At $400 billion, Apple is worth more than Greece

[Jon-Erich]

theprof00 said:

green_sky said:
Truly mind blowing what this company has done both financially and shaping modern consumer and design culture. In 96' it was around three months away from going bankrupt or atleast in a really bad position. Just finished reading Steve Jobs biography. It is quite a story showcasing many thing which are part of our daily life. Whether one is apple user or not. Personally i've only used Iphone as other products i find quite a bit expensive.

Don't know why that would be in Steve Jobs autobiography as he has nearly nothing to do with Apple's success today.

Steve Jobs has had nearly nothing to do with Apple's success today? That's a crock. The first thing he did when he returned to Apple waskill dead end products and the company's confusing Performa Mac lineup. He gave the company a sense of focus by having only a few products made instead of many. Instead of having a million Macs with numbers on the end to indentify which was which, he opted to have the consumer mac and the high end Mac, that's it. That was in contrast to Gil Amilio's philosophy of having the company create as many products as possible. He then had the entire company board resign, the same board who led Apple to fail in the first place and replaced them with competent people. Then, he helped influence the company's marketing in a way where he had both consumers and Apple employees believe in Apple again. Over the years, Steve had personal involvement in just about everything Apple worked on down to the design of the product and the marketing of the product. He also came up with with the concept of the Apple Store and focused on every little detail, even the glass staircase in the store and the type of flore some stores would have.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/08/24/technology/steve-jobs-patents.html

http://www.ifoapplestore.com/stores/glass_staircase.html

I don't know of a single CEO besides Steve Jobs who spent much of his time and energy on just about every detail of everything that is Apple, from the products, the packing of the products, what materials they were made out of, the marketing behind the products, and the stores that sold the products. So to say that he had nearly nothing to do with the company's success would be to ignore all of this. If anything, he's the very reason Apple still exists today. His drive for Zen-like simplicity is also the reason Apple is the way they are now and the reason why they are not the messy company that Sony has become.