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Measure twice, cut once.
Only one more step left... (Score:5, Funny)
Shut it down [cnet.com]
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, yeah, except that Dell was right, in 1997, about what to do with Apple as a company that made computers.
Of course, it turned out that shifting their core business model from making computers to making gadgets was an even better idea.
Re:Only one more step left... (Score:5, Insightful)
Except for all the success they had with iMac, Powerbook G4, iBook before iPod
Re: (Score:1)
F*ck Dell, and their crap boxes. Now they are private? Then we know exactly who to blame for shoddy packaging and miserable IO performance.
Re:Only one more step left... (Score:4, Interesting)
We'll have to see the direction he chooses to take the company now. As I understand it, before "Dude, you're getting a Dell!", Dell was actually known for making fairly good systems for a major brand. I remember working for CompUSA in the late 90s, and any Dell system we sold was required by them to go through a lengthy systems diagnostic process before being released to the customer. And some of their LCD monitors are known as being among the best. (Everyone raves about the U3011, etc.)
Re: (Score:1)
I don't agree with CitizenCain but I will say in 1997 Dell's advice was completely accurate. Apple was dead but still moving. Jobs threw the old apple out and gambled on rebuilding it with an all new OS, new hardware designs and eventually new devices. Any misstep or just a stroke of bad luck and Apple would have become a historical footnote.
Re: (Score:2)
This.
Except it wasn't an "all new OS".
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
And you have to give them credit for that.
Hanging an existing UI on top of a totally different kernel and OS and hardware to help users make a transition is nothing to sneeze at. (Unless, of course, when Microsoft does it).
But to bring this back on topic, Apple did this because they realized their existing OS and hardware had hit a brick wall, and they had already lost the desktop war. They essentially did Shut it Down as both Michael Dell and Jobs had suggested and rebooted with new architectures and new
Re: (Score:2)
Except that Apple takes 45% of the profits in the PC market. [forbes.com]
Better to lose than to win, it seems.
Re:Only one more step left... (Score:5, Insightful)
Except those were NOT that successful, and those were precisely the computers Dell was talking about and which were sinking Apple at the time.
Jobs vision was that he had to stop relying on desktop computers because he was clearly losing that war in spite of a few partially successful products. His vision saved the company by moving to gadgets, and letting the computer side play catch up. Jobs pretty much followed Dell's advice, pulling almost all the R&D money away from computers. He shit-canned his own operating system, went out and grabbed FreeBSD, Konqueror, and Cups, and packaged it to keep the faithful happy while the real effort went into the iPhone.
Only his pride prevented him from killing off the computer line altogether.
Re: (Score:1)
Except they were, they increased Apple's profitability, increased market share and brought in revenue that allowed Apple to develop iPod, iPod Touch, iPod Nano, iPhone, and iTunes Music Store.
Jobs didn't "shit can his own operating system", Jobs switched from the System 7-OS 8 operating system to Jobs own NeXTStep/Mach kernel approach
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_OS_X#Changed_direction_under_Jobs [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:3)
Jobs didn't "shit can his own operating system", Jobs switched from the System 7-OS 8 operating system to Jobs own NeXTStep/Mach kernel approach
Lets face it, without the totally free BSD operating system Apple would have been dead. He took the cheap way out, lashing up and locking down open source software.
Your own link says as much:
Meanwhile, Apple was facing commercial difficulties of its own. The decade-old Mac OS had reached the limits of its single-user, co-operative multitasking architecture, and its once-innovative user interface was looking increasingly outdated. A massive development effort to replace it, known as Copland, was started in 1994, but was generally perceived outside of Apple to be a hopeless case due to political infighting. By 1996, Copland was nowhere near ready for release, and the project was eventually cancelled. Some elements of Copland were incorporated into Mac OS 8, released on July 26, 1997.
After considering the purchase of BeOS — a multimedia-enabled, multi-tasking OS designed for hardware similar to Apple's — the company decided instead to acquire NeXT and use OPENSTEP as the basis for their new OS. Avie Tevanian took over OS development, and Steve Jobs was brought on as a consultant. At first, the plan was to develop a new operating system based almost entirely on an updated version of OPENSTEP
NextStep is simply a thin skin on top of BSD.
Re: (Score:1)
So despite NeXT being a Jobs led company and working on NeXTStep since 1989 and Jobs pushing Apple into adopting that architecture for the next Mac OS, it's a "cheap way out"?
OK
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
I don't base the success on any such thing. Learn to read.
I'm saying the availability of Free software SAVED Apple, because that software gave Apple the breathing space it needed to keep the desktop computer side financially afloat long enough for them to develop the Iphone, which these days accounts for something like 75% of Apples revenue.
Without a readily adaptable BSD kernel, a linux browser, and a printing systm, and Jobs's Next skin, all with very permissive licenses, the most rational thing to do in
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly. A better way to look at it is that Apple WAS shut down, just like Dell suggested. Instead of just being dissolved, however, it was bought out by a different company, called "NeXT". That company then used the Apple brand name and logo to market its own products, and was enormously successful.
Re:Only one more step left... (Score:5, Informative)
Your grasp of history is weak, or perhaps just willfully ignorant. Michael Dell uttered those words in late 1997. The iMac was announced in 1998.
Re: (Score:2)
Just a slightly MAJOR detail: Jobs didn't "shit-can his own operating system" - he adopted it. See, he was the CEO of NeXT, a high-end BSD-based workstation vendor.
What he did was ADOPT NeXT's OS, putting a Mac compatibility wrapper and refine the UI so it was "Mac-like": OSX was born.
Re: (Score:1)
He shit-canned Apple's old OS, the one built before he left Apple, and SOLD his Next OS to Apple, but it in turn was simply BSD with a skin.
Where's the skin? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Because its not opensource. (And its not worth the effort, its not all that great).
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Your claims that Jobs followed Dell's advice is the most ridiculous claim I have ever heard. Not only is the logic twisted and distorted, but what you stated as facts are actally all wrong.
Firstly, Apple did not abandon its personal computer business, and Macintosh computers remains an important part of Apple's business. While you claim that Apple was clearly losing in the computer business, the fact was that after Jobs's return, he was able to make the Macintosh business profitable. In fact, Apple's profit