Tim Cook Needs to Go

[JMacHack]

Man, hasn’t this same garbage been said since 2012 or so? Along with headlines like “Microsoft is the new Apple”, “Samsung is the new Apple”, or “every other company is the new Apple”?

Last time I checked no one’s been able to dethrone Apple. Maybe you’re salty about the iPhone 13 launch being lackluster but every event has half of Macrumors saying the same thing. They’re all full of ****.

 

[zakarhino]

Man, hasn’t this same garbage been said since 2012 or so? Along with headlines like “Microsoft is the new Apple”, “Samsung is the new Apple”, or “every other company is the new Apple”?

Last time I checked no one’s been able to dethrone Apple. Maybe you’re salty about the iPhone 13 launch being lackluster but every event has half of Macrumors saying the same thing. They’re all full of ****.

Nobody has dethroned Apple because Apple's business model of customer lock in prevents that from happening. Innovation has absolutely nothing to do with Apple's current dominance, outside of the initial innovation of the iPhone itself.

Toyota and Ford are some of the biggest car makers in the world. Nobody has toppled them yet because of their economies of scale -- i.e, they're big as f*** and it's super hard to compete with companies that are already at the top of the market unless you come in and invent something that makes them look like stone age technology. Are they still the biggest in the world because of some innovation they constantly come out with? Absolutely not. Even Tesla haven't fundamentally innovated on the concept of the automobile because the fundamentals of automobiles were defined and built for the initial top dogs like Ford, changing them now would be ultra difficult (i.e, flying cars aren't compatible with road infrastructure).

It's near impossible to compete with Android, iOS/macOS, and Windows because of how deeply embedded those platforms have become in everyday life, especially when it comes to platform lock in and how much data they have that nobody else can get close to gathering. The internet backbone as we know it today has been optimized for those guys even though it's supposed to be an open realm that anyone can compete in.

 

[The_Interloper]

How much do you want the dude to do? This is just off the top of my head.

Apple Watch
HomePod
Apple TV Plus
Current Mac Monitor
Apple Fitness Plus
CarPlay
Air Tags
AirPods
Full screen iPhone with face ID
M1 Processor

As far as the s-pen, that has been around since the PDA era, it was Apple who eliminated it with the first iPhone.

His track record is pretty spotty then.

Apple Watch - success, but useless without an iPhone
HomePod - failure, already discontinued
Apple TV Plus - failure? Possibly. Who’s watching it? More importantly, who’s paying for it?
Current Mac Monitor - just the one, then, and outside the realm of most mortal budgets
Apple Fitness Plus - failure? Difficult to tell, but who is talking about it?
CarPlay - success I guess, but it‘s a necessary feature. Where’s the revenue stream?
Air Tags - too early to call
AirPods - success, no doubt
Full screen iPhone with Face ID - it’s not full screen at all, there’s a huge notch with a compromised notification area. Face ID is problematic as the only biometric authentication in the COVID mask-wearing era
M1 Processor - success, off to a great start. Not without problems though - app compatibility still iffy and dreadful glitches on some hardware (e.g. Mac Mini Bluetooth issues, monitors won’t wake etc)

Don’t forget he also presided over 3 years of Mac laptops (the biggest part of the Mac market) with known keyboard failures; even releasing new models under a repair programme!

As for the S-Pen - it’s way more than a PDA stylus. It’s a Wacom pen, with precise functionality. It’s not needed for UI navigation. To criticise it means applying the same criticism to the Apple Pencil, especially when paired with a device like the iPad Mini. Both have their place.

 

[pshufd]

They had a reputation for that. It's been eroding away because Apple's development processes are 15 years old - whereas most tech companies have learned how to seamlessly push updates on a daily basis without breaking anything, Apple still has a model of only pushing updates every few months. And when they do push those updates out, they suffer regressions because they don't have a comprehensive automated test suite (a key component for pushing out constant updates, but always useful to just not embarrass yourself... see the fact that people generally ask whether Apple OS updates are safe or not, because Apple has a long track record of needing to release several bug fixes before the new OS is actually free of regressions.)

It's easy to see that Tim Cook needs to go. It's hard to see who should replace him. I don't think Apple has any promising new leaders within the company... they probably should hire outside. Elon Musk would be a good choice, but I have no idea what Apple could possibly offer him... maybe there's some talented engineers at Apple that could be added to Neuralink?

I don't really see where Apple QC is any better or worse in the industry. And I'd know.

 

[pshufd]

His track record is pretty spotty then.

