跳至主要内容

Apple's One-Dollar-a-Year Man, By Steve Jobs, 2000

(FORTUNE Magazine) – Now that Steve Jobs has showed his hand on Apple's Internet and system software strategies and dropped the "interim" from his title, other questions loom. He's always denied it, but isn't it true that his old company, Next, did wind up taking over Apple? Will there ever be an encore to the 15-year-old Macintosh? Short of that, does Apple have any plans to jump into the "Internet appliance" fray? Will Apple ever build computers for business people again? And what, pray tell, does Steve think of all these young Internet zillionaires? Let's ask.

Practically every technology that your old company, Next, possessed when Apple acquired it in 1997 is now being used by Apple in some strategic way. This must seem like sweet vindication. 

The thing about Next was that we produced something that was truly brilliant for an audience that our heart really wasn't into selling to--namely, the enterprise.

I suppose if you were writing a book, this would be a great plot line, because the whole thing circles back. All of a sudden, it's coming out for the market that we would've liked to create it for in the first place--i.e., consumers. So it's a good ending.

So now you're at the beginning of something else. How did Apple's Internet services come together? It seems like it happened quickly.

We entered 1999 with a feeling of having had tremendous success in 1998, what with the introduction of the iMac and all. And I was getting suggestions from people inside and outside Apple that we needed to think about starting an ISP [Internet service provider] business, just like Compaq and Gateway and Dell.

I was dragging my feet because it just didn't feel right. The more I thought about it, the more I saw that you can separate services from Internet access, and use those unique services to create incredible competitive differentiation, regardless of who provides the access. We didn't have to be an access provider ourselves to get most of the benefits.

Remember, we have a lot of market power in that we own an extremely popular Internet-access device. If you look at most ISPs, their No. 1 expense by a mile is customer acquisition. Well, we're acquiring new customers all the time; one third of all iMac customers are first-time computer owners. We can help those hundreds of thousands of newbies--who also happen to have incredible demographics--find an ISP. So we've made Earthlink our exclusive ISP; we'll get paid a bounty and they'll get new customers.

I'd say the big light bulb on services came on about nine months ago. The big light bulb being: "Wait a minute. We own a major operating system. Why don't we build some services that work uniquely with it to give us unfair competitive advantage?" Everything fell into place this fall. Our secret weapon to be able to build these services so quickly is OS X and the set of programmers' development tools that goes with it, WebObjects. We really do eat our own dog food around here.

Given that you're emphasizing Mac OS X and iTools, and not even introducing new hardware at a time of year when you customarily do, should Apple's new slogan be something like "It's the software, stupid"?

We're still heavily into the box. We love the box. We have amazing computers today, and amazing hardware in the pipeline. I still spend a lot of my time working on new computers, and it will always be a primal thing for Apple. But the user experience is what we care about most, and we're expanding that experience beyond the box by making better use of the Internet. The user experience now entails four things: the hardware, the operating system, the applications, and the Net. We want to do all four uniquely well for our customers.

You seem more focused than ever on the consumer market. Why do you think it holds so much promise?

A lot of people can't get past the fact that we're not going after the enterprise market. But that's like saying, "How can the Gap be successful not making suits?" Well, we don't make wingtips here either.

Then again, big companies are beginning to buy a lot from us simply because they like our jellybeans. If you want to have your employee up and on your intranet in seven minutes and if you want to have lower maintenance costs than you would running Windows, iMacs are great. But we make zero effort to sell to big companies.

We think that a lot more big businesses will eventually come back to us, because FORTUNE 500 companies use a lot of consumer products. If you want a minivan for your corporation, you don't have one custom made; you go to the Chrysler dealer and buy one. They make great minivans, even though they don't make them for Corporate America. Even so, a lot of big companies--including ours--buy them.

It's really hard to serve multiple masters--different sets of customers with completely different points of view, requirements, and ways of approaching computing. I think Microsoft is experiencing this.

I've always believed that the biggest market for PCs is consumers. The Mac was originally intended to be a consumer PC. One of the big arguments I had with [former Apple CEO] John Sculley was that the Mac was designed to sell for $1,000. Yes, we overshot a little and it cost too much to make to sell for that, but even so, I thought it should have sold for between $1,500 and $1,799. John wanted to bump it up to $2,499. His vision was to keep on going all the way up and have Macs selling for $5,000 or $10,000. After I left, that's exactly what Apple did.

