Part One of the Forbes Online Story
Hold on to your hats, it starts out positive, but they are setting us up for the other shoe.
Congratulations to the Apple Computer (AAPL) public
relations team. Last week the struggling Cupertino,
Calif.-based computer maker was wallowing in a spate
of positive publicity, including uncritical feature stories
in both Time and Newsweek. Superficially the stories
heralded the introduction of Apple's retro-futuristic-looking
iMac desktop (see "Back to the future"), but fresh off two
back-to-back profitable quarters (the first in three years) the
underlying message was clear: Apple is back.
"Apple is already back."
And smack in the middle of the spotlight is a
rejuvenated-looking Steve Jobs, Apple's once and future CEO.
At 43, Jobs seems to be having fun running Apple, a job he
took on a (long-term) temporary basis last summer, twelve
years after he was booted out of the company he cofounded.
By all accounts he is doing a good job too: slashing operating
costs by nearly half, boosting employee morale, and
dramatically winnowing Apple's once sprawling product line
down to just four computers (professional and consumer
versions of laptops and desktops). "Apple is already back,"
Jobs confidently crowed to Newsweek reporter Steven Levy.
(Perhaps not coincidentally, Levy is also the author of
"Insanely Great", a book-length piece of puffery about the
creation of the original Macintosh.)
Is Apple really back? Much as we'd love to say yes, and
participate in the collective Steve Jobs group-hug, the facts tell
us otherwise. Apple Computer is dying and Jobs' return, like a
crucial, but toxic, dose of chemotherapy, has only delayed the
inevitable.
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