Steve Jobs Resigns as CEO of Apple (and future of Apple)

[99semaj]

Apple was far more than Jobs....thousands of engineers made those products possible. Brilliant minds like Jony Ive made them beautiful.

Steve's contribution was his relentless drive for what what was best for the customer, regardless of what the competition was doing or what Big Music or Hollywood wanted.

[jvincent]

I'm standing by my original prediction of things will be OK for a couple of years and then they will degrade and Apple will become just another CE company.

When, not if, the internal power struggles happen and people start invoking "This is what Steve would have done" as their battle cry, that will signal the start of the decline.

Jobs ran Apple the way he wanted. His way or the highway and had the success to stay on top. I don't think Tim Cook has as much authority as Jobs, so that's the first problem. If there are any product/profit hiccups people will start questioning his leadership, etc.

The whole Apple University thing that gets brought up is such a farce. You can't teach people to be like Jobs. He became what he is by a combination of his successes and failures. A bunch of Apple employees weaned on iKool-Aid that have never had a product fail because of bad market intelligence or cold customer reception aren't suddenly going to put on black turtlenecks and save the company.

[hugh]

Apple went from near bankruptcy to one of the most valuable companies on the planet in 13 years, a truly amazing run.

Frankly, Steve Jobs himself could not continue that type of growth.

Apple has a great 13 years and my guess is it will continue for another year then slow down. Not because Jobs is gone but because it was inevitable as the tablet and smartphone marketplace matured.

[PokerChip]

If you research patents filed by tech companies like Apple, you can find a lot of ideas that are not (yet) incorporated in products, but rather coming down the pipeline.

I'm sure Job's time was shared between looking at "soon to be released" products as well as "long term ideas".

There are probably prototypes of all kinds of stuff in the vault there, as well as countless concepts that are being kicked around every once in a while.

Jobs is on the record as saying that Apple would NOT enter the phone market and that tablets would be a failure (amongst other comments that now appear contradictory in hind sight).

Plus, the company has so much momentum, it's hard to see how they could fail short term. Steve's ideology will be lost at some point. Look at Ford... They went through a long, rough patch and they are barely starting to emerge from what they probably call the dark ages.

I think the challenge for Apple will be to pace themselves and avoid the temptation to diversify too much, while keeping existing products simple and not too gimmicky. That's probably the lesson taught by Jobs. And quality needs to remain number one focus as volumes are increasing dramatically. But Tim Cook is the best at that...

[Francois Caron]

At which point Jobs would have created something no one knew they actually needed before.

99semaj is right. Jobs thought of the CUSTOMER first. Not profit margins or pleasing the board of directors and the shareholders.

As far as not inventing the tablet is concerned, in a way Jobs did "invent" it. He created one THAT ACTUALLY WORKED! After many years of trying out different tablets from different companies, the iPad is the first tablet that actually does what a tablet was SUPPOSE to do from day one, but which NO ONE ever came close to accomplishing!

I'm still not happy with the restrictive software environment though. It's completely unsuitable for a corporate/power user or hobbyist/hacker. But for nearly everyone else who bought one, there's a lot of happy people out there. Jobs understood the masses and their needs.

[james99]

Originally Posted by Francois Caron

99semaj is right. Jobs thought of the CUSTOMER first. Not profit margins or pleasing the board of directors and the shareholders.

Can't agree at all. I have never bought an Apple device because of the anti-consumer business policies that exist today and hopefully not tomorrow.

You spend mucho grando on a device then you have to contend with very tight controls that Apple enforces on its devices. Both hardware and software. It's a very big brother mentality.

This is like Microsoft dictating what pieces of software you can use on your Windows machine. Consumers wouldn't stand for it from Bill Gates.

[PokerChip]

I know we're veering off topic, but I can't not respond to this.

While Apple does have regard on what apps get approved or not on their app store, there are hundreds of thousands of them available, so control can't be that tight, especially with all the fart and bikini picture apps I keep deleting off my kid's iPhone. Name me one thing you wish you could do with an iPad and that you can't (and don't use Flash, because Apple isn't the only company not supporting it on mobile devices).

On the computer side of things, they don't exercise any control at all. Anyone can write any software they want and there's nothing Apple will do to prevent them from selling it.

Devices do cost more. Apple has never been in the business of making junk affordable for everyone. Neither does Mercedes-Benz. You get what you pay for.

And Apple embraces more standards than a lot of other computer makers in the world. USB, Firewire, h.264, HTML 5, and the list goes on, and on, and on... I never bought the argument that they were so "proprietary".

[hugh]

Please Stay focused on the future of Apple or we will have to close the thread.

[Nuje]

Originally Posted by MarcP

Jobs didn't quit back then. He was forced out.

A common mis-perception, to be sure. While the board wasn't thrilled with him hanging around and wanting to do things *his* way, and doing things like running up the pirate flag for his Macintosh team, it was his decision to leave.
From theapplemuseum.com:

On September 12, 1985 Steve Jobs stood up in an Apple board meeting and after years of internal political turmoil and power struggles, said in a flay, unemotional voice, "I've been thinking a lot and it's time for me to get on with my life. It's obvious that I've got to do something. I'm thirty years old." Resigning as chairman, Steve said he intended to leave the company and start a new venture to address the higher education market. After leaving Apple, Jobs' new revolutionary ideas were not in hardware but in software of the computer industry. In 1989 Jobs tried to do it all over again with a new company called Next.

