“Not everyone’s convinced Apple Computer’s chief executive Steve Jobs will get away from the company’s current options grant drama unscathed,” Tiernan Ray blogs for Barron’s Online.
Ray reports, “Rob Enderle, Principal Analyst with technology research firm Enderle Group, in San Jose, California… thinks no one is taking this week’s Apple rumors seriously enough. ‘The stuff that’s being discussed now raises questions of criminal charges,’ for Jobs, says Enderle. And he thinks Jobs’s character and personality, as demonstrated over the years, are at the heart of the current drama.”
Ray reports, “In Enderle’s view, the two articles that have surfaced this week concerning Apple’s options grants, first from The Recorder, yesterday, and then today in the Financial Times, are both news, and they are both probably accurate.”
“The accounts of falsified documents both ‘fit within the behavior framework of what the real Steve Jobs is like,’ opines Enderle. ‘He has a history of not being particularly honest in regards to matters of finance,’ says Enderle. Enderle cites as examples of Jobs’s character various incidents in Jobs’s long career, such as his cheating of pal Steve Wozniak out of money in the early days before Apple Computer, his attempts to get then-CEO John Scully fired after bringing him aboard Apple in the ’80s, and his pushing out Gil Amelio when Apple acquired Jobs’s company NeXT in the ’90s,” Ray reports.
Ray reports, “Concludes Enderle: ‘Whenever you have falsification of documents and they’re tied to the CEO, it’s then very difficult to separate the CEO from the matter. It raises the question can he even be at Macworld’ in January, Apple’s annual kick-off event where the company usually announces new products. ‘Still,’ he says, ‘If there’s anyone who could survive this situation, it may be Jobs.'”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Barry” for the heads up.]
According to the Enderle Group website, “For over 20 years Rob has worked for and with companies like Microsoft, HP, IBM, Dell, Toshiba, Gateway, Sony, USAA, Texas Instruments, AMD, Intel, Credit Suisse First Boston, GM, Ford, ROLM, and Siemens.” Note the lack of Apple Computer, NeXT, and/or Pixar among the companies in Enderle’s list. Does Rob Enderle, who last year laughably proclaimed that “Microsoft wrote the first MacOS,” have any firsthand knowledge of the events he mentions to assail Steve Jobs’ character? Has Rob Enderle ever even met Steve Jobs? Enderle’s pathological opinions, which sound to us as if they were formed by reading unauthorized Steve Jobs biographies at best, aren’t worth a bucket of warm spit.
Related articles:
Apple files 10-Q and 10-K, company to record non-cash charge of $84 million – December 29, 2006
Analyst: U.S. Gov’t unlikely to ‘nail Apple and Steve Jobs’ – December 28, 2006
Piper Jaffray: Steve Jobs not at risk in stock options case – December 27, 2006
Enderle revels in ‘collapsing’ iTunes Store sales that are actually surging – December 18, 2006
Enderle: Microsoft’s Zune could be very successful – November 07, 2006
Enderle FUD Alert: Apple MacBook firmware steps down processor to stop random shutdowns – October 27, 2006
Enderle: ‘4th quarter will be Apple’s hardest since the first iPod Christmas’ – September 18, 2006
Enderle spouts some incredible nonsense about Apple iPod+iTunes – July 07, 2006
Enderle: If Apple can’t double market share it will abandon Macs – May 02, 2006
Big surprise: Enderle was wrong about Apple’s holiday quarter Mac sales – January 19, 2006
Tech pundit Enderle: ‘Microsoft wrote the first Mac OS’ – September 28, 2005
Tech Pundit Enderle: ‘fourth quarter should be ugly for Apple’ – August 09, 2005
Enderle: ‘Surveys indicate demand for Apple’s products is dropping like a rock’ due to Intel switch – August 01, 2005
Tech Pundit Enderle: ‘This year will be more difficult for Apple Computer’ and iMacs in earthquakes – January 24, 2005
Ah, yes. To be right about that twerp is truly gratifying.
i have had my insurance with usaa since 1969; now i am worried!
…in other news, Rob Enderle’s admitted lying puts into question whether or not he can be trusted for an opinion.
How does Enderle continue to publish crap?
Time for Jobs to file suit against Rob Enderle
Enderle = FUDmeister. That’s all you need to know.
That’s it, Rob. If you heap enough faux dung on Apple right now, you just MIGHT–I repeat, MIGHT–take a bit of the coming spotlight off of your client DELL.
Truth Alert: No matter what Apple’s problems may be, or not be, at this point, they PALE with what Dell is about to face. And I kid you not.
Here’s to you, Rob, you pathetic lackey. I can’t wait to see how you defend Mr. Dell and his cohorts in the coming months!
Rob Enderle is a coward.
