Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, has passed away at the age
of 56, leaving behind a larger-than-life legacy which no obituary could
possibly capture. As colleagues and family members and all those who he
inspired begin to reflect on his life and impact, it's impossible not to
do so without feeling an almost shared sadness, as if the world is
collectively mourning the loss of a close relative--even if most of us
weren't fortunate to meet him. We all knew this day was coming, but we
can't believe it came so soon.
Simply put, Steve Jobs made our lives better, and the world is a worse
place without his presence and vision. In his memory, we'll be
re-publishing stories on Jobs and all that he came to represent. Please
leave your thoughts and memories in the comments below.
Steve Jobs's return to Apple in 1997 is often referred to as the
greatest second act in business history. He had been ousted more than a
decade earlier in 1985, and was forced to watch helplessly as the
company he built tumbled toward bankruptcy, hampered by poor management,
a weak product line, and a dearth of innovation.
That all changed when Jobs came back, and breathed new life into the
struggling company. We know how the story goes from there: Apple
unveiled revolutionary products--the iMac, Mac OS X, iTunes, the iPod,
iPad, and iPad--which led to unprecedented growth. When Jobs returned in
1997, Apple shares were being traded for barely a couple dollars;
today, Apple stock hovers around $380 a share, and recently shot passed
$400, briefly making Apple the most valuable brand and company in the
world.
But to get to that point, Jobs had to do more than introduce flashy
products. He had to define Apple's future. And he did so over the years,
fighting off skeptics, refocusing the company, and most importantly,
giving Apple a long-term vision.
Responding To Critics
Steve Jobs's return was never a cakewalk--many were skeptical that Jobs
would be able to rebuild Apple. After all, NeXT, the ultra-high end
computer company he started while away, failed to crack the mainstream
market (though Apple ended up acquiring the startup for $400 million).
In this rare Q&A session at 1997's Worldwide Developers Conferences
(WWDC), an audience member takes Jobs to task, angrily questioning his
technical understanding and telling Jobs that he doesn't know "what he's
talking about."
Jobs responds calmly to the question, even going so far as to say,
"People like this gentleman are right." He apologizes for his mistakes
in the past, acknowledges there will likely be more mistakes in the
future, and admits he does not have all the answers. However, he says,
"We've tried to come up with a strategy and vision for Apple--it started
with: 'What incredible benefits can we give the customer?' [And did]
not start with: 'Let's sit down with the engineers, and figure out what
awesome technology we have and then figure out how to market that.'"
Jobs goes on to cite the reaction consumers had when first seeing the
laser printer. "People went, 'Wow, yes!'" Jobs said. "That's where Apple
has to get back to."
Focusing On Saying No
Apple in the 1990s had a lot more products than the Apple of the aughts.
QuickTake digital cameras, LaserWriter printers, Newton PDAs--all of
these product lines were discontinued when Jobs came back. And Jobs's
thinking can be found at WWDC 1997, when he explained how Apple had lost
its way.
"Apple suffered for several years from lousy engineering management," he
said. "There were people that were going off in 18 different
directions…What happened was that you looked at the farm that's been
created with all these different animals going in all different
directions, and it doesn't add up--the total is less than the sum of the
parts. We had to decide: What are the fundamental directions we are
going in? What makes sense and what doesn't? And there were a bunch of
things that didn't."
"Focusing is saying yes, right? No. Focusing is about saying no. You've
got to say, no, no, no," Jobs continued. "The result of that focus is
going to be some really great products where the total is much greater
than the sum of the parts."
Burying The Hatchet, Letting Apple Be Apple
Microsoft is likely the main reason Apple had lost its way. The bitter
battle between the two companies--for market share, over operating
system superiority and patent issues--ended with Apple in a significant
hole, trying to bite off more than it could chew.
Steve Jobs--who probably more than anyone had the right to be bitter
about Microsoft--decided on his return to put the intense rivalry to
rest. "Relationships that are destructive don't help anyone," Jobs said
at MacWorld in 1997. "I'd like to announce one of our first partnerships
today, and a very, very meaningful one, and that is with Microsoft."
Predictably, the crowd groaned and booed--even more so when Bill Gates
made a cameo appearance via satellite. But the partnership showed just
how far Jobs had come, and just how much he and his vision for Apple had
matured. The deal proved incredibly important for the company:
Microsoft injected $150 million into Apple; agreed to provide Macs with
Microsoft Office; and agreed to patent cross-licensing and Java
collaboration.
