“I’m an Apple bull. I love the devices and own the stock,” Eric Jackson writes for Forbes. “So why am I writing this post? Because nobody’s perfect and it’s actually an interesting intellectual exercise to – as a bull – go back and learn from where a company has made mistakes in the past.”
“In the case of Apple, it’s actually damn tough to find the mistakes. And I’m deliberately taking John Sculley and Gil Amelio out of the equation. I’m only talking about since Jobs return through the acquisition of NeXT – the last 16 years,” Jackson writes. “Just try to find mistakes since then. You realize just how many of their strategic decisions were bang on. iPod. Opening iTunes to PCs. Retail stores. iPhone. App Store. iPad.”
Jackson writes, “Yet, there are mistakes… What’s not on this mistake list is something like paying a dividend (doesn’t matter and probably brings in more investors to the stock), appointing Tim Cook as CEO instead of the ghost of Steve Jobs (Cook is a fantastic CEO), or pushing Siri through ads (it’s great and will get exponentially better over the next 5 years).”
Apple’s 10 biggest mistakes since Steve Jobs returned:
1. Allowing Eric Schmidt to stick his nose into the tent.
MacDailyNews Take: Hoo boy, no doubt. Jobs got rolled big time twice by weaselly moles. First, by Bill Gates, then by Eric T. Mole. Like Santayana said: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” What a blind spot: Jobs made the same colossal mistake – twice!
2. Helping Google build a beachhead in mobile.
3. Not buying Twitter yet.
4. Partnering with Facebook.
5. Being so reluctant to spend the cash hoard on acquisitions.
6. Not buying Motorola.
7. Not allowing easy sharing of photos and videos.
8. Relying on being a fast follower for non-core products.
9. Waiting so long to update iTunes.
10. Allowing Samsung to be the perceived innovative leader with smart phone features.
Read more in the full article – recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: #2 goes with #1. #3: maybe. #4: Nobody really knows the details of the Facebook integration deal; what Apple gets, if anything, and so forth. #5: Discipline is a good thing. #6: Where would Google be today without Motorola? They’d own RIM. Apple was right not to bother with Moto. #7: Totally agree. #8: Perhaps. #9: Agree. #10: WTF really perceives that fallacy?
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “Edward W.” for the heads up.]
