What do you think of Steve Jobs?

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Venture

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  • #9
    A brief history of Apple:<P>Steve and Woz are great!<P>Woz who?<P>I never liked Jobs.<P>John is great!<P>I never liked Sculley.<P>Mike is great!<P>I never liked Spindler.<P>Gil is great!<P>I never liked Amelio.<P>Steve is great!<P>I always liked Steve.<P><BR>Mac supporters veer from total walk-on-water hero-worship of whoever's the current CEO to total dislike of departed CEOs.<P>I'll say this for Jobs: He's making money since he got the company into the novelty market and out of the computer market. View image: /infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif<P>
     
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    Atilla

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  • #12
    Woz is the best! But my impression of Steve Jobs has improved since his return. I never liked any of the the folks in between. I don't always share his vision for the Macintosh but he at least keeps me interested in them. That should count for something.<P>Better than the same boring stuff year after year. Even Dell has put out some cool me-too stuff (WebPC looks nicer than Astro or iPaq).<P>I think that's good.
     
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    resteves

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  • #18
    <BR>I assume most remember his famous line to Sculley (?) when he woo'd him from Pepsi. "Do you want to make sugar water, or do you want to change the world"? (I got it wrong, but the idea is there :)<P>I think he really does look at apple as having an important impact on the world, and wants to make sure it continues to. Plus, he is already really rich, how many millions does he need?<P>
     
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    hmurchison

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  • #20
    Wow what a High Brow conversation we're having here. The world must be coming to an end because a few pimply faced geeks aren't thinking about Steve Jobs. People SJ isn't thinking about you. Last time I checked he was a Millinaire and you were a slow witted computer hermits. Please spare us your opinion or what you think about because obviously it's nothing that most of us want to hear. Thanks in advance guys.
     
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  • #22
    View image: /infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif<BR>Nonono, hmurchison, you don't quite understand. Mr Jobs is like Tinkerbell, if we don't believe in him he'll get sick and die.<BR>Now clap your hands, to let him know you believe in him, everybody!<BR>::giggle::<P>[Edit: name booboo]<P>[This message has been edited by pigL1 (edited December 01, 1999).]
     
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    JB

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  • #23
    hmurchison<BR> <BR> He may be a Millinair(sic) but Big Bill is a billionaire and they both <BR>started at roughly the same time. So this notion that he is somehow a <BR>great (as opposed to mediocre) CEO is just more myth on the part of <BR>the new church. What a wonderful quote to get Scully to join the party, <BR>what a miserable job his handpicked leader did at the helm.<P>Apple stock has gone up since he came back to lead the troops? Sure.<BR>But check the Nasdaq, in the past 3 years what high-tech stock hasn't?<P>BTW, it is quite apparent that the intent of this thread was to be humorous <BR>in tone, that should be fairly obvious by how the original post that started <BR>this thread is worded. Personally I find the idea that he could be considered <BR>either a madman or messiah to be a ridiculous proposition, and that is why I <BR>have no intent of giving this thread the "highbrow" treatment that you believe <BR>it so richly deserves.
     
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  • #24
    I was in the same hall as Steve Jobs one winter's night in the early nineties. It was a Boston Computer Society meeting to show off the NeXT and I came to take photos.<P>Even then, Jobs knew how to work a crowd. He knows his geeks very well, and gave them what they came for. Afterward he came down off the stage and stood in front of it. I seized the Kodak moment and got up on the stage and took a couple of snaps looking down. It was a great picture, with the white-shirted Jobs surrounded by dark-coated geeks anxious to get near to him and feel his aura. Naturally, I lost the pic a few years later.<P>Also in "My Friends the Stars" series: I took pics at a BCS meeting where Gates was speaking a couple of years later. I was as close as this to him.<P>What are these people like? I have no idea. Jobs knows the importance of being "on" all the time there's an audience, and Gates zoomed off the podium (after his speech and questions) to confer with a Microsoft minion and depart.<P>From what I hear neither of them are exactly nice people - Jobs appears to have a rampant ego and Gates isn't far behind. But as I'm not into the cult of the personality I don't really give a sh!t.
     
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    hmurchison

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  • #25
    JB...nice reply.<P>I actually acknowlege both Jobs and Gates as pioneers of our Computer Industry. Strange but true both Gates and Jobs are not "Technically Gifted" (they had strong talent surrounding them) but they're Marketing and Business Acumen is unquestion. Both men excel at marketing their products and strategies better than any other CEO's that I know of. Jobs not only has reinvigorated Apple but he has also transformed Pixar into a Hollywood 3D powerhouse. Not too shabby. Gates has merely done the seemingly impossible....stay on top with ruthless competitiveness and shrewd(though not always timely ie Internet) decisions. If you think of being successful you should watch and listen to these men they're doing something right. My point was not really to be caustic but these boards would be much better if we actuall brought something to them rather than filling them with drivel. my $02.(AKA drivel lol)
     
