Saying that it might be time for a change at the top doesn’t necessarily mean that the fella before was perfect. Under Jobs we had the whole mess with iPhone antennae and, if I remember rightly, the man had to be convinced that it would be a good idea to have an API for the iPhone at all.
But that doesn’t mean that Cook hasn’t taken his eye off the ball while fighting to keep the system as closed as possible, introducing a new look-and-feel that is perhaps less than popular, and failing to deliver an AI solution that was promised two years ago. (Though the last one looks like it’s turning into an accidental win), and let’s not mention the billions spent on the car project.
You said time to put an engineer ‘back’ in charge. I pointed out that the last time there was an engineer in charge of (Jobs) there was no shortage of stuff-ups.
The new look and feel that SOME don’t like was designed by software engineers. Cook didn’t demand, or design any of that. He would have been involved in decisions, but on an OS designed by engineers, just has he and the management team sign off on products proposed and designed largely by engineers.
Yes, the car project turned out to be a non-starter, that happens. At least Cook had the sense to can it and not insist on carrying on which an egotistical engineer might well have done.
In the meantime, Cook led the company to over $4Trillion in valuation by approving a series of products and services that suited the market (and by share buybacks).
As for AI I don’t have an issue with Cook not sinking disgusting amounts into that. The obscene salaries being offered by Zuck etc to steal the good talent Apple did have suggests Apple might have had a good team in place. (Cook typically doesn’t get into bidding wars) They’ve lost more than a few of them.
Meanwhile those ‘leaders’ in AI have sunk many billions into an effort that reflects a mad desire to be leading an AI rush that I believe is more like a shotgun approach with ill defined targets. Who knows how long (if) it will be before any payback.
As I said, I don’t claim Cook is perfect, but show me someone (anyone) who would have been a better fit. Certainly no one at any of Apple’s competitors.
The odds on favorite, John Ternus is an engineer, but has been involved in all the decisions made recently, so not sure what you think he would do drastically different, at least in the short term.
It sure does feel like it. This should be a felony.
If we compare Apple’s market cap over both roughly 14 year eras, under Jobs (1997: $1.68 B → 2011: $377.51 B) it grew 225 times, under Cook (2012: $499.69 B → 2026: $4.036 T) “only” 8 times.
Impressive numbers under very different circumstances and I’m not suggesting that it makes much sense to compare the growth of an almost dead company with that of an already juggernaut. But we simply don’t know how Jobs would have performed beyond 2011.
All of that aside: Compare the presentations of Jobs and Cook. One of them is clearly passionate about tech. I’m not sure what the other one is passionate about. That’s part of the “magic”, I guess.
OT, but what the heck: Years ago, Steve Jobs gave his second public demonstration of the NeXT computer at a Berkeley Macintosh User Group (BMUG) meeting. In a 200ish-seat lecture hall on the UC Berkeley campus. My friend Barry and I sat in the front row and chatted with Jobs a bit.
Jobs gives an AMAZING demo of the machine, its NeXTSTEP OS, and the Objective-C programming tools.
Afterwards, Barry says, “I’m going to be a NeXT developer.” But Barry, you’re months away from finishing your PhD in chemistry. “This is much better.”
It took a couple weeks for the Jobs RDS to wear off. But then, Barry still does some programming for work, and likes Xcode…
Nothing I said implied there were no snafus while Jobs was in charge. But what we have now is a lack of attention to the small details that made the UI a delight to work with. We have the large scale stuff like bugs in the API, and then the small stuff that really shouldn’t have got past QA. I’m looking at that drive icon at the moment: it does what it’s supposed to, but the tiny detail is the perspective; it’s just weird.
I think the word ‘SOME’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Yes, we’re all well aware that Cook doesn’t design the UI, but what he should be doing is saying whether or not it is fit for purpose. Can he do that for all the products? No, but he should be doing it for the products that are the store front for Apple technology.
This is what I mean by saying they should be looking at engineer for the next CEO; someone who would not have allowed the original release of Apple Maps.
Ten billion dollars spent for a project that went nowhere, and you reckon ‘that happens’? Here’s what didn’t happen: someone asking what unique selling proposition was Apple bringing to the EV market.
Yeah, well I’m not so keen on Apple using buybacks to boost their valuation, but as I said right at the beginning, no one is saying he’s done a bad job; what I am saying is that it might be time for someone with a bit more of an eye for the fine detail to take over.
Yes, that’s the other problem; they need someone who can articulate that machine learning is their thing; not this chatbot nonsense. I read somewhere that Prompt Engineering is the discipline of crafting your AI questions so ChatGPT gives you the correct answer you found in a web search twenty minutes earlier. But again, I think the fact they tripped over their feet while trying to catch up was more of a happy accident than a deliberate plan.
Nope, I think the next chap should be from Apple.
Well the difference would be that he’s in charge, and he could bring a different set of priorities to the job that I don’t think we’re seeing now.
