Apple’s control issues have been a key ingredient in its success. CEO Steve Jobs is fond of pointing out that Apple’s hands-on approach to crafting both hardware and software has led to such breakthrough products as the Mac, the iPod and the iPhone–and it’s fair to say the attention to detail hasn’t hurt Apple’s marketing, either.
There was a time when the geeks who keep a company’s tech systems running could get by without knowing the finer details of corporate strategy. Well, those days are over. This downturn could mean the end of the sequestered CIO.
It would seem we’ve got all the makings of a tech shipwreck.
In the past few days, Xerox, Yahoo and eBay each announced plans to cut thousands of jobs. Esteemed Silicon Valley VC firm Sequoia Capital is warning entrepreneurs that it’s time to batten down the hatches because the good times are over.
With all the presidential campaign talk about American exceptionalism, it might be easy to forget that we do a pretty unexceptional job at some things–like shopping for computers.
Dirk Meyer was six months out of college and working as an engineer for Intel when he ran into Bob Noyce, the company’s legendary co-founder and co-inventor of the integrated circuit, at the punch bowl at a shareholders meeting.
Sustainability will influence the next generation of Internet technology, according to Chief Technology Officer Padmasree Warrior. At Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference Tuesday, Warrior talked with Strategic News Service’s Mark Anderson about information overload, mobile innovation, and major tech transitions ahead.
When Apple CEO Steve Jobs took the wraps off of the iPhone 18 months ago, the wireless establishment offered a smug response. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, a Nokia executive sniffed that Apple’s new gadget merely validated his company’s strategy, and voiced his surprise to journalists that the iPhone didn’t use the latest 3G networks for fast data connections. “Overall, it’s very exciting for us,” he said, implying the mighty Nokia had nothing to worry about.
Don’t think for a minute that Microsoft is ignoring the iPhone. In fact, the software giant is probing the gadget for profit opportunities. For a little more than a week, a team of the company’s Silicon Valley software engineers has been examining the iPhone software development kit (SDK for short), a set of tools Apple released this month that let outsiders build software for the iPhone and the iPod touch. Microsoft executives aren’t sure yet whether they’ll find worthwhile opportunities to sell iPhone software–but they seem eager to find out.
While munching on a reuben at Birk’s, a steakhouse in Silicon Valley, Seagate CEO Bill Watkins is explaining why he’s not too worried about these trendy new laptops that have everything but a hard drive. On the surface, this would seem to be a big problem. Seagate, after all, is the world’s largest hard-drive maker, with expected sales of more than $3 billion this quarter–so Watkins likes to see his wares go into more gadgets, not fewer.
Does News Corp. really want a piece of Yahoo? Word leaked out Wednesday that Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. (owner of this site–Ed.) is looking at taking a stake of 20% or more in Yahoo in exchange for MySpace, some cash and other online properties. An infusion from News Corp., the reasoning goes, could boost Yahoo’s stock price high enough to outstrip Microsoft’s hostile takeover attempt. This is probably as close as Yahoo will get to a white-knight scenario where someone saves the company from the clutches of Microsoft. But a News Corp. deal probably won’t happen. Why?
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