Steve Wozniak, who co-founded Apple with Steve Jobs, made some surprising remarks in an interview. Wozniak says that Apple should spin-off its iPod business to a separate division because it distracts Apple from its core business– computers. While acknowledging that the switch to Intel was a necessary evil, Wozniak says: “It’s like consorting with the enemy. We’ve had this long history of saying the enemy is the big black-hatted guys, and they kind of represent evil. We are different, and by being different we’re better. All of a sudden we’re the same in this hardware regard, so it’s a little hard to swallow your words from the past.” Update: Wozniak now denies having made the claims. Just like politics, boys and girls!
This is why Jobs is the super CEO and Wozniak is out of the business. Ideology and multi-billion dollar corporations don’t mix…
Yeah … but it’s also true that Wozniak is `out of the business’ because he wanted to, not because he was forced. It was more his choice to be the one he is (out of all the bussiness-games and stuff), rather than anything else, BTW, I really sympathize Wozniack’s outgoing-ness and humbleness. He’s really cool.
Ying and Yang– they are both pioneers in different ways. I deeply respect Woz, but I AGREE with Jobs. Winning is evrything in the end. We still have 95% of the computing populace bogged down in the Microsoft tar pit. We have help people out that “by any means necessary” to quote Malcolm X.
This is why Jobs is the super CEO and Wozniak is out of the business.
Wozniak is out of the business, would still be considered rich by most standards, and gets to do whatever he wants all the time. Plus, Jobs can’t buy his way out of being a major league asshole (has he mellowed in old age as the rumors have suggested?).
Do you really think Woz would’ve gotten where he is without Steve? Being a good engineer can make you comfortable. It’ll rarely make you rich, unless you either have other qualities or connections.
Do you really think Woz would’ve gotten where he is without Steve?
The number of slick marketers outnumber the number of great engineers like Woz. If anything, you can thank HP for passing on buying Woz’s Apple.
There are dozens of great engineers working at Apple. There are perhaps thousands more working throughout the tech industry. Yet, there are only a relative handful of people like Jobs, who have built mutli-billion dollar empires. More generally, there are a lot of great ideas out there, with great engineers behind those ideas, that never see the light of day because there isn’t someone like Jobs there to capitalize on t hem.
It’s interesting that patrons become historical footnotes to the developments they fund.
There are lots of great salesman out there that sell crack. But who had the better odds – Woz meeting up with one of thousands and thousands of VCs, salesman, businessman in the valley that would recognize the greatness of the Apple II or Jobs meeting up with a great engineer like Woz, who had a working home computer, would just let Jobs in for half, and also put up with Jobs antics?
You didn’t have to be a svengali to push something like the Apple II, and Woz wasn’t isolated in Bumfsck, USA.
How many of those thousands and thousands of businessmen took great ideas and ran them into the ground? How many of those built successful businesses of their great ideas?
Steve Jobs did both. Actually a lot of “successful” business people failed pretty regularly. There are a lot of successful business people in the world. There have been many historically.
Steve Jobs failed with NeXT. Steve Jobs failed at keeping Apple’s market share that it enjoyed in the 80s. Steve Jobs failed with Lisa. Steve Jobs failed to work with IBM on licensing NeXTSTEP.
There were/are thousands and thousands of businessmen in the valley that would have easily known what to do with the Apple II – and would have had the means and business acumen to take an obviously great product and put it into millions of households. Mike Markkula had the resources and connections to do it.
There were/are thousands and thousands of businessmen in the valley that would have easily known what to do with the Apple II – and would have had the means and business acumen to take an obviously great product and put it into millions of households.
Sure. How many those business men would have had the vision to go from there on to building one of the largest computer companies in the world? Lots of computer manufacturers of the era enjoyed limited success on specific products. How many of them are still around today?
Apple is one of the only companies from that era that survived selling their own computer architecture. Certainly, its the only one that is still flourishing and growing today. Apple wouldn’t have been able to do it without someone of Job’s caliber at the helm.
NeXT was one of those companies that didn’t. It failed developing its own platform, and then failed riding on others’ platforms. If NeXT were still selling computers under Steve Jobs’ oversite, would it be as successful as Apple?
Sure. How many those business men would have had the vision to go from there on to building one of the largest computer companies in the world?
Yeah, see you have a product, you manufacturer it, and you sell as many as you can. Is Jobs the only one that realizes this and all these other businessmen would have been trying to peddle it at HomeBrew meetings?
Apple is one of the only companies from that era that survived selling their own computer architecture. Certainly, its the only one that is still flourishing and growing today. Apple wouldn’t have been able to do it without someone of Job’s caliber at the helm.
