Tim Cook is not the man to lead Apple longterm

Posted:
in Future Apple Hardware edited January 2014
I just can't see Tim Cook as having the creative genius to lead apple longterm. He appears to be a careful and good businessman but after Jobs' itv is done what is left? This guy is not an INNOVATOR
«1

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 27
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member


    Ignoring the nonsense about the television, have you forgotten that Jonathan Ive, Phil Schiller, and Scott Forstall are all at Apple, hand-picked and raised by Steve Jobs?



    I imagine you have.


     


    Tim Cook is just as necessary as any of them.

  • Reply 2 of 27


    Also, Steve Jobs was not the only reason that Apple was successful. He clearly helped turn the company back around, but it's not a 1 man show. 

  • Reply 3 of 27
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,310moderator
    ray bart wrote:
    what is left?

    If there's nothing left to do, why does Tim need to be innovative? Fact is, Steve has pretty much taken personal computing from inception to its pinnacle.

    As I've said before, when you have a quad-core in your pants there's not much more needs to be done. Even science fiction films are just using iPhones and iPads now:





    There's some work to be done with input methods so we don't have to use our hands so much:


    [VIDEO]


    and I think keyboards and mice are going to go away eventually. I imagine we'll see 3D displays done properly. Any of these incremental steps can be handled by Apple's current team though just like most of the innovative things in the past. That was Steve's biggest strength - building up a team of A players - he didn't develop OS X nor iOS, he didn't design the icons, he didn't design the moulds for the laptops, he didn't pick the CPU/GPU parts, no single person can do all those things. They can have their control over the operation and they can add their input but a single person can only ever know so much and control so much.

    Tim Cook has proven himself very capable of keeping Apple under control and following through on Apple's biggest ever product launches. Shipping 54 million devices in 3 months is hardly evidence he doesn't have what it takes.

    If Tim falls short of people expecting him to fill Steve's sneakers, the problem lies with those expectations, not with Tim. Realise once and for all that those sneakers can't be filled; if they could be, they wouldn't be unique. Tim is unique - he wears shoes and he wears suits and he has an annoying accent. He's a different person and he's great at his job.

    If you want an icon to be the face of Apple that you can ascribe all of Apple's innovation to, you won't find one because Steve and Apple have been synonymous for so long and it was wrong to assign all Apple's achievements to Steve in the first place. Even when he had a break for months, people expected him at the keynotes. Why? He obviously wasn't working at Apple in the run up to the keynote. It was because he was the face of the company just like Larry and Sergey are the faces of Google, just like Colonel Sanders was the face of KFC.

    Do you see people asking for a replacement for Colonel Sanders to make some new flavours of chicken? New flavours will come with or without him. Since the beginning of time, great leaders, inventors, artists, musicians and engineers have come and gone - people who did something important enough to prevent being forgotten. But there's nothing that makes them differ from us. They shower in the morning, look in the mirror wondering how best to present themselves to the world, what activity they will occupy themselves with that day and they do what they are passionate about.

    If people want someone to admire and respect, they can be found quite easily - just stop looking up:


    [VIDEO]


    ps - someone give me a quick count of how many Mac Pros you see in the video.
  • Reply 4 of 27
    hmmhmm Posts: 3,405member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Marvin View Post





    If there's nothing left to do, why does Tim need to be innovative? Fact is, Steve has pretty much taken personal computing from inception to its pinnacle.

     


    I don't entirely buy that it will all be stagnant from here. Unpredictable things can come up. I would suggest that if you ask anyone at Apple why you are still waiting on a mini, this is the look you'll get. It's from your video. Click and pause it right on that frame, then pretend to ask him about the new mini.

  • Reply 5 of 27
    wizard69wizard69 Posts: 13,377member
    Don't be a fool and fall into the trap of believing Steve was the innovator at Apple. Steve's greatest accomplishment is in getting people to work together to achieve a common goal. Sure he had ideas, we all have had ideas, but it takes a different person to drive a team to realize those goals. Also not all of Steve's ideas where winners. I suggest you spend some time on the net reading about the development of the Mac or buy a book or two. By reading a bit of the happenings as seen by people that where actually there you will start to realize that Steve's role was far more diversified than people would like to believe.


    ray bart wrote: »
    I just can't see Tim Cook as having the creative genius to lead apple longterm. He appears to be a careful and good businessman but after Jobs' itv is done what is left? This guy is not an INNOVATOR
  • Reply 6 of 27
    omegaomega Posts: 427member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Marvin View Post



    ps - someone give me a quick count of how many Mac Pros you see in the video.


     


    Without watching - zero?

  • Reply 7 of 27
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,310moderator
    omega wrote: »
    Marvin wrote: »
    ps - someone give me a quick count of how many Mac Pros you see in the video.

    Without watching - zero?

    Nope.

    The 40+ MBPs might lead you to believe there's none but that's not the case. There's a couple of Minis in there too.

    It's clear what the most popular machine is though and why they get the first updates.

