Steve Jobs: His Life, His Death, And What It Means For Apple Discussion

Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computer Inc., and the man some called a modern-day Leonardo Da Vinci, died Wednesday at the age of 56. From pioneering the modern GUI (the way we click on images on our computer screens), to the introduction of the iPod, iPhone and iPad, Jobs made a career out of forever changing the way people use technology.

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I think at this point, Apple has a strong foundation and should do very well for the next few years. However, beyond that I feel Apple may loose some market share without Jobs direction. His ability to think critically on so many levels like securing the majority of memory capacities, getting most of the 1/8" HD's for the initial Ipod which gave it a clear advantage for a thinner form factor, thinking of mass producing the Ipad etc.. and getting components for less then the competition. What Jobs was good at was coming up with the next new toy and his incredible ability to take stage and make it seem magical.. at least to many of his followers.

But who will think critically for them now and know what next generation device to come up with? And know ahead of time what customers want and to build and secure components before the competition knows what hits them? Already the competition is gearing up, with Amazon fire, which may not be an Ipad, but the pricepoint may be a huge swing in their favor.. Amazon could gain market share in tablets, and then guess what, they come up with the second generation tablet. As I see it, Apple has a clear advantage when you freeze this moment in time. But having worked in manufacturing myself, I can attest that its so freaking volatile that is stupid. EG.. I worked at Motorola back in the day when we had over 85 percent of the market. We sold 550 flip phones for 400 dollars. Then at one point it got so bad that Moto was thinking of selling off its phone division, although they are coming back from that valley.

Many feel that Jobs laid the foundation for Apple to sustain continued growth. Personally, I think the competition has other ideas and Apple will definitely feel the heat down the road.

I admire Steve as a cunning business man and one who can put the whole package together. However, I have always thought that Apple sells hardware to maximize their bottom line in every way. Like internal batteries , memory, proprietary everything and codecs that are not universal. Iphones are gateways to their marketplace with little other options. I have always felt that Apple products create your experience. I personally like to define that experience. But the whole package works so cohesively and smoothly that people love them.

One thing is for sure, Apple has a huge fan base and that should keep them healthy for some time regardless of what they turn out. It will be interesting to see how much Jobs did for their success. Now that he is gone, we we know if it was truly a one man show. Time will tell.

RIP Steve, you were a warrior during a time of having an insidious disease. Its a horrible way to die but you fought back when many would have given up. Even with the best odds, his type of pancreatic cancer only has a 6-8 year survival rate. This man absolutely knew his time was limited. He knew no limitations or imagination to create. Can Cook do the same?

 

Apple products will sell with or without Jobs. People buy the apple, not the job. Honestly, I take this as a sign of upcoming new inventions from Apple. I expect something big in the future from them that will make them rise to the top once more above all else.

 

Sad day when one of the great minds of of our era comes to an end.
RIP

 

a great man passed away. RIP

 

I am not an apple fanboy, and I don't like the marketing ideas of Apple, but whatever has done Steve at Apple, I know he did it because he loved it and he believe it.

A charismatic person who also has a great personality and follow strongly his Ideas. An example in life.

R.I.P. Steve

 

Well said. Much thought put into post and I have to agree with you. Although, I'm a apple fanboy

 

Geez, I don't know why someone would compare Steve Jobs to an inventor and artistic genius like Da Vinci. I've owned Apple products in the past and have one in the house now, and feel that they are nicely made but not groundbreaking (besides perhaps the design, vendor lock-in, etc.). Nor IIRC did he actually pioneer the mouse-driven GUI, although he developed the idea further after taking the original ideas-- and some researchers who created them-- from Xerox.

If Steve Jobs was a genius or great man, his greatness lay in convincing people to buy what he told them to want, in his second stint at Apple, and that's something. A certain amount of innovation and excellence can occur in good leadership which results in success. The CEO of one of the most successful companies in the world needs no cult of personality to achieve recognition.

He was certainly an important figure in industry, and conducted his affairs with a certain flair. IMHO he has still been given far more press time than I would have expected for a company CEO.

He's been credited far and wide for inventing the PC, inventing the modern GUI, yadda yadda yadda. I leave you with an instructive quote:

"Good artists copy; great artists steal... We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas." - Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs: Good artists copy great artists steal - YouTube

 

No one is perfect...

Joking!

 

Any company that relies on a single person or even small group of people too much is destined to fail. But I think Apple did just that in Steve Jobs. Apple WILL FALL after they ride the wave that Jobs created, for the next few years. After that, unless some other great visionary takes the reigns, the company will flounder. They may come back, they may not. And in the end that's too bad. As little as I care for Apple products, their ingenuity and competitive edge are/were great for the computer and electronic gadget industry in general, which I'm sure was at least 90% attributed to Jobs enthusiasm and genius.

 

Yup, totally agree with this statement.

 

I agree 100%

Apple stock and innovation without steve jobs always went to the pooper, but came back when he came back. After all his work is used it will take a similar mind to regain apple as they rely too much on a small group micro managed by Jobs..

