Jobs is genuinely concerned with delivering a great product and a great user experience.
‘Apple makes an inferior OS’. If you had said you were dissatisfied with it, I could accept that. But to call it inferior? As compared to what? An OS which requires a geek [and I absolutely love all you guys out there, nothing whatsoever against geeks] with lots of time for molly-cuddling the system in order to get it to work properly, or an OS that is bothered by more viruses and malware than other platforms have entire software libraries for? We have serious differences of opinion as to what constitutes an inferior OS, you and I. My system just works and it works well. Boohoo, what a piece of crap I’m running.
The future of Apple… it may be so that they have peaked, but I’m not sure. I was unaware of the fact that they are sitting on 10 Billion dollars of cash. That’s a serious chunk of change and I’m willing to bet that a lot of it is going to be spent on research and development.
I’m not even going to try and play down the argument that it’s just a bunch of components and code they put together, a lot of it is. However, they do develop great stuff on top of that. But the important thing is, and the article puts it better than I can, the way it’s being put together. The whole is more than the sum of the parts.
It is amazing how few people ‘get that’. By tightly controlling how things are interacting with each other Apple is able to offer the user, ie. me, a really great experience [and it IS a great experience. To me at least, I’ve worked with lots of systems, I’ve never liked working with an OS more than I do now with OS X]. It is true that the OS has its problems, but that is true for every system you care to name.
Microsoft has chosen to get hold of the biggest market share. Both by very shrewd and ruthless marketing, including some illegal practices. That’s the way it is. Bill Gates is no ordinary man either. If he was you’d have to wonder how come you are not among the hyper rich.
But the present predicament Microsoft faces is that it’s newest release is going to be a year away from now. And its overdue because of some really bad decisions they made. Their weaknesses have finally come back to bite them in the ass. ‘Inferior OS’ you said? I keep reading Vista is going to be so much better than Tiger. I’ll have to see about that. But I don’t care about Vista being better than Tiger. I care about how Vista compares to Leopard.
The way Apple is working right now shows they’re doing -something- right. It’s probably best if they’re not too cocky about it. But if they really sucked that badly, they wouldn’t be making all the money they are today. The way I see it is they are working very hard to provide good products [and the screen thing… ok, that is true too, but only for a small batch apparently] and their process is geared towards integrated cooperation.
Or do you really want me to believe that the fact that the designers, the marketing people and the engineers working together to deliver a product that you can actually buy ad the end of the process, is somehow worse than the spectacular, shiny car you see at the car show that is never going to make it as a production model because the guys on the shop floor didn’t feel like making it?
I can’t speak for the person of Steve Jobs but as a business leader today he makes a lot more sense than the fancy suit stealing my lunch money. If he’s no more special than the next guy in the hot seat, why are they not turning out one cultural icon after the other? Because they don’t want to?
Need to look at the value of the stock options.
His pay is, now, probably not outrageous in comparitive terms, its comparable to similar pay of similarly placed people.
But its not $1 a year.
A CEO like many others, paid like many others, at a company like many others.
I can’t speak for the person of Steve Jobs but as a business leader today he makes a lot more sense than the fancy suit stealing my lunch money. If he’s no more special than the next guy in the hot seat, why are they not turning out one cultural icon after the other? Because they don’t want to?
Ding! The man gets it.
There was a company called Apple that needed a new advertising campaign. They went to a British company. A man within that company came up with a slogan. The man who came up with the slogan pinched it off someone else. That someone else was me. The slogan? Think Different. You may have heard of it.
Being a sheep is easy.
for those who know their history, there was a reason the board kicked him out of apple the first time around. the lisa came closer to killing apple then anything ever has, and the lisa is what happens when you give jobs free reign. and we arent even TALKING about the way he treated the woz after his accident.
he then went on to next. remember the next cube? pretty much the lisa all over again. real good idea, costs as much as a small house.
after that, he went on to pixar. at first, he had a cube at every desk, and it took quite a bit of pressure from the artists and the board to switch to a platform that was a touch more sane.
steve jobs has an incredable ability to surround himself with phenomenal talent. but time and again, if he has too much slack he creates something that costs a small fortune, and comes in a pretty box.
DISCLAMER: I love apple products, and am often accused of being an apple zealot on this site, as i feel that the company puts out things of almost astonishing quality quite consistantly.
