That's what I figured, you and most would not know innovation even if was right in front of you. Nice!
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Apple CEO Tim Cook Calls New 'Haunted Empire' Book 'Nonsense'
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That's what I figured, you and most would not know innovation even if was right in front of you. Nice!
Exactly. The problem is, most of the people commenting on Apple are new to the party. They don't have any real history with the company. They were blown away by the iPhone and now they slavishly expect something new and amazing around every corner. If they don't get it, they accuse Apple of having lost its mojo, of not being innovative, etc. Never mind the fact that no one else has delivered anything particularly Earth-shattering lately either.
I've been an Apple customer since 1982. When Steve was booted out of Apple, I got rid of my Mac and got a NeXT computer and used NEXTSTEP until Steve returned to Apple and NEXTSTEP became MacOS X. I've followed Steve/Apple for 3/4 of my life to date and I can assure all of the newbies (as I'm sure you can too, IJ Reilly) that it wasn't a constant stream of endless innovation.
Technology ebbs and flows. We get periods of great innovation followed by YEARS of iteration. The cycles have been getting shorter, but they're still cycles. It took several DECADES to move from the command line to the GUI. It took another two decades to move from a mouse-driven GUI to multitouch. It's only been six short years since Apple completely revolutionized the industry (again) with multi-touch. But for some pundits, idiotic fanboys and Apple haters alike, six years is an ETERNITY. The fact that Apple hasn't delivered anything utterly Earth-shattering in those six years is a clear sign that they can't innovate, that they are out of ideas, and that we all might as well write them off.
Morons.
I'll take the "Apple is dead" and "Apple can't innovate" camp seriously when they can show me one product released by another company in the past few years that meets the (idiotic, unrealistic) standard to which they hold Apple. One. Just one. I'm waiting.
On the flip side - not that I believe negative attention is ALWAYS better than no, this book could actually "help" Apple and some of the recent negativity it and Tim has gotten. How?
What better way to show how strong you are than to have something "damning" out there that you can respond to and then showcase how the author couldn't be more wrong.
The book attempts to lower expectations on Tim and Apple. That's an opportunity for Apple to leverage that...
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"No it's not" could mean the pen was thrown and his chest. He doesn't clarify where it was thrown or that NONE was thrown though...
What better way to show how strong you are than to have something "damning" out there that you can respond to and then showcase how the author couldn't be more wrong.
The book attempts to lower expectations on Tim and Apple. That's an opportunity for Apple to leverage that...
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"No it's not" could mean the pen was thrown and his chest. He doesn't clarify where it was thrown or that NONE was thrown though...
How convenient. You can trash them for not innovating, but you have no ideas yourself. Nor can you point to any other company that has delivered the level of innovation you expect. You're one fine troll, I'll give you that!
Tim Cook: "Apple has over 85,000 employees that come to work each day to do their best work, to create the world's best products, to put their mark in the universe and leave it better than they found it. This has been the heart of Apple from day one..."
WRONG... Steve Jobs, Jony Ive, and several other heavyweights were the heart of Apple. Art by committee is invariably mediocre and Cook's reliance on quantity as proof of quality is demonstrative of the intellect of a follower, not a leader.
WRONG... Steve Jobs, Jony Ive, and several other heavyweights were the heart of Apple. Art by committee is invariably mediocre and Cook's reliance on quantity as proof of quality is demonstrative of the intellect of a follower, not a leader.
Where, in Tim's statement, does he say anything about "art by committee"? So, Steve did all the programming and Jony designed every piece of hardware by himself while the rest of Apple's employees brought them coffee every day? Tim is giving credit where credit is due. It takes a great team to build a successful company and to create successful products.
Yes, and to this I'd add, the legend that only Steve could run Apple was created by, and now is being perpetuated by, the tech media. Nobody would dare to suggest that any other large company is successful due entirely to the efforts of just one person and is bound to fail after they are gone. Only Apple is held to this impossible cult of personality standard. To those of us who've followed Apple for decades this is a sadly familiar refrain.
i saw a video that was talking about how apple is losing its unit share in both devices sold and also developer proceeds to Google. The example he gave was that Apple had about 100% of the proceeds 3 years ago, now google is up to maybe 35%
this is journalism everybody. From 0-35% is the fact we choose to look at to focus on Apple's demise. Nevermind that the entire iTunes industry has generated over half of the entirety of Google's search business
this is journalism everybody. From 0-35% is the fact we choose to look at to focus on Apple's demise. Nevermind that the entire iTunes industry has generated over half of the entirety of Google's search business
In the U.S., proving a libel or slander charge requires more than showing that false statements were made. The statements must be proved to be knowingly false, that they were intended to cause personal harm, and that they did cause personal harm. These very difficult tests provide very broad protections for freedoms of press and speech. Unfortunately they also protect trash journalists. The bar is set much lower in the UK.
