“Ten years ago to this very week, Steve Jobs killed Apple. Or he began to take apart many of the projects and organization that many inside and outside the company thought of as Apple’s value to the computing industry. This event was the announcement of the company’s infamous spring 1997 reorganization, which continued step-by-step throughout the spring. For the company’s long-suffering developers and ISVs, push came to shove at the annual WWDC, where Steve Jobs revealed his plans for Apple’s future direction. Today, with the iPod-influenced haze over of recent Apple history as well as the success of Apple’s retail strategy and the Intel-Macintosh transition, we forget that some of that ‘future’ talked up in 1997 never happened.”
Seeing as I was there let me make something clear to everyone who wasn’t.
Apple had exactly enough capital to keep the doors open for 3 months.
The elimination of the Sabbatical Program and the bazillion independent Marketing departments (26 I believe) into one were just for starters and guess what?
It was the right solution. These “projects” were a financial money pit whose future ROI were negative.
Apple was in a tough position. They wanted to be an innovator, with all of the R&D and other negative ROI business units that this entails, but it didn’t really have a reliable cash cow like some of the other “innovators.” Now it has the iPod and the associated media distribution business. Apple’s future as an innovator is tied to its ability to keep this cash cow going. Just like IBM’s R&D prowess is tied to enterprise IT, Intel’s is tied to PC processors, and Microsoft’s is tied to Windows.
The problem for Apple is that these other innovators have cash cows that are really difficult to unseat. It would be economically infeasible to go after IBM, Intel, or Microsoft at the core of their respective businesses. Nobody touches IBM on the high-end, AMD still can’t match Intel after decades of focus, and only a unprecedented social phenomenon can loosen Microsoft’s grip on the OS.
Apple’s cash cow is relatively weak. It is based more on the blunders of its competition than on the sheer size of its resources, an insurmountable technical head-start, or even a compatibility lock-in. How hard could it possibly be to create a media consumption device and associated distribution service that offers a better value (and lifestyle) proposition than the iPod? The answer to this question speaks directly to Apple’s continued ability to innovate.
Edited 2007-02-11 23:46
“How hard could it possibly be to create a media consumption device and associated distribution service that offers a better value (and lifestyle) proposition than the iPod?”
The question still remains, if it’s so easy to do, then why hasn’t anyone else done it?
What’s equally fascinating is that the best thing to supplent the iPod for this is most commonly run on…iPods. RockBox offers an excellent alternative to the standard iPod+iTunes (or other third party software to manage the library) setup. Sandisk, though, seems to be the only company even coming close to supporting it. Also, no one makes anything remotely equal to the iPod standard or Rockbox.
Any number of companies making players could easily compete with the iPod. The problem is that practially none of them, save a couple Korean ones, appear to be interested in making any single best of breed product.
Apple has taken longer than most to get a product out (very late on a decent flash player, as one case), but make it count when it comes.
That the question still stands I think says a lot about the general culture of big businesses than any technical or creative limitation.
Thank goodness Apple survived.
Enough said.
I say: is Apple alive?
I gather the company’s aim is not to “make the future” -despite any misguided publicity- but just to “make money”. And seems that Job has done a pretty good job at it?
I know I’m being a grammer nazi, but these things just come to me…
“The Day Steve Jobs Killed Apple and Other Anecdotes”
How can Steve Jobs kill other anecdotes?
The headline would be correct if it had a comma after ‘Apple’.
Other than that, English has no official grammar/spelling, only by convention, which is different by a huge margin. Enlgish has no official set of rules concerning spelling, grammar, and pronunciation (there is no language institute [1] for English like i.e. my own native language Dutch has [2]) meaning that it is actually very hard to debate what is correct and what is not correct English.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_language_regulators
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Language_Union
So that the phrase “, and other anecdotes” would be in apposition to the the previous phrase “the day S.Jobs killed Apple”?
If you are going to be a “grammer nazi” at least spell “grammar” correctly.
You are so right…except, I’m being a ‘grammar nazi’ (note the correction), not a ‘spelling nazi’
The sentence is ambiguous but not necessarily incorrect. It can mean either the intended meaning or the one that you brought up.
Use of comma, that’s a biggie… I agree with tpchur, it’s not wrong or correct.
By the way, in my opinion it’d be a “style-Nazi”: as far as I know, commas in English do not have a syntactical function (in contrast to other languages). It’s a matter of style instead.
That would be “grammar-Nazi”
Booooo. Looks like the “antigrammar-Nazis” are out, then….
