I think, today, we take for granted the things that amazed us 15 or 20 years ago. Back in the 1980s, every few months, someone would be able to show someone something that no one had ever seen before. It might be a color display, it might be laser printing, it might be desktop publishing, or it might be video running on a personal computer display. Today, were not particularly amazed by these kinds of demonstrations anymore, because the technology has come so r, and peoples acceptance of the world becoming digitized has become so well understood.
The Download Blog
We werent insightful enough to recognize that what we had inside of Hypercard, essentially, was everything that later was developed so successfully by Tim Berners-Lee with HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) and HTML (Hypertext Markup Language). We didnt call it that. But essentially, we had all that hypertext, radio buttons and linking capability architected in the original Hypercard. In hindsight, I wish Apple had recognized that we had a huge opportunity to go take our user intece culture, and our know-how, and applied it to the Internet. I think we would have had a very different story for Apple during the 1990s. But that, of course, is hindsight.
Crave
At Apple, you were in some ways perceived as the person with next big thing ideas. And, in some ways, people say you were ahead of your time with the Newton. Where do you see the next big thing?
A hydrogen fueling station powered by the windBy building a wind turbine to power a hydrogen production and fueling station, a little hamlet in Long Island is positioning itself a bellwether for carbon-neutral transportation.
The Download Blog
I am personally interested in high-definition television, and multichannel VPNs (virtual private networks) are going to be very practical within the decade. I think were going to see a lot of innovation in the areas of television being reinvented, a huge opportunity with mobile wireless. In ct, I think wireless is the biggest landscape for innovation and business creation. I am personally involved in two mobile wireless companies, and I can see that while we are successful in what we are doing, were at the very beginning of the possibilities.
Politics and Law
In the wireless world, especially Wi-Fi, how do you think the industry will make some real money out of it? On the hardware side, the profit margins are slim and, on the services side, we havent seen a highly lucrative business model yet.
Q: As the IT industry restructures, how would you describe its turnaround?
Googles response on new privacy policy ticks off congresswomanAt a hearing in the House over the search giants new privacy policy, subcommittee Chairwoman Mary Bono Mack expresses frustration over what she sees as Googles lack of clarity in answering questions.
I think that the opportunity for young companies has shifted from IPOs to M&A. This is actually a very good time to be a seller or buyer of surviving companies that have made it through the last three or four years.
I just dont have the view into the research labs at what a lot of companies are working on, so I dont know if I can add a lot of perspective to that. I can look back at something like Newton and feel that it could have had a very different future than what had turned out. Newton could have been one of Apples most profitable investments ever. Most people are aware ApplRiding the next technology wave moving newton mae spent over $100 million developing Newton, but Newton was a chance for Apple to start with a clean sheet of and to be able to license both the chip design, as well as the software. We had a number of partners who had already signed up with it. The software didnt live up to the early ambitions that we had and the handwriting ended up being a pretty big embarrassment because it just didnt work.
The things that we used to think of as the areas for wow technology, like computers, have become commoditized and even transparent, as they are embedded into systems. The innovation now is taking place with things that are largely being driven by market opportunities and customers.
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Games for football lovers on iPhone and AndroidThe big game is this Sunday and Ive put together a collection of games for both iPhone and Android that let you play the role of different players on a football team.
Do you think the IT industry is as relevant now as when you were CEO of Apple Computer?
Firefox 11 to get add-on syncChanges are a-foot again for Firefox. The beta channel can now sync add-ons, the Aurora channel completes a smoother update process, and work on the ster native UI for Android continues.
The Car Tech blog
Do you ever see yourself stepping back into the role as a CEO of a large corporation, or at a start-up?
iPhone Atlas
I think the computer industry now is almost like the x industry or printer industry, in that it has been totally commoditized. The only exception to that is what Apple has been able to do with just beautiful products, well-thought through, no compromises, great styling. And that, at least, so r has not turned into a mainstream industry. Its much more of a selective market industry. Taking an automobile analogy, its more like a BMW selling inside of a much larger mainstream automobile industry.
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Technically Incorrect
When you watch the technology field, are there any times when you say to yourself that they really got it wrong in this area, or they are hitting it on the nose?
I think the M&A activity will only increase. I have been involved in a couple of businesses that have been able to do M&As this year, but I suspect the amount of M&A activity will only increase in the next several years, where I dont see much opening up in the IPO mmoving newton maarket, except on a very selective basis for probably several more years.
Riding the next technology wave moving newton ma,Sculley spoke with CNET News.com before his planned trip to California to participate in theSilicon Valley 4.0conference.
I think where the amazement is going to be is in the ability to do things with information and content that was never possible before. There are huge opportunities for search technologies to deal with information, and they are increasing in orders of magnitude over the next decade. If you take something as as sensor devices, like RFIDs (radio frequency identification), and, if Wal-Mart put RFIDs on every item on their store, it would generate something like 7.5 million terabytes of new data every day. So as we move to real-time systems and sensors and robots, and all of these things that have been kind of like experiments over the last decade are turned into things that can be productized over the next 10 to 15 years, the world of real-time information, and how it becomes incorporated into more parts of their lives, is going to be where the amazement is going to take place.
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Any missed opportunities that you wish you could do over?