    This is probably what's holding up everything else. The shipping times only just lowered to 1-2 weeks so they must have quite a backlog of orders. They might not ship the new desktops until that clears up. It's weird how they can ship 17 million iPads but 3 million or so MBPs create such a big delay.
  • Reply 8 of 27


    Cook is a tool, all he's good for is managing the status quo.  


     


    His epic fail on the Mac Pro non-update was a joke.  And axing the 17" MacBook Pro?  Apple aren't serious about computing anymore, all they seem to care about are shiny baubles and gadgets.  


     


    I'd like to see a CEO who would just up and set his balls on the table and introduce a headless iMac.  

  • Reply 9 of 27
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member


    Originally Posted by Junkyard Dawg View Post


    I'd like to see a CEO who would just up and set his balls on the table and introduce a headless iMac.  



     


    Go. Buy. A. PC.

  • Reply 10 of 27
    sr2012sr2012 Posts: 896member
    ray bart wrote: »
    I just can't see Tim Cook as having the creative genius to lead apple longterm. He appears to be a careful and good businessman but after Jobs' itv is done what is left? This guy is not an INNOVATOR

    Scott Forstall. But give him time.
  • Reply 11 of 27

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post


     


    Go. Buy. A. PC.



     


    Why are you here if you think PCs are so great???

  • Reply 12 of 27
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member


    Originally Posted by Junkyard Dawg View Post

    Why are you here if you think PCs are so great???




    That's my question to you.

  • Reply 13 of 27
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,310moderator
    Cook is a tool, all he's good for is managing the status quo.  

    His epic fail on the Mac Pro non-update was a joke.  And axing the 17" MacBook Pro?  Apple aren't serious about computing anymore, all they seem to care about are shiny baubles and gadgets.  

    I'd like to see a CEO who would just up and set his balls on the table and introduce a headless iMac.  

    He's a tool because he focuses on their most profitable products by far?

    http://www.wingsofreason.com/2012/07/26/apple-revenue-breakdown-july-quarters-2012-edition/

    He's a tool because he axed a laptop model very few people were buying to make a model that is inundated with orders?

    Yeah what he should do is build a model of computer hardly anyone is buying any more to help get that 4% of total revenue up a bit.

    Although the profit differs on their products, they are shipping around 30 million iPhones per quarter and 25% (going by the revenue split) of 4 million units in desktops = 1 million desktops per quarter of which 15% appear to be headless models = 150k.

    30 million iPhones per quarter vs 150k desktops per quarter. iPhones outsell desktops 200:1 so even if Apple made $100 per iPhone and $1000 per desktop in profit (which they don't), the iPhone would still be 20x more profitable and yet your suggestion is to focus on the desktops.

    For Cook to lead Apple properly, he just needs to make sure Apple does what it has always done: skate to where the puck is going to be. That's what they are doing. Not everybody likes where that leaves us at present but it doesn't matter, everyone will like where we end up.
  • Reply 14 of 27
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member


    Originally Posted by Marvin View Post

    He's a tool because he focuses on their most profitable products by far?

    He's a tool because he axed a laptop model very few people were buying to make a model that is inundated with orders?


     


    I wonder if he meant tool the insult or tool the utility. For once that was actually sort of ambiguous.

  • Reply 15 of 27
    ray bartray bart Posts: 91member
    Don't plaY on words. He needs to be innovative precisely because there is nothing left. He needs to come up with something new. And no, releasing a smaller iPad is not innovation, it's called being scared of the 7inch tablets already making inroads such as the google nexus.
  • Reply 16 of 27
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member


    Originally Posted by Ray Bart View Post

    Don't plaY on words.


     


    Tell him, then.






    He needs to be innovative precisely because there is nothing left.



     


    Which you know, since you work alongside him every day. Has he stopped his nail biting out of worry yet?






    He needs to come up with something new.



     


    Why? He has entire team to do that. I'd be happy if Cook kept doing what he was known for: simplifying operations.


     




    And no, releasing a smaller iPad is not innovation, it's called being scared of the 7inch tablets already making inroads such as the google nexus.



     


    Which is why I personally don't buy that crap. The iPad 2 will be $299 in about nine months. The 7" market has until then to make something worth buying.

  • Reply 17 of 27

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post




    That's my question to you.



     


    An odd question, at that.  Why would a "PC-lover" give a squat about Apple's product lineup?

  • Reply 18 of 27
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member


    Originally Posted by Junkyard Dawg View Post

    An odd question, at that.  Why would a "PC-lover" give a squat about Apple's product lineup?


     


    For the same reason Android users come on here and whine about how the iPhone doesn't have a 4.5" screen and SD card slot.

  • Reply 19 of 27

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post


    The iPad 2 will be $299 in about nine months. The 7" market has until then to make something worth buying.



     


    I've got a Nook Color which is pretty nice.  At the time I bought it, it had a higher pixel density than the iPad, which I preferred for reading text.  When I can finally buy a 7" Retina iPad, the nook color is history, but meanwhile it's seen a lot of use.

  • Reply 20 of 27

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post


     


    For the same reason Android users come on here and whine about how the iPhone doesn't have a 4.5" screen and SD card slot.



    So it hurts your feelings when people criticize Apple's products, is that it?  

Sign In or Register to comment.