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    EriMac

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  • #28
    <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>He may be a Millinair(sic) but Big Bill is a billionaire and they both started at roughly the same time. So this notion that he is somehow a great (as opposed to mediocre) CEO is just more myth on the part of the new church.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P>If the fact that he has less money than Gates makes him a mediocre CEO then every other CEO is mediocre. Its a wonder the economy has done so well with all this mediocrity.<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Apple stock has gone up since he came back to lead the troops? Sure. But check the Nasdaq, in the past 3 years what high-tech stock hasn't?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P>In the last two years, Apple stock has risen from about 13 to 103. That is a factor of eight. In the same span the Nasdaq has gone from about 1300-1400 to 3353 which is a factor of about two and a half. So apple has gone up at about three times the rate of the nasdaq average. <P>Regardless of anyone's opinion of Apple or their products, you cannot deny that Apple stock has beaten the puss out of the Nasdaq, the S&P 500, or any other large cap stock and pretty much most mid cap stocks since Jobs came back on the scene. In terms of the market, Apple has just kicked ass since Jobs returned, there's no two ways about it. <P>That does not necessarily validate Steve Jobs as a good CEO, but it does show that the reasons you gave for him not being a good CEO seem a bit questionable.
     
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    DJ Supreme

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  • #30
    >#Mac supporters veer from total walk-on-water hero-worship of whoever's the current CEO to total dislike of<BR> departed CEOs.#<P>Yet another myth.<P>Sculley? Good innovator, but didn't know much about the technicalityies in computers. Maybe a bad thing that he got kicked due to the Newton.<P>Michael Spindler? Definately didn't do the Mac much good... him we'd be better off without.<P>Gil Amelio? certainly better than Spindler, but he didn't seem to get that Apple was an innovation company, not just a businness that was failing when he took control.<P>Steve Jobs? Great innovator, but still just a human. Has his ups and down, but from what I've heard of his doings in the early 80's, he has improved on himself in an extreme degree.<P>Don't know about Woz...<P>#I'll say this for Jobs: He's making money since he got the company into the novelty market and out of the<BR> computer market.#<P>So the iMac is just a nice toilet seat (to quote our fine PC bigots here)?
     
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  • #37
    "Gil Amelio? certainly better than Spindler, but he didn't seem to get that Apple was an innovation company, not just a businness that was failing when he took control."<P>Hmm. Apple's innovation certainly hadn't got it very far - Amelio recounts in his book on how he was close to not being able to make payroll for the first few months he was there.<P>Amelio also launched the $600 million share flotation done which took Apple away from the brink. And he was the one that set things up with Gates to get that symbolic investment that turned the company around. <P>Which is why Jobs has been so fulsome in his praise for Amelio (Not!). And it's also why Jobs said, about Rhapsody: "I realized from Day One that it wasn't going to do the job."<P>Let's see. You sell Apple a failed OS for $400 million (which Amelio chose over Be because Jobs convinced him that it would be quicker to market). You then accept a job with Apple, but all the time you fail to communicate to your boss (Amelio) that the OS that will save Apple is just a POS.<P>And here we are, almost three years to the day that Apple bought Next, and OS X client *might* be announced at MacWorld 2000. I wonder what might have happened if Amelio had put the fear of God into the Apple OS team. Maybe we'd have seen a new OS by now?<P>
     
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  • #38
    "If the fact that he has less money than Gates makes him a mediocre CEO then every other CEO is mediocre. Its a wonder the economy has done so well with all this mediocrity."<P>In a hot economy selling computers is a no-brainer. Why do you think that computer stocks lead the market? Because people think that all the time business is booming it will buy more computers and individuals will have more disposable income to buy them.<P><BR>"In the last two years, Apple stock has risen from about 13 to 103. That is a factor of eight. In the same span the Nasdaq has gone from about 1300-1400 to 3353 which is a factor of about two and a half. So apple has gone up at about three times the rate of the nasdaq average. <P>Regardless of anyone's opinion of Apple or their products, you cannot deny that Apple stock has beaten the puss out of the Nasdaq, the S&P 500, or any other large cap stock and pretty much most mid cap stocks since Jobs came back on the scene. In terms of the market, Apple has just kicked ass since Jobs returned, there's no two ways about it."<P>Apple was at death's door when Jobs returned. Few people were willing to take a risk with it when almost every other computer stock was appreciating like gangbusters.<P>What you don't take into account was that Apple stock was around $80 five years ago. Over any period but the immediate past Apple stock is outperformed by every index and many other stocks. <P>
     
