Well, what Apple customers HOPE will change after Tim Cook leaves is a return to focus on the products and the customer, like what Apple had under Steve Jobs. When Cook took over, he slowly moved focus away from products and customer and onto profits exclusively. Literally all of Apple's success under Cook is because of those few years under Jobs where products and customer were #1. The quality they dished out, and the loyalty they built, has been fueling them ever since. Honestly Cook has done everything he could to ruin it, and still hasn't managed to, because of how strong a following Jobs built. Raising prices every time a new model is introduced instead of value-add like Jobs did could have and should have been disastrous for Apple...but the brand loyalty was too strong. Giving only the bare minimum that a user might need in base model products should have been disastrous... but brand loyalty is too strong. I just wonder how long it can last. How long can Tim continue to unravel the Apple that Jobs built before customers wake up and realize that its not the same company anymore. Hopefully Tim is replaced by a products-oriented CEO before that happens. Soon, please. Soon.
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The end of Tim Cook's reign is near.
- Thread starter Pearple
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I'd quibble with "Tim Cook's money-is-everything reign" because that's an interpretation you put on what you experience, not necessarily what it really is, but I think whatever-it-is is exactly what Apple pay him to do.
I also think you have to remember that Apple began in a rather different economic environment than is prevalent today. Then, selling out of a garage, and establishing themselves in the market, the marketplace was highly volatile, and Apple had a narrow product profile which was easy to market and support. Today, after Milton Friedman began the age of 'stockholders are to be pleased at all costs' in 1975, which is the prevailing economic theory even today, the CEO of just about any publicly held company has to focus (predominantly) on that. He has necessarily diversified the product range to protect the company's future, and moved to protect Apple's revenue streams. That's his job.
Whether a reputation for 'CUSTOMER AND PRODUCT' has ben sacrificed, and if so, how, is somewhat a matter of personal opinion. Having lived the fiasco of 128K RAM in the first Mac, the inflated cost of the first PowerBooks, the egregious mess that was the PowerBook 190 and 5300 product ranges, the confused and complicated, virutally impossible to navigate desktop systems products of the 90s, and the reliability of the G3 iBooks and G4 PowerBooks, the overheat issues with the G5 Desktops and first generation Intel MacBook Pros... Apple's history isn't quite a nice as you suggest.
Personally, I don't much care for him, but he has proved to be extremely good at the job he is paid to do. Sadly you (and I) are not his employers and don't dictate his responsibilities.
You're going back way too far. The Apple from 2000 - 2010 is the gold standard that everyone thinks of. This is the era that built the money machine, not anything Tim Cook did. This era with its focus on quality, product, and customer set in motion a formula that needed only to be continued. And for a while, that's all Tim did was continue it. But he slowly began to unravel it, and turn Apple into something else. But lucky for Apple, the effect that was hammered in during that decade has been hard to undo, despite every effort to do so.
Do…do you think Cook was not instrumental to that era as a top executive known in the industry as the supply chain guru?
Apple literally could not scale if not for the amazing supply chain mechanisms they built in that era….
I think there are a lot of moving parts and supply chain is certainly important, but its not like that is what created the demand on the supply chain.
Person says something in not the exact semantic way I would phrase it?
THEY ARE LITERALLY STRETCHING REALITY!
“I don’t like Tim Cook because, even though he does all the wrong things according to me, Apple continues to be successful. It annoys me that people think he’s a good CEO. Steve Jobs was a perfect CEO… well, aside from actually choosing Tim Cook!”
When Tim Cook steps down, it will be because he wants to. The next CEO will likely come from within the company and anyone that doesn’t like Tim will like Tim’s replacement even less.
Yes, we do. This was fine to say for the last 10 years while Apple tooled around with AR gimmicks on iPhone. But with Vision Pro, Apple tipped their hand. People were hoping for AR glasses that were an every day wearable product like Apple Watch or AirPods. Instead we got a proof-of-concept VR headset that does fake AR, and is unusable for any sort of "every day" type of use. The worst part is, if Vision Pro fails, which every ounce of evidence indicates it already has, it will stifle the development of vision-related products at Apple and efforts will be shifted elsewhere in short order. Apple doesn't throw good money after bad, especially not Cook's Apple.
You seem to be the only one aware of Apple's 5 year VR/AR roadmap.
Can you spell it out for the rest of us?
Yes. This is it. This is the core of the problem.
A bean counter looks at the numbers to confirm his actions. Apple stock good, my job good.
How utterly false this is.
Apple currently sells junk on its website.
Literally junk.
You can buy a brand new shiny aluminum unibody M3 processor liquid retina display for $$$$.
And it has only 8 GB of RAM.
This is more than just planned obsolesce.
This is creating waste, that with a very high chance won't be recycled.
This is deceiving customers "you don't need more".
This is like selling a brand new Ferrari with a 2-cylinder engine and the customer is not even allowed to pop the hood open.
Timmy only cares about the stockholders, he doesn't give a **** what the customers want.
It were the customers, who saved this company from annihilation. Without them, Jobs would not have had a company he could have returned to.
You're not discerning one thing from the other.
Apple starts MacBook Air with 8 GB RAM → "Apple literally sells junk!" (You find the issues you dislike and then claim the entire concept is trash.)
Why not look at the big picture, make a judgement on balance, then list to us the things that could be improved?
No, I'm going back to Apple products that were historically over priced, and in some cases had a staggering failure rate, and in other cases were withdrawn because they were the butt of jokes.
Cook joined Apple in 1998 as Senior VP of WorldWide Operations - which basically means that until he became Apple's CEO, he was responsible for organising the entire supply chain of the great products you want to focus on. I'd say that's not a bad CV right there, and something you ought to be praising him for.
By the way, I own some of the 'quality products' your not-exactly existent version of Apple produced, including MacBooks that fell apart, others that were blisteringly hot in use, and a laptop which had a 70% failure rate. There's even another that had to be given an 'extended repair period' for a range of faults so long that technically it never actually ended, because the repaired and replaced units also failed. (I own three of those to this day).
Well, at last, you did say something factually true and completely accurate.
$$$$ is more than $1, and it actually does cost more than $1.
I don't like this, but it is true. (There ought to be an emoji for that.)
Apple's customer satisfaction has never been lower, but their stock price and profitability has been through the roof. So regrettably, Tim Cook isn't going anywhere unless he wants to. This is the failure of the free market.
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What are you on about the AVP was always going to be that price as they have to make a big profit
X
Apple has been at the top of the American Customer Satisfaction Index for the past 20 years, and only lost #1 spot last year by tying with Samsung.
Their biggest unsatisfying years, personally, was during the 2016-2018 era due to butterfly keyboards (etc) and Apple rectified that with an amazing Apple Silicon lineup.
Where are all these Apple products that everyone is supposedly unsatisfied with?
And, also much to the point, WHO are these seemingly vast numbers of people who are unsatisfied with them?
I mean, I see a few dozen repetitive copycat threads here... like this one. And I see the same people come back and pat each other on the back for saying the same things over and over again whilst ignoring everyone else. It certainly doesn't convince me that macrumors is representative of the population as a whole, or Apple customers in general.
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Easy. Going on pricing alone; would the price tag for AVP be easier for most people to swallow pre-pandemic or presently?
It was never going to sell well regardless of the timing
3 & a half grand for a headset that you don’t actually need.