By some measures, it worked. Apple made a fortune, although not as much as we're making today. What they didn't understand was that they had thrown away one of the greatest chances they'd ever get to win market share. They went for $1 billion in extra profits over four or five years when what they really should have done was tell everybody they would make 'normal' profits and go for market share.

Just about every other computer maker is exploring new digital devices that can tap into the Internet, but you're still focused on personal computers. Why?

Everyone's talking about "information appliances" and other "post-PC" devices. So far, there have only been two or three that have succeeded--the Palm and game machines like the Sony PlayStation and possibly the cell phone. None of the others have succeeded. Why is that?

Well, if you look at the Internet, you can see it is absolutely optimized for PCs. All the pages are laid out to be viewed on a PC. That's one reason WebTV--a device that displays Websites on a normal TV--has failed. Beyond that, the Web is rich with things like Java and QuickTime and RealPlayer and MP3 sound files. By the time you build a device that [can handle those things], you've got something that is like a PC without the disk drives and is only about $50 cheaper than a PC or an iMac.

Then you ask your user if they care about storing anything. Do you care about storing MP3 files, or would you rather wait a few minutes to download them every time you want to hear them? Do you care about storing the photos you take with your digital camera? The answer is almost always yes. It's not that expensive to add a disk drive to let you do these things, and once you do, you're back to a PC. The only way to make it any cheaper is to start giving up things.

Apple is very much weighted toward the consumer-electronics space right now, because we're selling to a lot of consumers and we want to help them get more benefits from hooking up various things to computers and to each other. The perfect example is the digital camcorder and the iMac. It's amazing what you can do when you plug these things together--we call it iMovies.

I won't lie, we're working on other digital devices like everybody else. But I'm not convinced that customers won't pay a little bit more for a device that's not going to be obsolete in a year and that's going to give them the full Internet experience, not an "Internet Jr." experience.

What has always distinguished the products of the companies you've led is the design aesthetic. Is your obsession with design an inborn instinct or what?

We don't have good language to talk about this kind of thing. In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer. It's interior decorating. It's the fabric of the curtains and the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service. The iMac is not just the color or translucence or the shape of the shell. The essence of the iMac is to be the finest possible consumer computer in which each element plays together.

On our latest iMac, I was adamant that we get rid of the fan, because it is much more pleasant to work on a computer that doesn't drone all the time. That was not just "Steve's decision" to pull out the fan; it required an enormous engineering effort to figure out how to manage power better and do a better job of thermal conduction through the machine. That is the furthest thing from veneer. It was at the core of the product the day we started.

This is what customers pay us for--to sweat all these details so it's easy and pleasant for them to use our computers. We're supposed to be really good at this. That doesn't mean we don't listen to customers, but it's hard for them to tell you what they want when they've never seen anything remotely like it. Take desktop video editing. I never got one request from someone who wanted to edit movies on his computer. Yet now that people see it, they say, "Oh my God, that's great!"

I don't see enough innovation like that in our industry. My position coming back to Apple was that our industry was in a coma. It reminded me of Detroit in the '70s, when American cars were boats on wheels. That's why we have a really good chance to be a serious player again.

You and Apple have been responsible for popularizing the personal computer. What will be the next big breakthrough?

People are always asking, "What will be the next Macintosh?" My answer still is "I don't know and I don't care." Everybody at Apple has been working really hard the last two and a half years to reinvent this company. We've made tremendous progress. My goal has been to get Apple healthy enough so that if we do figure out the next big thing, we can seize the moment. Getting a company healthy doesn't happen overnight. You have to rebuild some organizations, clean up others that don't make sense, and build up new engineering capabilities.

Another priority was to make Apple more entrepreneurial and startup-like. So we immediately reorganized, drastically narrowed the product line, and changed compensation for senior managers so they get a lot of stock but no cash bonuses. The upshot is that the place feels more like a young company.

We're trying to use the swiftness and creativity in a younger-style company, and yet bring to bear the tremendous resources of a company the size of Apple to do large projects that you could never handle at a startup. A startup could never do the new iMac. Literally 2,000 people worked on it. A startup could never do Mac OS X. It's not easy at a big company either, but Apple now has the management and systems in place to get things like that done. I can't emphasize how rare that is. That's what makes Sony and Disney so special.

