“On Nov. 10, 2004, Apple CEO Steve Jobs had a strained conversation with Tim Bucher, one of the company’s engineering executives. According to a lawsuit later filed by Bucher, Jobs said: ‘People think you are sometimes manic-depressive…. I think I’m going to have to ask you to leave the company.’ Bucher was stunned: He’d been promoted only a few months earlier. Bucher left Apple but soon sued for wrongful termination. He says the charges of mental illness are ‘completely false.’ Apple settled the suit in 2005 and declined to comment for this story,” Peter Burrows reports for BusinessWeek.
“Now Bucher is again squaring off against his former company. He’s spearheading an ambitious plan at Dell to break Apple’s dominant hold on the digital entertainment market. He won’t challenge Apple head on, with iPod knockoffs or a Dell version of the iTunes music store. Instead, Bucher’s 120-person team is trying to create a potent alliance among Apple’s many rivals, from cell-phone makers and record labels to online music sites,” Burrows reports.
“The idea, which Dell plans to unveil as early as September, is to create a broad standard, more open than Apple’s, that will give people greater choice in how they buy and consume music, movies, and podcasts,” Burrows reports.
“Central to Dell’s plan is software acquired a year ago when it bought Zing, the company Bucher founded after leaving Apple. The software handles behind-the-scenes translations so that content can be ‘zinged’ between computers and other compatible devices. Dell hopes to announce the Zing software as a feature on small, cheap laptops expected in September and to have the software installed on all of its consumer PCs by the end of the year. Two portable media players are scheduled for early next year, according to three sources. Bucher confirms that new devices are coming, but he won’t discuss details,” Burrows reports.
MacDailyNews Take: Zing. Squirt. Whatever.
“‘I guarantee it’s not about revenge,’ Bucher says,” Burrows reports.
More details in the full article here.
“I guarantee it’s not about revenge,” meaning it’s all about revenge. Hopefully, Mikey Dell gives it the thumbs up. If so, stock up on the lithium, folks, because this is going to be way too much fun!
“He’s spearheading an ambitious plan at Dell to break Apple’s dominant hold on the digital entertainment market.”
Good luck and Dogspeed.
Whoops! Excuse me. There is a drug called lithium. My apologies.
@TheIoniousMac
You missed one key detail – and this is one that would probably be a challenge, but it needs to interface with accessories that work with the iPod. I’m sure that interface is protected, but if it’s available for license, it would be well worth it. No one is going to be tempted to switch their iPod out for a device that won’t work with their existing sound dock, their whole house audio system, or the adapter they had installed in their car. This is one of the major failings of the Zune and will continue to plague it for the rest of its miserable life.
“Its a reference to the diameter of the bullet. .9mm would be incredibly tiny, and might not even kill a mouse if you could even make a gun and a cartridge that small.”
“Stuart Little 3: Revenge of the Evil Falcon”
“Go ahead. Make my bed.“
Thelonius, get to work. Start your own company and get going. Your points are all well made, and the only way to succeed against Apple, is to respect the space they’ve built. Your thoughts do just that.
Sounds like conspiracy, they are really afraid of Apple.
If you can’t beat them with your innovative products… form an alliance, Axis of Evil.
Sorry, but these ‘business plans’ wont work.
1 You need an OS that you own or have total control over.
2 You need a large and well-organised company that is run by someone with imagination and prescience.
3 You have to balance your products between what people think they want and what people think they need. Its a kind of social engineering that doesnt make you feel manipulated, but still persuades you.
It comes from Marketing and Design and Advertising and Software all working together, intelligently.
4 You have to create something NEW, but not a one-hit wonder.
It has to make sense to people.
5 You need to develop it while your core competetency is still making you money.
I would choose a Linux version, build a real consumer desktop around it and do like Apple did with OSX.
I would build my products to work with open standards.
I would IGNORE Windows entirely – this is a future product, and Windows is the past.
I would be prepared to work for at least ten years to bring the products to fruition.
Unfortunately, Dell has no idea how to do this. NO IDEA. (proof? they hired Enderle, a class A moron)
Dell is a component-buying, cardboard box shipping company.
They are NOT a software group. they are NOT a design group. they are all about cheap crap at a low price.
WHY do we think for a SECOND that they could build and design anything at all?
ONLY Apple can do this, because Apple has BUILT, painstakingly, a company with VALUES and SKILLS, and has created a world of software and hardware around OSX and all the software that works on it.
IF there is anyone out there who could do this, they wont appear for another 10 – 20 years, and it wont be Dell, who are much more likely to disappear, rather than flourish.
The game is on between Apple and the music biz – it wont involve Dell or Micro$shit.
Its NOT about money, its about being aware.