For anyone who would like more info about Dell’s current SEC/NASDAQ problems:
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2006/111606-sec-probe-delays-dell.html
http://news.com.com/Dell+gets+non-compliance+letter+from+Nasdaq/2100-1014_3-6144279.html
Enderle is a nutcase and shouldn’t be allowed to comment on anything Apple because he is always 100% WRONG! He never knows what the heck he’s even talking about. Most real stock anaylsts say Steve Jobs did nothing wrong and is just following protocal when he hired a lawyer. Blowing things out of porportion and making up things to make it seem that much worse is all that most of these reports are doing.
If Rob is the ” Analyst with technology research firm Enderle Group,” who are the other employees? (his wife doesn’t count)
Enderle….. everything he’s ever said has been just plain dumb or FUD. …how do people like this become analysts? did he ever finish high school?
The problem with this idiot putting out the crap that he did is that it will be picked up by the AP tomorrow as a real news story in all likely hood… hmmm… how much money do I have in my account – hey thanks Rob, I felt foolish for missing Tuesdays and today’s drop, you just might have given me another chance. If I can add to my holdings at just under 80… that will be a $10-20 gain in the next two weeks…
OK, I think I just figured out the ONLY thing this tool is good for.
Enderle commenting on someone’s character is truly laughable. Every article he’s ever written could be considered a “falsified document”. Integrity is the last thing he should be bringing up.
The examples he gave were ridiculous. Trying to get Sculley fired, and getting rid of Amelio are what’s know as business. It speaks nothing of his character. The situation with Woz is a bit closer to the mark, but be was very young then. To condemn someone for something stupid that he did 30 years ago is really reaching.
Enderle would certainly love nothing else than to see Apple, and particularly Jobs, get hit hard by this. My guess is, at some point he really wanted to add Apple to his client list, but SJ took him for an elevator ride instead. That might explain his bitterness.
Will victorious road of Apple collapse without Jobs in 2007?
It should be obvious by now that “Enderle Group” is another way of saying he suffers from mutliple personality disorders.
steve jobs should sue enderle for defamation. this isn’t just opinion – enderle is making factual assertions about jobs’ integrity, and citing supposed examples to back up his claim that jobs is guilty of dishonesty both now and in the past.
i doubt jobs would do it, but (being a lawyer) i’m pretty sure he has a good case against enderle, and should be able to get sufficient damages to put this idiot out of business once and for all.
The more he opines about Apple, Jobs, or anything inbetween, he digs his own grave.
The bottom line on Enderle is this:
He makes a living promoting every other company on the planet outside of Apple’s sphere.
Quite frankly, Apple does not need Enderle or any other analyst for their product ideas, counsil or whatnot, and that threatens a guy in his consulting position.
Never will he be in favor of anything Apple does, but constantly play devil’s advocate because he knows where and how he makes his money – and who writes the checks.
Why the media, such as WSJ even validate this guy is the curious question. Then again, the main-stream-media is pretty much off its rocker in the first place.
Unbelievable how he can proclaim this: “Rob Enderle is one of the industry’s most influential analysts […] is one of the world’s most sought-after technology pundits”
He also said in a recent article: “What if in the early days they had followed Bill Gates’ vision instead of separating […] What if […] in the ’90s, when faced with the new OS choice, Apple had chosen Microsoft instead of Unix?”
Well, hello… Apple chose NeXT, thank God !
I couldn’t help making a quick look-up on Google Earth with the company address… you can clearly tell the guy operates his “group” from a house outside of San Jose.
What a fake !
The Onion should pick up his columns.
Enderle is a technological asshole. This buttbrain is the Ann Coulter of the tech industry. Someone should just tell him to shut the fsck up and get a job as a Microsoft salesman – oh wait, he IS a Microsoft salesman!
Every time this clown opens his mouth it spews more bullshit than all the lies ever told in this industry. He is a FUD peddler, a tech commie, a true moron that has no inkling about the industry he reports on. It’s like reading the tabloid version of the tech news.
How can this guy be allowed to carry on in this business? Who’s stuffing his pockets? How is he so “well-respected” by anyone? He makes me want to vomit. In his face.
I had the opportunity to sit down with Steve Jobs a recently at Apple Headquarters in Cupertino. We met in the boardroom. It was just Steve, myself and a man he had known for close to 30 years. We met for 45 minutes.
I can tell you as a matter of fact that Steve Jobs is as close to Evil as a human being can come. He is extremely inhumane!!!
Life is a very simple proposition. You get out of it what you put into it, and let me say Steve Jobs is so bad that he deserves the worst.
I realize that many people who read this will say that I am making it up or that this is a fake, but I can assure you it is very real.
