Tim Cook Duke commencement calls out to Steve Jobs, urges grads to think different
Apple CEO Tim Cook returned to his Alma Mater Duke for the commencement speech for the 2018 graduates, and left to a standing ovation.
Cook addressed many topics, ranging from climate change, Apple's use of renewable energy, and issued a clarion call to graduates to leave the world better than they found it.
While not an overt call back to Apple's late-'90s advertising slogan, Cook still called on graduates to "think different" and not just accept how things are.
"Don't just accept the world you inherit. Don't just accept the status quo," said Cook. "No big challenge has ever been solved, and no lasting improvement has been achieved, unless people dare to try something different. Dare to think different."
As with most of Cook's speeches, he invoked Steve Jobs, and thanked the Apple founder for his vision.
"I was lucky to learn from someone who believed this deeply. Someone who knew changing the world starts with following a vision, not following a path," reminisced Cook. "He was my friend, my mentor, Steve Jobs. Steve's vision was that the great idea comes from a restless refusal to accept things as they are."
"The question we ask ourselves is not what can we do, but what should we do. Because Steve taught us that's how change happens. And from him I leaned to never be content with the way things are," said Cook. "I believe this mindset comes naturally to young people -- and you should never let go of this restlessness."
Cook addressed many topics, ranging from climate change, Apple's use of renewable energy, and issued a clarion call to graduates to leave the world better than they found it.
Hard to believe it's been nearly 30 years since I was celebrating with my @DukeU classmates and these lifelong friends. I'm honored to join the #Duke2018 Commencement today! pic.twitter.com/biPQ7taE8S
-- Tim Cook (@tim_cook)
While not an overt call back to Apple's late-'90s advertising slogan, Cook still called on graduates to "think different" and not just accept how things are.
"Don't just accept the world you inherit. Don't just accept the status quo," said Cook. "No big challenge has ever been solved, and no lasting improvement has been achieved, unless people dare to try something different. Dare to think different."
Congratulations and thank you to the @DukeU class of 2018! Graduates, be fearless! pic.twitter.com/XeDV9seX0E
-- Tim Cook (@tim_cook)
As with most of Cook's speeches, he invoked Steve Jobs, and thanked the Apple founder for his vision.
"I was lucky to learn from someone who believed this deeply. Someone who knew changing the world starts with following a vision, not following a path," reminisced Cook. "He was my friend, my mentor, Steve Jobs. Steve's vision was that the great idea comes from a restless refusal to accept things as they are."
"The question we ask ourselves is not what can we do, but what should we do. Because Steve taught us that's how change happens. And from him I leaned to never be content with the way things are," said Cook. "I believe this mindset comes naturally to young people -- and you should never let go of this restlessness."
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As intelligent assistants, which have languished for years, will suddenly become smarter faster than most expect, and be (for many) constant over-the-shoulder companions, this is probably a wise tactic by Cook.
People shouldn’t expect Tim Cook to be what he isn’t. Jobs didn’t pick him because he was another Jobs. We shouldn’t expect from him the sorts of change we saw from Jobs. That doesn’t just go for “Cook having ideas like Jobs did”, it goes for “Cook hiring people like Jobs did” and even “Cook hiring people like Jobs himself was.” It’s just not going to happen–it’s outside the physical realm of expectation–and so expecting it to happen is silly.
Methinks your logic (not to mention your stats) are more broken than any of Apple's alleged "failures," though I (and Tim) would agree there are areas where the company can certainly do better.
Let's wait and see what WWDC brings, but it might be useful for Mac-oriented users like yourself (apparently) to bear in mind that Macs are less than 10 percent of Apple's business these days -- nearly every other hardware product Apple sells outsells the Mac. This is a disquieting notion to some of us, but we should not shy away from facing up to the truth -- and the truth is that the Mac actually gets more than the attention its sales figures deserve, but of course a lot less that it did when it was Apple's leading product (I'll bet the iPod lover crowd feels the same way ...).
This is not (much) the fault of former or present Apple leadership (you may remember that it was Jobs that rebranded Apple as a consumer company, not just a computer company) -- it is more the shift by consumers generally away from "traditional" computing. It's very unsurprising to me that desktops are dying off; MBP-type notebooks will likely follow that path in due course. The truth is that 95+ percent of the public has zero need for either device -- a Chromebook-like limited laptop or an iPad with a keyboard covers (or soon will cover) the needs of a typical non-power-user.
