How Would You Save
Apple?
Don't Need Steve
Jobs
by TMF
Nico
I am genuinely sad but also fascinated with what is happening with Apple.
I took it as a bad sign when Steve Jobs was brought back last winter. It
seemed like a move designed to recapture an old glory. I might call that
move desperate, but even that carries too strong a suggestion of active decision
making. Disoriented is more like it.
Why, in December 1996, did they all of a sudden realize that Copeland wasn't
gonna play and... duh! Steve! Of course!! What had they been doing for...
how many years? And what has Steve Jobs actually done in the last decade
or so?
There is always talk about the need for corporate vision in situations like
this. There MUST be a vision. And Apple has a serious vision problem. But
before it can possibly find and follow a vision for the future, it needs
to somehow pull itself out of the quicksand delusions of its past.
Apple's basic path to its current position had been set by the time Steve
Jobs morally one-upped the sugar water peddler John Sculley. From there it
was only a matter of how that misplaced cultural arrogance would run its
virus-like course, slowly eating away at the company until nothing was left
but self-worshiping vanity.
This has nothing to do with which OS is better.
This has nothing to do with who came up with what first.
And this has nothing to do with fairness in marketshare, whatever that means.
I DO believe that it can have a great deal to do with "changing the world."
And I do believe it has a critically moral and ethical dimension. We are
living in the space where this dimension meets technology, which is not always
easy. And I have no doubt that Steve Jobs senses this deeply. But I have
no particular reason to think he understands this or can put it to work today
any more than he did when he seduced John Sculley. And I don't think it any
longer has much to do with the company Apple Computer.
I have no concrete suggestions for what or who Apple needs. Not that anyone
asked me. But the last thing Apple needs is Steve Jobs. Unless, of course,
the last thing is just what they have in mind.
TMF Nico
NEXT: Apple
= Snapple? |