FORGET the Beatles. The decade's most unlikely reunion occurred over Christmas, when Silicon Valley's prodigal father returned to his long suffering child. Steve Jobs is back with Apple Computer.
In a $400 million deal, Apple will acquire Jobs's company NeXT - and the NeXT operating system while Jobs will become a part time consultant and adviser to Apple chairman Gil Amelio.
Apple employees greeted Jobs (41) with thunderous applause at a hastily called press conference announcing the merger. But the resurrection of Jobs as an Apple man stunned industry observers, who have been waiting for the troubled computer maker to clarify its new corporate direction. Apple's market share has slowly declined while the company has reshuffled executives and neglected the Macintosh's ageing operating system (OS).
"I'm looking forward to getting reacquainted," a stylishly dressed Jobs told the crowd from Apple. Given that he stormed out of the company in a fury 11 years ago, that process should prove interesting.
Jobs, who excels at creating high drama wherever he goes, is the John Lennon of the computer world, a brilliant bad boy and pop icon. Setting the pattern for a thousand Silicon Valley start ups, he co founded Apple with Steve Wozniak at an absurdly young age, after the two tinkered in the garage late at night and came up with the computer that eventually became the Macintosh.
But with Jobs's programming virtuosity came a mercurial personality and a controversial and abrasive leadership style. In a sort of digital High Noon, Jobs was ousted from Apple after a tense boardroom showdown with John Sculley, a Pepsi executive he himself had hired.
Apple's fortunes began to rollercoaster as a succession of company leaders dithered over the direction of the firm. But the Mac, "the computer for the rest of us" as the marketing slogan went, gained a vast army of devotees. Its easy to use graphical interface, reliability and innovative design made Macolytes of the converted. Even if users began to despair of Apple, they remained devoted to Jobs's friendly machine.
Whether Jobs can reboot Apple remains to be seen. Problem number one is the geriatric Mac OS, which remains much the same as it was in 1984. While its longevity is a testament to Jobs's ability to create what he called an "insanely great", user friendly computer, the OS has met its match in Windows 95 and Windows NT Software is increasingly difficult to find, and the Mac lacks some key features computer users now expect.
First, the Mac OS is difficult to write software for. It also has no memory protection to allow individual applications to run in their own memory space. As a result, starting another application sometimes crashes the computer. The OS doesn't support multi tasking, which allows a user to run a number of applications simultaneously. And it has only limited multi threading, which allows an operating system to run several processes within a program at the same time.
For years Apple had been promising a new operating system, codenamed Copland, but it finally threw in the towel a few months ago. This placed the company in the embarrassing position of having to shop around for an adequate operating system. Until the return of Jobs, the frontrunner was considered to be the BeOS, from Be Inc, a company founded by former Apple technology expert Jean Louis Gassee. But Be Inc apparently upped the asking price from $50 million to $400 million, and Apple baulked. To increase its bargaining power, Apple started talking to NeXT and to Sun Microsystems.
Be Inc reportedly dropped its asking price to $200 million, but Apple executives were taking a second look at NeXT. Jobs had set up NeXT to create a computer that would out Mac the Mac, but the expensive machine never found a ready market. NeXT abandoned its hardware operations and focused on software which utilised the stable and efficient NeXT OS.
Apparently Jobs was never told his company was negotiating with Apple until talks were well underway. A key NeXT marketing manager made the initial move, and four weeks later the deal was signed.
Now Jobs and Apple face a gargantuan task in integrating two different operating systems. "What Apple has always stood for is product innovation," said Jobs at the press conference. "It's time for someone to come up with some new innovation to drive this industry forward." He's clearly ready to be that someone.
Jobs is a visionary with the ability to inspire others, and his appointment should prove a huge morale boost for the company. As for Apple's technical problems, certainly no one knows the Mac better than its father. But there are fears that the family may have been dysfunctional for too long.