Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, and one of the best friends with Steve Jobs, recently spoke about his views about Apple without Steve Jobs. While some of the well known people on the internet think that this is right, I think his view might not be the case.
Before I jump into showcasing my views in this article, I would like to tell you that I have a huge respect for Larry Ellison, and I respect all of his views.
“Well, we already know,” Ellison told Rose. “We saw — we conducted the experiment. I mean, it’s been done. We saw Apple with Steve Jobs. We saw Apple without Steve Jobs. We saw Apple with Steve Jobs. Now, we’re gonna see Apple without Steve Jobs.”
The above was the quote from AllThingsD, which first reported that Larry Ellison said in an interview. Well, firstly, I blindly thought this might be true. But later that evening, after reading the news, my thinking changed.
I think there are three phases that Apple saw, before Steve Jobs resigned as the CEO of the company, and Tim Cook took over. One was the period when Steve Jobs was controlling Apple, the second was Apple when Steve was kicked out of the company and finally, Apple when he came back to the company.
We knew how Apple changed in all these three stages, and now, Apple is in its fourth phase. Initially, when Steve founded the company, he knew what has to be done, and how to make the company profitable. When he was kicked out, the company was not Steve’s company, but it was John Sculley’s company, where it was ONLY about making profits and keep the company running.
During the Sculley’s stage, Steve was watching how Apple was struggling to come back to normal. He definitely knew what went wrong with the company, and what the company needs to do to make it come back to normal. He knew every single thing his baby, Apple, has to do. And once he was called back to Apple, he just implemented all of his plans to get Apple back up in the industry. And he was successful.
Now, there’s Apple without Steve Jobs. Steve clearly knew that his era was coming to an end, and Apple, as a company has to survive without his help. And he, resigning and passing on the position to Tim Cook did NOT happen in a jiffy. Apple without Steve is not something which he did not expect, unlike the 90’s, where he was kicked out of the company unexpectedly.
Once Steve knew that fighting cancer is not going to be helping him stay with the company forever, all that he did was to handpick brilliant and loyal minds, and place all of them in positions which gives them the full freedom to innovate and keep the company up and running for decades. If you look at all the top employees at Apple, they are ones who envisioned, lived and shared the dream Steve Jobs had for the world and for the company.
While many say that Apple has changed since Steve Jobs passed away, I would like to tell you that a company changing the way it works, and employees changing the way they think are two different things. A company is made of employees, and as Steve said in one of the keynotes, the passion and the marriage between Technology and Liberal Arts are clearly in the DNA of the company. I’ve known the company and I’ve got some friends there, and all that I can see is, deep down, Apple is still the same. Doing stuff they’ve always loved to do, and doing stuff they’ve always been doing with passion.
The recent WWDC is probably the best example of how Steve has created a culture, where passion and design comes first. There are not many people on this planet who’s passion just comes out onto their face during such a large event like WWDC, while explaining the company’s product. I was super impressed with the way Phil Schiller demoed the new Mac Pro on stage during WWDC. If you’ve missed it, here’s a video clip from the keynote where Phil Schiller talks about Mac Pro:
Apple, as a company is still strong. And its really really hard for someone to rip off the passion that’s there in the company’s DNA. Steve has clearly made everything possible to make the company successful in the market for decades to come.
After all, Apple is NOT in the hands of a Ex-Executive Vice President of Sales and Support. It’s in the hands of Tim Cook, and many others who Steve Jobs himself crafted. Sorry Larry, but I would call this an era of Apple-With-Steve-Jobs’-Legacy, instead of just Apple without Steve Jobs era.