And Apple having their own architecture has nothing to do with Jobs selling Macs. If Jobs had real caliber then he wouldn’t have lost all that market share to the PCs and would be able to put a dent in Windows overwhelming dominance on the desktop. I guess Jobs reality distortion field isn’t all that some think it’s cracked up to be.
“Steve Jobs failed with NeXT.” Yea– he sold thee biz for $400 million. I wish I couldd fail so famously…
Yeah, with Ross Perot and Canon alone investing something like $130 million before any operational expenses that’s a stupendous sale. In fact there’s a NeXT computer sitting at every seat in every computer lab in the country.
actually, for a while, there WERE NeXT machines sitting in almost every lab in the country
i actually have one sitting on my desk 
Awesome hardware and OS…
“Steve Jobs failed with NeXT.” Yea– he sold thee biz for $400 million. I wish I couldd fail so famously…
Apple bought Jobs and his reality distortion field. The NeXT deal was something that Jobs insisted on. NeXT was in deep, deep trouble because of Jobs hardware fetish.
I assure you that you are WRONG. I worked for a company that was co-founded by two men I knew personally. One was a brilliant engineer, honest, upstanding. The other was the smoothest talker and charmer you could ever have met. Together their company soared… then the genius left (and I a little later) to form his own company and guess what…
The original company with the smooth talker lived on, the other folded…
You can throw together so-so products and market them well and succeed beyond your wildest dreams… but you cannot build a great product and succeed if you can’t convince your own mother of its worth.
That sort of hypothetical is unresolvable. Who knows? What would make anyone think Steve Jobs would be doing something more than selling cars if Steve Wozniak hadn’t been his friend? A lot of the ’70s/80s computer successes became absurdly wealthy in a short period of time, permitting them to do all sorts of things that they may have otherwise never had the opportunity to do. It’s not like either of them urinate pure liquid sunshine. NeXT was a failure. Cloud 9 was not a sparkling success. IT/Ginger/Segway was one of the biggest jokes of the earliest parts of this century. Or bigger than the Internet. I forget which.
What would make anyone think Steve Jobs would be doing something more than selling cars if Steve Wozniak hadn’t been his friend?
I don’t know. I think the fact that he turned around Apple after his return is an indicator that he actually has a talent for this sort of thing, and didn’t just get lucky. Like it or not, it takes some skill to successfully lead a big company like Apple, and while he may be an (allagedly) abrasive asshole, Jobs has that skill. Going by his suggestions, Wozniak obviously doesn’t.
If Steve Jobs had never been Steve Wozniak’s friend, he never would have been in a place to lead Apple Computer anywhere. Without the initial success of Apple Computer he would have never obtained the capital for NeXT, or Pixar. It has little to nothing to do with liking whether it takes skill to be a CEO of a business. All tasks require skills.
Sure, opportunity is everything. Jobs wouldn’t have gotten somewhere if Wozniak hadn’t given him an “in”. However, the history of computing is full of great engineers like Woz. People like Jobs, who can build a successful business on a great idea, those are much harder to find.
Saying “all tasks require skills” is pointless. Some skills are harder to come by than others. My point is that Jobs has skills that are harder to find than the ones Wozniak has.
My point is that Jobs has skills that are harder to find than the ones Wozniak has.
What is the basis for that statement?
The ratio of the number of successful businesses to the number of technically good ideas out there.
What’s that ratio, again? And what does the number of successful businesses have to do with skill set?
While you’re at it you can:
Define the skills that you’re talking about. Name ten people that have them in what order they have them if they do not have them equally. Provide a means for determining this skill set within the population and then provide some estimate. Let’s try to keep me from enumerating all of the details necessary for reading your comment.
Do you really need everything spelled out for you in such detail? Fine, I’ll play along.
The skills necessary to be a successful CEO in the computer marketplace:
1) Knowing when to stay the course, and knowing when to change direction. SGI and Be are good examples of companies that did not know when to do what.
2) Knowing how to handle changes of course smoothly. The two-big Apple transitions, to OS X and to x86, happened under Jobs. They were well-timed, and well-executed. Either transition could have been fatal to Apple had they been botched.
3) Knowing what business directions to pursue. Apple had the foresight to avoid becoming just another vendor of Windows PCs, yet had the sense to diversify their core business into the consumer electronics realm. Apple branched out into creating a large body of first-party software for its platform. This gives them a lot of flexibility, and creates reasons for people to stay on the Apple platform.
