Is Steve hurting Apple?

[Spyro7]

they would gain users but then no one would buy imacs anymore. all the cost and development of the imac would go to waste and then they would start to fall in line with every other hardware manufacturer.

 

I don't want an iMac, but I would buy a mid-range upgradeable mac at the drop of a hat. The customers that Apple would gain would be people like me that aren't in the iMac market. People who want an iMac, which is a pretty cool all in one, would still get an iMac. At the moment people who want a midrange are just plain out of luck. They get nothing. The Mac Pro and the iMac have a tremendous gap between them.

[Colonel Ingus]

Apple could streamline their products and slash prices heavily on their computers and basically own the computer market.

Not true. At first you would see this effect, but after a year or so it would actually work against them. They need to lower their prices, but only by 10-15%. Any more than that and it would work against them, which obviously they understand

 

They do need to come out with a mid sized free standing Mac. Something above the Mac mini. And it doesn't necessarily have to be 'PC' style big. The mini's form factor has worked incredibly well for them. A more powerful and customizable version of the 'mini' that has an upgradable videocard section would work nicely. Some of us have nicknamed this the Mac Mini Pro. I believe we may well see such a machine surface within the next 6 months

[FUKKU]

Quoted above "You can tell he loves his job too, because he has been working for only $1 (plus stock) a year."

 

Yeah... that (plus stock) gave him over 300 million dollars last year. I hate the fact that he publishes this because its simply not true. There are many many many CEOs who make less than he does when you factor it all in. If he was truly in love with his company, he'd give that stock back or do something good for the community. His publicity stunts make me sick.

 

phpguru

Yeah god forbid someone get MONEY for their WORK

 

Apple wouldn't be {censored} without Steve and people like Jon Ive right now. Back in 97 before Steve came back they were in the {censored}ter and had a schizophrenic product line. Now it's very consistent, even if there are gaping holes in their line (i.e. high-performing ultraportable, mid-tower).

 

Anyway, next year I'm buying a desktop. If the iMac can hold more than 4GB of RAM or if there's a mid-tower out by then I'll buy that, otherwise I'm going mid-tower hack if Leopard works better than Tiger does now on homebrew hardware. I love my Macbook but if I'm buying a desktop I want to run a bunch of VMs on it and 4GB won't cut it if I want to use OS X at the same time.

[MacVertigo]

How is Steve hurting Apple? Apple is blowing up! Right now Apple is doing everything right. They are getting peoples interest in their products with iPod, and the iPhone. People play with those "gadgets" and see how great they work, that peeks people interest in their computers. I started using Apple a little over a year ago... I was one of those people. I was sick of windows, I had all the beta versions of Vista and it made me puke. I started doing research on what OS I wanted to run. And I had a iPod(now replaced by my iPhone).. I started looking in to Apple for that reason. I was really impressed. I now am a die hard mac user. And the thing about using mac is that we all tell our friends "you have got to ditch that pc!" That is how Apple is going to spread.

 

The only thing holding back mac right now is the business sector. If they could come up with a cheap, midranged, desktop for busniess they would kill the market. They also need to come up with more busniess software, stuff that all works seemless (like all apple software). I'm stuck in the PC world for part of my work day...and nothing ever works right. Apple needs to go into companies, and I'm not talking Art and Design..they have that market...but the real world.. and sell their computers and software. Then we will see Microsoft start shaking in their boots.

[Colonel Ingus]

I started doing research on what OS I wanted to run. And I had a iPod(now replaced by my iPhone).. I started looking in to Apple for that reason. I was really impressed. I now am a die hard mac user.

Yep, same here I am truly convinced that Apple will one day take over being the number one OS, provided that Leopard is as good as Tiger was. So many people that I know think that windows is their only option, and as soon as you mention Apple to them they say "yeah, I've 'heard' of them but...". Once you start educating them about the advantages of OS X they jump the 'windows ship' and wonder why more people don't do the same. The point is that MANY people 'put up' with windows because they think they have to. For one reason or another they aren't educated about OS X, but as soon as they learn more about it they gladly switch

 

If they could come up with a cheap, midranged, desktop for busniess they would kill the market.

Apple will never come out with a 'cheap' midrange. That's not what they are about. They will probably come out with a midrange desktop, but it won't be cheap. That's not the image they're trying to present.

[realfolkblues]

Apple will never come out with a 'cheap' midrange. That's not what they are about. They will probably come out with a midrange desktop, but it won't be cheap.

 

Can someone say mac mini?

