Wow, kiss Apple good-bye if it does turn out to be true. Apple has already lost a lot of its innovative spirit with the death of Steve Jobs. Tim Cook is a great supply chain guy but is having difficulty doing much more than polishing the iPhone line as much as possible. To even suggest that a marketing executive whose experience is primarily in fashion goods would be an appropriate leader for one of the greatest technological companies in the world is ludicrous.
Apple would do well to take a note from Microsoft. Steve Balmer did his best to ruin it because he simply didn't have the technical ability to see where the company needed to be in five-to-ten years. Now they've finally got someone back in the big chair who has degrees in electrical engineering and computer science as well as an MBA. You need to be a high-level user of your company's products to be able to predict where the future lies. Nadella is doing a lot to turn Microsoft around.
Apple needs to be grooming a talented engineer with great design skills to be the next CEO.
"Apple needs to be grooming a talented engineer with great design skills to be the next CEO."
That describes Scott Forstall. He was in charge of UI during the early days of OSX.
And if Steve felt that way he would have recommended Forstall success him not Cook. There’s obviously a reason he picked Cook. And seeing a lot of the things Cook does as CEO I think it would be a waste to have an engineer or designer in that role. I want to see them spending their time creating great products. Also it should be noted that other than Forstall, who was let go, no one else from the SVP level has left other than the few who have retired. I think it says something about Cook that they’ve all chosen to stay. And it can’t just be about money because any one of them could get hired somewhere else and make a ton of money.
Apple needs to be grooming a talented engineer with great design skills to be the next CEO.
You can have the best technical mind in the world that can envision a brilliant idea no one else can. But without the ability to convince others to follow and work towards that vision that person would be rather useless in a leadership role.
My choice : bring Scott Forstall back. He grew up in the apple tradition with Steve. Or someone who has similar background.
What does Scott Forestall know about running an $800B company. Pretty much all of the current executive team “grew up in the Apple tradition with Steve”.
Steve Jobs - “My passion has been to build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products. The products, not the profits, were the motivation. Sculley flipped these priorities to where the goal was to make money. It’s a subtle difference, but it ends up meaning everything.”
Scott Forestall or whoever is the next CEO doesn't need to know how to run an $800B company. That's why you have competent finance, production, and legal departments. They will handle the day-to-day operations. Tim Cook was a terrific team member. He could take a product that Steve Jobs and Jony Ive developed and have it turned into mass-produced real-world goods. I just don't think he has the vision for yet undeveloped products that Steve had. It doesn't matter how efficient your productions lines are or how great your marketing campaign is if the product itself isn't awe inspiring.
What distinguished Apple and Microsoft was having leaders who were intimately familiar with and passionate about their products and who could foresee upcoming technological developments and gauge when the time was right for widespread consumer adoption. The CEO sets the long-term aims for the company. It is a fallacy of Wall Street that only financiers can head large corporations. One only needs to read Bob Lutz's book "Car Guys vs. Bean Counters" to see how a change in focus from product creativity to financial efficiency can cause long-term ruin.
Apple has extremely large design, engineering, production, logistics, finance, legal, and human resource departments. Each one needs to have a SVP that is an expert in their field. However, the CEO of a company like Apple that is dependent on the creation of new and innovative products needs to be a visionary. Someone whose life focus has been finance, marketing, production, etc. is generally too rooted in the here-and-now to be the person who can pilot the ship to where it needs to be a decade ahead.
Apple needs to be grooming a talented engineer with great design skills to be the next CEO.
You can have the best technical mind in the world that can envision a brilliant idea no one else can. But without the ability to convince others to follow and work towards that vision that person would be rather useless in a leadership role.
I'll agree 100% with that statement. I'll also add that without a good vision for product design, the ability to convince others to follow amounts to nothing more than leading lemmings off a cliff. A good CEO combines leadership with competence and innovation. The best leader who didn't care about the product would be just as bad as the best designer who couldn't communicate their ideas effectively.
My only concern about who ever replaces Tim, the board should not pick someone to appease some social pressure or PC Police. They need to pick the right person not just any person. In the end it going to be had to find the right person. Steve picked Tim, but the board will pick the next person and too many on that board have social agendas they trying to drive forward and will use Apple success to drive those agendas.
As Tim Cook I identify as a gay man, good to know that being a gay man makes me more respected by the average Appleinsider commentor than if I were female. (sarcasm for those not sure).
