Apple News, Analysis and Podcasts

Apple's Steve Jobs seems to be the wunderkind reborn after his return to Apple in 1997. His first stint with Apple led to the design and launch of the original Macintosh and the original Mac OS. During his second time behind the wheel he brought us the iMac, Mac OS X, and the i-Series of products and iOS operating system.

There's not much that Apple has done under Jobs' leadership that hasn't been a success. One of guiding principle Jobs has used is during his second term is, "Keep Your Friends Close; Keep Your Enemies Closer". There are three examples of this from the recent decade: Intel, Google and Facebook.

Intel

Intel has become an Apple partner by suppling the the Mac platform with CPUs. The switch from the PowerPC to Intel helped Apple grow Mac OS X from a niche platform to a serious contender. No longer does Apple have to play the speeds and feeds game as to whether their PowerPC processor is faster than an Intel one (Intel won that game if you hadn't noticed). By moving OS X to the Intel platform, Apple learned an incredible amount about chip design and integration. For example, Apple worked very closely with Intel to create the chip found in the first MacBook Air. Don't think that knowledge went to waste. Apple turned around and began designing their own mobile chips for the iOS platform. Now Intel is at odds with Apple over mobile computing and Apple has Intel to thank for their proficiency into the mobile computing chip market.

Google

Jobs used the "Keep Your Friends Close; Keep Your Enemies Closer" principle by having Eric Schmidt on the Board of Directors at Apple for several years. While many think it may have been a mistake to have Google's CEO sit in on Apple's board meetings, Jobs was crazy like a fox by learning who Schmidt was and how much of a threat he would be. Jobs may have given Schmidt just enough rope to hang himself as he was recently ousted from Google. By the way, take note that Google's financial success with Android is still TBD.

Facebook

And that brings us to Facebook — the new player on the scene in the last five years. Facebook has grown from a college dormitory room into a multi-billion dollar enterprise with over 500 million users. Facebook is really a platform that is making which hardware you chose to use hardware irrelevant. As long as you can get to your Facebook account on any given device, you're set. However, Apple may have the last laugh. Jobs recently met with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg over dinner and then again when President Obama was in town. Some thought Jobs might pitch Apple to Zuckerberg. Instead, Jobs was once again learning about his foe first hand, sizing him up to see what makes him tick.

It appears Apple's datacenter in Maiden North Carolina may be the launching platform for its own Social Networking service called iCloud. An article by Jason Schwarz points out that while Facebook is a powerhouse it has four major flaws in how it operates that make it susceptible to someone clever, like Apple. If anyone could take social networking to the next level, Apple certainly should be in the running.

So far this strategy seems to have worked as Jobs is a master of sizing up people for his ambitions. We'll see how well Apple has mastered this skill so they can continue to use this in a post-Jobs ear.

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