[Colonel Ingus]

The current Mac mini is not a midrange desktop. Bump up the processor and video section, add FW 800 and then it will be. Many people have asked for a Mac mini Pro version and that would work nicely but the current mini is not midrange, it's entry level.

[MacVertigo]

Yes, Apple does have the MacMini, but people look at it and don't see power. I was at the Apple store with my sister trying to "convert" her. She looked at the iMac and said "well why would I buy this, I have a monitor"...then she looked at the MacMini and said.."it looks like it doesn't do much, its so small". So that is why they need something that "looks" substantial. Somthing that has a little more power, sized, and something mid-priced. Apple needs a 1200-1500 dollar computer that has some good power.

[Colonel Ingus]

she looked at the MacMini and said.."it looks like it doesn't do much, its so small".

Judge a book by its cover much? The 'power' of a computer is not related to its footprint.

[ahduke99]

The only way steve is hurting apple is the prospect of him leaving. the problem is that apple IS steve jobs. no one knows anything but him. when he does step down or die, apple will tank initially. i bet the stock drops 50% before it bottoms out. that is the only way he is hurting apple. the company relies so much on him that if he leaves, the heart and face of apple leaves with him. he has somewhat of a cult following that no other CEO has in any company.

 

his stubbornness may also hurt the company, but his vision outweighs what his pitfalls do to apple. he isn't hurting them .. if it weren't for him, apple would not exist .. or Microsoft would be holding them together so they wont look like a monopoly.

[Khashoggi]

The only way steve is hurting apple is the prospect of him leaving. the problem is that apple IS steve jobs. no one knows anything but him. when he does step down or die, apple will tank initially. i bet the stock drops 50% before it bottoms out. that is the only way he is hurting apple. the company relies so much on him that if he leaves, the heart and face of apple leaves with him. he has somewhat of a cult following that no other CEO has in any company.

 

his stubbornness may also hurt the company, but his vision outweighs what his pitfalls do to apple. he isn't hurting them .. if it weren't for him, apple would not exist .. or Microsoft would be holding them together so they wont look like a monopoly.

 

This guy is 10000% correct. If I had taken the time to make a comment, I would have said the same thing. Not just part of it is correct, everything he says is absolutely correct. Don't believe "us"... Well, I have a lot of experience in this area, and have used the products and been involved in Apple from the very beginning.

 

Owning the stock is risky and rewarding. Just don't buy it the day before something happens to him, and if you have to sell, don't do it the day after...

[Ongeloof]

As this topic is about steve jobs hurting Apple inc. you should first consider how it was hurt when i was not there. Out of the 3 other mains people at apple, bertrand, scott and mike. i would say scott because mike is too old and i cant understand a word bertrand says. no offence ment ofcourse.

[mesasone]

Regarding licensing OS X on non-Apple hardware: I don't think this would be as dangerous as some of you suggest. The Apple of today is a very different company compared to the Apple of the clone-era. Today, Apple produces much more than just the Mac line of computers... there is of course the iPod and iPhone, but also and perhaps more importantly they also make software other than OS X. They have the Aperture, Final Cut, iLife (+ Garage Band add ons), iWork, and Logic... and whatever else they can come up with in the future.

 

Additionally, if Apple opened up OS X to non-Apple hardware, they would not be responsible for developing drivers for different hardware configurations, instead they would simply require signed drivers and institute a "Made for Mac" program where vendors would have to send in their hardware and drivers in to be validated, which would also possibly create a new source of revenue, like with iPod accessories.

 

Really, the only thing Apple would have to do is become more competitive and innovative in their hardware - and this would be good for everybody. Whether they lowered prices or offered specialized configurations geared towards audio production, video editing, etc... in the long run, imho, everybody would benefit.

[martiniman]

Steve was great until the iPhone. That is the turning point in his goodness for Apple.

From that point Apple is serving MTV bling instead of just plain good cumputers and other stuff.

The chrome edge of the iPhone

The glossy iMac screen

iMovie 08

AppleTV

MacBook Air

All products for posh attitude and money wasting only. Not for the creative different minds. If you still want to think different, think MESS, VMWare, OSX86.

[Redalert]

Steve Jobs – the name has become synonymous with the company he leads. Journalists frequently ask "What will Steve Jobs do next?" as if he is the sole owner, developer, tester, screamer, and thinker at Apple. It's undeniable that Steve is the force behind Apple's success over recent years. But this Great Debate asks - is he what's best for the company going into 2007?

 

The most common pro-Steve argument is that Apple would be nowhere without Steve's resuscitation of the company as iCEO and CEO. His ideas, his attention to detail, his eye for good design – all of these have been incorporated into Apple's ethos and have propelled the company from rags to riches. Apple's future is very bright, and Steve's leadership has contributed greatly to that future… indeed, it might have been the only thing that gave Apple a future.

