after Steve Jobs needed to be an operator who understood how to scale
the firm. If Apple’s board had wanted a visionary, it would have made
Jony Ive CEO.
Vision(less)
I’d argue Apple lacks a vision; however, it still thrives, as making the
iPhone bigger and then smaller again is genius in its simplicity (let’s
take the best bread in the world and slice it a bunch of ways). The firm
also has bought more time as it’s realized it has the brand, and assets,
to make expensive (both capital and time) investments in becoming a
luxury brand that other tech firms cannot.
As early as the Macintosh, Apple realized it wanted off the tech
train and moved away from the ethos of offering more each year for
less money (Moore’s Law). Apple’s business today is to sell to people
goods, services, and emotions—being closer to God and being more
attractive. Apple delivers those factors via semiconductor and display
technology, powers them with electricity, and wraps them in luxury.
It’s a potent and intoxicating blend that has created the most
profitable company in history. You used to be what you wore, and
some now believe you are what you eat. But who you really are has
become what you text on.
The Builder King
You would be amazed at how many people still believe, against all
evidence, that Steve Jobs actually invented all of Apple’s great
products. As if he sat at a lab table in the R&D department at Apple
headquarters in Cupertino and soldered chips on a tiny
motherboard... until boom! he gave the world the iPod. Actually, that
was Steve Wozniak with the Apple 1 a quarter century before.
Steve Jobs was a genius—but his gifts lay elsewhere. And nowhere
was that genius more visible than when business experts everywhere
were proclaiming the “disintermediation” of tech—the disappearance