Apple shipping delays higher under Tim Cook than Steve Jobs, data finds

2

Comments

  • Reply 21 of 60
    sflocalsflocal Posts: 6,092member
    I’m not sure what the point of his article is.  Tim Cook’s Apple is nothing like Steve Jobs’ Apple.

    Todays Apples ships products in quantities that Steve Jobs could only dream of, and with logistics far more complex too.

    So the point is??
    edited January 2018 StrangeDaysmike1philboogiewatto_cobrabaconstangmacplusplus
  • Reply 22 of 60
    SoliSoli Posts: 10,035member
    Soli said:
    I thought only Elon Musk missed self-imposed deadlines. I guess now it doesn't mean they're doomed if a company has some delays.

    Means nothing, other than the fact Apple is a little bit more "open" about upcoming products (instead of keeping everything a secret until launch).
    Still, it's better to underpromise and overdeliver. Missing so many self-imposed deadlines doesn't look good for multiple reasons. The switch to Intel was an amazing, in no small part, to starting the switch so far ahead of the first stated timeframe.
    When, or, which car, didn't make the self-imposed deadline? I thought all their cars made it out the door on time.

    Anyway, the Intel architecture? Allegedly they've always been running/designed for Intel CPU's, beginning with Rhapsody. That's because they intended the OS to run on x86, including DEC Alpha workstations as well as PPC's.

    Their transition to APFS is, in my opinion, is a much greater achievement. Pity it doesn't support compression, yet.

    The Model 3 was off the assembly line by the stated time, but the ramp up has been slower than initially projected, which has made many commenters here suggest a range of claims against Musk; anywhere between he's simply bad at his job to him being a charlatan who is duping people out of money.
    edited January 2018 watto_cobra
  • Reply 23 of 60
    emoelleremoeller Posts: 574member
    I've said this before:  Apple should not pre-announce products.

    Apple controls its own destiny, and they should only announce products when they are ready to ship.

    Vaperware was a widely used term back when Microsoft was king and it was but one of the nails in their coffin.  
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 24 of 60
    tzeshantzeshan Posts: 2,351member
    The AirPods shipping delay is worse than WSJ said. A year after December 2016, the AirPods is still not available.  I ordered two a few weeks ago for 2017 Christmas. I will receive them today. How do the Apple apologists on AI explain this sad truth? 
  • Reply 25 of 60
    SoliSoli Posts: 10,035member
    tzeshan said:
    The AirPods shipping delay is worse than WSJ said. A year after December 2016, the AirPods is still not available.  I ordered two a few weeks ago for 2017 Christmas. I will receive them today. How do the Apple apologists on AI explain this sad truth? 
    AirPods were delayed, but you ordering a popular product at Christmas isn’t a delayed product unless you were promised an earlier date.
    edited January 2018 StrangeDaysmike1watto_cobra
  • Reply 26 of 60
    tzeshantzeshan Posts: 2,351member
    Soli said:
    tzeshan said:
    The AirPods shipping delay is worse than WSJ said. A year after December 2016, the AirPods is still not available.  I ordered two a few weeks ago for 2017 Christmas. I will receive them today. How do the Apple apologists on AI explain this sad truth? 
    AirPods were delayed, but you ordering a popular product at Christmas isn’t a delayed product unless you promised an earlier date.
    I tried to order in early December. It is not available in any places. Do you know every company has a marketing department? It will estimate the demand so manufacturing can produce. Apple obviously failed unless it has some unspoken reason not producing enough number of AirPods.  
  • Reply 27 of 60
    racerhomie3racerhomie3 Posts: 1,264member
    Thanks Mr Tim for giving us PCIe SSDs across all the Mac & iOS devices at such a rapid pace.
    Soliwatto_cobrapatchythepiratebaconstangmacplusplus
  • Reply 28 of 60
    StrangeDaysStrangeDays Posts: 12,840member
    tzeshan said:
    The AirPods shipping delay is worse than WSJ said. A year after December 2016, the AirPods is still not available.  I ordered two a few weeks ago for 2017 Christmas. I will receive them today. How do the Apple apologists on AI explain this sad truth? 
    The fact that you call supporters of Apple, on an Apple site no less, "apologists" despite the fact that they discuss their points with you using reason, implies that youre a jackass. 

    As to your point -- its bogus because the AirPods *did* become available Dec 2016. I know because I got two pairs -- one from a pre-order, and one as a walk-in at my local store. The fact that your recent order was back ordered a few weeks doesn't mean their market-date was longer than what the WSJ reported. You could have gotten them months earlier had you ordered earlier. They're just backlogged 2-3 weeks. 

