The other night I was watching, ‘Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten,’ and it was terrific. Beautifully told the story about the front man of the seminal punk band, the Clash, who exploded upon the music landscape in times (mid-70’s England) that are very parallel to the present.
The closing line of the movie is delivered by Strummer, who suggests that we need to bring humanity back into the center of the ring.
As these things go, I happened to watch this biopic as I was working up a post on the Mac’s 25th anniversary, inspired by two diffuse threads floating across the blogosphere in the past couple of days.
One is a post by Henry Blodget of Silicon Alley, truly one of my must-read blog sources (I like character-driven finance). Yes, they stir the pot, but they also draw up some interesting narrative.
In the post, ‘Apple Stores Now Just Cheap Entertainment For Broke Shoppers (AAPL),’ Blodget cites a Barron's writer’s read on Apple’s retail prospects as proof that…well, that’s the problem with Blodget. He plays with inference and innuendo, but if pressed, he will cite that Apple is undervalued (and under-appreciated), suggesting that (in this case at least), it's more about the clicks than sincere commentary.
(Fine, but perception has a way of becoming reality, especially in this battered market, so I had to take him to task in the comments section of the post.)
If you read my posts on Apple, you know that while I am an unqualified admirer of the company, I am also hardly a FANBOY ( a derogatory dig applied liberally by Apple skeptics).
I try to simultaneously:
- Cite what Apple is doing in detail & analyze what it means in the market.
- Share my direct experiences with Apple as a consumer and entrepreneur.
- Shine a light when specific strategic decisions of theirs are sounding alarm bells (usually around iPhone SDK, App Store and mobile patent portfolio).
But, here’s where the rubber meets the road. Apple is not just a good marketing story or the cult of one guy (Steve Jobs); they are a breakout successful business who, win, lose or draw, have to be respected for swinging for the fences.
Simply put, who looks better against the template that Apple has put together; namely, differentiated products, diverse revenue lines, a deep product pipeline, stellar management team, huge profits, high operating margins, massive cash reserves and ungodly cashflow?
Shouldn’t we (collectively) get back to celebrating real success versus trying to tear it down? Or, in the words of Strummer, bring humanity back into the center of the ring?
Yes, dammit, we should!
With that as a backdrop, someone (a blog commenter) resurrected an interview from 1985 by Playboy Magazine with Steve Jobs in response to an article about how dead-on Jobs proved to be about iPod's eventual dominance (based on a 2003 Rolling Stone interview). The Playboy interview takes place right at the time of the Mac’s launch.
What’s interesting to think about in reading Jobs’ comments is that they came at a time when the company had succeeded pretty big (Apple 2), but then failed a bit (Apple 3, Lisa), literally on the fortnight before Apple made it really big with the Mac (this interview pre-dates Microsoft even being a topic in the interview - they just weren't on the radar yet).
Moreover, Jobs was yet to be squeezed out of the company he founded, see the company teeter on the edge of irrelevance (by getting outflanked by Microsoft), make his triumphant return and lead the company incredible new heights.
Read the whole interview; it shows a Jobs who is at once thoughtful, ambitious and grounded.
In the interim, here are some time-freezed thoughts (in no particular order) from a guy that is still affecting us in the present:
ON MAKING COMPUTERS INTO APPLIANCES: What we want to do at Apple is make computers into appliances and get them to tens of millions of people. That’s simply what we want to do. And we couldn’t do that with the current IBM-generation type of technology. So we had to do something different. That’s why we came up with the Macintosh.
ON INSANELY GREAT PRODUCT CREATION: Making an insanely great product has a lot to do with the process of making the product, how you learn things and adopt new ideas and throw out old ideas.
ON METRICS AND MEASURES: In order to learn how to do something well, you have to fail sometimes. In order to fail, there has to be a measurement system.
ON DESIGN ARTISTRY: When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.
ON VALUES IN DESIGN: What are we, anyway? Most of what we think we are is just a collection of likes and dislikes, habits, patterns. At the core of what we are is our values, and what decisions and actions we make reflect those values.
ON THE FUTURE OF COMPUTING: What’s really incredible about a book is that you can read what Aristotle wrote. But the problem with a book is that you can’t ask Aristotle a question. I think one of the potentials of the computer is to somehow...capture the fundamental, underlying principles of an experience.
ON YOUTH AND ENTREPRENEURIALISM: There’s an old Hindu saying that comes into my mind occasionally: "For the first 30 years of your life, you make your habits. For the last 30 years of your life, your habits make you."
ON HIS APPLE LEGACY: I’ll always stay connected with Apple. I hope that throughout my life I’ll sort of have the thread of my life and the thread of Apple weave in and out of each other, like a tapestry. There may be a few years when I’m not there, but I’ll always come back.
Related Posts:
- Punishing the Wizard: on Apple and Steve Jobs.
- How do you like them Apples? Apple's Earnings Rock!
- Holy Shit! Apple's Halo Effect: how Apple has turned gravity into its friend.
