Soured Apple?

27/03/2009

We talk to industry experts about the future of Apple now the man behind the Mac has stepped down

by Jasper Hamill
Just over a decade ago, only geeks loved their computers. After all, what was to like about a whirring grey box, plugged into a grey monitor? Then, in 1998, the first Apple iMac was released: a machine that, its creators joked, was better looking from the back than its competitors’ models were from the front.

Made from a gumdrop shape of translucent plastic and available in luscious-sounding colours like Bondi blue or tangerine, it quickly became a design icon and spawned a dedicated, lusty group of devotees. More importantly, it turned around the perception computers were things on desks in faceless corporations, laying the foundations for a “digital lifestyle”, where they are at the heart of our personal, creative and social lives.

The man at the helm of Apple, Steve Jobs, had returned from years in the wilderness to lead the company he founded towards a second act unprecedented in the technology business.

That he had saved the company from certain death and revolutionised the computer industry was impressive enough, but then he went on to radically alter the music industry with iTunes and the iPod; took on the movie business with Pixar, the animation studio he owned, and then battle the telecommunications giants with the iPhone.

Outsiders regard him as so important to the company that when an 18-year-old posted false claims that Jobs had suffered a heart attack last year Apple share prices plummeted by more than five per cent. But after Jobs announced he was taking a six-month break in January, after admitting the nutritional problem that had caused him to shed weight was “more complex”, rumours swept around Macolytes that his pancreatic cancer had returned, which would mean the end of Jobs’s reign and possibly that of the super-brand itself.

The computer market is now changing, as companies chase “the next billion” customers living in developing countries and adapt to a new age where software will be available free of charge, using an internet browser.

The corporation famously asked its aficionados to “think differently”; now they’re wondering if Apple can do the same without its chief thinker.
One reason to question its future is the extent to which Jobs has made the company an extension of his own personality. He is a famously exacting boss, sticking his nose into every last detail, querying the tiniest facet of a design and then shouting people out if they fail to meet his standards.

He paced the corridors of Apple, grabbing people, interrogating them about their work and firing them if they were not up to scratch. The phrase Apple employees used for this grilling – getting “Steved” – has now become internet parlance for a project that gets brutally shut down. But as well as these autocratic, monomaniacal tendencies, Jobs is an incredible leader, picking the best people, working them at an intense pace until they either crack or produce the best work of their lives.

Leander Kahney, news editor of Wired.com, has followed Apple for 10 years, writing a blog and book called The Cult of Mac along the way. His new work, Inside Steve’s Brain, is an attempt to break down why Jobs has been so successful. “Previous biographies were depressing catalogues of bad behaviour and tantrums, describing him as a man with the worst motivations. But there was nothing in there about how he got this magic to work,” says Kahney.

“Steve is a complex character – a real enigma. I’ve approached him after product briefs, tried to shake his hand, and he just stared at me. I lobbed him a couple of questions, but if it’s not on-topic he ignores it. He’s a totally ruthless jerk in some respects, but his achievements are remarkable.

“He was able to turn that company into the very embodiment of his personality. I don’t think he’s going to come back and I don’t think they can find someone to replace him.”


Jobs was adopted when very young and brought up in a blue-collar household in Mountain View, a bucolic town fringed by orchards and strawberry fields. Nowadays, the area is unrecognisable and more commonly known as Silicon Valley. As a child, Jobs became so absorbed in imaginary mathematical problems his mother had to literally shake him out of it.

He grew into a troubled adolescent; by some accounts, a borderline delinquent. He once remarked that if wasn’t for his passionate interest in electronics and computing he “would have absolutely ended up in jail”. Jobs went to college but dropped out, briefly taking a job at Atari to save up enough money to fund a spiritual retreat to India where he took acid, something that, he told the New York Times, was one of the “two or three most important things” he had ever done.

