Steve Jobs my condolences to his family, friends and work partners

In 1985  I went for a job interview with Apple in Hemel Hempsted. I was seen by the then UK managing director who was explaining how the Apple operating system and the combination of the new Macintosh hardware would challenge the leadership for the new PC and MSDOS operating system launched by IBM who  Microsoft had licenced MSDOS to them. As a  young man who had been selling IBM PCs, mainframes, and peripheral products I thought that Apple may not be the best choice for me at the time. Who would bet on a proprietary operating system with fixed hardware and against IBM? Let's face it in 1985 no one every got fired for buying IBM. In the end, however, I didn't have to make the choice as I wasn't offered the job.

I joined company with a small UK distributor of PC software and peripherals which later became C2000. But then something exciting did happen, Apple found its niche as the cools tools for the advertising and creative industry, and although still too expensive for the average manufacturing business the marketing departments set up little groups of Mac users who where are able to create the graphical needs of their business. Creative agencies did the same and desk top publishing was born. To be honest the hardware and software was easier to use and was much more stable and this was down to the fact that there was only one hardware platform that programmers needed to focus on. But as we remember Apple was in financial trouble.




New products like the Newton were a disaster and it wasn't until Steve returned to the company in 1997 and launched the neat, fashionable and low cost Imac that things began to change.




By then I was running an advertising agency and need PCs and Microsoft to build websites and web servers but the creative team all had the best Macs and Adobe software. To be clear we had to have both platforms to embrace the new Internet world. Cheap notebooks were all PCs but photo-shop was always on an Apple.. well for a time. Our networks were linked but to run the business we needed Microsoft... however buggy and full of viruses it was. In the terrible climate of 2001 Apple embraced the Internet and the Ipod was born once again locking you into Itunes but it was compatible with PCs and this grew the marketing into the winner we know today.




It is an amazing story and one which has been driven by both style and technology genius. But I believe this is probably the begining of the end for both Microsoft and Apple. Google and Android are becoming the power house for the future.. the micro payment economy is approaching, hardware devices will come with contracts for voice and data services. Businesses will be run from the cloud. This is a much more sustainable model for the world but we may all be a little poorer in not have that funky little branded gadget that gave us the edge down in the pub. I am sure that Steve would have moved Apple to take advantage of this but without a tough man at the top I can't see a career manager making those kind of decisions.  Look at Google, they brought back Larry Page to run the company as Eric Schmidt, a really good guy, was not driving the technology side of the business hard enough. In the last year Google has really started to perform.
So thank you Steve Jobs for being a tough guy and doing something so amazing.. nature is a  bastard.. RIP
And finally words from the man himself:
“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” – Steve Jobs
And in the words of Ayn Rand who I beleive is an author he read: 'Who is John Galt'
Stuart Greenfield

Please visit www.greenfield.co.uk or email Stuart Greenfeld: Stuart@greenfield.co.uk