"Apple class service"

I've been following much of the speculation about Steve Jobs and his recent keynote performance at WWDC.  I was at first surprised to see Eric Schmidt join Apple's board.  The New York Times article, "An Apple-Google Friendship, and a Common Enemy," (registration required) started me thinking about the real meaning of Schmidt joining Apple's board.

I don't think it is as simple as two Microsoft competitors getting together to fight for the desktop.  I'm guessing that Steve Jobs may well be shopping for someone to step into his shoes. This would not be out of character for Apple which has a strong history of bringing in outside talent as opposed to promoting from within.  I don't know that Steve's exit is even on the horizon, but Apple has got to be worried about their own bench strength.  There has been some speculation that Tim Cook, Apple's number two executive is being groomed to replace Steve.  As I've said a number of times, Tim Cook may well be a brilliant operations leader, but he's no innovator when it comes to products, and he certainly has never come close to putting an audience under a spell unless sleep counts. Then again I fall asleep easily in Keynote or Powerpoint presentations.

Even when I was at Apple there was speculation at Apple that Steve was losing interest in computers.  He is certainly not interested in the enterprise space if you can think back to some of his introductions of Xserves and Xserve RAIDS.

Seb Janacek has an article, "Minority Report: Changing of the guard at Apple?," which has this comment.

In recent years the media focus on Apple has grown as a result of the sheer number of products and innovations rolling out of Cupertino. It's clearly not a sustainable rate of innovation. Which isn't a criticism or a problem in itself - the company, like its CEO, is also in 'robust' shape....

Of the three executives on stage, only Phil Schiller would appear to be able to try and fill Jobs' shoes. He took charge of the keynote for the introduction of the G5 iMac in Paris in 2005, while Jobs was recuperating from his illness.

Meanwhile, the addition of Google CEO Eric Schmidt to the Apple board of directors this week has also got some conspiracy theorists going.

However, what all the candidates lack is what has been infamously described as the 'reality distortion field' - Jobs' ability to make anything about a new or existing product seem absurdly cool.

I think Phil Schiller would be a disaster for Apple but that's just based on my personal opinion and his bullheaded opposition to everything we ever tried to do in the enterprise. 

The challenge is that Apple has always been a hit product company. How do you sustain that without Steve to crack the whip?   The core people that support the Mac demand new technology on a regular basis.  But what do you do after you already have the "World's Greatest Operating System?"  If you're really smart, you turn off the PR machine and involve expert users in really testing and improving the operating system before it comes out the door. You make it better not more adorned with bells and whistles.  That's not going to happen at Apple right now because it isn't Steve's way.  It is however, the Google way.

I wonder also can Apple continue to innovate at the rate they need to in Intel world?  I don't have the answers, but innovation is one thing that is certainly going to be harder if Jobs isn't at the helm.  I'm not sure any of the current executives could handle the cult of personality that is Apple.  Perhaps an outsider like Eric Schmidt might have a better chance, but we likely won't know until we know.

I know that Google is making huge waves.  Page four of the on line ComputerWorld article, "SMB users enthusiastic as they try out Google Apps," has this to say.

Also important for Google has been its strategy of releasing new products as betas, which don't have to be perfect and which help the company gain user feedback. "If they can convince the market that they're moving toward an enterprise-ready position and it's free, then enterprises will play and test and give more feedback," Grey said. "I think that's real smart on Google's part."

It's the old "let them try Windows NT for free" strategy.  The article also makes this comment. 

What will make or break enterprise use of the upcoming premium Google Apps services, he said, are transparent, predictable service-level agreements for businesses.

"Their service has got to be kind of Apple-class -- you know what you're getting and you know it works," he said. "They need to have a good integration story about everything they've got, which is still building."

It's nice to see someone put a finger on the essence of Apple, "you know what you're getting and you know it works." Yet can Apple learn how to go after the enterprise market from Google who is also a newcomer to the market?  Does Apple really even care about the enterprise market?  Certainly they won't if Phil Schiller is at the helm.  I have my doubts about the enterprise market even being on Apple's radar, but it is nice to dream.

Aside from my pure speculation, it is a fact that the history of Apple is built around not promoting from within the company.  So if you're looking for a Steve Jobs replacement, don't look at Apple, look at the technology industry, and pick a innovator and someone who can do a good job of herding a bunch of cats. 