Apple Watch - success, but useless without an iPhone

There aren't sufficient resources on a watch to operate without a smartphone, PC or web browser.

Garmin started the category in 2004 and you used it with a PC and the internet. Garmin is still a leading GPS company including smartwatches and fitness enthusiasts typically gravitate towards Garmin products and other companies that make similar products. But Apple sells the most smartwatches. You still need a PC, phone or a way to access the web with Garmin products. Apple is making serious strides on health sensors and they make great products but the stuff from Garmin and similar companies have 7-30 day battery life which Apple and Samsung can only dream of. Apple does sell the most and probably makes more money on their watches than any other company.

 

[killramos]

Buy some shares and vote him out

 

[Kung gu]

M1 isn't innovation

I disagree, tell me one laptop that is fanless and also powerful like the M1 MBA. It got the whole chip industry talking about it from Intel to AMD to Qualcomm.

Yes, it's even noticeable to the average consumer as the M1 will have a huge impact in the laptop industry.

 

[Kung gu]

readful glitches on some hardware (e.g. Mac Mini Bluetooth issues, monitors won’t wake etc)

That's not the fault of M1, its the HDMI and bluetooth stack in the mini thats horrible.

The mac mini always had bluetooth issues ever since they got rid of the plexiglass top and made it all-metal on the top.

 

[Kung gu]

I am excited for one product from Apple and that is the Mac and i am excited to see the Mac chip.

To me Apple sillicon is innovation.

 

[zakarhino]

I disagree, tell me one laptop that is fanless and also powerful like the M1 MBA. It got the whole chip industry talking about it from Intel to AMD to Qualcomm.

Yes, it's even noticeable to the average consumer as the M1 will have a huge impact in the laptop industry.

I use my M1 devices in the exact same way I use my Intel Macs. Not innovation, just evolution. I understand people like to use "innovation" to describe 'new' technology but I prefer to reserve the term for new paradigms of technology, something that actually changes power structures or the way we do things. M1 hasn't changed anything on a fundamental level.

 

[44267547]

I’ve been a huge supporter of Tim Cook since his take over for Steve Jobs and I will continue to support Cook until the day he successfully retires from Apple. He is a financial genius on many levels, but strategic enough where he kept Apple just as successful in a long lasting pandemic.

 

[beanbaguk]

If you had asked me if I would like to see a new CEO, I would have said "yes" but I disagree with the last sentence.

Those who compare Tim Cook to Steve Jobs are very unfair. Steve Jobs was a genius and his success was evident. We also see very well what Tim Cook has done to Apple.

While I am a huge admirer of Steve Jobs, I don't think he was a genius. He was an insanely good marketeer and sold his vision to the world...

I would argue Steve Jobs made Apple a trillion dollar company and Tim Cook is just riding on his success.

I would argue you are completely wrong. The value of Apple at Steve Jobs' death was $350m, so you are far our.

Tim Cook made it the two-trillion-dollar company you know today. Not Jobs.

Apple becomes the first technology company to hit a $2 trillion market capitalization

Apple is also the first technology company in the world to hit a $2 trillion market capitalization.

mspoweruser.com

 

[beanbaguk]

I use my M1 devices in the exact same way I use my Intel Macs. Not innovation, just evolution. I understand people like to use "innovation" to describe 'new' technology but I prefer to reserve the term for new paradigms of technology, something that actually changes power structures or the way we do things. M1 hasn't changed anything on a fundamental level.

Without trying to be too abrasive, you are talking absolute nonsense.

In general usage, my MBP M1 usually has about 30-40 tabs running on the browser, photoshop, Apple Music, iMessage, WhatsApp, two browsers, Slack, and various other tools I use in my day to day activities. My Lenovo T490 ($2400 at time of purchase), with an i7 (Gen 8) and 32GB RAM struggled with half of that and the battery would be obliterated in about an hour or so with that number of applications running concurrently.

It has revolutionised the silicon industry. Efficiency is at levels never seen before. The architecture is unparalleled by Intel and AMD. They cannot keep up. It puts unseen levels of performance for regular users (ie, a $700 Mac Mini can obliterate a $3,000 PC).

Another example of this can be seen when testing my MBP M1 as a Plex server. (If you look at my threads, I plan to replace my watt guzzling PC with a Mac Mini M1). I was able to run four 4K transcoding streams and there was barely a hiccup in CPU usage. (About 65% at its peak). The fans didn't come on, and the power usage...25w. Compare that to my PC....about 400w, fans on full, liquid cooling, and can only manage one single 4K stream alongside a 1080p stream.

