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I think Tim changed Apple from a customer company to an investor company. As a customer I don't like the "lock me in / CSAM" company anymore...
 
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In the latest episode of the Apollo Effect podcast series, Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty discussed the potential for a so-called "Apple Car" to disrupt the auto industry through vertical integration of hardware, software, and services. Huberty also praised Apple CEO Tim Cook, noting that the late Steve Jobs would have been proud.

tim-cook-apple-car.jpeg

A fan-made image of Tim Cook announcing an Apple Car via YouTube/qfulm

Apple Car's Vertical Integration

While some reports over the years have indicated that Apple's automotive ambitions might be limited to software and services, Huberty said Apple is most successful when there is vertical integration, as evidenced by the iPhone. Huberty said Apple would want a hand in the design of the vehicle, in how the software communicates with the hardware, and in choosing the right components and technologies to use.

"When you think about what will differentiate the car of the future, it's certainly being creative around new supply chains," said Huberty. "It's about vertical integration of different components, hardware design, software, and ultimately, the services that can be delivered in that automobile. It's about consumer trust and credibility, and certainly brand when it comes to a consumer product. And all of those categories are ones where Apple is a leader."

Huberty said once Apple manages to "get the car right," the company can then introduce services on top. While she did not provide any examples, one could imagine an "Apple Car" having everything from full Apple Music integration like in the Porsche Taycan to built-in displays for rear passengers to watch Apple TV+ shows or play Apple Arcade games.

In a December 2020 research note, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said an "Apple Car" is unlikely to hit the market until 2025–2027 at the earliest.

Tim Cook's Legacy

Last week marked the 10th anniversary of Cook being named Apple's CEO after Steve Jobs stepped down from the post due to declining health. Huberty reflected on Cook's era in the podcast interview, noting that Jobs would be proud.

"I really think that Tim Cook has done a pretty phenomenal job allowing for Steve's legacy to carry on, protecting that legacy while building his own very separate legacy," said Huberty. "Steve was very much about design and innovation and getting in the weeds in those two areas. Tim has allowed the culture of the company to continue on that front, but at the same time, he's layered in some of the softer aspects that are harder to measure," she added, noting that Cook has successfully scaled operations while placing a greater focus on areas like employee benefits, charitable giving, and environmental responsibility.

"I think if Steve was looking down, he would be very proud of the way that Tim has built his own legacy while protecting the culture and the differentiation around design and innovation that Steve started," she concluded.

Article Link: Analyst Discusses Apple Car's Key to Success, Says Steve Jobs Would Be Proud of Tim Cook's Legacy
I see Cook as taking two of Jobs passions for better or for worse and amping them up turn was was a good computer to being a status symbol that with huge profit margins for Apple. Difference between Jobs and Cook is Jobs knew not to over do either one.

As for an Apple car that would be a big mistake for Apple. Designing and manufacturing a car is a huge expense, high liability especially in there early days of self driving, and something the Apple has zero experience doing. Apple should focus on only the software side of car making that is going to be a big enough task for them. Then decide to either partner with one car maker for the physical car or view Apple Car software as a product to sell to multiple car manufactures. Giving Apple a bigger market and less risk of partnering with one company and the car just sell well dragging Apple down with the car. Remember when you ask Elon Musk what Tesla is he say they are a software company. That is something Tim Cook and Apple need to think about.
 
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He has not done a great job - he has constantly managed the bottom line at the expense of quality product releases.
What do you mean by "quality" -- design philosophy (e.g., thinness at the expense of all else, or increasing lack of upgradeability), failure rate (e.g., the butterfly keyboard, or software bugs), or product focus (e.g., that period of time when it seemed that Macs were being relegated to the back burner)? And is it objectively worse under Cook than it was under Jobs? I remember when the general advice used to be to avoid the first release of a new hardware product because it would have bugs that needed to be ironed out. That doesn't seem to be the case as much anymore. And Jobs gave us the hockey-puck mouse and Apple Cube, which were beautiful but impractical. I'm sure there were other less-than-shining moments under Jobs.

As for Cook, in 2018, I was considering switching to a Windows PC due to lack up updates to the Mac product line, but then they dropped prices in 2019 and started updating again. I snagged a refurbished 2019 27" iMac at what I considered a great price, and all thoughts of abandoning Macs ended. I've purchased several Macs, iPhones, and iPads for my wife and myself during the Cook era, and not one has had a problem. The only problems I ever had with Apple products were with the NVIDIA GPU in my 2008 MacBook Pro and the hard drive in my 2000 Power Mac G4. Software is another matter: iOS is still hobbled compared to the hardware it runs on, and I still find Music (formerly iTunes) difficult to navigate, to cite two examples.

