Professor Elam

Sat Oct 8, 2011

Mr. Jobs was by no means the firstr person to articiulate this vision of a meaningful life, Socrates, the Buddha, and Emerson come to mind. To be sure fully embracing the secular gospel required an austerity of spirit that few have been able to muster..

The Secular Prophet, Weekend WSJ page C1

We began our semester reading an essay by Emerson on Self Reliance. I noticed Andy Crouch referenced Emerson in this article and decided to bring it to your attention.

Emerson would no doubt have been uncomfortable with Jobs the Buddhist, but not with the concept of the meaningful life.  The article notes that the first iPod came on the heels of 9/11 and the iPad came amid the depths of the 2010 recession-both were stellar success where others had failed miserably. Even  Apple had failed with its first table, Newton. Other articles had made the point that Jobs was fortunate to be away from Apple in the 1990s, high tech caught up with his ideas in the meantime.

By the way has anyone noticed that Asia is great on manufacturing but has yet to spawn a creative digital company?  Walt Mossberg asked why Jobs went into music after all Apple was a computer company. Jobs replied it was a Digital Company, big difference which has been lost on Dell and HPQ.

But Jobs was not focused on market share or being a philanthropist. He was focused on

delivering things people would want once they saw them

profitability

the elegance of design, that elusive thing Sony had and lost (Sony invented the Walkman using casette tapes and then CDs but never conquered digital)

He learned from failure, the LISA, I had a couple I bought used, was an expensive flop but led to the wildly successful Mac.   His idea was that the original Mac should remind consumers of the elegance of a Cuisinart food processor. And so it had a small footprint.

Ironically the first IBM, actually an Italian Olivetti computer, was the size of a small suitcase. Seeing the larger computer and the IBM name, most people assumed it was a more powerful computer.

Jobs bought the rights to a Xerox computer and released as his own-the MAC.  Here is the Wiki description.

 

 

In the mid 1980s, Apple considered buying Xerox; however, a deal was never reached.  Apple instead bought rights to the Alto GUI and adapted it into to a more affordable personal computer, aimed towards the business and education markets. The Apple Macintosh was released in 1984, and was the first personal computer to popularize the GUI and mouse amongst the public

The original MS DOS Microsoft Disk Operating System was just awful. If Apple has used MS DOS and IBM the Mac interface, Apple would have gone out in a matter of months. IBM only endured due to the IBM name. Mac was point and click, DOS was mmeorizing mind numbing code phrases and key strokes; as you can tell I did not care for it.  Indeed i another article Jobs was asked what it was like to be a Windows developer when Apple put iTunes on PCs. Jobs replied it was like givng a person in Hell ice water. Gates was not amused, Jobs offered him a bottle of water.

But as I say Jobs was smart enough to go for return on sales and assets rather than market share. You will never meet anyone who switched from PC to Mac who wants to go back. Period. There is no such thing as  HP or Dell fanatic, any more than one prefers a potato from North rather than South Idaho, the potatoes are the same after all. 

Dell gave up on the idea of stores about the time Apple embraced them. Jobs was told he did not have enough product to stock a store. Now there are 327 world wide. The design was tested before the first on opened.

Famously Mike Dell said in about 1999 that Apple might as well sell the assets and distribute them to the shareholders. Today AAPl's market cap is $342 B, Dell is $27 B, less than one tenth the size of AAPL.INdeed the first time I mentioned that quote o this blog Dell Inc made a post on my blog that of course Mike Dell had nto meant that, yeah right….

I have suggested that Texas A & M San Antonio embrace a philosophy of Design in its business classes. I may well post my Design Essay to that end.  The students who have read it have reacted in a positive fashion.  So far I have not had any takers form the Administration. But San Antonio is chok a block awash in design from the elegant Rose Window at Mission San Jose (not far from Brooks campus by the way)  to the McNay Museum to the HemisFair Needle to the Arts District in King Wiliam, not to mention scores of art deco homes in Olmos Park.

Other articles speculate on who the next Steve Jobs will be. Well the last one was Tom Edison and it took a while to come up with even one person that could compare to Edison.

 

I don't know if we can teach design but we can certainly make students aware of its importance.  I mean that's what Steve and his designers did, from scratch in 1999, in ten short years, right?