Comment by ksec
7 days ago
Cant believe Tim Cook is about to be CEO longer than Steve Jobs. Thank You for that perspective.
On the other hand Steve Jobs has accomplished far more within the same time frame compared to Tim Cook with far fewer resources. I really like the analogy of "autopilot".
I do think Steve could push Forstall as his successor, but didn't because Forstall wasn't ready as CEO. Tim Cook was a much better choice at the time as they have to compete with Android and they need market share ( in terms of user not sales ) to not repeat the same mistake with Mac vs PC. Tim should have mediate between Forstall and Ive instead of picking sides. The restructuring created power vacuum for Craig and Eddy Cue to pick up. With Crag we end up with OS that is constantly resume / features release driven and Eddy Cue which we end up with Apple Music, Apple TV+, Apple Fitness, Apple Arcade. None of them in my opinion are good decisions or great products / services.
Accomplish more is relative. At a large, later stage, companies become a lot more stability and long term revenue & sustainability. Which Tim Cook has absolutely excelled at. Sure, Steve was more of a tech revolutionary. But weird designs were super common under him! The Apple design language has been pretty consistent over the past decade.
I think it’s odd this thread is largely complaining about Apple taking too many risks, or making weird designs they don’t like, or being too feature-driven. The fact of the matter is that Apple has by far created the most stable tech ecosystem of any comparable company. With a very consistent design language as well.
Windows has a horrific track record (with only Windows 7 & 10 being well regarded in the past 15+ years). Android typically doesn’t support devices with major software updates past a small handful of years. Apple’s combo of privacy, long term support, and extremely consistent release cadences & design language make it a much more stable platform than practically anything else. They even did an entire hardware architecture change under our feet without downgrading the user experience in any meaningful way.
I mean whether or not you agree or like Apple’s service products like Apple Music, it is absolutely a very smart business decision to continue investing in them. Apple TV has a higher percentage of high quality content than other providers. Apple Music is at worst hardly that different than Spotify. Apple Arcade is just a way to bundle products that already exist.
>it is absolutely a very smart business decision to continue investing in them
I dont disagree. In fact I talked about services revenue in 2012 / 2013 before it was even a term on Appleinsider and other places. But the difference is that old Apple make a Great product and then make a business case out of it.
New Apple is we need to grow services so what should we do, and make some product out of it to fill the gap.
One is a Product focus another is a business revenue focus. Very different mind set. Although arguably both would have worked well if a Yard Stick of Quality was in place. Which is lacking in many areas in modern Apple.
>Which Tim Cook has absolutely excelled at.
That is somewhat true. Best operational manager and supply chain before anyone on the internet knew of it. But on taking risk it is going in all the wrong places. Apple had 200 Stores world wide before the 1.2 Billion iPhones and 2 Billions I Devices user. And they had 50 planned so arguably they had 250. Now they have ~500 Stores. The moment you have somehow who thinks Apple Store is a cost centre and not somewhere to quote SJ "Help your customers".
Apple TV+ having little to zero impact outside of US. And even in US home turf they are not doing great. But burning 5 to 10 billion every single year just to hide your services revenue profit margin.
I guess I could sum it up as Apple has more money than they know what to do with it. And Tim Cook is being stringent in places it shouldn't and spending on things that till now provide little value.
Cook is not "about to be CEO longer than Steve Jobs", he was also CEO from 1976-1985
>he was also CEO from 1976-1985
Sorry. Not understanding this joke or does it mean something else?