I totally agree with that. If we, for the sake of argument, were to assume god existed and created everything in the manner described, we can come to the conclusion that:
– the graphics are awesome and:
– the sound effects are really cool, but
– the architecture is not stable;
– the interface is crappy and [for the most part]
– the user experience sucks the big one
Now, if Steve had been left to build it, baby, that would have been something.
You wouldn’t know anything about it beforehand, but you wouldn’t be sold vaporware and the end result would have been just awesome.
So, to correct the posit: God != Steve Jobs
If we ever get to build version 2, I want Jobs to do it. Maybe we’ll get something decent for a change.
rofl!
you completely missed the point of course, but in a highly entertaining manner. you forgot to mention that everything would come in pretty boxes, and the whole experience would cost a bundle.
you forgot to mention that everything would come in pretty boxes, and the whole experience would cost a bundle
I had taken that as a given, but I don’t mind. A pleasing packaging is not a negative factor. It wouldn’t come free or maybe not even cheap, but you get what you pay for. If I could lead my life Apple style I certainly wouldn’t mind forking over some cash.
Yes, a lot of tech toys can be made way cheaper than what an ordinary Mac costs but to me the user experience counts for something.
If you go out to a fancy restaurant and the chef comes to your table with a big tub of the most delicious food and he piles it on your plate with a shovel, are you not going to mind because it’s half price or would you rather prefer a more civil presentation?
You will be able to mention a lot of tech gadgets that have some kind of functionality, but it’s actually badly designed and there’s functionality in there that you would never want to use anyway.
People who adore Wal-Mart tend to forget that cheap comes at a very high price sometimes.
You don’t have to pay the Apple price, but as long as they make good products, I don’t mind paying for it.
So why say it?
Because this is the era of the disenchanted, young squire [don’t care if you’re young or not]. There are no more heroes, there are no more role models. There is only the screaming fear of being deemed ‘a loser’ and to not fit in with the corporate ethos of ‘eat his heart before he eats yours’. This is an inherently poor experience and a lousy way to live a life. So, we humans look for -somebody- to cling to as a shining example that yes, thank Jobs, there is still someone who cares, or at least seems to care, about whether something looks nice and works well and more importantly, someone who wants -me- to share that same beautiful experience.
And so, I don’t care whether Apple does well or ill, whether it innovates or not, whether this and that protocol pleases soandso. None of that matters, the only thing that matters is that there is at least someone out there who doesn’t like the status quo, who wants desperately there to be something more than just the merely good enough, someone who understands the exhuberance of life and the enchantment of doing something really well. And whether corporate America or the shit-scared investors like what he’s doing or not makes no difference to me.
What makes a difference to me is that my Mac rocks the [censor] house and I’m riding high on the wave of near-perfect computing that the platform offers.
That is why I say it [but actually, I didn’t say it. I offered the correct qualifier to indicate that my information was outdated and that someone, in this case you, would put that straight. You didn’t read that right, or you worded your opinion of it badly, but you insist that I insist on using the wrong information, while I insist on something totally different] that too is a large part of why I prefer the Apple experience. But, alack, you don’t -get it-.
Life is like that sometimes.
I don’t care, I’m having beef stew tonight.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not an Apple-hater — far from it. I use a Mac at work (designer) all day long, and you’d have to to pry my PowerBook™ from my cold dead hands and all, but anyone that thinks it’s earth-shattering is more than slightly behind the times. I’ve been watching video (divx, xvid, you name it [http://tcpmp.corecodec.org/about]), listening to mp3’s *and* oggs [http://www.pocket-tunes.com/] for almost 2 years now on my Treo 600 [http://www.palm.com/us/products/smartphones/treo600/]. It’s also my cell phone, calendar, addressbook, yada-yada… I can even use it to ssh, vnc, ftp, or connect to Samba shares on my server at home and run several game console emulators on it (NES, GB, SG, etc. [http://tinnus.gp32z.com/ljp]). Not that the video iPod isn’t cool and all, I mean it does have more disk space (although I’ve never had problems filling up my Treo’s 2 Gig expansion card — which card I can swap out for more space, if I ever *do* need it), I’d just like to see more honesty in reporting the originality of the feature set.
Sorry for replying to my own post, but no sooner than I clicked ‘Submit’ did I remember another key advantage. My Treo 600 is also a digital camera and can even be a video camera [http://www.infinityball.com/movierec110.aspx] [http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~fine/Tech/palmtools.html]. I use it to take short home movies of my kids when we’re at the park or fair, or whatever and then export to mpegs.