Thoughts on Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, stepping down.

Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that Steve Jobs stepped down as CEO of Apple last week. Though he did not discuss the reasons for this move, there is no reason at all to think that it is not directly related to his health.

There are many opinions floating around about how this will effect Apple and the tech industry as a whole. The following is, of course, mine and is nothing more than just that, my opinion. My opinion is, however, based on facts from history and therefore, a short history lesson is required to better understand my position.

In the early days of personal computers, there were a lot of players with a lot of ideas and a lot of operating systems and a lot of hardware to run all of those operating systems. Long story short, ultimately, Microsoft came out on top with Windows and Apple came in (an extremely distant) second place. As market share fell and fell year after year, Steve Jobs was removed from his position at Apple. This would prove to be a very big mistake on Apple's part. Steve may have been difficult to work with, but, it turns out that Steve was the only one at Apple with any vision whatsoever. Apple's market share may have been tiny, but at least it existed. Once Jobs was kicked to the curb, the company went from "doing ok" to "slowly dying a painful death".

Some time after, Microsoft became so big that the US government sought to break up Bill Gate's life work into smaller, competing companies. Gates would have none of that. There are varying versions of this story, many of them outright conflicting each other. As I understand it, Bill Gates purchased a controlling stake in Apple around 1997 and injected a significant amount capital into Apple in order to save what was once Microsoft's only real competition. This got the feds off of Microsoft's case, as this made it so that Microsoft no longer held a monopoly over the operating system market. Part of the deal was that Apple had to hire the only man who ever truly had vision at Apple, Steve Jobs. Again, the internet is full of different stories about this so I can't really PROVE this. It seems though that if you look at any reliable source that this is the general consensus, though with some minor variations.

Once this (or whatever it was) happened, Jobs went to work saving the company he worked so hard to create. The result: the iMac. The iMac was an all-in-one type of PC. The monitor and the guts of the computer were all contained in a single unit. It sold pretty well, mostly within the already established Mac circle. But it was enough to make Apple viable again. Steve wasn't finished, however.

The original "Bondi Blue" iMac G3 was released in 1998.

In 2001, Steve Jobs launched the iPod. This device, coupled with iTunes, would go on to revolutionize the way we listen to music. Later models added photo and video, and it eventually evolved into the very popular iPhone line of mobile phones. The iPhone, in turn, paved the way for other touch screen phones to enter the market, including Google's Android, which would eventual overthrow iPhone as the market leader, much in the same way that the Macintosh paved the way for Windows to eventually become the PC operating system of choice.

Even though it seems that Steve is destined to come in second place no matter what he does, second place isn't a bad place to be. Apple is profitable. In fact, Apple often times proves to be more profitable than companies that are ahead in markets that Apple competes. Apple is doing just fine in second place. Apple fanbois would do well to remember that. 

Recently, as Steve's health has deteriorated, his lessening influence can be seen in many recent product launches. Though Jobs is still the brains behind it, the iPad2 was sort of a "meh" product. Considering how hugely successful the iPad was, it makes since that the iPad2 would be an even bigger hit. It's lighter, it's thinner, the iOS it's running is faster. It's just plain better than the original iPad. And as much as I love Android, I know that the Samsung Galaxy Tab is not the reason for this lack of stellar sales.

 It's possible, even likely, that I have Steve Jobs

to thank for my mobile OS of choice.

Final Cut Pro is Apple's video editing software that was well on it's way to replacing the old industry standard, Avid. The path to becoming the industry standard has a road block in it. It's called Final Cut X, the first version to release since Steve's influence began to dwindle. A quick Google search will reveal, just under the top hit of Apple.com "Final Cut Pro X - Revolutionary Video Editing Software", the universal hatred for this software. I haven't used it myself, and because of the terrible reviews it's getting, I likely never will as I am now looking into Adobe Premier to replace my old Final Cut Pro 4 software.

Around the same time Apple released Mac OSX 10.7 or Lion. In an attempt to marry iOS and Mac OSX, Apple created an unholy union of bad design choice after bad design choice. By trying to make the GUI simpler, they made it confusing, and ultimately made it more complicated and crippling than ever before.

I'm not the most gracious towards Apple, so it may seem like what I'm saying above is just me spreading the hate. Don't take my word for it. Research it yourself. There is very little being good said in the Apple biased tech media industry about any of these products.

And thus ends the history lesson.

When you consider all of that, I fail to see how you can not notice the writing on the wall. History is going to repeat itself. It's already repeating itself. Apple launched the Macintosh to great fanfare in 1984 and was beaten badly by Microsoft's Windows. Steve Jobs was fired and the company almost vanished into nothing more than a memory. Jobs comes back, reinvigorates his company, and launches the iPhone, by far their most successful product, to even bigger fanfare than the Macintosh, only to be beaten badly by Google's Android. Once again, Steve is stepping down (for vastly different reasons than his previous exit), and I'm expected to believe that the cycle is going to end there? I'm supposed to ignore the other lessons of the past and think that Apple will still be the power house that it is now 5 years from now?

Sorry, but my money is on Apple continuing down the same path. Steve is the brains, the innovator, the very life blood of Apple. Thanks to a ridiculous amount of cash on hand, Apple isn't going anywhere anytime soon. It might not be 5 years from now. It might not be 10 years from now. But it will happen and it's already happening. And I'll be around to say "I told you so" when it does.

Jobs' influence can be felt across the tech world. Without Macintosh, there might not have been Windows. Without iPod, there might not have been Zune. Without iPhone, there might not have been Android. Without iPad, there certainly would not be Galaxy Tab. During Apple's dark period, there was very little innovation in the tech world. If I'm honest with myself, there still wouldn't be without Steve Jobs' hand in everything. Steve Jobs forces Microsoft to be better. Steve Jobs forces Google to be better. The competition he brings has resulted in many products that I wonder how I got along without.


I'm sad to him go and I wish him well. The world changed for the better because of him. He will be sorely missed, even by this Microsoft following, Google loving, Apple hating tech enthusiast from Memphis, TN.