Federighi takes it a step further, explaining that Apple doesn't need to
deliver every technology on Earth. No one asked why Apple wasn't a
shopping destination like Amazon, or why it didn't build a YouTube
competitor, so it seems odd that everyone is clamoring for Apple to
supply a chatbot.
HomeKit could have enabled Apple to grab a much larger share of the IoT market, even rule it as far as its own users go, but its success was left in the hands of others.
In both cases, Apple squandered whatever lead it held, and is now forced to play catch up, by trying to make Siri smart, and developing home/IoT products beyond a speaker. Even with a rumored launch of a home hub product later this year, HomeOS was MIA from WWDC. So what, an iPad married to a HomePod? How will developers be able to enhance it and make it essential, or will they be shut out of a closed shop, at least until WWDC '26, '27, or whenever Apple feels, or is forced to open it up to others?
…
One would also be foolish to bet against Apple, but today's Apple is not the Apple of old, and there is no magic CEO to lead the company like before. We've seen what happens before when Apple was in that situation.
Apple isn’t losing IoT, because it does not sell IoT home goods. Nor do I believe it wants to. I am skeptical they want to sell deadbolts and outlets, which are niche markets. It’s just not their bag. The rumors of a HomePod-iPad mashup seem very unlikely to me.
As for not having Jobs, reality doesn’t match your claim. Apple has achieved more growth and more success under the “normal” CEO Cook than it did Jobs. Most CEOs are not also product managers and spokesmen, Jobs was the exception there and wound up delegating typical CEO duties to…Cook. Most CEOs of most brands are relatively nameless people who work on the business. That’s the job. That’s what Cook does. Product development is for product managers. The expectation that Apple must crank out new product category hit after hit is not how any company operates. Having the Mac, iPod, iPhone, iPad and Watch, all hits, is extremely rare. Expecting new ones and the lack of them as evidence that Apple lost its way or whatever, is contrary to normal reality.
Tim Cook just followed roadmaps of Steve Jobs.
Tim Cook is the guy who makes the final decision. He does not need to be a product guy. He does not need to be a market guy. He does not need to be an AI guy. But he does need to understand what´s good and what´s bad for Apple. He made huge mistakes by going to WWDC 2024 with Siri. He made huge mistakes by letting Siri development alone.
Just to be fair: Tim Cook made Apple one of the most valuable companies in terms of the market cap., but he had a nice timing: Interest rates were low. This environment helped Cook to drive AAPL up and up.
Earnings per share have been up and up due to constant buybacks.
Tim Cook has clearly preferred financial engineering over product/software engineering. Now, you see the result. AAPL is the worst performer among all Mag 7 companies YTD.
Even Craig and Joz trying to justify desperately why Apple is not behind Hahahaha.
Federighi takes it a step further, explaining that Apple doesn't need to
deliver every technology on Earth. No one asked why Apple wasn't a
shopping destination like Amazon, or why it didn't build a YouTube
competitor, so it seems odd that everyone is clamoring for Apple to
supply a chatbot.
Nobody is seriously asking Apple to directly compete with Amazon, YouTube, or Google Search.
What people do expect is for Apple to deliver on the promises it made itself last year with Apple Intelligence, and it has thus far failed to do.
At its best, Apple runs its own race, and doesn't let others define the rules. Even when it does, it finds ways to bring something different to the table, and win. At its best.
So, there is truth in what they say.
But as successful as Apple has been, it has not been free of missteps, and failing to fully develop technologies it helped bring to the market.
Siri, of course, is most famous, and not being able to deliver on AI is in danger of following that same path. Redemption still awaits.
HomeKit could have enabled Apple to grab a much larger share of the IoT market, even rule it as far as its own users go, but its success was left in the hands of others.
In both cases, Apple squandered whatever lead it held, and is now forced to play catch up, by trying to make Siri smart, and developing home/IoT products beyond a speaker. Even with a rumored launch of a home hub product later this year, HomeOS was MIA from WWDC. So what, an iPad married to a HomePod? How will developers be able to enhance it and make it essential, or will they be shut out of a closed shop, at least until WWDC '26, '27, or whenever Apple feels, or is forced to open it up to others?
