Apple in my eyes

 

Everybody loves a winner.

Today’s is Apple, starts with the “A” in the alphabet.

Not bad for a college drop-out who then learned calligraphy, hung out with “evangelist” Kawasaki, forced out then came back to the tune of billions. He embodied the “I” in I-phone.

I remember my first encounter with personal computers, and of course, it was a Mac.

Silicon Valley back in the early 80’s was brimming with S Asian programmers;  the Vietnamese-American community were working 2 or 3 shifts a day as assemblers (before the offshore trend).

You got to have a garage: garage band, garage sale, and start-up in garage. It’s cool to be in a garage, although it was meant for cars.

In California, you don’t freeze to death by sleeping in a garage, unlike in the cold Winter of the Northeast. Thus, it allows for start-up mindset and venture capitalist, risk takers, trend setters or just drifters.

You definitely find yourself there, because to go further West (young man), you will have to fly to Hawaii.

The best you can do is driving North, through Red Wood, onto Portland and Seattle.

Meanwhile, South of SF is sufficed.

It will keep you busy “coding” for a while.

What Steve Jobs brought to the business world is his signature turtle neck and a little bit of rebellious streak.

Meanwhile, he doesn’t mind to surround himself with the likes of Kawasaki, long before having an Asian partner becomes a hip (Yahoo, YouTube).

People of the Valley are not only Californians, but also tribal members of the Tech world. You don’t talk shop, you talk Tech. You are not the Man, you’re the Burning Man.

I remember attending a speech by Armstrong when he became CEO of AT&T. And having been at various start-ups

such as MCI and Teligent, I had a nagging feeling that you could not fake “coolness”.  In other words, you cannot be both the old IBM (blue suit) and the new new thing (like Apple). The elephant cannot walk.  Sure enough, after some “reality checks”, IBM sold off the hardware division to Lenovo to pursue the higher margin world of convergence and Cloud, while AT&T back then sold off NCR and other assets.

I admired the crowd Apple stores were able to draw in.

Apple takes it to the mass, at a boutique level, and bridges the gap between high-tech and high touch.

It’s been a long way since 1976 garage days. A lot of Chinese take-outs, brainstorming and risk taking.

It’s really tough to be number 1. Now the hard part is to stay King of the Hill. Apple in the post-Jobs era. Gotta Think Different this time.