6 ms·

"In 2013 i met a very close friend of Steve Jobs and i remember saying "there's one thing i absolutely have to know, it's really important to me" he responds "o

"In 2013 i met a very close friend of Steve Jobs and i remember saying "there's one thing i absolutely have to know, it's really important to me" he responds "okay what is it?" I ask "what was all the money for?!" puzzled "what do you mean?" "Steve Jobs saved up like 200 billion dollars in cash at Apple, but what was it all for? what was the plan? was he going to buy AT&T? was he going to build his own telecom or make a giant spaceship? what was it for?" And he looked at me with just the deepest and saddest eyes and spoke softly "there was no plan" "what??" "you see, Steve's previous company, NeXT, it ran out of money, so at with Apple he always wanted a pile of money on the side, just in case. and over years, the pile grew and grew and grew... and there was no plan..." https://x.com/DavidSHolz/status/1900334446928421081 https://x.com/DavidSHolz/status/1900334446928421081

jofla_net 1y ago
Totally believable. My grandmother lived though the great depression, wherein she was lucky to get an Orange at christmas. The last few decades of her life she basically was a food hoarder, pantries overflowing with canned goods, and a freezer where you never saw the back.
- bee_rider 1y ago
  When I was a kid I did odd jobs, and one of the odd jobs was cleaning out a semi-hoarder’s house after he’d passed away (iirc he’d lived through the Great Depression). Not like you see on TV, with the heaps and heaps of garbage. Maybe like your grandmother, tons of… basically well organized supplies and stuff. I dunno. Toilet paper, some canned goods, lighters, I guess that stuff all lasts decades if stored properly. Takes up a lot is space, though, and your descendants might have to pay some kid to throw it all away if you don’t use it up in time… But, some folks wished they were toilet paper hoarders during the pandemic I guess. Wonder what the kids of 2060 will be throwing away as a result of our life-experiences.
  - MisterTea 1y ago
    > Wonder what the kids of 2060 will be throwing away as a result of our life-experiences. Likely old computers that could do anything the user wanted.
  - n_ary 1y ago
    > Wonder what the kids of 2060 will be throwing away as a result of our life-experiences. EOL devices(tablets, phones, macbooks, thinkpads, hobby electronics boards, home lab equipments, hdd and ssd full of archive data, swag from conferences, outdated books on product and programming, smart watches etc).
  - scruple 1y ago
    Rats nests of USB cables and power cords, etc., probably.
- robotnikman 1y ago
  Same thing with my grandpa, he hoarded everything. Cleaning out his house after he passed was a huge undertaking.
TYPE_FASTER 1y ago
Also, Apple was down to 90 days of operating cash and almost went bankrupt in 1997.
- masklinn 1y ago
  And Microsoft had to invest in Apple, as a bankrupt Apple would have left them with effectively no defense against the antitrust investigation they were undergoing.
  - tough 1y ago
    The irony in that is pretty funny tbh
    - gruturo 1y ago
      It's also proof that antitrust laws are beneficial, if only they were enforced (a lot) more seriously and frequently and uniformly.
      - chongli 1y ago
        The jury's still out on this case. When historians look back a hundred years from now, will they consider it beneficial that Apple survived? Or will they see it as an unfortunate reprieve for a company that wrought unfathomable destruction upon our society via the creation of the smartphone and the attention economy that soon followed? It's really hard to argue counterfactuals on this one. Perhaps the smartphone would have been built by Google anyway. I can't really imagine how, given the state of the mobile phone market at the time of the iPhone's release.
        pjmlp 1y ago
        I would keep enjoying my Maemo or Symbian Belle probably, who knows.
joe_the_user 1y ago
The only way that differs "any corp" is that in most publicly corporations, you want to return that money to your shareholders - and they sit on it for the same reason. IE, this just says Jobs ran Apple as his personal fife. But since he made lots of money, no one cared.
- lotsofpulp 1y ago
  I’m a shareholder, and I would rather that money be used to grow stock price (since it is already at a business known for creating new products and markets). If I get a dividend, I have to pay tax today. And then I just turn around and buy more stock with post tax income? If I can sell the share at a higher price when I want the cash, then I can pay the tax whenever I want, possibly under more preferable terms.
ChuckMcM 1y ago
This and the Cult of Mac book completely describe it. Leaders are people who can have emotional damage that they compensate for in their business decisions. It is "easy" to understand why parents would lie to home invasion robbers about whether or not they had a safe in the house. Leaders of companies will readily lie if they believe that the survival of their company is at stake. The rational is "well someone might get mad that we lied but at least the company will still be here."
g42gregory 1y ago
Alternative/complementary view: traditional software applications business is extremely high-risk high-return. It’s no accident that NeXT (and Microsoft in early days!) almost ran out of money. To balance the risk, you would want to compensate with extremely conservative balance sheet. Michael Milken published a paper analyzing exactly this issue a while back.
ksec 1y ago
That is why I believe had Steve been alive the App Store would actually be something like 5-10% rather than 30%. They needed the money then, even in 2011 when he passed away. They really dont need it as much now. Apple now has more money than they know what to do with it. They have spend close to $800 billion stock buy back in total by the end of this year. They could have lowered the the margin of Mac and gained Market Shares. Which is something Steve said during NeXT era that Apple got greedy. Focusing too much on margin.

