Apple's Future - post-Jobs

G

Grall

Invisible Member
Legend
Not sure where to put this thread. General discussion, here, or in politics and ethics. It's hard with so many overlapping and redundant forums on this site. :p

...Anyhow!
I've started reading some Apple tech sites since I started considering buying a macbook pro (although now I've decided I'm prolly gonna skip this gen and instead go with the next; those ivy bridge chips look totally kickass, with lower power, much higher performance, more features - on-chip DX11 graphics? Yes please!).

Then today I saw this here newspost, and it just struck me - AGAIN...

The Woz is an unusually open, friendly and level-headed guy for being in the position he is. He's not a semi-antisocial half-sociopath like Jobs or Gates, he appears to be neither selfish, nor self-centered, and his demeanor appears honest, laid-back and downright friendly. Wow.

Woz spoke some time ago now about the lost iPhone prototype and matters related hereto, and then later about the (at the time) MIA white iPhones, and more recently about being willing to go back to Apple again should they ask him to.

With Jobs' health still very much an ongoing concern, who will take up his sword, should he falter, or even fall? That workoholic whatsisname that's 2nd in command over there at 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino? He doesn't seem to have the charisma needed for a company like Apple. Jobs certainly has - of a sort anyway, he also has a propensity for arrogance(*) and aloofness(**) unfortunately.

...Woz on the other hand...

Can you guys imagine Apple under the leadership of Steve Wozniak? Could it be an Apple with less of the snobby elitism we're so used to, less of the paranoid, DRM-pumped closed-nature of iOS, iTunes and so on? Would it be a friendlier, happier, less rigid Apple that if not endorses so at least tolerates stuff like jailbreaking and so on?

I dunno. I can't help wondering.

*: "We're not tracking anybody."
**: "You're holding it wrong."
 
Sxotty said:
What makes you think Gates is a half-sociopath
Click to expand...
Various (non-attributable) sources I've read over the years, combined with his general level of ruthlessness in how he ran Microsoft.

that you imply is selfish, and self-centered?
Click to expand...
I said Woz didn't appear to be. I didn't imply Gates is.
 
Woz doesn't appear to have any significant role at Apple, I watched an engadget interview with him a while back that says that while he's on the payroll he takes a tiny salary and has little to no inside information or input or knowledge about decisions at apple.

Tim Cook on the other hand has taken the company to be one of the most influential and profitable in the world...

I don't think the company could do much better than with the acting CEO they have and even if they wanted Woz, I can't see the share holders changing from one of the world's most successful acting CEOs to Woz on the basis he seems a bit quirky and a cool guy. It's not like one day soon Tim Cook's going to be running things and all hell will break loose - he essentially has been running things for quite a while and during that time Apple's not exactly done badly...


PS: it's probably a lot easier for Woz to comment on and look chatty as a relative outsider than the people running a company who in most cases probably can't talk freely.
 
Grall said:
Various (non-attributable) sources I've read over the years, combined with his general level of ruthlessness in how he ran Microsoft.


I said Woz didn't appear to be. I didn't imply Gates is.
Click to expand...

A half sociopath is quite strong. If you look at his behavior I strongly disagree with your assessment. Jobs seems much more ruthless to me right at the top level.
 
Sxotty said:
A half sociopath is quite strong. If you look at his behavior I strongly disagree with your assessment. Jobs seems much more ruthless to me right at the top level.
Click to expand...

I'd have to agree with this. At least Gates is quite active as a humanitarian (even before stepping down from MS leadership) working to help out in quite a few areas as a philanthropist. And referring back to Gate's days at MS, Jobs has been far more ruthless and anticompetitive than Gates ever was. Secret police type security at manufacturing plants and within Apple itself. Firing off strings of lawsuits constantly over the smallest things. Rabid anti-openess, etc.

It really struck me as odd that someone could even equate Gates with sociopathy.

As to the Woz. Great guy, but I'm not sure he's that good of a business person. Apple may become more open but I fear their bottom line would start to drop once again. I doubt very much that if he came back the board of directors would put him in as CEO or president.

Regards,
SB
 
Silent_Buddha said:
At least Gates is quite active as a humanitarian (even before stepping down from MS leadership) working to help out in quite a few areas as a philanthropist.
Click to expand...
That's quite the understatement.

Take a look at people with, say, 1% or more financial success as him. How many are willing to give anywhere near as much of their wealth to end human suffering? Especially for those with different skin color? Maybe 0.01%? I don't give a shit about his business practices. This guy should be put on a pedestal as this generation's Mother Teresa, except 10x better.
 
Mintmaster said:
I don't give a shit about his business practices. This guy should be put on a pedestal as this generation's Mother Teresa, except 10x better.
Click to expand...
Well, mother teresa herself wasn't really any sort of mother teresa, if you've read up on her views and practices...

Bill Gates' humanitarian efforts are absolutely peerless, I'd readily agree to that in a second (in the true sense of the expression, as NOBODY has ever donated more money afaik), however the methods and practices he used to gather the money funding those efforts make him a very strange dichotomy. Microsoft systemized breaking the law to corner the software market (much like Intel did on the hardware side), walking over the corpses of their defeated competitor corporations and watched the scattered ashes of all the now jobless employees with both glee and satisfaction; that Gates was instrumental in those strategies is indisputable.

His philantropical record nonwithstanding, I'm just not sure that qualifies him as some kind of awesome person, overall.
 
Strange dichotomy my ass. Half the libraries in the country wwre built by a man who decided to purge the immense sin from his accursed life when he finally was stopped by death long enough to realize he had massive wealth and nothing to be proud of. Even Heaven isn't as sad a lie as the American Dream! :D

I know that's laying it on a bit thick. No need to derail everything. But at what point do we stop forgiving the "Did I Do That?" (yes say it like Urkel) mentality of robber baron philanthropy? Is all really fair in business? Should we consider ourselves lucky that we have the modern world's shittiest broadband? I'm sure the sons of Ma Bell will be happy to buy us a few schools in 2050, if we put their names on them!

Whoops, got carried away again. The b&m foundation is cool, hope he someday apologizes for all the bribes.
 
The robber barons were far worse though. It wasn't just anti-competitive business practices then. I don't know why everyone has to draw false equivalencies all the time.
 
poopypoo's post makes zero sense to me, but I guess it doesn't matter since further discussion along those lines is best left for the political forum. I do have one question though. Are half the libraries in the US being falsely attributed to Gates or is there some history I don't know?
 
Fair enough. Let's keep the discussion moving. I knew this was a non-starter, just tired of people equating philanthropy with decency.

Ps, for the record, I am mistaken about Andrew Carnegie, who apparently had the foresight to dedicate his life to philanthropy from the age of 33! Truly impressive will. But still, literal blood on his hands... certainly, those robber barons made Gates seem an angel. Still, I maintain, a retirement in philanthropy is no different from a career in ruthlessness; a ceaseless drive to bend all people to your will. I don't want to say Gates is irredeemable. I'm just not interested in fawning over him. Shall we go back to Jobs now?? ;)
 
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He may not have time for that if the cancer's busy eating him again... He's not back on the job (no pun...and so on and so forth), and no timetable for when he'll be expected back either.
 
For Apple it's more important to have someone ruthless/soulless at the top than someone with flare. Ideally they want to find someone with both qualities ... but Apple is getting away with murder for the moment, so from a shareholder point of view you need someone who is willing to pull the trigger.
 
IMO, if they want , they can *entirely* disrupt the 3DTV market as it is . :smile:

High intensity pulse display,RGB backlit ~ 1000Hz update rate... Now that's a "3DTV" ....Also, time shared 2D without flicker at the same time...
 
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