{"id":1570,"date":"2023-09-24T11:39:46","date_gmt":"2023-09-24T18:39:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/?p=1570"},"modified":"2023-09-24T21:59:02","modified_gmt":"2023-09-25T04:59:02","slug":"grateful-geek","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/2023\/09\/grateful-geek.html","title":{"rendered":"Grateful Geek"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Grateful<\/a>Grateful Geek: 50 Years of Apple and Other Tech Adventures<\/a> by Jean-Louis Gassee <\/a>\nMy rating: 3 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jean-Louis Gass\u00e9e has led a remarkable business life. For many, he is probably known best as an early executive at Apple, circa 1980s. For others, he is the co-founder of Be Inc.<\/a> who\u2019s BeOS<\/a> almost became the next generation operating system for PCs and still lives on today as the free\/open source Haiku<\/a> OS. This past May, Gass\u00e9e self-published his memoir, Grateful Geek<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Written with hard won self-awareness, the book interweaves professional and personal antidotes from his 50-year career in the tech industry. In an easy to read 200 pages, Gass\u00e9e provides his first-person analysis of where he and his former employers succeed and failed at critical points during the PC, dot-com and mobile computing revolutions.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, the bad news. This is a self-published memoir, and it shows. Gass\u00e9e has stated on his blog<\/a> that he went the self-publish route because most publishers are interested in the \u2019Steve Jobs was an asshole\u2019 or \u2018Apple was lost at sea without it\u2019s visionary co-founder\u2019 narrative<\/a> and that is not what he was interested in writing (nor has he). Unfortunately, the book defiantly shows a lack of focus in places because of this. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Specifically, in terms of content, the book is more a collection of essays organized in chronological order, than a cohesive narrative. Gass\u00e9e covers several topics, starting with his personal affinity for engineering and his early start at HP in France. For an autobiography, this is straight-forward enough. Later, after covering important aspects of his time at Apple and Be, Gass\u00e9e includes his personal advice for founders and managers. Again, these insights are based on his personal experience and shouldn\u2019t be dismissed. Yet their inclusion is disconnected from everything else. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To put it another way, I\u2019m sure Gass\u00e9e could write a whole book on how venture capital in Silicon Valley works, but this is not that book. Scott Kapok\u2019s Secrets of Sand Hill Road<\/a><\/em> is that book and thus Gass\u00e9e\u2019s shared thoughts are somewhat superficial.[1]<\/sup><\/a> In my humble option, this book would have benefited focusing on a single topic. For example, how to be a better manager by referring to lessons learned at Apple. Or how to be a better founder and seek funding by citing his experience on both sides of the process, first at Be, then at a VC fund.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now the good news. Gass\u00e9e witnessed, firsthand, a unique time, when computers became personal and companies such as Apple and HP struggled in the marketplace to define what that meant. Alas, that also means, despite the choice to self-publish, most people will likely come to this book exactly because of his tenure at Apple during such a tumultuous time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To give you an idea, Gass\u00e9e\u2019s career intersects with Steve Jobs at two key points. First, in 1985, after successfully launching, growing Apple\u2019s business in France, Gass\u00e9e has an opportunity to move to Cupertino and take over the Software Division at Apple for the newly launched Macintosh. To be successful, a deep, rich library of software is needed for the freshly launched computing platform. But after taking over the internal Macintosh project<\/a> and shepherding it to market[2]<\/sup><\/a>, Jobs sees everything related to the Mac as his personal domain. Gass\u00e9e would have to report to \u201cApple\u2019s mercurial visionary.\u201d But, knowing Jobs\u2019 management style and his own \u201climited control over my emotions [temper]\u201d, Gass\u00e9e sees an impasse. Shortly however, the stalemate is resolved, Apple\u2019s CEO John Sculley dismisses Jobs[3]<\/sup><\/a> and Gass\u00e9e soon finds himself VP of Product Development over Apple\u2019s fractured computing platforms, the Apple II and the Macintosh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what if Sculley had never fired Jobs? Would the Apple we know now have come to be sooner? Or at all? Here is where, as witness of the people and events, Gass\u00e9e comes into his own and offers an answer, no. No, Apple was better off parting ways with Jobs at that specific juncture. Both Apple and Steve Jobs had to spend the proverbial years wondering the desert to discover what had made Apple a success at the beginning. For Jobs that would mean learning how to build and run a business, with NeXT<\/a> and Pixar[4]<\/sup><\/a>, before returning to the promised land and resurrecting a dying company. Had Sculley not fired Jobs, mostly likely Apple would have continued to run through CEOs until one day it just was, another company from a foregone era, lost to the mists of time along with Commodore, Tandy, Packard Bell and Gateway.