Tim is an all-around better CEO than Steve. Steve was unmatched in his abilities as a visionary and product marketer, but Tim has taken Apple to new heights, and infused the company with greater spirit, purpose, and humanity. I can’t imagine Apple would be pushing the environmental and humanitarian efforts it does today without Tim. He may always be consigned to Steve’s shadow but in countless ways Tim is the better man and CEO.
Businesses exist to make a profit. In Apple’s case, they make great products in order to generate those sales. “Greater spirit, purpose and humanity” would be signs a CEO is confused about the purpose of their company.
No, you have it backwards. While the purpose of a company is to make a profit, there is no rule that says it must be limited to that.
Let's put your self-limiting attitude to the test. Does Apple deserve to aspire to "Greater spirit, purpose and humanity"? Logically we must apply the master test: Can we show that this aspiration is hurting the ability of Apple to make a profit? The answer is...
Apple is one of the most profitable companies, if not the most profitable company, in the history of the planet.
Not only has Apple completely protected its ability to make a profit, heck...given that spectacular record of fulfilling the purpose of the company, it would be reasonable to flip your whole question around and ask ourselves, is aspiring to a more comprehensive scope than merely profit, a sign that a company has the potential to be more profitable?
Elon Musk does not limit this scope to profits either. What kinds of companies would he start if he did? Certainly more of a "sure thing" type of company, like marking up commodities made in China, or selling easy-to-overprice products into a broken health care system. Certainly not electric cars and space ships! That is why your approach is so dangerous to progress.
Apple needs a creative visionary who makes their products exciting again, not just thinner. I just bought a bunch of new iPad Pros. They are nice but they are just a tablet to our staff who appreciate new tools but were “meh, thanks” and went back to work. One person hasn’t even gotten around to opening the box yet. The AS thing is disruptive to the chip industry but most consumers are not going to care unless their favorite piece of software stops running on it. Safari opening 100th of a second faster is not a disruption to them. @"mr lizard" Some great observations there BTW.
There is no problem with the iPad. I used to be "meh" on it, I did not even care. But the iPad Pro and iOS 13 have changed everything. Over the last few months, my iPad usage has shot up, and I have discovered numerous ways that it augments my Mac which I use many more hours a day. I now often use my iPad together with my Mac because of the way Apple has integrated them. Today, I find the iPad immensely useful and exciting, even though I did not feel that way just 18 months ago. The problem is not in the iPad, but in how well Apple has let people know what they can do with it. I now think of myself as having one computer across three devices (Mac, iPad, iPhone). Of course, office drones who only think about computers in one traditional way will not see any of this, and go "meh".
There is one more level to this that is extremely important here.
Apple Silicon is being brought up as more evidence Tim Cook runs an unexciting Apple. But if you think about the big picture, it looks different. A company selling mainstream computers on its own CPUs is not something most computer companies could even think of attempting. Dell, Lenovo, and HP cannot start from zero and build world class, high performance, energy-efficient, tightly integrated CPU/GPU SOCs.
So why can Apple do it? Because of that one thing a lot of people continue to dismiss: The iPad.
Tim Cook has been running Apple throughout the years when Apple decided to design its own A series SOC for the iPhone and iPad. Over those Tim Cook years, that A-series SOC has become both extremely well tailored to Apple's specific needs, and performs very well and efficiently compared to the competition. Apple has been able to quietly work on the Ax SOC over the necessary number of years to grow, refine, and mature it into what it needs to be. They did this using the iPhone and iPad as the test beds. And they have pushed that SOC so far that we were able to complain that iOS was not taking full advantage of the power of iPad hardware.
Now we come to Macs on Apple Silicon. Every previous time Apple switched CPUs, it was simply switching suppliers. This time, they are switching to an SOC that is their own, completely tailored to their needs. The only reason they have it nearly ready is because under Tim Cook's watch they had all those years to mature the silicon using the iPhone and iPad. And now it comes right at the time when Intel is letting them down the most, when Apple needs an alternative the most.
Personally I think that Tim Cook playing the long game, over many years, investing many billions of dollars, meticulously setting up the company for a massive payoff available to no other competitors, is quite exciting.
