Re: Apple and the Holy War

["Ernest" <ernestls@home.com>]

>I'm no expert here, but I see events a little different. IMO Jobs is an
>emotional guy. He runs with a lot of emotional fire. Apple II wounded his
>heart so he hates Apple Inc. & Apple 2 like a jilted lover. He runs the Mac
>group in an emotional way, e.g. the pirate_flag_of_rebellion, or them vs
us.
>Once he saw the Xerox GUI it flipped the switch on. That, and his wounded
>heart, were powerful motivators.

It's precisely because he's so emotionally out of control that he's had so
much success, and so much failure. I don't know if the guy should be beaten,
or applauded but I think that most would agree that from a business stand
point, he needs to be "handled." He can obviously be an asset to a company
that he believes in but I wouldn't want him to run my company. Personally, I
think that the guy is insane -like a stark raving genius who needs to be
harnessed by a short lease. Lock the guy in a padded room, record what he
says but don't let him get near the employees. I'm really glad that he's not
a racist, or a neo-nazi, because his charisma and power of influence would
be very dangerous if he felt passionate about the wrong kind of "idea." It's
us against them, only much more serious.

How was his heart broken by the Apple II? I thought that it was a success. I
thought that he was canned because he drove the company in the wrong
direction with his personal vendetta against his enemies, like DQ tilting
his windmills -"eek! Monsters everywhere!", or the crazy Navy Seal in the
Abyss -"...gonna have to take steps..." I can really imagine Steve curled up
in the corner of his study, rain pounding on the windows late at night,
rubbing a pistol against his sweaty face while his eyes dark back and forth,
and mumbling paranoid gibberish about how he's going to have to take steps
because his enemies are everywhere -about how the Lisa was a failure because
his employees didn't "believe" in her like he did.


>> Instead, Jobs forced the design of several impractical
>> machines (Lisa, Apple III, and the original Macintosh)
>> and tried to bend the public to his vision.

I think that the iMAC systems were brilliant, especially for new users.
Simple, functional, and beautiful -like a work of art. I can never walk by
one without stopping to admire it. I didn't buy one but it was a hot, hot
selling machine, and probably still is.

>Another thing ... that stupid board they had which kept hiring all those
>CEOs .. those people should have been gone long ago, they weren't qualified
>to guide Apple. Among other blunders, that stupid board basically did
little
>to the Apple 68xxx line, it just plodded along as other caught up. The
>transition to the PPC was pretty neat though.

I was working as a database administrator, using a Quadra 900 when the Power
PC came out. It was like a dream come true for me (at the time) but I wasn't
able to afford the stiff price, so I ended up buying a 486-66 because it was
in my budget. I wasn't sorry -that was when DOOM came out, and I was really
in heaven then.
>
>Anyway, fun stuff to discuss.  Apple is an interesting company. We are
>fortunate to have them around.

I'm glad that Apple is still around but I don't really get to excited about
their new products. I love my old A2E but I'm sure that my next few systems
will continue to be basic Wintel machines. Who knows after that. I really
hope that Linux continues to develope into a knockout OS, and doesn't become
politicized like Windows or MAC-OS. It may be to late for that but I'm
learning Linux adminstration anyway because I think that it's where the
future is at. If Microsoft is broken up, it would make good business sense
to port Office to the Linux OS, and if that happens, then the future of
Linux is set, and if MS is smart and non-emotional about it, the OS division
would legitimize Linux by offering MS Linux. There was an MS Xenix at one
time but the IBM-PC squashed that out of exsistence with a weak little OS
called PCDOS. What was the world thinking?