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Comment by bilbo0s | Hacker News Reader

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bilbo0s

"...Personally I will not be giving Apple another cent of my money until there is a leadership change over there."

Uhhh

What?

The Apple Board?

Fire Steve Jobs?

Yeah, good luck with that buddy.

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Yeah, the Apple board would never push out Steve Jobs. Well, not again.

Exactly, they won't make the same mistake twice.

History is foremost in everyone's mind right now.

Ironically, if Jobs wasn't pushed out in 1985, Apple would have gone bankrupt even faster. Jobs' perfectionism is an asset now that he's let it be ever-so-slightly compromised by market necessities, but the Mac wouldn't have been a viable platform into the 1990's if, as Steve continued to insist, they not include a hard drive or any fans. His same perfectionism over the NeXT cube (and over such details as which shade of gray to paint the factory) nearly ran NeXT into the ground.

I think Jobs learned from those failures, but the history is a lot more complicated than "Jobs gets pushed out from Apple, Apple starts floundering, Jobs comes back and Apple succeeds."

NeXT was the best thing to happen to Apple. The NeXT OS was miles ahead of anything else at the time, and it has been probably the thing that helped Apple survive. I'd go so far as to say if Jobs had of returned when he did, but Apple hadn't picked up NeXT OS, it wouldn't matter what Jobs did, Apple would be a shadow of what it is now.

> Jobs' perfectionism is an asset now

You know that "too much of a good thing" thing, right?

I would say that's the central message of my post.

And that's a shame. Jobs is brilliant, but he needs adult supervision.

Unfortunately they haven't learned the other part of their history that got them almost bankrupted.

Care to elaborate? I don't know Apple history too well, but I thought their near-bankruptcy was just because their products weren't very good and Microsoft was dominating the PC market.

That part was about allowing Mac clones and having too long line of the products. Exactly the things Jobs abolished.

No, that part was a strategy to save themselves that didn't work so well because it was too little, too late. Not to mention that they did made a nice profit from that scheme.

You should get your facts checked. How much did Performa help? If that was part of the strategy and you claim it was working, how come, that Jobs returns, does exactly the opposite—gets rid of the clones and drastically trims product line–and Apple starts climbing up again.

I'm sure they've learnt their lesson from last time. We all know how that went. lol..

I think some people are alluding to the fact that he was knocking on death's door as little as a year ago. Probably most people don't wish him dead, but some certainly wish for the _effects_ of him dead, some of which might be the loosening of tyrannical grip on developers and a decrease in the number of purely emotional decisions (this, banning Google Voice, etc.).

No disrespect intended here. But I have to say this.

I just think this is starting to get a little morbid.

It's better to win in the field of ideas. If you have a better way, go compete. Create a phone or a tablet or a web site or whatever, and build a business.

Wishing someone dead so you can leach off of the one they built is a little 'punk-like'.

Now again, no disrespect.

I'm just sayin'.

Just to be clear, I'm not saying I want him dead or even the effects of that. I'm just speculating that many people probably do. You could not possibly disrespect me by saying anything about those hypothetical people because I do not embrace their position.

Glad you cleared that up.

I just wanted to address that whole line of thought before it went too far down the rabbit hole.

More a direction of leadership, not people in leadership. Although a few heads rolling might be therapeutic :-)

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