Moreover, all this technology and power can be powered by a small cell phone battery in the palm of your hand and last for nearly an entire working day without having to charge it up.

In some ways, I don't actually believe you have an M1.

I'm genuinely not trying to be a fan-boy about this, but the M1 is a phenomenal piece of kit. There are flaws; major ones, (My MBP has locked up and crashed, and it doesn't wake from sleep well, plus the lack of multi-monitor support is poor to say the least), but in day to day use, it's phenomenal and if you cannot see this, you are blind or as I suggested above, you don't actually have an M1.

 

[Blakesubo]

I’ll take “Revisionist history” for $1,000 please.

Jobs personally poached Tim Cook from Compaq at a time when working for Apple was not the best thing to put on one’s resume - and the company itself was near bankruptcy when Tim joined.

″[Cook] had the same vision I did,” Jobs told biographer Walter Issacson. “We could interact at a high strategic level, and I could just forget about a lot of things unless he came and pinged me.”

Jobs started grooming Cook for the role of CEO long before he became sick with cancer. Jobs and Cook spent a huge amount of time with Jobs mentoring him, teaching him and creating the next CEO from the moment Jobs received his initial diagnosis.

It’s obvious from your post that you don’t actually care about facts - or other peoples opinions. You asked a question and, so far, the poll shows a huge majority of folk in disagreement with you.

You therefore have now created a fantasy about how Tim Cook came to be at Apple in a failed attempt to bolster your belief that Tim Cook should be fired.

The fact that he’s now recognized as one of the most successful CEOs in history is neither here, nor there.

Trust me, Apple doesn’t care one fig about your opinion. Apple cares about the shareholders, and the shareholders are utterly delighted with Cooks performance. So he’s not going anywhere, your annoyance of such aside.

This is exactly why the question itself, let alone a poll and comments around it was really really stupid.

Everything said here is exactly right. The two main arguments are just simply false. People who argue that Tim doesnt belong there or didn’t earn it have no standing because Steve did poach him, and picked him to be his #2 and to be his replacement. You can’t get more qualified than a decade and a half of being Jobs’ direct report.

Additionally, virtually all the executive leadership, and a great majority of the senior leadership are all people that Steve either picked as well, or he worked with them in some capacity in a visible role before he passed.

It’s hard to argue that the leadership team today wouldn’t be fully approved of by Steve. If no other reason than, again, he picked the guy who has picked and lead them.

The other argument is just as silly but for much more objective reasons. Luckily, it’s very easy to show and explain to people because there are several charts that sum it all up very easily. Just google AAPL and set the timeline from 1997 to today. Then pay extra attention to 2012 to today. Tim Cook checks all traditional checkboxes that are associated with an amazing CEO, from a numbers and shareholder viewpoint.

now please. Can we get a good or useful poll question now?

 

[beanbaguk]

This is exactly why the question itself, let alone a poll and comments around it was really really stupid.

Everything said here is exactly right. The two main arguments are just simply false. People who argue that Tim doesnt belong there or didn’t earn it have no standing because Steve did poach him, and picked him to be his #2 and to be his replacement. You can’t get more qualified than a decade and a half of being Jobs’ direct report.

Additionally, virtually all the executive leadership, and a great majority of the senior leadership are all people that Steve either picked as well, or he worked with them in some capacity in a visible role before he passed.

It’s hard to argue that the leadership team today wouldn’t be fully approved of by Steve. If no other reason than, again, he picked the guy who has picked and lead them.

The other argument is just as silly but for much more objective reasons. Luckily, it’s very easy to show and explain to people because there are several charts that sum it all up very easily. Just google AAPL and set the timeline from 1997 to today. Then pay extra attention to 2012 to today. Tim Cook checks all traditional checkboxes that are associated with an amazing CEO, from a numbers and shareholder viewpoint.

now please. Can we get a good or useful poll question now?

Exactly. Here's your useful poll question:

Disagree / Dislike reaction needed! :)

Is there any way to add a disagree/dislike reaction to the available options (thumbs down)? The closest option is angry, but that's just inflammatory and not required in 99% of situations. It's good to be able to disagree/dislike a post, just like you are able to like it.

forums.macrumors.com

 

[MathersMahmood]

Lol. You wouldn’t know the first thing of what it’s like to run a trillion $ company. But hey easy to just groan by your self which no one would care. Apple will do what ever they want no matter what your stupid opinion is

Nice mature way of digesting someone else's opinion. Not a sheepish fanboyish way of replying. You must be related to Tim.

