According to Hoyle...
Apple in the Post-Steve Jobs Era
February 2009
by Jonathan Hoyle
jonhoyle@mac.com
http://www.jonhoyle.com
The economy is down. We have the
highest unemployment since 1992,
sales are steeply declined, and companies, even very successful ones, are
laying off in record numbers. Some
say that this is
the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Whether
you buy into such statements or not, most believe that things are going to get
worse before they get better. Perhaps much worse.
And yet,
Apple posts
record revenues and profits for Q1 2009!
It seems very difficult to get a handle on what Apple
will do next. Throughout the 1990's, many of the major prognosticators were
predicting
Apple going out out business
"in five years". It was always five years away, whether the claim
was in 1990, 1995 or 2000. Even as late as 2002, one columnist predicted
that Apple will
voluntarily exit the computer business
by 2008.
Yeah, so much for the genius of us columnists.
Not that the Pro-Mac fan-base fared with any better. With
each new product release, some blogger somewhere speaks of Microsoft now being
"doomed" and that Apple will take over the market, again "within
five years". Although
Macintosh
marketshare has recently spiked
(one in every five portables sold today is a MacBook),
overall share still remains
shy of 10%
(lower than it was ten years ago during the Mac clone era of the late 1990's). Hardly
a take-over. Sure,
Microsoft Windows
no longer holds 90+% of the market as it used to,
but it is still the dominant OS. And it appears very unlikely that that
will change in as short a period as five years.
And as if Apple weren't unpredictable enough as it
is, we now have CEO
Steve Jobs taking
a leave of absence for health reasons. And
what if he doesn't come back for a while? Or ever, if the unthinkable were
to happen? As we are all mortal, this is something that must be considered. Can
anyone forecast what would become of Apple under such an eventuality? This (hopefully)
hypothetical is the subject of this month's discussion.
So what makes me think I can do a better job at foreseeing
what is going to happen than others who have miserably failed at it? Actually,
I doubt I can do any better. I estimate that my predictions about Apple
has an accracy rate of about 40%. Not a great batting average, I admit. However,
I know what I will NOT do: I will not apply conventional wisdom and standard
business expectations to Apple's current situation to forecast its future. People
who do this have always been wrong about Apple. (Which is why Apple never
actually went out of business in any of those previous times.) I instead
will apply my knowledge of the company history, customer base, and just plain
gut feel. (Hey, how much less accurate can that be than from what these
other talking head geniuses come up with?)
The Steve Jobs Effect
Before predicting the effect the absence of Jobs will
have on Apple, we should first consider how his presence affected it. Some
people are quick to overestimate it, even coming out and saying Jobs is Apple
itself. Essentially: The Fall of Steve Jobs = The Fall of Apple. Although
I would agree that Steve's influence has been quite profound, it should be remembered
that in the 25-year history of the Macintosh, Steve Jobs was involved in only
half of it. Macintosh fanatics abounded throughout the
John Sculley,
Michael Spindler and
Gil Amelio
eras, and most certainly will continue to do so after Steve leaves. Moreover,
Mac OS marketshare
reached its peak
during the period when Steve was still at
NeXT, and
reached its lowest (~3%)
while Steve was in charge.
Having said all this, there is little doubt that
Steve Jobs was instrumental in turning Apple around from near-death to the booming business it is today. The
master marketeer, Steve was able to create interest and spin a business plan like
nobody's ... uh, well, business. Could Apple have created the
iPod and the
iPhone
in the same way under anyone else? Could anyone else make them such household
names? Pretty darn unlikely.
So,
Wall Street
sees Steve Jobs as essentially equal to Apple. When it was announced that
he was taking a medical leave of absence,
Apple stock dropped nearly 7%. Never
mind the fact that its business emained solid, as evidenced by its record numbers
in an otherwise terrible economy. Never mind that Apple remains the toast
of the town in the tech world. No, what matters is: "What's happening
to Steve?"
After all, Jobs brought genius and unpredictability
to the show. Steve took gambles, and won more often than he lost. His
gambles changed the face of entire markets (including
portable music players and
cell phones). And
Mac OS X finally
made the Mac the clear winner in OS market.
So Prediction #1: Even with the same numbers
and the same profitably, Apple stock price will be significantly lower without
Steve Jobs at the helm, than it otherwise would under similar circumstances with
him, as Wall Street's expectations will be lower.
Respect
For the longest time, Apple never got any respect. I
remember about 10-15 years ago, my Windows friends would constantly call my Macintosh
a "toy", whilst their Windows boxes were "serious machines"
(despite the fact their OS was simply a wholesale rip-off from the Mac). I
think this lack of respect also played into the widely-held belief that Apple
was going out of business in five years. Whenever I'd hear that suggested,
I would remind my friends: "You said the same thing five years ago, and five
years before that. Yet Apple remains in business". These friends
just laughed and said, "Well, I'll probably say it again five years from now."
Notice that no one is saying it now.
Competitors take Apple very seriously today. Even
a behemoth like Microsoft targeted Apple when it launched its ill-advised
$300 Million Gates/Seinfeld ad campaign,
as a response to Apple's
Mac/PC ads. These
Microsoft ads were so poorly received that they were replaced by the current
I'm a PC
ad campaign, again to combat Apple. These newer ads were much better and
might have actually improved things for Microsoft, if it weren't for someone leaking
the fact that
Macs were used in creating these very Microsoft ads. But
I digress ...
With Steve gone, would Apple return to being the
Rodney Dangerfield
of tech companies? I don't think so. If nothing else, the iPod and
iPhone have made Apple a very powerful mover in the business world, and those
products are here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future. No matter
who is Captain of the ship, Apple will get its respect.