I don’t believe the iPod can keep Apple going forward. It’s just quick cash on a fad electronic. Sorta like what Sony had with the Walkman that had about 11 good yrs of life. But Sony too had to move on.
Apple with all it’s talent in software writing should be focusing on better products that are better than the status quo.
As a Mac user(an pc), I have been annoyed by Apple’s continue focus on everything else but it’s pro foundational user. Are we going to get another broken app like Apeture that was rushed to market?
Apple whatever happen to quality both in software and built products?
That’s true. To be honest, I didn’t the ride would have lasted this long.
What is good is that Apple can see this too, that is why the iPhone is coming, to breathe new life into the iPod. I think eventually you may not even have iPods, but a range of phones that embed the iPod.
I think Apple is still very much interested in OS X, but can see the future is moving away from a standalone computer.
I think the future is something like the iPhone (I’m talking a few years here) where you plug the phone into a keyboard, monitor etc. for computer work (via bluetooth or something like it). You won’t sync the phone with a computer, your phone is the computer.
im not sure we will ever see os x on stand alone computers (officially). it would kill the mac completely. im sure apple still make a lot of money out of macs
I don’t agree with that, because how will you do real work on a small phone even with a monitor plugged in, a phone doesn’t offer the computer power in raw processor and memory strenght, let alone a decent video card to do real work. I mean correct me if I’m wrong, because I don’t see that coming in the next few yrs.
Edited 2007-02-11 21:27
A large fraction of the “real work” people doesn’t require a lot of processing power or memory. And video cards are more often used for avoiding real work than for doing it.
IBM has something similar. I forgot what it is called, but it is a small box that you plug in a dock, and *poof* computer. Another dock and *poof* tablet PC, and another dock *poof* Media player, etc… Really neat idea…
[edit] Oh, yes, there is one more thing…
A lot of most peoples work can be done effectively on a mac plus, or other 10+ year old computer. They would have a hard time with MySpace though… It may not be a bad thing…
Students don’t need a fast computer. Someone gave me a 2001 iBook. Even though the HD is finally going, the 6+ hour battery lets me type my notes and do homework.
As a former IT person, I would have loved to have a small device with a minimal interface(maybe CMD only, like linux!) that would let me do all my diagnostic stuff, and test networks etc.
All that to say this: using the iPhone as multiple Devices (desktop, pda, dock to make a laptop, etc.) is usefull. You would be surprised how much you can do with a 640 mb HD! I used one up till a few months ago (poor college student
). Imagine what you can do with a properly executed iPhone.
Edited 2007-02-12 03:38
The headline would be correct if it had a comma after ‘Apple’.
Other than that, English has no official grammar/spelling, only by convention, which is different by a huge margin. Enlgish has no official set of rules concerning spelling, grammar, and pronunciation (there is no language institute [1] for English like i.e. my own native language Dutch has [2]) meaning that it is actually very hard to debate what is correct and what is not correct English.
I disagree with your reasoning here. If you must have an official set of rules endorsed by a government to know what is correct, then how do you know that a comma would have made your headline correct?
I do not mean to criticize your English. It would take me years to have a similar command of Dutch. I do mean to criticize the mentality that any accidental misuse of the language is excused by saying “Well, there are no rules, so back off!” It is simpler to just correct an ordinary mistake than to rationalize it.
And actually, English spelling is perhaps 99% standardized since the twentieth century. A few words have multiple standard spellings, but if it is not in the Oxford English Dictionary or Merriam-Webster, it’s almost certainly wrong.
As for grammar, there is wide written agreement on what is acceptable, but style manuals are currently, well, out of style. In the case of the mistake here, I seriously doubt any formal grammar text would allow it. Sure, you can write that way, but you can just as easily write French or Dutch incorrectly.
As English evolves, perhaps it would be better to argue that you might be right in 100 years, but here in 2007, I think it is a lot easier to accept the correction.
Heh you misunderstood me; he was right, the title is not right. However, I’m keeping it because it is the title of the original article.
I wrote the language bit not directly for this case, but more generally. Language is cool, and things like this interests me
.
Heh you misunderstood me; he was right, the title is not right. However, I’m keeping it because it is the title of the original article.
I wrote the language bit not directly for this case, but more generally. Language is cool, and things like this interests me
.
My mistake.
Generally speaking, the stories of English being unstandardized are greatly exaggerated. I can think of several reasons why:
As you said, there is no government standardization body for English. As a side note, I favor such a thing until I consider how ridiculous it would inevitably become, at least in America, by deciding nothing in an attempt to offend no one. So I guess we’re fine without.
