Apple. Ruh Roh!

[Big Gulp]

Steve Jobs taking leave of absence "until June", cancer apparently back

It was really only a matter of time.  Pancreatic cancer is something that's going to get you eventually even if you go into remission for a time.  On the business front, I find it astounding that a company the size of Apple's can allow itself to become the cult of personality that it is.  I can only blame Jobs' own egomania on not removing himself somewhat from being identified as the one true savior of Apple.  With the market only just starting to slap down Apple's stock price (down 6% yesterday) I think we're going to see the short-sightedness of that aspect of Jobs' personality; namely the control-freakiness.

[Jeff Kelly]

I don't get all that fuss.

People die and life goes on all the time. Maybe Apple will survive, maybe not. Who cares.

I don't even think that it is really that much of a cult of personality that the media make it out to be.

People (or better fans) and investors are concerned because after Jobs was fired from Apple the company slowly spiralled into oblivion and only the return of Jobs kept it from going under and becoming a strong innovative brand again, at least that is what people want to believe because it correlates with Apple's well being.

On the other hand it was never purely Jobs' doing, Apple was basically taken over by NextStep and Jobs got a whloe lot of really brilliant people on board without whom none of Apple's success would have been possible.

Apple (or Jobs) used that notion and made him not only CEO but Chief evangelist and marketing face of Apple. That may now come back to haunt them but behind the facade it has always been a triumvirate with Jobs, Schiller and Ive and now one or two others.

[Big Gulp]

People (or better fans) and investors are concerned because after Jobs was fired from Apple the company slowly spiralled into oblivion and only the return of Jobs kept it from going under and becoming a strong innovative brand again, at least that is what people want to believe because it correlates with Apple's well being.

See, that I don't get.  Jobs fucked up any number of projects when he was with Apple.  The Apple III, the initial Mac launch?  Even NeXt wasn't doing too great when he came back to Apple.

There's a reason he was shown the door, and in fact Apple did quite well until around 1995 when MS really got it's shit together.  Hell, if memory serves Apple had around 20% market share in the mid 90's.  People act like the original Mac got released, Steve Jobs got chased out of the castle by a torch-wielding mob, and Apple sank into oblivion until the stars aligned, Jesus returned to earth and anointed Jobs with his holy mojo.

T'ain't true.

[Yegolev]

They could hire The Woz.

[Salamok]

I don't get all that fuss.

The big deal is that in many investors eyes it is Steve Jobs DBA Apple Inc. and without him they go back to Apple Inc. circa 1998.  Given the respective history of jobs and apple (both together and apart) I don't think this is necessarily a totally unjustified point of view.

edit: none of you have mentioned that Jobs managed to be successful w/o apple.

[Murgos]

edit: none of you have mentioned that Jobs managed to be successful w/o apple.

Actually, the more salient point is, I think, that no one has mentioned that Jobs other ventures continued to do well without Jobs once he went back to Apple.

[Sky]

I think he brought them through the problems they were having pretty well. With the people he's got in place now, who understand that memory management is good and the the Gx line of chips was ass...I think they'll do fine. Maybe not "revolutionary", but they might also drop a lot of the bullshit like the discontinuation of the CRT eMac (kids + LCD? no), the lack of a solid midrange desktop, designer mice, etc.

[stray]

I'm pretty excited about where they'll go from here actually. In one sense, he gave a lot of direction to the company, but in another, he held them back. I still think it was a bullshit move with what he did to the clones, for example.

[Big Gulp]

I'm pretty excited about where they'll go from here actually. In one sense, he gave a lot of direction to the company, but in another, he held them back. I still think it was a bullshit move with what he did to the clones, for example.

Same here.  Or preventing a mid-range desktop instead of either an underpowered all-in-one or a 16 core monstrosity with RAM that costs 4 times the amount of standard DDR2.  That right there lost Apple a customer in me, and I've got to think I'm not alone in that.

There are certain things he fetishized that really need to go away.

[schild]

Sometimes cancer is just another word for karma.

[Big Gulp]

Sometimes cancer is just another word for karma.

I'm sure that's something Steve believes in.   

I guess peace, love, understanding and conspicuous tofu consumption doesn't make you not a soulless prick.  Who knew?

[Trippy]

Steve Jobs taking leave of absence "until June", cancer apparently back

That doctor is just speculating that that's what needs to be done. We don't know what his problem is. I.e. we don't if his cancer is back or it's some issue caused by his treatment or something else entirely.

[Righ]

After Jobs was ousted in the mid 80s, soda salesman Sculley did one useful thing at Apple - he gave the portable computer team their own division within the company and helped the birth of the wildly successful and influential PowerBook team. That kept Apple going for several years until he failed to capitalize on the lead and let the team members get poached by Compaq. After that he pretty much pissed away any good he ever did. Spindler, his successor, tried to open Apple's technology up. That would have been a great idea when Apple had a strong market position. They no longer did. It was a disaster.

Gil Amelio did a lot more of the repair at Apple than he gets credit for, but Jobs played him brilliantly. Its always bad news for a company when they lose a businessman as savvy as Jobs, but there's no reason to think that without him they're going to repeat the mistakes of Sculley or Spindler.

[Fabricated]

Sucks he may have cancer again, but I couldn't be happier about the -company's- poor fortune since they did nothing to detach Jobs' name from the success of Apple so the stock wouldn't drop every time he sneezed on camera.

[UnSub]

Apple has been too tied to Jobs for a while now for him leaving / dying not to hurt the company. I think Jobs would like that a lot.

But yeah, back in the mid-80s Jobs had to go. Apple needed business people to build it into a real organisation or it would have imploded like so many other Silicon Valley IT companies.

[Furiously]

You know whenever I am feeling down I think about how much Steve jobs bought pixar for from George Lucas and how much he got for it when they merged with Disney...

(he paid 5 million and put in 5 million more then sold it for 7.4 billion)

[Yegolev]

Yea, that perks me the fuck up every time.