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    EriMac

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  • #39
    <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>In a hot economy selling computers is a no-brainer. Why do you think that computer stocks lead the market? Because people think that all the time business is booming it will buy more computers and individuals will have more disposable income to buy them.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P>Which has little to do with the real point of my statement which was that for JB to say <I>"He [Jobs] may be a Millinair(sic) but Big Bill is a billionaire and they both started at roughly the same time. So this notion that he is somehow a great (as opposed to mediocre) CEO is just more myth on the part of the new church."</I> is silly. Since Bill Gates has more money than another CEO then the other CEO is thus mediocre? That means every other CEO besides Bill Gates is mediocre because they all have less money than him. Surely you don't think that this is the case?<P>But even if you wanted to make the claim that you did about my side comment, I would say that profitably selling computers in the last few years hasn't been a no-brainer. We keep hearing about how hardware margins are shrinking and the growth is really in services, internet infrastructure, and servers. All of which are areas where Apple has virtually no presence and yet they are still doing well financially in the personal computer market. <P>Compaq is having lots of trouble and had to replace their CEO, IBM is having to move away from retail for their PCs due to the financial difficulties that unit is having, HP's personal computer performance is pretty blah, and then Apple, Gateway and Dell seem to be doing well in that market. So while its still a good place to be, it isn't quite the no-brainer that you make it out to be. <P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Apple was at death's door when Jobs returned.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P>If Apple was at death's door (with PeterB I suppose? View image: /infopop/emoticons\icon_wink.gif ) then I would say that makes its successes of late rather impressive and speaks pretty well for Steve Jobs.<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Few people were willing to take a risk with it when almost every other computer stock was appreciating like gangbusters.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> <P>If your point here is that Apple had a relatively easier time than other companies might have in being such a successful stock in 1998 and 1999 because of its valuation at the time being rather poor, I would refer you to your above comment that apple was at death's door and so there were legitimate reasons why the stock was poorly valued. So while from a numerical standpoint, it is true that higher percentage gains are easier to achieve with a relatively pessimistic valuation, it would also seem that the causes of that poor valuation- all the problems at Apple which you alluded to above- would mean that it was a rather tough task to pull off and so those percentage gains are still rather impressive.<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>What you don't take into account was that Apple stock was around $80 five years ago.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P>Incorrect. Specifically it closed at 36.5625 on 12/2/94, five years ago exactly. But giving you the benefit of the doubt and going back over the last six years, the highest daily close of Apple's stock between 1/1/94 and the 12/31/97 was 50.125 on 6/21/95, not even close to $80. No splits during that time period. <P>The reason why I don't take that into account is because it is irrelevent to this discussion. If you wanted to discuss Apple stock in the nineties it would matter, but we are only talking about Apple stock as it relates to the current Steve Jobs' era since that is the topic at hand and so stock performance under Spindler or Amelio is rather irrelevent.<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Over any period but the immediate past Apple stock is outperformed by every index and many other stocks.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> <P>Well, I'll assume that you mean the last two to three years or a lesser amount of time by "the immediate past". Again, the reason why I mention that time period is that the topic is <u>What do you think of Steve Jobs?</u> so Apple's stock performance over other periods of time than that is irrelevent to this discussion.<P>You also exaggerate a bit on Apple's poor performance in the past. Since you mentioned Apple's price 5 years ago, I looked up how it has done relative to the Dow, S&P 500, and the Nasdaq over that span which happens to be one of the worst possible time blocks to pick for Apple stock. Comparing the numbers for each from 12/2/94 to 12/2/99 it turns out that the Dow has gone up 194.7%, Apple has gone up 201.4%, the S&P 500 has gone up 210.8%, and the Nasdaq 363.4%. So a little bit better than the Dow (<u>Outperformed by every index did you say?</u>), a little less than the S&P and a fair amount less than Nasqaq. So while Apple has not been a great performer, it hasn't been that terrible either, especially when you consider that since it was a mid to large cap stock far earlier than most tech or Nasdaq stocks, it didn't have the percentage growth potential of the smaller stocks.<P>But more specifically, I was responding to this claim: <I>"Apple stock has gone up since he came back to lead the troops? Sure. But check the Nasdaq, in the past 3 years what high-tech stock hasn't?"</I><P>Perhaps a better reply to the above overgeneralization might have been to compare Apple to the Nasdaq and to the other major personal computer boxmakers over the three year span this fellow mentioned. I chose figures for a two year span since Gil Amelio resigned in July of 97, and Steve Jobs was actually named interim CEO in September of 97, so doing two years includes only time for which Jobs was CEO, a three year span would include too much of Amelio's regime. The amounts these stocks have gone up from their close on 12/2/97 to the close on 12/2/99 (adjusting for splits of course):<P>Apple 594.1% <BR>Gateway 420.3% <BR>Dell 307.1% <BR>Nasdaq 114.9%<BR>IBM 91.3%<BR>HP 64.7% <BR>S&P 500 45.0% <BR>Dow 37.7%<BR>Compaq -18.4%<P>Even considering that Dell is _the_ premier stock of the mid- to late- nineties and that Gateway has been doing extremely well too, Apple still comes out on top.<P>Anyway, trying to refute the claim that Apple stock has done about the same under Steve Jobs as the rest of the Nasdaq has done or as well as the other personal computer makers have done is just as ignorant a statement as a mac user saying that a G4 450 outperforms an Athlon 750, its just not true.<P>Cheers,<BR>-EriMac<P>[Edit-UBB]<P>[This message has been edited by EriMac (edited December 03, 1999).]
     
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    DJ Supreme

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  • #40
    "And here we are, almost three years to the day that Apple bought Next, and OS X client *might* be announced at MacWorld 2000. I wonder what might have happened if Amelio had put the fear of God into the Apple OS team. Maybe we'd have seen a new OS by now?"<P>Probably.<P>Nevertheless, do not forget that many things have happened to the Rhapsody project in the span of these years. Such as the Blue Box...
     
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