Steve Jobs takes Fortune CEO of the Decade title
updated 11:05 am EST, Thu November 5, 2009
Magazine claims revolutionary impact
Apple head Steve Jobs has been chosen as Fortune's CEO of the Decade. The magazine claims that "the past decade in business belongs to Jobs," not only because of his personal and corporate wealth, but the way he has "radically and lucratively reordered three markets," specifically movies, music and cellphones. His impact is also said to extend to computers, though it is less pronounced.
Jobs is described as one of the few genuine celebrities amongst CEOs, with natural salesmanship, an "anticorporate" dress style and friends like U2's Bono. In reality however he is believed to be a micromanager and perfectionist, obsessed with Apple's operational and market metrics, not so much out of a desire for profit but because he wants to dictate cool, and exert general influence on the world. Publicity efforts are said to be strictly controlled by Jobs, to the extent that only a handful of fellow executives are allow to speak on particular topics.
The executive is however criticized for at times having an unlikable personality, and being involved in several scandals, such as stock backdating and the questionable secrecy surrounding his own health. Despite reviving Apple as a whole, he is moreover said to be responsible for some failures, such as the G4 Cube and the Apple TV. Jobs is thought to disregard customer research in favor of his own views on what the public wants.
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: May 2004
Failure is in the eye of the beholder
The G4 Cube and the AppleTV may not have been blockbusters in the marketplace, but they certainly pushed the envelope as far as quiet, small, and relatively powerful devices. In this, they are successes. The Mac Mini is the spiritual successor to the Cube, and it has yet to be matched in the generic PC space for small and powerful basic computer.
While some think the AppleTV is underpowered, it handles what it was intended to, h264 encoded video, remarkably well. I think the AppleTV has been hampered by Apple's more combative relationship with the content providers. The studios saw how the music industry had lost control with Apple successfully reconstructing their market for the consumer's net benefit. The MPAA and the TV network collusion are more responsible for the AppleTV's situation than Apple. I guess the upside of at least the TV networks not wanting Apple controlling re-distribution is what gave us free hulu (with the unfortunate choice of using compute-inefficient Flash video). Now that they think they have effectively neutered Apple and the AppleTV, they are looking to charge for hulu.
If Apple does work out an inexpensive TV subscription, and hulu starts charging for their crappy-quality feeds, then the AppleTV may become an overnight success, several years after release.
-- Len