Business magnate Larry Ellison thinks that without Steve Jobs — “our Edison” and “our Picasso” — Apple Inc. is in trouble.
In a CBS News video interview with Charlie Rose, Ellison painted a bleak future for Apple.
Larry Ellison: He was brilliant. I mean, he was our Edison. He was our Picasso. He was an incredible inventor.
Charlie Rose: So what happens to Apple without Steve?
Ellison: Well, we already know. We saw, we conducted the experiment; it’s been done. We saw Apple with Steve Jobs (raises hand high). We saw Apple without Steve Jobs (lowers hand). We saw Apple with Steve Jobs (raises hand high). Now, we’re going to see Apple without Steve Jobs (lowers hand).
MacDailyNews Take: Oracle CEO Larry EllisonThis is sad. Something seems to have slowed down Larry’s thought processes. Botox overdose?
Quick, somebody unstretch Larry’s face to the point where he can open his eyes enough to see that the variables in his infantile equation have changed dramatically:
Tim Cook ≠ John Fsckin’ Sculley, nor does Apple Computer, Inc. in 1985 = Apple Inc. 2013.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
Lawrence is probably right in the long term, though wrong in the short term. Steven Jobs was fully in charge and more experiences when he picked Timothy Cook and others to work for Apple. Jobs personally participated in over five thousand interviews.
This means that Apple has very powerful and focused team that can provice great products even without Jobs present.
However, in the long run, people whom Jobs have hired will be slowly gone and will be replaced in a way that less picky. It is not because Apple’s current bosses are not great, it is because it will he hard to reproduce Steven’s mercilessness and perfectionism in this regard, too.
This process will be very slow and it not expected to significantly effect Apple for at least like fifteen years from now. But later, Apple will slowly degrade, it is almost inevitable. Apple might very well still stay very robust and competitive company, not not as amazing as it is now.
I have to disagree. Ever heard of Apple University? This is comparable to McDonalds Hamburger U. By teaching the way of the company and failures of the past the company can be assured of future success. McDonalds leader, Ray Kroc, worked until the day he died in 1984. The industries are very different but the vision each leader had continues today.
Yes, I have heard about it. However, MacDonalds is not know for an amazing, “think different” culture of creativity. It is more like a conveyer.
Apple University is already taken into account in my estimation that the nearest fifteen years are probably safe for Apple. However, it will be harder further. “Entropy of the Universe” is an inevitable law that could be overcomed only by an unique, extraordinary phenomenons like Steven Jobs was. If, say, in twenty years, Apple will find a person as zealous and as visionary as Jobs was, then Apple will be safe for a prolonged time.
But again, as I wrote, Apple will not all of sudden become Palm or BlackBerry after fifteen years. It might turn from amazing phenomenon that can continue to change the world to a solid company, which will be still highly successful, even though not revolutionary any more.
“If, say, in twenty years, Apple will find a person as zealous and as visionary as Jobs was, then Apple will be safe for a prolonged time.”
A person like that exists right now. He goes by the name of Scott Forstall.
Interesting thought. He’s in the doghouse at the moment, but enough time alone, spent introspectively, changes a person and can lead to a new sense of purpose. I can think of another who departed on a low note only to return years later with new vigor, determination, and focus.
Apple as Steve left it the first time is not remotely the same as it was when he died. The team and structure of Apple now is incredibly strong. One notable difference is Jonny Ive. Had he not been around Apple wouldn’t have reached the heights it did during Steve’s second time in charge. To look at it on those terms is simplistic and doesn’t give credit to the very talented people working there and also to the legacy Steve built and the structure he put in place to ensure it would carry on without him.
Whenever there are arguments like this there is always undue credit given to other other companies. Assuming Apple are somehow doomed, why do other companies have some magical recipe for success now that they didn’t have before?
The work Edison and Picasso did inspires future generations to continue advancing each. This is much the same as what Steve Job’s has done in building Apple. Anyone that compares this Apple without Steve to the 80’s Apple without Steve is clueless.
It has been rightly said that Steve Jobs’s greatest achievement was Apple itself.
What others have mocked as a “cult” was in fact the embodiment of a great idea…an organisation carefully designed to be self-sustaining with unstinting devotion to stewardship and craftsmanship, reflecting deeply held aesthetic values, and motivated by a religious awe at what people could do when they were allowed to do their best.
he’s a slime – has his own agenda and would not trust a single word from this boys mouth. Just goes to show he had no real friendship with the late great Steve… or he would know that Steve was working on the super team long before he left this world!
