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Thursday, April 06, 2006
Ng: Apple’s Steve Jobs
By Wilson Ng
Wired Desktop
It’s the 30th founding anniversary of Apple Computers, a company that provides a very interesting study. It thrived in its initial phase then booted out founder and chief executive officer Steve Jobs. It experienced a near death nine or 10 years ago then got Jobs back. In the last few years, it grew continuously.
Apple is probably the world’s most colorful company with Jobs being the world’s most colorful personality. While Jobs has made a lot of great innovations, his life is rendered more interesting by a series of ironies and mistakes of his undoing.
If this article can provide a lesson, it is that only fools don’t change their minds. Here are some of Jobs’ famous turnarounds:
1) Jobs was not a believer originally of notebook computers. “(Smaller portables) are OK if you’re a reporter and trying to take notes on the run,” he told Playboy magazine in February 1985. “But for the average person, they’re really not that useful.”
Eighteen years later, he declared 2003 “the year of the notebook” for Apple. “Many users are going to wonder why they even need a desktop computer anymore,” he had said.
2) Introducing the flat-panel iMac at Macworld San Francisco in January 2002, Jobs tells the audience that “the new iMac ushers in the age of flat-screen computing for everyone. The CRT display is now officially dead.”
Four months after, Apple brings out the eMac, a 17-inch flat CRT powered by a G4 processor that’s pitched at the education market.
3) “Apple has decided to make Internet Explorer its default browser,” declared Jobs at Macworld Boston in 1997, cementing a stunning partnership with longtime nemesis Microsoft. “Internet Explorer is my browser of choice,” he had said.
In 2003, Apple introduces its own browser, Safari. Jobs said: “Safari’s highly tuned, rendering engine loads pages over three times faster than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer for the Mac and runs JavaScript over twice as fast. Safari is the fastest browser on the Mac, and we predict that many will feel it is the best browser ever created.”
4) In 1998, he tells Fortune magazine: “I don’t really believe that televisions and computers are going to merge. I’ve spent enough time in entertainment to know that storytelling is linear. It’s not interactive. You go to your TV when you want to turn your brain off. You go to your computer when you want to turn your brain on. Those are not the same.”
The debut of the iMac G5 in October 2005 contradicted that statement. The built-in Front Row software allows users to play music, view photo slide shows and watch videos. “The new iMac G5 debuts our amazing Front Row media experience, and we think users are going to love it,” said Jobs.
5) Apple introduced the iPod photo in October 2004, disappointing pundits who believed the company would release a video-capable iPod. Jobs addressed their dashed hopes, stating emphatically that the iPod is the “wrong place” for video. “No one has any video content to put on them, and even if they did, the screens are much too small.”
In October 2005, Apple takes the wraps off the fifth-generation iPod, which features the ability to play video.
6) In November 2003, Jobs pronounces himself “very happy with the PowerPC.” “We have all the options in the world, but the PowerPC road map looks very strong so we don’t have any plans to switch processor families at this point,” he said then.
In June 2005, Jobs drops a bombshell: “Apple will deliver Intel-based Macs within a year.”
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (April 6, 2006 issue)
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