 

[Pakaku]

Tim isn't the guy coming up with the innovations, so both answers are irrelevant.

 

[zakarhino]

Without trying to be too abrasive, you are talking absolute nonsense.

In general usage, my MBP M1 usually has about 30-40 tabs running on the browser, photoshop, Apple Music, iMessage, WhatsApp, two browsers, Slack, and various other tools I use in my day to day activities. My Lenovo T490 ($2400 at time of purchase), with an i7 (Gen 8) and 32GB RAM struggled with half of that and the battery would be obliterated in about an hour or so with that number of applications running concurrently.

It has revolutionised the silicon industry. Efficiency is at levels never seen before. The architecture is unparalleled by Intel and AMD. They cannot keep up. It puts unseen levels of performance for regular users (ie, a $700 Mac Mini can obliterate a $3,000 PC).

Another example of this can be seen when testing my MBP M1 as a Plex server. (If you look at my threads, I plan to replace my watt guzzling PC with a Mac Mini M1). I was able to run four 4K transcoding streams and there was barely a hiccup in CPU usage. (About 65% at its peak). The fans didn't come on, and the power usage...25w. Compare that to my PC....about 400w, fans on full, liquid cooling, and can only manage one single 4K stream alongside a 1080p stream.

Moreover, all this technology and power can be powered by a small cell phone battery in the palm of your hand and last for nearly an entire working day without having to charge it up.

In some ways, I don't actually believe you have an M1.

I'm genuinely not trying to be a fan-boy about this, but the M1 is a phenomenal piece of kit. There are flaws; major ones, (My MBP has locked up and crashed, and it doesn't wake from sleep well, plus the lack of multi-monitor support is poor to say the least), but in day to day use, it's phenomenal and if you cannot see this, you are blind or as I suggested above, you don't actually have an M1.

You're so heated that I don't have the same definition of innovation as you that you conclude the only possible explanation is that I don't actually use an M1 device... uh, ok lol, that's kinda weird. You somehow think I'm saying the M1 is a bad chip or something. I never said that. I agree, it's a great chip. I just don't consider it a societal innovation even in the same ballpark as the Macintosh or iPhone. The invention of the CPU itself is an innovation, not the M1. The invention of the GUI is an innovation, not the retina display, etc. I understand people have a hard time wrapping their heads around that but they don't have to agree considering my definition is defined by a higher bar than most. I only ask you don't insult me by implying I'm lying about using an M1 device or that I'm a hater for not revering it as paradigm shifting (it's not).

Besides, everything you wrote doesn't refute my point: the underlying paradigm of consumer computing has not changed because of M1. According to you: you are still using the same browsers as before, the same software, except you can run it for a few hours longer and maybe have a few more tabs and apps open. Oh and Plex uses way less power. Cool. How has your digital life fundamentally changed? Has M1 democratized technology in any way or changed society? No. We can very clearly see how society radically changed from a pre-PC world to a post-PC world. Same goes for the smartphone. The Mac and iPhone were category defining products for those respective technological paradigms. M1 hasn't changed anything in the same way the Mac and iPhone did. No benchmarks or anecdotes can possibly change my mind on that.

Also the Intel and AMD have a pipeline of products to try and keep up with Apple Silicon, it's not like Apple invented an alien technology here. They'll probably match some of the important leading stats of Apple Silicon (keep in mind AS doesn't excel at every metric) by around 2024 according to some silicon analysts that have an inside peek into what team red and team blue are working on.

 

[zakarhino]

Tim isn't the guy coming up with the innovations, so both answers are irrelevant.

No, he's the guy deciding the general direction of the company and where they allocate funds. If you're incapable of defining a novel vision for the future as the leader of the company then how could you possibly fundamentally innovate? You don't need to be the source of innovation but you at least need to have an ambition, vision, and eye for it like Jobs did.

Steve Jobs wasn't the guy coming up with the innovations either. Did you know the iPod concept was pitched to Apple by a contractor, for example? Steve sought out those ideas and had enough of a vision to know what would be hot and what wouldn't be. That's why he spent a lot of time visiting PARC and taking ideas from them, he knew where to go to find innovation.

 

[zakarhino]

The next paradigm shifting innovation will not come from Apple under Cook*. They are too big and too focused on profit margins, that's their legal obligation as a public company. They couldn't shake up the underlying power structure of the ecosystem they've built even if they wanted to, they make too much money from it and shareholders would complain. They cannot innovate like a startup or lab can, they don't even have the aspirations to. Steve Blank implied as much in regards to large companies decades ago.

