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Ok, I know I need another coffee, so I apologise in advance for being the Grinch here, but... This is pure CEO puffery. When will these guys get it? When will

Ok, I know I need another coffee, so I apologise in advance for being the Grinch here, but... This is pure CEO puffery. When will these guys get it? When will they start looking up to Steve Jobs instead of treating him like a guy who just happened to get lucky eight times (Apple II, Macintosh, Pixar, Macintosh again, iPod, iTMS, iPhone, App Store, iPad)? Steve does not talk about what will ship on every Macintosh next year. He might talk about what will ship in the next sixty days if there is an SDK he is shipping to developers today. Steve does not talk about Apple investing in R&D. Steve invests in R&D. Talking about the future is the action of a person interested in how he looks and sounds, rather than the actions of a person interested in how the company performs. Steve ships. Leo had better spend less time with his PR people and more time with his engineers. I have nothing against shipping WebOS on every HP PC next year. But please, Leo, just fucking do it. Talk to your engineers, not to me.

jarek 16y ago
> Steve does not talk about what will ship on every Macintosh next year. Nah, he just talks about where he thinks the entire industry is heading and post-what era we are entering at the moment. Come on.
- raganwald 16y ago
  You're right about that, +1. Personally, I can live with CEOs of all stripes talking about or even writing books at a very high or abstract level about "The Road Ahead." It's puffery, but it doesn't masquerade as management. It's just a guy (like me) making predictions about the future. My vituperation is reserved for those CEOs who pretend that they're making product announcements or strategic direction announcements when they're vaporous or non-actionable. Maybe WebOS will be on every PC next year. Maybe not, and if we try to get Leo to eat his Claim Chowder, he'll say that "new information has come to light that caused HP to make new decisions." Puffing about the company's specific products (see also: Playbook) is really bad. But you are absolutely right that they're both puffery. Different kinds of puffery, IMO, but still puffery.
  - tjogin 16y ago
    I think Steve's puffery is more of an explanation; it says something about why they're doing what they're doing, from their perspective. Compare and contrast with the other kind of puffery, seen in this article. Steve's puffery can actually be valuable to interested parties, as it reveals the thought behind the actions, whereas Leo's puffery is just vacuous promises that may or may not be upheld.
- lurch_mojoff 16y ago
  Yeah, he does that on the day he is shipping the device that represents the direction in which the entire industry is heading, the device that is the harbinger of the post-what era in question.
  - sorbus 16y ago
    The iPad 2 isn't shipping yet (it begins on march 11). So it would be more accurate to say that he does so when he's really close to shipping it, not on the day he is shipping it.
    - rbarooah 16y ago
      And yet curiously people don't doubt that he's going to ship it.
      - jarek 16y ago
        White iPhone 4, anyone?
        rbarooah 16y ago
        If that's all there is, it proves the point.
JoelSutherland 16y ago
"HP will stop making announcements for stuff it doesn't have. When HP makes announcements, it will be getting ready to ship." - Leo Apotheker, Jan 27 2011 Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12291529 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12291529
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- SwellJoe 16y ago
  So, they have a month or two to actually ship, or we'll know it's all PR puffery, including this particular quote.
contextfree 16y ago
This is kind of cultish. Jobs being successful with a certain approach doesn't mean that it's the only possible successful approach and everyone else should copy it. Not that you can't make an argument for his approach to disclosure, but it'd be better if not couched in hero-worship.
- raganwald 16y ago
  Fair enough, however looking at the industry, the correlation between announcing products a year in advance and actually shipping them is low. I conjecture that if we go out and measure things, we will find that the correlation between announcing products a year in advance and being successful with said products is actually negative.
  - patrickaljord 16y ago
    Correlation does not imply causation.
- raganwald 16y ago
  it'd be better if not couched in hero-worship I admire what the man has accomplished. That doesn't make me blind to those of his policies that I dislike. For example, I do not develop for iOS at this time, despite owning a collection of said devices, and knowing lots of people who have made excellent coin developing for iOS. Anyhow, I'd like to admire Leo as well. I have opinions. They are often based on feelings. Those feelings are often backed up by rational thought and are perfectly reasonable, but they are still feelings and opinions. If you're looking for a dispassionate argument where everything is in the passive voice, I am not the right person for you. I take the same approach to my work. I try to make things I can admire. Or at least, I try to make things that are less then contemptible. It's the same thing. Anyhow, I don't think that admiring what Steve has accomplished and pointing out his track record is inappropriate when criticizing Leo's choice of announcement in a personal forum like this. It's a personal opinion, which means it's personal.
  - contextfree 16y ago
davidw 16y ago
Not that it's at all related to HP, because they aren't anything more than a niche player in that segment, but Microsoft used to use talking about stuff that wasn't shipping to great effect to beat up on their competitors: even if the competitor shipped sooner, everyone would wait around to see what Microsoft shipped.
camiller 16y ago
instead of treating him like a guy who just happened to get lucky eight times (Apple II, Macintosh, Pixar, Macintosh again, iPod, iTMS, iPhone, App Store, iPad)? and what about Taligent, Apple Pippin, 20th Anniversary Macintosh, Motorola ROKR (colaberation with Apple), Macintosh Portable, Apple Lisa, Apple Newton, Apple ///? I'm not saying it's bad, after all the saying is "if your not failing your not trying hard enough" but Apple has had it's share of failures as well.
- raganwald 16y ago
  I don't think we can hang all of those failures on Steve. Some of them, but not all. By my recollection, Taligent, 20th, Portable, and Newton were all released during his exile (if you want to call Taligent being "released"). I think they were all on Sculley's watch, but I might be mistaken. Lisa was definitely all Jobs, all-singing, all-dancing Jobs. And ROKR... I didn't understand it then and I don't understand it now. You could slough it off as being a Motorola failure. It was about as successful as Microsoft's investment in Danger, minus the six hundred million dollars invested :-) Anyhow, yes of course Apple has failures. So has Steve personally (NeXT!), and I never suggested otherwise. My point was that very few people trying to compete with him adopt his methods. This is really the crux of my perspective: here are these companies getting beaten up by Apple and by Google, and somehow they refuse to learn from their opponent.
  - ptomato 16y ago
    I wouldn't really call NeXT a failure, considering OS X.
- philwelch 16y ago
  Steve wasn't even involved in most of those. Taligent, Pippin, 20th Anniversary Macintosh, Mac Portable, and Newton all happened after he left in 1985. Apple III wasn't Steve's project--and Steve wasn't the head of Apple at the time, either. That leaves the Lisa, a project Steve Jobs was forced out of a year before it was released, and the Motorola ROKR, which was designed and released by a separate company entirely. On the other hand, there was the NeXT Cube, the Power Mac G4 Cube, Mobile Me, and the Apple TV. But out of those, the NeXT Cube is the only real failure Steve ever bet the company on. Meanwhile, Mobile Me and the Apple TV are projects Apple is at least working on improving.