jofla_net 1y ago

Totally believable. My grandmother lived though the great depression, wherein she was lucky to get an Orange at christmas. The last few decades of her life she basically was a food hoarder, pantries overflowing with canned goods, and a freezer where you never saw the back.

bee_rider 1y ago
When I was a kid I did odd jobs, and one of the odd jobs was cleaning out a semi-hoarder’s house after he’d passed away (iirc he’d lived through the Great Depression). Not like you see on TV, with the heaps and heaps of garbage. Maybe like your grandmother, tons of… basically well organized supplies and stuff. I dunno. Toilet paper, some canned goods, lighters, I guess that stuff all lasts decades if stored properly. Takes up a lot is space, though, and your descendants might have to pay some kid to throw it all away if you don’t use it up in time… But, some folks wished they were toilet paper hoarders during the pandemic I guess. Wonder what the kids of 2060 will be throwing away as a result of our life-experiences.
- MisterTea 1y ago
  > Wonder what the kids of 2060 will be throwing away as a result of our life-experiences. Likely old computers that could do anything the user wanted.
- n_ary 1y ago
  > Wonder what the kids of 2060 will be throwing away as a result of our life-experiences. EOL devices(tablets, phones, macbooks, thinkpads, hobby electronics boards, home lab equipments, hdd and ssd full of archive data, swag from conferences, outdated books on product and programming, smart watches etc).
- scruple 1y ago
  Rats nests of USB cables and power cords, etc., probably.
robotnikman 1y ago
Same thing with my grandpa, he hoarded everything. Cleaning out his house after he passed was a huge undertaking.

TYPE_FASTER 1y ago

Also, Apple was down to 90 days of operating cash and almost went bankrupt in 1997.

masklinn 1y ago
And Microsoft had to invest in Apple, as a bankrupt Apple would have left them with effectively no defense against the antitrust investigation they were undergoing.
- tough 1y ago
  The irony in that is pretty funny tbh
  - gruturo 1y ago
    It's also proof that antitrust laws are beneficial, if only they were enforced (a lot) more seriously and frequently and uniformly.
    - chongli 1y ago
      The jury's still out on this case. When historians look back a hundred years from now, will they consider it beneficial that Apple survived? Or will they see it as an unfortunate reprieve for a company that wrought unfathomable destruction upon our society via the creation of the smartphone and the attention economy that soon followed? It's really hard to argue counterfactuals on this one. Perhaps the smartphone would have been built by Google anyway. I can't really imagine how, given the state of the mobile phone market at the time of the iPhone's release.
      - pjmlp 1y ago
        I would keep enjoying my Maemo or Symbian Belle probably, who knows.

joe_the_user 1y ago

The only way that differs "any corp" is that in most publicly corporations, you want to return that money to your shareholders - and they sit on it for the same reason. IE, this just says Jobs ran Apple as his personal fife. But since he made lots of money, no one cared.

lotsofpulp 1y ago
I’m a shareholder, and I would rather that money be used to grow stock price (since it is already at a business known for creating new products and markets). If I get a dividend, I have to pay tax today. And then I just turn around and buy more stock with post tax income? If I can sell the share at a higher price when I want the cash, then I can pay the tax whenever I want, possibly under more preferable terms.

ChuckMcM 1y ago

This and the Cult of Mac book completely describe it. Leaders are people who can have emotional damage that they compensate for in their business decisions. It is "easy" to understand why parents would lie to home invasion robbers about whether or not they had a safe in the house. Leaders of companies will readily lie if they believe that the survival of their company is at stake. The rational is "well someone might get mad that we lied but at least the company will still be here."

g42gregory 1y ago

Alternative/complementary view: traditional software applications business is extremely high-risk high-return. It’s no accident that NeXT (and Microsoft in early days!) almost ran out of money. To balance the risk, you would want to compensate with extremely conservative balance sheet. Michael Milken published a paper analyzing exactly this issue a while back.

ksec 1y ago

That is why I believe had Steve been alive the App Store would actually be something like 5-10% rather than 30%. They needed the money then, even in 2011 when he passed away. They really dont need it as much now. Apple now has more money than they know what to do with it. They have spend close to $800 billion stock buy back in total by the end of this year. They could have lowered the the margin of Mac and gained Market Shares. Which is something Steve said during NeXT era that Apple got greedy. Focusing too much on margin.