“Apple is a conduit for a lot of things. Technological innovation,” Chris Ciaccia writes for TheStreet. “Media attention above most, if not all, other companies. Criticism at the executive level has just started and now one of tech’s biggest names is weighing in.”
“[Oracel CEO Larry] Ellison saying that ‘[W]e conducted the experiment,’ when it comes to what Apple will look like, infers that the company will look very similar to when Gil Amelio and John Scully ran it, prior to Jobs’ return in 1997,” Ciaccia writes. “Assuming this is what he means, Ellison couldn’t be more wrong.”
Ciaccia writes, “CEO Tim Cook is the right man for the top spot at Apple for a multitude of reasons. We all know he’s not the product visionary Jobs was. That was never going to be the case. Cook was brought in by Jobs and Apple’s board for his operational expertise and ability to cut costs for Apple’s supply chain. The real brains behind Apple’s product innovation is Jonny Ive, and as far as I know, Sir Jony isn’t going anywhere for a long time. Cook gets more than his fair share of vitriol from the media for not having released new products since September 2012 (though I guess the Mac Pro doesn’t count)…”
MacDailyNews Take: No, it doesn’t count. Not until it is shipping. This lengthy product drought is either due to unplanned circumstances or Cook has lost his mind. We strongly believe it’s the former.
“…and for not having the pizazz Jobs did. What Ellison and others seem to forget is that while Jobs was taking leave of absences for being sick, Cook running the company.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Larry Ellison is the one who’s lost his mind.
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’s financials are OK, despite a recent trashing, but I fail to understand why, as he has thrown hundreds of millions of dollars around willy-nilly, building lavish estates, castles 100x the Palace of Versailles, buying one of the Hawai’ian Islands. Maybe real estate is just a hobby for Larry, akin to playing checkers with bottle caps. Frugality and restraint seem to be missing from his lexicon. Yeah, that inspires confidence in his pronouncements.
Very few people have the mindset of Steve Jobs (or Tim Cook, for that matter), staying modest upon acquiring excessive wealth. Ordinary persons, who grew up middle class, and eventually achieved / acquired wealth (either by their own doing, or by luck — see Steve Ballmer), consider it a realisation of their dream and a chance to have everything they had ever dreamed of. And most people at some point dream of lavish estates, villas, cars, boats, private islands…
Larry Ellison is an ordinary man. Steve wasn’t, neither is Cook.
You do know that Steve, your ordinary man, was in the process of building a monster house, also a god awful ugly but super expensive boat when he died? Steve also had the same very pricey private jet that Larry has.You also know that Larry was a very close friend of Steves? I doubt you ever met Jobs, let alone shared his friendship. My guess is Larry is in a better position than you to talk about Steve Jobs.
I am not disputing anything that Larry said of Jobs (I’m not sure where you got that).
The Gulfstream belongs to Apple, not Jobs. The company did let him use it at his discretion, though, but it wasn’t at his own request. They did it as a token of appreciation for resurrecting Apple from the verge of bankruptcy.
The house in which Jobs and his family had lived until his death is nothing special; certainly not a castle of Ellison’s proportions. It sits on a regular street corner in Palo Alto, and anyone can still walk by (even knock on door). No walls, no moats, no mile-long driveways. As for the boat, while it is certainly big and extravagant, it is just one thing — one boat. And it is half the size of Ellison’s, by the way. Steve drove standard S-class Mercedes.
Long story short: Steve Jobs, with all his billions, had a modest house, an ordinary (albeit a luxury) car, and was awaiting the completion of his yacht. Larry Ellison has multiple mansions, a private islands, a stable of cars, a fleet of private airplanes, and fifth-largest yacht in the world. All I’m saying is, there is a big difference in how these two men projected their wealth. One flaunts it, the other never did.
Yes I know the house in Palo Alto where Steve lived for years. but I am sure you know that Steve fought the powers to be over tearing down a hundred year old mansion so he could build his own dream house? And he finally got approval and was building his mansion when he died. And the boat? You did not mention that extravagance. Other little things, like Steve bought new Mercedes SL convertibles every six months. That way he never needed license plates in California. He also parked those SLs in the handicapped spaces at Infinity Loop. Diagonal across two spaces at that. The man was feared by waiters in cafes, he was surly and demanding. Employees feared his wrath. Yes oh yes, he would have been Jesus if he only grew a beard. Wake up, the man was like many newly wealthy. He was far from perfect. A genius yes, but hardly anyone you would want as a buddy.
