Apple's Tim Cook profiled as "most powerful gay man in Silicon Valley"

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Comments

  • Reply 321 of 335
    Wow....another day...another 'gay' story.



    I don't care what people do in their bedrooms but quit forcing on me what a wonderfully, super awesome, and keenly progressive lifestyle being gay is everytime I open a godamn web browser or read a newspaper!



    PS. Steve Balmer is into Plushies...
  • Reply 322 of 335
    For you all stating this shouldn't be news, it sure is creating quite a stir. If you don't care for it, move on.
  • Reply 323 of 335
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by pondosinatra View Post


    Wow....another day...another 'gay' story.



    I don't care what people do in their bedrooms but quit forcing on me what a wonderfully, super awesome, and keenly progressive lifestyle being gay is everytime I open a godamn web browser or read a newspaper!



    PS. Steve Balmer is into Plushies...



    Urm... This is actually one of those articles that didn't say what wonderfully super awesome progressive lifestyle gaydom is. It just says Tim Cook might be gay.
  • Reply 324 of 335
    davdav Posts: 120member
    so A.I., who's the most powerful Asian, atheist, bisexual woman in Silicon Valley? Inquiring minds want to know!

  • Reply 325 of 335
    john.bjohn.b Posts: 2,742member
    For Daniel, the Valleywag crew, and the AI editorial board; here is how a journalistic profile of an executive is done: The Understudy Takes the Stage at Apple (nytimes.com)



    Something for you to aspire to.
  • Reply 326 of 335
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by John.B View Post


    For Daniel, the Valleywag crew, and the AI editorial board; here is how a journalistic profile of an executive is done: The Understudy Takes the Stage at Apple (nytimes.com)



    Something for you to aspire to.



    John B., bulls-eye, right on the mark.
  • Reply 327 of 335
    What does anyone's sexual orientation have to do with ability to run a company? You're pretty obviously dredging the bottom for a story. I'm outta here.
  • Reply 328 of 335
    axualaxual Posts: 244member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Futuristic View Post


    I agree with your criticism of the article's "sensationalizing" angle. But, highlighting a person as "the most powerful non-gay man in Silicon Valley" is a non-issue, because non-gay, aka: straight, is considered "normal". Gay/Bi/Lesbian/etc. is still considered "alternative", and, as I said earlier, I'm very much in favour of moving them from the margins to the mainstream.



    I like rainbows.



    I agree ... it's a non-issue ... so what is the point of the article? To point out (err guess) he is gay? Who cares ... that's why the article is dumpster material.
  • Reply 329 of 335
    asciiascii Posts: 5,936member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Mark View Post


    First of all, what is 'that?' Is 'that' anal sex? Or oral sex? I hate to break it to you, but it's not an exclusively gay thing. Neither is it a sign that a person is irresponsible or immoral, someone who would 'harm your company.' This fear is so illogical and absurd, that it really is homophobic.



    Yes, anal sex. You don't have to be an art critic to see it's plainly an act of domination by one party and submission by the other. Healthy human beings should not want to dominate others or be dominated by them. It's where war (domination) and slavery (submission) come from.



    Quote:

    No worries? On the contrary. People like this make me nervous. They have deep-seated fears that, when encountered in the real world, are suppressed by the flimsiest of rationalizations. This is a recipe for hatred and violence. Often people ask, why do gays speak of bashers as being 'phobic?' It's because it's in human nature to hate what we fear.



    You say you are worried by the prospect of hatred and violence, so am I! Because if gayness is voluntary, not genetic, then their desire for these things comes from an idea not a gene. An idea that is about 1 inch away from what a dictator might hold.
  • Reply 330 of 335
    nvidia2008nvidia2008 Posts: 9,262member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by ascii View Post


    Yes, anal sex. You don't have to be an art critic to see it's plainly an act of domination by one party and submission by the other. Healthy human beings should not want to dominate others or be dominated by them. It's where war (domination) and slavery (submission) come from...



    Nope, whichever side is "submitting" or "dominating" does not necessarily relate to who's-what-is-in-who's-where.