 

But has Steve overstayed his welcome? Perhaps taking a cue from his arch-rival Bill Gates, is it time for Steve to step down and let his company proceed without him? The question is not without merit. Folklore.org is chocked full of situations in which Steve held up development for trivial aesthetic concerns, among others. Today's technology landscape is also vastly different than that in 1984 or even the mid-90's when he regained the reigns. Can a habitually proprietary Apple (a philosophy very much influenced by His Steveness) thrive in an increasingly open-source world? Will consumers continue to suffer with 1st Generation products with a history of poor performance?

 

His company has reached the ripe old age of 30 and shows no signs of slowing. Will Steve Jobs be the factor the holds Apple back?

 

man u r words echoes steve's 1983 Apple Keynote-The 1984 Ad Introduction when steve was all young & charged, guess u know a lot abt him

 

[kinkster]

I just watched Steve Jobs's interview on CNBC. He looked to be in good health and very clearly stated that he intends to stay at Apple for the indefinite future. So, I now looks like we are in good hands and talk of succession is premature to me.

 

I sure hope so.

 

 

And when he does step down it probably wouldn't work for him to be part of the board or any other place at Apple. It wuold just create nasty power struggles and the new CEO would probably feel very insecure about going in whatever direction they want.

[osx007]

honestly guys, do you want John Sculley back

[Chris Mills]

No way.

 

Steve is Apple and although I don't like it I can understand why he won't license OS X to other manufacturers.

 

Think of IBM. What were their 2 biggest mistakes with the PC.

 

1. Open Architecture. Apple have now made that mistake. Intel now design the internals and they are very close to PC internals. They will get closer too as BIOS is abandoned in favour of EFI in PCs.

 

2. Allowing MS to license DOS to others....

[V Plamondon]

Essentially, Apple is about branding, they have always positioned themselves as a manufacturer of premium hardware, and Steve Jobs has always been the face of Apple. His attitude, how people make him out to be a visionary, and everything he does reinforces these perceptions.

 

You might say that Steve Jobs made Apple, but Apple made Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs position might be replaced, but Apple cannot replace what Steve Jobs adds to their brand and image by just anyone.

 

Take the Budweiser frogs, they have long been replaced, but they are still the Budweiser frogs. If Budweiser rolled out a new, creative, nostalgic commercial featuring the Budweiser frogs, I guarantee it would be well received.

 

For the longest time PC Manufacturers and Apple have faced off against each other. Apples position boiled down to Macintoshs are superior, and PC Manufacturers have always maintained that PCs are cheap, plentiful and well supported by third party software.

 

Though Apple captured a decent market share it made little headway into the economy market and the uber-PC market.

 

Then something interesting happened, Apple switched over to the Intel architecture, and eventually allowed Macintoshes to run Windoze via Bootcamp. Apple made it very clear that they would concentrate on being a premium hardware manufacturer just as always, seemingly a reluctant admission of defeat.

 

PC pundits everywhere hailed the eventual demise of the Macintosh, that soon Apple would just be a fancy Windoze machine. They declared that Apple was obviously ditching Macintoshs software platform and the writing was on the wall.

 

But they were very wrong.

 

Apple fans eagerly bought the Macintosh that could run Windoze and the Intel Mac became an instant hit, allowing Apple to capture 14% of US retail sales in 2008, when they could never capture more than a 5% market share before the introduction of the Intel Macintosh.

 

That wasn't the only surprise in store though.

 

PC hackers started to wonder if OSX would run on their PCs and the Hackintosh was born. To this date I estimate their are at least hundreds of thousands of Hackintosh users out there, and the fact that OSX sales exceed Macintosh sales by ten-fold, I believe it is more likely millions of Hackintosh users (yes, there are Hackintosh users buying OSX).

 

So what does this have to do with Steve Jobs? Everything. Any day one Windoze user knows the devil they have. Microcrap is about cranking out product and earning sales, not quality. If quality suffers Microcrap doesn't care, they will use every software design principles and marketing techniques to increase sales.

 

But that doesn't mean Apple is the Devil you don't know and Microcrap is the devil you know (from a Windoze users perspective). In everything Steve Jobs and Apple have done it becomes clear that good solid engineering and a quality are first and foremost, even at the cost of short term sales. Steve Jobs might seem arrogant, but he sticks to his guns.

 

For the longest of time Dell enjoyed a strong position because experienced PC users don't want to spend all their time fixing friends computers and Dell was a no brainer suggestion because of their PC's reliability and excellent customer service.

