[taligent]

Exactly. This is what makes this all so hilarious.

Steve Jobs said himself that he was directly involved in the next 2-3 years worth of upcoming products. So "this would never have happened under Steve Jobs" can partly be blamed on him.

[radley]

Steve wasn't just the inspiration. He was also the guy who was more than willing to say "WTF is this? We can't release THAT! Fix IT!!"

Without that you've got the contentment of the collective.

[achompas]

Sure, but we've also got anecdotes where he'd curmudgeonly agree with the collective after lots of pushback from them.

I'm of the opinion that people assign too much importance to Jobs' final decisions. He created a design-oriented culture at Apple and guided Apple to the Dieter Rams style. But do we really think that, after >10 years working together, Jony Ive would approve of something that Jobs would hate? Does anyone doubt Ive's design decisions at this point?

[DeepDuh]

Ive doesn't sign off on Software. When you look at the MBP as an example, the hardware is great, the release software was buggy (most of it fixed with ML though).

[jasonlotito]

> "WTF is this? We can't release THAT! Fix IT!!"

But he was also the guy that missed in that regard multiple times as well. Sure, he might have stopped a lot from going wrong, but the stuff he didn't say "No" to quickly became a blight on the company.

[mikecane]

>>>but the stuff he didn't say "No" to quickly became a blight on the company.

Ping.

[josephlord]

Never used it and it seems to have completely failed in the market but I don't see the harm it has done the company.

Anyone got any better examples? FCP seems closer to a possibility that could have been avoided just by keeping the existing product on the price list in parallel for those that really do require it's features until the new version is fully fleshed out.

[beedogs]

Newton, Lisa, AppleTV, Thunderbolt

[pvidler]

A product developed while Steve was away from Apple, a project he was forced away from, a success (if not up to iPhone levels) and a probable future success (for Intel!). What's your point?

Seriously, the AppleTV is only a 'failure' by the standards of the iPhone and iPad -- most companies would love to have a product that sells nearly 3 million units per year! The margins may be lower than the iPad's, but my understanding is that it does still make a decent profit.

Thunderbolt is an Intel technology and an incredibly useful one. The available products are already starting to look impressive in functionality and prices will come down before too long; Apple themselves use it to provide gigabit ethernet on devices that are about the same thickness as an RJ45 connector, and they sell those for just $29.

[girlvinyl]

The AppleTV is a failure? It's what has made all the difference in cutting cable for me. I love mine. Further, it's really coming together now that you can wirelessly mirror an MBP display to the AppleTV. That means projectors+screens can beautifully be replaced by HDTVs and AppleTVs for meeting room presentations. It also means every single piece of content you can get on your laptop, you can also easily watch with one click on your television, wirelessly. It's fantastic for home entertainment too.

[yardie]

Newton - was under a different CEO. He killed it because the tech just wasn't there yet.

Lisa - was the precursor to the Mac. It was beta but everything you see in a Mac was in Lisa.

AppleTV - STBs are really, really hard. I think this is the last gasp for TV. AppleTV just makes it useful again when the world is moving to watching things on a laptop/tablet.

Thunderbolt - fantastic piece of tech probably has longer legs than eSata, which it is supposed to replace.

[demallien]

Newton and Lisa were not projects under Jobs' control - Newton was Scully's baby, and Jobs created the Macintosh team precisely because he thought the Lisa was the wrong solution. AppleTV sells more units than xBox at the moment, hardly something that harms the company. Thunderbolt is a bit too young to see if it is going to pan out or not, but considering that it has the support of Intel, I would be happy to bet on it in the long term.

[jasonlotito]

MobileMe.

[astrodust]

Given the evidence in the new Samsung court case, with the 2010 iPad being worked on in 2002. That means there's still at least another eight years of pipeline that's yet to hit the public.

[CamperBob2]

Of course, Jobs would have spent the year before he died blasted out of his mind on very strong medications and analgesics.

[Florin_Andrei]

Sure, but towards the end he was pretty sick, so I would assume quite a few bloopers may have escaped his attention.