Like GE without Edison, and Disney without Walt, Apple can suffer without Jobs while still continuing to thrive and adapt.
What could Apple have become if we’d had another couple of decades of Jobs? We’ll never know.
Losing Jobs was a tragedy. But this is a good time to let Apple become its own thing. He left us with Apple at a very high point, with solid foundations, very good leaders, and plenty of inspiration.
Apple has already been through it’s floundering stage after Jobs first left with the craptastic triumvirate of Sculley, Spindler, and Amelio as Disney did with (son-in-law) Ron Miller. It’s a totally different day of course. Ellison, who’s no dummy, should know this so there must be a new agenda he’s pushing we can all summarily ignore and dismiss. Larry just took a larger step into irrelevance and lack of credibility without qualifying his remarks.
Advice from the guy who recently aligns himself with Microsoft. Somehow his insight to business success seems rather limp given that bold move of brilliance. I’d ask Larry to whip out his financials over the last couple of years and compare them to Mr Cook’s then let the chips fall where they may….
Ellison nailed it right on the head. MDN is full of shit. Cook is a suit … what is it about that that you don’t get. Cook would never come up with iPhone, iPad, iTunes Store, retail store strategy, telling Adobe to go fsck themselves, on and on and on. He is a logistic SVP, and then he runs out of gas.
A suit who knows how to let product people be creative.
A suit who knows how to capitalize on bold ideas with solid execution.
A suit who can marshal finance and logistics to ensure great products succeed.
A suit who knows on a deep level what Apple’s secret sauce is.
100% right.
Jobs was of a time and of a world that has gone. Apple will slowly decline.
Cook seems an ok guy – but he IS a suit.
They only made one Steve Jobs, and I feel fortunate to have lived in his time.
I got news for you Larry. Maybe you should go sit with your friend Michael Dell. The last time someone said something like that about Apple that’s what happened. Dell said Apple should shutdown go out of business it has no chance of surviving. Look who’s selling off his company.
Larry is not and never was a freind of Dell, he was in fact Job’s closest friend. They shared many a quiet evening walk in their neghborhood in Palo Alto. Dell was not a pal of either of them. Not all rich people are buddies you know.
This is how great men, great companies, great societies go belly up with such thinking. Far too simplistic to say that last century when A happened B happened so this century when A happens B must happen again. That is why big established companies go stale, Apple only went that way when such men from outside with Larry’s sort of thinking took over. Despite concerns there is little evidence to suggest that is happening again. To be honest a lot of the problems with Apple mk 1 was also down to SJ’s lack of flexibility but he thankfully learnt from his fatal short comings during Apple mk 2 if not completely. However some of the slowness to react this time also has some regard to SJ’s policies (different faults but similar inflexibility) so lets give the present management a chance to show what they are worth. If they can retain his wonderful vision and add a little more flexibility belatedly happening now then that is no comparison to Sculley’s time at all. Next year will be the first time when a real SJ free Apple can truly be judged. Apple wont be SJ’s company any more but it wont be Sculleys either, Cook is a facilitator its others who will feed the innovation and that capability is still there.
Apple kicked Jobs out the first time around, then tried to run their business without him. It was a disaster. This time around, he tragically left them, and the company is doing their level best to live by the lessons he taught them. Not the same thing. Not in the slightest.
Someone here will iCal your comment and play it back to us in 6 months.
Creating the best new innovative products takes an incredible number of man hours and when you tie them all together in a software ecosystem that multiplies the work to be done.
So, orandy, who else is doing better? HP, MS, Dell, Samsung?
So how come nobody here has brought forth one iota of evidence to show that Larry’s opinion is inaccurate? He didn’t predict that Apple would tank, but that its fortunes would wane. Without Jobs, they have.
Stock price is down, despite Apple bending over and giving Wall Street traders everything they wanted.
Pace of product innovation is noticeably down.
Retail executives are not even in place.
Advertising is a bore.
Cook is uninspiring. If he’s such a genius, then he should be COO. As CEO, he has essentially just sit on his hands and allowed the last of Steve’s pipeline roll out behind schedule. Let a real leader make some decisions, and maybe Apple would reverse its fortune — and Larry would be the first to praise the decisive leadership.
I’ve worked with Oracle since 1995. I’ve been a fan and really liked their technology. When they introduced the Network Computing Architecture back in the late 90s, they were ahead of what today is called “cloud computing”.
