Bill Campbell Reflects on 17 Years on Apple's Board of Directors

I have been Apple's shareholder for well over 10 years. One thing I always voted against, was keeping Bill Campbell on the board. Intuit has consistently and intentionally produced inferior applications for Mac, starting with perhaps their biggest insult, Quicken for Mac.

"Apple is an institution now," he said. "Tim's done an amazing job of building bench strength within the organization. There's a whole set of new and smart people who are taking over. You're watching that company grow up." [...]

I like hearing this. Tim's the guy to lead a grown up Apple. Steve knew that, hence why he recommended the board put Tim in charge.

Campbell's company sure showed Apple a lot of love. How he remained so close to Steve is a mystery to me.

I always found it quite ironic how the Intuit chairman was on our board - yet their offerings for Mac OS (classic and X) have always been complete garbage compared to the windows versions.

What does he mean by "Apple is an institution now"?

Apple has been an institution for some time, no?

I would say he's pretty spot on. You have to remember Apple's ascendance to the top of the heap is a relatively new occurence. Only a decade ago Apple's net revenue was only $8 billion. 5 years ago it was $36.5 billion. Apple didn't cross that magical $100 billion in net revenue until 2011.

Just an aside: To go from $8 billion in 2004 to $170 billion in 2013 is abso-f'n-lutely Chris Bridges.

I think that's what he meant by "now".

Quicken

My biggest gripe with Bill Campbell is that for almost a decade now he has allowed Intuit/Quicken for the Mac to languish with problems of incompatibility with OSX (Lion, I believe), iOS, lack of support, lack of improvements and sheer and utter lack of responsiveness.

Quicken was a piece of software that was an early hit with the Mac Community -- nothing else including the Intuit-owned Mint (anybody heard anything about that lately?) has even come close to taking Quicken's place.

Mr. Campbell ought to give the software to Apple and let it get the development it's due. Now that it's APPLE/IBM such an action might be worthy.

It always has bothered me that Campbell's Intuit just ignored the Mac audience that helped building the company and has continued to adapt, improve and support the Windows world.

I, for one, think a not so very good friend has left the building and his exit need not be bemoaned.

A lot of people have heard enough of it. It's been three years. Time for the players to get off the bench and play.

You're right. In addition, it seems like there's an undercurrent of mild chaos and uncertainty that is interfering with the development and execution of a clear plan of action going forward. It's as though Apple has stalled. Oh sure there's some movement and the ever present profit taking. But it just seems as though Apple could be doing so much more. Between the personnel changes and other changes, stability seems challenged.

A lot of people have heard enough of it. It's been three years. Time for the players to get off the bench and play.

WTF was WWDC and the IBM announcement then? Seems to me that's getting off the bench.

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This Sue Wagner lady who is going to replace him on the board....yuck. Another Wall Street type, just what Apple needs...

She was hired for a spot on the board not to run product development.

Time for someone else to serve for 17 years.

Finally, this disgusting parasite of a human being is gone!! Good riddance to this disgusting man who has done more to hurt the Mac platform than almost any other man in existence. The man who has always allowed his company Intuit to treat all Mac users like second-class citizens, which still continues to this day. The man who has never lifted a finger of good for the Mac platform. The man who allowed his company to drop all support for Quicken for the Mac, then drop all support for QuickBooks for the Mac, then reluctantly bring back QuickBooks after many years, but still never brought back Quicken and still keeps QuickBooks paralyzed with 99% less features than the Windows versions of QuickBooks. The man who allowed his company to never develop any other accounting products for the Mac. The man who made everyone in the entire tech industry doubt that the Mac was a viable business machine. Why Steve Jobs was EVER friends with this pathetic human being is beyond me. Good riddance. At first, I actually misinterpreted the headline to read that Bill Campbell had died, which would be even BETTER news… but this news will still suffice as the best news of the day.