Big Changes at Apple with Jobs out

As by now every geek in the Western world knows, Steve Jobs, Apple’s co-founder, chairman and CEO has stepped down as CEO due to health reasons. Many are praising him as possibly one of the greatest CEOs of modern times and say that he has performed the greatest corporate turnaround in history. Hard to argue with this and in any case I am not well enough informed on overall corporate history in America to dispute or support the claim. But to play a game of what if- what if John Sculley had not relieved Jobs of his position as head of the Macintosh division in 1985? I believe that Jobs learned a great deal about focus and proper product development in his years at NeXT Computer and Pixar.
Jobs returned to Apple when it purchased NeXT and he began running the company after the ouster of then-CEO Gil Amelio in 1996. At the time Apple’s stock was stuck trading below $10. He quickly killed a number of products and honed the company’s focus. One of the complaints about Jobs prior to his ousting at Apple had been that he was unpredictable and chaotic managing the Macintosh division. Those traits were now gone. Now it remains to be seen if Tim Cook, his hand picked successor, can successfully follow in his footsteps.

An athlete who does not go to the highest bidder?

I think that Jered Weaver is my new favorite baseball player. No I have not started rooting for American league teams but his reasoning for signing his latest contract really struck a chord with me. Rather than wait until next season ended and let his agent, Scott Boras get the Yankees and Red Sox engage in a bidding war for his services, he instead signed an $85 million extension with the Angels. Now of course $85 million is a lot of money, but how many of us would leave additional millions on the table when it could be ours for the taking? He said “If 85’s not enough to take care of my family and generations to come then I’m pretty stupid.” A refreshingly honest comment IMHO.

Do you really need an HP Touchpad, even at $100?

The Samsung Galaxy

A funny thing happened on the way to leaving consumer electronics for Hewlett-Packard, its Touchpad became an overnight sensation. Stores are posting signs proclaiming they have no more, people are following HP execs on Twitter to find out when and if more will be available. There are lines at some stores and people are purchasing extras in the hopes of reselling them for expected profits. Still why buy a poorly reviewed product with a now obsolete OS, even if it is at the sale price of $99? A friend of mine who is self employed admitted to me that if he had spent the time working and gaining billable hours rather than fruitlessly waiting in line, he could have purchased a Samsung Galaxy or Apple iPad rather than a tablet that he had not even considered purchasing a week ago.

Can NBC Sports Challenge ESPN? NBC has Sports?

Is NBC Sports trying to go head to head with ESPN? That is the topic of an interesting piece at Sports Business Daily. The idea seems to be establishing a honed, professional approach to the sports it has, Major League Soccer and the NHL. I had not realized that the Versus channel was part of the NBC sports empire. The network has worked hard in the last few months to rid itself of the junk sports programming it had and has lured, if that is the word, MLS from Fox. Still it has quite an uphill battle and I wish it the best. I think that ESPN would really benefit from some stiff competition in sports broadcasting, and maybe force it to deliver a more focused, professional product rather than simply running its talking heads by us at every conceivable moment. I believe that the MLB and NFL networks are also putting pressure on the World Wide Leader.