Steve was at the Job of providing value to Apple customers.
Tim is about Cooking Profit for himself and Apple.
Do you Agree ?
Tim is about Cooking Profit for himself and Apple.
Do you Agree ?
Bingo.No.
Steve was a product genius who made loads of mistakes, but put Apple on the road to high cost/high profit systems.
Tim is a supply chain genius, who knows how to make extremely complex operations work, and keeps Apple on the road of high cost/high profit systems.
Look at the history of Apple's products and pricing, and you'll find that the only time their profit margins were slim was after Steve was ousted and before he returned.
Yes.Steve was at the Job of providing value to Apple customers.
Tim is about Cooking Profit for himself and Apple.
Do you Agree ?
No.Steve was at the Job of providing value to Apple customers.
Tim is about Cooking Profit for himself and Apple.
Do you Agree ?
The way I see it, Steve is Churchill, while Tim is Eisenhower. Different people are needed at different points in a company's history. Steve was right for his era, but I doubt he would fare as well today when the biggest challenges to Apple are political in nature, not technological.Steve was at the Job of providing value to Apple customers.
Tim is about Cooking Profit for himself and Apple.
Do you Agree ?
No.
Steve was a product genius who made loads of mistakes, but put Apple on the road to high cost/high profit systems.
Tim is a supply chain genius, who knows how to make extremely complex operations work, and keeps Apple on the road of high cost/high profit systems.
Look at the history of Apple's products and pricing, and you'll find that the only time their profit margins were slim was after Steve was ousted and before he returned.
Well said, and very well expressed, both of you, and not just because I am in complete agreement with you both.Bingo.
Steve would come up with some crazy ideas. Some worked. Some didn't. But he was constantly thinking of what else could be done that was intentionally against the grain. The downside to this is that these (for lack of a better term) experimental devices cost a lot of money but they sold so his gamble worked.
Tim in a lot of ways is similar to Henry Ford and the assembly line. He knows how to keep those expensive, experimental devices flowing off of the floor and into stores. Tim is not a design guy but he surrounds himself with people who are so he has the best of both worlds right now.
Pff here we go again with the beancounter vs. the saint trope. News flash: Steve was no saint, and he was in business to make money. He needed Tim for Apple to grow; he hired him for that explicit reason, and Tim is good at it.Steve was at the Job of providing value to Apple customers.
Tim is about Cooking Profit for himself and Apple.
Do you Agree ?
Exactly… the perfect description… thank you for it. 👍Yes.
Tim Cook tries to provide as little as possible to customers as he can get away with. Basically, he gives as little as he can to the point where a large number of people are still willing to buy. For example, he is constantly taking hardware away from successive generations of iPhones. No headphone jack, then no headphones, then no Touch ID (which could easily have been provided in addition to Face ID), then no phone charger, then the previous year's iPhone's CPU on the current non-Pro models, etc. Cook saves Apple money by doing all of that, but he doesn't lower prices. He doesn't even keep prices the same, which would be bad enough. Instead, he has the shamelessness to actually raise prices whenever he removes hardware and give customers less.
Cook is a miser. People should call him Tightwad Tim.
When Steve Jobs was temporarily away for medical reasons and Cook was filling in, Jobs was still making the big decisions and the company was still under his structure.It's also worth noting that Tim Cook was basically doing Steve's job as CEO when the latter returned. It's probably thanks to Tim Cook's genius with managing their supply chain that Apple could even make enough units of their products to sell.
I mean, let's put it this way - what's the point of having the best-designed product in the world if you can't make enough copies to sell?
Well said Thomas👍. Most of the fans are with Apple due to the legacy Steve created. Tim can sell what Steve made, but not for long… most of the Apple lovers now have android as there secondary phone. The way Apple tells the customer 8Gb RAM is ~ 16 Gb on windows doesn’t reveal that 5.5 Gb is used by the OS leaving 2.5 Gb or less for the user, which fills up quickly. As a result, swap usage increases and SSD degrades faster. So the more you use, the faster u need to replace your Mac. Most of the components are serial matched and soldered to the board making repairs costly and sometimes equal to a new unit. The processor bandwidth is lower on M3 pro processor compared to M1 Pro or M2 pro.When Steve Jobs was temporarily away for medical reasons and Cook was filling in, Jobs was still making the big decisions and the company was still under his structure.
Cook did an excellent job with supply chain management, so that's where he should have stayed. There is huge difference between being excellent at supply chain management and being a visionary who guides others to create innovative products. Those are two very separate skillsets.
At the very least, after Cook became CEO shortly prior to Jobs's death, Cook could've kept the same structure that Apple had in place. The most Jobs-like visionary Apple had at the time was Scott Forstall, who masterminded the Mac OS X interface, the iPod interface, and the iPhone interface (thus the iPad interface, too).
