Ways to save Apple (1997) • Hacker News Board

Re: Ways to save Apple (1997)

#21

Post by PhasmaFelis » Fri, May 01, 2015, 4:26 AM UTC

macspoofing wrote: post #13

Gustomaximus wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I felt reading this is what life for a CEO must be like. To be continually bombarded with 101 ways to do the job. 80%+ are wrong, from people who absolutely believe at the time they are correct.

I think it's worse than that. You don't know the right answer, nobody else knows the right answer, and the only way get by is to guess and hope you get lucky. Apple got lucky. They built the iPod, which in hindsight, was a trans-formative product, but at the time it wasn't so obvious.

And, of course, your lucky roll of the die will get you hailed as a "visionary CEO" for the rest of your life.

Re: Ways to save Apple (1997)

#22

Post by molmalo » Fri, May 01, 2015, 4:29 AM UTC

vacri wrote: post #7

hoodoof wrote: post #2

Kinda weird how much of this is the opposite of what worked.

Plenty of items on the list are involved with what happened. Like 'keep a retail presence', 'distinguish your looks' ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac#/media/File:Nafija55.jpg came out the next year), 'focus on customer support', 'break new ground, don't CYA', 'improve your marketing', 'simplify product names', even 'buy a song' (hello U2). Notable exceptions are 'apologise', 'build software the business community…

#1 was pretty accurate actually...

>1. Admit it. You're out of the hardware game. Outsource your hardware production, or scrap it entirely

They didnt scrap it entirely, but they did ended up outsourcing production to Foxconn.

Re: Ways to save Apple (1997)

#23

Post by PhasmaFelis » Fri, May 01, 2015, 4:30 AM UTC

terminus wrote: post #16

Ye, Gods. Yet another Apple story. They are a for profit (and quite a lot of it) corporation that makes shiny gadgets. Why do we keep talking about them incessantly? If we are not talking about what Apple is doing now, then we are talking about what somebody said about Apple 20 years ago. I'm of course making the problem worse or meta-worse, if you will, by talking about talking about Apple, but I just don't understa…

Apple is one of the most important and influential tech companies in the world right now. There's a lot of Apple articles for the same reason there's a lot of Google/Amazon/Facebook articles.

They also have a lot of pretty devoted fans, but don't confuse ponderings on the industry with fanboyism.

Re: Ways to save Apple (1997)

#24

Post by gh02t » Fri, May 01, 2015, 4:31 AM UTC

stevebot wrote: post #17

Funny how some of these are way off, while others are pretty spot on: 7. Don't disappear from the retail chains. Rent space in a computer store, flood it with Apple products (especially software), staff it with Apple salespeople, and display everything like you're a living, breathing company and not a remote, dusty concept.

The one that made me laugh was the suggestion of replacing Mach (though really even then NeXT was more than *just Mach, but w/e) with the NT kernel.

Can you imagine what MacOS and iOS would look like if they were built on NT? Not so much because they are technically incompatible, but more for the political implications of MacOS being married to the heart of Windows.

Re: Ways to save Apple (1997)

#25

Post by mami » Fri, May 01, 2015, 4:31 AM UTC

1. limewire

Re: Ways to save Apple (1997)

#26

Post by robterrell » Fri, May 01, 2015, 4:42 AM UTC

hoodoof wrote: post #2

Kinda weird how much of this is the opposite of what worked.

I read this in 1997. A lot of these seemed like terrible ideas even at the time.

Re: Ways to save Apple (1997)

#27

Post by dasil003 » Fri, May 01, 2015, 5:15 AM UTC

macspoofing wrote: post #13

Gustomaximus wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I felt reading this is what life for a CEO must be like. To be continually bombarded with 101 ways to do the job. 80%+ are wrong, from people who absolutely believe at the time they are correct.

I think it's worse than that. You don't know the right answer, nobody else knows the right answer, and the only way get by is to guess and hope you get lucky. Apple got lucky. They built the iPod, which in hindsight, was a trans-formative product, but at the time it wasn't so obvious.

This is pretty uncharitable to Jobs. If you look at Apple's trajectory over the last 15 years, you can see the vision was consistently outlined from the very beginning—the Digital Hub strategy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9046oXrm7f8).

You can draw a straight line through iPod -> iTunes Store -> iPhone -> App Store -> iPad -> Apple Watch. Even though the vision was a little blurry with regards to how powerful mobile devices would get and thus how the smart phone would overtake the PC for revenue, it still holds up in the way these products are executed and integrated. Frankly, the only company that is really competing effectively with this 15-year-old strategy is Google, because they have cloud services chops that Apple has struggled with, but despite being dominant in that area, it's still just good enough to put them on par because their UX, integrated industrial design, supply chain management, and marketing still pale in comparison to Apple.

Just because it wasn't immediately obvious to the world that the iPod would succeed doesn't mean that the vision wasn't there or that it was just dumb luck. Obviously there is a huge amount of luck in terms of circumstances that fuel every large company, but I find it really annoying when people are so dismissive of good execution with this type of hand-wavy rhetoric.

Re: Ways to save Apple (1997)

#28

Post by bobbles » Fri, May 01, 2015, 5:21 AM UTC

DrStalker wrote: post #20

macspoofing wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's worse than that. You don't know the right answer, nobody else knows the right answer, and the only way get by is to guess and hope you get lucky. Apple got lucky. They built the iPod, which in hindsight, was a trans-formative product, but at the time it wasn't so obvious.

At the time it was a heavy music player with an annoying interface that only worked for mac users and was useless forever if you dropped it and the hard drive broke. They fixed all those problems later versions, but the initial device was underwhelming to a lot of people.

Apple tends to be pretty good at releasing 1.0's where the problems can be fixed as tech improves, rather than being fundamental design flaws (though they manage those as well.. coverflow)

Re: Ways to save Apple (1997)

#29

Post by pcurve » Fri, May 01, 2015, 5:32 AM UTC

joezydeco wrote: post #18

grecy wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent $4,500 on a G3 + 17" monitor in '98... it was an amazing machine :)

I spent $3,899 on a Macintosh SE in 1987. ($8,000 in today's dollars). It was a lot slower.

$3,400 on IIsi in 1991... one of the first 'affordable' color Macs. That was an amazing machine and I still remember the magic.

Re: Ways to save Apple (1997)

#30

Post by ssalazar » Fri, May 01, 2015, 5:36 AM UTC

molmalo wrote: post #22

vacri wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of items on the list are involved with what happened. Like 'keep a retail presence', 'distinguish your looks' ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac#/media/File:Nafija55.jpg came out the next year), 'focus on customer support', 'break new ground, don't CYA', 'improve your marketing', 'simplify product names', even 'buy a song' (hello U2). Notable exceptions are 'apologise', 'build software the business community…

#1 was pretty accurate actually... >1. Admit it. You're out of the hardware game. Outsource your hardware production , or scrap it entirely They didnt scrap it entirely, but they did ended up outsourcing production to Foxconn.

Not in any meaningful sense. Hardly any big tech companies manufacture hardware in the US any more. Hardware is Apple's single distinguishing feature as a business, and theres way more to it than which company happens to assemble the components together.