The winner will be Apple, because the public are learning to HATE the music Biz, are getting addicted to simply downloading music quickly without buying chunks of plastic, because ENVIRONMENTALLY downloads are superior, because the music biz is the PAST.
You think the App store is o big deal? Think again.
It will be the beginning of the Artist selling his MUSIC to APPLE exclusively and taking 70% of the proceeds instead of 3% they get now from the music biz.
People HATED their crappy cell phones – Apple brought them the iPhone.
People HATED Windows – Apple brought them OS9 OSX.
People have LONG memories when they get RIPPED OFF – watch the music biz die, and Dell with it.
My rant is now officially over, for today.
“Ousted Apple vet Tim Bucher heading up Dell’s quixotic music ‘strategy’”
So, it’s powered by tiny windmills?
Zing? is that something like Squirt?
Zing is the sound it makes when I pee on it.
This has EPIC FAIL written all over it!
That Zing don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got the Apple bling.
Apple has all of it’s own customers taken care of.
What if all this is a hoax?
What if there was no fallout between Jobs and Bucher and instead this is a clever plan by Jobs to embed a loyal employee inside mikey Dell’s inner circle?
What if this were corporate espionage?
Nah. This is just about revenge. Dell had a good laugh for years over Apple’s stagnation and now that the reverse is true, why not hire former Apple employees, if only to get a little closer to the magic. Microsoft does. Funny though, you never hear about Apple hiring Dell’s or Microsoft’s former employees.
But it makes you wonder whether Bucher still has to comply with a court-ordered NDA and that any violation will be met with, swiftly and decisively.
Good luck mikey, but even if this doesn’t pan out, I would suggest you keep Bucher around if for no other reason than keeping a good supply of eggs.
@ HUDsucker Proxy
Most droll!
Whatever happened here, we don’t know all the details. But I have one thing to say to Steve Jobs. Have your lawyers get you up to date on the Americans with Disabilities Act. An ounce of legal prevention is worth a pound of courthouse cure.
For the average people the “if it ain’t broken then don’t fix it” rule applies. If consumers are truly suffering from iPod/iTunes and begging for rescue, no doubt someone smarter or richer or more sinister than Dell would have done it by now. The problem with potential Apple-killers is that they are always trying to create a solution for a problem that does not exist, like Open Office trying to unseat MS Office. Most people have Office for free at work. They do not need or want to bother to learn a new office software.
The second problem with Dell is that it is tied to Windows, and anything it creates goes head to head first with MSFT. On the alternative music sales front, there is already Amazon, who has more ‘cloud’ than Dell ever will. And if this new ‘alliance’ makes digital content more ‘open’, than other F/OSS software and competitive services will surpass Dell. As the rest of the tech industry mold themselves after Apple’s iPhone, Dell service will be second choice if it is not integrated into mobile devices, despite how they try to sell more new laptop forms.
I feel bad for Tim. Sounds like he’s a sharp guy to have been promoted in Apple. But sometimes you get promoted into a role that does not suite your talent, and Jobs realized the mistake and did what he thought best for his company. For the most part Jobs knows how to pick a good team. Dell has proven its only trick is copy and make cheaper. This is a typical Silly-con Valley saga – guy gets dumped by company A; guy starts new company; new company gets bought by company B; company B makes guy head of new project using software create by guy to battle A. Dell and the music industry have no love for Tim. They all just hate/envy Apple. As Redmond’s crushing of Oracle and Sun already show, hating is no way to succeed. We’ve seen this before. Statistically, odds are against guy and company B.
If you read closely It was NEVER that Steve Jobs fired someone for reasons stated, it was what was CLAIMED
“According to a lawsuit later filed by Bucher, Jobs said: yadda yadda yadda”
IF there was ANY proof at all that such a thing was actually said, ANY PROOF at all, that would be a different matter.
the inevitable failure of this will make him manic depressive.
I think it’s an elaborate trap sprung on Mikey Dell. Steve-o and Tim Bucher fake his firing and the trial, only for Tim to later be plucked up by an unsuspecting Dell.
Very clever Apple. V-E-R-Y clever!
It’s a free market; these folks are entitled to come up with whatever they decide to come up with. The masses will judge accordingly. As far as BUcher leaving APple, absent personal knowledge of what happened, or a close reading of all the court filings, depositions, etc., who can judge what went on there?
Amazing; Tim Bucher is going to gather a crowd of supporters and jump in front of a freight train, hoping for success. I wish him luck with this one.
So Bucher is going to spend Dell’s money to try and kick Steve’s ass cause Steve pissed him off. Dell already wasted cash buying Bucher’s company now they are going to waste more?
Del deserves its drop down to the penny stock level.
idiots.