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second interaction happens a few years later. By the 90s, both Gass\u00e9e and Jobs have left Apple. Jobs, at NeXT and in a similar path Gass\u00e9e has co-founded his own computer company, Be. As a company, Apple is broken. Despite the promise of the Macintosh, its graphical user interface and its growing importance in the graphic design and desktop publishing industries, most business and engineering users view it as a toy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Worst, the original Macintosh operating system had collected a bunch of technical debt<\/a>, engineering and design decisions that made sense with 1980s hardware but had imposed strict limitations on the platform running in 1990s hardware[5]<\/sup><\/a>. 1990s Apple needed a next generation operating system, one architected for more powerful personal computers and beyond. Having failed to deliver its own modern operating system<\/a>, Apple\u2019s CEO Gil Amelio goes shopping. One possible option, Be. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gass\u00e9e sees a unique opportunity, as the popular story goes, and sets the purchase price for Be high. Amelio goes looking for a cheaper option and tries knocking on the door at NeXT. Jobs puts on a masterful presentation and, well as they say, the rest is history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what if Apple purchased Be? Here Gass\u00e9e is silent, as if the very suggestion of such a thought would ever to occurred to him. Given how Steve Jobs\u2019 return to Apple set in motion the key elements of Apple\u2019s return to relevancy (and beyond) one can understand Gass\u00e9e silence on the subject. However, Gass\u00e9e still offers us his perspective on the success of \u201cApple 2.0\u201d and even includes an alternative telling of the popular tale, that Jobs was in fact uninterested in the initial approach from Apple, having moved NeXT onto new business opportunities[6]<\/sup><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jean-Louis Gass\u00e9e, has led a rich and remarkable business life. His story deserves an equally rich and remarkable telling. Hopefully, this is only the first telling of that story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

[1]<\/sup><\/a> I\u2019m sure Gass\u00e9e will agree with me that Fred Brook\u2019s classic, The Mythical Man-Month<\/em> is the place to start for learning how to manage engineers and technical projects from Brook\u2019s own firsthand, lived experience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2]<\/sup><\/a> \u201cReal artists ship<\/a>\u201d \u2013Steve Jobs<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[3]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0The key nugget here is Jean-Louis telling John Scully not to leave for a business trip overseas, else Jobs would implement a palace coup and Scully, not Jobs would be on the outs at Apple.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[4]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0It should be noted that Pixar, not Apple is what made Jobs a billionaire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[5]<\/sup><\/a> Moore\u2019s Law, \u201cthe number of transistors in an integrated circuit (IC) doubles about every two years\u201d. Thus, a CPU in 1995 was 10x more powerful than one from 1985. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

[6]<\/sup><\/a> WebObjects, which was an object-oriented framework for building applications on the new computing frontier, the World-Wide Web.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Grateful Geek: 50 Years of Apple and Other Tech Adventures by Jean-Louis Gassee My rating: 3 of 5 stars Jean-Louis Gass\u00e9e has led a remarkable business life. For many, he is probably known best as an early executive at Apple, circa 1980s. For others, he is the co-founder of Be Inc. who\u2019s BeOS almost became the next generation operating system […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1570"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1570"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1570\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1580,"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1570\/revisions\/1580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weinstein.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}