instead of treating him like a guy who just happened to get lucky eight times (Apple II, Macintosh, Pixar, Macintosh again, iPod, iTMS, iPhone, App Store, iPad)?
and what about Taligent, Apple Pippin, 20th Anniversary Macintosh, Motorola ROKR (colaberation with Apple), Macintosh Portable, Apple Lisa, Apple Newton, Apple ///?
I'm not saying it's bad, after all the saying is "if your not failing your not trying hard enough" but Apple has had it's share of failures as well.
That one yes, though it was not actually Apple's design he did demonstrate it I believe.
> Macintosh Portable
Apple during Job's exile
> Apple Lisa
Jobs was forced out of the lisa more than a year before release and went to work on the other Apple project at the time (project which you might have heard of)
> Apple Newton
Apple during Job's exile
> Apple ///?
Involved neither Jobs nor Woz.
You can hang the ROKR to his neck, and the Apple /// and the Lisa if you stretch reality a lot, but the rest makes absolutely no sense at all.
It's interesting that you didn't mention NeXT though: it failed technically (never succeeded on its own), but managed to lead to an acquisition and most NeXT people took control position at Apple.
I don't think we can hang all of those failures on Steve. Some of them, but not all. By my recollection, Taligent, 20th, Portable, and Newton were all released during his exile (if you want to call Taligent being "released"). I think they were all on Sculley's watch, but I might be mistaken.
Lisa was definitely all Jobs, all-singing, all-dancing Jobs. And ROKR... I didn't understand it then and I don't understand it now. You could slough it off as being a Motorola failure. It was about as successful as Microsoft's investment in Danger, minus the six hundred million dollars invested :-)
Anyhow, yes of course Apple has failures. So has Steve personally (NeXT!), and I never suggested otherwise.
My point was that very few people trying to compete with him adopt his methods. This is really the crux of my perspective: here are these companies getting beaten up by Apple and by Google, and somehow they refuse to learn from their opponent.
Steve wasn't even involved in most of those. Taligent, Pippin, 20th Anniversary Macintosh, Mac Portable, and Newton all happened after he left in 1985. Apple III wasn't Steve's project--and Steve wasn't the head of Apple at the time, either. That leaves the Lisa, a project Steve Jobs was forced out of a year before it was released, and the Motorola ROKR, which was designed and released by a separate company entirely.
On the other hand, there was the NeXT Cube, the Power Mac G4 Cube, Mobile Me, and the Apple TV. But out of those, the NeXT Cube is the only real failure Steve ever bet the company on. Meanwhile, Mobile Me and the Apple TV are projects Apple is at least working on improving.
and what about Taligent, Apple Pippin, 20th Anniversary Macintosh, Motorola ROKR (colaberation with Apple), Macintosh Portable, Apple Lisa, Apple Newton, Apple ///?
I'm not saying it's bad, after all the saying is "if your not failing your not trying hard enough" but Apple has had it's share of failures as well.