(Especially as a shareholder, watching my AAPL share value multiply 15x.)
but there are a few who are upping their game very quickly, like Tesla
Tesla is a perfect example of a first mover advantage, driven by a charismatic leader, who was not the founder, finding itself with a business model that fails in the marketplace.
Tesla has relatively poor quality control, abysmal service, is not a leader in autonomous driving despite the marketing, has relied on billions in government incentives to survive, has routinely ignored the industry's manufacturing prowess, and is now facing an extinction event as the major automakers release a plethora of competitors.
But investors low him, hence the valuation.
As for Christensen, you might follow Horace Dediu at Asymco.com, reading some of his past posts on Apple, as he actually studied under Christensen. Horace is now mostly involved in micromobility.
Your knowledge of Tesla is abysmal.
For what it’s worth, I own neither the stock nor the car (but I am in line for the Cybertruck, with the option to wait until Dec 2021 to decide).
Yeah, that's the ticket, and I am suitably chasitized, but nah, Tesla is a shit company. Fortunately for you, all of what I stated will be very obvious before another year is up.
Still, I hope you enjoy Tesla's "Doorstop", if it ever actually gets built. Reservations seem to be less than espected.
My guess is that Elon will change his mind on the design before the pickup debuts.
Is it me or there were a couple of paragraphs that didn’t quite developed an idea inside the full text? Although the information is there, the reading felt like a first draft!
If switching the Mac to AppleSilicon is not disruptive I don’t know what is. The amount of planning and flawless execution in a large number of areas is staggering. The article is also minimizing the AirPods when they are in their way just as disruptive as the iPhone and the iPad have been. Innovation at Apple is alive and well.
The invention of Apple Watch and AirPods were under his clock. Both were statistically more successful than all of Steve's products except iPhone.
Apple Silicon Macs may be the next revolution in computing since the 1970s.
Utter 🐎 💩. Jobs sold over 400 million iPods.
Jobs moved from PPC to intel which was huge at the time, so big that Microsoft was advising quietly to its developers to buy a MB air and run Windows on it natively.
The watch idea was created before Steve died and he did know about it and didn’t nix it.
What has surprised me is that Tim came from a bean counter background yet during the shutdown from the pandemic, he hasn’t furloughed anyone.
Usually companies do that as their first order of survival, even with companies who have a lot of money in the bank.
There have been positive changes in the fact that Apple now realizes their eggs can’t be all in the iPhone basket. That’s why you saw almost every product was updated last year.
When is the last time you saw that?
Nice try. I know it hurts to give Cook his credit but statistically Airpods and Apple Watch are more successful than iPods. It is unfair to quote iPods lifetime number when comparing to babies like Apple Watch and especially Airpods but it's what the haters do.
....Wait, Ballmer?!?!!!
"Apple is selling 0 phones a year"
Ballmer logic aside, it took iPod roughly 3 years to reach Watch's year 1 sales.Airpods sold more.If we go by revenue, these two products beat the crap out of iPod. Now consider the fact that Airpods and especially Watch are tied to iPhone users.
"The watch idea was created before Steve died and he did know about it and didn’t nix it."
Sure depending on how far you wanna move the goalposts. Even so, Tim's Airpods are outselling Watch.
I'm not a Cook apologist by any means, but I think it's worth remembering that Apple have allegedly had at least two major, potentially market shattering projects very credibly rumored over the last decade; the car and the AR glasses.
.... t (the car development sounds like a bumpy road), but to say they're not focused on Jobsian-levels of innovation seems off the mark. They not fighting for their life anymore so they don't need to be scrappy, rapid innovators. I reckon Apple are swinging even harder for the fences than they ever have, only with much higher odds of whiffing if they don't take the time to nail it perfectly.
The AppleCar project is there to prove us Cook is a product innovator. Also, to prove his successor he wasn’t (...)
No, because unlike Watch and Airpods, we know Jobs had high interest in the car. We wouldn't know what was under Tim and what was under Jobs. I remember reading that the Car and medical were Steve's last visions.
I'm not a Cook apologist by any means, but I think it's worth remembering that Apple have allegedly had at least two major, potentially market shattering projects very credibly rumored over the last decade; the car and the AR glasses.
