- Posts tagged Steve Jobs
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Fast Decisions: Steve Jobs vs. Meg Whitman
In writing about the recent news that HP is taking their time to decide webOS' fate, John Gruber wrote:
So the longer HP waits, the less valuable WebOS becomes, because more and more of the smart and talented people behind it will have left…
When you’re faced with a “we need to stop the bleeding” problem, you need a fast decision.
This sounds much like the situation at Apple when Gil Amelio was ousted as CEO and Steve Jobs was acting as an active advisor. Apple was in such disarray top employees were leaving. Jobs first order of business was to stop the talent drain by repricing their stock options. What happened next, according to Walter Isaacson in Steve Jobs:
Jobs called for a telephonic board meeting and outlined the problem. The directors balked. They asked for time to do a legal and financial study of what the change would mean. "It has to be done fast," Jobs told them. "We're losing good people."
When the board proposed a study that could take two months, Jobs exploded: "Are you nuts?!?"
Ultimately, Jobs threatened to leave Apple if the board wouldn't support this kind of decision, which they did.
Desperate times, desperate measures, and all that. I don't know if feet are being dragged by Whitman or the board, but if the latter Whitman might want to crack a head or two.
Steve Jobs answers Android UX designer's question
In this interview with Matias Duarte, the head of user experience for Android, I was struck by something the author observed:
"What is the soul of the new machine?" The words are emblazoned across Matias’ laptop display.
It struck me because it sounded familiar, as if that question had already been asked and answered. And it was. By Steve Jobs:
In his WWDC keynote a few weeks ago, Steve Jobs said the following. “You know, if the hardware is the brain and the sinew of our products, the software in them is their soul.”
When Duarte is asked if that's the first time anyone at Google ever asked that question, he replies:
“I don’t think anybody ever asked about the soul,” he answers in a very matter-of-fact way, “This was my question, it was the question I challenged the team with.”
Right. Maybe the team didn't see Jobs' WWDC keynote.
That's Where He Will Be. (For Steve Jobs)
There's lots of things that I don't know, the afterlife is one.
I tend to think we live our lives, and after that it's done.
But if there is a place revealing great technology,
That's where he will be.
An era for "the rest of us" is what he ushered in.
And if there is a place with a "mere mortals" citizenry,
That's where he will be. I know there's hardship in the world, and tragedy unmeasured,
But cannot use that to deny that there are also treasures.
And if there is a place where the consumer holds the key,
That's where he will be. So I'll always be grateful that he bucked the status quo.
Not satisfied with where we were; knew somewhere else to go.
And if there is a place for those who see what we can't see,
That's where he will be.
Ideas, Not Hierarchy: On Steve Jobs Supposedly Making All Apple Decisions
I've read more than a few articles since Steve Jobs' resignation as CEO that question how Apple will perform without him there to call all the shots. It reminded me of a conversation he had with Walt Mossberg at the D8 conference (starting at around the 1-hour mark). He was asked what a typical work day for him would be like:
Jobs: What I do all day is meet with teams of people and work on ideas and solve problems to make new products, to make new marketing programs, whatever it is.
Mossberg: And are people willing to tell you you're wrong?
Jobs: (laughs) Yeah.
Mossberg: I mean, other than snarky journalists, I mean people that work for…
Jobs: Oh, yeah, no we have wonderful arguments.
Mossberg: And do you win them all?
Jobs: Oh no I wish I did. No, you see you can't. If you want to hire great people and have them stay working for you, you have to let them make a lot of decisions and you have to, you have to be run by ideas, not hierarchy. The best ideas have to win, otherwise good people don't stay.
Mossberg: But you must be more than a facilitator who runs meetings. You obviously contribute your own ideas.
Jobs: I contribute ideas, sure. Why would I be there if I didn't?
I love the last line. Jobs says it so matter of factly, as if it's obvious. And it is, to him. But for many people it's not, they think Jobs is there because he's Jobs. Period. Yet from his answer you can see that in his mind he's there because he's another of the "great people" working at Apple and helping make the decisions about which ideas are best.