Steve Jobs is not only a rotten apple, but he is pure evil. Being an extremely devout Mac user it was extremely difficult for me to reconcile Steve’s behaviour. I think Steve has some redeeming qualities, but if you guys experinced what I did your jaws would drop to the floor.
Enderle is just the M$ version of MDN: both come out with rediculous unsubstantiated hatefull garbage.
Rob’s Cellphone number from his website…
(408) 832 6326
@Jake
You’ve just watched PIrates of Silicon Valley, haven’t you…?
Let me guess. Did he ask you if you were a virgin?
Hey Jake – that’s pretty interesting! Got any more details for us?
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This is just a bunch of horse jibberish.
Funny how he can make those conclusions while all the evidence available would put his own honesty very much in question.
IF criminal charges are filed against Jobs I don’t think they’ll stick. 3 letters: RDF.
Jake: I really wouldn’t believe he was evil. I would believe if he were cold or callous. He seems like the type of man could turn on either charm or comtempt at once and simultaneously. What specifically did he say or do to make feel he was “evil”. I know it’s an exageration but still a strong word. And like you said, I’m calling bullshit.
It’s another case of “Pay For Play” for Enderle – the Microsoft money that is spread around reminds me of the payola days of radio.
Jobs dishonest? Maybe.
Enderle have a little microslush fund? Maybe.
Rob is full of it…
Robert X Cringely wrote in his very famous novel “Accidental Empires” that Steve Jobs cares less about the money and more about taking over the world of computing. Mr. Cringely also said that Bill Gates was in it for the money in the same paragraph.
Robert X Cringely IIRC worked for Apple back in its early days.
I bet Steve is like Buddy in
the movie Swimming With Sharks:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114594/
Check it out.
@Jake,
Very interesting comment. It’s curious how a person some admire so much from their achievements can be the opposite when in person.
I don’t know Steve Jobs in person, but as one of the bunch who admire him, I find your comment very interesting.
Where’s the line between the legend and the person? And do we admire the legend or the person?
I’m definitely interested in hearing more.
About Enderle, the thing is very simple: If he says Steve Jobs is in trouble, that means Steve Jobs has no problem whatsoever.
For anyone who would like more info about Dell’s current SEC/NASDAQ problems:
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2006/111606-sec-probe-delays-dell.html
http://news.com.com/Dell+gets+non-compliance+letter+from+Nasdaq/2100-1014_3-6144279.html
Microsoft got caught doing the same thing a few years ago (around the same time as Xerox who got fined millions); supposedly it was to prop up their stock value a bit. I seem to remember that they got away with a hand slap.
CNN just did a piece (7:20 am, est) “Steve Jobs, Apple gone bad?”
I was surprised, as it seems that all of CNN’s coverage of Apple has always been positive (maybe it’s CNN who is truly ‘fair and balanced”).
Pointed out that Apple products still selling like mad-15 mil ipods over xmas – did some of the peice from outside of NYC store, interviewed customers, etc.
Ended up saying company confident, etc., and will ISSUE A STATEMENT THIS MORNING.
Then, Ann whats her names says, in closing, ‘it should be noted that NBC and Apple are in a partnership together.
ooops.
I mean NBC, not CNN.
As I typed that last comment, had switched to CBS, and what’s on?
Scene from inside of any Apple store, harry whoever saying “…millions buying electronics…”, then the co host interupts with “… I just got MY 1rst ipod….”
Hard to believe that the stock should be effected at all, even if jobs is guilty.
ah, channel surfing.
ABC doing a story on viral videos- they show the videos in each scene playing an a computer.
An iMac.
Speaking of Enderle, did you ever fart so hard you ended up in another zip code?
Enderle was recently described in an article on The Register as a “rent-a-quote” analyst. It seems that The New York Times is on to him, and now bans his comments from appearing in articles about products from his clients.
From the EnderleFlackLetter:
“..Enderle’s firm does paid promotion for clients without identifying them as a conventional PR firm does. From the Enderle Group web site, as quoted on http://enderle.iwethey.org/
“”Rob Enderle, the founder, has been the most highly quoted analyst since 1995 as ranked by firms like the Kensington Group and Sage Circle. In addition he has been in the top ten of most influential analysts as ranked by Technology Marketing since the beginning of that ranking and was ranked number one in 2001 in influence (#2 in 2002). This gives the Enderle Group a unique marketing and influence expertise not shared by any other firm; one focused on how to do the most with the limited marketing budgets available today.””
In everything he writes, you must always consider whose “limited marketing budget” (or not so limited marketing budget) he’s billing.
I’ve been told that Apple refused to pay him, so now he pans Apple.
7:56 am EST
CNBC says “stay tuned, Apple stock on the rise in pre-market trading. Story next”.
Gotta go to work Bye.
AAPL stock is up almost 5% in premarket trading. Jobs has basically been cleared, crisis over.
