added: From a February 1985 interview with Playboy:
Jobs: The most compelling reason for most people to buy a computer for the home will be to link it into a nationwide communications network. We're just in the beginning stages of what will be a truly remarkable breakthrough for most people ‐‐ as remarkable as the telephone.
Playboy: Specifically, what kind of breakthrough are you talking about?
Jobs: I can only begin to speculate. We see that a lot in our industry: You don't know exactly what's going to result, but you know it's something very big and very good.
Apple stock is down about 5% in after-hours trading off the announcement, which raises an interesting question--is there another CEO whose resignation would trigger such an immediate drop in the value/perception of a company? (Zuckerberg walking away from Facebook and Gore walking away from CurrentTV are the closest I can come up with.)
ReplyDeleteThank goodness TIm Cook is a good, orderly transition.
ReplyDeleteAnd here's a Fortune article from 2008 on Cook showing the (at the moment) 7% drop in Apple's stock in after hours is a horrible overreaction.
ReplyDeleteJeff Bezos at Amazon strikes me as more likely than Zuckerberg. Amazon is a volatile stock and the company has morphed into so much more than an online bookstore under Bezos' vision and stewardship. I'm not sure Zuckerberg has proven that he's the mastermind of what's next/possible, as opposed to a techie guy who was smart enough and talented enough to catch the social networking lightning in a bottle.
ReplyDeleteIf Zuckerberg flew away on a jet pack, for continuity's sake, they could replace Zuckerberg with Jesse Eisenberg and then they'd also be very well prepared for the upcoming Zombie apocolypse.
ReplyDeleteI think an argument can be made that Jobs was, if not our generation's Edison, the next best thing. Maybe Edison's not right. I am sad.
ReplyDeleteI think an argument can be made that Jobs was, if not our generation's Edison, the next best thing. Maybe Edison's not right. I am sad.
ReplyDeleteFrom his 2005 commencement address: "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."
ReplyDeleteBe well, Steve Jobs.
Warren Buffett
ReplyDeleteI'm not very well versed in Edison's history, but the history of Apple is not one of invention, but one of perfection. Apple didn't invent the personal computer, the portable music player, or the mobile phone; they perfected them, made them elegant and beautiful and easy to use.
ReplyDeleteHeard an interview with Jesse Eisenberg where he talked about all the people who approach him thinking he's actually Zuckerberg. He said he plays along if they're nice, but if they're jerks he's like "dude, that's not me." (His entire delivery of this story was way funnier than my recap of it).
ReplyDeleteConsider this from Jobs in 1985: " [Large companies] insert lots of layers of middle management between the people <span>running the company and the people doing the work. They no longer have an inherent </span><span>feel or a passion about the products." </span>
ReplyDelete<span></span>
<span>They're in good hands, but it's a big deal. I agree with the person who said that Apple without Jobs can still be better than its competitors, but it's hard to imagine it being a better company than it is now.</span>
The interview is interesting in the de-emphasis he places on hardware of personal computers, from a world where the Apple I didn't even have anything other than a circuitboard. The look and feel of the iMac is what saved the company.
ReplyDeleteIn other respects, it's stuff that could be said today, about business philosophy and a very keen understanding of how people would want to use these products, even to do things they didn't even know they wanted to do.