Controversial Leadership
Jobs had a tendency to go over budget for projects. For example, he spent too much money on the Lisa Project, the highest priority project at Apple. The Lisa project was the first personal computer to offer a graphical user interface. It wound up as a failure and only sold about 100,000 units. |
"But after this encouraging wave of early adopters, Mac sales started to plummet. There were several concerns about Apple’s computer: first, it was painfully slow, as its processing power had difficulty handling the complex Graphical User Interface. It was also a bit pricey, selling for $2,500, a thousand more than the IBM PC it was supposed to compete with. But the biggest drawback was software: Macintosh being a brand new platform, almost no program could run on it when it was launched..." - allaboutstevejobs.com.
"NeXT was a tiny company at the time compared to Apple with an entirely different mission..." - Susan Kare Interview, Graphics Designer at Apple and NeXT.
"Although Jobs tried to spin NeXT computer as an ultimate success... few in Silicon Valley agreed. The company struggled from the start to find the right markets and customers.... It’s clear that even Jobs was confused. In it [a Youtube video] he says, 'We’ve had, historically, a very hard time figuring out exactly who our customer was, and I’d like to show you why'” - HBR.org. |
"I remember once an engineer who worked and worked for weeks on a project, the guy was literally sleeping under his desk at the office all night, and Steve just came in one day and said, 'Oh, I cancelled your project', and walked out" - Donna Dubinsky Interview, Apple Employee.
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