In the late 70's, when Apple was created, Silicon Valley and Route-128 were full of innovative, engineering driven companies, trying to improve the world with better products, including DEC, Data General, Fairchild, Varian, Lockheed Martin, Nat Semi, Intel and many others.
They all stood pitted against IBM, the company that didn't so much represent evil, as banal conformity, corporate blandness and a company that dictated how the world would work in its image. A company run by salesmen, with their blue suits, crisp white shirts and company songs.
Leading the rebellion was HP, who at the time made a lot of things, including computers and test equipment, but were famous for their calculators, and the quality of their products. Corporate, to a degree, but this was the one company, with its mythical HP Way, and ethical spirit, that everyone wanted to emulate.
These companies, and their smaller brethren, often built products because they were simply cool, and that impulse led to the creation of the PC and the modern computer industry.
But times have changed. In 2011, as Steve Jobs's health forces him to give up the reins at the company he founded, it's clear that Apple is the only company left that embodies the original Silicon Valley spirit. Dec, Sun, SGI are gone or a shadow of their former selves, and HP makes most of it's money by selling ink in small plastic boxes.
And it's clear what happened. Companies started to employ people without the engineering gene, MBAs without a sense of history or wonder about what the companies they worked for did. Without a sense of mission.
As these people focused on activities that would improve their bonuses, they became marketing and finance oriented, saving pennies in a constant race to do things more cheaply, outsource work until eventually they outsourced their core competencies, focusing on emphemeral things like branding, mindshare and "leadership", losing their attention on the things that got them there, until these companies died from parasitic invasion.
And even Apple got sucked up by this, during Jobs's exile, seemingly on a collision course with oblivion. Until he returned.
Now. some people might say that companies like Google and Facebook are the modern Fairchild and HP, but it's clear these companies don't actually make anything, or at least for the sake of making the thing. Android phones and tablets are simply vehicles for Google's advertising business, no more, no less.
Apple is different. It builds products for the sake of building them, for people to use them, so that they in turn can do great things. Let's be clear, they're no saints, and some of their recent business practices have left a sour taste in the mouth.
But ultimately, Apple brooks no short cuts, no facile compromises, in a crusade to follow a clear philosophy about how the world should look, and to make that world. Religious fanatics? Perhaps, but it's clear they're committed to the joy of creation.
And it should be noted, that Tim Cook, the man Jobs anointed to succeed him, rose through the ranks of the industry via operations, and not through sales or marketing. Someone with hands-on experience of the creation process..
Will Apple continue to kick ass with its products? While Jobs is still alive, I'd have to say yes. But when he's truly unable to engage with the company he created, one only needs to look north to a company in Redmond to see a possible outcome, and that one isn't pretty. Then again, Gates was only ever really interested in making money., and the man who succeeded him was originally in charge of sales.