 

Now their exists a Macintosh that a PC user has no problem recommending, because as long as Steve Jobs is at Apple, we know they will not ship a subpar product, and it will run Windoze for those stuck with some legacy software. Now if a new user can't afford a Macintosh, their friend can hook them up with an inexpensive machine, pick up a copy of Leopard from Amazon.com and set them up with an excellent newbie machine.

 

People underestimate the influence that experienced PC users, hackers and IT people have on the general population, but I feel that the rapid momentum into the swift change over to the Intel OSX software and Macintosh machines is because of this influence.

 

If Steve Jobs were removed from Apple it would indicate a possible change in direction of the company that the people with the most influence over the general publics buying power would recognize. Steve Jobs could spend his entire day in his office reading comics, but his being there say a lot about the direction the company will move.

 

So, No. I don't think Steve Jobs hurts Apple by being there.

[Memorial]

Didn't you guys see the WWDC 2008? Steve was up there at most 1/3 of the time. They put up new guys to see how they would deal on stage. Looks to me like Steve might be thinking about moving on, they just need a replacement as talented as he is, or maybe more.

[BlackFox]

Steve also was looking very sickly at the WWDC. I am tempted to say he just looks like a vegan, but he has gone a little bit past that. He really has no choice but to appoint a successor. I personally would love to see Eric Schmidt of Google get the position as rumors have it. However, anyone who would be a little more supportive of open source and opening OS X to the PC market would be a good vote. I don't think Steve Jobs is hurting apple as much as he is simply holding the company back from unleashing the great technology it has developed into the mass market, thus destroying everything else.

You could think of it as if Microsoft made their own computers. Imagine windows was a good operating system (a HUGE stretch but imagine), and Microsoft made some beautiful pieces of equipment. If Dells were microshank's computers, sure people would still buy them for the simple sake of not knowing jack $hi* about building their own computer, or just pure laziness, but there would still be a huge surge of custom computers, and microsoft still makes a ton of money along with everything dell would make.

The biggest reason Linux is gaining more and more popularity is not really because its free, but because its an alternative. while it is a great operating system for certain applications, its not the greatest for general purposes.

If money is the worry of releasing OSX to the pc community, no worries there. if its coding drivers, open source. Problem solved.

So Steve isnt hurting apple, he is just a crippled leg which would be more useful if it were amputated.

[metalmaniac]

PC hackers started to wonder if OSX would run on their PCs and the Hackintosh was born. To this date I estimate their are at least hundreds of thousands of Hackintosh users out there, and the fact that OSX sales exceed Macintosh sales by ten-fold, I believe it is more likely millions of Hackintosh users (yes, there are Hackintosh users buying OSX).

 

Well surely many of these sales are upgrades for people who use macs?

 

I've never purchased a mac from the Apple store, but I purchased Leopard.

 

Edits:Bloody mistakes

[OblivionMon]

I really think Steve has this Amazing passion for his job which no other future CEO will likely have.

[yuppiebenchmark]

i don't think anyone knows, exactly how much of that cool design and ease of use is steve... or the numerous other employees they have in their development staff. he's the face of apple and he may be a good business man... but it doesn't mean even half of what Apple produces all comes from his head.

 

what they need to do is ease up on restrictions and pricing, the only reason i'm posting this here is because i think Steve may have a hand in those areas as well.

 

1. Apples are just way too expensive from a hardware stand point. I'm not comparing them to Dells or any other crappy company... i'm speaking more about the people like us who buy our own parts and assemble our own computers. I know what hardware is in these Macs, i've seen people disassemble them each year and post the real specs on the internet. it's a shame they do this, or they'd have customers like me and many others buying their products. i love the cases they use, and the design is just flawless usually. I just refuse to pay a $150 memory upgrade, when i know they paid $40 for that ram.

 

2. Restrictions. Free up the hardware end, and let people build their own Pros. I understand this can't really be done with the iMac, MacBooks, and any other specialized stuff. But for the Mac Pros, give us some motherboard companies to choose from, and ram and everything else. There in lies the problem though, Mac only has to design for a specific set of hardware... so things get optimzed and much less testing needs to be done than with other operating systems. I'm not saying they have to design to ALL hardware like Microsoft does, but why not give some specifications for major companies to design to, Certified hardware for Mac.

 

Until Apple takes a step in this direction, at the very least with pricing. They will never compete with PC.

[imember]

If Steve Jobs has anything to do with my new iMac and Macbook, I love him. I'll bet Bill Gates does too. You don't really think Mr. Gates actually uses those PC's, do you!