jarek 16y ago

> Steve does not talk about what will ship on every Macintosh next year. Nah, he just talks about where he thinks the entire industry is heading and post-what era we are entering at the moment. Come on.

raganwald 16y ago
You're right about that, +1. Personally, I can live with CEOs of all stripes talking about or even writing books at a very high or abstract level about "The Road Ahead." It's puffery, but it doesn't masquerade as management. It's just a guy (like me) making predictions about the future. My vituperation is reserved for those CEOs who pretend that they're making product announcements or strategic direction announcements when they're vaporous or non-actionable. Maybe WebOS will be on every PC next year. Maybe not, and if we try to get Leo to eat his Claim Chowder, he'll say that "new information has come to light that caused HP to make new decisions." Puffing about the company's specific products (see also: Playbook) is really bad. But you are absolutely right that they're both puffery. Different kinds of puffery, IMO, but still puffery.
- tjogin 16y ago
  I think Steve's puffery is more of an explanation; it says something about why they're doing what they're doing, from their perspective. Compare and contrast with the other kind of puffery, seen in this article. Steve's puffery can actually be valuable to interested parties, as it reveals the thought behind the actions, whereas Leo's puffery is just vacuous promises that may or may not be upheld.
lurch_mojoff 16y ago
Yeah, he does that on the day he is shipping the device that represents the direction in which the entire industry is heading, the device that is the harbinger of the post-what era in question.
- sorbus 16y ago
  The iPad 2 isn't shipping yet (it begins on march 11). So it would be more accurate to say that he does so when he's really close to shipping it, not on the day he is shipping it.
  - rbarooah 16y ago
    And yet curiously people don't doubt that he's going to ship it.
    - jarek 16y ago
      White iPhone 4, anyone?
      - rbarooah 16y ago
        If that's all there is, it proves the point.