 

I think Apple will do just fine without Steve Jobs. They've got a market stability they never had before, thanks to continued domination by iTunes and the incredible name recognition of the iPhone and iPad. And I know multiple people who buy Apples SOLELY because of the great customer service they can get at the Apple store (which really is unparalleled in the industry...you just don't get consumer tech support like Apple offers from anyone else). These customers are not going to go away suddenly if, in 2015, Toshiba or Asus has an innovative new trackpad that does more things than the Apple trackpad.

They will continue to innovate, but if they have a couple stumbles or delays on the innovation front, they're secure in their position and they have a steady stream of die-hard loyalists. That's not the situation they were in when they nearly went bankrupt.

 

Its O.K. I admit that Jobs was not a genius, but you can't neglect completely the influence apple devices has on the modern generation. He is a perfect inspiration for the youths having high aspirations.

 

I am curious if Mac OS will open up to PCs now or even iOS to other handset makers. Steve Jobs was a great mind, but his control of both software and hardware seemed to place Mac behind. Apple came in second in the Microsoft vs Apple era of the PC. Android seems to slowly be doing the same thing to iOS.

 

Not a chance in hell. Apple's entire business plan is built around a closed system. It wasn't just a quirk of Steve Jobs' personality that made Apple do things that way (their hardware, their OS, and with increasing emphasis on the App Store and a rumored abolition of built-in optical drives from all Apples, software from their store too).

 

I don't think they'll fail but I don't think everything coming out of Apple in the next 5 years will be an automatic winner. But Jobs was smart as he pumped in enough of his ideas to keep Apple steaming along. It will be after his projects run dry that we'll find out if his successors will be able to work the magic of Jobs.

For Apples sake Jonathan Ive's better not leave.

 

Headwinds for Apple and other observations:

* Law of large numbers - as a company gets larger, it becomes progressively harder to keep up the astronomical growth. Apple is now worth ~$200B, so expecting growth similar to the past few years is unrealistic.

* Copycats - after IBM 'invented the pc', (which they really didn't; they just provided the standards for hardware/software, after stepping into the market as the big dawg), people came out of the woodwork, offering up clones. Often better quality and almost always LOTS cheaper.

Expect the same of Apple.

* What'd Jobs & crew -really- develop? Not all that much, when you step back and look at the big pic. A phone, a tablet, and some music downloads. What made -this- different was being the first, biggest and THE standard that everyone aspired to. The technology was finally to the point where someone would have come up with these gadgets eventually. Jobs' big advantage was in being the guy/company to integrate this and convince the public that their product was THE one to use. Enormous growth/opportunity if you're the first-est with the best-est.

Note that there's a reason none of this was done 10 years ago - the technology & infrastructure wasn't yet out there to support this in an economical fashion.

* Profit margins; or, rather, lack thereof - Apple's profit margins are currently quite high. Expect that to decline as product alternatives flow into the market. After all, at some point, there'll be a generic smart phone for 1/3 the price that'll provide most/all of the true functionality of the current whizbang gizmo. Not everyone has to have the flavor of the week. Just walk around Best Buy, looking at portable phones for your home. When these came out years ago, they were a big deal. Today, $50 gets you sumpin' that'll get the job done. When was the last time you checked the brand of your phone when it rang(if you still have a land line)?

* Corporatization - despite what drivel you hear about "We'll always it Steve's way", that's crap. The overwhelming history of companies is that once the originators/stars are out of the picture, they become like every other big corp. out there - maximize $$$, squeeze/screw employees to cut costs. Consider that pension funds, investment funds, and just plain rich folks control most stock in the U.S. and you'll find that they have zero interest in maintaining the 'good old days'; they just wanna make money - lots of it. For example, look for the phrase 'Apple pays competitive salaries for xxxx position'. What this really means is that Apple ain't gonna pay one damned cent more than the sweat shop down the street, so drop any ideas of makin' big bucks here when you apply for that 'dream job'.

Now, in the case of Apple, it could take many years for this transformation to occur...or, it could happen WAY faster than most imagine, if'n the $earnings$ numbers start coming up way short. At that point, expect to see news of the board becoming more involved, new mgmt. on board, and a 'focus on fundamentals and the bottom line'(read: Screw you, here we come). Once this is in place, look for a 'reinvigorated company with fab new mgmt. doing a bang up job'(read: stock price is UP).

Don't believe this? HA! Well, I didn't either, until I lived it...somewheres else, but just like I described.

Not gonna happen tomorrow, but down the road a bit. Just look at HP...between Carly Fiorino and Mark Hurd, that company's gone down the tubes big time...

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On a more personal level, reaction to Jobs' passing(notice almost no one said "Jobs' DEATH") was very typical of well known, cult personalities(Princess Diana, Michael Jackson, etc.). It's been well researched and documented that people often feel intense personal loss when they identify with a personality figure who finally 'cashes it in'. However, how many people actually 'knew' Steve Jobs? Well, not that many. And a lot of -them- described how he was anything but a saint.

Btw, it's not like this was unexpected and out of the blue. 2003 diagnosis, walking skeleton appearance the last few years, stepping down as CEO a few months ago...