Your tainted view is an extreme and out-dated mythology. I suggest you watch and see how emotional John Lasseter is when accepting the Disney Legend Award for Steve, who he says became his brother. It is true that evidence shows he “did not suffer fools lightly”, but he was also an extemely warm and loyal friend. He was a complex human being.
I agree with you. Most accounts seem to indicate that Jobs was a difficult person (a jerk, an a$$hole). But fundamentally, he was definitely NOT one of the “newly wealthy”, as you imply. He didn’t accummulate those new Mercedeses; he kept replacing them in order to flaunt the license plates law (legally). In his mind he was better and more important than everyone else, and that is how he lived his life. But he NEVER flaunted his wealth for its own purpose.
As for the Jackling house, the plan was to build a smaller house on its site.
My point remains: Larry Ellison, much like many other neuvau riche billionaires of the Silicon Valley (as well as elsewhere) has the urge to flaunt his riches (by buying / building multiple lavish mansions and castles, hoarding ultra-expensive cars and planes, etc). Jobs prefered perfection according to his own criteria. He lived in one house, so he owned only one house (and not multiple). He only drove ONE car. He never even got to build his “perfect” house, or ride in his “perfect” boat. And Tim Cook seems to be very much similar, in not flaunting his wealth.
Larry Ellison is a turd!
Oracle would be better off WITHOUT Larry. 😛
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P.S. Someone can not spell Oracle.
Larry is the NEW Mike Dell!!!
Agree with MDN’s take: long product delays happened in Jobs’ years, too, and it was always due to technical reasons and because of Apple’s perfectionism.
Remember when white iPhone 4 was postponed for nearly a year because the opacity of white glass was just not perfectly right?
It looks like Apple’s product revamping cycle is not optimal for business and share price because Apple wants products to have some specific quality or feature that just could not be done any sooner than it could be done.
While Apple is still able to not care about marketing considerations for the sake of products, this is still Steven Jobs’s Apple.
“Product Drought”. All you drama queens need to soak your heads.
Pile on Ellison all you want but be sure to iCal his commentary. MDN’s first take here is insightful as to the malaise at Cupertino but only hopeful as to the cause. Tim’s management during Steve’s last weeks hadn’t really effected the company yet but the direction toward mediocrity was set into motion and now, here we are.
Why can’t this ” lengthy product drought” have been planned? I think that’s the most likely scenario.
Larry was a neighbor and a good friend of Steve’s. It’s okay to believe that things can’t the same without him. He just got a little carried away.
Has Pixar lost its creativity? Did Ford Motor Company die off? Did Edison’s or Bell’s companies fall on troubled times? I think Larry forgot that the great inventors also know how to create a lasting legacies.
The list of big names whose namesake brands have been squandered is equally long. Westinghouse comes to mind (today being slapped on bottom-of-the-barrel Chinese-made electronics). Or F. W. Woolworth; Braniff International Airlines…
I certainly wouldn’t put the founders of these companies on the list of great inventors. Much closer to Microsoft’s founder.
Well, Westinghouse underwrote Tesla’s work, who is certainly significantly greater than most others. Tesla did not build his own company, though, and today’s Tesla Motors is about the only corporate brand that touches on his genius (or tries to ride on it).
Underwriting is not the same as being run by the inventor. And Tesla’s Elon Musk will go down as a great inventor and his legacy will be long lasting.
Larry indeed knows that his brain was left behind in the internal Apple University with an incredible array of highly observant and competent managers used to thinking different!
Say, Larry, had any new ideas for DBs lately?
product drought for the late adopters? for who? I just got a new macbook pro retina last fall – it is the best computer apple, or any company for that matter, has ever made. My iPhone 4S just came eligible for upgrade – I don’t know many early adopters who have the iPhone 5 due to contract timing in the US – AT&T and Verizon. The 5S is going to be a MASSIVE upgrade cycle for the iPhone faithful.
