Steve Jobs last act?
Steve Jobs is ready to retire, period. The writing is on the wall, and WWDC all but confirmed it. The master showman, who always leads the charge with a call to arms for the Mac faithful is tired and aging. The charisma was a fraction of what it once was.
Case and point. Jobs style and so called ‘reality distortion field’ can make his flock of the faithful explode with excitement with the most mundane announcement. I remember watching a crowd go wild when Jobs announced that MacOS X supports color coded folders. Mind you this is an old feature that was lost with the transition between OS9 to OSX. Yes, colored folders, that just illustrated Jobs salesmanship.
Fast forward to WWDC 2006. Steve Jobs, who clearly looked tired, was not the center of his three ring circus. When Jobs takes the stage he does his presentations solo, with brief breaks to have third party developers sing his praises, or to embarrass a CEO with a bunny suit. In this presentation he was flanked with his loyal lieutenants, which I’m sure are fine businessmen but can’t put on a show to save their lives. Take Phil Schiller, looking more and more like a character from Willy Wonka, was responsible to announce the Mac Pro. Apple pulled out the stops with the hardware selection, however the presentation of the ‘fastest Mac Apple has ever produced’ seem boring. There is no enthusiasm.
Cut to Steve Jobs portion of the presentation, you still won’t find the excitement. Agreed, WWDC is a developer’s conference, and the focus should be on hard core technical details of everything Apple but without the typical pomp and circumstance of a typical Jobs stage show WWDC simply felt like any Fortune 500 CEO showcasing, in my opinion, a lackluster feature set to a new ‘revolutionary’ OS.
I’m sure Jobs brought Schiller and Serlet out to see how the crowd would react to his potential successor, but I must say if either of those gentlemen are to fill Jobs shoes as CEO, Apple’s future is dim. Jobs enthusiasm and attention to detail is Apple. With his vision and leadership Jobs transformed Apple from a bloated beleaguered company with confusing computer choices to the sleek, stylish, minimalist company it is today.
Again to highlight how Jobs is losing his touch. With the transition to Intel, Apples riskiest move ever, instead of housing Apple’s new processors in sleek new shell to shed the stigma of the PowerPC processor, Jobs retrofitted the existing designs to accommodate the new processor. I don’t think any Apple enthusiast would agree that the old Steve Jobs would have signed off on it.
What does the future hold without Steve, is Steve ready to retire, disagree with my opinion? I would be interested to hear your reactions. Chime in with a comment.
