Will Apple be a Great Company

The title seems bombastic and I don't have a plan write a complete paper with this title. It came into my mind when I read the book From Good to Great.

There are plenty of evidence supporting that Apple is great companies. It looks like a superstar among technology companies. Macintosh transformed the way we use computers; iPod changed the way we enjoy music; iPhone redefined what a cellphone should be. With all these innovations, Apple brings continuous revenues for investors. It is a great success in terms both of technology and profitability. No one company has ever attracted so much attention since 1970s.

It seems no doubt that Apple was and is a legendary company, however our question now is "will Apple be a great company"? The past success of Apple should give substantial credit to its founder Steve Jobs. His pesonal vision dominated the development of Apple. His influence was so profound that Apple suffered ten years loss during Jobs was out. Luckily, Steves returned and Apple re-emerged.

However, there is a mounting danger that Apple has to face. Steve suffers from health problems and eventually Apple has to evolve without Steve someday. Jim Collins reported in his research of so-called "good to great" companies that great companies usually benefited from so-called "level 5 leaders", who "build enduring greatness through a blend of personal huminity and professional skills" and "set up their successsor for even greater success in the next generation".

While Steve Jobs himself is a superstar leader, he seems to fail to set up a sustainable development framework for his successors. When Jobs announced in Janary he would leave for a period, the stock price of Apple plumpted several points. Investors and analysists shared the concern the Apple without Jobs will not be as successful as it is now. Apple's situation looks like that of Kingdom of Shu of the Three Kingdoms period in the history China. When the founder of Shu, Liu Bei, was alive, Shu was able to recruit great people and eventually held the
Xichuan district. But once Liu Lei was dead, the Kingdom of Shu collapsed within a generation.

What will be the fate of Apple in the future? Apple still have time to find an answer but the time seems very limited.

Book Review: The Call of the Wild

Image source: http://www.hautman.com/jim.html

Some phrases have the mysterious power to arouse the deep hidden feelings in your heart. "The call of the wild" is one of them. Since the first time I heard about this phrase at junior high school, it has been carved in my memory. From time to time it comes into my mind, sometimes when I am actually longing for the wildness, sometimes when I need to made decisions in front of uncertainties. The phrase is not only associated with adventure, deserts, mountains, forest, rivers, breast, but also associated with freedom, courage and ambition.

This phrase has been inspired and excited me since then. But it is not until now that I read the novel with the same name. This novel is authored by Jack London. The story is set in Alaska during the Gold Rush. The main character, a dog named Buck, who was raised in Santa Clara Valley as a domestic dog, was accidentally abducted to Alaska where he served as a toil dog. From the original world of love and peace to the world of fang and club (fight and blood), the hidden instinct of his ancestors emerged and finally Buck returned to a pack of wolves, living a life of his ancestors in the great plain of Alaska.

Besides this theme of Buck's struggle, I am more impressed by another theme: the process of a man growing up and adapting to the society. From this view of point, it talks about friendship, loyalty, loneliness, work ethic and determination.

We can interpret Buck's life at Judge Miller's mansion as a man's childhood. It is a troubleless time. As Pink Floyd describes in "The Thin Ice", "mom loves her baby, daddy loves you too". Parents carefully protects you from any dark side of the society.

Then after you grow up and have to face this world by yourself.

You meet different persons. Some of them are your classmates, some your colleagues, some your supervisors. You will discover various facets of humanity.
[to be continued]










The dog book

the cat book

Keeping Culture in the Warfire: Diary of Saad Eskander

I come to know Saad Eskander via the post Culture Under Siege: A Diary of Iraq's National Library by Max Magee. Saad Eskander, the director of the Iraq National Library and Archives, are rebuilding in very hard conditions the collection of the library, which has been looted during the early days of American invasion. Just image the endless violent events in Iraq, the perilous condition, the limited help of the authority and the difficulty in interacting various forces etc, the story of Saad and colleagues' sustaining the culture in the warfire is actually a heroic episode of intellectuals. If fortunately peace returns to Iraq someday in the future, we should thank them for keeping the culture from entirely disappearing.

It reminds my some Chinese heroes in Anti-Japan War and in the Culture Revolution. It is a tradition of Chinese intellectuals to protecting the Chinese culture most of because of an instinct. That is why China can have an continues of civilization history of over five thousand years.

And now I see the same instinct in Saad and his colleagues. I hope the Iraq war can damage the regime but not the culture, because the regime is of the politicians but the culture is the treasure of all Iraq people, or the human being as a whole.

Related Links:
1. Culture Under Siege: A Diary of Iraq's National Library
2. Online Diary of Saad Eskander at the British Library

The Dream of Red Chamber in wiki

I was really impressed by a piece of comment by Zhiyan Zhai when I was reading the Dream of Red Chamber. It says "I prey to God to create another Qin and another Zhi. It will be a great luck to the book and a great delight to us two"

能解者方有辛酸之泪，哭成此书。壬午除夕，书未成，芹为泪尽而逝。余尝哭芹，泪亦待尽。每意觅青埂峰再问石兄，余不遇獭头和尚何！怅怅！今而后惟愿造化主再出一芹一脂，是书何幸，余二人亦大快遂心于九泉矣。甲午八日泪笔。

I dreamed of being another Zhiyan Zhai expressing my ideas and feelings about this novel and sharing them with other alive. A wiki version of this book can record reversion history and provide collaboration between groups, and thus it will be good media to for people dreaming of being another Zhiyan Zhai like me. This media also involves now hot social network.

Fortunately, I came to know that Zoho release its wiki hosting service from TechCruch and I spent the whole night in tranferring a version of the Dream of Red Chamber to my wiki on Zoho. You can visit it at http://ryansonger.wiki.zoho.com/HomePage.html. It is still rather simple but I will add more materials in the future. And I welcome your comments and suggestions.