My one question for Steve Jobs in 2000 | Hacker News Reader

My one question for Steve Jobs in 2000

baligu.blogspot.com

152 pointsjonathanberger17 comments

I like the friend's response. Almost always, the only wrong response to a "two roads diverged in a yellow wood" situation is to stall.

I was really expecting there to be a twist like the "friend" was actually Bill Gates. Imagining that, it made the "friend's" response even more humorous.

Given the tone of language, it's most likely Larry Ellison; Oracle's head honcho.

http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/Larry_Ellison_Discuss...

"Q: Another person who has a certain mythology about him is your friend Steve Jobs. Everybody seems to believe they know the book on Jobs: heis brilliant but hard-driving, overly sensitive. Do you and he ever talk about that?

A: We almost decided to wear T-shirts: 'The Mercurial Steve Jobs' and 'The Arrogant Larry Ellison.'

Steve Jobs is my best friend, and I love him dearly, and heis one of the most remarkable people on this planet. You watch him create Apple, then in one of the worst human-resources mistakes in the history of Silicon Valley -- the only thing worse was when the French fired Napoleon -- they fire Steve Jobs and Apple almost completely disintegrates. Then he comes back and he saves a company that was on life support.

I never see this quoted about Steve, but they once asked Andy Grove who he most admired in the PC industry, and he said, "One guy: Steve Jobs. He invented the PC industry."

You know, we live in a very egalitarian world. We donit like heroes. And Steve is one of these heroic guys whose accomplishments are of such epic proportions, and it gnaws away at our egalitarian sense of the world."

This was my guess exactly, actually.

The more posts like this I read, the more they sound like obituaries. The man might be sick, but he's not dead! He just stepped down from being CEO, that's all.

I remember watching "Pirates of the Silicon Valley" some time ago. It was nice to see the battles between Gates and Jobs in the beginning of the PC era. That movie ended even before Apple's re-birth.

'Steve, look. I don't give a fuck about Apple. Just make up your mind'

I need friends like that. Glad to know indecision has good company.

Why is this on HN? Who the fuck cares about Apple?

TLDR: Steve Jobs decided to go back to Apple after his friend told him he didn't give a fuck about Apple.

"Is Apple ever going to go after the enterprise market?" (Steve's response, a refreshing "If you're interested in that, you're probably at the wrong company.")

You like our software enough to want to use it at work and/or want others to get to use it? Yeah, fuck that.

I thought that at first too, but I think it could be interpreted a couple other ways too.

What we've seen over the last 10 years or so is the increased consumerization of the enterprise. Essentially, large IT depts have been forced to accommodate iPhones and iPads, due to large numbers of people buying them then saying "I want to use this at work", rather than Apple having to accomodate "enterprise" needs (and thereby perpetuating often antiquated or just poor ways of doing things).

I'm generalizing here a bit, but that's another way I'd read it. It probably would have been difficult for people in the late 90s to foresee how much consumerization of IT we'd see 10-15 years in the future

Also the needs of consumer and a enterprise have converged. Everybody expects to able to read email on their phone. Many people expect their consumer laptops to be able to encrypt their hard drive (at least Apple users) just like the enterprise IT department. The difference between enterprise and consumer as an IT user has become smaller.

rather than Apple having to accomodate "enterprise" needs (and thereby perpetuating often antiquated or just poor ways of doing things).

Thats kind of a plastering over of the reality though.

iOS plays nice with ActiveSync, right there thats Apple accommodating enterprise needs. I can hit up exchange to remote wipe any employee's iPhone right now.

Its not that IT departments are forced to accommodate iPhones, they're forced to accommodate yet another smartphone.

Yes, I did realize I was generalizing some. But... Apple's supported some of those protocols, but not out of the gate, and they've not built their initial products around some competitor's idea about a market (at least, not that I've seen). So... yes with the iPhone, they did accomodate "the enterprise", but didn't base the success of the iPhone on how well it was accepted by 'the enterprise'.

One could easily look at it from the opposite direction:

Consumers want to access their company email on their personal property. The inclusion of ActiveSync wasn't to help enterprise IT departments, it was the help the consumer access the resources they want to access.

That said, there are other features of iOS that do support your point of view.

>What we've seen over the last 10 years or so is the increased consumerization of the enterprise. Essentially, large IT depts have been forced to accommodate iPhones and iPads, ...

i'd not say "consumerization of the enterprise" is limited to the last 10 years - it is more like for the last almost 30 years "large IT depts have been forced to accommodate" PC, notebooks, iPhones, iPads ... (mental implants? ask Jobs what is the next :)

...what?

The 'cost', to Apple, of going to Enterprise is pretty large. Enterprises need things like stable patch schedules, forward-looking roadmaps, and integrated control structure. The toughest, culturally, on that list, is the forward-looking roadmaps. As one of many examples: Apple's switch from PPC chips to Intel chips was done with no warning & negatively impacted order fulfillment. (I was working at a university at the time, and lab computers ordered well in advance of the change were delayed 2 weeks -- other schools who ordered later were waiting months.)

Compare & contrast Microsoft's "patch Tuesday" with Apples "patch whenever". There's a cost to 'going enterprise' that goes far beyond "we don't want you to use this at work".

And that's not even touching the issue other's have pointed out regarding 'image' and 'branding' and emotional associations with the system you're using at the job you hate.

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