In this day and age of whizbang HD TV, people think they know someone when they actually don't. A lot of what made Jobs intriguing was his near death experience w/cancer and the personality changes from it. He was -very- correct in pointing people to focus on what they should really be doing(Stanford grad speech; worth a look if you've never seen it). Then, throw him in the middle of the gadget-of-the-month-club company, sprinkle on some Silicon Valley magic dust, add in some 'special sauce'(charisma) and you have a hell of a recipe for 'greatness'.

Interesting guy, had quite a run, but just remember, he was a human being like all of us, with some good attributes and some not quite so good.

 

It happened to us at Wang Labs when Dr. An Wang first stepped down and it happened at Digital Equipment Corp when their founder Ken Olsen left. It took awhile but eventually neither company was able to recover or have the level of success when they were both there. Both men were leaders and the inspiration at both companies for the vision and products of the company.

Steve Jobs definitely is in this category.

 

History has shown what happens to apple when steve jobs leaves. Maybe they will ride his odeas, but the fact that he can never return will drop stock and users.

 

Steve Jobs was clearly one of the pioneers of Personal Computing along with Gates. His vision and single minded focus propelled Apple Inc from a has-been to the largest Tech Co. in the world.

However Apple's future depends on how Jobs' successors continue to run the business.I feel it is still too early to comment and maybe a couple of years later, things will become clearer.

 

Aha, you're showing your age in the 'puter biz

Been a while since I ran across the 'Wang' name, but I, too, remember those days of Wang Labs, DEC and 500 pc makers out there in mail order land(way before the web, righto?).

 

Good times. I remember buying and selling PC's from the PC Processor magazine.

 

Just saw the Walter Isaacson interview on 60 minutes and came away with an unexpected thought (among many others): If neither Steve Jobs nor Apple had ever existed, the world today would be ....pretty much exactly as it is. I doubt that we would not have superb smart phones (as Samsung and HTC are producing) or excellent tablets (ditto Samsung, probably Amazon, others who will get their acts together) and the music industry was inexorably marching towards digital delivery, as is all storage moving to the cloud. Even the exceptional piece of work that the present MBA 13 is will soon be replicated by many "ultrabooks" coming down the path.

I think Apple may have pushed some to produce better designed products sooner, but I'm not sure the world is a better place because Jobs was so compulsive about perfection that he insisted upon having 100% end to end control, and to charge outrageous prices to those for whom perfection was mandatory, at the expense of variety.

Brilliant guy, but Edison, Einstein, Ford? Don't think so.

(Please hold the hate mail. Just speaking from the facts; correct me if I am wrong.)

EDIT: Forgot to mention, I owned (and built) a Sinclair, and bought an Apple II, Apple III (oops!), Osborne and a 1981 IBM PC with 64 K RAM and two 128K floppy drives) and wrote memos in longhand that secretaries (remember them?!) typed out for me on, you guessed it, Wang word processors. Also, after DEC and Wang, don't forget Data General and PRIME, all part of the "Massachusetts Miracle," circa 1980!

 

Edison was a liar and cheater. He stole a lot of his work from Tesla and other employees. He doesn't deserve credit for most of his "inventions".

 

Then I guess Edison was no, er, Edison either

 

Hold on a second. I actually thing Steve Jobs WAS the Henry Ford of mp3 players, tablets, smartphones, and ultraportables. There are plenty of good cars on the market today; a Honda or Mazda is just as good as a Ford. And Henry Ford didn't invent the automobile...that was Mercedes-Benz. But Ford was the company that blew the market wide open, turning a truly niche commodity into a mainstream commodity. Brands like Honda and Mazda came along later and made products that were just as good, arguably better, but they're not the ones that blew the market open.

Likewise, while the iPad wasn't the first tablet, it was the first tablet that crossed the line from "niche oddity" to "mainstream success." And while some may argue that the Galaxy Tab, the Tablet S, etc are in some ways superior to the iPad (at least in certain respects), those tablets didn't create the market they're now competing in; that was the iPad's work. Likewise, the Ford Focus is a good car, but nothing really unique...but that doesn't change the fact that the Model T was a pioneer and really blew the market open for mass-produced cars. The same is true of ultrabooks and the MacBook Air, or mp3 players and the iPod.

 

I could take issue with some of your thesis there, but I'm the one who chose Edison and Ford as the idols and now Edison's been discredited as a theiving drunk and Jobs said to have done as much to advance three important products of his day - though IMO their importance pales in comparison to bringing the automobile mainstream.

Now, just please don't tell me Einstein just copied the work of others and made no major contributions to science; I'd be so crushed, I might never get over it.

 

I agree with some of what is said about stealing ideas but I do think Apple is going to be just as if not stronger in the future without Steve Jobs. A hugely overlooked part of Apple's success is their head designer Jonathon Ive who was a major part in a lot of Apple's modern products. This also opens up the door for other people to step up that wouldn't of had the chance with Steve Jobs taking the lead.

Their is a great article on Jonathon Ive here: Head designer behind Apple success