Enderle….suck it.
Apple Says Options Probe Clears Execs
“Apple Says Options Probe Finds No Misconduct by Managers, Has ‘Complete Confidence’ in Jobs”
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/061229/apple_options.html?.v=7
Enderle is a jackass.
Apple stock up 4.5% in the premarket.
I like the part about pushing out Gil Amelio. Steve rather brilliantly got himself (Pixar) bought by the unsuspecting, incompetent Gil Amelio with the full intention of taking over Apple once again. Steve and his team had product visions he could never implement at NeXT, but could at Apple. What did Steve do that was in any way unethical in the transaction? He maneuvered his way, rather skillfully, back to Apple and into the CEO position – bravo Steve!! Maybe the writer of the article is a close personal friend of Gil and realizes Gil’s feelings were hurt or something – tough, it’s business, that’s all. The writer of the article is, how shall I put this, a dork. Rock on Steve, see ya’ at MacWorld with wonderful products to suck money out of my wallet
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Regarding MS writing the first Mac OS, he just got his facts a little mixed up. MS did in fact write the second OS — ProDOS — for Apple II computers. Compared to the original Apple II OS, the MS version was a big step backwards, or so I thought at the time.
Steve Jobs: icon, iCon, or “I con”?
I usually do not agree with Enderle on much of anything, but he does raise good points. As for MDN’s take – does MDN know Steve Jobs any better? As if any authorized biography would be any more insightful than an unauthorized one… For a guy who’s been known to park in HP spots at his own company, one wonders how gray his ethics are? One thing is certain, the typical stock-holder and employee is not well-served by this whole option back-dating issue.
How will the SEC problems prevent Steve from being at MacWorld?
Apple’s problems are serious, but Enderle’s being a drama queen.
Let’s do the world a favor and not give his article any hits.
Enderle must be going through a job transformation. Could it be that he has finally realized that “Tech Analyst” is probably not his forte?
It appears that his current diatribe has him exploring:
1. “Financial Anylyst”
2. “Legal Consultant”
3. “Doctor Phil”
What a freakin retard.
For a guy who’s been known to park in HP spots at his own company, one wonders how gray his ethics are?
How can a CEO grant himself millions in stock options, yet not have a parking spot at his own office?
How long before a “Felon Parking Only” sign pops up?
Noah, Curious, Bruce and Griferus:
Yes I have seen Pirates of Silicon Valley and I can tell you Steve is way worse than the movie portrays him. The other thing to take into consideration is that Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are essentially one in the same…They are indeed both Pirates. Steve is absolutely obsessed with trying to rock Billl Gates and get back at him for stealing the market away from Apple after Steve Jobs got fired from Apple by Mike Markkula. You have to be pretty unethical knucklehead to get fired from a company you founded. (Think about it?)
Just to put Steve Jobs in context and how bad he is, I will say this:
In my life I have had detailed conversations with every kind of human you can imagine, ranging from the President of the United States to the lowest person you could imagine. I have NEVER, and I repeat, NEVER met somebody as rude, and inhumane as Steve Jobs.
When I was with him, it seemed like somebody was going to run into the Apple Boardroom and say “Surprise!!! You’re on Candid Camera” or “You Just Got X’d” but obviously that did not happen.
I am dead serious when I say Steve Jobs is as close to evil as exists on earth. Hitler could not have been as bad as Steve Jobs.
If you watch the original “1984 will not be like 1984” commercial it appears to me that what Steve Jobs suggested he was trying to protect us from has come true. As a matter of fact I argue that Steve Jobs has become the bald guy on the screen with the glasses that he suggests we should be afraid of. An apparently fascist iron fist dictator, Jobs is the Big Brother in 1984.
As a matter of fact, there is a line from the book 1984 that perfectly describes the way Fascist Dictator Jobs treated me.
The line from 1984 reads, “Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face–forever.”
Steve Jobs is also very intellectually dishonest. The most stunning revelation is that he does not know very much about his own computers or about design. Just for the record, I love Apple, I just can’t stand Steve Jobs. By the way, I don’t think that Apple is so great, so much as I think that Microsoft and company are just totally lazy idiots.
Apple tends to oversimplify many things, like not having a two-button mouse for more than 20 years and then coming out with one that has a hidden second button with a mini scroll ball that gets clogged every 20 minutes. The ipod has the same challenge. It is an oversimplification. The ipod should at the minimum have volume up and down buttons on the side.
I will give you an example of how intellectually dishonest Steve Jobs is:
I pointed out to Steve that human’s reason by analogy and that Apple is riddled with broken analogies. I was giving Steve a presentation on a hardware and software system I developed that will make learning how to use a computer 100 times easier for every newbie and once you get good at it you will become 100 times more effective.