On the software side of Wi-Fi, where will be the potential beyond VPNs and security?
I believe that the first phase of really commercializing Wi-Fi will be moving into application areas that are already being served in a tethered world. But they can be served even better when you have highly reliable, high-quality services that are secured for everything from health care to financial services to business processes.
I think a good way to think of Wi-Fi is to think back to the 1970s, with the introduction of citizens band radio. And what citizens band radio did was it whetted peoples appetite to the possibility that mobile communications could be available to everybody. But citizens band radio wasnt the business that ever got commercialized into a business success. What became the real commercial implementation of that dream was the cellular telephone industry. That started off originally with analog and today has moved into mobile digital services with PCS and either GSM or CDMA platforms. I suspect the same thing will happen with Wi-Fi. Its whetting our appetite as to what you can do with things like 802.11A, B and G. But I believe there will be a follow-on generation of even more interesting technologies that will increase quality of service and add real value in terms of the security to work in a wireless world and the ability to extend the range. Everything from last-mile solutions for fixed-base wireless, to all kinds of mobile wireless applications, will be the descendents of what we know today as Wi-Fi.
Cryoscope lets you feel your forecastRobb Godshaw, an industrial design student at Rochester Institute of Technology, demonstrates a haptic weather forecaster called the Cryoscope.
From where he sits, John Sculley enjoys a panoramic view of the IT landscape.
Why have you decided to harvest some of your investments at this time?
iPhone 5 rumor roundupCNET tracks all the iPhone 5 rumors--from the likely to the crazy--that weve heard so r in 2011 and 2012.
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The addition of domain expertise and the recognition that technologies are often developed ster than you can change peoples behavior to adopt them have to be put into the equation. So, while a lot of technical brilliance will be focused on improving the technologies, I think there will have to be parallel tracks on developing the domain expertise, as well as developing the ways of consumers motivated to want to use these kinds of products. So, the user intece will be just as important in the mobile communications world as the user intece has been in the personal computer industry for the last 25 years.
Military, government officials could get secure Android phonesCNN reports that U.S. civilian and military officials are testing the use of secure Android smartphones that could be capable of transmitting confidential documents.
As an investor and partner with Sculley Brothers, what areas are capturing your attention?
Android Atlas
As an investment partner with venture firm Sculley Brothers, Sculley does not count himself among those subscribing to the school of thought that IT is headed for a dead end. Rather, he sees a technology business on the brink of change. Known as an idea guy during his tenure as CEO of Apple, Sculley has a short list of promising new technologies that he believes are already transforming the IT industry in subtle--and not so subtle--ways.
A: I think were going through more than just a cyclical change. Were going through a systemic, secular change in high technology. We saw, in the 1990s, the commoditization of hardware. Now, were going to be seeing the commoditization of almost everything, including software and services. This makes a lot of sense because, as the technology world moves from being computer-intensive to communications-intensive, you have to have open standards, which means innovation is going to have to take place in different parts of the value chain.
But the hardware inside of Newton, which was the ARM processor, has gone on to be incredibly successful, and it actually enabled Apple to make this huge amount of money out of the original Newton investment. But its so easy to look backward on things and see decisions that could have been done differently. Its obviously a lot harder to look forward.
Iran to ban Samsung over explosive Israeli cable ad?Tehran is reportedly rather upset about a commercial in which a Mossad agents Samsung tablet is instrumental in accidentally blowing up an Iranian uranium enrichment plant.
Do you see other similar cases of missed opportunities at other companies?
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There is one thing I think is totally right on with the Wi-Fi model--nobody has to buy spectrum. In the 1980s, the government was selling spectrum and carriers had to pay huge amounts of money for it. The beauty of Wi-Fi is nobody has to buy spectrum--its public, open, available spectrum. It is a much better model for innovation, because the focus then is on lots of people creating things that would be impossible for any one company to try to dream up. For example, in the computer industry, the best applications really came from entrepreneurs who became real innovators. These kinds of applications didnt come from the big established companies. I would suspect the same thing will happen to Wi-Fi, or the descendents of Wi-Fi. The chance for entrepreneurs and innovators to create new things will probably come from start-ups, not from giant corporations.
We actually have been harvesting some investments...I am personally interested in the whole area of high-definition television, so were doing some experimental development at a very, very early stage. There are some possibilities there, but only time will tell whether that will actually turn into a commercial opportunity.
I think its pretty unlikely I would go back to being a CEO, or step into a corporate environment, other than as a board member. My interest now is really more in coaching CEOs and management teams and also enjoying life a lot more. I take time off for a lot of travel. I spent several months this year traveling throughout Asia and, really, Australasia. I intend to do more traveling in the coming year. Im really much more balanced in my life now. Probably, you could call it semiretired. I like working on a project basis, as opposed to actually being involved in directly running something myself.
As I look back on things that I wished we would have done differently when I was at Apple, I think one of the biggest missed opportunities, and it was on my watch, so I feel responsible and disappointed that we didnt do more with it, was Hypercard. It was created back in 1987 by Bill Atkinson, Apples first software programmer. We could never figure out exactly what it was. We thought it was a prototyping tool. We thought it was a database tool. It was actually used by people as a front-end communications device for TCP/IP to connect the Internet to large Cray computers.
