Steve Jobs, Apple, the Power of One Man and the Importance of Tech
Monday, January 17, 2011 at 11:00PM Hey, we didn't want you to think that we just sit around here muttering about how the government destroys everything and how much of the western financial system is in the midst of collapse. We can and do think about other things.
Today's announcement that Steve Jobs is taking a leave of absence resonated with me personally for many reasons and I think it is worth pointing out recounting a bit of his story in order to make a few points about leadership and the tech sector.
As I mentioned in Friday's blog, I was a computer nerd from a very young age when my parents bought me a Unitron - an Apple II+ clone from Vietnam around 1980. I had to build it myself. Believe it or not it came with no hard drive (the concept of a hard drive hadn't even really been produced yet) and just came with a floppy disk drive and 48K of RAM. Yes, K.. not MB... not GB... K. A Kilobyte (KB) has 1,024 bytes, so 48K of RAM is 49,152 bytes. Your average computer today comes standard with at least 1 Gigabyte (GB) of RAM which is 1,073,741,824 bytes. I remember asking my parents for an upgrade from 48K of RAM to 64K of RAM for Christmas! Just think what I could do with 16 extra kilobytes, I dreamed!
My modem, to connect to Bulletin Board Systems (the internet, pre-internet where you dialed up directly to people's individual houses to log onto their computer) had a speed of 300 baud. Baud was how you quantified the speed of modems back then and 300 baud meant it could transfer up to 300 bits of information per second - although as with most modems, it never performed at its optimal level. Many times, even just typing would lag because the modem wasn't fast enough to keep up with your typing speed!
And so, getting back to the point of the story, I actually used Apple computers since 1980 and in 1986 Apple came out with the Apple II GS. You've probably never heard of it. Why? Because it was quite expensive and they literally launched the product, got a few people to buy it, and then discontinued it, leaving it basically as an unsupported, useless piece of expensive hardware with very little software available for it.
But at the time it was the thing to have so I once again begged my parents to buy it for me. It was over $1,000, which was a lot in 1987 and my Mom gave in to my demands. But, soon after, they discontinued it, leaving a very bad taste in my mouth. My next computer after that was a PC and I've been on PC's ever since, until two years ago when I bought a Macbook Air, an iPhone and now also own an iPad.
Interestingly, Steve Jobs helped create Apple but left Apple after an internal power struggle in 1985. Which means, he probably had nothing to do with the failed launch of the Apple IIGS.
And, in fact, when you look at the stock chart of AAPL, it really shows the difference Steve Jobs made to Apple:
I don't have stock chart information for AAPL prior to 1985, but Steve Jobs played a major role in the development of Apple Computer from its founding in 1976 through to when he left in 1985. By looking at the chart, AAPL traded at around $4 in 1985 and when Steve Jobs returned, in 1996, it still only traded around $6. That isn't much growth for a major player in the computing industry throughout much of the 1980s and 90s.
But after Jobs' return in 1996 it was only one year later that the stock began to move higher, reaching a high of $30 during the tech bubble before retreating briefly and then engineering an amazing run from around $6 to its current high near $350.
Obviously Steve Jobs didn't do it all on his own. In fact, the leader of the team who designed the iMac, iPod and iPhone is Jonathan Ive.
But, from my outside perspective, Apple was leading edge in the late 1970s and early 1980s and then as soon as Jobs left it lost its way and produced a number of failed products. When Jobs returned in 1996 things soon changed and within a few years the company was on its way to re-taking its leadership position in the space.
And so there are two things I take away from this. One, the importance of leadership. Under Jobs' direction Apple has been a stellar investment. Compare that to Microsoft, which was a good investment from the mid 90s until the tech bubble burst but has been dead money for over a decade now:
But, Bill Gates hasn't spent much time on Microsoft in a long time as he is more focused on reducing the world population nowadays. And the maniac he left in charge is, bluntly, no Steve Jobs (if you haven't seen this bizarre, insane video of Steve Ballmer, you won't believe this!)
And secondly, the stock price performance of AAPL reinforces the potential gains that are possible in the tech sector if you find the right company at the right time with the right leader.
We are very focused on the precious metals sector as well as agriculture and uranium at this time but we look forward to a time when we can also focus more of our attention on other lucrative and exciting sectors such as the technology sector.
In the meantime, we wish Steve Jobs well and hope he returns. Apple isn't the same without him.
Reader Comments (5)
Mobile products now account for 75% of Apple’s overall revenue while Microsoft does not have much to offer in this department. Microsoft released Windows CE, an operating system for mobile devices, as early as 1996 and were in a good position but inexplicably neglected the development to such an extend that Windows Mobile, as it was called later, had become completely outdated when the iPhone and Android arrived. Analysts have predicted a significant shift of internet usage from desktop system to mobile devices for years, so it is highly surprising that Microsoft was so unprepared. They truly lack a visionary like Steve Jobs!
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