Now when we see new things or opportunities, we can seize them. In fact, we have already seized a few, like desktop movies, wireless networking, and iTools. A creative period like this lasts only maybe a decade, but it can be a golden decade if we manage it properly.

You've finally done away with the word "interim" in your title. But you still only let Apple pay you $1 a year. Why don't you take any salary or stock yet?

The board has made several incredibly generous offers. I have turned them all down for a few reasons. For the first year I did not want the shareholders and employees of Pixar to think their CEO was going on a camping trip over to Apple never to return. After two and a half years, I think that the management teams at Pixar and at Apple have demonstrated that we can handle this situation. That's why I dropped the "interim" from my title. I'm still called iCEO, though, because I think it's cool.

Bottom line is, I didn't return to Apple to make a fortune. I've been very lucky in my life and already have one. When I was 25, my net worth was $100 million or so. I decided then that I wasn't going to let it ruin my life. There's no way you could ever spend it all, and I don't view wealth as something that validates my intelligence. I just wanted to see if we could work together to turn this thing around when the company was literally on the verge of bankruptcy. The decision to go without pay has served me well.

Do you ever look around and think that a younger generation is driving this industry now?

I had dinner in Seattle at Bill Gates' house a couple of weeks ago. We were both remarking how at one time we were the youngest guys in this business, and now we're the graybeards.

When I got started I was 20 or 21, and my role models were the semiconductor guys like Robert Noyce and Andy Grove of Intel, and of course Bill Hewlett and David Packard. They were out not so much to make money as to change the world and to build companies that could keep growing and changing. They left incredible legacies.

It's hard to tell with these Internet startups if they're really interested in building companies or if they're just interested in the money. I can tell you, though: If they don't really want to build a company, they won't luck into it. That's because it's so hard that if you don't have a passion, you'll give up. There were times in the first two years when we could have given up and sold Apple, and it probably would've died.

But then, the rewarding thing isn't merely to start a company or to take it public. It's like when you're a parent. Although the birth experience is a miracle, what's truly rewarding is living with your child and helping him grow up.

The problem with the Internet startup craze isn't that too many people are starting companies; it's that too many people aren't sticking with it. That's somewhat understandable, because there are many moments that are filled with despair and agony, when you have to fire people and cancel things and deal with very difficult situations. That's when you find out who you are and what your values are.

So when these people sell out, even though they get fabulously rich, they're gypping themselves out of one of the potentially most rewarding experiences of their unfolding lives. Without it, they may never know their values or how to keep their newfound wealth in perspective.

 

 

 

Popular posts from 产品随想的博客

Interview at the All Things Digital D5 Conference, Steve and Bill Gates spoke with journalists Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg onstage in May 2007.

Kara Swisher: The first question I was interested in asking is what you think each has contributed to the computer and technology industry— starting with you, Steve, for Bill, and vice versa. Steve Jobs: Well, Bill built the first software company in the industry. And I think he built the first software company before anybody really in our industry knew what a software company was, except for these guys. And that was huge. That was really huge. And the business model that they ended up pursuing turned out to be the one that worked really well for the industry. I think the biggest thing was, Bill was really focused on software before almost anybody else had a clue that it was really the software that— KS: Was important? SJ: That’s what I see. I mean, a lot of other things you could say, but that’s the high-order bit. And I think building a company’s really hard, and it requires your greatest persuasive abilities to hire the best ...

产品随想 | 周刊 第43期:历史上的今天

Products Huberman Lab   https://hubermanlab.com/ 一款聚焦于健康的播客 今日热榜   https://tophub.today/ 聚合展示,国内各热门榜单,对跟进热点非常有帮助,热点运营的好帮手 SketchyBar   https://github.com/FelixKratz/SketchyBar A highly customizable macOS status bar replacement Mac菜单栏定制 自定义程度很高,看作者展示的案例,暂时没想出这样的好处(不过应用本身的编辑,确实也没啥意义)生命在于折腾吧! Thanks-Mirror   https://github.com/eryajf/Thanks-Mirror 整理记录各个包管理器,系统镜像,以及常用软件的好用镜像,Thanks Mirror。 Musicn   https://github.com/zonemeen/musicn 一个下载高品质音乐的命令行工具,音乐来源: 咪咕 Planet Minecraft A creative Minecraft community fansite sharing maps, minecraft skins, resource packs, servers, mods, and more. 里面有很多动人的故事 可能是世界上最大的Minecraft社区,从2010年至今 The Uncensored Library   https://www.uncensoredlibrary.com/en blockworks   https://www.blockworks.uk/ "Distinctive maps for Minecraft that have educated players and risen to the level of art" 游戏也可以让人有更高的实现,而不仅仅是沉迷其中,国外游戏厂商比我们做的好太多 Minecraft_Memory_Bypass_GUI   https://github.com/xingchuanzhen/Minecraft_Memory_Bypass_GUI 绕过Minecraft...

