“What a blockbuster year Steve Jobs had,” Leander Kahney writes for Wired News.
Kahney writes, “Not only did he manage Apple’s seamless switch to Intel, he probably made the company the most money in its 30-year history. (I say probably, because the only dark spot — a stock options backdating scandal — may yet prompt a restatement of earnings.)”
“Financial scandal or no, Apple’s comeback is a solid validation of Jobs’ business chops. Jobs is too much of a liberal iconoclast to be taken seriously by the corporate world, but 2006 showed he’s up there with the greats,” Kahney writes.
Kahney covers Jobs’ and Apple’s month-by-month highlights in his full article here.
Hey, it was my best year ever, too!
MW:dead, as in “uh oh…”
Ah, His Steveness is liberal. Good. That word should be vindicated.
The good news is, I bet 2007 is even better!
The corporate world is colorless and loves Micro$oft .. calculators.
Jobs is great — and thus Apple is great — not because he is a former faux hippie, but because he is brilliant and intellectually honest. He based the corporate culture on satisfying the needs and wants of his customers, not the control freaks who would manipulate them. What a concept. It is enlightened capitalism at its best.
It takes a lot to get that model to work, but the brand loyalty that it has created is the reason that Apple can introduce new products and a significant number of people will buy and try. Others try to copy — superficially — parts of Apple’s business model, but that does not work. Who would feel loyalty towards Dell and go to a Dell store — nobody with an IQ greater than a lobotomized chicken or an Alzheimers patient. Who would buy a Zune? Answer; only fools who actually believe a Best Buy clerk getting kickbacks from Microsoft to lie to the customer about the Zune “blowing away” the iPod, as was done to a friend of mine. Note: After I talked to my friend, he went back and switched the pair of Zunes to a couple of iPods.
Jobs built the Apple culture on capitalist principles that stress the good of the customer as being critical to the good of the company. It works – spectacularly.
Right on, Prodigal Son!!
And Apple stock keeps dropping–like a boulder, not a rock!
Probably just a good buying opportunity, though, since there isn’t a solid, objective reason for it.
Steve Jobs,
post-war bulge (like me),
gives me the impression that he’s resisted the multi-temptations that wealth and power bring.
The rule is: power and wealth corrupt. But something in S.J.’s character (perhaps his love of Dylan and ‘veganism’ are symptoms of this). suggests that he’s reisisted the worst.
The fact that he’s not got fat and self-satisfied, like most of the M.S. top executives, are postitive signs indeed.
Head’s up MacMacs!!
Crusin one of my favorite channel’s web site’s (Discovery, History, etc.) for vacation shows to entertain myself with and found this:
http://dsc.discovery.com/tvlistings/episode.jsp?episode=1&cpi=25257&gid=0&channel=DSC
Never know what you’ll find when you type in Steve Jobs in the search box!
Jake,
Are you suggesting there was a solid, objective reason for AAPL’s rapid rise to 90+ in November? Bwa ha ha ha………..
<i>”The rule is: power and wealth corrupt. But something in S.J.’s character (perhaps his love of Dylan and ‘veganism’ are symptoms of this) suggests that he’s resisted the worst.”</b>
Steve Jobs doesn’t have to “resist the worse” because power and weath corrupt only when you make them your gods, as most of the so-called civilized world has unfortunately done. Steve Jobs wants to change the world, not gorge himself on its temptations. That’s what makes him “intellectually honest,” as LinuxGuy and Mac Prodigal son put it. If Steve Jobs could be tempted by mere money, today’s Macintosh would never have been created. He’d be counting his fortune and peddling the same beige boxes he was selling 15 years ago, just like the pc makers.
I th!Nq 1ves be3n inzulted?
Power and wealth turn you into a lazy fat idiot. You become corrupted, when you’ve got power and you’re too slow to fight for the marketshare.
Usually power doesn’t corrupt. Corruptees and are hungry for power. Can you remember any nice, good or friendly dictator.
Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Putin, Berlusconi… Can you call these people nice and honest, truly honest or pure minded?
When you have vision, it’s easy to not get corrupted. But when you make it to the finish, where ever that is, you better have a new vision and a new goal.
Ballmers vision?
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Hallucitantions from coke doesn’t count.
Whooo! Get uuup! Get uuuup!!
Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers!
MW: where. Where’s Apples goal?
Now that the Mac OS is based on NeXT, Apple has more of Steve’s DNA than ever before.
LinuxGuy and Mac Prodigal Son
Thanks, I was wondering for a while about Zune Thang’s social thingie and you made it clear to me.
“Answer; only fools who actually believe a Best Buy clerk getting kickbacks from Microsoft to lie to the customer about the Zune “blowing away” the iPod, as was done to a friend of mine. Note: After I talked to my friend, he went back and switched the pair of Zunes to a couple of iPods.”
So the hordes who will be returning their Zunes for iPods….THAT social.
Oh boy I can welcome that social for suuuuure.
Hey, might make a great new motto for Microsoft “returned for sure”