I don’t claim to be a savant. When I wrote yesterdays blog on how eerily similar the battle is between Apple and Google to the one a decade prior with Microsoft, I had no idea Steve Jobs was retiring as CEO. I have seen a pile of articles come out on the impact of Steve Jobs to Apple and I think most miss the mark.

Steve Jobs was not the person who thought up the technologies which differentiated Apple from the rest of the pack. In fact Apple was not the first to create the PC (Mac), mp3 player (iPod), smartphone (iPhone) or tablet (iPad). If Steve Jobs didn’t create these technologies then we need to ask a different question entirely to understand Jobs relevance in the tech industry.

What made Steve Jobs a really outstanding leader of his company was the two things he always focused on. He always asked himself if the technology he was going to embrace and extend was a game changer – independent of what the price tag would be for any product. He didn’t care that iPods/iPads/iPhones would have radically lower pricing and therefore lower profit dollars per unit. Instead he focused on what the impact would be in integrating those technologies into his business model and strategy.

This is no small accomplishment. The bean counters scream when a technology which is cheaper is introduced. The product managers of the older platforms scream that the new technology will eat into their sales volumes. Of course both of these concerns are absolutely true. But if you don’t go into business against yourself – you can be sure that another competitor will. External competitive pressures are far worse than loud and emotional arguments within your own company.

Steering his company through these eat your babies types of product launches and integrations was where Jobs was better than any other in the microprocessor era. Bar none. These are very difficult and he did it multiple times. This was the first great skill Mr Jobs brought to Apple.

Steve Jobs second great skill was that anything which was brought out had to be insanely great in terms of meeting the end users experience. There is a reason why people say Macs are better than PCs. If you ever upgraded your computers operating system you saw how well integrated his products were. My daughter upgraded her OS without any help or prior experience on her Mac. If you have ever done this on a PC you know how insanely difficult this is comparatively.

The design and integration are huge factors which Jobs brought to bear and beat the pants off of the competition. He never assumed this was business as usual. He always pushed for ease of use and simplicity of design. He won with this approach again and again.

As I wrote in yesterday’s blog – the world has learned a thing or two from Jobs and therefore the competition which Google brings to bear is not trivial for Apple. Whether Steve Jobs had remained with Apple or not – Apple and Google are going to provide a tremendous show for the battle in Cloud based products for end users. They are both totally focused on the end users experience and this is a huge differentiator for both companies as they are now recognized for this as their core brand value.

Google and Apple's brand value of in being totally focused on the end user experience actually has created barrier to entry for competitors in the tech marketplace. What I personally find more interesting is how Apple and Google will very likely rewrite the marketing text books over the next decade in waging this type of competition.

To get back on point – Steve Jobs wasn’t great because he was an engineer, or a visionary who invented the new technologies. Rather he extended the value of interesting technologies and products through design and integration. He recognized what could be done where others just saw a music playre or cell phone. In this he was King and I for one think we should recognize him for his very real accomplishments. I wish him well in future. All the best wishes for you Steve.           

I am not a Steve Jobs hater. Having worked my entire career in the big company world – believe me I get just how incredibly difficult it is to do anything new. People use process and what has been done previously as shields for not having to skate out onto the ice of invention. As well many sincerely worry that they won’t be able to deliver something on a projected timetable when they are really doing something new. They play it safe instead. I get how tough it is to innovate in big company world.

I have respect for Jobs for having done it not once but twice! He has mad skills as they say. Having just finished the book on Google “In the Plex,” I am struck that Jobs now faces the virtually the same dilemma he faced when he battled and lost to Microsoft. Google, having just purchased Motorola, is now going to compete with Apple on smartphones head up.

What is ironic for me is not the competition however. It is the fact that in both cases Jobs was blindsided as to who the “real” competitors were. Jobs thought he was battling IBM in the personal computers wars when he awoke to the realization that the primary threat was Microsoft and not Big Blue. That realization was almost to late for Apple.

