Replies to post #30874 on Apple Inc (AAPL)

[dilleet]

I guess this is the extent of the interview unless there is more in the print edition. I would say that the feature article is the highest praise I have read for OSX and Apple's software programmers, Bill Joy quotes make for a very credible piece

'Our DNA Hasn't Changed'
Five questions for Steve Jobs.
FORTUNE
Monday, February 7, 2005


How has the iPod changed Apple?

It feels great. We're having fun. Most of us can't wait to get to work in the morning. But it's not like Apple has somehow morphed into a mass-market consumer electronics company. Our DNA hasn't changed. It's that mass-market consumer electronics is turning into Apple.

Do Apple and Pixar have anything in common?

I've always said that Pixar is the most technically advanced creative company; Apple is the most creatively advanced technical company. At Apple we come at everything asking, "How easy is this going to be for the user? How great is it going to be for the user?" After that, it's like at Pixar. Everyone in Hollywood says the key to good animated movies is story, story, story. But when it really gets down to it, when the story isn't working, they will not stop production and spend more money and get the story right. That's what I see about the software business. Everybody says, "Oh, the user is the most important thing," but nobody else really does it.

You're about to turn 50. Has middle age made you more patient?

It makes us look further ahead, but it doesn't make us more patient. You know better what questions to ask. There aren't enough good people to do everything you want to do. So now we chew on things for a while before we decide to have the A-team go after something. That's not the same as being more patient.

So do you think young people are different?

You or I move into a new house, and the first thing we do is call the phone company to get our land line turned on. Kids, they just move in with their cellphones. Stereos are the same: Kids aren't getting stereos; they're getting speakers for their iPods. That's become the audio market. People are buying iPods and Bose speakers instead of a JVC or Sony stereo system. And those guys have never come to us and said, "Could we work with you on the iPod?" Some companies are prisoners of their point of view.

Why is Apple in vogue?

We live in an era where more and more of our activities depend on technology. We take our photos without film and have to do something with them to make them usable. We get our music over the Internet and carry it around in digital music players. It's in your automobile and your kitchen. Apple's core strength is to bring very high technology to mere mortals in a way that surprises and delights them and that they can figure out how to use. Software is the key to that. In fact, software is the user experience.

[langostino]

Evolutionary

"We're partnering with Motorola for doing things on cellphones, partnering with HP on the iPod, partnering with car companies and with the record companies. And we definitely will be partnering more and more."

Those words should be music to the ears of Apple fans everywhere.

Apple's DNA is evolving, as Mr. Jobs matures. Doors once closed are opening as a result.

Cross-platform products
Major partnerships
Price competitive and price-point sensitive entry products

These are fundamental shifts for the better.


p.s. I will give Jobs huge credit for the p.r. spin job he did on the Fortune writer regarding digital music. It was not that he was so busy working on video that he didn't notice kids going to digital music and burning and ripping CDs. He saw it, and he saw the other PC companies respond to it, and he defiantly declared that he was deliberately choosing a different path because he thought they were wrong. In the face of direct questions in earnings calls about why Apple refused to make CD-R/RW drives standard in their machines, Apple was defiant. They were ruled by the mistaken notion that businesses succeed by trying to maximize profit per unit and deprive their customers of features in order to "force" them to buy ever more expensive models to get the functionality. Thankfully, while there is still WAY too much of that at Apple, at least the tide is gradually beginning to turn. Success comes by fighting with all your might to give customers everything possible for the most competitive price possible, not by doing the opposite. I must admit, I like the way he convinced the writer that he dreamed up the need for the iPod and then went out to search for a way to make it happen rather than that others had the vision first and had to recruit Apple and him to pursue it. But I guess if you've made an entire career and persona for yourself as an "innovator" by nabbing stuff first envisioned and developed by others, that would be the instinctive way to present the iPod.