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I like to believe Apple under Jobs was different.

kranke155 4y ago
It clearly was. It was a high performing organisation with few peers in corporate history. Apple under Jobs was perhaps one of the biggest value creating organisations in our recent memory, if not the most value creating organisation in the last 20/30 years. So whatever he did, it worked brilliantly. The only analogue we have now is SpaceX imo. Tesla, if they crack self driving, maybe.
- skippyboxedhero 4y ago
  > It was a high performing organisation with few peers in corporate history Apart from the time he ran it into the ground. Musk isn't up there, Jobs isn't up there. You need a multi-decade record of strong capital allocation decisions, Musk barely has five years. Jobs had a record of making mistake after mistake for decades until the IPhone. Musk, by his own admission, made huge errors and would likely have gone bankrupt in 2017. Of those alive today: Buffett, Malone, and a handful of smaller-scale people (i.e. Leonard, Stiritz, and some firms with strong culture like 3G, potentially Costco). In most cases though, CEOs need to be saved from themselves. Tech CEOs are also some of the absolute worst...I can't think of any with very strong records (Leonard is one, but the scale is relatively small). You find far strong management teams, on average, outside tech (industrials is one area, you have quite a few companies that not only have good CEOs but very good succession). The incentives are just totally wrong in tech: you get rewarded for failing, so you end up with lots of incompetent CEOs (Pichai being one of the worst, Google generally is just a terrible shit-show).
- kennend3 4y ago
  You have conveniently forgotten a serious part of apple's history so let me remind you. " Steve Jobs and Bill Gates’ rivalrous friendship is the stuff of tech lore. The most poignant moment of that fraught relationship happened 20 years ago. In August of 1997, Gates stepped in and saved Apple, which, at the time, was on the brink of bankruptcy. “Bill, thank you. The world’s a better place,” Jobs told Gates after the Microsoft exec agreed to make a $150 million investment in Apple. " So was it working brilliantly when it was 90 days from bankruptcy and was thrown a lifeline by Gates? Jobs was lucky with the iPhone...
  - astrange 4y ago
    That failure was under the last guy. He didn’t work there yet. Wasn’t an investment of any value either, it’s the message that mattered.
fdgsdfogijq 4y ago
I think Apple is excluded when Jobs was there, as an innovative company. The iPhone, iMac, Macintosh, etc. Along with that, theres exceptions to every rule.
- quadcore 4y ago
  I especially like iTune and iPod because of the out of the box thinking and the startup-like understanding of the customers back then.

It clearly was. It was a high performing organisation with few peers in corporate history. Apple under Jobs was perhaps one of the biggest value creating organisations in our recent memory, if not the most value creating organisation in the last 20/30 years. So whatever he did, it worked brilliantly. The only analogue we have now is SpaceX imo. Tesla, if they crack self driving, maybe.

skippyboxedhero 4y ago
> It was a high performing organisation with few peers in corporate history Apart from the time he ran it into the ground. Musk isn't up there, Jobs isn't up there. You need a multi-decade record of strong capital allocation decisions, Musk barely has five years. Jobs had a record of making mistake after mistake for decades until the IPhone. Musk, by his own admission, made huge errors and would likely have gone bankrupt in 2017. Of those alive today: Buffett, Malone, and a handful of smaller-scale people (i.e. Leonard, Stiritz, and some firms with strong culture like 3G, potentially Costco). In most cases though, CEOs need to be saved from themselves. Tech CEOs are also some of the absolute worst...I can't think of any with very strong records (Leonard is one, but the scale is relatively small). You find far strong management teams, on average, outside tech (industrials is one area, you have quite a few companies that not only have good CEOs but very good succession). The incentives are just totally wrong in tech: you get rewarded for failing, so you end up with lots of incompetent CEOs (Pichai being one of the worst, Google generally is just a terrible shit-show).
kennend3 4y ago
You have conveniently forgotten a serious part of apple's history so let me remind you. " Steve Jobs and Bill Gates’ rivalrous friendship is the stuff of tech lore. The most poignant moment of that fraught relationship happened 20 years ago. In August of 1997, Gates stepped in and saved Apple, which, at the time, was on the brink of bankruptcy. “Bill, thank you. The world’s a better place,” Jobs told Gates after the Microsoft exec agreed to make a $150 million investment in Apple. " So was it working brilliantly when it was 90 days from bankruptcy and was thrown a lifeline by Gates? Jobs was lucky with the iPhone...
- astrange 4y ago
  That failure was under the last guy. He didn’t work there yet. Wasn’t an investment of any value either, it’s the message that mattered.

fdgsdfogijq 4y ago

I think Apple is excluded when Jobs was there, as an innovative company. The iPhone, iMac, Macintosh, etc. Along with that, theres exceptions to every rule.

quadcore 4y ago
I especially like iTune and iPod because of the out of the box thinking and the startup-like understanding of the customers back then.