4) Being able to effectively handle NIH-syndrome in the engineers. Apple under Jobs brought in a lot of outside software, from OS X (nee NeXTStep), to WebKit (nee KHTML), Final Cut Pro (nee KeyGrip), etc.
5) Being able to effectively manage your competitors. Apple has lots of competitors, and some particular complex relationships with them. They compete with Adobe in the video editing realm, but Photoshop is a crucial application on the Apple platform. Apple under Jobs has so far done an excellent job of juggling the various considerations.
I’m sure your’re smart enough to look at the CEOs out there and figure out which ones display these qualities. I’d put Bill Gates at the top of the list, though.
Do you really need everything spelled out for you in such detail?
Yes, I require that you explain your assertions so that I can do more than dismiss you as ignorant. If you’d prefer I could just ignore you entirely as not being worth the effort.
Knowing when to stay the course, and knowing when to change direction.
Operations Research.
SGI and Be are good examples of companies that did not know when to do what.
Be had nowhere to transition to. They wanted to be acquired by Apple Computer and failed to do so. When Apple didn’t acquire Be, its fate was sealed. SGI along with the other major UNIX vendors besides IBM are good examples on the other hand, for much the same reasons.
Warren Buffet excels at such matters of business in my humble opinion. But so might that guy that turned his record store into a coffee shop a few blocks from here. His pastries are much more to my liking. So did the Mathematical Applications Group, only to fail later. There’s a pretty long list someone could write there.
Knowing how to handle changes of course smoothly. The two-big Apple transitions, to OS X and to x86, happened under Jobs.
Actually one of them is in the process of happening. The other was the entire purpose of acquiring NeXT’s technology, and I think we know who to credit for that. We’re still watching to see if the Intel transition will be a smooth one.
Knowing what business directions to pursue. Apple had the foresight to avoid becoming just another vendor of Windows PCs,
Apple did make some good decisions. Obtaining rights from the music cartels to sell iPods was a good idea. Being associated with movie trailers was a good idea. Investing development in professional tools was a good idea. Selling fruity-colored iMacs was a good idea. Whether opting to maintain its own operating system while making itself another PC vendor is a good idea or not is not immediately obvious.
Apple branched out into creating a large body of first-party software for its platform.
It had to. The number of ISVs targeting Apple’s platform is not large.
I could continue to itemize this but it’s all standard business with specific opinions inserted about Apple’s performance in specific situations. Believe it or not a lot of businesses have to make strategic decisions all of the time, and there’s a whole lot of them.
Yes, I require that you explain your assertions so that I can do more than dismiss you as ignorant. If you’d prefer I could just ignore you entirely as not being worth the effort.
I think I’d prefer that. I can’t even figure out what you’re arguing about half the time, or what your exact contention with my points happens to be. You refute points I never made, and put words into my mouth I never said.
Operations Research.
Right, because the CEO isn’t responsible for the overall direction of the company…
Be had nowhere to transition to. They wanted to be acquired by Apple Computer and failed to do so. When Apple didn’t acquire Be, its fate was sealed.
I’d argue that Be’s movement into the embedded realm could very well have been successful if it had been executed more cleanly. That market was not locked out to Be, and the success of companies like QNX in expanding into markets such as car navigation systems suggests that Be could have found its niche. The problem with the “focus shift” was that Be burned its bridges in the desktop market before establishing roots in the embedded market.
It’s interesting to consider the differences between Be and YellowTab. Both are selling essentially the same product. So what differentiates them? The fact that YellowTab has a specific, narrow focus, that its trying to build its business up slowly and gradually, and that its creating first-party applications to run on its platform. I’d argue that Bernd Korz deserves some credit for these things.
SGI along with the other major UNIX vendors besides IBM are good examples on the other hand, for much the same reasons.
SGI’s failure was the fault of bad management. It’s not like SGI’s market evaporated. The demand for high end visualization machines is larger now than it was before. It’s just that the components inside these machines became very commoditized. SGI could have survived by “embracing and extending” this commoditization. Instead, they jumped from one marginal CPU platform (MIPS) to another (Itanium), and abandoned the very thing that differentiated them (IRX), before building up its replacement.
Actually one of them is in the process of happening. The other was the entire purpose of acquiring NeXT’s technology, and I think we know who to credit for that. We’re still watching to see if the Intel transition will be a smooth one.
You act as if switching its developer base over to OS X was simply a matter of buying out some technology. The OS X transition could have been very dangerous, but it was executed very cleanly. Remember, the OS X transition was pre-iPod halo, and Apple was still in the middle of its recovery. As for the Intel transition — the worst of it seems to be behind them. Customers are buying the new machines in decent numbers, lots of applications are already ported, and no major developers have jumped ship. Given the way it could have gone, it was handled very cleanly.
