> Apple so easily could have gone the way of SGI, the way of Sun. Instead, it literally shapes the future of the industry. All because in 1997 Steve was able to offer a simple and compelling reason for Apple to exist. A purpose. And it’s a purpose that managed to aggregate some of the most talented people in the world to do some of their best work. Again and again.
I would say that much of the lust for Apple is because of their software. If the Mac, iPhone, iPad, etc. ran Linux or Windows or some other commodity system, I feel the hardware would have much less appeal.
I think there is a fair amount of 'lust' surrounding Diablo III, in much the same way as a yet to be released BMW. As to productivity software, Photoshop and other high end design software probably qualify. http://9to5mac.com/2011/10/10/photoshop-unblur-leaves-max-au...
I don't see how eBay is a fair comparison because its competitive advantage is its strong network effect and established ratings/community. Imagine if management was satisfied with only 2% market share..
I agree there is a network effect to get critical mass, and certainly a winner-take all game in auctions.
But eBay lost its essence a long time ago as they absorbed too many MBAs and let them rather than the technologists run the show. The description in the OP of the process eBay went through was enough to know the reinvention would be a failure. It was.
"I told them about Steve’s speech to the Rhapsody team, and asked: 'Does eBay want BMW market share, or Toyota market share?' At the time, eBay was more than 20% of all e-commerce, and all plans oriented towards growing that market share."
Where does MBA's versus engineers ever come up? Jobs' speech is about creating a competitive advantage by building a premium product and focusing on a specific user - something eBay doesn't have the freedom to do.
It doesn't - but the comparison is about quality of the product versus market share and money. The MBAs put the 2nd first, the engineers the first.
During the 2000s eBay increasingly focussed their business on the largest sellers, helping push the site from a many to many business to a more traditional fixed price eCommerce business.
Along the way they forgot about the awesomeness of their tiny auction customers who liked the fun of both placing auctions and buying goods, and as a result the site 'lost it' for many. The right customer for eBay was not the big merchants but the masses.
Having a market share as large as Toyota's doesn't mean that you can't make great products. Who says they have to be related? It seems to happen in practice, but I can't figure out any good reasons.
Toyota is an awesome company. Simply amazing, by any standards. If you visit Nagoya, you will meet a few million Toyota fanatics – and they have something epic to pride themselves on. Honda, likewise, is a powerhouse of innovation, and the only Japanese manufacturer with essentially a singular brand, excluding the Acura name used in certain countries. Both are phenomenal lessons in how to dominate a key market. Both were brilliant at motivating employees – galvanizing a willing workforce by turning convention on its head.
The OP's point about Steve Jobs is that he brought his team in for a huddle, and gave them the play, and some of them are still running it, even after leaving Apple, and after Steve left us.
The thing is, if you've owned both a Toyota and a BMW that are outside of the manufacturers 'free maintenance' window, well, you'd know that Toyota makes a vastly superior vehicle.
I think this supports what Jobs said rather than diminishes it. People love the BMW for the image, and for the performance in certain rare cases. (The BMW is superior to any Toyota I've driven once you get above 100Mph) People love the Toyota because it's an economical, reliable car that performs quite well at the speeds you normally drive.
The mac has a certain image that people love. I mean, that image, personally, does not appeal to me, but that was Job's point. If you can make a product that resonates with a small portion of the market; and if that product resonates to the point where they are willing to pay a large premium, you can make quite a lot of money. Maybe even more money than selling a lower-margin, higher-quality product to the masses.
Apple seems to have proved your point, but they seem exceptional in that respect. Typical reasons are that the broader you make the audience, the more you have to dial down exceptional features for cost, scale and broad appeal.
One of the key things I feel like I learn from Steve Jobs is that while he may have been niche-focused at one time, he seems to me to have either intuited, or rapidly learned, that actually there's a very broad audience that values high-quality products. It's easy to forget that the "cheaper is better" pessimistic view of consumers is very strong, and that can become very cynical in a product company.
Deciding to trust the good judgment of your customers and put faith in your ability to appeal to their sense of value, rather than simply their cost-watching ability, is a brave and bold move. I think it is awesome that it turns out to pay off.
His genius move was turning Apple’s engineering talent to making sub-$1000 products that were not personal computers and therefore had profit margins comparable to the Mac’s.
PC manufacturers went with the strategy of “we used to be able to sell a machine with these features for $1000, and now that components are cheaper, we can sell it for $800”... and then they got into a price war that destroyed one another’s margins.
It helps when you have a product like iPod with enough universal appeal and innovation that you can quickly come to dominate the market and then use that purchasing power to drive down costs from suppliers.
I dont see why a great product cant have a great market share which seems to be an implication. Google search was one example. I am sure there have been other examples.
I am sure there are many lessons to be learnt from Steve Jobs, but I think we should be careful in not making everything he said or did as a lesson to learn!