The company was prescient, in incorporating ML, and ML hardware into its products, but again, for a company that has in the past skated to where the puck is going, not where it was (or in the words of Jobs, "giving people what they want, before they know it") the whole Apple Intelligence effort has been reactive, not proactive.
It's not difficult to see, however the execs want to spin it. Nobody forced the people at WWDC '24 to go on stage, and make the promises they did. Apple dug its own hole there, perhaps out of an uncharacteristic bout of pressure, if not panic.
None of this is to say Apple is "doomed," to steal that old joke. Far from it. But for a company that usually manages to put most items in the Win column, it would be foolish to ignore those in the Loss column, especially big ones that has cost it new markets, and the benefits they bring.
One would also be foolish to bet against Apple, but today's Apple is not the Apple of old, and there is no magic CEO to lead the company like before. We've seen what happens before when Apple was in that situation.
As a user, my response to these two would be -- don't tell me, show me. Apple's employees knew that would be the standard going into every meeting where Jobs was in attendance. Do they still know, or have that fear and hunger? Or is the company slowly drifting into mediocrity and complacence again, just with a much larger financial buffer this time around? It wouldn't be the first tech giant to do so.
For these two guys, and Apple to be able to later say "I told you so" it first has to deliver on its own promises.
This is a very well articulated comment framed in how one might deliver a "tough talk" to someone who has be slipping a little in comparison to their previous performance. But I would not pin it all on Tim Cook. I think Tim is doing what he needs to do in a very difficult environment. Is he perfect? No, but he is trying to be the calm, stoic, and thoughtful leader that he needs to be.
In the business sense Tim is as good as it gets. But he's not the burning, undeniable, and unquenchable source of energy, creativity, and purposeful intention that Steve was. There are not a lot of lifelong entrepreneurs and creative risk takers that work in the same way that Steve did. Steve had Tim to lean on for fine tuning Apple's business execution concerns. He had Jony Ive to collaborate with on design goals and a team senior executives that Steve kept a fire under them to make sure Apple's execution stayed in lock step with Steve's expectations.
I seriously doubt that under Steve Jobs, things like strategy and execution were ever rule by committee. While Steve had a Tim Cook partner to lean on, Tim Cook doesn't have a Steve Jobs partner to lean on to maintain the same balance and mix of combined strengths. Tim has to lean on a committee, the sum total of which seems unable to fully fill the void left by Steve. They are doing a great job and the business is thriving, but there is still a small slice of unfilled capability and drive to maximize Apple's potential.
The question in my mind is whether Apple's current perceived shortcomings, real or imagined, are due to shortfalls in vision, strategy, or execution. Maybe it's a combination of all three. I'm not talking about market expectations. I'm narrowing it way down to Apple's delivery performance, whether Apple has been able to deliver on the expectations that they planted in their customer's minds and maintain the quality bar where needs to be. From a batting average perspective I believe they are way ahead of their direct peers who are within the same product/services markets. For Apple, merely being a power hitter isn't enough, they have to be a phenom.
I personally believe that software quality is still an issue, as well as engineering execution that cannot fully keep up with current promises and expectations, much less the very broadly scoped ones that some folks are trying to force Apple to take on, like AI that goes far beyond the scope and domain of the products that Apple builds. As an engineer, product manager, or project manager there is nothing worse than being behind on what you've already committed to delivering with a specific release date AND having the scope of the work expand beyond what you have already committed to. The goalposts for what is expected in the release deliverables keeps going up but the release date doesn't move. I'm sure anyone in product development has seen this movie before and knows it doesn't end well.
As much as we'd like to ignore it, the prevailing political, social, and economic turmoil has certainly affected Apple. I'm not just talking about the personal challenges that Tim Cook has to contend with, or the demotivation of Apple employees who keep up with current events, it's things like moving factories and manufacturing production to different countries, having to deal with the EU, having to deal with a mountain of lawsuits, having to renegotiate with countries who are suddenly adding to their list of demands and that kind of stuff that crushes execution performance and distracts those who would much rather spend their time coming up with great new ideas and new products or motivating teams.