I was showing Steve our keyboard and I pointed out that the all Apple keyboards are missing important symbols on the modifier keys. I said that when you go to pull down menus in every program there are symbols for keyboard shortcuts, but the same symbols are not on the keyboard. Particularly on the ALT, CTRL and Option keys.
Steve shrugged his shoulders and said, “Nobody cares about using keyboard shortcuts!?!?!” I looked at him in disbelief and said “what???” Then he said “Just name one keyboard shortcut that anybody uses?” I responded by saying “Command +P” for printing or “Command C” for copying. He shrugged his shoulders and said, “Nobody cares about that stuff!!!”
In my mind as a designer this clearly illustrates that Steve does not know very much about his own computers.
Many people speculated when Steve was giving a presentation recently that he is sick because he looked so gaunt. This is pure speculation on my behalf, but I would bet he lost so much weight because he is so freaked out about this impending exposure for this highly illegal and unethical stock deal he finagled. Talk about “T’was the best of times and t’was the worst of Times.” Steve realizes he has sooooo, sooooo far to fall. Kind of like Saddam Huessein. No joke.
For once I too feel that Enderle has a point. If, as has been reported elsewhere, the Board minutes were falsified it seems incredible that Jobs was not aware of the fact. If so, he is culpable morally if not in Law.
@Jake: I find your comments interesting but not altogether surprising. Whether Jobs is in fact as evil as you make out I don’t know, although from some of the anecdotes floating around, ‘inhumane and insensitive’ would seem about right.
What I do know from experience, is that meeting one’s heroes in the flesh is seldom a good idea, since reality never comes up to expectations. Part of the problem is that we expect people to be all of a piece. The reality is that people are complex with different sides to their character. When they become heroes we discount the negative aspects to focus on the *good* ones. The fact that Jobs is a visionary who turns out great products does not make him a ‘nice’ person. Nor for that matter does it make him necessarily ‘evil’.
Even Hitler was kind to animals….
Ha! If Enderle’s opinions “aren’t worth a bucket of warm spit” because of his never having met Steve Jobs or working for him, what does that make MDN’s opinions of Enderle, Gates, Glazer, Ballmer, and everyone else they cry about?
Godwin’s Law Alert
“Hitler could not have been as bad as Steve Jobs.”
WTF?????
Jake has exposed his own delusions.
Your puerile hyperbole reads like a sad cry for the outpatient treatment of psychosis. Your analogies place you between moderate and mild mental retardation.
You need help. And if you are just astroturfing, you need a more honorable job.
Jake,
He is “pure evil”? WTF??? Is he building a death star or something?
would call Enderle a butt-munch but that would be an insult to butt-munches everywhere!
Enderle is shockingly crappy.
I’m confused Jake. Not wanting your keyboard design because of the symbols makes him pure evil? NOt having volume up and down control on the side of the iPod (I think the scroll way is very intuitive) makes him evil?
You’re not backing up your statement dude. What the hell happened to make him worse than Hitler?
“For over 20 years Rob has worked for and with companies like Microsoft, HP, IBM, Dell, Toshiba, Gateway, Sony, USAA, Texas Instruments, AMD, Intel, Credit Suisse First Boston, GM, Ford, ROLM, and Siemens.”
16 positions over a span of 20 years? Sounds like someone can’t hold down a job for very long.
See the kind of conclusion you can draw from just a little information.
“Is he building a death star . . . “
Cubert: Don’t you mean Death Cube?
MW: blood. I was in the Apple boardroom with Steve and there was blood EVERYWHERE. And kitten heads. Hundreds and hundreds of kitten heads. And then, Satan appeared and he turned his head to vomit in disgust.
Jake,
Apparently, you don’t take rejection well. Sounds like you failed to build any interest in the product you were selling to Mr. Jobs. As a result you got the “I’m not interested” series of objections, which are comonly not true objections but are used as a polite way of saying “no thanks”.
You decided, that because you failed to build any value in your products to this potential customer, that he is more evil than Hitler?
Wow dude, I hope you found a new career path, because “sales” doesn’t look like a healthy place for you.
@Jake– Sorry Steve didn’t like your invention, but you sound not a little like a spurned lover. The “Hitler” hyperbole was the tip-off that you are seriously short on emotional stability. Now, if you had provided some evidence that Steve was rounding up millions of innocent people, and executing half of them while putting the other half into slave labor building Macs as he slowly starved them to death… then I might have gone along with the Hitler analogy.
Jake,
A CEO’s job isn’t to be nice or to be liked. The job is to be effective in making money for the shareholders. If he’s a complete prick then so be it. Welcome to big business.
but if you guys experinced what I did your jaws would drop to the floor.
It’s always a shock when reality dawns. “I’ve been fighting for THIS??”