巴菲特致股东信-1976年

 笔记: 为什么选择轻资产行业:当竞争疯狂时,不会强迫加入降价大战 最终选择了费雪的思想,选择能理解的优秀企业,以合理的价格买入并长期拥有 翻译: 雪球:https://xueqiu.com/6217262310/131440258 备份:https://archive.ph/XLK0S 原文: To the Stockholders of Berkshire Hathaway Inc, After two dismal years, operating results in 1976 improved significantly. Last year we said the degree of progress in insurance underwriting would determine whether our gain in earnings would be "moderate" or "major." As it turned out, earnings exceeded even the high end of our expectations. In large part, this was due to the outstanding efforts of Phil Liesche's managerial group at National Indemnity Company. In dollar terms, operating earnings came to $16,073,000, or $16.47 per share. While this is a record figure, we consider return on shareholders' equity to be a much more significant yardstick of economic performance. Here our result was 17.3%, moderately above our long-term average and even further above the average o...

Commencement Address at Stanford University--“Stay hungry. Stay foolish.”

I am honored to be with you today for your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. Truth be told— I never graduated from college. This is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots. I dropped out of Reed College after the first six months but then stayed around as a drop-in for another eighteen months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting...

产品随想 | 周刊 第90期:史家之绝唱,无韵之离骚

Why AI Will Save the World   https://a16z.com/2023/06/06/ai-will-save-the-world/ Marc Andreessen的雄文,十分有說服力,邏輯清晰 辯證了現今AI監管拋出的5個可能的AI問題 讀的過程中,腦海裏浮現的都是編程隨想那篇文章 为什么马克思是错的?——全面批判马列主义的知名著作导读   https://program-think.blogspot.com/2018/09/Book-Review-The-Errors-of-Marxism-Leninism.html 兩者的思維鏈條、敘事方式,非常相似 人民聖殿教   https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hk/人民圣殿教?useskin=vector 瓊斯自稱是神的化身,幾千年前轉世為釋迦牟尼,創建了佛教;後來又轉世為耶穌基督,創建了基督教;之後短期化身轉世為巴孛,建立巴哈伊信仰;最後轉世為列寧,將社會主義發揚光大。 邪教徒聲稱自己轉世成了列寧,這說明了什麼? Apple Vision   https://stratechery.com/2023/apple-vision Omnivore   https://github.com/omnivore-app/omnivore Omnivore is a complete, open source read-it-later solution for people who like reading. How the YouTube Algorithm Works in 2023: The Complete Guide   https://blog.hootsuite.com/how-the-youtube-algorithm-works/#A_brief_history_of_the_YouTube_algorithm 外人眼中的YouTube推薦算法變遷 Histography   https://histography.io/ “Histography" is interactive timeline that spans across 14 billion years of history, f...

巴菲特致股东信-1973年

 笔记: 在上一年度预测的今年竞争加剧导致利润下滑,真的发生了 翻译Link: 雪球:https://xueqiu.com/6217262310/131257618 备份:https://archive.ph/KIfdT 原文: To the Stockholders of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.: Our financial results for 1973 were satisfactory, with operating earnings of $11,930,592, producing a return of 17.4% on beginning stockholders' equity. Although operating earnings improved from $11.43 to $12.18 per share, earnings on equity decreased from the 19.8% of 1972. This decline occurred because the gain in earnings was not commensurate with the increase in shareholders' investment. We had forecast in last year's report that such a decline was likely. Unfortunately, our forecast proved to be correct. Our textile, banking, and most insurance operations had good years, but certain segments of the insurance business turned in poor results. Overall, our insurance business continues to be a most attractive area in which to employ capital. Management'...

