Inside Steve's Brain - Leander Kahney [5]
Jobs has used his natural gifts and talents to remake Apple. He has fused high technology with design, branding, and fashion. Apple is less like a nerdy computer company than a brand-driven multinational like Nike or Sony: a singular mix of technology, design, and marketing.
His desire to craft complete customer experiences ensures Apple controls the hardware, the software, online services, and everything else. But it produces products that work seamlessly together and infrequently break down (even Microsoft, the epitome of the opposite approach, the open licensing model, is adopting the same modus operandi when selling Xbox game consoles and Zune music players to consumers).
Jobs’s charm and charisma produce the best product introductions in the industry, a unique blend of theater and infomercial His magnetic personality has also enabled him to negotiate superb contracts with Disney, the record labels, and AT&T—no pussycats when it comes to making deals. Disney gave him total creative freedom and a huge cut of profits at Pixar. The music labels helped turn the iTunes music store from an experiment into a threat. And AT&T signed up for the iPhone without even laying eyes on a prototype.
But where some see control freakery, others see a desire to craft a seamless, end-to-end user experience. Instead of perfectionism, there’s the pursuit of excellence. And instead of screaming abuse, there’s the passion to make a dent in the universe.
Here’s someone who has turned his personality traits into a business philosophy.
Here’s how he does it.
Chapter 1
Focus: How Saying “No” Saved Apple
“I’m looking for a fixer-upper with a solid foundation. Am willing to tear down walls, build bridges, and light fires. I have great experience, lots of energy, a bit of that ‘vision thing’ and I’m not afraid to start from the beginning.”
—Steve Jobs’s résumé, at Apple’s MobileMe website
One bright July morning in 1997, Steve Jobs returned to the company he had cofounded twenty years before in his bedroom.
Apple was in a death spiral. The company was six months from bankruptcy. In just a couple of years, Apple had declined from one of the biggest computer companies in the world to an also-ran. It was bleeding cash and market share. No one was buying its computers, the stock was in the toilet, and the press was predicting its imminent passing.
Apple’s top staff were summoned to an early-morning meeting at company HQ. In shuffled the then-current CEO, Gilbert Amelio, who’d been in charge for about eighteen months. He had patched up the company but had failed to reignite its inventive soul. “It’s time for me to go,” he said, and quietly left the room. Before anyone could react, Steve Jobs entered the room, looking like a bum. He was wearing shorts and sneakers and several days’ worth of stubble. He plonked himself into a chair and slowly started to spin. “Tell me what’s wrong with this place,” he said. Before anyone could reply, he burst out: “It’s the products. The products SUCK! There’s no sex in them anymore.”1
The Fall of Apple
Apple’s fall was quick and dramatic. In 1994, Apple commanded nearly 10 percent of the worldwide multibillion-dollar market for personal computers. It was the second biggest computer manufacturer in the world after the giant IBM.2 In 1995, Apple shipped the most computers it had ever sold to date—4.7 million Macs worldwide—but it wanted more. It wanted to be like Microsoft. It licensed the Macintosh operating system to several computer makers, including Power Computing, Motorola, Umax, and others. Apple’s management reasoned that these “clone” machines would grow the overall Mac market. But it didn’t work. The Mac market remained relatively flat, and the clone makers simply took sales away from Apple. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s new operating system, Windows 95, was taking off like a rocket. Critics charged that Windows 95 was Microsoft’s most shameful rip-off of the Mac operating system yet. But Microsoft’s customers didn’t care. It made Windows PCs a good-enough facsimile of the Mac, and cheap,