Microsoft, Apple and the Great River

I was recently having a brief discussion with a friend about Windows 8.1 and what Microsoft did. He, a developer of a well-known desktop add-on suite, which has been around for more than a decade, felt that, in one night, Microsoft essentially made all these years of work obsolete. The transition that Microsoft tried to do with Windows, from a desktop operating system towards a much more "tablet" and touch-oriented interface, disrupted an entire ecosystem of Windows tools, add-ons and various applications, not to mention enraged the vast majority of users.
The issue of Apple in our discussion came naturally: where Microsoft keeps stumbling in the dark, Apple had the leadership of Steve Jobs, a man truly charismatic, with an incredible insight in technology and the ability to envision things nobody else could. On the other hand, Microsoft had Bill Gates, an admittedly very smart guy, but no genius, who guided his company through the times of MS-DOS, Windows 3.1 and Windows 95. Presently, Microsoft has to make do with the decisions of some Steve Ballmer, a guy with the charisma of a used cars salesman and the technological insight of a troglodyte. Think I'm exaggerating? Watch this:

Yes, this is the current CEO of Microsoft, a position he took in 2006. Note how the date matches the introduction of Windows Vista, the company's biggest failure until then? During his reign, he's seen the introduction of three new Windows versions, two of which have been huge flops: Vista and 8, where Windows 7 was simply an adequate product whose main saving grace was the fact that it came after Vista (and, of course, from Microsoft).

Obviously, mentioning Steve Jobs and the current fortunes of Apple got me thinking. For you who don't know what Apple was doing 20 or so years ago, I'll include a brief synopsis.
Steve Jobs was practically kicked out of Apple in 1985, only one year after the introduction of the original Macintosh, by ex-Pepsi boss John Sculley, a guy who Jobs himself had brought in. After Jobs' departure, Apple kept on going on sheer momentum: the 'magic' was gone. They kept on improving their Macintosh line, making newer and bigger machines, adding on what was already there, but eventually ran out of steam.
In less than a decade, they were in big trouble, as the computer world kept evolving in leaps and bounds, while Apple was plodding along. The best description of Apple's situation came from Steve Jobs himself (reportedly quoting Gil Amelio, Apple's CEO):

For you who can't be arsed to hit 'play', he described the situation, just before Apple got him back to save the company: "Apple is like a ship, with a hole in the bottom, leaking water. And my job is to get the ship... pointed in the right direction."
Apple had lost its vision and more importantly, they had lost the one person who actually *had* a vision and could convince others to pursue it.
The man who saw the computer mouse and thought "icons" when everybody else thought "text menus". Who could see the whole picture where everybody else could only see down to the next dot.
Apple had become big, complacent and its leaders were businessmen, not geeks, and therefore unable and unwilling to take risks and bet everything on something revolutionary. They were all trying to play it safe, and all inevitably failed.

Keeping that in mind, where is Apple now? What is Apple, without its great visionary?
Quite seriously, I think Apple is now too big to fail. Having said that, though, Apple would need an equally big man to lead. Unfortunately for Apple and for the rest of us, there is no such man. Men like Steve Jobs come once per generation or two, and we've already had ours.
So, I guess Apple will keep on going, like it did back in 1985, on sheer momentum and it's up to the leadership to keep it going for as long as possible. But I personally don't expect to see any major breakthroughs from them any time soon.
The days of the iMac or the iPad are probably over.

But since I started with Microsoft, I can't finish but with them again. Microsoft, much like the Apple of the '90s had a hole in the bottom, has a hole in the head. And a big one at that.
Don't get me wrong, Microsoft was always copying ideas from all over and their strategy was to buy small companies that made the "second best" programs, beef them up, relabel them and sell the final product as their own. Microsoft was never an innovator, nor a risk-taker. They never paved ways; instead, they waited until the road had been paved and then ran to the front.
Every time Microsoft had to lead the industry, they failed. Miserably.
So now, their leadership decided to copy Apple. Unfortunately for them, their leaders not being the brightest sparks in the bunch, they copied none of the right and all of the wrong things. Twice.

What the future holds for the big Apple and the Micro Soft? No, they can't fail, at least not immediately. But Apple can very easily end up being a glorified cellphone maker, just as easily as Microsoft can end up being a "business computers' operating system and office suite" maker.

Oh yeah... and a games console maker. Almost forgot... they've got Xbox...


P.S. Damn, Steve, we're gonna miss you.