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What’s sad is that he had to exit Apple and found a company. Maybe to sell it back to Apple in the future. It seems symptomatic that he couldn’t inside Apple.

What’s sad is that he had to exit Apple and found a company. Maybe to sell it back to Apple in the future. It seems symptomatic that he couldn’t inside Apple. Sad that it’s so hard to do some things inside humongous companies. Even when you’re obviously incredibly talented and accomplished.

yabadabadoes 7y ago
I don't see it as sad, the existence of NeXT as a separate entity allowed many possibilities. I.e. it left room open for a completely different startup to roll new tech directions back into Apple and NeXT to end up as new direction at SGI, HP or whatever. Even if the end looked a lot like the status quo should have looked, a wider range of possibilities shape the industry and individual motivation.
- tambourine_man 7y ago
  The fact that Jobs had to found another company is unfortunate and symptomatic to me. There’s no reason why huge companies can’t foster innovation, besides bad management. See Bell Labs and Xerox Parc. You would think a place with almost unlimited money for R&D would be perfect for nurturing an ambitious project, but instead most go for VC. What’s sad to me is that it’s cheaper and easier to buy a startup than to fix broken culture, given a large enough company.
  - yabadabadoes 7y ago
    Bell and Xerox are great examples of why. If the ideas were separate entities, Bell or Xerox could have decided which to buy back and run as a business. They didn't decide anything and each idea had to be stolen by a visitor.
leppr 7y ago
What would be sad is if he was unable to take the financial risk of leaving Apple. The whole point of capitalism is encouraging experimentation with limited liability companies, that falls apart if you try to experiment inside another company. The magic of our economy is in the connections between companies, inside individual companies it's just boring old dictatorships.
friedman23 7y ago
>What’s sad is that he had to exit Apple and found a company. Maybe to sell it back to Apple in the future. I don't understand why this is sad? This is just a negotiating tactic.
cushychicken 7y ago
It's not so sad or surprising. Apple is heavily leveraged to build chips in support of its core business, which is building iPhones. He can likely achieve his goal of becoming a top executive in the semiconductor industry (within Apple or other company) faster by getting acquihired into a larger corporation as head of this new server development company. It's all about mission orientation vs. functional orientation. Apple is heavily leveraged in a functional orientation to build chips for iPhones. NUVIA is heavily mission oriented in building server chips. Mission oriented companies win on speed. An acquihire of NUVIA shortens the total time this fella would need to ascend to the top tier of semiconductor executives just by virtue of the fact that they are a company that moves faster. He either becomes a top executive in a successful chip startup, or he gets acquihired at a high level into a big semiconductor company. Either way - he wins. Andy Grove has some great insights on mission orientation vs functional orientation if you're interested. Chapter 8 of High Output Management - cliffs notes available here: https://medium.com/@iantien/top-takeaways-from-andy-grove-s-high-output-management-2e0ecfb1ea63 https://medium.com/@iantien/top-takeaways-from-andy-grove-s-...
scarface74 7y ago
He wants to make server chips. Apple doesn’t sell servers. It would be more of a Google thing to invest money on random products that either and fail inside the company.
- tambourine_man 7y ago
  Apple doesn’t need servers? They outsource iCloud to AWS/Microsoft. So producing TV content is important enough that it should be done in-house but servers… not so much?
  - scarface74 7y ago
    I didn’t say that Apple didn’t “need” servers. I said that Apple doesn’t “sell” servers. Apple doesn’t even design chips for its desktop computers (yet). Seeing that Netflix is AWS’s largest customer, why is it surprising that Apple outsources servers? They also outsource all manufacturing except for Mac Pros, outsource camera design and displays. They don’t “produce” content in house. They pay the same production companies that everyone else pays.
ddingus 7y ago
There were companies who encouraged these things. Lifted up whole regions, and in some cases, kicked off whole new industries. Tektronix in it's prime, run by it's original founders, did exactly this. The benefits still play out today. https://www.opb.org/television/programs/oregonexperience/episodes/405/ https://www.opb.org/television/programs/oregonexperience/epi...

yabadabadoes 7y ago

I don't see it as sad, the existence of NeXT as a separate entity allowed many possibilities. I.e. it left room open for a completely different startup to roll new tech directions back into Apple and NeXT to end up as new direction at SGI, HP or whatever. Even if the end looked a lot like the status quo should have looked, a wider range of possibilities shape the industry and individual motivation.

tambourine_man 7y ago
The fact that Jobs had to found another company is unfortunate and symptomatic to me. There’s no reason why huge companies can’t foster innovation, besides bad management. See Bell Labs and Xerox Parc. You would think a place with almost unlimited money for R&D would be perfect for nurturing an ambitious project, but instead most go for VC. What’s sad to me is that it’s cheaper and easier to buy a startup than to fix broken culture, given a large enough company.
- yabadabadoes 7y ago
  Bell and Xerox are great examples of why. If the ideas were separate entities, Bell or Xerox could have decided which to buy back and run as a business. They didn't decide anything and each idea had to be stolen by a visitor.

leppr 7y ago

What would be sad is if he was unable to take the financial risk of leaving Apple. The whole point of capitalism is encouraging experimentation with limited liability companies, that falls apart if you try to experiment inside another company. The magic of our economy is in the connections between companies, inside individual companies it's just boring old dictatorships.

friedman23 7y ago

>What’s sad is that he had to exit Apple and found a company. Maybe to sell it back to Apple in the future. I don't understand why this is sad? This is just a negotiating tactic.

cushychicken 7y ago

It's not so sad or surprising. Apple is heavily leveraged to build chips in support of its core business, which is building iPhones. He can likely achieve his goal of becoming a top executive in the semiconductor industry (within Apple or other company) faster by getting acquihired into a larger corporation as head of this new server development company. It's all about mission orientation vs. functional orientation. Apple is heavily leveraged in a functional orientation to build chips for iPhones. NUVIA is heavily mission oriented in building server chips. Mission oriented companies win on speed. An acquihire of NUVIA shortens the total time this fella would need to ascend to the top tier of semiconductor executives just by virtue of the fact that they are a company that moves faster. He either becomes a top executive in a successful chip startup, or he gets acquihired at a high level into a big semiconductor company. Either way - he wins. Andy Grove has some great insights on mission orientation vs functional orientation if you're interested. Chapter 8 of High Output Management - cliffs notes available here: https://medium.com/@iantien/top-takeaways-from-andy-grove-s-high-output-management-2e0ecfb1ea63 https://medium.com/@iantien/top-takeaways-from-andy-grove-s-...

scarface74 7y ago

He wants to make server chips. Apple doesn’t sell servers. It would be more of a Google thing to invest money on random products that either and fail inside the company.

tambourine_man 7y ago
Apple doesn’t need servers? They outsource iCloud to AWS/Microsoft. So producing TV content is important enough that it should be done in-house but servers… not so much?
- scarface74 7y ago
  I didn’t say that Apple didn’t “need” servers. I said that Apple doesn’t “sell” servers. Apple doesn’t even design chips for its desktop computers (yet). Seeing that Netflix is AWS’s largest customer, why is it surprising that Apple outsources servers? They also outsource all manufacturing except for Mac Pros, outsource camera design and displays. They don’t “produce” content in house. They pay the same production companies that everyone else pays.

ddingus 7y ago

There were companies who encouraged these things. Lifted up whole regions, and in some cases, kicked off whole new industries. Tektronix in it's prime, run by it's original founders, did exactly this. The benefits still play out today. https://www.opb.org/television/programs/oregonexperience/episodes/405/ https://www.opb.org/television/programs/oregonexperience/epi...