Originally published at: Tim Cook tells how Steve Jobs recruited him to a rotting Apple - Boing Boing
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Those were dark years for Apple. Gil Amelio had managed to completely destroy more than a decade’s worth of brand goodwill and set back their R&D to the point that they were struggling to keep up with the PC manufacturers.
To get an idea of Amelio’s supposed business “genius”, Jobs quoted him as once saying:
Apple is like a ship with a hole in the bottom, leaking water, and my job is to get the ship pointed in the right direction
The executive who made that statement was being paid millions of dollars a year.
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Hard to believe now, but this was a Wired cover from around that same time period:
This was at around the time Microsoft bailed out Apple by giving the company a $150m cash infusion in exchange for non-voting shares of stock.
This wasn’t done out of altruism. Apple agreed to drop a lawsuit against Microsoft. Microsoft continued to have a profitable secondary source of sales for its Office suite. And since Microsoft now held a bunch of Apple stock, Apple’s success also meant more money for Microsoft.
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question is; was it a good or bad thing apple survived?
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It also meant that Microsoft could prove they still had competitors in the marketplace, so no need for any inconvenient legal stuff based on anti-trust legislation, right?
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That’s not wrong.
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Yes it was.
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Since I wasn’t clear, I was commenting on your remarks not being wrong, not making a judgement call about their substance.
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I know.
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I don’t think the timeline where Microsoft reigned unchallenged would have been any better than the one we got, unless you were a huge fan of the Zune and Windows Mobile OS.
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Yeah, that timeline includes multiple alien and robot attacks on earth and other nastiness so I’m fine with the one we’re living in.
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I dont know, maybe an apple-bankruptcy would have pushed linux as a serious ms “competitor”…
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I don’t know if Windows Mobile OS would have happened in an Apple-less world, but I’m pretty sure the Zune wouldn’t have existed without the iPod. There were of course digital music players before the iPod, but they were cheap, sketchy products aimed at the people who were pirating music on Napster and the like. The iPod made digital music players a respectable, legitimate niche that big companies like Microsoft would get involved in.
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Ditto modern smartphones. Using the web on a mobile device before the iPhone was a real PITA and apps were limited and janky. Android phones are great but it’s far from a foregone conclusion they’d be what they are if Apple hadn’t led the way.
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It’s interesting to look at Apple now vs the late 90’s. Apple has a huge market share and has been a cash cow for a long time, but they are not innovating anymore, they are just iterating.
As someone who used to own a small business in the enterprise IT space, I can say that success in any business is related to 4 things:
- Have a product-leader who can define, market and sell innovative ideas. This is the most important of the 4 things, but cannot stand on its own. (This is Jobs in the Apple case)
- Have an operations-leader who can run the company efficiently through efficient processes. This person organizes all the resources of the company behind the product. (this is Tim Cook)
- Have a people-leader who can help drive company culture and ensure that product and process are supported with high-quality resources (who was this at Apple?).
- Make sure that all of the above roles, whether they are satisfied by one, two or three individuals, are on the same page; are respectful of each other and are empathetic of the value of all 3 roles.
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