“Before Steve came back, sales executives were gutting Apple worse than the Capital One plunderers and rewarding themselves handsomely. (While Michael Spindler was looking to sell out.) None of the sales executives survived when Steve returned, and sales executives were rendered much less powerful. As bizarre as it seems, the sales organization can no longer even do marketing,” John Martellaro writes for The Mac Observer.
“These days, Apple has about $10B in the bank. That’s the result of years and years of rolling the profits into paying off debt and saving for a rainy day. Excellent. That $10B earns a lot of interest. But one analyst asked a few years ago whether Apple was simply running a credit union. The implication is that that much money either needs to be paid in dividends, which Apple won’t do, or be put to good work,” Martellaro writes.
Martellaro writes, “No one knows what Apple has in mind for that kind of money. My theory has been that Apple’s board of directors has been accumulating cash for a seriously large merger at the appropriate time. For a while, some thought it was Disney. It’ll be something much bigger than a mere $500M for a new campus. Or $50M for a new data center. No, I mean something so big, it’ll change the face of computing in America.”
“Apple appears to be transitioning to a much more consumer electronics focus. Back in the days, pre-iPod, when Apple was in its $6B/year doldrums, it was possible to put up barriers, remain a little arrogant (in order to keep the religious fervor alive), create a fever of endless product surprises, and remain distant from its customers. But as the Cluetrain Manifesto points out, companies that put up barriers, lock themselves behind walls, and refuse to actually talk with their customers get into trouble very quickly,” Martellaro writes.
Martellaro writes, “Apple realized that if they were going to become a consumer electronics company, they needed to have a store front presence on Main Street, USA. They’ve solved a major part of this ‘Castle and Moat’ complex with the Genius Bar at more than 150 retail sites, well placed with respect to population centers in the U.S. Even so, it’s interesting that the people who work in the Apple stores are a different kind of Apple employee, badged differently, and do not have a whole lot of authority. In time, that will have to change.”
Martellaro writes, “Apple is a mature company now, both technically and financially. The key to understanding how Apple is going to make this transition — from a computer company that has a popular electronic gadget, the iPod — into a company that has a portfolio of popular and useful electronic devices for the 21st century will be to watch where the money goes, up and down the organization. And with that money, authority and responsibility.”
Full article with much more here.
MacDailyNews Take: Buy Adobe. Clean out the dreck. Discontinue Windows versions of Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere, etc.
Hey, it’s just an idea. 
Related articles:
How long must we wait for Adobe to produce Universal applications for Apple’s Intel-powered Macs? – August 21, 2006
Cost of Apple’s second 50-acre Cupertino campus could top $500 million – April 25, 2006
Video: Steve Jobs meets Cupertino City Council – April 22, 2006
Transcript: Apple CEO Steve Jobs addresses the Cupertino City Council – April 20, 2006
Apple CEO Steve Jobs plans new 50-acre campus in California – April 19, 2006
Should Apple buy Adobe as leverage against Microsoft? – December 16, 2005
Adobe prefers (and promotes) PCs over Macs – March 24, 2003
Talk about brewing speculation!
$10 billion. Hm…
Steve found a Monolith! He’s going to Jupiter! He will become the Star Child!
New plane for the Steve.
I wonder how much cash Steve Jobs has in his jeans on an average day?
MW: consider
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Hostile takeover.
Microsoft.
Discontinuing a Windows version of Creative Suite would only open the market for a competetor to enter. Not wise. Instead, how about continue to develop creative suite…just make the Universal Binary for OS X a priority and the Windows versions the red headed step child that comes out 6-9 mo. later. That would still lock out competition while driving users to the OS X platform.
“MacDailyNews Take: Buy Adobe. Clean out the dreck.”
Could you please explain or detail the “dreck” you talking about?
And do remember that new Macs run Windows and Windows versions of software….
Why would you discontinue the largest segment of your business?
Suddenly, and purposely loosing hundreds of millions in sales just for spite doesn’t seem like a good business model. What share of the music player market would Apple have without Windows?
I’m sure glad Steve is in charge and not you.
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P.S.: Just being sarcastic in case you’re dull…
“Buy Adobe. Clean out the dreck. (Chizen? LOL) Discontinue Windows versions of Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere, etc.”
