we shall see. 1) Apple Car 2) Apple Vision Pro 3) iPhone 16
Apple needs a few hits to help us forget the duds.
Tim’s success isn’t necessarily measured by new products.
Though he does have some notable items:
Apple Watch
m series processors
streaming video and music
turning apple into a lean, mean success machine.
Cook’s forte isn’t the same as Jobs. It just isn’t. Where jobs was a visionary, who took the basic building blocks of computing and nearly single-handed brought forth modern computing as we know it - including the advent of the true smartphone, cook is the legendary refiner. Cook is not and cannot be Jobs. Likewise Steve was not and could never accomplish what cook has. They are two perfect back to back leaders for apple. Jobs laid the foundation and vision. Cook took that, ram with it. And built a great big, powerful success castle on top of that.
You can’t measure them the same. Jobs cwss easy to see. Mac, mouse, gui, iPod, iPad, iPhone, etc. etc. but cook is more about the refining of those with some of his own launches along the way. Apple under cook is far more successful than under jobs. Take away jobs and there is no cook to follow. Take away cook at the wrong time and what jobs started doesn’t go this far or this high.
The apple car is a tragedy. It could have been great. Especially if Hyundai would have kept quiet. Or if there wasn’t an adversarial relationship with Tesla. I think those are lessons learned. Jobs had to learn his lessons as well. The Vision Pro was a lesson on not forgetting why apple has historically said “no” far more often than “yes.” And you can bet these hard lessons will not be forgotten. But they are drops in the bucket compared to the oceans of success Cook has honed Apple to deliver.
And now he has his Jobs moment - navigating the “Wild West” days of AI to reign in and hone a responsible way of utilizing artificial intelligence that is consistently useful and not just a nerd project, is ethically responsible and not just an excuse for rampant IP theft, and isn’t a gateway for bad actors and unscrupulous developers to distort facts or invade your privacy.
This is the huge deal of recent times and Cook is stamping more of his legacy here as well as reminding us - Apple has rarely been first, but is always the best.
Good things come to those who wait. Patience still is and always has been a virtue.
Tim Cook is different from Jobs as a CEO that ain’t a bad thing, Apple has managed to have two of the best CEOs in the tech world running the company back to back….
Still waiting for someone to explain *how* Apple is behind in AI.
If I’m not mistaken, Nvidia are the only ones to have earned any meaningful profit from AI. It’s easy to imagine Apple offering AI as a subscription service and thereby become the first profitable AI company after Nvidia.
You are mistaken. AMD, TSMC and others involved in the design (like NVDA) and/or manufacture of AI chips are doing quite well and are profitable.
All three companies are profitable for now, but if the public facing AI software part doesn’t takeoff, and it probably won’t since people (the general public) are expecting Robbie the robot, a lot of their current profit will disappear because the bubble will burst, AMD, and particularly Nvidia will be left in reduced circumstance.
Apple is right to lay the groundwork/foundation because at the end of the day it’s going to be the software (ecosystem) that is useful to the public every day that will win out.
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All three companies are profitable for now, but if the public facing AI software part doesn’t takeoff, and it probably won’t since people (the general public) are expecting Robbie the robot, a lot of their current profit will disappear because the bubble will burst, AMD, and particularly Nvidia will be left in reduced circumstance.
Apple is right to lay the groundwork/foundation because at the end of the day it’s going to be the software (ecosystem) that is useful to the public every day that will win out.