ZDNet AnchorDesk executive editor David Coursey recently met with Steve Jobs to talk about Apple’s business strategy. The results of that meeting are talked about in a new article entitled The un-vision: What Steve Jobs WON’T do at Apple.
After spending more than an hour with Jobs, Coursey confessed that he knew more about what Apple won’t do than what it will do. Apple’s not going to become a home entertainment device maker, for example — iPod experience not withstanding.
One interesting point came out of the meeting, though: Jobs and Coursey talked about Apple’s position as a maker of UNIX-based computers.
“Few realize it, but Apple is rapidly becoming the largest volume manufacturer of Unix-based computers,” said Coursey. OS X, of course, uses UNIX in its underpinnings. And, based on the editor’s own informal poll, it’s a UNIX variant that is respected in the community.
To that end, said Coursey, Apple isn’t making a big deal out of it, but they are dedicating sales and technical resources to getting the word out to segments of the UNIX community where Apple can make inroads — creative markets where UNIX machines have already been doing work that Macs couldn’t do before now, for example, or academia, or corporate UNIX users.
If Apple succeeds as a UNIX company, posited Coursey, it may add a lot to the company’s bottom line. “Jobs has done many good things at Apple since his triumphal return. But his greatest feat may have been to bring the Mac to Unix (or vice versa). Then again, like everything else he’s done lately, we’ll realize it not by looking out through the windshield, but by looking into the rear-view mirror,” said Coursey.