But, since then, all they have done is buy companies and buy companies and buy companies. The database itself has been stalled for years, and today’s Oracle looks like a 1000 head monster with no focus at all.
While Steve Jobs worked on focus on few amazing products, Oracle has a catalog which not even they understand. A lot like the pre-Jobs comeback Apple. While I admire Larry Ellison, I think, at this point, he’s not the most authorized person to analyze Apple’s state.
Now, he was a close and personal friend of Steve Jobs. There has to be anemotional factor on what he says.
Oracle’s problem is that it ran out of room to grow. Once you’re the biggest and best at your core business, all you can do is get into other businesses to satisfy Wall Street’s insatiable greed and demand for infinite growth.
Apple, on the other hand, thinks it owns the PC market when it has perhaps a 12% market share in the USA and even less elsewhere. It thinks its owns the mobile phone industry despite the continuous waves of competition that are slowly but surely beating down iOS market share — and, yes, profit share will follow, it always does. Apple thinks its app store is untouchable despite the android copycats offering:
1) more hardware options at all price points
2) more OS versatility (and with it, less security, which buyers seem not to care about as much as they say they do)
3) just as many decent phone apps as iOS.
4) more retailers, more advertising, and greater global support.
Face it, Larry is correct. Steve has always got the ball rolling in the right direction. Nobody at Apple has ever been able to keep it moving for long. None of Apple’s other leaders, including Cook, has ever shown the same ability to conceive of a must-have breakthrough product, let alone have serial commercial successes. Cook hasn’t done anything new — he’s a perfect COO and a dismal CEO.
This is the same guy who, though supposedly Steve’s “best friend,” predicted, after Steve came back, that Apple would leave the computing business and focus on “appliances.” This worried me at the time- would Steve actually do that? Not exactly…
We’d all be missing the point if we didn’t see this as Larry sayin Oracale with me will crash and burn. Oracale has lots of lieutenants and one general. Jobs created an Apple with Generals of various ranks. Hence some of the friction.
The example of 85-95 is bogus. Use Jobs’ medical leaves as the examples and we get a very differant view
Oh Larry, what will happen to Oracle after your face explodes?
Lawrence is probably right in the long term, though wrong in the short term. Steven Jobs was fully in charge and more experiences when he picked Timothy Cook and others to work for Apple. Jobs personally participated in over five thousand interviews.
This means that Apple has very powerful and focused team that can provice great products even without Jobs present.
However, in the long run, people whom Jobs have hired will be slowly gone and will be replaced in a way that less picky. It is not because Apple’s current bosses are not great, it is because it will he hard to reproduce Steven’s mercilessness and perfectionism in this regard, too.
This process will be very slow and it not expected to significantly effect Apple for at least like fifteen years from now. But later, Apple will slowly degrade, it is almost inevitable. Apple might very well still stay very robust and competitive company, not not as amazing as it is now.
I have to disagree. Ever heard of Apple University? This is comparable to McDonalds Hamburger U. By teaching the way of the company and failures of the past the company can be assured of future success. McDonalds leader, Ray Kroc, worked until the day he died in 1984. The industries are very different but the vision each leader had continues today.
Yes, I have heard about it. However, MacDonalds is not know for an amazing, “think different” culture of creativity. It is more like a conveyer.
Apple University is already taken into account in my estimation that the nearest fifteen years are probably safe for Apple. However, it will be harder further. “Entropy of the Universe” is an inevitable law that could be overcomed only by an unique, extraordinary phenomenons like Steven Jobs was. If, say, in twenty years, Apple will find a person as zealous and as visionary as Jobs was, then Apple will be safe for a prolonged time.
But again, as I wrote, Apple will not all of sudden become Palm or BlackBerry after fifteen years. It might turn from amazing phenomenon that can continue to change the world to a solid company, which will be still highly successful, even though not revolutionary any more.
“If, say, in twenty years, Apple will find a person as zealous and as visionary as Jobs was, then Apple will be safe for a prolonged time.”
A person like that exists right now. He goes by the name of Scott Forstall.
Interesting thought. He’s in the doghouse at the moment, but enough time alone, spent introspectively, changes a person and can lead to a new sense of purpose. I can think of another who departed on a low note only to return years later with new vigor, determination, and focus.
Apple as Steve left it the first time is not remotely the same as it was when he died. The team and structure of Apple now is incredibly strong. One notable difference is Jonny Ive. Had he not been around Apple wouldn’t have reached the heights it did during Steve’s second time in charge. To look at it on those terms is simplistic and doesn’t give credit to the very talented people working there and also to the legacy Steve built and the structure he put in place to ensure it would carry on without him.