Hitler could not have been as bad as Steve Jobs.
Well you had me until you pulled the Nazi card.
Did Steve invade Europe? Did Steve march millions of his own people to their deaths? Is Steve sitting in his bunker with Eva, his mind gone, waiting for his elite armies to save the Reich? There’s ZERO comparison between the literal hell of WWII and a couple poor business decisions.
The “Enderle Group” consists of Enderle and his tiny dick.
On a more serious note, tell me more about that bucket of warm spit…
“Steve shrugged his shoulders and said, “Nobody cares about using keyboard shortcuts!?!?!” I looked at him in disbelief and said “what???” Then he said “Just name one keyboard shortcut that anybody uses?” I responded by saying “Command +P” for printing or “Command C” for copying. He shrugged his shoulders and said, “Nobody cares about that stuff!!!”
The really funny thing is that the symbol for “command” is actually on the Apple keyboard.
Hmmm, he makes some good points for once and people do seem to bite Job’s bait hook, line & sinker without thinking for themselves.
e.g. When some wondered why Apple was taking so long to include simple video playback on their iPod, many said the screen was too small etc, but the real reason was that “Job’s said so”. Now that he has done the exact opposite of what he says (again), there is no mention of how “absurd” and “useless” video would be “on a small screen”. Stil no video recording capability though.
IDIOTIC MDN ONCE AGAIN SUPPORTING AND PROMOTING ENDERLE’S WRITING…
Who’s stupider?
JB,
I think you also got your facts a little mixed up. Microsoft has never written an OS for any Apple product. In fact many will say that Microsoft has never written an OS! Back when ProDOS was under development, Microsoft had just come out with the first release of DOS that they worked on, DOS 2.0. I remember the cover story about it in Byte magazine. The title was “The Dark SIde of DOS 2.0”. Obviously little has changed in Redmond in 20 plus years.
Oh by the way to all the Apple Bashers amd Microsoft fanboys, it isn’t kool-aid and it never was. It’s Apple juice for crying out loud.
Happy New Year to all.
Magic word: works – Apple works hard to make improvemnets to their products
Wow, Jake. Wow. Invest in some therapy my friend.
By the way, Mike Markkula didn’t fire Steve. For one thing, Markkula resigned from his CEO position in 1983. He was a member of the board until 1997, but he was known as being very non-confrontational. More importantly, Steve was not fired, he quit. He was stripped of any power, but he wasn’t fired.
I have my doubts that you’ve ever met Steve Jobs. I’m not saying that I think he’s a saint, but comparing him to Hitler? Come on. Wait a second…are you really Robe Enderle? That explains it.
About Jake:
I knew it, I knew, it, I knew it.
I knew this character Jake was trying to demo an idea or product to SJ when he said he met for 45 minutes at Infinite Loop.
Jake’s ideas apparently sucked or weren’t that revolutionary (Keyboard shortcuts! For Cripes Sake!). So Jobs laughs at him and probably is pissed because he wasted 45 minutes with Jake. HELLO!!!! Steve Jobs is CEO of a freaking multi-billion dollar technology company, if you aint’ got something better than what his team currently has in the works then you best take a hike.
Jake, I reallly thought at first you were trying to sell him on life insurance.
I guess all the kids in grade school that laugh at some other kids are pure evil too?
I think what is evil is for Jake to state that Jobs is worse than Hitler, the most evil person that walked the face of this earth during our time.
Jake, you are a sad little man.
@Jake, the Hitler card was a bit extreme.
If you meant that he has the same demented aspirations as Hitler did, and offered some examples, such as the two way display to spy on people ( like in Orwell’s 1984), the charm and ability to have people follow blindly (like Hiltler did in the beginning) , the selling of a computer for $666 (like he did in the beginning before PR changed it) the vegitarianism (like Hitler), the desire to change the world to his image (Pirates of Silican Valley), knowingly utilizing sweat shops to build his companies equipment (been denied), using his OS to keep tabs on everyone who uses it, it might have held more water.
Certainly any man in a position of power has the potential to be corrupted. IF Hitler could almost rule the world 60 years ago with the limited technology of that day, what could the head of a computer company do today if he was evil. Bill Gates comes to mind.
Not sure if that was where you were going…
If you’re only given two choices, Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs wins. But life is about more than just thoe two choices. They’re both businessmen, it’s like saying there are GOOD politicians. Some are just better at PR.
Well it’s out of the bag now. I’m as crooked as any other CEO but I have a blind following that will excuse anything that I do. I”ve got a Teflon coating kind of like my buddy Clinton.
Jake hangs with Steve Jobs and the President.
Wow. We’re honored to be in the presence of such greatness.
Let us know when you do lunch with Nelson Mandela, Jake.