Along the same lines some might argue that English usage is dictated by common convention. I am glad that no one would similarly argue that watercolor usage standards are dictated by their most common users, that is, five-year-olds.
Some might argue English is unstandardized because of the existance of American or UK (etc.) standards. I suggest that this is like saying disks are unstandardized because there is SATA and SCSI.
At any rate, we have our standards. A lot of people just prefer to ignore them! That’s fine by me, so long as they know that the standards do exist.
Hmm, the water color argument seems to suggest that a large portion of English speakers are akin to five year olds. Not exactly the fairest of comparisons, is it? Go ahead and say “yes, that’s exactly right”, but then I’ll have to go ahead and call you a purest snob at best, a bigot at worst.
All languages have been historically created out of common convention. AFAIK it’s only in the past few centuries that standardization attempts have really been attempted. I actually like the fact that to this day no one has been able to standardize English completely. Not sure exactly why I like it; I guess since “variety is the spice of life”
. Of course, put in perspective the fragmentation of English is nothing compared to the range of dialects you get in German-speaking countries 
. But still, the rules of “high German” have been far more formalized than English.
I think this comes back to English being simply too unwieldy to fully standardize: there are just so many borrowed words with wide discrepancies in spelling and subtle differences in meaning, many of which can only be employed in very specific usage situations using very specific prepositions and/or sentence structures, that there really can be no hard and fast rules, except for, “there is always an exception to the rule.”
Hmm, the water color argument seems to suggest that a large portion of English speakers are akin to five year olds. Not exactly the fairest of comparisons, is it? Go ahead and say “yes, that’s exactly right”, but then I’ll have to go ahead and call you a purest snob at best, a bigot at worst.
A bigot! Oh my goodness, how shall I ever recover? Please forgive my prejudice against kindergarten art skills. You see, I was raised by Republicans in Texas.
But seriously, let me reiterate, for the humor-impaired: Common usage does not necessarily make artless construction good. Just common. Like it or not, good writing can be told from bad writing. I am simply in favor of noticing the difference.
AFAIK it’s only in the past few centuries that standardization attempts have really been attempted.
This is true of essentially anything from screw threads to accounting. What’s the point? I suppose you are suggesting that things ‘could’ be different. That’s true, but the question is, would they be better?
I actually like the fact that to this day no one has been able to standardize English completely.
[snip]
I think this comes back to English being simply too unwieldy to fully standardize: there are just so many borrowed words with wide discrepancies in spelling and subtle differences in meaning, many of which can only be employed in very specific usage situations using very specific prepositions and/or sentence structures, that there really can be no hard and fast rules, except for, “there is always an exception to the rule.”
By discrepancies in spelling I guess you mean sound versus written form. No doubt that these are everywhere. But the spellings themselves are standardized perhaps 99% of the time. Sometimes there are multiple accepted spellings. But in 2007, ‘educayshun’ can be discerned as incorrect spelling by checking any major dictionary.
I think you are taking the idea of standard English too literally though. I am not suggesting there is some ‘English Compiler’ which can parse ISO English. Rather I am suggesting that certain ideas such as subject-verb agreement and comma placement are extremely well defined in formal writing, and to suggest otherwise is slightly bizarre.
Apple died. Apple is now NeXT reincarnate ;D
Here here!!!!
and the world is better off because or it!
I think you’ll find that’s “Hear, hear”.
Sorry.
The phoenix rises and the great bull of heaven falls.
I’m moderately irritated at the author of this piece. The title and first paragraph are about “Apple History”, then the next 2 pages are Yet Another Article on Leopard, then finally on the last page we get the apple history we read the article for in the first place… sheesh.
Also, I don’t think the title is grammatically incorrect. It’s ambiguous, but that is poor style not a grammar error, and it’s pretty clear from the context what it means.
Nope, the title is most definitely incorrect, unless the author really did want to imply that Steve Jobs killed the “other anecdotes”.
That is one of the primary reasons we have the comma, and that is to differentiate between two possible meanings.
The only reason it is “pretty clear” is because the unintentional alternate meaning is ridiculous, as one cannot kill anecdotes (not literally anyway). Consider the following sentences:
1. Dogs which are mostly brown are rare.
2. Dogs, which are mostly brown, are rare.
The first implies that dogs are rare, while the second states clearly that it is only those dogs which are “mostly brown” that are rare.