In Apple's case it's more an issue because Steve Jobs was exceptionally charismatic, but questioning whether a company can keep being equally successful once the leader leaves it's standard practice: the same happened at Microsoft after Gates left the helm in the hands of Ballmer just to cite one of the most egregious examples.
I guess today in Microsoft's case we can agree that Ballmer has not been up to the task. In Apple's case it's still anyone's guess.
microsoft's case is really egregiously bad considering bill gates is still alive and around the board. Microsoft's demise would probably still ahve happened under bill gates
Actually your mileage may vary even in Europe. E.g. in Italy making true statements is not enough to be protected under "free speech" laws: you can "defame" someone even when stating the truth. To be protected your statement (on top of being true) needs to be of "public interest" and the statement is supposed not to be "excessive".
So in this case most likely no libel, but the statements being true is not enough to make it legal anywhere.
This seems like a false dichotomy. No other CEO is held to the charisma standard and no other company that I know about is seen to need a charismatic leader to succeed. Why is Apple different in this respect? It's fine to question or observe what happens with a leadership change at any company, but it is exceptional to create a separate (and essentially impossible) standard of comparison for any successor at Apple.
Ballmer's problem was not that he wasn't Bill Gates, but that he was very much part of the team that created the corporate culture at Microsoft along with Gates. That culture needed to change. Unsurprisingly, Ballmer wasn't the person to do that deed. The culture at Apple is very different, and I don't think anyone is arguing that it needs to change, but rather to be perpetuated. Why is Cook the wrong person to do that? Nobody seems to know. All I'm hearing is that Apple could be in trouble for no other articulated reason than Tim isn't Steve. To me, that reasoning is unique and bizarre.
I used to bleed in 6 colors...
While I have not read the book yet I am in a similar mindset as to what I have read about it's conclusions.
Now let me say in no way do I think Apple is dead! Not by a long shot if for no other reason then the products are still (in many ways) the best of what is out there. The problem as I see it is what Apple has done with them since we all lost Steve.
iOS has gone down hill in both it's ascetics and usability. When it comes to OS X is barely a shadow of its former self (Snow Leopard was the last great version) mostly because Apple now seems to want to tell us how we should be working with our machine rather then letting us choose. They removed UI features we came to love and use because they felt they were no longer needed. In fact if you don't know UNiX your SOL. Not the OS "for the rest of us"...
Now before any of you think I'm "new to the party" (as I have read people say here) I have been an unapologetic "Apple fan boy" since 1977 when my then best friend and I got the Apple | (not the ||) kit and built it. My second box (actually it was MY first) was the Apple ||e and I even still have it along with my Mac 128k (upgraded to a 512ke). AND to top it off I have been and Apple registered developer since '85. I can even say I have met Claris (the dog cow).
My point in saying all this is (and it pains me greatly) Apple is beginning to look a lot more like M$ then Apple.
I really miss Steve and his reality distortion field!
While I have not read the book yet I am in a similar mindset as to what I have read about it's conclusions.
Now let me say in no way do I think Apple is dead! Not by a long shot if for no other reason then the products are still (in many ways) the best of what is out there. The problem as I see it is what Apple has done with them since we all lost Steve.
iOS has gone down hill in both it's ascetics and usability. When it comes to OS X is barely a shadow of its former self (Snow Leopard was the last great version) mostly because Apple now seems to want to tell us how we should be working with our machine rather then letting us choose. They removed UI features we came to love and use because they felt they were no longer needed. In fact if you don't know UNiX your SOL. Not the OS "for the rest of us"...
Now before any of you think I'm "new to the party" (as I have read people say here) I have been an unapologetic "Apple fan boy" since 1977 when my then best friend and I got the Apple | (not the ||) kit and built it. My second box (actually it was MY first) was the Apple ||e and I even still have it along with my Mac 128k (upgraded to a 512ke). AND to top it off I have been and Apple registered developer since '85. I can even say I have met Claris (the dog cow).
My point in saying all this is (and it pains me greatly) Apple is beginning to look a lot more like M$ then Apple.
I really miss Steve and his reality distortion field!
Even if still alive, he's definately not at the helm of Microsoft and has not been for a long time. What would have happened with Gates still in first line is anyone's guess, the facts are that Gates left the helm to Ballmer and he was not able to lead Microsoft successfully enough.
