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Really good point -- I had forgotten Apple's proliferation of incomprehensibly-named Power Macs and how Jobs reduced the line to the bare minimum. And, indeed,
by HillRat 12y ago
Really good point -- I had forgotten Apple's proliferation of incomprehensibly-named Power Macs and how Jobs reduced the line to the bare minimum. And, indeed, part of his strategy was to kill off Apple's actually innovative product, the Newton MessagePad, which had finally hit a solid implementation with the 2000. As much as I loved the Newton, killing it was a sound tactic in pursuit of a sound strategy.
By contrast, think of Jobs at NeXT: he pursued a failing strategy because he was trying to innovate for innovation's sake (trying to build a 3M workstation without a proven market; building a totally-automated, world-class factory without enough orders to keep it operating; obsessing over minutiae like the handrail design at NeXT headquarters). The result was fantastic technology but a company whose promises had to wait for Jobs' return to Apple.
I like to think that Jobs' failure at NeXT was an educational experience for him; however, with Mayer, I'm not sure she can pull off a second act after what I expect to be an unceremonious ouster from Yahoo.
- tim333 12y agoWas NeXT a failure? From Wikipedia it was founded in '86 and got bought in '96 by Apple for $429m plus 1.5m Apple shares for Jobs. I wouldn't mind failing like that.
- HillRat 12y agoI'm a bit late in catching up on this, but NeXT really was a commercial failure. It sold a number of its workstations to government agencies (notably CIA) and scientific teams , but in the early '90s exited the h/w business to concentrate on selling NeXTSTEP and, later OpenStep. The strategy switch was the result of the company's failure to compete with workstation manufacturers like Sun, and the company's rapid drawdown of its cash. By the time NeXT exited the hardware business, they had revenues of about $125m/year, but operating at a loss; Canon, which was already into NeXT to the tune of $100m, floated another $30m plus a $55m line of credit. Jobs was also funding NeXT and his other project, Pixar, out of his own bank account, which left him severely depleted. (Previously, Ross Perot and, later, a consortium of universities had also invested in the company for about $150m combined.) By cutting the hardware business, developing a mildly popular web server (WebObjects), and selling off assets like the Deer Park HQ, Jobs was able to eke a minor profit out of NeXT, but nothing that would justify the massive valuation investors accepted during its early days. Apple's purchase was indeed partially for its technology -- Apple had played around with a competing OS, Be, for its new OS layer, but ultimately passed -- but also to lure Jobs back.