On Steve Jobs

I'm not an Apple fan but I do have a lot of respect for their products and Steve Jobs

I'll just say a few things about him I think should get more attention
After the original Apple, his first great business success was Pixar, that was what made him a billionaire.
The Mac was a great design but not a great business success.
The most important reason for which I think is that he didn't market to business, he showed his contempt for business buyers with the commercial of businessmen marching off a cliff.

His first great  business success at Apple was the iPod, and then the huge, huge , huge success of the iPhone.
All his successes had in common that they were striking visually--that must go to his core abilities. They had good visual user interfaces but even more they were things people wanted because of their looks. Even when they sacrificed some usability- you can't control an iPod by feel, for example.
One element of their visual appeal was that they had a higher screen resolution (dots per inch) than the competition. It makes them look very sharp, better in some way than the rest, though often there is no more actual information shown the user because the display is smaller. He created small but refined objects which people desired.
They were all also consumer products, not primarily for business (though the iPhone is a very useful business tool).

His idea of making a computer 'for the rest of us' has turned out to be more like 'for the best of us'- those with more money and less tech savvy, which is too bad. With the Macintosh, he couldn't compete on price because he didn't have the economies of scale of his rivals. 
But the iPhone-it was a great device, and the carriers saw that , and Jobs used that to force them to give him more control over it than any other phone mfg had- the control, and a cut of the revenues, of applications that can be installed on it. He used that to make a tremendous amount of money, probably more than 50% profit margins, making Apple the most valuable publicly traded company. 
He could have used it to break the carrier's subscription model, selling unlocked iPhones that worked with any carrier , making the carriers support them without making people pay hidden costs for 'free' phones. He could have supported all carriers,  and sold as many phones as possible at lower prices. But he didn't.
Fortunately the advances in his products have been largely made available by rivals at lower prices.


[Added May 2013-
Actually he went partway in breaking the carriers' model. The iPhone had a full fledged browser that would go to any site on the Internet, and the App store is fairly open as well. The carriers' attitude toward apps was 'make us an offer and we'll let you know if its good enough.' He didn't try to take a cut of everything people buy on their iPhones. 
This made the iPhone a huge success where earlier smartphones, with their lame carrier-approved apps had limited success.  ] 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"White supremacists/Antifa rioting"? Show me the videos

A lot of people on Facebook, as well as the President, Mayors and others, have been claiming that most of the destruction was caused by White Supremacists or Antifa. If this is true there should be many photos and videos of it happening.  I searched Google images for the last week for "white supremacists riot". There isn't much to see. So this is probably today's Fake News. Don't spread it. If you believe it, find evidence.  I looked at the first 20 hits. I looked for whites committing violence . Is that "racial profiling"? Well, maybe, but I don't think many blacks are White Nationalists. With Antifa it's harder to tell, but I believe they are mostly white and college educated.   2 videos clearly showing whites vandalizing: Far-Right Infiltrators and Agitators in George Floyd Protests: Indicators of White Supremacists   video #1 nothing clear  video #2  https://twitter.com/i/status/1266661155994550272 does  show whites s
Read more

2 radical conservative changes to the police--

These are radical changes but in accord with conservative principles. There is an alternative to making the Federal government even more powerful.  1. Local control. Control by a city of 3 million, more people than were in the whole United States in 1789, is not that local. It is quite reasonable that neighborhoods want to choose police that reflect their values and priorities. And even their ethnic group. I don't support affirmative action in any other case, but I do here. A precedent--Candidates for the military academies like West Point are not chosen only by merit. They are nominated by each congressman. The Founding Fathers wanted the military to be representative of the people. Let different neighborhoods choose their police, make the rules, and own the hard choices between public safety and respecting the rights of suspects. 2. Reduce the power of police unions.   (Aside to fellow conservatives: think about police unions the way you think about other government e
Read more

Storming of Capitol

It's appalling. I feel sick. I never thought I would see this in the United States.  I also felt sick in June, though. I'm glad most Republicans, and all the top leadership, condemned it and the President.  I didn't think he would do this Anyone want to abolish the Police now? The Capitol Police? What should it be called?  terrorists ? thousands of protesters, 1 policeman killed, virtually no damage except broken windows, doors Terrorists would have blown things up, killed 100's, started fires. If the protesters were all armed they could have done so.  Rioters? Yes, broadly. How much damage did they cause compared to that in June 2020? Not much vandalism, burning or looting. It was a political attack, aiming to disrupt government at the highest level. But not a coup. Coup attempt? thats a joke. Or its a joke of a coup. how many were armed? This is not a scary paramilitary group (thank God). Once they got in, and Congress was gone, they didn't know what to do. They d
Read more