Quote:
Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott
You would be wrong about that. Without his vision Apple was nothing.
But successful innovation doesn't just need vision, it also needs practical implementation. The job of engineers is to provide that. Apple's problem was that Jobs insisted on his vision being implemented verbatim even when it wasn't practical. Commodore's problem was letting the engineers be visionaries and then just going with whatever they came up with.
Both approaches are hazardous. Commodore had multiple pet projects on the boil and as each one became ready they were supposed to market it, regardless of what the actual market was for it. But they couldn't afford to do that. Furthermore their marketing was often over-priced and ineffective due to the advertising companies not understanding the product (and/or just being plain incompetent).
By the time Commodore got a manager onboard who had the vision they needed, things were pretty dire and his options were limited. The A1200 was as good a result as could be expected under the circumstances - just a pity it wasn't implemented earlier when the company wasn't in such dire straits.
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Well... look at NeXT - truly marvelous product from engineering perspective, engineered almost like non-Jobs vision and fail, similarly other products with at least debatable esthetics... Obviously people forgotten about failed Jobs ideas and remembering only good ones - truth is laid somewhere between - that's why i've wrote about overestimated Jobs visionary capabilities...