2) I'm not a fan of the think different mentality. I'm a fan of what Jobs said in a Q&A months before the "Think different" campaign launched. As I recall, it was a Macworld Expo circa 1997 when one guy asked him about Apple dropping AppleTalk in favor of Ethernet. This gentleman made a comment about Apple thinking different and clearly didn't care for Apple falling in line with the rest of the industry for networking. Jobs replied something to the fact, "It's not about thinking different, it's about thinking better. If there's a better option out there we'll use it." Being different for its own sake will ultimately lead to failure. (I'll see if I can find the clip.)
edit: Go to 12m:17s for the specific part I'm referring in the gentleman's follow up question. His first question is at 09m:25s where Jobs then references networking.
Bonus: Right before he takes that guy's question Jobs states that when the media shorts Apple that he buys AAPL stock.
“The question we ask ourselves is not what should we do, but what can we do.”
This is just a personal impression, not a judgement. Although admittedly I do have some reservations about their respective disingenuousness, creepiness and copyright issues, I do appreciate the technical merits of these endeavours and what possible advancement they can bring.
I'd settle for.... here's the foundation Steve laid, let's work to stick to those principals.
It's just brand momentum. Any big company can do this for a time. It's usually a sign of the start of their demise, though.
Because most of us don't boycott a company just because the leadership hold an opposing value, or sometimes even act on it.
I'm getting really sick of this one. Who cares, and what does that matter? Is that supposed to be a legitimate excuse for the state of the Mac lineup? Seriously?
Can Apple only work on one thing at a time? Also, while Macs might only be 10 percent of Apple's business, they are far more than 10% in terms of importance.
But, I thought they were all going to be YouTube stars... Coders... VR/AR people... scientists, etc.
Again, I'm not sure what this has to do with a languishing Mac lineup. If Apple really believes the Mac is over, then let us all know so we can move on.
It’s sort of a shame they died out, and it’s a shame that the last conference only similar to that was whatever the one was with Steve and Tim on bar stools taking questions when there was a problem with a product (I think… was it Antennagate?).
Apples "after Jobs era" I see that the value is shifting here a bit towards the more traditional corporate risk taking values (still not at the same level yet though) and weight is not equaly distributed in a balanced way on what in "we can do/what should do" vs executional perfection with the later getting more and more attention at the loss of the other. I think Jobs best qualities were vision and strategic ability and keeping difficult things as simple as possible. The first iteration of apple cloud services was a good example of how not to do it and Jobs ultimately took the initiative to fix it. The problem after Jobs is that things are getting too complex and really need simplification. The icloud is a good example of how difficult things are to use now.
"It's about caring deeply about making products that people like".
Caring is not only what enabled Steve to produce great products, it is why his presentations were so great -- his caring spilled over into pride and joy in his product. It wasn't that Steve was a great showman. His caring and his passion spilled out for all to see...
The most important challenge for Tim Cook going forward is to find or develop a successor who will get Apple back on the entrepreneurial part of the curve with a whole new series of products & services. Apple has to be very careful that its current position and financial resources do not create an illusion or false sense of security that Apple has an unlimited runway for getting new products off the ground, over the chasm, and up the adoption and growth curve. I sense that this may be happening to some degree when even smaller scale and more easily attainable launches like the charging pad drag on for (subjectively) too long. In Apple's case money is not a problem but time delays create more opportunity for disruptors to wedge their way into Apple's grand plans. The far end of the seemingly endless runway inspired by a quest for perfection and paid for with unlimited cash resources may already be cratered by unforeseen competitors who are currently being viewed as ankle biters.
I disagree here. There's a big difference between what can be done with big-data (which maybe Apple doesn't have) in terms of marketing to people or discovering certain things about them.... and sheer incompetence of relatively simple (in comparison) things like search technology. Siri doesn't just fail when it doesn't have similar data that Google might have, it fails on basic stuff that needs no such data.
Does anyone happen to know if it was Jobs' decision not to have a user-accessible file-system on iOS? That seems like something Jobs would champion, which I'll admit has been one of the biggest problems with iOS until recently. But, yea, iCloud was initially a huge disaster (though it still isn't all that great).