Also Craig Barrett, and Paul Ottellini following Andy Grove. Craig had Andy’s technical knowledge, and Paul had Grove’s charisma (not of course in Jobs league) but neither had Grove’s vision. Grove, like Gates, and Jobs inspired people to do great things out of a combination of fear, and a desire for a approval. A friend of mine who worked closely with Jobs at Next and Grove at Intel, said she always felt working for both guys like she was 11 years old, trying to please her demanding, but beloved father. Many people have said the same thing about Gates.
While the power of the Rockstar CEO maybe exaggerated in society, probably not so much in Jobs case.
I am neither a particular fan of Apple or Jobs, but I do hope he dies an old man, and if not he has time to spend with his family.
Or maybe their money will stay down here and be spent eventually on either charity or goods and services that keep other people in business? Why do you care? How is this relevant?
Reading around the web an hour ago, looking for confirmation of the then-minutes-old news that Steve Jobs had resigned as CEO, I repeatedly encountered and bridled each time at use of the adjective “shocking” to describe the announcement. But my initial resentment was unwarranted. This is not out of nowhere, it’s not even unexpected. We could all see this was coming — but it is a shock.
I saw that headline and my nervous system took a jolt.
The thing to keep in mind is this: Apple tomorrow, a week from now, and next month is the exact same Apple from yesterday, a week ago, and last month. Tim Cook wasn’t named “CEO” until today, but he’s been the chief executive at the company since Jobs started this — his third — medical leave back in January, and probably even before that. Whatever Steve’s role is going forward, it’s only different in title than what it has been, in effect, for some time. Whatever it is that ails him, he’s been diminished.
It’s no coincidence that I wrote about succeeding Jobs just last month. All you need to read in that piece is the second footnote:
Perhaps this entire article could be replaced with, “Look, it’s going to be Tim Cook, and that’s that.”
How do you replace the irreplaceable man? Like we’re seeing. An open-ended medical leave, where he retains the CEO title. A continuation of strong new products, including a major improvement to the iPad, the device that is upending the entire computer industry. The ceding of day-to-day operations and leadership to Tim Cook, his right-hand man and chosen successor. Ever-higher profiles during public product announcements of top product-focused lieutenants like Phil Schiller, Scott Forstall, and Eddy Cue. It wasn’t something you could see or hear, but from the audience during this year’s WWDC keynote, it was something you could feel. Midway through, I wrote:
He’s here, but this is the first post-Steve keynote.
Apple’s products are replete with Apple-like features and details, embedded in Apple-like apps, running on Apple-like devices, which come packaged in Apple-like boxes, are promoted in Apple-like ads, and sold in Apple-like stores. The company is a fractal design. Simplicity, elegance, beauty, cleverness, humility. Directness. Truth. Zoom out enough and you can see that the same things that define Apple’s products apply to Apple as a whole. The company itself is Apple-like. The same thought, care, and painstaking attention to detail that Steve Jobs brought to questions like “How should a computer work?”, “How should a phone work?”, “How should we buy music and apps in the digital age?” he also brought to the most important question: “How should a company that creates such things function?”
Jobs’s greatest creation isn’t any Apple product. It is Apple itself.
Today’s announcement is just one more step, albeit a big and sad one, in a long-planned orderly transition — a transition that no one wanted but which could not, alas, be avoided. And as ever, he’s doing it his way.
Saw this news earlier today and I was surprised that my first thought was “Can Apple still be so fucking cool without Steve?”
It’s a giant company run by very talented people, if it was almost any other company I wouldn’t think twice. Maybe I’ve bought into the cult of Steve Jobs without being aware of it, but I really wonder how Apple will keep their edge as he backs further away from a leadership role.
It’s hard to believe Apple will maintain it’s character without a force like Jobs. It just doesn’t happen. HP used to have “the HP way” and it’s but a shell of what it once was. Microsoft isn’t the same under Ballmer, though I’m not really sure what it’s “culture” was to be honest. It just was Borg-like in it’s OS monopoly.
I’m sure there are plenty of other examples. It may take a decade, but Apple will almost certainly lose it’s unique character.
Well, since you’re being an asshole I’ll respond in kind and point out that your post seems to have been written by a twelve year old or someone with a very limited knowledge of the English language.
So as far as the cult thing goes, when Jobs had “merely” presided over the creation of the Apple II and the Macintosh, you could say that he’d just gotten lucky, or that he was a basically talented guy who was in the right place at the right time. And when he then came in to an ailing Apple, turned it around quickly, introduced the massively popular iMac and iBook, managed a transition to a new modern OS (which his predecessor had failed to do despite repeated attempts) and managed a butter-smooth processor-architecture transition, leaving the Mac platform on a sound technical footing and with growing marketshare, you had to admit that he was also at least a Gerstner-level turnaround CEO. (Especially considering that along the way he shepherded Pixar from an effects house into the leading animation studio in the world, which by itself would be enough to give most CEOs a solid reputation.)
But so then he goes and revolutionizes the music industry with the iPod and the iTunes Store, yet another world-changing device. Then, as one more thing, he tosses out the iPhone (and ultimately the iPad), arguably his most significant creation yet, and yet another device that changed the world.
There’s no cult about it, the guy’s an absolute certified genius. I don’t think there’s any single person in the tech world who’s presided over the sheer amount of innovation, nor performed such conspicuous feats of executive leadership, as Jobs. You can take out half his accomplishments and he’s still right up there at the top of the pile.
If you’d put Tim Cook in charge of Apple in 2003, they’d still be selling very nice Macs and doing well in that market; they’d still be selling iPods and doing well in that market. But do you really believe that they’d have introduced an iPhone that was like what they introduced? I don’t. They’ve got lots of talented people at Apple, no question about it, but Steve Jobs has created amazingly, astonishingly innovative things many times over three decades, working with different people, and it’s not cultish at all to notice that the common denominator there has always been Jobs.
Tim Cook can be as much of an asshole as Jobs was. He’s the one who got ripped at someone for not getting on a plane to China immediately when he said, “we’re having a problem over there.”
Very effective CEO, yes. “Presided over sheer amount of innovation”, no, unless you mean “business process and manufacturing pipeline innovation.” All the early stuff came from Xerox, and all the late stuff was coming into to established markets, noticing there was an underserved market for the high-end of non-geeks, and exploiting the hell out of that. They’ve been incredibly, incredibly good at that, but they’re no IBM.
The idea that he personally revolutionized the music industry is a bit of reach. He successfully capitalized on a technological transition that was already happening and would have continued with or without Apple.
His biggest accomplishment [with regard to the music industry] is probably wrangling the big labels to participate in Itunes.
Edit: You’re talking about the DRM stuff, fine, but again, that’s more about working with existing labels. The labels would have had to react eventually to the technology, with or without Jobs.