They were two separate meetings. From the article:
" ... I actually did attend the meeting that John describes in his blog post. However, as a full time engineer on WebObjects, I also had the opportunity to attend a different all hands that Steve Jobs called ... "
The article mentions that he drove with no license plate. But I always wondered if he possessed the plate and never attached it, keeping it inside the car just in case.
New cars in California don't come with plates, so it's not uncommon to see cars without any plates at all, especially in the Bay Area. You get temporary plates in the mail and are responsible for affixing them yourself. As long as your registration is current, your taxes are paid, and you have insurance, getting caught without the plates is a small fine.
Apple and any of the big brands of German cars have been associated (emotionally and culturally if not officially) together quite often. Volkswagen, BMW, and Porsche especially. Except for Mr. Jobs's personal preference, there's almost no association between Apple and Mercedes-Benz ("the German car for people without a sense of humor.")
You know, I thought the same thing. Steve doesn't drive a BMW. But I'm almost 100% sure his example in the talk was BMW. I can only guess that it was because BMW market share (which was sub-2%) fit the example, since that was Apple's market share at the time.
Here it is 14 years later. The thing about that meeting, that strikes me, is that this is what Apple always was. Steve wasn't bringing a purpose to Apple, he was reminding Apple employees of Apple's purpose. Apple still has that purpose.
Every product cycle you see the blogs and the pundits speculating on what Apple will do, and exclaiming what Apple should do. Just today I saw an article along the lines of "now that Steve's dead, here's the four things that Apple MUST DO!" None of these people get it, and that's why they are always wrong.. and then after the fact, rather than learn from their errors, they start spinning why the iPhone 5 wasn't announced. Anyone paying attention knows the tick-tock pattern Apple is following.
People seem to think that apple has become microsoft-- some monolithic entity, focused on having a monopoly and controlling everything.
I can assure you, controlling everything is the last thing Apple wants. Apple is not proprietary. Hell, Mac OS X is the most popular open sourced operating system on the planet. The Safari web browser is just a thin shell around webkit. Apple could have kept both closed and innovated on them, instead they innovate on them and give them away (and yet so called "open source" fans actually complain about this.)
What Apple does care about-- the singular purpose that drives them to make the decisions they make-- is the best user experience for their customers.
IF you ever wonder why Apple did or didn't do something, that's why.
And that didn't go away with Steve's passing. Even in the years when Steve wasn't there, and the company suffered from bad management, they still operated in the Apple way, just not so effectively. Now they have great management, and though Steve is no longer there, it's a lot easier to keep to their purpose...
Maybe this is the real reason Apple accumulated so much cash. It will be a long time, and likely never, in a situation where outside investors and wall street can dictate the CEO position, and so Apple can operate without fear that people who don't get it can undermine its mission.
The real question, though, is why do so few people get it? There's nothing really secret about all this... but I'm unaware of a single other company that operates in this manner.
He is almost true in the pragmatic sense that a lot of the OS is open sourced and it certainly lends itself well to running and developing open source.
Of course it isn't open in the Stallman sense of "if you don't melt the ore yourself, it's not open" but then again Linuxes and others aren't, too.
Mac OS X as a whole package might not be open source, but many of its individual components (Darwin, Webkit, ...) are open. (See http://opensource.apple.com/)
The problem with your argument is that you appeal to the idea that open source is more virtuous than proprietary software, and you want that virtue to rub off on Apple, but unless you explain why open source is virtuous, nobody can refute your implication that Mac OS X has almost as much of this virtue as Linux does.
I would almost certainly be running OS X even if none of it were open source, and I tend to believe that that is true of most OS X users (even those users like me who can program). In contrast, the fact that parts of OS X are open source does not seem to help OS X gain traction in markets where completely open-source software stacks are vastly more popular than OS X, like embedded systems, supercomputing and internet servers.
I am not an expert on all of the reasons developers and admins of embedded systems, supercomputers and internet servers prefer completely open-source ecosystems to OS X, but I tend to believe a lot of it has to do with not wanting Apple to be able to jerk them around and has to do with the fact that if they started to use OS X, Apple would be able to jerk them around almost as much as they would be able to if Darwin, Webkit, LLVM and TextEdit were not open source.
> I can assure you, controlling everything is the last thing Apple wants. Apple is not proprietary. Hell, Mac OS X is the most popular open sourced operating system on the planet. The Safari web browser is just a thin shell around webkit. Apple could have kept both closed and innovated on them, instead they innovate on them and give them away (and yet so called "open source" fans actually complain about this.)
Wow! This is great news. I've been waiting for this to happen so that I can go ahead an run OS X on any computer I choose. Kindly point me to the link? I would have guessed it was at http://opensource.apple.com but alas, that's just a random assortment of parts which I'm limited to using for "internal research and development".
> Wow! This is great news. I've been waiting for this to happen so that I can go ahead an run OS X on any computer I choose. Kindly point me to the link? I would have guessed it was at http://opensource.apple.com ...
