Archive for January, 2009

What’s the matter with Apple?

Jan 15 2009 Published by Bryan under Uncategorized

I read this today:

What If Steve Jobs Doesn’t Come Back to Work?

But the risk to Apple is far higher if we imagine the grim possibility that Steve Jobs is unable to return to work. I’m not saying that because there is any shortage of good people at Apple. The company’s top management ranks are filled with some very skilled executives, including Tim Cook, the company’s chief operating officer, who will step in for Mr. Jobs while he is on leave.

But the essence of Steve Jobs — the obsessive visionary who involves himself in the smallest details of Apple’s products and advertising — has fostered what is in effect a corporate operating system that will need to be completely upgraded whenever a successor is named.

Steve Jobs deserves a lot of credit for the success of Apple. Before he returned, the company was headed in the wrong direction. But, somewhat ironically, it was headed in the wrong direction because it was doing all the things that conventional business wisdom said it should do – going after market share above all else, sacrificing quality for price, forgoing innovation for mass appeal, even licensing the operating system to other vendors ala Windows. Everyone would have said that Apple was doing the right thing…until 6 months later when they were in the stinker and Steve returned.

Steve has succeeded by doing innovative things well. The iPod almost single-handedly resurrected the company – who would have thought of that? The iPhone could have been a crappy “iPod with a phone” but instead Apple created a whole new platform for mobile applications. The point is that Apple has succeeded when it ignored common sense and when with great design and great ideas.

Steve is not the only guy around with great ideas. Apple has a great team in place to carry the company forward. The success of Apple depends less on Steve Jobs than on Apple’s own faithfulness to its customers, its vision, and its tradition of no-compromise design. It is still the case that only Sony among electronic companies ever gives Apple a run for its money when it comes to designing consumer technology products. Apple will continue to be the leader in computer design so long as Apple refuses to do what popular corporate wisdom says. When Apple sticks to her guns, Apple comes out on top, Jobs or no.

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Looking west…

Jan 09 2009 Published by Bryan under Uncategorized

I’m reading Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy.

“Blood Meridian: Or, the Evening Redness in the West (Picador Books)” (Cormac McCarthy)
It’s a tough book to read, because it is unflinchingly violent. It is violence that still manages to disturb, despite my healthy diet of violent images in the mainstream media – from Quentin Tarrintino to the Dark Knight. It is – in a strange way – refreshing to recognize that violence can still jar, still shock, still offend. I think that is one of Cormac’s gifts as a writer – that he makes violence so visceral, so demanding. He paints a world I don’t want to be a part of….
….and he also manages to force me to realize that I am a product of that same world I find so distasteful. That is what is so powerful about his work I think – that it disturbs and fascinates with its violence – but it also connects us to it, holds us responsible through some distant chain of fate in reverse. I want to wash my hands of the blood.
As I thought about Gaza, and Blood Meridian I realized that violence is always designed to seem distant, remote. Wars are fought on distant shores, where the bloody mess and the dusty rubble can be ignored by those who find it easy to turn away from it all. Israel refuses to let the media in to Gaza – I suspect because they know the benefit of keeping us all distant from the reality of violence. Hamas, for their part, shows little of their missile launches, and paints a picture for us to gain our sympathies. Both sides know how removed we are from violence – even violence of our own making.
I don’t pretend to know what Cormac thinks about anything. But I do read in his books a somewhat desperate effort to make us face the bloody, destructive facts of our history and our present. Maybe if we looked at it in all its horror, we’d be less inclined to participate in it.

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