*Scratch that, the next paradigm shifting innovation DIDN'T come from Apple (past tense, not future). It's called blockchain and decentralized systems. No, I'm not talking about random pump and dump s***coins, I'm talking about the underlying technology that has the capability to completely change the power structure of the internet and digital world as we know it. Now THAT is a true innovation.

 

[beanbaguk]

How has your digital life fundamentally changed? Has M1 democratized technology in any way or changed society? No. We can very clearly see how society radically changed from a pre-PC world to a post-PC world. Same goes for the smartphone. The Mac and iPhone were category defining products for those respective technological paradigms. M1 hasn't changed anything in the same way the Mac and iPhone did. No benchmarks or anecdotes can possibly change my mind on that.

I would suggest it has. Radically.

M1 CPU's use approximately 85% less power than the nearest Intel CPU's and that IS game-changing.

Not just for the user, but also on a global and environmental scale. You have to take a much more open approach to this rather than the obtuse view many use.

So in many ways, the M1 will have an impact on society, and as Apple continue to improve this, I only see a wider adoption of their silicon technology and a shift on how the industry adopts their technology.

 

[Denzo]

This post is nostalgic at best. Cook is a great CEO and achieved a lot of great things leading Apple.

 

[MadeTheSwitch]

I’m not going for that. Samsung keeps on innovating. With its foldables alone. Including it’s under display cameras etc. Think Big. Think outside the box & never limit yourself.

Uh huh. And how many are they selling?

If you haven’t figured out by now that Apple is usually not the first one out on the dance floor with new tech and waits until a technology is a bit more mature and mass marketable, then I don’t know what to tell you. Apple waits until they can get it right, not get it out first. Can you imagine the complaints if Apple released a horrible foldable phone that wasn’t ready for prime time and cost a fortune? They have a roadmap for the future. They know what they are doing. They didn’t get to where they are by not knowing.

 

[The_Interloper]

There aren't sufficient resources on a watch to operate without a smartphone, PC or web browser.

That wasn’t my point. I know the Watch is a companion device; my issue was that the iPhone is the ONLY way to use it. The Watch is useless without it - it can’t even be set up. No iPad, no iPod Touch, no Mac can fix this.

Compare this to Wear OS, Tizen, Fitbit, Garmin devices etc which all work with both iOS and Android. The latter two even work with Windows and Mac.

That's not the fault of M1, its the HDMI and bluetooth stack in the mini thats horrible.

The mac mini always had bluetooth issues ever since they got rid of the plexiglass top and made it all-metal on the top.

I didn’t say the M1 was at fault, but it doesn’t change the fact the new chip was released inside faulty products presided over by Cook (he has history of this, though - butterfly kb, Mac Pro 2013 GPU issues etc). If the Mac Mini has always had Bluetooth issues, why is that design still being used? What about the HDMI problem? That’s soldered to a new SOC, right? The one with an M1 chip…

 

[RadioHedgeFund]

Tell that to the people folding and flipping their Samsung phones (as well as writing notes with a digital pen).

The issue isn't the slowing of innovation, it's the stagnation of Apple's products. The new iPhones aren't discernably different from the model before it. More importantly, they fail to even integrate innovations that have been around for years now: under-display (or even power button) fingerprint sensors, always-on displays (a software feature!), lack of a huge notch etc.

And while we're talking about the notch...that symbolises Apple's stagnation more than anything. That abomination has now been there for 4 years and 6 iPhone iterations (X, XS, XR, 11, 12, 13). This year, they've slightly shortened the width while making it taller - and adding nothing to the notification area. Jobs must be spinning.

The digital pen from the Palm Pilot? The flipping hinge from the Nintendo DS? Niehter of these are 'innovations' in a smart device because they do not solve a problem. It is technology for technologies' sake or rather technology outpacing its own usefulness. In the meantime Apple saved me £10k on a lab-grade LiDAR scanner by letting me use a £700 phone.

All innovation left in the smartphone space is in software and both Apple and Google are still lagging behind where they should be. Consider that as phone sizes grew, the OS did not. iOS15 is iOS7 stretched over a larger area. A 6" phone should be devoid of any interaction that needs the top 1/3 of the screen, unreachable with one hand. And yet we still have hangoffs like the notification shade (from Android 1.0!) that still linger.

The Palm Pre and webOS had bottom-up notifications in 2009. Why not have a shade the swipes up from the bottom of the screen when on the app switcher view that pushes notifications downwards? This would be a clever solution that requires minimal effort.