It took Apple 6 months to make my iPad 3 obsolete… and then another 12 months to come out with a new one? I’m not ready to replace it yet, but if I was in the market, are people even conscious of tablet upgrade cycles or just the brand name, “iPad”. Seems to me that the iPad product cycle is going to be right in time for the holiday quarter – makes a lot more sense to me than a March release. After the Maps debacle, I think that Apple is circling the wagons and making sure its new products reflect the brand.
And one last thing – product drought = clone ripoff drought – the longer Apple holds out the more likely that the copiers miss holiday 2013… this is key. Everyone is just grousing because Apple is the R&D for the industry and they went dark for a while – ha ha, suck it!
Larry Ellison has lost his mind. People with this mindset of new visionary products coming out every month have lost there minds too. There is no magic wand to do this. It took 7 years before the iPhone came out after the iPod was introduced and smartphones were already out in force just not like the iPhone. Blaming Tim Cook seems to be the escape goat for everyone and the media. Tim Cook has been running the company for the last 4 years already. Tim Cook knows what needs to happen and those things will happen but time is the key. Do we really want Apple to rush a new product and have it fail like Microsoft? Really annoying how everyone else seems to think they could run the company better yet who thought of Tim Cook as the best man for the job?
Steve Jobs.
Doesn’t that mean something?
So by your logic Apple is only obligated to release a new product every 7 years? That means IPOD in 2000, IPHONE in 2007 and IPAD in 2014? That is not what happened. Apple released all three products by 2010. That is about a product (revolutionary one) every 3 years and a significant update to existing products every year. Now we only get the latter. In 4 years Apple has not released anything revolutionary, just evolutionary. Ellison is right just on that statement alone. No new products since Steve has left us.
I’m quite happy with my NEW MacBook Air, 12 hours battery life
I strongly suspect this product “drought” is due to Cook pulling the plug on something, or sending a product back to the drawing board.
If that’s the case, it’s the best indication we have the Jobs’ vision and fortitude still permeates the place.
Well I still think that a lot of it is because the company is still in the tail of the SJ era where his singular vision desired as much as possible from as few variations/products as possible though I dare say Cook was not averse to that either considering his own skills. Either way and perhaps coincidentally the company has had to change this past 2 years and going into the future away from that policy. However to change that policy will have taken a minimum of 18 months because of logistics so products as a result would be coming on stream around now. I suspect that the iPad mini was a quickly developed result of a product that we know was in the labs and originally rejected. Other products not being so far down the line would take longer to introduce however. As part of the product mix any existing versions of existing products would equally have to bend to this new policy and be redeveloped to fit thus delaying them too. then of course you have the unexpected technical delays that could slow things down. Well now we will see this next 6 months or so if whatever has happened inside Apple is going to pay off. Until the new year at least, Ellison’s comments are totally mute I feel as the present situation may well be as likely because of SJ than not. Give it 5 years or so and I suspect books will enlighten us even further.
There is truth in what Ellison is saying. Sadly as Steve Jobs is no longer around there isn’t a visionary around to drive Apple. Tim Cook is ok but he is no Steve Jobs. As with all speculation though that is all it is and the next 2 or 3 years will be proof if Apple has still got what it takes.
I think Larry is wrong on this one and I do like and respect the guy, a true gangsta if you will in tech (along with Steve who was the OG ).
I think he’s basically preserving Steve’s legacy with his comments and that’s what a best friend is supposed to do.
Apple of course will never be the same without Steve, but during his 2nd act where he transformed Apple to become the new King of the Hill, I truly believe Steve laid the foundation for Apple to be successful after he passed.
As long as Apple remains focused on making the best products without compromising their core values , they will continue to thrive imo
Not true at all. Innovation is needed not just making the “best products”. Steve created with the team revolutionary devices not just the “best” devices. Steve was the one who could get Scott F and Jony to work together, look what happened the second Steve is gone. The band fell apart.
