Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs passed away in November last year. Since then, his official biography has been published. Most people who read his biography tend to polarize in two camps, very positive & very negative. In real life, it is hard to find anyone who works around him like him at all. He was such an eccentric that he irritated & agonized most people. His former associate once said, "The highs were unbelievable, but the lows were unimaginable". He was considered one of Silicon Valley's leading egomaniacs. He parked his car in space designated for disables. He manipulated & yelled at people. Jobs repeatedly took credit for things he was never involved in developing. The question is that why he could get away all his antics in the high tech world. I think it is the combination of personality, power & money. He was a man of humble background, abandoned by his biological parents & adopted by a middle-class couple. So his power & money came after personality. Jobs was not an engineer or programmer. He seems to have a keen sense of product packaging & a strong will to make it happen. His first success was Apple II Personal Computer. With it, he acquired the money & power necessary to pursue his next project, Macintosh. However, Macintosh never got more than 10% of the PC market. It was dipped to about 2-3% in early 1990's. He was kicked out from Apple by John Sculley. He started Next & eventually got hired back to Apple in 1997. Meanwhile he purchased Pixar & made it a power house in animation world rivaling to Disney. So at the year of 2000, he was not really that successful except Pixar. It was really a miracle that he revived Apple & catapulted it to the most valuable company in the US. So what is the trick? It is iPod, iPhone & iPad. It has been a long time people wear watches. They need something handy & can carry with them all the time while they are moving around. In 1980's, there was a wave of movements try to build gadgets around watches. However, most of them failed. The reason probably is the small size of watch. Then in 1990's, another product concept caught on, it was PDA-Personal Digital Assistant. Apple came up with Newton (Sculley's pet project) & Palm got some slick designs. Most of them failed & never caught much attention. At the beginning of 2000, Jobs led the pack in creating mobile devices that replace watch & PDA. The timing was just right & it was quite stunning that he was able to achieve the feat in less than 10 years.

There is some similarity of management style between Jobs & Chairman Mao. There is no other person in the organization who can challenge him or have the will to stand against him. As a company, Apple is run like a totalitarian regime. For example, when Jobs wants to replace the face glass of the iphone to a non-scratch type, he demands action immediately. He got his way & accomplished the objective with only two days. In other words, the workers in Foxcomm need to work 3 shifts in a short notice. It is similar to move more than a million of people with short notice to other area for the project of Yangtze River Dam. Jobs also makes Apple like Pentagon. All product releases were kept secret. He even sues people or companies that leaked the information. By this, he could move the company swiftly, focus on the key product features & important issues. I met some Apple employees & found them like some people from FBI who got top level of security clearance. You can ask anything but they can't say anything. He equips with a personality that rivals Alexander, Genghis Khan, Napoleon & Hitler. Per his biography, he was so furious on the issue of Android, he has no hesitation to use thermonuclear weapon on Google. This reminds me of Captain Ahab of Moby Dick. A leader without some check of power can create a monster. Imagine if he has the position & power of Hitler, what will happen to our civilization? With the success of Apple, people around the world try to idolize him & some even put him in the same status as Edison. People tend to forget or forgive the bad things some leaders did. Chairman Mao, Bill Clinton, Jesse Jackson, Willie Brown, etc etc etc are just a few examples. I think Thomas Edison is several levels above Steve Jobs in engineering & the influences in the society. Some people compare Jobs to Bill Gates. Both are successful in transforming & changing PC world. But one thing is quite different between them. Jobs never paid attention to philanthropic causes. He actually have eliminated all corporate philanthropy programs since he returned Apple in 1997. Perhaps he came from a humble family & childhood, he valued money in different way than Bill Gate. After he made a fortune, he still lived in a normal track house in Old Palo Alto without fanfare like Larry Ellison (Oracle Chief). So it is kind of sad to hear that some burglar recently broke into his house, stole his driver licence & some iPads.

I don't know how history will record Steve Jobs. Perhaps most people may not remember iPod, iPhone or iPad 50 years later since by that time there will be so many useful gadgets around that obsolete Apple's iProducts. However, 100 years later people will still remember Thomas Edison who invented Electric Lighting , Phonograph (audio recording) & Movie (video recording). Why are the differences between them? In Edison's case, the products are revolutionary. They were the technological breakthrough at that time. In Jobs' case, the products are the repackage of the existing technology (audio, video, telephone, internet & pc) that tailor to the interest of the public.