Fighting a Commodity

I’ll admit that I’m not a fan of Steve Jobs or the Apple fanboy cult, but as I get busier I am really starting to appreciate the level of certainty both Jobs (and Gates) pack into a oneliner. The kind that you just have no counter-argument to mount against, love it or leave it, the discussion ends here. One of these came yesterday during the earnings call and here is what a Wall Street Jr blogger noted about it:

But the most fun on the conference call came when he parried analysts’ questions about new product areas that Apple might or might not enter. A recurring question among Apple watchers for decades has been, “When is Apple going to introduce a low-cost computer?

Mr. Jobs answered that decades-old complaint by stating, “We don’t know how to build a sub-$500 computer that is not a piece of junk.” He argued instead that the company’s mission was to add more value for customers at current price points.

Powerful words.

Now, let’s for a second ignore that the Mac Mini uses the same chipset, same video, same speed RAM and most of the peripheral components found in your average MSI Wind that sells on retail for half of Apple’s Core 2 Duo’s…

Think about all the other ways he could have said that?

• We have seen no interest in a junk computer
• Those computers are pure junk
• We are not a company that builds junk commodity computers
• We don’t want to compete in that junk market

Point is, in the answer of why they are not doing something Jobs didn’t blame any external party. Not the customers. Not the suppliers. Not the market. Not the demand. Not the interest. Just the only thing he controls, and it’s hard to argue with someone that takes the entire roadblock onto themselves….

He just said that they don’t know how to build a cheap junk computer that many more people can afford. Quite a departure from what started the Apple company, don’t you think?