According to Kahney, the computer industry rewards this kind of risk-taking. “Bill Gates was a drop out too, so there’s a similarity. You see this a lot in high-risk industries like the arts, technology or movie making. These guys follow their own muse. They say f**k it, I’m not going to college. I’m going to get out and do something.” Returning from India as a long-haired hippy-dippy drop out, Jobs began working with a computer whiz called Steve Wozniak, or Woz, and they designed the first Apple computer in Jobs’s garage.

Called Apple I, it was released in 1976 to muted praise; the second, Apple II, hit the market in 1977 and is widely regarded as the bedrock for the entire home computer industry. When Apple started selling its stock in 1980 it generated the most money since Ford went public, in 1956, giving Jobs a fortune of $100m at the age of 25.

Then – after wooing John Sculley, CEO of Pepsi-Cola, by asking: “Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water to children, or do you want a chance to change the world?” – he was thrown out of the company he had started. These wilderness years proved crucial. He failed to achieve success with his new company, Next, and initially failed to strike gold with Pixar, until he redefined its purpose. Pixar was originally meant to sell high-end graphics computers, but then ended up revolutionising the film industry with movies like Toy Story.

When Apple fell upon hard times Jobs was brought back in, reportedly when the company had only 90 days left to live. Jobs then brought in phenomenally-talented people – like the British designer of the iMac and iPod, Jonathon Ives – and released a series of blockbusting gadgets, culminating in the iPhone. He created, according to Mike Cassidy, a columnist with the San Jose Mercury News, the paper that covers Silicon Valley, “a digital Starbucks where it’s not just about coffee; it’s about a whole experience”.

“There is a love/hate relationship with him in Silicon Valley, unless you are a hardcore Macolyte in which case it’s just a love relationship,” adds Cassidy. “He is seen as Apple – he is the company.

“He’s even seen that way by investors, which we’ve seen with his health issues. In the old days, when they had those medcial charts at the foot of a hospital bed – that chart would go exactly as Apple’s stock did. When Steve was up the stock was up and when Steve was down the stock was down. In Silicon Valley that’s brought out a good deal of sympathy for him, no matter what people thought or think about him. He is a human being, although he tries to keep us from the details as much as possible, struggling with a serious illness. That makes anyone mortal, even Steve Jobs.”

In his trademark black polo neck and jeans, Jobs would wander around Apple headquarters barefoot. He maintains a strict adherence to the Buddhist faith and is a committed pescetarian, a vegetarian that eats fish. But peace and love only goes so far at Apple: Jobs is perhaps the most ruthless control freak it’s possible to imagine.

Obsessed with details, he once demanded his engineers redesign the motherboard of a computer – because it was too ugly. Most computer users never even see the motherboard unless they take a screwdriver to their machine. But his despotic tactics worked: Apple commands a rabid following.

The firm’s canny manipulation of consumers was powerful enough to be satirised by The Simpsons, when Springfield became in thrall to a brand called Mapple and its leader Steve Mobs, described by one fan as “a God that knows what we want”.

However, Silicon Valley is awakening to the prospect Apple may lose its leader. There are also tough times ahead, as the recession bites and in the struggle to compete for emerging markets.

Jeffrey S Young, author of iCon: Steve Jobs, The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business, an unauthorised biography of Jobs, says: “Apple have a very poor international presence and they are not successful in the markets like China, India, Indonesia or Brazil. Apple’s model of charging you a premium, and a western premium at that, doesn’t work. Apple’s personality and the fact their machines are slightly better looking is not going to play very well in Kenya. This is a giant Achilles heel.”

Figures from Euromonitor International bear this out: Britain and America spend about one-fifth of their income on electronics, whereas China spends one-seventh, India one-eighth. Nigeria, one of the lowest spenders, only $3 out of the average yearly spend of $486.

Young thinks even Jobs could founder when facing these challenges and he is unlikely to surrender the reins to people who could, like one of the founders of Google or an Indian internet entrepreneur, because “he’s one of these guys that will have to go out feet first”. But is this enough to knock Apple off its golden bough?

The company has come through tough times before but not without its leader at the helm.