Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s course is apparently disappointing Alan Kay, one of the company’s very first influential engineers.
Kay was quoted by Jobs numerous times as saying that “people who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.” In fact, this way of thinking became the mindset that Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) was entirely built on. So what has Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) and even the corporate tech world as a whole done with his ideas? He’s not a fan, clearly.
Fortune published excerpts of his interview with David Greelish, a computer historian, and he made it quite clear that he isn’t too happy with the way the company has been going. One of Kay’s biggest disappointments was the fact that although the iPhone and the iPad are very user-friendly, they aren’t very child-friendly. He expressed disappointment that children can’t “download an Etoy made by another child somewhere in the world.”
Kay also discussed Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) both with and without Steve Jobs. He said that the company did change every few years and noted that all of the companies he has worked for had a “deep problem of devolving to something like the hunting and gathering cultures of 100,000 years ago.”
He actually seemed fairly disappointed with the corporate tech world as a whole and spoke of charismatic leaders like Jobs, who many considered to be the epitome of charisma.
“If they require a charismatic leader who will shoot people in the knees when needed, then the corporate organization and process is a failure,” he said. “It means no group can come up with a good decision and make it stick just because it is a good idea.”