In a perfect world Apple would be able to go after every adjacent market and outside dependency to bring more capability and coverage under the Apple brand, e.g., IoT, LLM AI, networking infrastructure, wider range peripherals, home automation, audiophile gear, physical security infrastructure, etc. Despite their size and coffers filled with cash, they don't have the resources, attention, focus, and bandwidth to do everything without giving up something else to compensate for it.
This is a very well articulated comment framed in how one might deliver a "tough talk" to someone who has be slipping a little in comparison to their previous performance. But I would not pin it all on Tim Cook. I think Tim is doing what he needs to do in a very difficult environment. Is he perfect? No, but he is trying to be the calm, stoic, and thoughtful leader that he needs to be.
In the business sense Tim is as good as it gets. But he's not the burning, undeniable, and unquenchable source of energy, creativity, and purposeful intention that Steve was. There are not a lot of lifelong entrepreneurs and creative risk takers that work in the same way that Steve did. Steve had Tim to lean on for fine tuning Apple's business execution concerns. He had Jony Ive to collaborate with on design goals and a team senior executives that Steve kept a fire under them to make sure Apple's execution stayed in lock step with Steve's expectations.
I seriously doubt that under Steve Jobs, things like strategy and execution were ever rule by committee. While Steve had a Tim Cook partner to lean on, Tim Cook doesn't have a Steve Jobs partner to lean on to maintain the same balance and mix of combined strengths. Tim has to lean on a committee, the sum total of which seems unable to fully fill the void left by Steve. They are doing a great job and the business is thriving, but there is still a small slice of unfilled capability and drive to maximize Apple's potential.
The question in my mind is whether Apple's current perceived shortcomings, real or imagined, are due to shortfalls in vision, strategy, or execution. Maybe it's a combination of all three. I'm not talking about market expectations. I'm narrowing it way down to Apple's delivery performance, whether Apple has been able to deliver on the expectations that they planted in their customer's minds and maintain the quality bar where needs to be. From a batting average perspective I believe they are way ahead of their direct peers who are within the same product/services markets. For Apple, merely being a power hitter isn't enough, they have to be a phenom.
I personally believe that software quality is still an issue, as well as engineering execution that cannot fully keep up with current promises and expectations, much less the very broadly scoped ones that some folks are trying to force Apple to take on, like AI that goes far beyond the scope and domain of the products that Apple builds. As an engineer, product manager, or project manager there is nothing worse than being behind on what you've already committed to delivering with a specific release date AND having the scope of the work expand beyond what you have already committed to. The goalposts for what is expected in the release deliverables keeps going up but the release date doesn't move. I'm sure anyone in product development has seen this movie before and knows it doesn't end well.
As much as we'd like to ignore it, the prevailing political, social, and economic turmoil has certainly affected Apple. I'm not just talking about the personal challenges that Tim Cook has to contend with, or the demotivation of Apple employees who keep up with current events, it's things like moving factories and manufacturing production to different countries, having to deal with the EU, having to deal with a mountain of lawsuits, having to renegotiate with countries who are suddenly adding to their list of demands and that kind of stuff that crushes execution performance and distracts those who would much rather spend their time coming up with great new ideas and new products or motivating teams.
In a perfect world Apple would be able to go after every adjacent market and outside dependency to bring more capability and coverage under the Apple brand, e.g., IoT, LLM AI, networking infrastructure, wider range peripherals, home automation, audiophile gear, physical security infrastructure, etc. Despite their size and coffers filled with cash, they don't have the resources, attention, focus, and bandwidth to do everything without giving up something else to compensate for it.
I'm not a member of the "Fire Cook" reactionary group that calls for his head upon every bit of perceived negative Apple news. That belongs to the peanut gallery of critics on other rumor sites.
By both objective and subjective standards, I believe he has done an excellent job of leading Apple, and handling the pressure of such a high profile role with such high stakes. He's done what a CEO is expected to do, run a profitable company that returns value to its investors. Those who think that the CEO role is exemplified by those like Jobs, or even Musk, don't understand that executives like that are outliers, and unique as individuals (for better and worse). He has also fulfilled Jobs own desire, to see his baby and legacy carry on to grow into adulthood and hopefully live a long, full life, so to speak. Cook was the best candidate, internally, and it would have been difficult to find a better one externally.