Apple updated almost its entire product line in September 2012, a move which I think is unprecedented. It makes perfect sense to me that Apple did this in order to allow the entire company to focus on a massive hardware and software overhaul. We know about iOS 7, which is a huge change and undertaking. We don’t know about the hardware yet. Innovation as opposed to evolution takes time and effort. As the video shown at the beginning of WWDC said “If everyone is busy making everything, how can anyone perfect anything?”
If you ask a product & brand repair technician what s/he thinks of the product he’s supposed to repair, you’ll hear all manner of problems with the product. But that’s because s/he’s too close to and only sees the problems. Likewise, Larry was a friend of Steve’s, but that’s really all he saw of Apple. Larry had no reason to visit Apple and meet thousands of passionate engineers and other folks who strive to make the very best product possible. That’s not a knock against Larry. But taking his singular exposure to Apple (Steve) and believing he can speak for the entire company is folly.
If you ask a product & brand repair technician what s/he thinks of the recent Apple product, you’ll hear that it’s unrepairable and cannot be upgraded.
Yes, I know Apple is better built from the start, but some of the repairability decisions Apple makes are downright stupid. All ~$1k+ computers should be relatively easy to repair commodity components.
Larry who?
Ellison is saying what I have been saying all year, Tim Cook is not qualified to run Apple.
He’s made mistake after critical mistake (far too voluminous to recite here).
He is a babysitter, not a CEO, and a chimpanzee could do a better job.
All he does is make “questionable” updates to products pioneered by Steve Jobs.
When you ask him about new products, all you get is a weird smile…kinda creepy!
orandy, glad to hear you do not like Tim Cook. Please hold your breath until they bring Steve Jobs back. 🙂
I am sure even you could do better. Just wave your hand and we would have teleportation. Jump up and down and we would have food duplicators…. Yep it is that easy, just ask Samdung.
And the part about not advertising new stuff that never happens….. er…. I believe that is what microsoft does. Maybe you have the wrong company.
Not about bringing Steve back. We need to find a new Steve. From what I’ve seen of IOS 7 I am not sure Jony Ivy is the guy either. Tim is an operations guy and needs to return to that role. The company needs a visionary not an ops guy. We may not get Steve back but Apple can do a lot better than Tim Cook
Apple is “not” the same company without Steve Jobs period. A lot of what Ellison said is true. Operational excellence does not equate to long term success. What Ellison has said is we have seen each example in Apple of what life is like without Steve and with an “operations” guy running Apple. Whether or not a person “likes” Tim Cook is not relevant with whether Apple has lost its edge. Steve had the whole company built around him. The IPHONE IPAD, IPOD devices Steve had the final say in, not Jony Ivy, not Scott Forstall, not Phil Schiller and certainly not Tim Cook. Tim was just told help me make them at a profit, Jony was simply hardware, Scott Software. Steve Jobs was the one who put it all together. Macdailynews and most fan boy sites want to reinvent history. Steve was a dictator, we all know this. That is really the point Ellison is making. All the post success of Apple is currently happening is what was laid out by Steve. When that dries up will they have something other than the IPHONE 18? Is Apple still innovative? If IOS 7 is “innovative” then we are in some trouble.
Steve’s greatest legacy may be the Apple organization, not just the products he’s had a hand in creating. For someone who claims to be one of Steve’s closest friends, he doesn’t seem to know much about the man.
Larry may be wrong about Apple but he’s right about Larry Page.
I see the product drought at Apple, a result of a much needed shake up at the company after Steve’s untimely demise. With Steve at the helm, prima donnas like Forstall could be tolerated as Steve could out prima donna the best of them and keep them all towing the line. In the vacuum left by Steve’s departure a shake out was bound to develop and we have seen the results of this over the last six months. I sure Forstall saw himself as a future CEO of Apple. People I know who work at Apple have told me that they have spent much of the last couple of years regrouping and healing from the relentless pace that Steve drove Apple over the last 12 years of his life.
One thing that I saw very little comment of at the last WDC keynote was the integrated message that Apple put out. It was a clear well defined message that Apple was here to stay and there was much coming over the next few years (I guess this remains to be seen) that would wow us all over again. Yes, Apple will be different without Steve, but I believe that there is the potential given the values Steve instilled there over the last decade, for it to be equally surprising and successful as it had been with Steve at the helm.
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