[MarcP]

Originally Posted by Nuje

A common mis-perception, to be sure.

That's not what he said on an interview on 60 Minutes and other interviews.

[Francois Caron]

According to Wikipedia:

In 1985 a power struggle developed between Jobs and CEO John Sculley, who had been hired two years earlier.[42] The Apple board of directors instructed Sculley to "contain" Jobs and limit his ability to launch expensive forays into untested products. Rather than submit to Sculley's direction, Jobs attempted to oust him from his leadership role at Apple. Sculley found out that Jobs had been attempting to organize a putsch and called a board meeting at which Apple's board of directors sided with Sculley and removed Jobs from his managerial duties.[40] Jobs resigned from Apple and founded NeXT Inc. the same year.[43]

The article then notes the period between 1986 and 1993 when Apple rested on their laurels, coasted with their MacIntosh line, giving Microsoft and IBM time to catch up with their OS/2 and Windows operating systems.

Today however, it's an entirely different story. Product development cycles are much shorter, product releases happen much more frequently, and Steve Jobs won't be coming back. On a more positive note, product innovations should slow down to a crawl now that Apple's competitors won't be pressured into releasing any new and innovative products any time soon. They're just as likely to become as lazy as Apple once was a long time ago.

It's definitely going to be an interesting five years.

[Neild]

Originally Posted by Francois Caron

We have to be realistic here. The reason Apple became such a huge success is because of Jobs.

I'm not going to speak ill, but I'd strenuously disagree with this claim. Read some of the pages previous to your post and learn why.

Originally Posted by Francois Caron

It's rumoured that Apple has between two and four years of Jobs' ideas left before they run out.

While there's no shortage of uninformed fans, mourners, and pseudo-journalists saying that, there's not one shred of factual evidence to that. I think it's nonsense myself.

Originally Posted by Francois Caron

Is there anyone at Apple or even the world that has the level of brilliance and vision that Jobs had?

Yes... the thousands of accomplished people who ACTUALLY did all the stuff you mistakenly think Steve Jobs did.

His focus and slick speeches will be missed.

[MarcP]

Originally Posted by Neild

Yes... the thousands of accomplished people who ACTUALLY did all the stuff you mistakenly think Steve Jobs did.

You're confusing vision with know-how.

And Apple was on the verge of bankruptcy when Jobs rejoined.

[Neild]

Originally Posted by hugh

Do people really believe that Jobs left behind a little "ideas" jar that can be dispensed with magical ideas every month for the next 4 years?

Yes, yes they do. And once a couple people say it on twitter, then some half-baked journalist publishes the tweets as commentary, and another lazy journalist reports the commentary as news, and pretty soon the original dopes read it in the news and that cements their opinion.

My favorite is the current imagery being conjured of Jobs toiling away at his workshop at the north pole, putting the 'finishing touches' on the iPhone 4s, and people lining up to get his final masterpiece.

[Neild]

Originally Posted by Francois Caron

Hugh, it just makes sense. Jobs accepted the state of his health. He never complained that he was too rich and famous to die, and even acknowledged the limited amount of time we all have on this world in his commencement address.

Not really. There's credible reports now that Jobs, who often felt he was smarter than everyone, over ruled medical advice which might have saved his life. His self prescribed alternative treatments failed and it became evident the cancer had become life threatening during the delay. The famous commencement speech would have come after that stark and humbling realization. In that context, it makes more sense.

Originally Posted by Francois Caron

Also, new products can easily take a year or two to complete. Chances are Apple already had a few new ideas in the bank before Jobs even resigned.

Or more than a year or two. If you study and consider the products and marketplace enough, the future products are kind of self-evident.

Apple improved their laptop touchpad, making it large and glass. Through several generations, they created and evolved a gesture language for working with iphones, that eventually evolved to the ipad.

At the same time they got into small phone screen displays, again evolving their performance and capability while lowering their production cost.

Then they combined them, not that surprising. I guess the only surprise was how well the combination was executed and worked. We see the lessons learned and the ideas incorporated into a stand alone touch pad product.

Their foray into aluminum design and manufacturing begat the Macbook pro, and gave them the foundation to use aluminum as the perfect lightweight backer to give the ipad's fragile glass structural stiffness and protection.

Rounds and rounds of work to squeeze out a few minutes more battery life from their power sucking macbooks paid dividends when the iPhone/iPad came along and needed battery technology but only ran the miserly A4/A5 designs, and suddenly 10 hrs became the expected run time for a tablet.

The miniaturization and other tricks learned with Macbook and Mac Mini helped set the course for Macbook Air. And Macbook air created a model for what an envelope thin computer could do. But what if you take out the power hungry components and use phone innards and OS?

Since the whole computer market was obsessed for several years with low priced Netbooks, pressure mounted on Appe to build a cheapo mini-mac.

And viola, out comes iPad. Not exactly what people were demanding, but close enough, and with some surprising benefits as a result.

A lot of the products and ideas are sort of predictable, or at the very least, not that shocking when you see how Apple refines and evolves given components, then sees where and how they can match up components to create new products. For example, a touch screen Macbook Pro won't be far off.