.... t (the car development sounds like a bumpy road), but to say they're not focused on Jobsian-levels of innovation seems off the mark. They not fighting for their life anymore so they don't need to be scrappy, rapid innovators. I reckon Apple are swinging even harder for the fences than they ever have, only with much higher odds of whiffing if they don't take the time to nail it perfectly.
The AppleCar project is there to prove us Cook is a product innovator. Also, to prove his successor he wasn’t (...)
No, because unlike Watch and Airpods, we know Jobs had high interest in the car. We wouldn't know what was under Tim and what was under Jobs. I remember reading that the Car and medical were Steve's last visions.
The AppleCar project is there to prove us Cook is a product innovator. Also, to prove his successor he wasn’t (...)
No, because unlike Watch and Airpods, we know Jobs had high interest in the car. We wouldn't know what was under Tim and what was under Jobs. I remember reading that the Car and medical were Steve's last visions.
So why didn’t Tim kill it (like most of Steve principles) ?
So I went and read the whole article on the WSJ. The big takeaways for me are:
Tim Cook is not about radical innovation but claiming an area like the iPhone and then building increasingly larger moats around it to gain more ground like adding the watch and BT headphones, services etc.
Unlike Jobs, he is much more risk adverse as he fears a failure will tarnish the brand so what appears like evolution to some is revolution for him. Jobs had some spectacular failures, including being fired from the company he founded. That is a different world than what Cook came from and following Jobs’ advice he took his own road.
How this all plays out in the long run will be interesting to see but I do have a lot more respect for him as a person and leader. Now that the company has been remade in his image I wonder if there is room for people to work through the fragile stages of creating something new when you are immediately expected to have all the answers when the CEO demands them. They talk about the HomePod development - basically the guy who had ideas about it shelved them after Cook did his impatient questioning schtick and then when he heard about Amazon and Googles devices suddenly wanted one and the guy had to go back and ramp it all up.
Worth reading the whole article though as it fills in some important details.
So I went and read the whole article on the WSJ. The big takeaways for me are:
Tim Cook is not about radical innovation but claiming an area like the iPhone and then building increasingly larger moats around it to gain more ground like adding the watch and BT headphones, services etc.
Unlike Jobs, he is much more risk adverse as he fears a failure will tarnish the brand so what appears like evolution to some is revolution for him. Jobs had some spectacular failures, including being fired from the company he founded. That is a different world than what Cook came from and following Jobs’ advice he took his own road.
How this all plays out in the long run will be interesting to see but I do have a lot more respect for him as a person and leader. Now that the company has been remade in his image I wonder if there is room for people to work through the fragile stages of creating something new when you are immediately expected to have all the answers when the CEO demands them. They talk about the HomePod development - basically the guy who had ideas about it shelved them after Cook did his impatient questioning schtick and then when he heard about Amazon and Googles devices suddenly wanted one and the guy had to go back and ramp it all up.
Worth reading the whole article though as it fills in some important details.
This is a flawed analysis.
Tim only appears to be more risk adverse, simply because he has the luxury of not having to deliver any innovation until it is ready. In the meantime, Apple generally delivers evolutionary, and very well executed, products, hence why Apple is often chastised for "being late to the party".
So I went and read the whole article on the WSJ. The big takeaways for me are:
Tim Cook is not about radical innovation but claiming an area like the iPhone and then building increasingly larger moats around it to gain more ground like adding the watch and BT headphones, services etc.
Unlike Jobs, he is much more risk adverse as he fears a failure will tarnish the brand so what appears like evolution to some is revolution for him. Jobs had some spectacular failures, including being fired from the company he founded. That is a different world than what Cook came from and following Jobs’ advice he took his own road.
How this all plays out in the long run will be interesting to see but I do have a lot more respect for him as a person and leader. Now that the company has been remade in his image I wonder if there is room for people to work through the fragile stages of creating something new when you are immediately expected to have all the answers when the CEO demands them. They talk about the HomePod development - basically the guy who had ideas about it shelved them after Cook did his impatient questioning schtick and then when he heard about Amazon and Googles devices suddenly wanted one and the guy had to go back and ramp it all up.
Worth reading the whole article though as it fills in some important details.
This is a flawed analysis.
Tim only appears to be more risk adverse, simply because he has the luxury of not having to deliver any innovation until it is ready. In the meantime, Apple generally delivers evolutionary, and very well executed, products, hence why Apple is often chastised for "being late to the party".