Whether opting to maintain its own operating system while making itself another PC vendor is a good idea or not is not immediately obvious.
Apple could not have survived becoming another Dell. It doesn’t have that kind of corporate structure, and Dell has far more experience and clout when it comes to aggressively trimming the price of its computers. Keeping Apple as a high-value brand was the only sane course of action.
It had to. The number of ISVs targeting Apple’s platform is not large.
Building first-party software is actually not the standard procedure of companies pushing platforms. Vendors like Sun, SGI, HP, etc, really didn’t. SGI, in particular, might still be relevant today if they’d used their period of dominance in the industry to build up a base of IRIX-specific graphics software. Microsoft and Apple are actually the exception rather than the rule in this regard.
I could continue to itemize this but it’s all standard business with specific opinions inserted about Apple’s performance in specific situations. Believe it or not a lot of businesses have to make strategic decisions all of the time, and there’s a whole lot of them.
You act as if all these policies are obvious and every business would follow them, regardless of the capabilities of its leadership. I picked this characteristics specifically because so many technology companies did not pick up on them. Most such companies have been weeded out by now, but some remain. How about HP? The lack of good leadership has had a terrible effect on the company, despite its highly capable engineering workforce.
You refute points I never made, and put words into my mouth I never said.
That’s rich when you’ve consistently tossed in comments that have no root in anything I’ve said. Insinuations about my thoughts on the difficulty of running a business or some such. You seem to become desperate and it’s not becoming.
Right, because the CEO isn’t responsible for the overall direction of the company…
Do you know what Operations Research entails? Because your response makes no sense to me. The “skills” useful for what you stated are a soft form of operations research. It’s not even remotely uncommon for people to specialize in the subject when pursuing an MBA. Talk about being hypocritical.
I’d argue that Be’s movement into the embedded realm could very well have been successful if it had been executed more cleanly.
There wasn’t clear-enough demand for BeOS in the embedded market to maintain the company. A lot of development of the BeOS that made it novel wasn’t especially applicable.
SGI’s failure was the fault of bad management. It’s not like SGI’s market evaporated.
SGI’s market evaporated in the sense that the demand for hardware at its price-point quickly declined. Even its half-hearted attempts at releasing workstations based around x86 hardware maintained the same overengineering and priced them out of the market. Its staff in this area evaporated with it, moving to other companies, and SGI focused on its supercomputers and the transition to the Itanium. SGI made numerous mistakes similar to those of the other UNIX vendors, who were afforded some more slack during the bubble years. SGI made other business mistakes, like partnering with Microsoft for Fahrenheit.
You act as if switching its developer base over to OS X was simply a matter of buying out some technology.
I’m tired of you tell me what I “act like.” Apple’s transition to NeXT’s technology was the purpose of the NeXT acquisition. The hurdles around moving the platform were technical in nature–namely providing backward-compability and updating a mildly bitrotted operating system. ISVs could take this or leave it, and some did both. It could have failed. So could any of their products.
and Apple was still in the middle of its recovery.
The replacement of OS9 was a large component of the Apple recovery, along with killing off the clone market and selling cute computers. Selling WebObjects also seemed to work out for a while.
As for the Intel transition — the worst of it seems to be behind them.
People are just now obtaining their MBPs. They’ve just barely moved the iMac. They’ve still yet to move the more mainstream iBook and the more professional Powermac. There remain applications that aren’t ported and some won’t be until the next release cycle. Rosetta is a bit buggy. At best the worst is now, when the early-adopters and developers still centered around Code Warrior pay the inconvenience the majority of the Mac userbase will never pay because they don’t buy new computers every two years. By the time they upgrade, the transition will be complete.
Apple could not have survived becoming another Dell.
Apple would never be Dell, even if it sold Windows, or simply arranged to license parts of NT. They could sell the same hardware configurations as Dell and their customers would by and large pay more anyway. I don’t see any real problem with Apple using TPM to provide brand-retention.
Building first-party software is actually not the standard procedure of companies pushing platforms.
If you don’t have the ISVs to provide desktop software to desktop users, they’re going to buy Windows and not BeOS, unless you develop the software yourself. As Microsoft knows, there’s also a good deal of money to be made in leveraging control of your desktop operating system to sell these wares. IBM and Sun develop software for their own platforms, but that’s just a different market. There really aren’t any competitive desktop operating systems to compare with. Embedded platforms are generally sold for specialized tasks–developing a word processor or video editing software makes no sense for Wind River. The workstation market existed to run specific software packages. To some extent that’s still the case.
