It's Rishi

With all this talk about the Amazon Kindle, I Googled Jeff Bezos (Amazon’s founder and CEO) and found an article by Fast Company about his, and Amazon’s, story.

On page 4, Jeff’s rules of leadership – and management – are listed:

• Hire very carefully — you’re creating an enduring culture.
• Be stubborn and flexible.
• Obsess about customers, not colleagues.
• Know when to throw away the org chart.
• Get good advice — and ignore it.
• Don’t chase the quick buck.

…and his rules for Amazon:

• Communication is terrible.
• Take leaps of faith.
• Be simpleminded.
• Add up lots of little advantages.

I’d encourage you to click the link above and read the details behind some of these bullets. His general rules on leadership you’ve probably heard before in one shape or form, but his rules for Amazon – particularly the “Communication is terrible” rule – I found to be thought-provoking.

I love the Macbook Pro that I bought for myself back in July. It replaced my trusty Gateway laptop that never so much as hiccup’d during my 3+ years with it (in fact it’s total power-on time was >2 years!). While I liked the Gateway, I have to admit, I like my MBP even more. I really appreciate OS X’s flexibility in that it I have a full UNIX-compliant environment + a very nice desktop with great business apps when I’m not developing software. The MBP is lighter than any other 15″ on the market and has lots of other unique design considerations that just feel good: aluminum frame, lighted keyboard, integrated webcam, sweet touchpad, etc. Combined with the fact that I can run Windows whenever I need to on it, there is no other laptop that I’d rather own.

While I do love my Mac, there is one aspect that I absolutely hate about it: the smugness of Apple, smugness as a company and as a community. As a result, I’ve almost made it a point not to own or use any other Apple product. No iPhone, iPod, iTunes, iLife, iWork…. I almost feel like using Apple products is a downward spiral into Apple hell. By limiting my Apple experience to 1 product, I hope I’m not beyond the point of no return.

Whether you do or you don’t know what I’m talking about, take a minute to read Scoble’s latest commentary on the Apple community:

http://scobleizer.com/2007/11/17/the-brand-promise-of-apple/