For Jake
I’m just surprised that he claimed that Steve gave him 45 minutes. That right there tells you it can’t be true. If it is true it’s proof of the opposite of what Jake claims.
People in authority don’t have time for people with dumb ideas, or ideas that don’t fit into their vision of where their company is going.
The fact that you got 45 minutes instead of 4 or 5 is testimony to the fact that Steve probably is a good guy and wanted to be polite. His supposed negative statements about your product are just the way he was showing whoever booked this meeting how displease he was with his time being wasted.
I’ve made sales presentations to large companys. When you finally get in front of the Man/Woman in charge you’ve got about 10 min max to make your point. If you don’t have them by then it’s all over except for the crying.
Jake, if you’re real and not astroturfing. Count what happened as a learning experience. Don’t waste the time of people you’re trying to sell things to, and don’t sell them something they are not interested in.
MDN word is “test” as in Jake failed this test miserably. This has to be an example of astroturfing, and out and out lie, or an example of Steve cutting this guy a break and not wanting to embarass the other person in the room with the two of them.
The closest Jake has ever been to Steve Jobs is that he might have driven through Cupertino once.
Come on folks. Smell the troll.
“Hitler could not have been as bad as Steve Jobs”
6 Million People would say otherwise, but Hitler killed them.
Steve Jobs has killed no one to my knowledge.
Disgusting analogy.
That’s quite a post from Jake. Joke is more like it.
“I have had detailed conversations with every kind of human you can imagine, ranging from the President of the United States to the lowest person you could imagine. I have NEVER, and I repeat, NEVER met somebody as rude, and inhumane as Steve Jobs.”
Frankly – I don’t believe that Jake has had detailed conversations with the US Pres. Still, I could be wrong so let’s search for clues about Jake’s credibility. There’s this:
“I am dead serious when I say Steve Jobs is as close to evil as exists on earth. Hitler could not have been as bad as Steve Jobs.”
So Jake ‘seriously’ believes Steve Jobs to be more evil than a mass murder of millions of innocents. Yah – that’s credibility. What evidence does Jake for for Steve’s extreme rudeness and evil? Well, Steve didn’t accept Jakes opinions of keyboard shortcuts. (see below).
What a clown.
“I was showing Steve our keyboard and I pointed out that the all Apple keyboards are missing important symbols on the modifier keys. I said that when you go to pull down menus in every program there are symbols for keyboard shortcuts, but the same symbols are not on the keyboard. Particularly on the ALT, CTRL and Option keys.
Steve shrugged his shoulders and said, “Nobody cares about using keyboard shortcuts!?!?!”
I bet Rob Enderle wrote that piece on his new, complimentary, not-at-all-a-bribe from Microsoft, Acer laptop…
Maybe “Jake” is really Enderle…….
stay right there Jakederle…. We’re coming for you my friend…..
With a fucking straight jacket!!!
BWAAAhhhaahhhaaahhhhhhhhh!
Jake converses with US Presidents and common folks, but also sells keyboards to tech companies yet finds time to post his experiences to MDN!!!! Wow, I for one am impressed.
I say: Jake for President of the Eternal Federation of Irak and the Middle East.
MDN word is: fake, as in jake is a fake. All our fakes are belong to him
I think some people misunderstand what Jake is saying by taking the example he gave as the reason for his feelings. It is sometimes difficult to put your sometimes accurate feelings into words for others. The example he gave may present the context in which he dealt with SJ, but is likely not the reason for his strong belief, which may be accurate. I don’t know SJ except that, under him, Apple and AAPL have thrived. As a CEO, he has appeared to do wonderful things with the company and its products. As a person, I don’t know but am willing to listen to Jake should I need to have an opinion on SJ the man at some point.
MW: “police”
@Someone Else
“As a person, I don’t know but am willing to listen to Jake should I need to have an opinion on SJ the man at some point.”
Sorry, the listening should have ended when he pulled out the Hitle card. C’mon man. Be for real.
HOLIDAY PREDICTION::: poster Jake chokes on his own venom
45 minutes for demonstrating keyboard short cuts???
http://www.apple.com/feedback/
That’s the right place.
To Jake: I have two or three actual software ideas that I might try to sell in a future. I think I wont get more than 30 minutes, and I think I don’t get a chance at all. 45 minutes for keyboard short cuts sounds like 25-to-life for illegal U-turn. At least they are both weird.
Jake = Balmer = Gates
VCs in Silicon Valley, give you 5 to 10 mins to demo your product or idea. That’s it. No big deal, but NOT 45 mins.
It’s time to END EARLY – you’ve been on this planet too long
Why does my breath smell like ass?
