Gil Amelio had been on Apple’s board for less than a year before he was tapped to be Michael Spindler’s successor. As CEO, he would transform Apple from the inside out, and set it up for Steve Jobs’s triumphant return. Read an account of Gil Amelio’s 500 days as CEO of Apple Computer here.
Forever in this biz. Could anyone expect to work with some game playing asshole like Jobs on the scene? Under those conditions his performance was truly heroic. They were lucky he took them on.
Man, Jobs and Gates are trully evil.
We are doomed.
There’s some good news today:
http://lowendmac.com/lite/05/1220.html
cute, very cute…
if only…
if the account does anything, its pointing out the very machevellian (sp?) conditions that is at work inside apple.
i find it strange that the company have not imploded long ago…
No doubt some people up close view things differently, interesting reading nonetheless.
If you think that was interesting, you should read the book that Mr. Amelio wrote about his time there. It was a real eye opener for me.
The person who will write the history are those who made a success of it; Steve made a successful turn around of Apple – regardless of what the naysayers claim about him.
Stripping the company down to the core of its business, accountability in all levels and justification for any money spent on R&D, Marketing/PR – Once that focus was back, the recovery of Apple was sure to follow.
No matter what you say, the facts stand, under Amilo the direction Apple was taking was Down and if it had contiunued it would have ceased to exist, under jobs, its being up and up, hate him, despise him all you want, but he is doing his job right
Actually all he did (and does), was (and is) carrying on the line laid by Gil Amelio.
But instead of Gil Amelio in front, it’s now Steve Jobs in front. But all Jobs did and does is what Gil Amelio was doing or tried to do.
Bingo.
Some might say Steve Jobs is more succesfull with carrying it out. However, whether this is due to his personality or not, is something I cannot answer. But I wouldn’t be surprised, if Steve Jobs has the charisma and the personal behaviour required to pull it off, and then that would be the reason.
But again, it’s all speculation (but speculation can be fun some times).
What is left to say is that the desktop implementation in Mac OS X is the best so far (not counting hobby OS’es and other small OS’es), even though it’s not perfect. Seems that going with NEXTSTEP was a wise choice.
This notion that Jobs has been on some set path / cruise control since Gil left Apple is insane. During Jobs 2nd reign at Apple, he has turned Apple into a powerhouse, not a takeover target.
Nobody is saying that he has been on a path/cruise control since the takeover.
What he is doing however, is exactly what Gil tried to accomplish. He’s following the same basic principle but that does not imply that he’s on a path/cruise control. He’s not a car, you know.
I remember thinking that this was the right man for the wrong job. He’s the turnaround guy you bring in to rescue a fading company in a mature industry, someone who knows how to institute much-needed controls. Apple probably qualified as a turnaround play when he joined, but it’s really in the ideas business, more so than in manufacturing or distribution. Of course they did need controls and Amelio probably helped there, but that’s not nearly enough to be a successful player in the personal computing business.
Paul G
Gil saved apple with the NeXT call. If he would have chosen the BeOS, they would probably be dead right now.
Gil was a great CEO at Apple
Steve is a great CEO at Apple
Both guys were needed to complete the apple turnaround story. The turnaround would not have work, without both. Each CEO had their strengths and weaknesses. If you want to give credit…give it to the board of directors. Their decisions and timing to in the right CEOs was perfect, playing on each CEOs strengths.
Two thoughts:
1. The members of the board had been recently appointed or were mostly replaced at the time Steve Jobs was made interim CEO–including Mike Markulla. So, how could we possibly congradulate the board?
2. Does anyone think Jobs wouldn’t have had an easy time getting the company refocused and disciplined without Amelio? There was a great deal of blood-letting when Jobs came in, even after the cutting and refining that went on with Amelio.
Amelio was never liked by the Apple faithful who saw him as a bug-eyed suit come droid. That alone was enough to dish him. As we know now, though, Amelio was a decent and highly competent executive who inherited an unholy mess and made the right decisions during his tenure – otherwise there would have been no Apple for Jobs to take back. Many lesser men would have taken one look and walked away.
This story tells us that Apple has never been in the computer business per se, something that Amelio probably got wrong. Apple is in the business of selling a lifestyle, something that Jobs has always understood so well. If Jobs wasn’t at Apple, he’d probably be the world’s top advertising executive.