You act as if all these policies are obvious and every business would follow them, regardless of the capabilities of its leadership. I picked this characteristics specifically because so many technology companies did not pick up on them.
The scenarios you’ve chosen are so broad that they apply regularly to every business. Sometimes they make good decisions, and sometimes they don’t. That still doesn’t support your original thesis vis-a-vis the relative scarcity of business acumen. You can continue to sit there and tell yourself that I secretly think that all components of a business are not important to its success despite me repeatedly telling you otherwise, but that’s intellectually dishonest and somewhat foolish. Maybe you should meander less and answer things directly for a change.
What’s that ratio, again?
The ratio is very low. There are an enormous number of technically-competent ideas out there that failed because the company behind them couldn’t hack it.
And what does the number of successful businesses have to do with skill set?
It takes certain skills as a CEO to build a successful business in the computer industry. It takes a lot of skill to survive a general consolidation of your industry. There are not a huge number of companies that made it out of the consolidation of the PC indusry alive. Apple is one that did it, and not only that, but did it without switching over to selling Windows-based PCs.
Unfortunately you’re leaving this too vague for me. The ratio is very low? What is the ratio? Should I just pull it out of my ass, and say that there are millions more profitable companies in the world than there are good technical ideas?
You’re being silly. Just because you can’t quantify how many successful companies there are and how many good ideas there are doesn’t mean you can’t say there are way more good ideas than successful companies built on them. For every company like Apple there are a dozen good but dead products like BeOS.
You aren’t able to articulate what you’re saying. You already believe it to be true, and simply take it for granted that it is. You conflate the success of Apple with Steve Jobs’ skills at something that you basically allude to as simply having been successful at some point at running Apple. Capacity and realization are entirely different things, which is something you seem to believe when you talk about all of the “great ideas” that aren’t realized. I’m humoring you in hopes that at some point you’ll come up with something more meaningful than “Rayiner says so,” because you aren’t an authority and the otherwise circular arguments regarding Apple’s recent successes seem to ignore failures and others’ successes, and the historical scarcity of genuinely “great ideas” when compared to people that sell widgets.
You aren’t able to articulate what you’re saying.
Or you’re too dense to pick on what is really a very simple statement.
You conflate the success of Apple with Steve Jobs’ skills at something that you basically allude to as simply having been successful at some point at running Apple.
Steve Jobs is the guy in charge of Apple. Apple’s success it Job’s success.
Regardless of what you might believe to be true, running a company is not easy, and running one in a market like Apple’s is even harder. Thousands of good engineers could not help their companies survive the consolidation of the computer market around the Windows/x86 platform. Of all the companies that used to sell desktop machines in the 1980s, Apple is the only one that hasn’t basically become a pusher of Wintel PCs. Would you have me believe it was because Apple’s engineers were better than anyone else’s, or would you concede that leadership had something to do with it?
Capacity and realization are entirely different things, which is something you seem to believe when you talk about all of the “great ideas” that aren’t realized.
Realization is everything. Good products are a dime a dozen. Successful technology businesses are much more rare.
I’m humoring you in hopes that at some point you’ll come up with something more meaningful than “Rayiner says so,”
And I’m trying not to call you on your excessive pedantry — let’s call it even.
otherwise circular arguments regarding Apple’s recent successes seem to ignore failures and others’ successes
What is circular about my argument? Talk about being vague…
and the historical scarcity of genuinely “great ideas” when compared to people that sell widgets.
What historical scarcity? You can look in any part of the market, and see how saavy business leadership is what makes products succeed rather than technical quality. Remember WordPerfect? How about Smalltalk? Alpha anyone? How about the Amiga, BeOS, and OS/2?
Or you’re too dense to pick on what is really a very simple statement.
You only think it’s simple because you’ve foregone the required reasoning to come to the conclusion you already have. You’ve stated that the skills Steve Jobs possesses are more rare than the skills Steve Wozniak possesses. Why do you think that? Because Apple Computer is successful? What kind of reasoning is that? Were Scott Livengood’s “skills” rarer in 2000 than they were in 2005? How do they compare with Steve Jobs’ skills in 1995 versus 2003?
Would you have me believe it was because Apple’s engineers were better than anyone else’s, or would you concede that leadership had something to do with it?
What a retarded false dichotomy. Apple’s success has increased with its marketing and the sale of the iPod. The entire company is responsible for its performance. If the iPod was a piece of shit, Apple would be on the way to oblivion. When Steve Jobs was heading up NeXT it was no Apple Computer, that’s for sure.
