Where's Steve?

jobs

“The only thing worse than being talked about,” said Oscar Wilde, “is not being talked about.” That has until recently applied in spades to Steve Jobs of Apple, a guy who, when I’ve interviewed him, has always asked what other people have said about him, “especially the bad stuff.”

Steve is a guy who likes being talked about.  He likes it so much, in fact, that he’s adopted a strategy to encourage it.  This strategy involves very carefully doling-out bits of himself to the press not in an effort to discourage coverage, really, but to ENcourage it by limiting the supply.  Like everything else about Steve it is brilliant and cold.

This was the […]

Don’t Worry about Apple

applelogo

I knew things were bad when Steve Jobs didn’t make even a token video appearance at Macworld.  He would have done it, I’m sure, had he been well enough.  Maybe someone at Apple, weeks before, thought of suggesting such a video, but of course to do so then would have been committing career suicide even if in retrospect it would have been a good idea.  So now Steve is off on his six month (or longer) medical leave, readjusting those hormones, and the press is abuzz with what the heck Apple will do without Steve.

Apple will be fine.

Steve Jobs is an amazing chief executive, clearly the best of his era, but that […]

Apple, MacWorld and Steve Jobs – the Wal-Mart Connection

Bentonville stands in the northwest corner of Arkansas only a few miles from Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma. It is a little city in the Ozarks with a fine town square where once there stood a Ben Franklin variety store owned by Sam Walton. Today, that store on the square is a museum, and Bentonville is the headquarters of Wal-Mart, not just the biggest retailer in the world, the biggest COMPANY in the world. There is nothing fancy about Wal-Mart, and that certainly applies to its corporate headquarters, a nondescript brick building where every day suppliers from around the world come to peddle their wares. The place where would-be suppliers meet Wal-Mart buyers looks like an old Quonset hut from World War II. The hut […]

Surviving 2009

Microsoft

Microsoft may or may not make a deal for Yahoo’s search service.  What neither firm realizes yet is there is a better way to do searches with value advertising.  It will be easier than what Google is doing and can produce more tangible results.  Right now both firms are in the mind set of “competing with Google” instead of being creative and innovative.  When they start thinking independently and start tuning into what the customer needs, Google will have some competition.

Apple

If Apple would port its Mac software (iWork, iLife, Final Cut, etc) to Windows it could quickly OWN the software market.  Microsoft’s competitive advantage is not Windows — it is Office.  Apple could take them out if it chose to.  They won’t in 2009.  […]