Jobs had allowed Gates and Microsoft personnel into Apple’s development plans when he realized that Microsoft was using that information to compete against his company. He even took the famous trip to Xerox PARC’s development labs with Gates. Xerox PARC invented many of the core inventions which drove the PC era in computing. As those turn of events cost him control of Apple as well as a near death experience for Apple as a company, I would have thought that he would have never ever allowed any company to get close to Apple development plans again - EVER.

Instead Jobs thought Google was a Search company focused on advertisement revenue only and therefore had their CEO sit on his board. The board reviewed all the major strategic initiatives – Google was able to watch as Apple laid out the roadmap for the future in smartphones! When he realized a year or so ago that Google would launch a real smartphone – he freaked out – again!

What is even more interesting as a parallel here is that Google presents the exact same type of competition which Microsoft presented back in the 1990s. Apple is the bling to the competitive Spartan products. Microsoft went to market as the high volume cheaper competitor just as Google is working in the marketplace leveraging machine automation to radically reduce pricing. It is the same high volume and inexpensive competition dynamic repeating itself.

Today smartphones are expensive but as they become the standard computer which will displace 95% of all other computing devices - the volumes shipped will rock the pricing. In other words – smartphones will create the same dynamic over again. If something almost kills me – I tend to sift through the debris to make sure that doesn’t happen again. Clearly with Jobs this is not the case. Rather remarkable.

I don’t believe this will play out the same way as before however. This time Apple has a 2^nd major stream of revenue from iPods and iTunes which will prevent anything like the previous near death experience. Microsoft not only funded Apple to stay alive back then but due to the competitive vacuum Microsoft completely lost their way and developed products with increasing bloatware.

Microsoft had no culture in leadership of function or bling. Microsoft has descended from a market leader into the Avis of cutting edge technology companies. They have given up on innovating – they don’t even try to paint their products as new anymore. They just extend their dying Windows platform into new products in order to maintain some marketshare instead.

Google on the other hand is a model which I never thought could succeed. Better engineered and Spartan lead products devoid of bling I had always considered to be the recipe for disaster. It was the Betamax vs VHS competitive model which always leads to cheaper product winning (VHS).

Google seams to understand this and refuses to bling their products. From their revenue engine of advertising they realize that both speed and price is the winning combination in the race for Cloud based products and solutions. Therefore I doubt that Google will fall into the same Microsoft trap.

Apple has already demonstrated they won’t stand pat in having opened the iPhone to Verizon. They will not Google surround them in volume as they had with Microsoft previously. Truthfully I think this is better for not only Google and Apple’s long term health but also for us – the end consumers of their products. When there is zero competition reducing innovation and increasing price is just not a feasible strategy.

I had always thought the single winner takes all model to be a stupid one. I always hated visiting the winner de jure as the egos were nauseating. The business decisions were even worse. Not only did it produce monopolies but it also strangled innovation and most importantly value. I am hoping that both companies stay on their game and that we get to witness one of the great ping pong matches in tech history. One can only hope!    

In the event that someone was in doubt as to the future of the Smartphone marketplace, the link below attaches to an article which shows that the Apple and Motorola and HTC (Android OS) have taken the lead in marketshare. RIM and Nokia are now nosediving. 

The Smartphone Salad Days Are Over

As a follow up - I have been using Windows 7 on my new Sony Vaio now for a month plus and it is performing exactly as expected. I get system crashes on a PC that I have almost no software on beyond the original load that it shipped with. Whatever the marketing was for Windows 7 - it is pretty clear that it was just hype as I can't be more underwehlemd with this OS.

I purchased the Sony Vaio as my last PC. It is the size of a Netbook and I use it to manage what is still to difficult for Tablets and Smartphones. I realize they will certainly catch up but I am thinking I am still 18-24 months away from being able to power off my last PC. 

I loaded IBM's free open source office suite onto the little Vaio. I was pleased to find that it was not only free but also could open spreadsheets, presentations and word processing documents from Microsoft. It can also save a document you created in its native open source format in Microsoft formats as well. So you can receive a Microsoft office document or send one without having to send another behomth check to Redmond. Very pleased to say the least!

IBM Lotus Symphony Office Suite