Apple and Jobs take off: The meaning of a jet plane
Apple's survival is as assured as that of any other Silicon Valley inmate. It's off the hook, and it knows it, and that's why it's sending the world, analysts, customers, developers, competitors, a very clear message in the shape of that prize.

This piece was first published in OS Opinion on January the 25th 2.000

01-30-2.000

 

After last week's announcements, most analysts are updating their reccomendations about Apple. As one of them says, it is still quite undervalued, with a price-sales ratio well below the industry.

The reason for it sounds like a joke, but it's a real problem.While most of the stock exchange's darlings grow their sales at the expense of growing losses, Apple has been paring its sales and generating ever-higher revenues... something hard to understand by the gurus of the "New Economy". Now at last Apple has reached the point in which it has not just growing revuenues but also growing sales; and not just growing, but doing so at a faster rate that even the most bullish insiders predicted. As if it weren't enough, they're also starting an Internet play as an important part of the business, a part that looks set to become not just important but also profitable. Analysts must have been smiling dangerously (I'll wager some jaws are still cramped) when learning of all this.

But the icing on the cake, the waking call for all those little gurus (and the smile-stopper) was Jobs' enormous prize. We're not talking the usual hill of banknotes here, but of options of 10 million shares, potentially the biggest bonus ever paid, and a jet plane valued at a staggering 40 million dollars.

Once past the obvious thought about poor, comparatively destitute soccer and pop stars, there's a serious side to it that begs to be considered. It is that Apple has just closed the lid on its dark years. It has achieved its goals. It grows in sales and in profits, and has clear-cut product and corporate strategies. Its survival is as assured as that of any other Silicon Valley inmate. It's off the hook, and it knows it, and that's why it's sending the world, analysts, customers, developers, competitors, a very clear message in the shape of that prize.

But the important part of it all is not the prize itself. It is that Apple is cured. The corporate genius that brough personal computers to the world and destroyed the incumbent vision of computing to put it in the hands of the Rest of Us, that digged the graphical user interface out of Xerox's Parc (paying for the privilege, as it is often forgotten), tweaked it and turned it into something so pervasive and widely copied that we take it for granted, that built the ground of modern computing and was even behind AOL's launch (it was iniatially the outsourcing of an Apple project)... that genius seemed doomed to die in the bottle it managed to get itself back into years ago. Now it has been set free again, it knows where it's going and believes it will get there. And, as geniuses are known to do, it has bestowed on its particular Aladdin the three gifts of corporate success, unbelievable wealth, and a jet plane just for him.

Or to put it in another way, Apple's sent a letter to the world and the competitions saying: "We're back" ;-).

An epic gesture, probably. A theatrical gesture, and a very expensive one, for sure. But a gesture that says a lot about the new Apple, in which there's people who know how to get things done. Because, theatrical or not, with that gesture Apple's management has grabbed the market's attention and relaunched the share price. Which, don't ever forget again, is what it is all about :-).

 

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