You have the URL wrong. I will kindly point you to a link:
It's not "any computer you choose", but any desktop or laptop with hardware components that are supported. Did you know Windows Server 2008 doesn't have drivers for early Intel Gigabit Server NICs, so you can't run that OS on an unsupported computer? Just as you can't run Windows on "any computer you choose", only on ones with supported hardware, it's the same thing with OS X.
> It's not "any computer you choose", but any desktop or laptop with hardware components that are supported. Did you know Windows Server 2008 doesn't have drivers for early Intel Gigabit Server NICs, so you can't run that OS on an unsupported computer? Just as you can't run Windows on "any computer you choose", only on ones with supported hardware, it's the same thing with OS X.
Nobody said that Windows was open source or could run on any computer. However, as I type in a Windows vm running on a computer assembled from commodity hardware, I can honestly say that are certainly a much larger number of choices, since neither of those are options with OS X.
The Hackintosh stuff is not really relevant either as a) it is not open source, and b) violates the EULA of OS X. I won't go so far as to say it's "illegal" but I don't see any overriding moral reason to violate Apple's wishes here.
"You agree not to install, use or run the Apple Software on any non-Apple-labeled computer, or to enable others to do so."
> However, as I type in a Windows vm running on a computer assembled from commodity hardware, I can honestly say that are certainly a much larger number of choices, since neither of those are options with OS X.
On the contrary, running in a VM, and running in a VM on a computer assembled from commodity hardware, are both certainly options with OS X.
Running both server and desktop OS X in a VM is now even allowed in the EULA, which previously only authorized virtualizing OS X Server.
If you want to run it in a VM under Windows 7 (granted, not in the EULA), here's a link:
I stand partially corrected, you can apparently run OS X in a VM, but only on an OS X machine you buy from Apple.
"to install, use and run up to two (2) additional copies or instances of the Apple Software within virtual operating system environments on each Mac Computer you own or control that is already running the Apple Software"
So no, unless I missed something, you cannot run it in VMWare Workstation, and I still cannot run it on the $1800 (including Win 7 Pro) box I put together that has better specs than a $4500+ Mac Pro.
You do realize that not including excess drivers for components that Apple doesn't use in its own hardware is part of that "better user experience" talked about above...
You may disagree with Apple's approach of bundling hardware and software but you would be foolish to expect a company taking that route to produce software that runs on other devices. Notice that the cheapest Windows 7 option is $120 while Lion is $20. Apple is not selling software to run on other devices. They are selling devices with their software. I hope you understand the difference between a hardware and software company.
Gotta be careful with sarcasm. Done right, everyone grins with wry amusement. Sadly, it's much easier to do wrong, and you end up dancing around your point instead of making it persuasively and directly. Brevity helps.
Not trying to be persuasive, I was just entertained by seeing Apple fanboyism raised to the point where people think OS X is now open source, and figured I'd have some fun and spend a few points on the inevitable downvotes.
There was no scandal and only GPL "enthusiasts" would be mad at someone for complying with the license... only not in the style they might want. Reality is, they're just bigots who hate Apple and are looking for any excuse to bash them. Really, you're not fooling anyone.
They kinda were. I don't know all the in's and outs, but as it was explained to me, GPL v3 is not very attractive for them since they're shipping devices that are closed ecosystems. The specific issue has to do with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization
The purpose of using LLVM was so that they could stop relying on the GPLed gcc. The reason GPL is not attractive is because it restricts freedom. It limits people from using GPL software.
When you look at how much effort and time Apple has put into WebKit, I think Apple could have written WebKit from scratch without spending too much time on it.
Remember, Apple had experience web engine developers on the team from day 1. They knew exactly what was needed and how it should be done.
I agree, and it has puzzled me also why so many people just doesn't get it. Apple operates as dependently as a clock. You can see from a mile away what their intentions are when they've done something (or haven't done something), and they are often honest and upfront about it.
And yet, people think Apple have some sort of unlikely agenda of world domination. Jesus christ. They just want to make the best products possible, what is so hard to understand about that?
For the last decade, I've been wondering why people "just don't get it", not only about Apple, but about politics, economics, history, etc.
I've been forced to reach the conclusion that they don't get it because they don't want to. They are driven by ideology. Notice I was called a "fanboy" for defending Apple. The person who called me that name has substituted an ideology for their decision making, and thus, because I said something that pokes holes in the ideology, they must attack me personally.
Further, in the case of Apple, the fact that they are so good at being good, inflames the of people who are jealous or upset, because Apple isn't following their ideology. Richard Stallman, for instance, has been kicking Apple since they were down, and doing so while giving bigger companies like IBM, Google and Microsoft a complete pass.
They don't get it because reality disagrees with their ideology.
I would be surprised if Linux had it over the TRON Project ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRON_Project ), but then again, TRON and Linux are in different 'leagues' as far as 'operating systems' go.
Indeed. Also telling is a lot of the stories on folklore.org - You see a lot of what was described in this article, from yet another unique perspective.
If I were at ebay, I would go for Toyota market share, maybe the reason they have stumbled is because of your thoughts on how a business should be run.
Isn't it survivorship bias?