But most important was just how much Jobs dramatically changed the
direction of his company, during one 12-minute speech. "If we want to
move forward and see Apple healthy and prospering again, we have to let
go of a few things here. We have to let go of this notion that for Apple
to win, Microsoft has to lose," Jobs said. "We have to embrace the
notion that for Apple to win, Apple has to do a really good job. If
others are going to help us, that's great. Because we need all the help
we can get…The era of setting this up as a competition between Apple and
Microsoft is over."
The Apple Hierarchy Of Skepticism, Redefining Product Strategy
At MacWorld 1998, Steve Jobs finally got the chance to silence a few
skeptics. After the release of the iMac, he had the facts to back up his
success. Profits were surging, to $47 million his first quarter, and to
$55 million during his second. He had launched Apple.com, which he
refers to here at the "gold standard of e-commerce," a site that
rocketed from 1 million hits per day to more than 10 million. And
Apple's market value had quadrupled to roughly $4 billion.
"This went a long way to convince a lot of the skeptics," Jobs said.
"When I came to Apple a year ago, all I heard was that Apple is dying,
that Apple can't survive. Turns out that every time we convince people
that we've accomplished something at one level, they come up with
something new. I used to think this was a bad thing. I thought, 'When
are they ever going to believe that we're going to turn this thing
around?' But actually now I think it's great."
In what he calls the "Apple Hierarchy of Skepticism," Jobs lays out all
the ways critics will be skeptical going forward--in many ways, the
critics would never be silenced, and as Jobs said at the time, that's a
good thing. It meant Apple was ahead of the curve--that it was taking
risks, and trying to innovate.
One of the riskier moves Jobs also took that year was to redefine
Apple's product strategy. At the time, most other OEMs were spitting out
dozens of products into the market--Apple was no different. "When we
got to the company a year ago, there were a lot of products--15 product
platforms with a zillion variants of each one," Jobs said. "I couldn't
even figure this out myself, after about three weeks: How are we going
to explain this to others when we don't even know which products to
recommend to our friends?"
Jobs dramatically changed and streamlined Apple's product roadmap. The
company, he said, would now just offer four products, a simple offering
plan that has allowed Apple to differentiate itself over the years from
the endless options available from competitors such as HP, Dell, and
others.
The Big Picture: Vertical Integration = Customer Experience
"I remember two-and-a-half years ago when I got back to Apple, there
were people throwing spears, saying, 'Apple is the last vertically
integrated PC manufacturer. It should be broken up into a hardware
company, a software company, what have you,'" Jobs said in 2000 at
MacWorld. "And it's true, Apple is the last company in our industry
[that's vertically integrated]. What that also means if managed properly
is that it's the last company that can take responsibility for customer
experience--there's nobody left."
That strategy--to keep Apple a hardware-software integrated company--has
allowed Apple to thrive in recent years. It was the opposite approach
as the one taken by Microsoft, which licensed its OS, Windows, to device
makers. And even with critics arguing that Apple should follow suit,
Jobs resisted--in fact, Apple pre-Jobs-comeback had tried (and failed)
to license its operating system to OEMs such as Gateway. Jobs devotion
to hardware-software interplay led to breakthroughs with the Mac/OS X
and iPhone/iPad/iOS.
"There's no other company left in this industry that can bring
innovation to the marketplace like Apple can. It means that we don't
have to get 10 companies in a room to agree on everything to
innovate--we can decide ourselves to place our bets," Jobs said at the
time. "We're going to integrate these things together in ways that no
else in this industry can to provide a seamless user experience where
the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. We're the last guys left
in this industry than can do it. And that's what we're about."
The Digital Hub
At MacWorld 2001, Jobs began by looking
backward to describe what he called the golden ages of the PC, from the
age of productivity to the age of the Internet. He then spoke at length
about what the next golden era would be.
"I'd like to tell you where we are going," Jobs said. "What is our vision?"
Describing
the "explosion of new digital devices" such as cell phones and music
players, Jobs said he envisions Apple (the Mac, specifically) to become
the new "digital hub for our emerging digital lifestyle." While he
didn't explicity say what products were likely to come from Apple--Jobs
would never do such a thing--he described a future very much like the
one we're living today, where Macs, iPods, iPhones, and iPads are
central to our digital media experience.
"We don't think the PC is dying," Jobs said. "We think it's evolving."
In
the decade that lay ahead, traces of Apple's products and innovations
can be traced back to this talk, and speeches Jobs had delivered in the
years prior--to what Jobs had envisioned for the company all the way
back in 1997.
And in true Jobsian style, he concluded his 2001 MacWorld address with what is now justified hyperbole.
"We think this is going to be huge," Jobs said.
And he was right.