    This means they're popular and difficult to make. It does not mean they're a "failure" as you claim.
    edited January 2018 macxpressSolimike1watto_cobrapatchythepiratebaconstangroundaboutnow
  • Reply 29 of 60
    SoliSoli Posts: 10,035member
    tzeshan said:
    Soli said:
    tzeshan said:
    The AirPods shipping delay is worse than WSJ said. A year after December 2016, the AirPods is still not available.  I ordered two a few weeks ago for 2017 Christmas. I will receive them today. How do the Apple apologists on AI explain this sad truth? 
    AirPods were delayed, but you ordering a popular product at Christmas isn’t a delayed product unless you promised an earlier date.
    I tried to order in early December. It is not available in any places. Do you know every company has a marketing department? It will estimate the demand so manufacturing can produce. Apple obviously failed unless it has some unspoken reason not producing enough number of AirPods.  
    1) Again, that’s not missing a deadline.

    2) The marketing dept. has nothing to with manufacturing.

    3) You assume they woefully under estimated their materials and production needs yet you never once considered the finite aspects of physical products, like demand simply outstripping their ability to supply. Maybe they have been saying for over a year now demand will die any day now so we should keep production to a minimum, but that seems highly unlikely to me. As a worst case scenario, I’d say that production is more difficult than first imagined which is causing the rate at which they can produce a finished product to be less than they desire.
    edited January 2018 StrangeDayswatto_cobra
  • Reply 30 of 60
    SoliSoli Posts: 10,035member
    Their transition to APFS is, in my opinion, is a much greater achievement. Pity it doesn't support compression, yet.
    It's interesting that they rolled it to iOS, watchOS, and tvOS mid update cycle last year, and that macOS got it much later and still has imitations with High Sierra. I think that's an example that shows that shows that closed systems are considerably easier to support and less error prone than open systems where the user can install all sorts of various HW, drivers, side-loaded apps, etc.
    StrangeDaysphilboogiewatto_cobra
  • Reply 31 of 60
    jungmarkjungmark Posts: 6,926member
    It's a worthless article. 
    How many times did Apple ship something that was clearly not ready?

    Also it said Jobs had only one item wait more than 3 months? That's the original iPhone. Wasn't  the white iPhone also delayed a long time?
    baconstang
  • Reply 32 of 60
    jungmarkjungmark Posts: 6,926member
    tzeshan said:
    The AirPods shipping delay is worse than WSJ said. A year after December 2016, the AirPods is still not available.  I ordered two a few weeks ago for 2017 Christmas. I will receive them today. How do the Apple apologists on AI explain this sad truth? 
    It's called supply and demand. 
    watto_cobrabaconstang
  • Reply 33 of 60
    tzeshantzeshan Posts: 2,351member
    jungmark said:
    It's a worthless article. 
    How many times did Apple ship something that was clearly not ready?

    Also it said Jobs had only one item wait more than 3 months? That's the original iPhone. Wasn't  the white iPhone also delayed a long time?
    The original iPhone was announced in January 2007. The planned ship day is June 2007.  When was it shipped? 
  • Reply 34 of 60
    As the former COO I would say that the amazing logistics success was primarily his achievement. I would be reluctant to look at a direct causal relationship between number of days of delay and who's CEO. There are just too many other factors to draw a direct line.
    SoliGG1StrangeDayswatto_cobrabaconstangrandominternetperson
  • Reply 35 of 60
    SoliSoli Posts: 10,035member
    jungmark said:
    Also it said Jobs had only one item wait more than 3 months? That's the original iPhone. Wasn't  the white iPhone also delayed a long time?
    The original iPhone didn't miss its stated date. New products have lead times for a variety of reasons, but mostly because it's better for Apple to control the narrative than someone else. That keynote was one of the best they've ever had. Imagine if they had tried to do that the week before it was shipping.

    Steve had plenty of products that missed their stated target date so why not pick those?
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 36 of 60
    tzeshantzeshan Posts: 2,351member
    Soli said:
    jungmark said:
    Also it said Jobs had only one item wait more than 3 months? That's the original iPhone. Wasn't  the white iPhone also delayed a long time?
    The original iPhone didn't miss its stated date. New products have lead times for a variety of reasons, but mostly because it's better for Apple to control the narrative than someone else. That keynote was one of the best they've ever had. Imagine if they had tried to do that the week before it was shipping.

