here are arguments about how he was not a visionary. I totally disagree. Here is one definition of the word - as an adjective: "thinking about or planning the future with imagination or wisdom." Can there be any doubt he did so?
Depends on your definition. What you describe is what I call Paypal. Can someone send money to someone else with just a pure email address? The entire banking community had not thought of that. That was visionary.
Take the personal computer. IBM built it but it was Microsoft that figured out the real gold mine was the software. IBM sold the hardware business to Lenova and the PC hardware industry struggles to this day.
People think Jobs must have invented the iPod and iPhone so they bestow these accolades onto them. In reality, much of what we see here is the brilliance of Apple designers, and engineers with *leadership* from Jobs. It was Rubinstein who discovered by chance that Toshiba had developed a 1.8 inch drive that could make it possible to build a large capacity portable device that was small. It was Phil Schiller who thought of using the wheel to navigate. And the unsung heros were companies like Portal Player which had already built the complete platform for the player (we worked with them while at Microsoft).
The brilliance of job was recognizing that once prototyped, this device was going to be revolutionary much like the original Sony Walkman was. So he poured a ton of money on it to the tune of $20M marketing budget. You could not walk five inches and not see an iPod ad during that time.
He also had one thing that is unique, super unique: being the most charismatic tech leader ever. Every other smart tech founder combined could not hold a candle to him. Bill Gates looked like a genius college dropout. Jobs looked like the guy who could tell you what you were going to eat for lunch tomorrow!
That let him do things that were impossible before. Take digital music distribution. The man walks into Warner Music one day, curses every executive there and tells them they are all stupid and are going to go out of business. Can you imagine if you are a normal executive and walk into a #2 music company and act that way? You would be thrown out of the room in an instant. "Content is King." At that time music companies were super powerful entities. Anyway he then demands that they break up the album into tracks. They tell him no way. He says, "let me just do it on the Mac. I have a 5% market share so your exposure is very little." The idiots that they were, they agree.
iTunes store opens up and tracks are available for 99 cent with one click buying which by the way, Amazon had patented and everyone was scared to use. It is an instant "hit" as customers for the first time are able to buy and pay just for the one track that they want. As you know when it comes to pop albums, there is always that one or two catchy track and the rest are fillers that brought the price up to $12. Now you could get just the one hit song for 99 cent.
I meet with the record execs after this. They are grinning cheek to cheek. One of them said, "customers are buying music like it is potato chips; they buy one, then another and then another!" So they proceed to license their music that way for longer term and with no platform restriction. Great thing for consumers. But pushed music business closer to the grave.
Is this being visionary? Sucking out the profitability out of music and capturing it in the hardware he sells?
Until the iPod came out, there was no precedent for us paying 50 to 60% profit margin. Those devices sold at 5% or whatever. We made it "OK" to be charged so much more. And with it, we made their valuation highest of any company in the world. Did we do ourselves some good here?
All of this said, recognizing excellence as he did is a remarkable thing. I didn't recognize Youtube as anything but a bad idea due to huge losses it ran when it was started. Years and years later, it is making money for Google now. So what do I know
. No doubt huge amount of good has come out of him being involved in tech world. Every time I use my phone to download an app and use it, I think of how clever it was to create a new ecosystem to develop, deliver and pay for apps so easily and efficiently. The monstrosity that was doing the same for Windows was gone.
I can't remotely deny Jobs the amazing role he had in leading Apple from a money losing company at the brink of becoming irrelevant to this powerhouse. I just hope you forgive me for not ignoring the roles of thousands and thousands of people below him and the brilliance that many of them had in making all of this happen. And the unlikable personality that he brought to the industry that already has a lot of unlikable personalities.
Let's recognize him for what he was but no more....