Whenever there are arguments like this there is always undue credit given to other other companies. Assuming Apple are somehow doomed, why do other companies have some magical recipe for success now that they didn’t have before?
What a douche.
We have seen Larry high and low too.
He should focus on his Java-Android case.
Wrong! Tim Cook will be an amazing CEO for Apple. I see him as Apple’s Steve Ballmer.
hey Bill – did your mommy let you use the PC
time to put it down and have her change you shitty little pant now… unless you like them that way… Ha
The work Edison and Picasso did inspires future generations to continue advancing each. This is much the same as what Steve Job’s has done in building Apple. Anyone that compares this Apple without Steve to the 80’s Apple without Steve is clueless.
It has been rightly said that Steve Jobs’s greatest achievement was Apple itself.
What others have mocked as a “cult” was in fact the embodiment of a great idea…an organisation carefully designed to be self-sustaining with unstinting devotion to stewardship and craftsmanship, reflecting deeply held aesthetic values, and motivated by a religious awe at what people could do when they were allowed to do their best.
he’s a slime – has his own agenda and would not trust a single word from this boys mouth. Just goes to show he had no real friendship with the late great Steve… or he would know that Steve was working on the super team long before he left this world!
You have to treat what Crazy Larry says the same way we treat what Woz says…
Does anyone care what the man who’s company is responsible for the dirty mess they call java that created 99% of malware, thinks or has to say?
Like GE without Edison, and Disney without Walt, Apple can suffer without Jobs while still continuing to thrive and adapt.
What could Apple have become if we’d had another couple of decades of Jobs? We’ll never know.
Losing Jobs was a tragedy. But this is a good time to let Apple become its own thing. He left us with Apple at a very high point, with solid foundations, very good leaders, and plenty of inspiration.
Apple has already been through it’s floundering stage after Jobs first left with the craptastic triumvirate of Sculley, Spindler, and Amelio as Disney did with (son-in-law) Ron Miller. It’s a totally different day of course. Ellison, who’s no dummy, should know this so there must be a new agenda he’s pushing we can all summarily ignore and dismiss. Larry just took a larger step into irrelevance and lack of credibility without qualifying his remarks.
Advice from the guy who recently aligns himself with Microsoft. Somehow his insight to business success seems rather limp given that bold move of brilliance. I’d ask Larry to whip out his financials over the last couple of years and compare them to Mr Cook’s then let the chips fall where they may….
Larry forgets what Steve left in the pipeline.
Larry just wants more headlines for himself & Oracle!!!
Ellison nailed it right on the head. MDN is full of shit. Cook is a suit … what is it about that that you don’t get. Cook would never come up with iPhone, iPad, iTunes Store, retail store strategy, telling Adobe to go fsck themselves, on and on and on. He is a logistic SVP, and then he runs out of gas.
Maybe Apple was ready for a suit.
A suit who knows how to let product people be creative.
A suit who knows how to capitalize on bold ideas with solid execution.
A suit who can marshal finance and logistics to ensure great products succeed.
A suit who knows on a deep level what Apple’s secret sauce is.
100% right.
Jobs was of a time and of a world that has gone. Apple will slowly decline.
Cook seems an ok guy – but he IS a suit.
They only made one Steve Jobs, and I feel fortunate to have lived in his time.
I got news for you Larry. Maybe you should go sit with your friend Michael Dell. The last time someone said something like that about Apple that’s what happened. Dell said Apple should shutdown go out of business it has no chance of surviving. Look who’s selling off his company.
Larry is not and never was a freind of Dell, he was in fact Job’s closest friend. They shared many a quiet evening walk in their neghborhood in Palo Alto. Dell was not a pal of either of them. Not all rich people are buddies you know.
This is how great men, great companies, great societies go belly up with such thinking. Far too simplistic to say that last century when A happened B happened so this century when A happens B must happen again. That is why big established companies go stale, Apple only went that way when such men from outside with Larry’s sort of thinking took over. Despite concerns there is little evidence to suggest that is happening again. To be honest a lot of the problems with Apple mk 1 was also down to SJ’s lack of flexibility but he thankfully learnt from his fatal short comings during Apple mk 2 if not completely. However some of the slowness to react this time also has some regard to SJ’s policies (different faults but similar inflexibility) so lets give the present management a chance to show what they are worth. If they can retain his wonderful vision and add a little more flexibility belatedly happening now then that is no comparison to Sculley’s time at all. Next year will be the first time when a real SJ free Apple can truly be judged. Apple wont be SJ’s company any more but it wont be Sculleys either, Cook is a facilitator its others who will feed the innovation and that capability is still there.