Forstall really cared about customers' user experience. He paid so much attention to detail on the skeuomorphic graphics, that he kept a jeweler's loupe on his desk in order to magnify and see each pixel was perfect on icons, etc.
Cook fired Forstall precisely because Forstall was like Jobs: a visionary who guides others to create innovative products, but has an abrasive personality. Like Jobs, while Forstall's personality is not good, he is by far a net-positive for consumers.
Cook is too mediocre to realize that. Cook has an MBA degree, and lives up to the stereotype that "MBA" stands for "mediocre but arrogant".
After Forstall, perhaps Jony Ive was the other most valuable visionary and innovator at Apple. Even Forstall fans like myself would probably agree that it would be highly stupid to put Forstall in charge of industrial design, and that's because he lacks that skillset. While no one ever made the highly stupid mistake of putting Forstall in charge of industrial design, Cook made an even more highly stupid mistake: putting Ive in charge of user interface design, because Ive lacks that skillset.
Just look at how flat design makes everything look bland, uninspired, boring, and the same. Apple copied flat design from Microsoft. Yes, under Steve Jobs, Microsoft copied Apple; but under Tim Cook, Apple copied Microsoft.
Cook is far more skilled than Jobs at making more money for Apple and its shareholders. I will never deny that. But you have to ask yourself what you prefer: An Apple that makes the most innovative and user-friendly products but not astronomically high amounts of money for the company and its shareholders, or an Apple that makes comparatively mediocre products while making astronomically high amounts of money for itself and its shareholders?
I understand why people who own Apple stock would say Cook is doing a great job, but it makes no sense why many people on this forum who are only users of Apple products and don't own Apple stock also say Cook is doing a great job.
Not being able to read the minds of millions of people, I can't agree or disagree with this statement, but I will say it seems a bit of a bizarre notion.Most of the fans are with Apple due to the legacy Steve created.
It's the entire business that has changed, not just Apple's leadership. No systems producer can hope to survive on the same model of design and engineering that existed even just 10 years ago, because there isn't a 'next big thing' in hardware to leap onto. Even Apple Silicon was just a different way to do the same thing.I loved every part of the Steve, Joni and Forstall era, and all keynotes was superfun to prepare for. The big ones was like Tech Christmas Eve’s.
Thank you Steve and all others who was part of my tech childhood and made it magical.
Today: I stopped watching Apple's presentations many years ago, with some exceptions when I was really out to buy something that I heard would come.
But good tech media report evertrhing in advance today, thankfully, so I can to avoid getting the fake face of the Apple CEO in front of my eyes.
I was obviously not alone with that feeling, as the company stopped the tradition, while people leaving Apple continuosly.
I will continue buy my Apple products though, as long as they serve its purpose for me. My brother was a PC guy who tried to get me into the PC world. Although I am certain that PC’s are better and more user friendly today I still like my Apple products - so no Tim will not let me hate what I fell in love with during Steve/Joni era.
This also raises the question - how exactly is Apple able to generate supernormal profits if its products are comparatively mediocre in comparison? Who exactly is buying them?Cook is far more skilled than Jobs at making more money for Apple and its shareholders. I will never deny that. But you have to ask yourself what you prefer: An Apple that makes the most innovative and user-friendly products but not astronomically high amounts of money for the company and its shareholders, or an Apple that makes comparatively mediocre products while making astronomically high amounts of money for itself and its shareholders?
Sure, but I don't care about the leadership or their business either anymore.It's the entire business that has changed, not just Apple's leadership.
Not saying you should care or there's anything wrong with that you don't. In fact it's quite odd that people seem to because its only a commodity our service after all. I merely posted that perspective in the context of the discussion in this thread that personalizes what is in fact an industry-wide process of maturation.Sure, but I don't care about the leadership or their business either anymore.
I just buy a product from Apple as long as I like it, that's it.
I usually don't get to know the organization behind every company that I buy a product from.
Apple have been added to those now, nothing more nothing less. I don't care, I'm not interested of their organization anymore.
I just buy products that I like, as long as I like them.
People still miss Steve, and grieving takes its own ways and time. This is not only about grieving a person but a company and the vision Steve and Apple stood for aswell.We'd have far less silliness here if more people took the same view that you do.
Inspired? No, that's certainly true. Personally, I don't much like him, and he's certainly no great figurehead. He is though a consummate professional.Tim is not somebody you get inspired of, he just represent the soullessness and greed that is far to common in the world.
If you look at the product Steve Jobs was most remembered for, the creation of the Mac, you'll find that in 1984, there were no user serviceable parts inside, no upgrade options and the case was fixed with very unusual bolts, two of which needed a tool that only Apple had.... Apple products are vastly different from the Jobs era. No longer user upgradable, all soldered parts and glued shut. No diversification options that Jobs included. Just a range of fixed products with limited facilities and no upgradability or anything. You have to comply, that is all. Terrible.