No one denies that the Apple executive team is brilliant, yet it seems many are willing to believe they're just puppets. I'd argue the two are mutually exclusive. Jobs is right, brilliant people won't stand for the best idea consistently losing. They'll leave. I think there's a reason for this management team's relative longevity. They like making consistent winners, not being shouted down by seniority or politics and producing failures.
Steve Jobs reveals some of iCloud to a D8 conference attendee a year ago
In light of the recent iCloud announcement, it's especially interesting to review this exchange between Steve Jobs and a D8 conference attendee during the Q&A session at the end of Jobs' interview.
What's surprising is how candid Jobs was about a future offering. Not only was he specific about what the problem was, he even tipped his hand at iTunes Match scanning non-iTunes content by using the phrase "or somehow otherwise acquired", which neither McAskill or Mossberg mentioned. He then states that they're working on it.
In retrospect it was an unusual reveal for Jobs to make, given his standard response of not talking about future products
The exchange begins at 1:20:45 in the video here, and I've transcribed it below (emphasis is Jobs'):
Don McAskill: Hey, Steve, Don McAskill from SmugMug. You may remember a couple years ago we talked about this, but I think it's even more pressing. I love my iPad, my two year old daughter loves my iPad, and I buy the truck vs. car analogy, but it seems like there's a sort of a gaping hole in that analogy right now. You have great syncing of contacts and mail and calendar. I can buy my apps and update them over the air, but I still have to tether to get what is arguably the birth of this platform, which is music and videos on my devices…
Steve Jobs (interrupting): That's not exactly true. You can buy music and get it on your device over the air and you can buy video and get it on your device over the air. iTunes store is on all those devices and it does flow over the air.
McAskill: But I have a large iTunes library that I've built up thanks to you over the last eight years…
Jobs (interrupting): No what you'd like to do is share your library of media amongst your various devices. It's not buying it…
Walt Mossberg (interrupting): Without a wire.
Jobs: Yeah, without a wire. It's not buying it on that device, because you could buy it all on that device.
McAskill: It's the tethering…
Mossberg: Syncing.
Jobs: It's the sharing. You want to share your content that you've bought or somehow otherwise acquired amongst you're various devices.
McAskill: Yeah.
Mossberg: And you can't do that today, right, with iTunes?
Jobs: You can do that today with a wire, you cannot do that today without a wire. We need to work harder on that.
Mossberg: You do.
Jobs: We do.
(audience laughing)
McAskill: Thank you.
Mossberg: You really can't even do it with a wire because it'll blow away, it'll say if you're gonna sync with this PC or this Mac…
Jobs (interrupting): No no but if it's your content you can do it all real easy, it just takes a wire.
Mossberg: So you're gonna do better?
Jobs: We need to do better.
Mossberg: OK, any time soon?
Jobs: We're working on it.
The iPad's not the only thing Steve Jobs produced that was "magical"
Beginning at about 1:33 into the video:
It was the magic of the fact that two teenagers could build this box for a hundred dollars worth of parts and control hundreds of billions of dollars of infrastructure in the entire telephone network in the whole world from Las Altos and Cupertino, CA. That was magical.
It's All Smooth (Or Small) Sailing From Here
However, the main issue with Apple using the wrong quote is that the corrected one is just as bad, and still would've made en excellent slide. This is especially true with Samsung having to correct "small" sales. Does anyone know what "smooth" means relative to "small"? One thing seems clear: sales were unimpressive, else Samsung would not have hedged on sell-out even when given a second chance.
Smooth or small, this was simply a bad thing for a Sr. VP to say. Providing sell-in is not uncommon, just quote the 2M figure and be done with it. The second he drug sell-out into it, he'd blown it. Had it not been misquoted Samsung would've been barraged with questions about what the heck "smooth" sell-out is supposed to mean. The quote was going to be an issue for Samsung no matter what.
Steve Jobs Moves Into Top 10 of CEO Wealth Creators
the CEO wealth creation index… attempts to identify those business leaders who have performed best in creating true economic value—as opposed to mere accounting value—as measured by GAAP metrics. Creating value is, after all, why CEOs do what they do.
Steve Jobs was #35 in 2009, he's #4 for 2010.