I've said before, I think Cook could have been successful in a different life in a diplomatic role, with the way he has deftly steered Apple's ship between the icebergs of governments around the world, amongst other risk and challenges. Even from what little Cook publicly shares about his life, it's clear that his priority has always been Apple, and seldom about himself, in any context.
Those who have criticized him for the perceived fealty shown to the current administration conveniently ignore the parade of other business leaders who have done the same, without the slightest bit of shame. I have no doubt it must present an intensely personal conflict to do what Cook has done, but he has done it for the sake of Apple, and at the cost of his own personal principles, which run counter to everything that is happening now. By its nature, his public role as CEO seems counter to what the Cook the person is comfortable with, yet he has managed to excel.
His strengths are not those that Jobs had, and vice versa. As the anointed successor, along with Ive, Jobs clearly hoped that the two could work together in long lasting partnership like the one he had with Ive, leveraging the individual strengths each one has. That ultimately lasted ~8 years, with the reasons for the dissolution truly known only to those parties. I won't try to speculate whether they were natural or unnatural, but probably both.
I didn't enjoy the Organizational Behavior class when in it during college, but have come to appreciate what it taught, and understand why those things are important to the success of any business, or group, large or small. Leadership is spoken of so often, and casually tossed around as a term, it has become cliché. But there is real truth behind that concept, and it when it is lacking, it becomes acutely evident.
So, no, I wasn't trying to pin it on Cook, though ultimately, as the head of the company it does reflect on him.
Business is dynamic, and so are companies. Conditions change, and demand response.
Internally and externally, Apple has things it can try to control, and those it can't control.
The "headwinds" (to steal a favorite PR-speak term) Apple faces now are stronger than they have been in the past.
Like people, companies have a life cycle as well, and Apple is squarely in middle age, which shouldn't be discounted.
How it reacts to these challenges, as a mature and powerful company, will be the ultimate arbiter of success. Will it set itself up to have many more years of a healthy, long life, or is this the start of a decline that makes it more vulnerable to disease, the effects of aging, and the outside factors it can't control?
I'm old enough to have seen the tech revolution from early on, and there are many things people now take for granted that were not even dreamt of back then. That perspective also serves to remind me that nothing is forever, even the largest, richest, most powerful companies. Apple may not be "doomed," but it is also not immune from the fates of the big names that have faded, or disappeared. So it can't allow the seemingly little missteps in the present to undermine its future.
The thing that is so stupid is that as the list of AI providers or LLM providers increases and shrinks and grows Apple is built to and wants to plug a "Brain" in and use them accordingly. AI and LLMs currently stand as; There is no clear winner, they continue to leap frog one other and have since 3-6 months after the flood gates opened.
So while such-n-such LLM has the most token capabilities, this one is faster, the other hallucinates less, etc etc, as long as Apple keeps chugging along working on it's AI privacy platform and services, and being able to plug a different "Brain" in here and there, they'll never be behind.
And who knows with training issues, copyrighted content, and IP etc, you can never tell what's around corner.
But here is the kicker, they have the bestOS(es), and hardware, for the most part en masse, so goes to show you never can tell...
I mean look at Microsoft and OpenAI troubles and going all in saying AI for the WIN!!
p.s. and if you've been paying attention you can just plug a brain into a "chatter box" and so go, people get laughed at when that happens, so in a no win situation where: Apple reboots Siri and she hallucinates (laughed at) or they don't (mocked and laughed at) the best is once again weather out the negative comments and make sure it's 95% all there and then release the hounds, then all those people that laughed at Apple won't admit they are idiots, and we end up having to listen to them again.
I mean honestly, what is the "I totally underestimated Apple and man they sure did prove me wrong" tally at? 50-100 guys worldwide? <1%? Ram Butt Bash! All day!
Comments
Tim Cook is the guy who makes the final decision. He does not need to be a product guy. He does not need to be a market guy. He does not need to be an AI guy. But he does need to understand what´s good and what´s bad for Apple.
He made huge mistakes by going to WWDC 2024 with Siri. He made huge mistakes by letting Siri development alone.
Just to be fair: Tim Cook made Apple one of the most valuable companies in terms of the market cap., but he had a nice timing: Interest rates were low. This environment helped Cook to drive AAPL up and up.
Earnings per share have been up and up due to constant buybacks.
