
Steve Jobs is not like you and me. - pchristensen
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2008/pulpit_20081107_005502.html
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mattmaroon
This is exactly why I buy AAPL puts. The cult of Steve weighs far more heavily
on their share price than their actual results.

Apple's success is clearly due to a lot of people. Nobody does that well due
to the brilliance of a single man, and Steve Jobs isn't as bright as people
give him credit for. The man tried to cure his own pancreatic cancer by eating
carrots for Christ's sake.

Yet every time he sneezes their shares drop $10. So I buy puts knowing that
one day, probably soon given the way he's looking lately, he'll announce his
retirement (either voluntarily or due to illness) and their share price will
plummet, at which point I'll sell my options and then go long AAPL, because
really, they don't need him.

~~~
yters
How will a company that is so shaped by one man have an effective successor?
Especially if he seems to kill off anyone who could be a good successor?

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thorax
Well, some of these people could come back later to lead it. Less effectively
than if they were there longer, but... maybe better than nothing?

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yters
Matt's point is that it will run well even without Steve. But, at least
according to Good to Great, such ego companies fail pretty hard once their
leader leaves.

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mattmaroon
I haven't read that but perhaps I should. Either way I think selling the puts
is good. But if I'm wrong that Apple can't function nearly as well without
him, I shouldn't reverse positions after.

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yters
To save you a read, the gist is that the leaders of ego driven companies do
not have an interest in making sure the company succeeds when they leave. In
fact, it is the opposite, since a spectacular failure shows they were indeed
geniuses in being able to hold it all together. Likewise for giving others the
important decisions they need to learn to be leaders.

But this problem is much larger than just the business world. In my other
readings and observations, I've noticed a similar trend. According to Rashid's
"Taliban," the Taliban succeeded despite themselves. Their culture is so
caught up in ego that they are pretty much incapacitated without a strong
leader to hold it all together, consequently they are constantly splitting and
fighting with each other. We also saw this in the leadership vacuum left by
deposing Saddam, and is partially why it has taken so much work to get an
Iraqi army going.

In general, I see this in most non western cultures, at least that I know of,
so I suspect it is a common aspect of human nature: principle based leadership
outperforms ego based leadership. This is reinforced by another book I read,
"Why the Rest Hate the West." The enlightenment marked a very important shift
in social structure: from societies based on relationships to principle based
societies, such as law, strict national boundaries, a common language and
currencies - the American constitution being the epitome of this approach.

However, I qualified this as being more general to western culture, since the
Greeks, and then the Romans, took a similar view of law and culture. For
example, see Sophocles' "Orestes" or Virgil's "Aenaed." I guess the
Enlightenment more marks a truly rigorous and global application of this idea.
If you want a more contemporary example, just look at what kind of culture
perpetuates the ghettos vs the culture that perpetuates the more successful
segments of America. At any rate, I'm pretty convinced that cultures based on
principle vs personality are much more successful.

So, all that is to give credence to the idea that ego driven companies are an
evolutionary dead end, and give myself a link that I can refer to for future
discussions.

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mattmaroon
How would you explain the resurgence of the Taliban then? They seem to be back
and stronger than ever.

~~~
yters
If your whole society is formed by a bunch of ego driven leaders who don't
accept change because it threatens their power, then you're going to grow up a
pretty frustrated person, anxious to do anything that will fix things - even
if it is really more of the same problem.

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reidman
It's worth noting that the writer of "I, Cringely" has pumped out more than
just a few off-base Apple articles in the past. Apple merges with Intel, Apple
teams up with Blockbuster, Apple to stop making hardware, Apple buys Adobe...

~~~
Prrometheus
And the article is composed primarily of (plausible sounding) speculation.

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jimbokun
Yes. Cringely is the absolute master of (plausible sounding) speculation. It
describes almost every article he has written.

It's usually pretty entertaining plausible sounding speculation, though.

~~~
olefoo
The plausible speculation based on anonymous 'sources' makes the whole thing
sound rather like celebrity gossip.

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ojbyrne
Everything in Silicon Valley is Ego. For all the bozo CEOs who take all the
credit for _everything_, there's a gazillion unsung heroes who are smarter,
faster, and are completely unsung (but hopefully they get some cash when
there's an exit). That's the dynamic.

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aston
Mistitled. Why not just call it "Love-Hate: Why iPod chief Tony Fadell is
really leaving Apple" like Cringely did?

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nihilocrat
Honestly, the title seems fairly apt. The author starts the article with the
sentence, and proceeds to mention a plethora of things which argue that this
sentence is accurate.

~~~
aston
If you didn't already know Steve Jobs was an ego-centric CEO with a cult-of-
personality keeping him going before the article, you're pretty far behind in
tech news. However, I had no clue about the reasons behind Fadell's firing,
and that's the real point of the article anyway.

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shutter
From the article: > "But if Apple fails in that, Steve Jobs will just pick up
the phone and choose IBM Microelectronics as the fab to build the next
generation of Apple’s PowerPC processors – a contract worth billions, but ONLY
if IBM drops all legal action."

Uh, Apple doesn't use PowerPC anymore.

~~~
alaskamiller
It will.

~~~
tlrobinson
I can't see Apple switching Macs _back_ to PPC any time soon. In the last 10
years they've forced Mac developers and customers to switch to a totally
different operating system AND processor architecture. Both were good moves,
but it seems silly to switch back.

Apple has said they bought P.A. Semi to create custom chips for their portable
devices:

[http://blogs.wsj.com/biztech/2008/04/24/jobs-still-hearts-
in...](http://blogs.wsj.com/biztech/2008/04/24/jobs-still-hearts-
intel/?mod=WSJBlog)

~~~
skalpelis
They didn't switch to a different processor architecture, they switched to a
system where processor architecture is insignificant, hence the universal
binaries, not Intel binaries. They could put any kind of chips in their
computers and any universal application would be one recompile away from
working on the new processor architecture.

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andrewf
That was the theory, but it's not the way things are anymore.

A whole load of stuff is being released Intel-only now. The newest PowerPC
machines are now two years old, so if you're releasing something that needs a
this-generation machine to run reasonably, why bother?

This proportion is only going to grow over time. And it will probably be
riddled with endian bugs, alignment assumptions, and x86-only toolchains.
Going back to PowerPC would be at least as traumatic as the initial switch.

~~~
jdg
I never felt like the "initial switch" was that traumatic at all.

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Dilpil
Steve jobs tears cure cancer...