JoelSutherland 16y ago

"HP will stop making announcements for stuff it doesn't have. When HP makes announcements, it will be getting ready to ship." - Leo Apotheker, Jan 27 2011 Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12291529 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12291529

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
SwellJoe 16y ago
So, they have a month or two to actually ship, or we'll know it's all PR puffery, including this particular quote.

contextfree 16y ago

This is kind of cultish. Jobs being successful with a certain approach doesn't mean that it's the only possible successful approach and everyone else should copy it. Not that you can't make an argument for his approach to disclosure, but it'd be better if not couched in hero-worship.

raganwald 16y ago
Fair enough, however looking at the industry, the correlation between announcing products a year in advance and actually shipping them is low. I conjecture that if we go out and measure things, we will find that the correlation between announcing products a year in advance and being successful with said products is actually negative.
- patrickaljord 16y ago
  Correlation does not imply causation.
raganwald 16y ago
it'd be better if not couched in hero-worship I admire what the man has accomplished. That doesn't make me blind to those of his policies that I dislike. For example, I do not develop for iOS at this time, despite owning a collection of said devices, and knowing lots of people who have made excellent coin developing for iOS. Anyhow, I'd like to admire Leo as well. I have opinions. They are often based on feelings. Those feelings are often backed up by rational thought and are perfectly reasonable, but they are still feelings and opinions. If you're looking for a dispassionate argument where everything is in the passive voice, I am not the right person for you. I take the same approach to my work. I try to make things I can admire. Or at least, I try to make things that are less then contemptible. It's the same thing. Anyhow, I don't think that admiring what Steve has accomplished and pointing out his track record is inappropriate when criticizing Leo's choice of announcement in a personal forum like this. It's a personal opinion, which means it's personal.
- contextfree 16y ago

davidw 16y ago

Not that it's at all related to HP, because they aren't anything more than a niche player in that segment, but Microsoft used to use talking about stuff that wasn't shipping to great effect to beat up on their competitors: even if the competitor shipped sooner, everyone would wait around to see what Microsoft shipped.

camiller 16y ago

instead of treating him like a guy who just happened to get lucky eight times (Apple II, Macintosh, Pixar, Macintosh again, iPod, iTMS, iPhone, App Store, iPad)? and what about Taligent, Apple Pippin, 20th Anniversary Macintosh, Motorola ROKR (colaberation with Apple), Macintosh Portable, Apple Lisa, Apple Newton, Apple ///? I'm not saying it's bad, after all the saying is "if your not failing your not trying hard enough" but Apple has had it's share of failures as well.

raganwald 16y ago
I don't think we can hang all of those failures on Steve. Some of them, but not all. By my recollection, Taligent, 20th, Portable, and Newton were all released during his exile (if you want to call Taligent being "released"). I think they were all on Sculley's watch, but I might be mistaken. Lisa was definitely all Jobs, all-singing, all-dancing Jobs. And ROKR... I didn't understand it then and I don't understand it now. You could slough it off as being a Motorola failure. It was about as successful as Microsoft's investment in Danger, minus the six hundred million dollars invested :-) Anyhow, yes of course Apple has failures. So has Steve personally (NeXT!), and I never suggested otherwise. My point was that very few people trying to compete with him adopt his methods. This is really the crux of my perspective: here are these companies getting beaten up by Apple and by Google, and somehow they refuse to learn from their opponent.
- ptomato 16y ago
  I wouldn't really call NeXT a failure, considering OS X.
philwelch 16y ago
Steve wasn't even involved in most of those. Taligent, Pippin, 20th Anniversary Macintosh, Mac Portable, and Newton all happened after he left in 1985. Apple III wasn't Steve's project--and Steve wasn't the head of Apple at the time, either. That leaves the Lisa, a project Steve Jobs was forced out of a year before it was released, and the Motorola ROKR, which was designed and released by a separate company entirely. On the other hand, there was the NeXT Cube, the Power Mac G4 Cube, Mobile Me, and the Apple TV. But out of those, the NeXT Cube is the only real failure Steve ever bet the company on. Meanwhile, Mobile Me and the Apple TV are projects Apple is at least working on improving.