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Case Study: Apple After Steve Jobs

Satisfactory Essays

Case study: Apple today after Steve Jobs The death of Steve Jobs was not merely a tragic loss: it also took the business world by surprise, given the tremendous influence Jobs had exercised over the direction of his company. While any change of leadership requires a reassessment of the organization's goals and priorities, few CEOs were as inexorably associated with the fate of their company as was Jobs. Apple must reconfigure itself anew, while still retaining the principles established by Jobs which had made the company so wildly successful. Apple has been said to do certain things very well: its simplicity and intuitive design and its 'selling' of style along with technological sophistication. Apple's pared-down minimalist product appearance (emblematic of Jobs' equally austere personal aesthetic) was just as much of the product image as the actual functions of the iPad and the iPod. Also, Jobs was a true visionary rather than follow the public's lead and try to give them what they wanted, Jobs tried to anticipate demand. When the iPad was first released, industry insiders asked 'what does it do,' uncertain of the function of an instrument that straddled the market between a large PDA and a small laptop. But now the product has become ubiquitous and Apple's rivals are trying to play 'catch up' in the notebook market. Current Apple CEO Tim Cook has taken a different approach than Jobs in terms of his relationship with investors. Jobs could afford to be haughty.

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