    Steve had plenty of products that missed their stated target date so why not pick those?
    Steve does not supervise production of all products. I think. But he knows the products exceptionally well. The fact is most CEOs don't know the company products. 
  • Reply 37 of 60
    dewmedewme Posts: 5,335member
    Soli said:
    tzeshan said:
    The AirPods shipping delay is worse than WSJ said. A year after December 2016, the AirPods is still not available.  I ordered two a few weeks ago for 2017 Christmas. I will receive them today. How do the Apple apologists on AI explain this sad truth? 
    AirPods were delayed, but you ordering a popular product at Christmas isn’t a delayed product unless you were promised an earlier date.
    I walked into an Apple Store in early December 2017 and bought a pair of AirPods off the shelf. The good news is that you will get them today and they are wonderful. The convenience and ease of pairing with multiple Apple devices from Apple Watch to iPhone to iMac is so far beyond any wireless product I've ever used. One of the main reasons I bought them, even though I own at least a half-dozen other really good headphones, is because they are not sound isolating. When I'm at home with other people in the house I want to know if others are trying to get in touch with me. When I'm on an airplane however I want to be totally isolated and that's when the Bose QCs come out and the AirPods go back into their dock. 

    As far as Tim Cook and the shipping delay stats are concerned... I believe Tim Cook is a very data driven individual at a personal and business level. He is undoubtedly aware of all real and perceived shipping delays. But one of the great things about Tim Cook, at least from his public facing persona, is that he gives his development teams all of the leeway and air cover they need - as long as they are always focused on the one thing that matters more than anything else at Apple - which is delivering amazing products. This is exactly the kind of leader I would want to work for any day of the week versus someone who is trying to prop themselves up by whipping the troops into delivering "something" on-time. 
    watto_cobrabaconstangrandominternetperson
  • Reply 38 of 60
    eightzeroeightzero Posts: 3,056member
    Sog, is that you?
  • Reply 39 of 60
    thrangthrang Posts: 1,007member
    The ramping of supply chains and production is exponentially higher now...
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 40 of 60
    AppleZuluAppleZulu Posts: 1,989member
    AppleZulu said:
    This article doesn’t even make any sense. For Cook, it notes delays for Apple Watch, AirPods, Apple Pencil, the iPad Pro’s keyboard, and HomePod. With the possible exception of the keyboard, these are all entirely new products released during Cook’s tenure. Then the article notes that for a few items, iPhone, iPad and Apple TV, Jobs made the announcement well before products were ready to ship.  So... the issue is that for entirely new product lines, announcements tend to come early, and for Cook, the announced ship date is apparently a little too ambitious. Or is it that Cook is actually more of a perfectionist that Jobs, willing to delay to achieve higher quality?  I’m not sure what the information actually means. The intent, however, seems pretty clear: choose an arbitrary metric and spin it to negatively compare Cook to Jobs.

    O.K. Got it.
    Apple was always keenly aware of the Osborne effect and careful not to make itself a victim of that.  And there’s the rub.  You never want to announce far in advance a product that will cause your customers to delay purchases of your existing products, but you do want to announce far in advance products that will cause your competitor’s customers to delay purchases of their products, or decide to forego those purchases in favor of waiting for your offering.  And that’s the reason you want to announce far in advance your initial offering in a product category in which you don’t yet sell products, like the initial Apple Watch, or in the past the first iPhone and first iPad.  But not when you already have products in a category.

    And there exists some gray area, where a far-in-advance announcement causes your customers to delay purchases of your products but also causes your competitors customers to delay or forego purchases of competitor’s offerings, if your calculus is such that you’ll harm yourself less than you’ll adversely effect your competition.  

    And so it all makes sense. .
    Well, yeah. That’s totally why they announced the HomePod when they did. Prior to that announcement, I didn’t think they would bother with that market, because of the inherent security issues involved in having an always-on voice activated device tied to such things as door locks, garage door openers, etc. I was already going to be pretty skeptical of Amazon or Google doing enough to prevent nefarious use of the devices to ultimately hack ‘meat space.’ But there they are, selling the things, cheap. With the HomePod announcement, I am more than happy to stay away from those things and wait to see what Apple will do. They’re often late to a product category, but when they come in, it’s rarely with just an Apple-branded version of what everyone else already has, so the Pod’s announced features likely represent only a partial description. The early announcement makes a great place-holder, even if it does hurt some sort of time-to-market metric that the Wall Street Journal made up in order to criticize Mr. Cook. The real statistics will be what happens to the Google and Alexa products when the Apple device is finally rolled out. Will Apple be late and struggling to find buyers, or will the others suddenly find themselves with feature-poor devices and a sudden need to play catch-up or be doomed to the low-end, low-margin part of the market (again)?
    watto_cobrarandominternetperson
Sign In or Register to comment.