    Next you'll be saying missionary is the only healthy way of doing it, and to keep your mouths out of everything!
  • Reply 331 of 335
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by nvidia2008 View Post


    Nope, whichever side is "submitting" or "dominating" does not necessarily relate to who's-what-is-in-who's-where.



    Next you'll be saying missionary is the only healthy way of doing it, and to keep your mouths out of everything!



    Even with "missionary" style, from an outsider's viewpoint it could still very easily appear as though one side is dominating the other. Clearly the only acceptable system would be to refrain from all forms of relations entirely.



    If we find ourselves running low on population, introduce a program of controlled reproduction by means of artificial insemination.
  • Reply 332 of 335
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by lfmorrison View Post


    If we find ourselves running low on population, introduce a program of controlled reproduction by means of artificial insemination.



    Yup, one that doesn't involve masturbation.
  • Reply 333 of 335
    addaboxaddabox Posts: 12,665member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by ascii View Post


    Yes, anal sex. You don't have to be an art critic to see it's plainly an act of domination by one party and submission by the other. Healthy human beings should not want to dominate others or be dominated by them. It's where war (domination) and slavery (submission) come from.



    Lesbians, however, will usher in the new golden age of peace and prosperity.





    Quote:

    You say you are worried by the prospect of hatred and violence, so am I! Because if gayness is voluntary, not genetic, then their desire for these things comes from an idea not a gene. An idea that is about 1 inch away from what a dictator might hold.



    OK. (Begins to back slowly towards door) Very......interesting..........your Hitler equals gay theory......I'll have to give that some........(runs)
  • Reply 334 of 335
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,486moderator
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by dav View Post


    so A.I., who's the most powerful Asian, atheist, bisexual woman in Silicon Valley? Inquiring minds want to know!





    Tim's wife.



    There are a couple of profiles around concerning Tim so while the sexuality issue is a sensitive one, some other points they raise are interesting and a lot of them mentioned in the AI article:



    -----------



    Cook is described as a workaholic who begins emailing his underlings at 4:30 am each morning. He expects similar commitment from others; Cook once dispatched an underling straight from a meeting at Apple headquarters in Cupertino to the airport bound for China, without time even to pack a change of clothes or figure out a return date. "Why are you still here?" was Cook's goodbye, delivered in the middle of the meeting.



    Cook is not known as a product visionary or for shepherding projects through Apple's rigorous development pipeline. For those sorts of tasks, Jobs' heir apparent is design chief Jonathan Ive. He is also not known as a compelling public speaker, which is probably why marketing chief Phil Schiller has handled the unveiling of new Apple products during Jobs' past absences.



    Like Jobs, Cook is a Bob Dylan fan, and at one point, at least, kept a picture of the singer in his office, alongside a shot of Bobby Kennedy. The photo of Bobby Kennedy reveals another side of Cook, the idealist. Cook has said he is "tormented" at times by thinking what would have happened if R.F.K. had become President.



    A former college classmate described him as "not a real social person...He just never seemed that interested in other people. I'm a hugger and a kisser, but I'd never feel comfortable giving Tim a hug or a kiss."



    After Cook was profiled as a "lifelong bachelor" and "intensely private" elsewhere, we wondered if he might be gay. We've since heard from two well-placed sources that this is indeed the case, and it sounds like Cook's sexual orientation has been the topic of at least some discussion within the company. One tech executive who has spoken to multiple Apple management veterans about Cook was told executives there would support Cook if he publicly acknowledged his orientation, and even would encourage him to do so as he steps up his leadership role, but that they also had concerns about whether his coming out would impact the perception of the Apple brand.



    If Cook is in a long term partnership, he's kept it well hidden. Given his brutal work schedule, though, it's hard to imagine how he'd find time. Still, he's got enough experience to have developed some preferences; our tech executive source claims Cook is into Asian guys.



    Cook serves on Nike's board, which is why you'll see him sporting Nike shoes under his jeans around the Apple office.