Anyone running a huge company has to have a strong personality and some innate intelligence, and even then there’s no garuantee of complete success. Jobs’ first go around with Apple is testament to that. Yet many manage to do it, and be successful, without the negative baggage Jobs has accumulated over the years, and most of that baggage revolves around a personality something like what Jake has described. So while I take what he says here with some salt, I won’t dismiss him out of hand so quickly, as others here will reflexively, simply b/c reports of Jobs odd personal behavior are legion among those in the know.
The take-away here is not that Jobs is evil, it’s that he’s extremely self-absorbed. A house has historic value? Tough-titties if His Steveness wants to demolish it. Going with Intel for their DRM-friendly TPMs may compromise customer privacy? Oh well – there are video iPods & iTVs to sell! Jake was on the receiving end of that basic disimissive tenent of his nature (one that’s been marinading in massive wealth for decades to boot), and after pitching a product to him that Jobs feels he knows better than any human on Earth – software. Talk about walking into a flame thrower.
Still, it is Jobs self-absorption that tends to lead to his downfalls. He never would have been kicked out of Apple – a company he founded – if his personality was benign. He either a] would have saw it coming and adjusted, or b] never would have engendered that level of backlash in the first place. It’s like Graham Bell being ousted from AT&T, or Ray Walton from Walmart, or Ray Kroc from McDonald’s … I could go on and on. The point is, it’s just not normal. Succesors get bumped all the time; founders almost never.
That Jobs’ ‘manias’ tend to drive his decision-making should be no surprise though. They do for all of us. But in Jobs’ case, his are particularly deep, and thus lead to brillance at times, and big FUBARs at others.
However, another factor to include relates to something I’ve written about here in the past, about what really prompted dropping PPC for Intel – Steve’s brush with death from pancreatic cancer. Faced with his (ultimately spared) mortality, and knowing a long road would have to be hoed in getting back at Gates for usurping Apple’s OS success (Jake is right about how much this galls Jobs), he made a bold gamble to cut down on the years it would take – years he might not live through – by piggybacking on Intel’s favored position amongst the video content providers. It had/has nothing to do with performance, or access to chips, or anything else. Apple had gained a Windows-like market position in audio and seemed to be gaining OS market share as a consequence. It stood to reason that doing the same in video would gain them even more OS share. So, any way Jobs could leap ahead with video would serve the overall purpose of taking back what was once ‘his’ from Gates. There were a lot of objective reasons why staying with PPC made more sense (cost, more provider options, better design going forward, no drop off in PC sales during transition), but letting things play out with PPC would have taken time. It was Jobs’ overriding desire to be big in video, as a lever to finally get ahead of M$ BEFORE HE DIED – his mania – that drove the decision.
I mention all this b/c this backdating thing seems to have occured in roughly the same timeframe. For a person as singleminded as Jobs, who was also almost given last rites, a lot of pesky details may have seemed not worthy of setting right. The agenda would have been speed, not accuracy, or even legality. “Lets just get moving forward, no matter the consequences!”
I know its hard for some of you fanbois to imagine, and even harder for the stock cheerleaders to talk about publically, but Jobs is flawed like the rest of us. His mix of flaws and strengths have done some good things for him – and by extension, us – but they’ve also laid him low at times. This may be one of those times, again.
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MDN magic word = “england”
It just reminds me of how massive hubris brings down mighty empires every time.
According to reports the backdating occured in ’01, and Jobs’ health issues were after that, so my interpretation of that being an influencing factor are wrong. sorry – should have done my homework before posting.
O67
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Enderle gets his jollies riling Mac users and MDN faithfully posts his drivel. This is nothing new.
I don’t give a frak about keyboard shortcuts! And I sure as hell don’t give a damn about a product some asshole tells me will make me 100 times more productive. Pulled that right out of your ass didn’t you Jake?
Thanks for wasting our time Guess we’re all more evil than Hitler too.
S’okay, Odyssey67. So you made a mistake – we all have our flaws, right?
Enderle should not be the one talking about character. He’s falsely played the supposed “unbiased analyst” to websites while his own original website basically stated he was employed by Microsoft to promote them. He’s changed it to now read:
“Rob Enderle is identified by firms like the Kensington Group and publications like Technology Marketing as one of the most influential technology analysts in the world. As President and Principal Analyst of the Enderle Group, a forward looking emerging technology advisory firm, he provides regional and global companies with guidance in how to better target customer needs; create new business opportunities; anticipate technology changes; select vendors and products; and practice zero dollar marketing. For over 20 years Rob has worked for and with companies like Microsoft, HP, IBM, Dell, Toshiba, Gateway, Sony, USAA, Texas Instruments, AMD, Intel, Credit Suisse First Boston, GM, Ford, ROLM, and Siemens.”
If Enderle is invoved in Advising Microsoft, there is your answer as to why they are off base on everything they do. With Ballmer as CEO and Enderle advising–well, ’nuff said.