So what you are saying is you agree he hasn’t taken any risks (regardless of the reason) Which is called being risk adverse. The article makes a good case for him being concerned about risks going wrong affecting the brand (and probably the stock price) If you read the WSJ article, Cook seems to admit that he sees his role differently in a quote from Colin Powell he apparently uses about leaders vs managers.
So I went and read the whole article on the WSJ. The big takeaways for me are:
Tim Cook is not about radical innovation but claiming an area like the iPhone and then building increasingly larger moats around it to gain more ground like adding the watch and BT headphones, services etc.
Unlike Jobs, he is much more risk adverse as he fears a failure will tarnish the brand so what appears like evolution to some is revolution for him. Jobs had some spectacular failures, including being fired from the company he founded. That is a different world than what Cook came from and following Jobs’ advice he took his own road.
How this all plays out in the long run will be interesting to see but I do have a lot more respect for him as a person and leader. Now that the company has been remade in his image I wonder if there is room for people to work through the fragile stages of creating something new when you are immediately expected to have all the answers when the CEO demands them. They talk about the HomePod development - basically the guy who had ideas about it shelved them after Cook did his impatient questioning schtick and then when he heard about Amazon and Googles devices suddenly wanted one and the guy had to go back and ramp it all up.
Worth reading the whole article though as it fills in some important details.
This is a flawed analysis.
Tim only appears to be more risk adverse, simply because he has the luxury of not having to deliver any innovation until it is ready. In the meantime, Apple generally delivers evolutionary, and very well executed, products, hence why Apple is often chastised for "being late to the party".
So what you are saying is you agree he hasn’t taken any risks (regardless of the reason) Which is called being risk adverse. The article makes a good case for him being concerned about risks going wrong affecting the brand (and probably the stock price) If you read the WSJ article, Cook seems to admit that he sees his role differently in a quote from Colin Powell he apparently uses about leaders vs managers.
but there are a few who are upping their game very quickly, like Tesla
Tesla is a perfect example of a first mover advantage, driven by a charismatic leader, who was not the founder, finding itself with a business model that fails in the marketplace.
Tesla has relatively poor quality control, abysmal service, is not a leader in autonomous driving despite the marketing, has relied on billions in government incentives to survive, has routinely ignored the industry's manufacturing prowess, and is now facing an extinction event as the major automakers release a plethora of competitors.
But investors low him, hence the valuation.
As for Christensen, you might follow Horace Dediu at Asymco.com, reading some of his past posts on Apple, as he actually studied under Christensen. Horace is now mostly involved in micromobility.
Your knowledge of Tesla is abysmal.
For what it’s worth, I own neither the stock nor the car (but I am in line for the Cybertruck, with the option to wait until Dec 2021 to decide).
Yeah, that's the ticket, and I am suitably chasitized, but nah, Tesla is a shit company. Fortunately for you, all of what I stated will be very obvious before another year is up.
Still, I hope you enjoy Tesla's "Doorstop", if it ever actually gets built. Reservations seem to be less than espected.
My guess is that Elon will change his mind on the design before the pickup debuts.
Ah, "doorstop." Lame comment from (I'll bet you think ingeniously named) "Nikola."
In the meantime, can you send me the specs on Nikola's currently available products, if I am interested in purchasing an EV?
So I went and read the whole article on the WSJ. The big takeaways for me are:
Tim Cook is not about radical innovation but claiming an area like the iPhone and then building increasingly larger moats around it to gain more ground like adding the watch and BT headphones, services etc.
Unlike Jobs, he is much more risk adverse as he fears a failure will tarnish the brand so what appears like evolution to some is revolution for him. Jobs had some spectacular failures, including being fired from the company he founded. That is a different world than what Cook came from and following Jobs’ advice he took his own road.
How this all plays out in the long run will be interesting to see but I do have a lot more respect for him as a person and leader. Now that the company has been remade in his image I wonder if there is room for people to work through the fragile stages of creating something new when you are immediately expected to have all the answers when the CEO demands them. They talk about the HomePod development - basically the guy who had ideas about it shelved them after Cook did his impatient questioning schtick and then when he heard about Amazon and Googles devices suddenly wanted one and the guy had to go back and ramp it all up.
