Piling On Gil--Again!

Gil Amelio, Apple CEO prior to Steve Jobs, is quoted in the latest Business Week and by my observation first noted by a Mac web site on MacCentral with the headline "Gil Amelio claims credit for Apple's success." The reader responses are truly saddening and make me feel ashamed. In fact, Amelio did lay the foundation for Apple's recovery by doing the necessary dirty work of cutting costs, writing off $700 million of useless accumulated Performa inventory, recalling a poor quality PowerBook 5300 and killing Copland to mention a few unpopular but necessary actions. He also got Apple's existence financed, implemented Mac OS licensing that brought us the excitement of the clones like PowerComputing, chose speed via the G3 line up, pressed quality (remember the PowerBook 1400) and bought the foundations of "Mac OS X" from NeXT for $400+ million. Make no mistake, I believe that Steve Jobs deserves the credit for Apple's recovery, the return to elegant simplicity and the wonderful focus on design. He is a visionary, master salesman and wonderfully lovable CEO. I hope Jobs stays on forever. But Amelio deserves credit for saving Apple from impending death and for laying the essential foundation for Apple's current success. He does not have Jobs' charisma, he is not attuned to Apple culture and he doesn't have the greatest personal public relations sense but he does not deserve to be spat on.