Then there's the increased complexity that comes with increased power, functionality, and security measures. When the hard drive in my G4 failed in 2004, I bought a new drive, installed it, and installed OS X, my software apps, and my data from DVDs and backup disks. I was up and running in two days. When my 2015 MBP failed to update to Yosemite, forcing me to reformat the SSD and reinstall everything from scratch, it took me a month to track down software serial numbers, backup codes, apps that had to be downloaded and installed from online, and so on. (I'm much better organized now, keeping all that information in 1Password on multiple devices.) But that complexity is part of tech in general and probably would have occurred Jobs, as well.
 
It's pretty presumptuous for an analyst to claim what Steve Jobs would be proud of (or not proud of).
Absolutely. It's as presumptuous as the writer to assume the way Steve would have felt as it is for MR posters to claim what Steve would or would not have done or approved or rolled over in his grave, etc.
 
Cook's certainly done well at Apple, but it isn't in any way still Steve Jobs' company. It's different because Cook had a different way of looking at the business, and did things quite differently from Jobs. So much of the feel - the nostalgia, the "revolution" that Apple firsties felt in the early years is long gone. It's a much more conventional lasers-and-spaceships corporation now. Still a lot of good things, but the magic left a long time ago, it seems.
 
Cook's certainly done well at Apple, but it isn't in any way still Steve Jobs' company. It's different because Cook had a different way of looking at the business, and did things quite differently from Jobs. So much of the feel - the nostalgia, the "revolution" that Apple firsties felt in the early years is long gone. It's a much more conventional lasers-and-spaceships corporation now. Still a lot of good things, but the magic left a long time ago, it seems.
It's not an underdog any more. Everyone loves an underdog. Once Apple achieved the success people claimed to want for it, it became another corporation. Once it achieved the success no one dreamed of at the time, it became suspect.

Human nature, I guess. I don't see a whole lot different-- it's bigger, it does more stuff, it seems to get about as much wrong as ever but doesn't have as much charisma on the Keynote stage to make us all aw shucks the problems away.
 
The world needs to wean off oversized, single occupant (99% of the time) vehicles, regardless of how they’re powered, driven or shared.

Build better communities, walkable/rideable neighbourhoods, medium density, mixed use zoning, quality public transit. If we keep going down the car-sprawl-motorway route, humanity is doomed. It’s unsustainable, and has been since for decades. We just keep kicking the can down the road…
 
"Hey Siri, turn left at Maple Street".

"Here is the web site for maple syrup"

From many of the current reports on Apple software......well, you know.......
 
can't wait for the Apple Car.. hope it has the following features built-in

(1) make speeding tickets a thing of the past by not allowing the car to exceed the posted speed limit by more than 5mph(or whatever Apple engineers deem safe)

(2) car will not start moving if it detects babies or toddlers safely restrained in their safety seats

(3) self-destruct function if the car detects unsecured firearms(such as those used by carjackers or bank robbers)

(4) automatically disable the car and lock all doors when authorized law enforcement issues the command(car chase, for example)

(5) if the car is illegally parked, automatically sends alert to nearest parking enforcement agency for automatic ticket issuance(and then automatically charged to the registered owner's Apple Card)

(6) automatically sound the alarm and notify registered owner when passenger(any age) locked in the car when ambient temperature is above 80 degrees, also roll down all windows and start air conditioning

(7) anyone screaming "help" inside moving Apple Car will trigger silent alarm to nearest law enforcement

(8) alcohol or drug sensor that sample the cabin air... if a threshold is exceeded, car will come to a stop when it's safe to do so and will not move again.

(9) rear collision sensor will disable car behind you that's about to collide(only works if it's another Apple Car)

(10)
 
Oh SURE, Tim has done a bang-up job: trash can Mac Pro sucked, spying for the government sucked, a laptop with a stupid TouchBar sucked, substandard solder in MacBook Pros leading to graphics card failures sucked, butterfly keyboards sucked, forcing people to buy expensive dongles sucked, removing cables from products sucked, charging a 30% cut for the App Store long after it was necessary to break-even sucked, not bribing Congress to prevent antitrust legislation and bad PR sucked, underpowered and undercooled and overpriced laptops sucked, creating a $5B campus with an open floorplan that no one wants sucked, trying to force employees back to work while a pandemic rages on sucked, and draconian HR policies for employees sucked. Timmy has been great for shareholders, not so much for customers or employees.
 
