A bit about Apple

As Apple has recently passed Microsoft as the highest-market-cap technology firm, AOLNews posted this about the comparisons that can be made.

Most of you probably know by now that I'm an Apple-phile. It was not always thus...

Back in the Win 3.10 days I hated the closed system that Apple represented. I was in the industry, and I wanted to be able to see a command line; we NEEDED to be able to open the box and throw in some cards or a new video subsystem. Nevermind that tweaking our AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files was a daily chore. Anyone else remember QEMM386? Wow, those were the days.

Well, along came Win95, and everything was broken for a few years there. A friend gave me a PowerBook 100 (yes, a 100) and a box full of apps. The rest is history. I bought my first new Mac when the toilet seat iBook premiered in 1999, and then a Strawberry iMac, a Pismo, an iceBook and now I'm working [in Windows XP] on a MacBook.

When Office gets back to being compatible between Windows and OS X, I'll go back to OS X as my desktop, but that's not Apple's fault now, is it?

I've had my share of disputes with Apple over the years, but as the last blog post mentioned, it's obvious that they have their heads on straight over in Cupertino. In particular, it seems that Apple has managed, over the last 30 years, to keep focused on WHY they are in business and not just HOW to stay in business or WHAT to make.

Another Apple reference to keep an eye on, from the old old days: Guy Kawasaki. Genius. Anything he touches turns to gold. And I think he never looks any older; maybe he has a pact with Satan for that.

His stuff from the early days of Apple is nothing short of brilliant. He "invented" the evangelist in modern marketing -- making sure that everyone ELSE knows "why" you're doing what you're doing. He was talking about guerrilla marketing before Faith Popcorn. Hundreds of years from now folks are going to know his name.

God Almighty, why can't everyone else "get it" the way Apple does? Is it that hard to understand? Can't anyone else put their culture into action this way? Does it take a Steve Jobs to get this kind of thing done? Are there other companies out there hiring and feeding people like Jef Raskin and Guy Kawasaki? Man, the difference is striking.


*Jef Raskin, for those of you who may not have heard of him before, invented the information appliance. He described the "computer for the rest of us" almost completely. But I don't think he anticipated the effect that Solitaire and MySpace would have on productivity -- seems that he was thinking computers would make people MORE productive.

What is your mission?

Boy, I'm so glad that other folks share their brains with us sometimes.

As many of you know, I've been spending a lot of time pitching and helping with mission statements for a few of my students. I think it's a worthy bit of introspection, especially when changing careers or starting a family, etc. It really helps to be grounded BEFORE things happen that demand your attention.

This guy explains why Apple gets us to buy almost anything they decide to sell. It's all about tribal values. It's about mission orientation.

Apple operates on by starting with "Why?" WHY do we bother to make a product? WHY would anyone want this product?

Other folks start with the "What" and "HOW." WHAT do we do? [We make widgets.] HOW do we do it? [What is the actual transformation process, capital, etc.]

People are only sold from the WHY perspective. In other words, we don't buy Apple to get a computer, we buy Apple because we know their focus is on what the computer is for. It's a shared vision of ease of use and fault-tolerance and ... mission focus. We want to USE a computer, not just buy one with all of the bells and whistles.

The analogues are obvious:

WHY do we have an undergrad curriculum?

WHY do we have a grad curriculum?

WHY would anyone want to put themselves through the paces to get a degree?

Some of us can answer these questions. I hear "WHY do I bother?" from other faculty and administrators nearly every day -- all of these people KNOW why they bother, it's a rhetorical question for most of us.

Whatever you do everyday, individually, I challenge you to 1) watch the video, and 2) ask yourself WHY you do what you do. The answer is really really important to know in advance of life's unexpected challenges.

Write down something about all of the different roles you play in your life, and WHY you do them. That's a start.

And if you've never read Cameron Crowe's mission statement piece from Jerry Maguire, you should. It's not the first time I've posted it, and I'm sure it won't be the last.

To do the mission, you have to know the mission.

Apple knows their mission.

EDIT: Charlie sends in a reference to this TED video from Bobby McFerrin. Don't worry, be happy.

EDIT: Walter Williams posts this about poverty of the spirit. I believe mission and spirit are pretty closely related.

ObamaCare, Round One

I hate to personalize things here, but I know some of your guys read this for insight and ideas and I have to call 'em as I see 'em.

Yesterday, we had the last in a series of meetings about my son's progress in cognitive behavioral therapy. As you know, he's been doing this for a few months now, and we're seeing tremendous progress very quickly. As some of you know, it's almost $50k per year without insurance.

We found out yesterday at the meeting that he's doing very well, and making tremendous progress. It's very stressful on everyone in the family, and very costly, but it's paying off at this point, and he's starting to accelerate in his progress as well. In other words, we're seeing breakthroughs at each interim evaluation over the past couple of months.

Last night, though, we found out that our insurance program is proposing changes that will more than double our out-of-pocket for therapy during the year. Basically, they are considering a doubling of the stop-loss limit and a halving of the out-of-network copay. I'm not sure where the extra $4K per year will come from if it goes through.

Is this change random? Heck no. It's in response to a need to get ready for 2014. Changes were coming, for sure, but now with a mandate to cover more folks by 2014, this kind of thing is going to touch everyone.

The only way to give less to more people is to take more from the few. Can't work any other way.

Those of you who are thinking you're immune to this crap in Washington, think again.

Sooner or later, the bell will toll for thee.

In the immortal words of Edward Rooney, High School Principal Extraordinaire: "Pucker up, Buttercup."

Credit Default Swaps didn't doom Greece, Anthony Sanders says

At Congressional hearings on Thursday, Dr. Anthony Sanders pointed out that the CDS market actually served to warn us of the depth of the crisis with respect to Greece. More about this here.

For those of you not familiar with Dr. Sanders, he's a leading expert on mortgage-backed securities and collateralized products such as CMOs. He's also a contributor to Fabozzi's Handbook of Fixed Income Securities. He probably knows what he's talking about!

Finally, Dr. Sanders' home page is here.