Steve Jobs

To my mind there are two things that defined Steve Jobs for me and they are best exemplified by, firstly, his pitch to hire John Scully

“Do you want to sell sugared water for the rest of your life or come with me and change the world?”

and the Think Different campaign that was launched after he returned to Apple

You did change the world.

Will Apple Snatch Defeat from the Jaws of Victory?

Since the return of Steve Jobs to Apple they’ve just gone from strength to strength with a few missteps along the way.

iMac
iPod
iPhone
iPad
iTunes
MacBook
MacBook Pro
MacBook Air
Apple Stores
the upcoming iCloud that we hope launches better than MobileMe
the App Store

That’s a lot of winners.

Now Apple is making inroads into the corporate market, the potential to become a massively dominant player is within their grasp.

Will they ‘screw the pooch’? Sad to say that a very possible scenario.

If you look at the recent launch of Final Cut Pro X you’d have to say that was pretty comprehensively screwed up. Apple managed to piss off a vast majority of editors with that one. I know they’re saying just wait for the updates and all will be good, but people don’t want to wait for the updates. They want it to be good when they get it.

That’s kind of like buying a Porsche and discovering that the wheels are on a boat from Outer Mongolia so you’ll just have to wait until they arrive and THEN everything will be really good. Promise.

The truth of the matter is that Apple do not, and appear to never have, understood the corporate market. Sure they understand it better than the Gnomes of Mountain View, but they don’t get it like Microsoft do.

I talked about this some time back in this old blog entry at Anthill. Apple just don’t seem to get corporate customers, but, there is a chance that this may change with the Commonwealth Bank deploying 4000 MacBook Air laptops to replace their fleet of Dell laptops.

If they don’t screw things up at the Commonwealth and they can learn about what corporates want, they might, just might, figure out how to crack this market sector.

That being said if anyone can screw up a deal like this its Apple.

Steve Jobs Resigns as Apple CEO - its iMargeddon

It was always going to happen.

Jobs was never going to stay as CEO forever.

The fact that he resigned the way he did was smart, and good for Apple.

Despite what all the ADHD afflicted Wall Street wunderkinder think, dumping shares and claiming doom and gloom because their spreadsheet models say so, this isn’t as big a problem as everyone thinks.

1. Jobs is a long term thinker. He knew this day was coming and has been busy preparing.
2. While the common view of Apple is that its a company built on one tent pole, and that tent pole is Steve Jobs - there’s more to the company that just him.
3. Jobs brilliance lies in the fact that he can look at technology and distill it down to something that is accessible to the “I just want it to work” crowd.
4. I’m willing to bet money that he’s been explaining this rationale to everyone in his inner circle.
5. Apple’s product line for the next 2 years are already in the pipeline.
6. Apple’s engineering mules for the next 4 years of possible products are in the pipeline.

It’ll be good for column inches to say that Apple is screwed. Everyone said that the day Bill Gates resigned Microsoft was screwed.

Different situation. Gates resigned after the rot had set in and handed the reigns over to Monkey Boy. Vista was already in the works before Bill resigned, he just left the big steaming pile for Ballmer to deal with.

This time Jobs, appears, to be leaving with Apple going from strength to strength.

1. The iPhone 5 due ‘real soon now’.
2. The Mac grabbing market share like Ballmer grabs futile acquisitions.
3. A very successful patent war being fought against Samsung. The timing on this is interesting too.

The real reason I know Apple is in good stead - 5 year olds.

The other day I was in one of those Home Maker Super Centres.

The 5 year olds wanted to play with iPads and Macs. I mean all of them. They weren’t lining up top play with Windows 7 laptops or someone else’s tablet.

Want to know what tech trend to follow look at what floats the boat of a 5 year old.

I don’t really think iMargeddon is here - but if you do I’ll offer you a couple of bucks for your Apple shares.

Worst. Presentation. Ever.

I have just sat through the most astoundingly, mind bogglingly bad Powerpoint presentation I have ever seen!

It was a novel, not a presentation. Each slide was dense with prose and the presenter read the content to me. It felt like Play School for adults hosted by a talentless drone with the imagination of a cardboard box!

Seriously, it was so bad that after the presentation I asked the guy how he was going to make good the 90 minutes of my life he consumed with this dribble.

Its just not that hard guys. Really!

Watch any presentation by Steve Jobs, they are great and I don’t mean when viewed through an Apple Reality Distortion Field they're great object lessons in good presentation, from content to delivery. No matter what you think of Apple and Jobs, give the man his due, he gives great presentation!

Let me explain some of my rules for what makes a good presentation:

1. Don’t read your slides to me. I am an adult and I can read - sometimes I don’t even have to move my lips.
2. If I can understand the content of your presentation just by looking at the slides - its a document.
3. A good picture is worth a thousand words - a cheesy image makes you look, well, cheesy.
4. Less is more.
5. Consistent look and feel is good. A different wipe and effect on every slide is not.
6. Just because you think you are a good presenter doesn’t make it so.
7. Good presentations take time, bad ones suck forever!
8. Engage me.

Now I’m not saying I’m a great presenter but I think I do a good job and I’ve given a few presentations in my life where I haven’t put people to sleep.

A presentation is you making a pitch, don’t give the audience your document in bullet points, engage them with your delivery and explanation. Tell them a story that makes them buy into your vision.

A long time ago Aristotle came up with a brilliant concept that he detailed in Poetics, this concept is the secret to great presentations and I’ll let you in on it. The secret is that every good story has a beginning, middle and end. As a presenter you are telling a story. Your story. The story that you want to tell your audience.

If you don’t buy into your story no one else will. Instinctively you know the difference between The Godfather and Attack of the Killer Tomatos, the difference between a good story and a really bad one. Its no different with a presentation.

Your presentation can either be a story that inspires your audience or one that puts them to sleep.