Realization is everything. Good products are a dime a dozen. Successful technology businesses are much more rare.
Realization does not demonstrate exclusivity of capacity. The capital investment necessary for a global technology company is slightly more difficult to obtain control of than an engineering degree.
What is circular about my argument?
There are fewer positions available for CEO of X company worth N billion dollars because the skills necessary are more rare. The scarcity of those positions is evidence of the scarcity of the skills necessary.
Remember WordPerfect? How about Smalltalk? Alpha anyone? How about the Amiga, BeOS, and OS/2?
WordPerfect is a “great idea?” So basically any “good product” is a “great idea?” Smalltalk is an interesting example, actually. It contained some good ideas. An extremely simple syntax. Execution on a virtual machine. It continued the usage of garbage collection. It focused on object-orientation. And its ideas in the agregate didn’t suit the market of the time. Not simply because Xerox was comically inept at selling its technology, but because Smalltalk ran badly on the computers people were buying for a long time. Those ideas sparked research that went into the Self project, which then went on to be commercialized in the implementation of Strong Talk which became HotSpot. If it wasn’t for that work, Java wouldn’t be rivaling C for dominance despite any of Sun’s marketing (Sun of course being a giant financial success after all). We’re clearly side-stepping the commercial success of Smalltalk by ParcPlace and IBM prior to it being largely tossed aside for Java. The “good ideas” are gleaned and the forces behind them come and go, as they’re continued forward into the future. The “great ideas,” like say the GUI itself, or personal computing, or computer networks, become ubiquitous but are few while the gradual process of revising them is quite common. There are lots of different types of sodas, but genuinely new beverage ideas? Ah, not so much. And now I’m rambling any my dinner is probably burning.
You’ve stated that the skills Steve Jobs possesses are more rare than the skills Steve Wozniak possesses. Why do you think that? Because Apple Computer is successful?
Because Apple Computer is successful where so many of its contemporaries were not. Lot’s of engineers like Wozniak created personal computers during that era. How many around still around today? What seperated Apple from all those other companies? Was it better engineering? Or was it because Apple’s management was on the ball?
Realization does not demonstrate exclusivity of capacity. The capital investment necessary for a global technology company is slightly more difficult to obtain control of than an engineering degree.
You act as if you have a good idea, all you need to find is funding and you’ll be successful. You need more than VC capital to make a successful company. You need somebody at the helm that can steer the company in the right direction. Lot’s of companies from that era did not have such a person, and are not around today because of it.
There are fewer positions available for CEO of X company worth N billion dollars because the skills necessary are more rare. The scarcity of those positions is evidence of the scarcity of the skills necessary.
That’s not my argument at all. What I said was that good corporate leadership is rarer than good engineering in the technology world because of there are far fewer examples of successful technology companies than there are examples of unsuccessful technology companies with good products.
WordPerfect is a “great idea?”
WordPerfect was a product full of great ideas. It had very powerful editing modes, and integration of text and graphics that Microsoft Word still cannot match. Why did WordPerfect go under? Was it because of technical considerations or business ones?
There are lots of different types of sodas, but genuinely new beverage ideas?
Now you’re switching around the argument. I never said great CEOs were rarer than breakthrough technology. I said great CEOs were rarer than great engineers. Great engineering doesn’t have to mean breakthroughs. The Apple II wasn’t a breakthrough — Wozniak didn’t single-handedly invent the personal computer. It was just a good piece of engineering, just like all those products I mentioned. There is, in fact, lots of examples of great engineering in the computer industry — just few examples of major companies built on them.
Because Apple Computer is successful where so many of its contemporaries were not. Lot’s of engineers like Wozniak created personal computers during that era. How many around still around today? What seperated Apple from all those other companies? Was it better engineering? Or was it because Apple’s management was on the ball?
You seem to be forgetting that Steve Jobs was kicked out of Apple when many of those companies were still around. Apple was ran by John Scully for much of the time when the remaining non-PC vendors went down. In fact one of the non-PC vendors which had to abandon hardware was Next, ran by none other than Steve Jobs…
I agree with many of your points but I do think you have belittled Woz, he wasn’t just a good engineer, he was an excellent engineer. The early success of Apple was in no small part due to him.
The success of Apple after Steve Jobs returned is clearly due to Steve Jobs.
The original point you made was that ideology has no place in business presumably being a reference to Woz’s (now denied) comment about not being different.
However it’s the companies who gave up trying to be different and went into PCs are the one’s which failed…
How about the Amiga, BeOS, and OS/2?
