

Peggy Noonan on Steve Jobs and Why Big Companies Die - rfreytag
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/11/19/peggy-noonan-on-steve-jobs-and-why-big-companies-die/

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watmough
My interpretation is, that in Apple's case, Steve getting cancer in the mid
2000's appears to have galvanized him, and by extension the entire company.

I just read through all John Siracusa's OS X reviews, and things really moved
fairly slowly for the first few years, then from Tiger on, man, stuff just
starts to fire on all cylinders. Think about what else was happening at Apple,
the iPad (shelved), the iPhone, the move to Intel, Aperture, the unibodies,
the MacBook Air.

It's hard to imagine that this peculiar set of circumstances, that put a guy
like Steve Jobs along with a huge cast of incredible hardware and software
engineers, in one place, then inspired Steve by showing him his own mortality,
could ever happen again.

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gruseom
Interesting conjecture, but these things must have been in the pipeline for
several years. Plus the great run starts with the iPod in 2001.

~~~
watmough
Yes, I wouldn't argue that the iPod shows a vision, but the push on OS X, and
other things, from 2004 or so onwards feels in a different league, at least to
me, compared to around 2000.

Also, look at how slowly OS X improved in the first few releases, and compare
that with the way that every single iOS release just hits the ball out of the
park. It's like night and day.

Something that makes me somewhat uncomfortable, is the relatively lameness of
Lion in comparison to what came before. To a small but noticeable proportion
of users, including myself, Snow Leopard is more attractive than Lion, and
luckily, it should be supported for a while by virtue of being the last 32-bit
intel supporting OS X.

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specialist
Thank you for prefixing your post with the pundit's name.

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110101001010100
Can't disagree with what she's saying. But I'd add that if we're talking about
firms whose business is computers, 15 years feels like 75.

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yuhong
Personally, I think it is more harmful that companies keep trying to live when
they are becoming obsolete, like the oil industry.

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philwelch
Petroleum products are more of a necessity to people than Facebook, Google,
and all their Macs and iDevices put together. The oil industry may be crooked
and they may corrupt world politics, but they are anything but obsolete.

~~~
yuhong
For now, but I am particularly thinking of the oil industry trying to prevent
alternative energy from becoming popular (I am thinking in particular of
electric cars).

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buff-a
I'm thinking of bio diesel. We have the technology, the delivery
infrastructure, clean engines, mechanics, the land. And its as carbon neutral
as it gets. But no, instead we have all these massively energy intensive
processed "biofuels", or electric vehicles using rare-earth elements for
batteries (we've hit peak lithium already) and they're still charged using
coal.

~~~
rimantas

      > the land
    

Indeed. The same land we grow food on. Farmers jumping to grow plants for
biofuel was one of the reasons driving food prices up.

~~~
buff-a
The price skyrocketed because of some spectacular crop failures, price of oil,
etc. Biofuels contributed but do not explain the price changes we saw in
2007-2008 [2]. That is more industry FUD. A further problem is ethanol and
corn. Corn is subsidized by the tax payer, so naturally everyone wants to use
it for everything, including biofuel. Unfortunately its incredibly inefficient
to turn into biofuel [1]. Its actually incredibly inefficient period - but
humans don't like to eat palm oil.

So yes you are correct in worrying about bio _fuels_ affecting agricultural
prices: low yield corn was affected by its use as a biofuel.

This is why I argue for bio _diesel_ from high yield crops that can produce
700 gallons per acre, instead of corn's 17 gallons per acre.

[1] [http://www.progressivefuelslimited.com/PDF/PFL-
Biodiesel%20C...](http://www.progressivefuelslimited.com/PDF/PFL-
Biodiesel%20Crops%20Chart.pdf)

[2] <http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/ifdp/2009/967/ifdp967.pdf>