巴菲特致股东信-1975年

 笔记: 华盛顿邮报已成为伯克希尔第一重仓股 翻译: 雪球:https://xueqiu.com/6217262310/131409324 备份:https://archive.ph/4hgK3 原文: To the Stockholders of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.: Last year, when discussing the prospects for 1975, we stated “the outlook for 1975 is not encouraging.” This forecast proved to be distressingly accurate. Our operating earnings for 1975 were $6,713,592, or $6.85 per share, producing a return on beginning shareholders ’ equity of 7.6%. This is the lowest return on equity experienced since 1967. Furthermore, as explained later in this letter, a large segment of these earnings resulted from Federal income tax refunds which will not be available to assist performance in 1976. On balance, however, current trends indicate a somewhat brighter 1976. Operations and prospects will be discussed in greater detail below, under specific industry titles. Our expectation is that significantly better results in textiles, earnings added from recent acquisitio...

犀流研习班第十期001-2讲听课笔记

一. 杂谈   1. Max  逼真的效果图和视频   2. SU  显示模式,费力可以作出好看的效果图   3. Maya  支持Nurbs,但不快捷,对CAD导出也不方便

产品随想 | 周刊 第69期:Do not go gentle into that good night

Products Windows Apps That Amaze Us   https://amazing-apps.gitbook.io/windows-apps-that-amaze-us/ 令人精细的Windows App 文物出版社   https://book.douban.com/press/2456/ 这是一个宝藏出版社,出品书籍质量非常高,大开眼界 blind   https://www.teamblind.com/ 老外的匿名职场社交工具,挺有意思,看看硅谷的meme 中国科学技术大学测速网站   https://test.ustc.edu.cn/ 看着还不错,挺靠谱的 底层代码是LibreSpeed   https://github.com/librespeed/speedtest 能不能好好说话?   https://github.com/itorr/nbnhhsh 也是我的一个痛点 Tree Style Tab (aka TST)   https://github.com/piroor/treestyletab 一个超强的浏览器扩展插件,树状呈现浏览器标签 Failory Pitch Decks   https://www.failory.com/pitch-deck 超级多的融资计划投资板,Pitch Book AutoCut   https://github.com/mli/autocut 用文本编辑器剪视频 全网漫游指南   https://tagly.notion.site/tagly/a333efd8c3e54e12b123acd541e8d3e6 数字时代的指引,希望他们成功 IT eBooks   https://it-ebooks.info/ IT书籍下载 ToastFish   https://github.com/Uahh/ToastFish 一个利用摸鱼时间背单词的软件。 利用Win10通知栏,出现、背单词 Ideas 沈向洋:IDEA 如何找到创新的「甜区」   https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/OlI5VUxQKU_ijWZClQCG0Q AIGC How Did Nor...

产品随想 | 周刊 第127期:晨光只开一刻钟,但比千年松,并无甚不同

Cherry Studio   https://github.com/CherryHQ/cherry-studio Cherry Studio is a desktop client that supports for multiple LLM providers. Support deepseek-r1 Aalto Repository beta   https://repo.aalto.fi/ Images, sounds and videos from Aalto University 这个系列,价值极高 Nokia Design Archive   https://nokiadesignarchive.aalto.fi/ 芬兰这个国家很了不起 对话影石刘靖康:两代未出现划时代的产品,就会沦为平庸的品牌   https://www.geekpark.net/news/308996 还挺喜欢这个创始人的,有一种海盗的内涵 从哈佛、明星创业者到酷家乐副总裁,苏奇的传奇   https://app.modaiyun.com/mdy/article/3FO4K4W0M259 WHO关于猫狗咬伤、抓伤的处理建议 动物咬伤: https://www.who.int/zh/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/animal-bites 狂犬病: https://www.who.int/zh/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/rabies 关于狂犬病的10个事实: https://www.who.int/zh/news-room/facts-in-pictures/detail/rabies INDIGO 新年直播(2025)   https://www.youtube.com/live/ZIgPvSDGAfY 对2024年AI发展的回顾部分特别好 Artab   https://github.com/get-artab/artab Get Inspired by the World's Greatest Artworks Every Time You Open a New Tab. Extension Available for Chrome, Edge, and...