Your sentence is a completely different example from the title. You have a “which” clause, which must be offset by commas when it is ambiguous (some guides say it must always be offset by commas). The title is two items joined by a conjunction, one of whose items is a phrase.
Actually, looking at your sentences, it’s completely off. The which clause implies that what it adds is of secondary importance to the sentence and can be safely removed. Both sentences imply that dogs are rare. What you should have used is a clause with “that”, which never takes commas between it and its antecedent.
If the title is wrong, it’s that it should have quotation marks around “The Day Jobs Killed Apple”, not that it needs a comma.
Actually, you have it backwards. The first sentence means that mostly-brown dogs are rare; the second sentence means that all dogs are mostly brown and rare.
whew! Glad we cleared that up b-)
Actually, you have that the wrong way around:
1. States that mostly-brown dogs are rare.
2. States that dogs are both mostly brown, and rare.
EDIT: Whoops, looks like Moochman got there before me. Sorry.
Edited 2007-02-12 18:26
But dogs that are brown aint rare, most dogs are brown, init?
Sorry.
Unfortunately the baby was thrown out with the bathwater in many cases. The Mac clones may not have made money for Apple but they were often superior and cheaper than Macs. The Motorola Powermax series supported a lot of PC peripherals by having PC and Mac connectors. The high end Umax machines were better performers than any Mac.
Opendoc was very interesting but probably ahead of it’s time as was Cyberdog.
People have always drawn, and still do, exactly the wrong conclusions from the clones episode. The problem was not that clones were cheaper and better (they were). The problem was that Apple was not competitive in hardware – with any other PC hardware, including the clones. Closing down the clones didn’t affect this underlying problem one way or the other.
Strategically the right solution was to get the costs out of the company so they didn’t need such huge markups, and improve the hardware so they could compete.
The great paradox underlying the business strategy was revealed very clearly by the clones episode. It is that Apple sells the benefits of having hardware and software made in house. This, and not OSX running on whatever you have lying around, or that whoever makes, is supposed to be the unique selling point of the Mac. Integration and all that.
Yet, on the one occasion Apple computer customers have been given the ability to vote with their wallets, they headed for the exit and bought their hardware from the clones and their OS from Apple.
We had the surprising spectacle of the most loyal customer base in the consumer space in full flight from the supposed main selling point of the product they buy. And having to be compelled to buy it by having the mix of hardware and software from different suppliers, that they allegedly don’t want, cut off.
I agree totally. The whole clone fiasco showed how slow and overpriced Macs were at the time. Back in 1997 a 200MHz Mac 9500 tower cost $AU 12,000 – keyboard and mouse were extra!
I’m sure if a standalone OSX was sold Apple computer sales would plummet to the point of irrelevance. People like Apple OSes but are underwhelmed by the Apple hardware.
People are pretty impressed with the iMacs, MacBooks and MacBook Pro’s though, which is with good reason.
I think Apple has a big killing feature in his next release. Something that can help people easily switch from Tiger, XP and some Linuxes.
And that is: Release iWork with the system the same way that you do with iLive.
It is easy and clever: You will make much more money with new computers and licenses if you put iWork together with the system that the money you can do by selling it appart.
If its really such a killer feature, release it for Windows and sell a huge bundle. Like Filemaker.
It is always silly (as well as nasty) to try to use a supposedly killer product to make people buy something with it that they do not want in itself. You get far better sales and returns, and you will be a nicer bunch of people, by selling as many of the killer products as you can and not worrying what else they do or do not buy with them.
There is a reason you can buy a pair of Timberland shoes without having to buy a Cliff Richard album along with them.
Imagine, if they had tried to keep the iPods tied to Macs so as to make people buy Macs to be able to use one…
o_0 o rly?
This was actually very, very week. Don’t let the ‘Titles’ fool you, it is more like a rant, mixed in with hear-say. Honestly, it is like the author was trying to say something, but forgot his message 1/2 through…
More on topic discussion in the comments above.
Actually, most of the discussion above is about grammar. Your post is one of the most on-topic ones here. (Btw I agree with you about the lack of focus in the article, although I found it fairly interesting on the whole.)
3 pages later I have no idea what the point was, no time of death, no corpse, no motive, what the hell was that supposed to be about something?
Perhaps the article should have been called… “The Day Steve Jobs Pruned Apple, and Other Anecdotes.”
3 pages later I have no idea what the point was, no time of death, no corpse, no motive, what the hell was that supposed to be about something?
3 pages of “article” or three pages of comments (mostly on the subject of English grammar)? :p
–bornagainpenguin