My Utopian View (Of Hardware) - Part 3

This will be the last point I'll make before advocating my Utopian view (of hardware).

Point 5 - Apple is driven by a unified (Jobs) vision.
My own personal experience would tell me that somebody who behaves like Steve Jobs is reported to (ie, into pretty much everything) would cause more issues than they'd solve. I've had enough micro-manager bosses that I'm thoroughly against the practice.

Yet Jobs makes it work - he's the extremely rare example that challenges the rule. But is it his oversight or his clearly communicated vision that we should credit most? I'd say it's the latter more than the former. Jobs has a clear vision for creating consumer devices, and that vision works. His aesthetic sensibilities are very refined, his understanding of his target market is deep and he's able to drive his organization to achieve his vision by clearly communicating his direction. I'd suggest that his method of operation (heavy oversight) works because he is dedicated enough to make it work. Try to find another example of a corporate leader who, by being overbearing, actually causes good things to happen within an organization.

So I'm asserting that the fact that there is one person, whose taste is very good and whose knowledge of his field is excellent, at the top of the ladder makes all the difference for Apple. Just as with the homogeneous platform, things become simpler for the people involved when they know what the rules are that will govern how their efforts are judged.

I'll offer the following as an anecdotal example of what I'm talking about. In other tech companies the man at the top is generally somebody who understands his market in terms of buzzwords - he seeks to "leverage synergies" between "vertically integrated" suppliers of "tightly coupled whatsits." (I don't do buzz-speak or that could have been funny.) When a new idea or product is evaluated, the things that make the idea great at a fundamental level might be completely lost on somebody who isn't able to understand things outside the scope of their own experience/buzzword glossary.

Jobs is a different sort. Rather than simply being the chief figurehead, he's the chief visionary. Things that match or extend or even challenge his vision are pushed forward within the organization - those that don't fail. This creates clarity within the developer/engineer staff. Clarity is good.

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So there's five points about Apple that I will put forward as interesting differentiators. You may or may not agree with them, but I think there's a formula to be extracted from these points.