I second that. While reading this thread, I kept wondering how anyone can claim Woz didn’t need Jobs to succeed. I am thinking of the Amiga, my favorite platform by far, and as far as I know undisputedly technically superior in the home market for at least 5 years, and in my opinion for at least 10 years. It tanked despite its brilliant engineers because it couldn’t find competent management.
I wonder how Amiga would have done had someone with even half of Jobs’ talent taken its helm.
Face it: they both needed each other, it was the use of both their respective skills that made the company what it was. When they didn’t need each other any more, they split up. They’re both doing what they prefer and are happy with it. Who needs these little bickering matches of “This Steve was more important— no, this Steve was.”
The fact of that matter is that they were both excellent at what they did, they had complementary skills, and they got lucky enough for everything to come together in their favour.
“NeXT was a failure.”
I’m not so sure about that. Many people consider the acquisition of NeXT by Apple as the thing that saved the company. In some ways it was a reverse takeover.
Hey Mac OS X for Intel doesn’t even support classic! That means NeXT code is more prevalent in the current OS than the original Apple code base.
You may think NeXT was a failure but in the end Steve J had his way…
rayiner: Do you really think Woz would’ve gotten where he is without Steve? Being a good engineer can make you comfortable. It’ll rarely make you rich, unless you either have other qualities or connections.
Being a good businessman implies having good connections, otherwise you have nothing to sell and no one to sell to. (In fact from what I’ve seen, some businessmen are only connections.)
Do you really think Woz would’ve gotten where he is without Steve?
That question works in reverse too.
The idolatry of Jobs is not surprising, as he’s the most public, easily-worshippable face of Apple, but it can get a bit silly. The way some Mac fans gush about him, you’d think he single-handedly designed the PPC architecture and wrote every line of code in OS X.
This is why Jobs is the super CEO and Wozniak is out of the business. Ideology and multi-billion dollar corporations don’t mix…
Totally wrong. In order to be successful you have to have an ideaology, something that makes you different from everyone else and something that you truly believe in. Without it you’re simply another faceless corporation that spends billions drifting from one fad to the next without any thought whatsoever.
Of course, it depends what kind of ideology you have, but having one and knowing what you’re about is better than nothing at all.
Ideology is different from direction. Direction is abot knowing where you are going, ideology is having specific and rigid beliefs about how to get there. Corporations need to have focus, so they know what needs to be done. At the same time, corprations can’t be ideological, but that might prevent them from doing what needs to be done.
Apple is really an excellent example. The x86 transition was, from the business perspective, what needed to be done. Jobs didn’t let ideology about “we’re different” stop them from doing that.
Edited 2006-02-25 21:22
I watched “Pirates of Silicon valley” the made for TV movie the other evening, whist laid up in a Hotel room on business. Whether the film is entirely fact is debatable, but it does show why Woz left and why Jobs is his own worst enemy. It paints a nasty picture of Gates too… It’s worth watching (again?) if you take it with a pinch of salt. Very compelling, almost “The Doors”-esque style in many elements.
To be honest, Joe Public doesn’t care what processor is in a computer so long as the computer isn’t slow and impractical. There is no ‘evil’ in using Intel, there’s only OSX; exactly the same as it was before the switch.
Why does the techy 5% of the market feel that they speak for the other 95%?
Perhaps 5% of the peole have 98% of the ego.
Why does the techy 5% of the market feel that they speak for the other 95%?
Is it because, most of the time, that 5% gets the honor to be the unpaid consultant of said other 95%? Because the other 95% wouldn’t know a computer if it bit them in the rear and needs the 5% to tell them that they can’t go wrong with < enter computing platform here >?
It’s just a thought. Maybe the techy 5% feels they are the voice, since they call the shots when it comes to the casual computer user.
iPods have increased the brand recognition for Apple. If anything Apple sells more computers because of the iPod.
iPods sell well because they’re trendy, not because they’re the best MP3 player on the market. Microsoft just needs to make sure their player is the next big trend and they can easily overtake the iPod.
Whoa– have you OWNED an iPod. Sure they look cool. Sure, the ads are hip. But they SELL becuase they blow away everything else on the market. I plug mine in at the end of the day and– bamm- automatically, it’s filled up with content for the next day. No hastle. I don’t CARE if Joe Schmoe general MP3 player gives me 5oo more meg for $25 less.
Next, at least NextStep didn’t fail. Remember our beloved OSX is nothing else than a pimped up NextStep.
Steve Jobs is real genius. He saved Apple. Woz may be a brlliant engineer, but he didn’t prove the qualities of Steve.
Doesn’t he remember the underpaid Apple CEO stating that Apple was a music company? Apple doesn’t have to spin off anything.
