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Technology Stocks : Apple Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Scott Crumley who wrote (12484)	5/1/1998 7:36:00 PM
From: Adam Nash	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 213177

As a recent Apple Alumni (I just left the WebObjects group in Feb. to try my hand at the Valley Startup thing), I have to be careful what I say in regards to these issues. However, I will try to report what I know that is non-confidential. In general, I rarely feel good crediting any executive with hardware or software design. see below... Adam, The 3400 project began even before Amelio was at Apple: in fact it was basically the answer to the fact that the 5300 was not going to have a CD-ROM. I may be wrong about that, but I recall that the final board design was a result of the new VP in charge of hardware that came aboard through the Jobs connection. This may be kind of true, since Jon had to OK the final go. However, the project was almost 2 years old by this time. Amelio agreed to making the 3400 "best-of-class" (ie, 240 vs. 200), but the real glory should go to Barbara Cardillo and Gregg Zehr (VP of Marketing PowerBooks and VP Engineering PowerBooks). Both went to try the startup thing last year. Wall Street was born under Amelio, so not much credit to Jobs there. I didn't give Jobs credit for Wallstreet, but rather the exterior design of the product This is inaccurate, but I'm not sure I'd be allowed to explain why. Let's just say you are correct that Steve did have his hand in the Wallstreet design. Once again, though, I give more credit to the designers, not the people who say OK or No way. Avie, as great as he is, really did not have anything to do with Mac OS 8 going on time. Even Allegro was largely mapped before Steve took over, although there will be some influences. Avie was directly in charge of the project for many months and he and his team were credited with the rapid and effective release of OS8. Here too, you are somewhat correct, although again 8.0 (was 7.7) was mapped out well before 7.6 shipped. I'm not sure how much of the glory should go to "not messing it up" as opposed to actively helping. Steve certainly wasn't the vision behind Rhapsody (Amelio's baby), but he will likely morph it into his liking. Avie definitely gets credit here. How can you say it was Amelio's baby when Jobs convinced him to buy Next's software as the heart of the OS? Gil had a vision for an new OS, true, but Steve got him to buy into his. And it was this purchase that allowed Jobs and his programming team, entree into Apple. I talked to Apple employees as early as January of 97' that said it wasn't clear who was running the company at that point, Jobs or Amelio. You are correct about the latter, but incorrect about the former. The views laid out at WWDC 1997 were Amelio's vision of the OS Strategy. Steve will be announcing his vision in a couple weeks. I'm not saying that Amelio doesn't deserve any credit for these achievements. I'm saying that once Jobs secured the Next deal, the people he brought to Apple had an important effect and basically Steve was leading Gil around by the nose. Gil admits in his book that he spoke with Jobs daily thoughout this period. I doubt that there's anybody on Earth that could speak daily with Steve Jobs and not have it effect their decision making. But that's just my humble opinion. And it is a good opinion. However, some of the issues, namely credit for projects, has been widely misconstrued by the media, and even employees of Apple. Apple has 10,000 employees, and just because they work there does not always mean they are intimate with the executive details of why or what or how decisions are being made. IMHO, Apple is creating great stuff right now, (and not just the stuff already out there), largely because they are being given the direction, and ironically the permission, to. Looking forward to the next 2 weeks. - Adam