Not to mention Jobs would have survived had he followed the advice of the Doctors, but he thought the holistic approach was better.

Oh come on. The whole point of having Tim temporarily run the company, TWICE, while Steve took leave was to make sure he could do it on his own. Those were trial runs.
 
lol the F he would. The butterfly keyboard debacle alone would have had Steve rolling in his grave. People forget the man was a perfectionist. Look at the Gen 2 iPod with capacitive touch controls. It was a good idea but it just didn't work in real world use so Steve tossed it immediately and released the much loved Gen 3 with Clickwheel, a design that became the hallmark for every iPod released afterward other than the Touch or Shuffle. Steve lived the mantra "Do it right or do something else," something that Human Dialtone Cook has struggled with since Day One.
And no, the "that was Ive's fault" argument doesn't work either as Steve was able to keep Ive under control, making sure all his grand ideas worked in the real world and didn't just look pretty, something Cook was never able to do because he never understood Ive and has zero artistic imagination himself.
As for the capital gains Apple has made under Cook, Steve never cared about such things. He was more interested in making the best products around. He was fine being the underdog in overall sales so long as everyone agreed what he made was the best on the market.
Sorry but this analyst clearly didn't understand Steve Jobs at all and is talking squarely out of his rear with this nonsense.
One of the best replies on MR ever! Nailed it.
 
Huberty reflected on Cook's era in the podcast interview, noting that Jobs would be proud.
Who the heck says stuff like that? It's fine to say that about a child that graduated or achieved something with a deceased parental figure.

Sounds plain creepy to say one dead CEO would be proud of another CEO.
 
None of us will ever know what Jobs would have thought about Cook's handling of the company, but we certainly all have our opinions on it. And mine is that, if Steve could somehow come back to life, he'd relieve Cook of his duties in about two seconds flat, then possibly demote or fire him. It wouldn't be personal. It would be strictly based on the fact that all Cook does is tread water and keep the boat afloat. That, and this whole privacy debacle. No way Jobs doesn't behead someone for that mess.
 
I love this Messianic idea that jobs, a man sick with pancreatic cancer, was running Apple until his very last breath, then and only then Cook, the pretender, took over the reigns!!
I suspect Cook was doing most of the heavy lifting for years before Jobs passed away.
Cook is Apple.

If Cook had been running Apple, secretly, there would never have been an iPad or iPhone because Cook, unlike Jobs, can't see two inches past his own nose. One look at the list of things Apple brought to market while Jobs was in command should be enough to dispel any belief that Cook had his hand on the wheel prior to Jobs getting sick.
 
If Cook had been running Apple, secretly, there would never have been an iPad or iPhone because Cook, unlike Jobs, can't see two inches past his own nose. One look at the list of things Apple brought to market while Jobs was in command should be enough to dispel any belief that Cook had his hand on the wheel prior to Jobs getting sick.
The above is a strawman. Cook brought a bunch of new products to market that are innovative and are big with consumers. For example, Cook turned wearables into fortune 500 revenue.
 
The above is a strawman. Cook brought a bunch of new products to market that are innovative and are big with consumers. For example, Cook turned wearables into fortune 500 revenue.
The gulf between wearable computers and something as disruptive and revolutionary as the Mac, iPod, iPhone and iPad --is quite wide.
 
I made a tweet (back when I still had a twitter account) in 2011 or 2012 calling out that Apple would get in to making cars.

Now give me millions for being foreseeing and an "analyst"
 
,[…] charging a 30% cut for the App Store long after it was necessary to break-even sucked, not bribing Congress to prevent antitrust legislation and bad PR sucked, […]
The post is fun reading, but the above really? What’s the break in period? How do you know or not that Steve and Tim didn’t discuss how to move forward with the App Store? All those things may “suck” according to you, but by every objective metric, Tim has crushed it as ceo.
 
The recent technological additions to the automotive market: LiDAR, 5G, Autonomous driving, IOT, batteries, etc.
Are leading to a future of driver-less cars and Apple knows this well by expecting cars to re-shape into self-driving-habitacles..

Tim Cook understands that an Apple Car is a perfect place where to sell most Apple entertainment services.
Most likely, all these entertainment services will be included (or not) in the same bundle when you pay for your Apple Car subscription (You won't own the car)..
 
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