‘And one more thing’

Last month marked three years since Steven Paul Jobs (popularly known as Steve Jobs), Apple’s co-founder and a modern era innovation czar, passed away. The nostalgia around the late technology billionaire, whose penchant for aesthetic design and purely-simple products won him millions of fans around the world, refuses to go away.
Great companies outlast their founders, they say. Many received a rude shock when Jobs, 56, died of pancreatic cancer in 2011: Maybe Apple’s ability to deliver category-defining products had also gone with its long-time CEO. After all, since his second coming to Apple in 1997, Jobs led a product development streak that not only eventually made Apple the most valuable corporation on earth but also helped revive industries like music, retail, and publishing that were uncertain of their future at dawn of the digital millennium.
Since Steve’s passing, Apple’s market cap has now more than doubled to $684 billion. Revenues almost doubled in 2014 from $108 billion in 2011. But the key question is whether Steve’s product development ethos – continuous product development, narrow product focus, and tight ecosystem control – are still embodied in his organisation.
The answer is perhaps mixed.
On one hand, regular upgrades to Apple’s hit products – the iPhone, iPad, iPod, and the Mac notebook series – have continued and sold well. Steve would announce a new product roughly every two to three years – Tim Cook, his successor, did the same by launching Apple Watch in the “wearable” health category two months back. Cook is also upholding Steve’s philosophy of a tightly-held user experience where product hardware, software, content, and now payment (via Apple Pay – another new service) would all be handled by Apple.
Apple’s new devices, upgrades and the maturing device-content ecosystem are more tech-savvy and friendlier than before. But these products are hyper-commercialized now, so their “revolutionary” oomph is probably gone. In Jobs’ time, an Apple-dominated high-end-gadget universe was known for converging different segments and creating a new bold category (“People don’t know what they want until you show it to them,” was Steve’s usual refrain when asked about market research).
So, what would Jobs do today, if he were around, to shake things up once again? That’s a difficult question, but some cue is available from what has been written so far on the Valley’s snobbish showman. In his brilliant (authorized) biography on Steve Jobs (which came out just weeks after Jobs died), Walter Isaacson suggests there were a number of industries, Steve had in mind for his next round of innovation, but he didn’t live long enough to work on them.
One was the education industry. Walter saw Jobs lament that computers had done very little for school learning. Jobs specifically told US President Barack Obama in late 2010 that in order to reform the education system, “All books, learning materials, and assessments should be digital and interactive, tailored to each student and providing feedback in real time.”
Walter notes, “He (Jobs) wanted to disrupt the textbook industry and save the spines of spavined students bearing backpacks by creating electronic texts and curriculum material for the iPad. He believed it was an $8 billion a year industry ripe for digital destruction. His idea was to hire great textbook writers to create digital versions, and make them a feature of the iPad.”
At another point Walter writes, “And he (Jobs) very much wanted to do for television sets what he had done for computers, music players and phones: make them simple and elegant. No longer would users have to fiddle with complex remotes for DVD players and cable channels.”
Cook and co. is continuing the legacy alright. Competition is in confusion as the bigger iPhones are winning over Android users; the task-friendly iOS8 is catching on; App Store continues to be the foremost hub for paid mobile apps; iCloud is gaining traction; and Apple Pay is about to further tighten Apple’s hold over payment data.
But Apple has ruled the tech stratosphere for so long because it came up with revolutionary new products in the last decade. Apple under Tim Cook has a tough road ahead to figure out new products for the next decade. But then, Jobs used to say, “The journey is the reward”. If Jobs has left a great team behind, it won’t need Jobs around to guide them. His frantic search for new ideas and design purity should suffice.