Oh, fer cryin’ out loud.
Apple kicked Jobs out the first time around, then tried to run their business without him. It was a disaster. This time around, he tragically left them, and the company is doing their level best to live by the lessons he taught them. Not the same thing. Not in the slightest.
——RM
Tim Cook + Jonathan Ive + Phil Schiller – Scott Forstall ≠ John Sculley.
So, Larry Ellison’s hands told him?
We’re doomed!
All MDN delusional fangirls will be speechless when the board finally removes this “babysitter” posing as the Apple CEO.
Tim Cook had done nothing except make critical errors in judgment since he took over.
He will be remembered for his only innovation, a completely unnecessary and outlandishly expensive device adapter… pathetic!
Someone here will iCal your comment and play it back to us in 6 months.
Creating the best new innovative products takes an incredible number of man hours and when you tie them all together in a software ecosystem that multiplies the work to be done.
So, orandy, who else is doing better? HP, MS, Dell, Samsung?
So how come nobody here has brought forth one iota of evidence to show that Larry’s opinion is inaccurate? He didn’t predict that Apple would tank, but that its fortunes would wane. Without Jobs, they have.
Stock price is down, despite Apple bending over and giving Wall Street traders everything they wanted.
Pace of product innovation is noticeably down.
Retail executives are not even in place.
Advertising is a bore.
Cook is uninspiring. If he’s such a genius, then he should be COO. As CEO, he has essentially just sit on his hands and allowed the last of Steve’s pipeline roll out behind schedule. Let a real leader make some decisions, and maybe Apple would reverse its fortune — and Larry would be the first to praise the decisive leadership.
I’ve worked with Oracle since 1995. I’ve been a fan and really liked their technology. When they introduced the Network Computing Architecture back in the late 90s, they were ahead of what today is called “cloud computing”.
But, since then, all they have done is buy companies and buy companies and buy companies. The database itself has been stalled for years, and today’s Oracle looks like a 1000 head monster with no focus at all.
While Steve Jobs worked on focus on few amazing products, Oracle has a catalog which not even they understand. A lot like the pre-Jobs comeback Apple. While I admire Larry Ellison, I think, at this point, he’s not the most authorized person to analyze Apple’s state.
Now, he was a close and personal friend of Steve Jobs. There has to be anemotional factor on what he says.
Oracle’s problem is that it ran out of room to grow. Once you’re the biggest and best at your core business, all you can do is get into other businesses to satisfy Wall Street’s insatiable greed and demand for infinite growth.
Apple, on the other hand, thinks it owns the PC market when it has perhaps a 12% market share in the USA and even less elsewhere. It thinks its owns the mobile phone industry despite the continuous waves of competition that are slowly but surely beating down iOS market share — and, yes, profit share will follow, it always does. Apple thinks its app store is untouchable despite the android copycats offering:
1) more hardware options at all price points
2) more OS versatility (and with it, less security, which buyers seem not to care about as much as they say they do)
3) just as many decent phone apps as iOS.
4) more retailers, more advertising, and greater global support.
Face it, Larry is correct. Steve has always got the ball rolling in the right direction. Nobody at Apple has ever been able to keep it moving for long. None of Apple’s other leaders, including Cook, has ever shown the same ability to conceive of a must-have breakthrough product, let alone have serial commercial successes. Cook hasn’t done anything new — he’s a perfect COO and a dismal CEO.
This is the same guy who, though supposedly Steve’s “best friend,” predicted, after Steve came back, that Apple would leave the computing business and focus on “appliances.” This worried me at the time- would Steve actually do that? Not exactly…
We’d all be missing the point if we didn’t see this as Larry sayin Oracale with me will crash and burn. Oracale has lots of lieutenants and one general. Jobs created an Apple with Generals of various ranks. Hence some of the friction.
The example of 85-95 is bogus. Use Jobs’ medical leaves as the examples and we get a very differant view
Larry Ellison admired Steve Jobs. To him, Apple and Steve Jobs were one and the same. My take is he is showing loyalty to his friend.
Ellison gets a pass from me.
Most of these bozos predicted a bleak future for Apple while SJ was alive.
Give the anti-TC rhetoric a rest boys.