Somehow Dvorak is right!
Edited 2006-02-26 00:06
I must take exception. It is not just like politics.
It may be more like journalistic liberties.
If you where not there you have to rely on the reporter. Who is to say the reporter didn’t “sex it up” a bit. You know…make it just a little more “newsworthy”.
I have been interviewed for publication and I can tell you that what I said is not what was published.
I sympathize with the Woz on this one.
Just recently has been released a study stating that there is coming a period of chronic lack of engineering and scientific skills in the industry, and that there is an inflation of MBAs, middle and top management.
Now this info ties in with the dispute that has been going on in this thread, about engineer vs. businessman: There are way more business-movers than there are engineers, but the role of engineers and researchers has been put down/deprecated in western societies, expecially american, because success is measured almost exclusively in terms of money. Yet, people forget that many researchers and egnineers do what they do because they like it more than being suits, they enjoy it more – and not because they can’t. The truth is, most suvvesful managers are both lucky and have nothing better to do.
And by lucky I mean that the ratio of success vs. failure has been a bit more favourable. In those terms, Jobs would count as a mildly succesful CEO, as most of his enterprises failed. The ones that succeeded (not necessarily because of him) have been succesful enough to tip the scale onto the positive side. But, if you want to look at it objectively, even Apple is an unsuccess, as it’s marketshare is tiny, compared to Interl-based computers.
As for the x86 Macs: nobody know whether they are going to be succesful. For all we know, they might end up sinking Apple. The jury is totally out on that one, so don’t dismiss Woz just as yet.
“As for the x86 Macs: nobody know whether they are going to be succesful. For all we know, they might end up sinking Apple. The jury is totally out on that one, so don’t dismiss Woz just as yet”
We do know. They will be successful beyond anyone’s imagining. How do we know this? Because the first models out show a SIGNIFICANT speed increase with bump in cost; without being really buggy or anything. Vista is going to look like molasses in january when Microsoft foists it on the market in 6 months, or whenever the current release date is.
But you know that technical ualities alone don’t necessarily guarantee success of a product. It is debatable whether PPC-based Macs are technically superior to PCs. Yet, Mac-heads would always buy a Mac, no matter what. Part of the reason is the existing apps, another part is OS X, but there is a big part that is mystique and a bit of elitism (and I don’t mind the latter, personally). Who knows whether the Intel-based Macs will have the same, untangeable, quality/dimension.
Just for the record, I didn’t mod you down, I think your post was reasonable and civilized. Unfortunately, I can’t mod you up, either, I have no mod points left (in fact, I have the impression they somehow vanished since last night).
OK, I grew 1 modpoint, so gave it to you. Fair is fair, and sometimes one has to right what others did wrong.
Even though I still mostly disagree with you ;oP
Wasn’t there once a commercial:
Crunchy Wheat,
Nicely Sweet.
This thread brought that 20 year old commercial to mind for some reason.
I thought Woz died in a car accident years ago or something…??
I thought Woz died in a car accident years ago or something…??
Hehe, no, he was in a serious plane accident years ago. I remember him joking about that at least he got his teeth fixed finally.
Just like the constant hysterical attempts to find and publicize a mac virus that will knock Apple down a peg, it looks like the reporter was deperate to create conflict and ideological war when Woz just isn’t that sort of person.
…any old ***hole can do it.
Woz was brilliant with Steve Ciarcia’s favorite software — chips. He lowered chip counts for a living and this made all the difference in the early days. As to the later years, history always shines on the first few companies in a new industry no matter how they stumble years later. Look how long Xerox or Kodak has stumbled yet they remain favorable images in our minds.
Woz would have kept on being brilliant at any point in the evolution of computing but it soon became more than just hardware and really he had shot his wad.
Jobs is all the negatives you have heard, just read the books about him. But Apple continues to get undeserved praise in every quarter and so the quarterback of iMac and iPod will always get the appearance fee.
As to Jobs turning Apple around, this has happened countless times before. ALL that is needed is to ask for full authority and I am quite sure the Zen man (hysterical laughter) asked for that.
On an achievement scale I would rank Jobs with the people who made IOmega or Quicken — good but not great. The Woz was and is great, on many levels. He was even smart enough to see that it was no longer all about the chips and took his leave on the highest note.
By the way, it can not be ignored how much Microsoft has propped up Apple over the years — and not just the more obvious things like the $150M loan and providing Office/Mac for years. Apple has survived because investors, and competitors, have wanted it to. Today its assimilation is almost complete.
Floyd
http://www.just-think-it.com