Worth reading the whole article though as it fills in some important details.
This is a flawed analysis.
Tim only appears to be more risk adverse, simply because he has the luxury of not having to deliver any innovation until it is ready. In the meantime, Apple generally delivers evolutionary, and very well executed, products, hence why Apple is often chastised for "being late to the party".
So what you are saying is you agree he hasn’t taken any risks (regardless of the reason) Which is called being risk adverse. The article makes a good case for him being concerned about risks going wrong affecting the brand (and probably the stock price) If you read the WSJ article, Cook seems to admit that he sees his role differently in a quote from Colin Powell he apparently uses about leaders vs managers.
No, I'm saying that Tim hasn't had to make a decision of consequence to date, with attendant risk, but huge rewards. He will certainly have to do so for glasses, since glasses by other companies have failed in the market.
People gloss over 99% of Apple's history under Jobs to claim they were always reinventing the world. I've been an avid follower since 1989 and most years, Apple is just Apple. But always has been committed to excellence. That's the difference.
I can't even begin to understand all the complexities in running a company like Apple, but users of the macbook keyboard, iCloud syncing, Catalina / iOS 13 users would have loved the 'commitment to excellence'. I hope Cook switched up whoever is the software development dictator at Apple, and let's Apple developers use their own products before releasing.
I think that the money wasted in stock buyback could have better been used for R&D and acquisitions.
I also think [HOPE] that Steve Jobs would have responded appropriately to Carl Icahn in language that would not be suitable for me repeating here.
When I first read in Forbes about Icahn the article was praising him for having amassed a fortune of maybe $800 million. Now, after many of his corporate victims are no more he might be worth $20 billions, if not a lot more. It has not been just companies destroyed but the lives of many who lost their jobs.
Project Titan is a very big risk project and even though Tesla is, so far, making it, but the failure rate for new car companies is very high.
Quite rightly so. Cook lost me in the beginning with his statement about pouring as much money out of customer pockets as possible (or something of that nature). How would any product oriented employee at Apple get inspiration from this man (maybe some bookkeeper..) ? This article proves his only distant interest in design, engineering, development. Transpiring into the rest of the oprganisation and translating into late or failed product launches for anything other than iPhone and the transition from trendsetting leadership towards just following others. A man that probably gets more energy from sellling $45 plastic WatchBands than a brand new Mac design.
What he stands for is supercapitalism by exploiting the less-educated masses and captivating them in the walled garden (symbolized by the SpaceShip). Apparently in a distant, ivory tower leadership style with interest in financial and PR aspects mostly.
You got a quote for that bolded part? Because that sounds like it is massively taken out of context.
As others have pointed out, Apple Watch and Air Pods have been under Tim Cook. Even if AirPods are not considered "disruptive", I think it would be disingenuous to claim that the Apple Watch is not disruptive.
Apple's success in personal health may very well be Cook's legacy. It is very easy to dismiss his expertise as being a "bean counter", but he is managing to keep a large percentage of Apple customers and stock holders happy - which is no small feat.
It also looks like he has given up on granola bars. I remember an article a while ago where he'd make people shit in a meeting by simply unwrapping a granola bar and eat it while the person at the other end tried to justify a goof-up, or something. Looks like he just flips pages now!
Comments
Let's put your self-limiting attitude to the test. Does Apple deserve to aspire to "Greater spirit, purpose and humanity"? Logically we must apply the master test: Can we show that this aspiration is hurting the ability of Apple to make a profit? The answer is...
Apple is one of the most profitable companies, if not the most profitable company, in the history of the planet.
Not only has Apple completely protected its ability to make a profit, heck...given that spectacular record of fulfilling the purpose of the company, it would be reasonable to flip your whole question around and ask ourselves, is aspiring to a more comprehensive scope than merely profit, a sign that a company has the potential to be more profitable?
Elon Musk does not limit this scope to profits either. What kinds of companies would he start if he did? Certainly more of a "sure thing" type of company, like marking up commodities made in China, or selling easy-to-overprice products into a broken health care system. Certainly not electric cars and space ships! That is why your approach is so dangerous to progress.
There is one more level to this that is extremely important here.