    "Come on, replace Steve? No. He's irreplaceable," Cook said recently, according to a person who knows him well. "That's something people have to get over. I see Steve there with gray hair in his 70s, long after I'm retired."



    "By default Tim Cook would be the logical guy," says Toni Sacconaghi, an influential Apple analyst at brokerage firm Sanford C. Bernstein. "Yet that hasn't been spelled out. And the stakes are just higher at Apple, because Steve is larger than life, and Tim isn't a known quantity."



    Though he's capable of mirth, Cook's default facial expression is a frown, and his humor is of the dry variety. Like everyone else at Apple, Cook dresses casually in jeans, his graying hair cropped close in the style of Lance Armstrong, whom he idolizes.



    "Nobody would make Tim Cook CEO," says a Silicon Valley investor who travels in the Apple orbit. "That's laughable. They don't need a guy who merely" gets stuff done. "They need a brilliant product guy, and Tim is not that guy. He is an ops guy - at a company where ops is outsourced."



    There's also the question of whether Cook even wants to be CEO - such a high-profile job would attract the kind of public scrutiny he has carefully avoided - or if he'd accept a job elsewhere if one were offered. People who know Cook say he professes a genuine love for Apple. "To me the company is about putting together pieces of the puzzle," Cook told someone recently, "not about getting personal visibility."



    ----------



    From some of the details above that don't concern his sexuality, Tim Cook most certainly wouldn't come across the same way as Jobs. It doesn't sound like he has a great sense of humour nor vision for products. There is also the hint that he can be swayed into going elsewhere - he's on Nike's board. This wouldn't happen with Steve because it's his company. From his own admission, he doesn't see himself taking that role either and plans on being retired while Steve is still at the company.



    It sounds like this will happen within 10 years. For the CEO position, they need someone who can go the distance. Although Tim has been there a while, I mean go the distance from now. The only person remotely close that we see publicly would be Scott Forstall. I don't see an idealistic persona there though, more just someone who would connect well with the younger demographic. Steve Jobs will have thought long and hard about this time coming and he's tried to mould people to be like him and look for other people like him but that approach is flawed because you can't replace a mould-breaker by fitting other people into the same mould. The mould itself is just a by-product of the qualities that produce it so it's the qualities they need to look for. I actually get the impression from a few of the public figures there that they share similar qualities though so it's not all bad.



    The question I would have is, what will Apple as a company look like in 10 years? Year after year, they've used superlatives to describe their achievements but there will come a time when that stops. With every company, there has to be a driving force to reach a certain Event Horizon and beyond that point, it doesn't matter. Think of a day when motherboards are so small and networks so fast that everyone is building machines that are the size of a mobile phone or laptop screen with capacitive multi-touch or a progression of it. When you just have a black square for a device, all you are left with is software and no need to innovate in hardware.



    At this point, hardware manufacturers stop being great in their own right and become conduits for innovative soft-content just like TV manufacturers. If they have a desire to stand out in the crowd, they need to diversify and move off the well-worn path again and again. They can only do this with a visionary at the helm and Tim Cook doesn't seem to be the man to do this. Without one, I don't see Apple continuing to be the same company. They have enough reserves and product lifespans to last for a very long time though and well before that time, it's probably not going to matter.
  • Reply 335 of 335
    HOLD UP, GUYS. It?s not wrong to report on gay public figures. Yes ? it might encourage another to come out of the closet, whether they are a child or a corporate figure. And yes, the art of journalism is to report what is true. It is wrong, when the rumours are unconfirmed ? how can you possibly say things like, Cook will help open the corporate closet, when he hasn?t ACTUALLY OPENED HIS CLOSET? While the idea of having a gay role model that is successful in business is admirable and inspiring for many, the core of what I?m trying to say is: until Cook says so, you are all making incredibly loud and large assumptions. So yes, can we stop the media sensationalism of one?s sexuality? It may be an issue to discuss, but there is no substance behind the Cook story. So stop involving Cook, if you?re going to discuss about gay public figures.
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