Read Online Inside Apple: How America's Most Admired--and Secretive--Company Really Works by Adam Lashinsky - Free Book Online Page A

also doesn’t staff the factory where the saw will be used. But it absolutely has an opinion as to which saw its supplier will use. It’s a new form of vertical integration. Where once a manufacturer would own every step of the process, Apple now controls each step without owning any of it.

    Integration is also internal at Apple. “Apple is not dependent on other companies to turn its vision into products,” said Rob Schoeben, a former top product marketing executive. “Microsoft was always frustrated that the PC industry didn’t do a better job of making PCs. Vertical integration is such a huge advantage for Apple. It’s shocking that no one has replicated it.” It’s possible Apple’s approach hasn’t been replicated because so few companies are organized the way Apple is.
    A s interesting as it is to understand why Apple chooses to make what it makes, it is equally insightful to study what it decides
not
to make. Saying no is a core tenet of Apple product development and, for that matter, Apple’s approach to doing business. In fact, the ability to say no—to reject features, products, categories, market segments, deals, and even certain partners—is how Steve Jobs explained Apple’s core strengths. “Focusing is powerful,”he said. “A start-up’s focus is very clear. Focus is not saying yes. It is saying no to really great ideas.”
    Jobs preached this message inside Apple. It’s worth noting that he is not the first to have this insight. The observation more typically comes from those in the aesthetic rather than the entrepreneurial realm. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the Bauhaus alumnus who went on to design American skyscrapers including New York’s Seagram Building, famously said of modern architecture’s disdain for ornament, “Less is more.” Diana Vreeland, the doyenne of
Vogue
magazine from 1963 to 1971, was fond of saying, “Elegance is refusal.” Steve Jobs, however, worked in an industry that says yes to everything. Microsoft Word is loaded with features no normal user will ever see. Macintosh computers work straight out of the box and are the picture of simplicity.
    Predictably, Jobs limited his sermons on the art of saying no to internal Apple audiences. On one occasion, though, he accepted an invitation to opine outside the company. Jerry Yang gathered about two hundred of his top-ranking executives at the Sofitel San Francisco Bay hotel in 2007, shortly after he took back the CEO reins at Yahoo! He wanted to discuss his plans for the troubled company. To boost the sagging spirits of his demoralized executives, he brought in a guest speaker, Steve Jobs. Separated by about a decade in age, Yang and Jobs had much in common. Each had been the celebrated co-founder of a game-changing and wildly successful Silicon Valley company. Each had given up leadership of the company in favor of more seasoned executives. Each had seen his company drift and decline. Now Yang was returning as Yahoo!’s CEO, just as Jobs had done at Apple exactly ten years earlier.
    After being introduced by Yang, Jobs recounted the dire straits Apple was in when he returned. He reminded the audience that Apple had about ninety days of cash left. He noted that the Microsoft investment had given Apple some cash cushion, and that Jobs had cut and cut Apple until the iMac was ready to be released. “Strategy is figuring out what not to do,” he told the group. Back then, he went on, he specifically rejected pleas from his executives to create a personal digital assistant like the PalmPilot, preferring to focus on rejuvenating the Macintosh line. His advice to Yahoo!: “Just pick one thing you can do that’s great. We knew it was the Mac.”
    Jobs then treated Yang and his executives to some Apple-style honesty. “Yahoo! seems interesting,” he said. “Yahoo! can be anything you want. Seriously. You haven Fly. You talented people and more money than you could possibly need,” he continued. “I can’t figure out,