Prediction #2: Even with Steve gone, pundits
will continue agreeing that Apple will be around for quite some time.
The Customer Base
Apple's customer base is very loyal. Always
has been. Mac users in particular are known for their zealous, near religious,
fervor. And it should be remembered that this customer loyalty is not due
to simply Steve Jobs' presence. Note that Mac-o-philes have been this way
for decades (even whilst Steve was abscent, never expected to return). But
there remains no question that Steve Jobs has won back the Mac user base. Despite
this though, there have been times in which Macintosh community has seen Steve
misstep, causing him to change direction.
Heretical sounding? Well, true none-the-less. Consider
some of Steve's less than brilliant decisions:
- The Round (Hockey-Puck) Mouse. Yeah,
remember that one? That pretty boneheaded move took place not long after
Steve Jobs returned to Apple. A simple user study could have disabused
him of any delusions regarding this product prior to its launch. It
took Steve three (friggin!) years to finally
reverse this decision,
and then only thanks to the users (voting with their dollars to buy other
vendors' mouse products), to essentially forced his hand.
- Rhapsody. At the
1997 Apple Worldwide Developer Conference,
Steve Jobs attempted to kill the Mac OS and replace it with the
NeXTStep operating system,
repurposed for Macintosh hardware and renamed "Rhapsody". All
Mac developers would have had to rewrite everything from scratch. A
huge developer revolt took place, once again forcing Apple's decision to
switch gears and instead create a new operating system: Mac OS X,
which combined the best of lassic Mac OS, NeXTStep and other new innovations.
- The G4 Cube. This
little painful item was
overpriced,
incorrectly marketed and had no real user base. It was display-less
and non-upgradeable, a combination that didn't appeal to the high end user
it was targeting. Cancelled and quickly forgotten, it was replaced by
the far more successful
Mac mini.
What is my point with regard to these three examples? It's
not that Steve Jobs isn't brilliant (because he most certainly is). It's
that the Mac customer base is extremely strong and loyal, and a mistake by any
CEO (even the great Steve Jobs) will result in a very loud response. Hey
man, we Mac fanatics are not afraid to express our opinions. The above three
failed products are proof of that. We are not simply sheep following blindly
(as many PC pundits like to suggest); stupid decisions will cause user reactions,
regardless of who is CEO.
Prediction #3: The next CEO will be carefully
scrutinized with each product announcement. Stupidity will have its consequences. The
high expectations people have had with Steve Jobs is likely to make any mediocre
rollout appear disappointing in the eyes of Apple devotees. Advice to new
CEO: It's going to be tough out there. Better wear a cup.
The Macintosh
I don't care what anyone says, Apple's most important
product will always be the Macintosh. Yes, I know
iPods
outsell Macs by an order of magnitude (they should, as they're an order of magnitude
cheaper). And iPhone contracts are a huge revenue source. But in the
end, it is development in Mac OS X which drives the technologies of everything
else Apple has.
So what impact would the departure of Steve Jobs mean
for the Mac? In my opinion, not as much as you might think since Steve has
been "gone" from the Mac for the past 2-3 years now. Since the
beginning of the iPhone's early development, Jobs had pretty much delegated Mac
development efforts to others. One merely has to compare the last few WWDC
and MacWorld keynotes with previous ones to see what I mean.
The highly controlling Steve Jobs had previously been
on top of everything to do with Mac technology since his return to Apple. Every
keynote demo was timed for effect and just the right words were used for marketing. Even
as late as 2005, his last minute decision to leave IBM's G5 processor behind and
switch the Mac architecture to Intel
was masterfully marketed. Compare that to
WWDC 07's keynote,
in which he followed notes written out for him in his Mac demos, and
WWDC 08's keynote,
in which he skipped the Mac completely.
Sure the very high-end movements for the Mac have
to be cleared by him, but he appears to be happy letting
Bertrand Serlet and
Scott Forstall
make the day-to-day decisions. Unless the next guy is also a micro-manager,
I believe that things will continue in the same manner.
And what will that course be? One important
aspect I believe has to do with its
MacBook
line. Although
overall Mac sales climbed
this past quarter,
Mac desktops fell a whopping 20%! It
was fortunately made up for by a staggering 30% increase in portable sales. As
time goes on, I believe this trend will continue, and MacBooks will soon become
Apple's most important Mac-based product. Gone will be the days that Apple
can simply poor more power into their tower machines. They are going to
need to keep their portables very fast and very light.
Prediction #4: Mac OS X, without Steve Jobs,
will emphasize performance improvements over glitz and keep one step ahead of
Microsoft Windows. I am sure there are still a number of really cool new
features started under Steve which have yet to make it out of the pipeline and
into our hands yet, but an emphasis in cleaning up the features that already exist
will be as important.
Conclusion
Apple without Steve Jobs is almost impossible to imagine. He
has single-handedly brought Apple back from life-support and placed it ahead of
the pack in technological wizardry. Added to that Microsoft's
blundering of it latest operating system (Vista),
Apple is actually sitting pretty well right now. Desperate times had called
for Jobs to perform desperate measures, but the times are no longer quite so desperate
(at least not for Apple). Steve has done a magnificent job, and his successor
should hopefully be ready for the transition.
Final Prediction: Apple without Steve Jobs
will be more about evolution than revolution. That's not to say there won't
be new insanely great products. But the volatility of such dramatic changes
for Apple will probably cool for a while. And although the fun of revolutions
may be missed, maybe a little while of evolution will be a good thing after all.
Coming Up Next Month: Software Development Jobs in a Down Economy! See you in 30!
To see a list of all the According to Hoyle columns, visit: http://www.jonhoyle.com/maccompanion
http://www.maccompanion.com/macc/archives/February2009/Columns/AccordingtoHoyle.htm