If that happens, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to stop laughing. We’ll also be able to run Windows but why use a platform without useful software?
I think Apple should concentrate on getting Voiceover to sound like HAL, Peter Jones, Stephen Franklyn and Stephen Fry.
Better yet, buy Adobe and El Gato and itegrate its technology on like iMacTV. I’ll be OK with iMacTV 23 inchs at badroom and a 32 in the family room.
Discontinue Windows versions… hahaha
MDN has a razor sharp business acumen.
You know, the “dreck” that are so slow to update Photoshop CS to UB. The “dreck” that allowed the code to be written without X Code, after they had been warned about it. The “dreck” that put a sales guy in charge. The “dreck” that has allowed the Microsoftization of Photoshop, with tons of palettes and features that are not intuitive to use. I’m sure there’s more “dreck”, but that’s off the top of my head.
Oh, just remembered another, the “dreck” that essentially turned Photoshop into a Windows port, as it was shown to be unoptimized for OS X. Is that enough “dreck” that needs to be cleaned out?
f*@k adobe, buy autodesk, they are the mac haters, and they are what the mac needs, especially now they own all the cards (maya, 3d max, cad)
Correction: William Franklyn
So, what would it cost to buy Adobe?
Apple IS a software company after all that just happens to make incredible hardware too.
Once MSFT plummets to a penny stock, hire Ballmer to wear a tiny hat and squat on downtown street corners begging for coins with a little tin cup while rocking back and forth to the enchanting music of Bill the Organ Grinder. Then hire Michael Dell to wear a bright pink ballerina costume and frantically clap and cackle like an idiot to draw crowds. Finally, sell it to Fox for the fall line-up.
Adobe (ADBE) current market value: $19.88 billion.
Apple could quite easily execute a takeover of Adobe (hostile or otherwise) if Jobs wished to do so.
And do remember that new Macs run Windows and Windows versions of software….
But why would we want to run a sub standard OS when we can run the far superior and safer OS X???????
I don’t think anyone has any trouble remembering that one can run Windows on a Mac … but why would one want to?
Apple buys Dell?
Somehow I find that amusing, and difficult to wrap my head around.
Apple buys HP? Makes just a teensy bit more sense than Dell, but too expensive (100B)
I know… Apple buys Verizon! Nah, also too expensive (100B)
Adobe (20B) does make the most sense of the ones that come to mind right away.
Personally, I think the most obvious “Consumer Electronics” company for a meger would be Dell. They have all the facilities to manufacture the products, they have the recognizable name, and, AND, it would be a way to potentially, reduce Microsofts install base by making their OS a secondary option in the configuration.
TThe author can genereate a 500 word fluff piece very well. He speculates much and offers nothing. It weas a waste ofg time reading it. The responses were much more interesting. For instance:
Why would you discontinue the largest segment of your business?
Suddenly, and purposely loosing hundreds of millions in sales just for spite doesn’t seem like a good business model. What share of the music player market would Apple have without Windows?
Microsoft did this with Office for the Mac. They’re strategy was to make Windows versions work better, thereby putting pressure on firms/consumers to switch to Windows. It worked too.
If Apple were to discontinue Windows versions of Adobe’s products the firms that bought them would not go away, they would, by necessity, switch to Mac.
I speculated, on this board, a while back that Apple may want to buy Adobe as a hedge against Microsoft screwing with Office in the future. Screw with Office we’ll release our own Office-like product and screw with Adobe, then let’s see where the share goes.
Apple’s always had a cash hoard.
$10,000,000,000 + Intel + Apple = Nationwide WiMax network
WiMax = Threat to cell carriers = new era of mobile computing.
$10,000,000,000 + Intel + Apple = new era of mobile computing.
Maybe?
andy: f*@k adobe, buy autodesk, they are the mac haters, and they are what the mac needs, especially now they own all the cards (maya, 3d max, cad)
Heh. Market cap for AutoDesk is just under $8B. You could do it, and have enough left over for a healthy stake in Adobe.
But would that “change the face of computing as we know it”?
MW: deal, as in “It’s such a….”