Steve Bets the Company
by Mitch Stone, the Accidental Expert
SAN FRANCISCO. It's tough times all around in the computer business. Sputtering PC sales have hit all of the big computer-makers, leaving them looking nervously beyond the desktop for the next big thing.
Will it be hand-held devices? Set-top boxes? Internet appliances? Nobody knows for sure -- but the PC industry as we knew it is dead, some say.
But don't tell that to Apple CEO Steve Jobs.
In this high stakes game, Steve Jobs is proving to be one of its toughest players. And in his nearly two-hour keynote address to the MacWorld Expo in San Francisco last week, he showed, once again, that he plays for keeps.
The luster may be off Apple's iMac, but pessimism isn't in the Jobs vocabulary, even though his company is about to report its first unprofitable quarter since he took over as CEO three years ago. No, when the going gets this tough, Jobs pushes all of his chips forward.
He bets the company.
Betting the company is what brought the world the iMac, and filled the shops with a slew of brightly-hued translucent imitators. Whatever we might think of this trend, Apple set it.
So, Jobs now says, the PC industry isn't dying -- it's evolving.
To hear Steve Jobs explain it, we stand not at the end of an era, but at the dawn of what he calls "the third golden age" of the personal computer. The first golden age, spanning the years 1980 to 1994, was "the age of productivity," when we learned to process our words and spread our sheets.
The second, from 1995 to 2000 was the "age of the Internet." During these years, the PC was all about connecting us to one another.
Those of us who are still trying to grasp the implications of the first two golden ages may be distressed to learn that the third is already upon us. And if Jobs' theory plays out, it will be remembered as "the age of digital lifestyle."
Peering into the mists of the future, Jobs conjures up a vision of the cell phones, DVDs, digital camcorders, Palm Pilots, CDs, MP3 players, and all of those other devices that increasingly populate our lives, converging. Converging on the personal computer. Converging on the Macintosh.
Jobs is convinced that all of these devices are too small, and too functionally limited, to live entirely on their own. The PC will serve as what he calls the "digital hub of our emerging digital lifestyle."
In partial fulfillment of this vision, Jobs introduced three new Apple software products at MacWorld.
The first is a "digital jukebox" application for storing music and creating custom CDs. This slick software, called iTunes, is modeled after Apple's iMovie, the successful digital video editing package shipped on iMacs last year. It's all been done before, but never with as much style and attention to detail.
The second, called iDVD, does essentially the same for creating and recording Digital Video Discs at home. Before last week, technology like this cost many thousands of dollars, and was available only to video production professionals. Now it's standard on new high-end Macintosh computers.
Jobs also announced a shipping date for MacOS X, the first complete overhaul of the Macintosh operating system since it was created in 1984. It's a radical departure from the classic Macintosh, and whether current Mac owners entirely like it or not, OS X will hit the streets on March 24.
Not to be lost in all of this digital futurism was the MacWorld debut of Apple's first laptop computer based on the G4 PowerPC microprocessor -- their first new subcompact notebook computer in many years. The silvery, inch-thick case is cast from pure titanium.
In his trademark breathless style, Steve Jobs described the Titanium PowerBook as an irresistible combination of "power plus sex."
In fact, this might just be the phrase that best summarizes Jobs' vision for Apple's next reinvention, inaugurated last week.
Get it?
Steve Jobs thinks you will. He's betting the company on it.
15 January 2001 |
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