Apple Silicon is being brought up as more evidence Tim Cook runs an unexciting Apple. But if you think about the big picture, it looks different. A company selling mainstream computers on its own CPUs is not something most computer companies could even think of attempting. Dell, Lenovo, and HP cannot start from zero and build world class, high performance, energy-efficient, tightly integrated CPU/GPU SOCs.
So why can Apple do it? Because of that one thing a lot of people continue to dismiss: The iPad.
Tim Cook has been running Apple throughout the years when Apple decided to design its own A series SOC for the iPhone and iPad.
Over those Tim Cook years, that A-series SOC has become both extremely well tailored to Apple's specific needs, and performs very well and efficiently compared to the competition.
Apple has been able to quietly work on the Ax SOC over the necessary number of years to grow, refine, and mature it into what it needs to be. They did this using the iPhone and iPad as the test beds. And they have pushed that SOC so far that we were able to complain that iOS was not taking full advantage of the power of iPad hardware.
Now we come to Macs on Apple Silicon. Every previous time Apple switched CPUs, it was simply switching suppliers. This time, they are switching to an SOC that is their own, completely tailored to their needs. The only reason they have it nearly ready is because under Tim Cook's watch they had all those years to mature the silicon using the iPhone and iPad. And now it comes right at the time when Intel is letting them down the most, when Apple needs an alternative the most.
Personally I think that Tim Cook playing the long game, over many years, investing many billions of dollars, meticulously setting up the company for a massive payoff available to no other competitors, is quite exciting.
(Especially as a shareholder, watching my AAPL share value multiply 15x.)
Still, I hope you enjoy Tesla's "Doorstop", if it ever actually gets built. Reservations seem to be less than espected.
My guess is that Elon will change his mind on the design before the pickup debuts.
Nice try. I know it hurts to give Cook his credit but statistically Airpods and Apple Watch are more successful than iPods. It is unfair to quote iPods lifetime number when comparing to babies like Apple Watch and especially Airpods but it's what the haters do.
....Wait, Ballmer?!?!!!
"Apple is selling 0 phones a year"
Ballmer logic aside, it took iPod roughly 3 years to reach Watch's year 1 sales. Airpods sold more. If we go by revenue, these two products beat the crap out of iPod. Now consider the fact that Airpods and especially Watch are tied to iPhone users.
"The watch idea was created before Steve died and he did know about it and didn’t nix it."
Sure depending on how far you wanna move the goalposts. Even so, Tim's Airpods are outselling Watch.
No, because unlike Watch and Airpods, we know Jobs had high interest in the car. We wouldn't know what was under Tim and what was under Jobs. I remember reading that the Car and medical were Steve's last visions.
(like most of Steve principles) ?
Unlike Jobs, he is much more risk adverse as he fears a failure will tarnish the brand so what appears like evolution to some is revolution for him. Jobs had some spectacular failures, including being fired from the company he founded. That is a different world than what Cook came from and following Jobs’ advice he took his own road.
and the guy had to go back and ramp it all up.
Tim only appears to be more risk adverse, simply because he has the luxury of not having to deliver any innovation until it is ready. In the meantime, Apple generally delivers evolutionary, and very well executed, products, hence why Apple is often chastised for "being late to the party".
Apple Silicon is a RISK RISC.
In the meantime, can you send me the specs on Nikola's currently available products, if I am interested in purchasing an EV?
I also think [HOPE] that Steve Jobs would have responded appropriately to Carl Icahn in language that would not be suitable for me repeating here.
When I first read in Forbes about Icahn the article was praising him for having amassed a fortune of maybe $800 million. Now, after many of his corporate victims are no more he might be worth $20 billions, if not a lot more. It has not been just companies destroyed but the lives of many who lost their jobs.
Project Titan is a very big risk project and even though Tesla is, so far, making it, but the failure rate for new car companies is very high.
Even if AirPods are not considered "disruptive", I think it would be disingenuous to claim that the Apple Watch is not disruptive.
Apple's success in personal health may very well be Cook's legacy. It is very easy to dismiss his expertise as being a "bean counter", but he is managing to keep a large percentage of Apple customers and stock holders happy - which is no small feat.
It also looks like he has given up on granola bars. I remember an article a while ago where he'd make people shit in a meeting by simply unwrapping a granola bar and eat it while the person at the other end tried to justify a goof-up, or something.
Looks like he just flips pages now!