Not funny. And since fake news is the real news, a bit scary that she used that phrasing. She may be savvy in certain ways, but with iOS11 currently making my phone horrid, and the latest version of Podcasts a continued decline in usefulness, even Tim Cook is starting to leave me uninspired. Sure, he can manage the supply chain, but the software is the key, not just the hardware. First time I have ever thought it might be time to look around, and I go back Mac, way back.
Not funny. And since fake news is the real news, a bit scary that she used that phrasing. She may be savvy in certain ways, but with iOS11 currently making my phone horrid, and the latest version of Podcasts a continued decline in usefulness, even Tim Cook is starting to leave me uninspired. Sure, he can manage the supply chain, but the software is the key, not just the hardware. First time I have ever thought it might be time to look around, and I go back Mac, way back.
Like him or not, the man is a class act. Steve picked wisely.
Being a class act is great if you are a PR rep maybe not so much for CEO. Some of the best CEOs were not considered class acts (Jobs, Gates, Ballmer, Dell)
With all the mistakes Ballmer made including with; the Zune, Windows Mobile/Phone, the Kin, the XBox Red Ring of Death, the design of the Metro/Modern UI, etc.; If that kind of CEO had been in charge of Apple in the 2000s, then Apple would now be dead.
* Microsoft (as well as Google) is a software company which has had several monopolies earning multiple billions of dollars. Because of that, Microsoft (and Google) can repeatedly release very flawed hardware that they quickly abandon or which turn out to be poorly designed. Microsoft under Ballmer could lose enough money on mistakes to kill off multiple companies.
* Apple is a niche brand hardware company. Apple always has to be very careful to not make a terrible mistake. - Apple can innovate but then it needs to spend years refining that innovation to keep the reliability of its hardware top notch (which it has done for decades) and keep it's customer service/support among the best (which it has also done for decades).
* I don't know who will be the next Apple CEO and frankly I don't have nearly enough knowledge to make a recommendation. But what I do know is that Apple does not need a CEO who makes a string of blunders, releasing very flawed personal / mobile computer products.
OK, time to stop using "fake news" as a description of anything false. "Fake news" is a dishonest trumpian construct to delegitimize REAL NEWS.
What bothers me is people calling everything “fake news” and everything qualifying for “fake news” EXCEPT when it comes to Apple, where everything is automatically “true”.
Comments
You can have the best technical mind in the world that can envision a brilliant idea no one else can. But without the ability to convince others to follow and work towards that vision that person would be rather useless in a leadership role.
Scott Forestall or whoever is the next CEO doesn't need to know how to run an $800B company. That's why you have competent finance, production, and legal departments. They will handle the day-to-day operations. Tim Cook was a terrific team member. He could take a product that Steve Jobs and Jony Ive developed and have it turned into mass-produced real-world goods. I just don't think he has the vision for yet undeveloped products that Steve had. It doesn't matter how efficient your productions lines are or how great your marketing campaign is if the product itself isn't awe inspiring.
What distinguished Apple and Microsoft was having leaders who were intimately familiar with and passionate about their products and who could foresee upcoming technological developments and gauge when the time was right for widespread consumer adoption. The CEO sets the long-term aims for the company. It is a fallacy of Wall Street that only financiers can head large corporations. One only needs to read Bob Lutz's book "Car Guys vs. Bean Counters" to see how a change in focus from product creativity to financial efficiency can cause long-term ruin.
Apple has extremely large design, engineering, production, logistics, finance, legal, and human resource departments. Each one needs to have a SVP that is an expert in their field. However, the CEO of a company like Apple that is dependent on the creation of new and innovative products needs to be a visionary. Someone whose life focus has been finance, marketing, production, etc. is generally too rooted in the here-and-now to be the person who can pilot the ship to where it needs to be a decade ahead.
If that kind of CEO had been in charge of Apple in the 2000s, then Apple would now be dead.
* Microsoft (as well as Google) is a software company which has had several monopolies earning multiple billions of dollars.
Because of that, Microsoft (and Google) can repeatedly release very flawed hardware that they quickly abandon or which turn out to be poorly designed.
Microsoft under Ballmer could lose enough money on mistakes to kill off multiple companies.
* Apple is a niche brand hardware company.
Apple always has to be very careful to not make a terrible mistake.
- Apple can innovate but then it needs to spend years refining that innovation to keep the reliability of its hardware top notch (which it has done for decades) and keep it's customer service/support among the best (which it has also done for decades).
* I don't know who will be the next Apple CEO and frankly I don't have nearly enough knowledge to make a recommendation.
But what I do know is that Apple does not need a CEO who makes a string of blunders, releasing very flawed personal / mobile computer products.
As a reminder, it's not the President or previous candidates that are the problem -- it is how you talk to each other.
Do not persist.