Another thing to bear in mind is that if this mess existed at Apple it probably existed in plenty of other IT companies at the time. Perhaps, with Windows, we are still “enjoying” the results of similarly chaotic growing pains at the Beast but Microsoft have just been more adept at covering it up.
This story tells us that Apple has never been in the computer business per se, something that Amelio probably got wrong. Apple is in the business of selling a lifestyle, something that Jobs has always understood so well. If Jobs wasn’t at Apple, he’d probably be the world’s top advertising executive.
That’s fine to sell the lifestyle, but you also need to have the technical muscle to back it up, which Apple has now, as well as the smart move to Intel which should have happened years ago. MacOS was not a technically good operating system. It didn’t even have pre-emptive multitasking. But Apple got back on the ball with OSX and this latest move. I just hope we see some good prices that can compete on performance with the Inspiron 9300 I got the other day. Dell’s EPP coupon deals are incredible.
Gil Amelio just proved that first mover advantage is bunk. Without his groundwork, Steve Jobs would have had a tougher time of reinvigorating Apples fortunes, been given the boot for a second time, and be sulking back in fortress Pixar. It’s an interesting specualtion to wonder what would’ve happened if Gil Amelio had followed on from Steve Jobs.
found it a really interesting article, and learned a lot of stuff i didn’t about apple
if gassee wasn’t prepared, did not think apple would go with next, then he’s not even worthy to be an apprentice to trump
Anyone who used BeOS in 1995-1997 knows how truely remarkable the OS really was. Apple would have been able to have a native built OS from the start, instead of four years later. For anyone to imply that BeOS would have killed Apple is simply insane. BeOS made Apple’s hardware look, and feel much faster than any NeXT box, or Windows9x box. If you install BeOS *now*, you may see a “normal” OS. But in 1995, it was like holy sh*t! KEEP THIS IN REFERENCE! morons!
Interesting article… although it does seem a little too defensive and favorable to Amelio. I noticed, at the bottom of the article, a series of links to other stories, including “NeXT, OpenStep, and the Triumphant Return of Steve Jobs” (http://lowendmac.com/orchard/05/1115.html).
Surprise, surprise – very favorable to Jobs. But, most interestingly, flat-out contradictory, even in the details. For instance, from Amelio’s story:
“Amelio began reviewing every product under development at Apple. He found a few gems […], but most were superfluous and had little hope of ever being released.
The most glaring example was the PowerBook Mercury. Designed for mobile salespeople, the notebook had a detachable display the could be propped on an easel for presentations or held in a hand to read a spec sheet or other document.
The product was cool, but there was a flaw. The logic card, power supply, and battery were all housed in the display, making it almost impossible to use Mercury as a notebook – the computer would dive backwards.
Amelio canceled the project immediately.”
OK, but here is the version from Job’s article:
“Jobs already held a good deal of power over the company. He controlled the software and hardware divisions at Apple […] Guy Kawasaki, the maintainer of the famous EvangeList, claimed, “Steve is practically running the company already.”
A major example cited by an Apple employee on a newsgroup was a specialized PowerBook meant for salespeople. The device had a detachable screen that could be handed to a client and controlled wirelessly from the keyboard and trackpad. Beyond the technical flaws present in the computer (it would tip over if used in a laptop configuration), it had no market. It was ready to be released, but Steve Jobs canceled the project immediately after he heard of it – without Amelio’s authorization.”
PoV? Let’s play a little game: In which story (Amelio’s or Job’s) did this sentence appear?:
– Regarding Gil Amelio’s disastrous speech at Macworld San Francisco –
“He had refused to rehearse his speech, even at the urging of the event organizers.”
And this one?:
“[…]his writer (whose identity has yet to be revealed) was behind schedule and making excuses. Revisions continued to be made up until show time.
To make matters worse, the TelePrompTer malfunctioned, garbling most of the text that had been loaded on it.
The other presenters did not fare so well either.”
You ought to email the author instead of complaining on a public forum.
>You ought to email the author instead of complaining on a public forum.
And tell him what? I would assume he already knows, given that the same author wrote both articles and, according to the dates, about a month apart.
Edited 2005-12-24 20:30
Seems like you’re attacking the author and not the content of the article.
Err.. no. I didn’t say anything about the author on my first post, I mentioned that it was the same in response to (your?) post.
Your entire post critiques another article by the same author. I would have just emailed the author, not complain about the contradictions on a public forum.