Let's say someone was arrested for murder, but turned out to be completely innocent, with the true murder going to jail. If that person moved to your neighbourhood, and you fully knew that he is innocent, but then told all the neighbours that he was arrested for murder, I would take that as defamation. Even if it was literally the truth, as long as you tried to give a very wrong very negative impression.
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On another website, someone claimed "the Mac is dead!". The last published estimate was that Apple made 45% of all profits of computer (laptop and desktop) hardware sales. That was almost as much as everyone else added together. (This didn't count iPads and other tablets or game consoles, and it didn't count Microsoft's OS revenue, just computer hardware).
In the phone market, for some reason we are always told about "smart phone" market share and not "phone" market share, where Apple has been growing continuously. We also only hear about unit sales, and not revenue, so if one company sells ten phones for $50 and another sells one for $500, the numbers that we are told make the second company look very bad.
I never said that it's fair... basically the impossible standard comes from the incredible successes attained in relatively so few years. In my opinion it's not even true that Apple is different in this respect: other companies simply had success of lesser magnitude and/or less charismatic leaders. Add on top of that that the leader tends to be considered the only reason success was attained in the first place and here you have your impossible standard.
If you're into soccer and want a completely different example look at Guardiola leaving Barcelona or Ferguson leaving Manchester United: you'll find exactly the same "fear, uncertainty and doubt" about the future being discussed.
It's not that Cook is the wrong person, it's that you come from a (false?) sense of security (with Jobs we cannot go wrong) into uncertainty. Basically every change is both a risk and an opportunity, but if you come from great successes you'd rather keep going with the status quo, which you know is successful: change is seen more as a risk. If you come from disappointing results change is seen more as an opportunity.
The truth is that change is inevitable, and even if you are successful you have to change now to be ready tomorrow, but for many it's psychologically very difficult to accept.
Under the law I mentioned you don't even need to try to mislead with the true statement: if you tell you neighbours that the person who just moved in is a murderer and he was actually found guilty and served his jail time you could be found guilty of defamation, since it could be considered not in the public interest to divulge that (he served his time and is supposedly not a danger anymore).
the fact that bill gates remained on the board gives bill gates some level of responsibility over the direction at Microsoft. And most experts would agree that Bill Gates still has influence around Microsoft and Steve Ballmer. I'm not shifting blame away from Steve Ballmer since he is the CEO, but Bill Gates is still in the action and if there was some publicized spat between them or disagreement, than I'd be more inclinedt o think Bill Gates would've done a better job.
I'm not concerned with fairness, but I do care about logic. Is Sergey Brin charismatic? Mark Zuckerberg? Jeff Bezos? It seems illogical to suppose that Apple's success should be predicated on charismatic leadership, when this certainly is not the case nor is it the expectation anywhere else, even in the tech world.
I don't buy the "false security" argument. Time and again, Steve Jobs put all of Apple's chips on the table and bet that they had the right ideas. Most of them paid off, and not because they were sure things, but because the ideas were good, they were fully committed to them, and the execution of the strategy was first rate. If anything, Cook is not only a product of, but was a front-line participant in this process. He might not have the rock star persona that Steve so carefully cultivated, but it hasn't been demonstrated to me why that is important, when it is easily shown that other companies have succeeded quite nicely without it.
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Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer are two peas in a pod. They go way back, to the very beginning of Microsoft. There's no reason to believe that Gates would have done a single thing differently than Ballmer had he remained as CEO. It's fair to say that they both see Microsoft the same way. The only reason this point is worth debating is because Ballmer is as much the creator of the culture at Microsoft as Cook is at Apple. Both are/were invested in sustaining those cultures.
No - but it's not entirely untrue either. The simple fact is - Tim is not Steve. He will never be Steve. And yet he will ALWAYS be compared to Steve. That will work to his advantage AND disadvantage. It comes with the territory.
Perhaps a (typical) poor analogy. Original Casts on Broadway are indelible in their roles - even iconic because they were first and they live on through the cast recording. One of the hardest jobs in theater is to take over a lead role from an original cast member - especially if they've won a "Tony." In fact, many performers won't take that opportunity but instead opt to be the 2nd or 3rd replacement. Even further - some performers won't consider a revival of a show because the original lead in the original production (IE - Robert Preston in The Music Man) is SO iconic. The Music Man had that very issue with the revival. Many a celebrity and performer were called to take on the role of Harold Hill. No one wanted to step into the role given the association with Robert Preston.
Tim will almost assuredly always live somewhere between damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.
Well, when I was in PR I would have never advised a notable CEO to do that. It's just elevates a book to a level you want it to be near. There is zero reason to acknowledge the book. If ask'd the CEO simply states he's been busy making a better company and isn't familiar with the book.
Referring reporter to a statement looks too defensive.