Apple needs a “Visionary” person in its leadership position one who has a passion for technology & also has a backbone like Steve Jobs and is not afraid of saying No and calling people out. Steve Jobs in my opinion would of never released the current iPhone 13 Pro. It would of been much much better. Tim Cook is a logistic & a numbers guy. Not a leader that should be charged and not one that others inspire to be & look up to.
This is a very interesting discussion.
I watched Apple's presentation of the new MacBook Pros this Monday. Tim Cook was the guy on the field, talking generically about Apple, vision, and values, and delegating every technical aspect to other people to talk about. It was the same during Apple's presentation of the iPhone 13. Just for the sake of curiosity, I have searched some videos of past Apple's presentations. Tim Cook was the guy that introduced the iPhone X, just to immediately call Phil Schiller to explain what it was and what it did. As far as I know, Tim Cook never talks about product details, he only talks about how "they love product X", how "product Y changes people's lives", and so on. He always calls other people to give the details.
Steve Jobs was kind of the opposite. He dove deeply into the products specifics, and he was clearly in love with the tech. He might not be the engineer or have the knowledge of Woz, but he was clearly interested in the products. Steve Jobs himself presented the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, the MacBook Air, and so many other products. He knew about those products, he knew the specifics by heart, and he wanted to talk about them, providing his own personal touch.
Microsoft may have followed a similar path. In the past, Bill Gates made the presentations of the products. Perhaps he did not show as much enthusiasm as Steve Jobs, but he did it himself. Then, Steve Ballmer, as CEO, was a lot more enthusiastic, even if not so charismatic. Steve Ballmer was interested in products and even made some bold statements about Apple products such as the iPhone, the iPad, and the MacBook Air. Satya Nadella takes a different approach. I suppose he takes more interest in products than Tim Cook, but what he really does is talk about leadership, vision, future, culture, market trends, sales, and other management stuff. He is not the one who presents the products or tells about the specifics of them.
It may be a trend. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were founders of their companies. They created tech companies because they liked tech in the first place. Apple and Microsoft were once small companies, and Steve Jobs and Bill Gates had to do the job themselves. They ended up becoming executives and CEOs because the situation led them to this.
When Steve Jobs died, shareholders were worried about the future of Apple. Steve Jobs was a visionary and had an incredible personal feeling, but what a listed company really needs is reliability and not ingenuity. Shareholders and customers needed Apple to keep providing products and services for the foreseeable future, regardless of the person behind it; the company could not rely on the individual.
Under Tim Cook, Apple became the first trillion dollar company. Today, its market cap exceeds $2 trillion. Microsoft followed a similar path: Satya Nadella drove it to be a trillion dollar company and to eventually reach $2 trillion. It is probably not a coincidence. Either these two companies reached this kind of value because tech companies in general were up, or because they were well managed after the first generation of founders retired, or both. Probably both, as Intel, even being a tech company, failed to reach such heights.
I have read some articles comparing Steve Jobs and Tim Cook and they usually reach the conclusion that Tim Cook is the better CEO.
Think Steve Jobs is the greatest tech CEO ever? Think again: Tim Cook wins hands down on every metric.
www.wired.co.uk
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Tim Cook (as well as Satya Nadella) is a market executive, prepared to run a company. He knows the market, and not the products themselves. He is interested in management, in inspiring people and teams, in streamlining processes, in efficiency. He is not interested in products; he does not fall in love with the iPhone or the iMac like we, customers, do. That is the role that a CEO should assume, and Tim Cook has been particularly good at it.
This is weird because John Sculley, the guy who replaced Steve Jobs when he was fired from Apple in the 1980s, was a successful executive who knew nothing about technology, and he failed miserably. But perhaps it was because Sculley, unlike Tim Cook, did not understand about the tech market, and not about the products.
Now, Tim Cook is the CEO that checks all the marks, does everything a CEO is supposed to do, empowers people and give them space (to deliver public speeches on the products, for instance). At the same time, he is perfectly replaceable by someone else who has similar management skills. An Apple without Tim Cook is nowhere near an Apple without Steve Jobs. This certainty leads to Apple being valued as a company.
Personally, if you ask me, I would much prefer the style of Steve Jobs. I like the CEO being a guy who loves the products as much as I do. Steve Jobs made the products he wished to use for himself, and found a way to sell them for a reasonable price. Tim Cook is the guy who does not care about the products, but only about the company; he just want the products to sell, and to charge as much as he can for them. Plus, without Steve Jobs, Apple certainly would not be the behemoth it is today. As much as Tim Cook may have been efficient, Apple would never be the world's most valuable company if it was not for Steve Jobs' legacy.
So, I do not care if Tim Cook stays or goes. If Tim Cook goes, he will probably be replaced by another CEO interested in the very same things. The tech guy is now either an Apple employee or will create his own company. He will not become Apple's CEO.