It could also be someone who was once at Apple and left.  Leaving the company only to come back to the mothership has always been viewed as a very positive career move at I Infinite Loop.  It was looked on far more positively than hanging around to keep things going during the tough times.  It could well be that coming back after exile allows some management innovation to get into Apple's relatively closed management circle.  After all the boss did it.

Perhaps if Apple finds some great external candidate to replace Steve, we'll keep getting great products which really work better and better even after Steve is put out to pasture.

 

Comments

[pauldwaite]

> "It could also be someone who was once at Apple and left. Leaving the company only to come back to the mothership has always been viewed as a very positive career move at I Infinite Loop."

Hmm! Maybe an ex-Sales Director would fit the bill :)

[ocracokewaves]

Nope, I'm not a hardware guy, and I have a proven inability to herd the Apple cats, at least in the recent past.

I think they need someone more dynamic than an old balding guy who enjoys walks on the beach more than meetings or anything about Apple.

I respect Steve's reality distortion field and wonder if anyone can ever fill his shoes.

[Roland Dobbins]

Would you please enable full-text on your Atom feed? Full-text feeds make it far easier for those of us with large numbers of subscriptions to read each post.

Many thanks!

[jack Zahran]

Steve's RDF is no secret to recreate. It requires someone to truly believe in and speak with conviction about their products. Steve does this and his honesty is what comes across.

The problem is that the other guys are trying to put it on.

[Keller]

Jean-Louis Gassée

But he's getting kinda old and might still be pissed at Jobs for getting bought when he didn't.

I've seen few other people that would fit the bill and be able to replace Jobs, for all his faults.

[Deja Vu]

I have to agree Schiller would be horrible as whenever he talks at these keynotes, his speeches comes across as too canned and dispassionate. I don't even care for him as a public mouthpiece to begin with since he comes across as a complete dunderhead.

Out of all the Apple employees who used to do any form of keynoting, the only one I ever enjoyed listening to was Frank Cassanova (it was a sad day when he finally shaved off his ever receding hair which he always joked about). Jonathan Ives is also interesting to listen to when he does those short "product creation" video interviews but he obviously is not CEO caliber nor do you want to waste someone like him at Apple in that manner.

Gassée if I'm not mistaken would be horrible since by all accounts, he was into excessive high profit margins (60% at one point) and always against low cost Mac's. He also let his engineers run rampant in terms of budget with zero accountability. The biggest gaffe was in 1989 when the PC market began to rocket causing a rise in the price of DRAM chips. Gassée however wanted to protect profit margins at all costs as opposed to taking a short term hit by absorbing those costs and raised prices as opposed to dropping them and gaining some ground with the rest of the market. Apple took a major hit as a result of that including alienating their own customers. While he was responsible for some goods things (like Mac's becoming modular), the fiscal side of him would probably be disasterous for Apple in the long run.

There really aren't much tech visionaries out there to begin with that are truely passionate about their companies and also CEO material (most of those founding types have no business sense and need someone else to run the company like how it is with Google and Yahoo for example). But that is the kind of DNA needed for some future CEO successor at Apple where they have business smarts and also eat and breath their vision for the company they oversee. Schmidt I doubt has what it takes either to fill that role because even though he was CTO at Sun and CEO of Novell, he seems more like a software guy. Apple needs someone who believes in the synergy of both hardware and software design and how their integration brings value to each other in creating a lifestyle product when it comes to consumer products. That same thinking can extend to enterprise markets where the focus isn't on lifestyle but on integration of services in a much more easier and seamless fashion.

Jonathan Schwartz over at Sun is a fairly interesting character in that respect since he has to deal with similar challenges (UltraSPARC, Opteron, Solaris on both of those platforms). I took a gamble one day and watched an interview with him several months ago. He's a refreshing change from McNeely. He's pretty sharp, easy to listen to, and has a great sense of humor which is saying a lot since selling enterprise solutions isn't easy to get excited over. But this guy truely believes in the products they are shipping and the steps taken to turn the company around. Should be interesting to see if he succeeds there.

While his ponytail would fit in Apple, I doubt his open style of management would be able to pull in the reigns on some of Apple's internal fiefdoms. That is probably one of the biggest challenges for any CEO in a post-Jobs environment especially if that person doesn't have a good handle on the internal culture at Apple before stepping into those shoes.