Tim Cook has clearly preferred financial engineering over product/software engineering. Now, you see the result.
AAPL is the worst performer among all Mag 7 companies YTD.
Even Craig and Joz trying to justify desperately why Apple is not behind Hahahaha.
In the business sense Tim is as good as it gets. But he's not the burning, undeniable, and unquenchable source of energy, creativity, and purposeful intention that Steve was. There are not a lot of lifelong entrepreneurs and creative risk takers that work in the same way that Steve did. Steve had Tim to lean on for fine tuning Apple's business execution concerns. He had Jony Ive to collaborate with on design goals and a team senior executives that Steve kept a fire under them to make sure Apple's execution stayed in lock step with Steve's expectations.
I seriously doubt that under Steve Jobs, things like strategy and execution were ever rule by committee. While Steve had a Tim Cook partner to lean on, Tim Cook doesn't have a Steve Jobs partner to lean on to maintain the same balance and mix of combined strengths. Tim has to lean on a committee, the sum total of which seems unable to fully fill the void left by Steve. They are doing a great job and the business is thriving, but there is still a small slice of unfilled capability and drive to maximize Apple's potential.
The question in my mind is whether Apple's current perceived shortcomings, real or imagined, are due to shortfalls in vision, strategy, or execution. Maybe it's a combination of all three. I'm not talking about market expectations. I'm narrowing it way down to Apple's delivery performance, whether Apple has been able to deliver on the expectations that they planted in their customer's minds and maintain the quality bar where needs to be. From a batting average perspective I believe they are way ahead of their direct peers who are within the same product/services markets. For Apple, merely being a power hitter isn't enough, they have to be a phenom.
I personally believe that software quality is still an issue, as well as engineering execution that cannot fully keep up with current promises and expectations, much less the very broadly scoped ones that some folks are trying to force Apple to take on, like AI that goes far beyond the scope and domain of the products that Apple builds. As an engineer, product manager, or project manager there is nothing worse than being behind on what you've already committed to delivering with a specific release date AND having the scope of the work expand beyond what you have already committed to. The goalposts for what is expected in the release deliverables keeps going up but the release date doesn't move. I'm sure anyone in product development has seen this movie before and knows it doesn't end well.
As much as we'd like to ignore it, the prevailing political, social, and economic turmoil has certainly affected Apple. I'm not just talking about the personal challenges that Tim Cook has to contend with, or the demotivation of Apple employees who keep up with current events, it's things like moving factories and manufacturing production to different countries, having to deal with the EU, having to deal with a mountain of lawsuits, having to renegotiate with countries who are suddenly adding to their list of demands and that kind of stuff that crushes execution performance and distracts those who would much rather spend their time coming up with great new ideas and new products or motivating teams.
In a perfect world Apple would be able to go after every adjacent market and outside dependency to bring more capability and coverage under the Apple brand, e.g., IoT, LLM AI, networking infrastructure, wider range peripherals, home automation, audiophile gear, physical security infrastructure, etc. Despite their size and coffers filled with cash, they don't have the resources, attention, focus, and bandwidth to do everything without giving up something else to compensate for it.
So while such-n-such LLM has the most token capabilities, this one is faster, the other hallucinates less, etc etc, as long as Apple keeps chugging along working on it's AI privacy platform and services, and being able to plug a different "Brain" in here and there, they'll never be behind.
And who knows with training issues, copyrighted content, and IP etc, you can never tell what's around corner.
But here is the kicker, they have the bestOS(es), and hardware, for the most part en masse, so goes to show you never can tell...
I mean look at Microsoft and OpenAI troubles and going all in saying AI for the WIN!!
p.s. and if you've been paying attention you can just plug a brain into a "chatter box" and so go, people get laughed at when that happens, so in a no win situation where:
Apple reboots Siri and she hallucinates (laughed at) or they don't (mocked and laughed at) the best is once again weather out the negative comments and make sure it's 95% all there and then release the hounds, then all those people that laughed at Apple won't admit they are idiots, and we end up having to listen to them again.
I mean honestly, what is the "I totally underestimated Apple and man they sure did prove me wrong" tally at? 50-100 guys worldwide? <1%? Ram Butt Bash! All day!