I'm no Apple fanboy (perhaps I would be if I had bought the stock when Laura wanted me to - about fifteen years ago), but I do feel a bit of the legacy.
My first "Apple" was a II+ clone that me and the other guys at Northern Telecom put together over a winter's weekend in cold, cold Saskatoon. We ordered motherboards, disk drives, chips, cases and power supplies from a company called "Parts Galore" in Toronto. I remember this vividly as Paul, one of the engineers that was putting together an Apple clone for himself, had a brand new American Express card. His first transaction was to order these parts for all of us - I think the total came to $18K. He got a phone call from Amex at work in about 30 seconds.
My second computer was an Apple IIc - no faster than the II+, but it had a sexier case. It was amazing that back in the days when we had almost nothing - a rented apartment, a rented TV, mom and dad's pots and pans - I still could find $1500 for a new computer. Guess that tells you where my head was at.
Anyways, after Apple came Atari for me, and after Atari came HP's first foray into the PC business. But even then I was interested. Mike Devall and I skipped out of work one Friday afternoon so we could get a look at the new McIntosh computer on display in downtown Edmonton (he would take orders, but you'd have to wait for delivery).
I've long since left the Apple computing world behind, although I've had my share of iPods and still use my iTouch daily. Both my kids are Apple fans, and they both drive Macs of some description (Kathryn is on her third, I think - Dave is on his first).
So on to the question of the day. I was at dinner last night and John thinks that the Apple franchise is about to go the way of every other company that preceded it ... Xerox, Wang, IBM, HP. They get run by committee, and the vision is gone. Their products become evolutionary, not revolutionary.
Steve Jobs has long been the vision of Apple. He's famously adopted the role of tyrant and chief decision maker, and has created this image (I don't really know if it's true) that he will veto any product idea that doesn't meet his criteria.
As everyone knows, Steve stepped down as CEO of Apple last week. The elephant in the room is that he's dying, and he knows it - so this is his way of peacefully transitioning the company to new leadership.
Many, like John, would say that marks the end of Apple. I initially thought this as well. Now I'm not so sure. Jobs has had lots of time to get the transition in order. And the pipeline. And the culture. And the vision.
If Apple can successfully keep the culture of "insanely brilliant" alive and thriving, the company will do just fine. For the next decade or two anyways.....
No comments:
Post a Comment