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Steve Jobs Criticized Tim Cook as 'Not a Product Person,' Says Biographer Walter Isaacson
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Tim is CEO, he doesn't need to be a product person...but somebody at Apple does.
In most companies that would probably be ok. But for Apple whose whole success has been built upon great product design then that is not good. Great product design is what pulled Apple from the brink of bankruptcy. Market share and everything else was secondary to the product itself under Steve Jobs. Those came as consequences of building the best product possible.
The problem is you cannot ever replace the passion of a company founder. Steve Jobs truly loved Apple to everyone else its just a place of employment. An exception may be Jony Ive but since the head of the company doesn't care about products he has nobody to listen to his ideas and see the long term vision of the product rather than focus on short term profits, which is all Tim Cook cares about. Hashing out ridiculously priced products based off years old designs.
Give Apple maybe 5 years and I think they'll be in trouble. Not to the point of bankruptcy like previously, but I do see their sales and profits dropping significantly.
I used to love Apple but I don't really recognise the company today from what it was 10 years ago. When I think of Apple now I don't get the same emotion as I used to.
I'm not an historian myself, but I've read Isaacson's Ben Franklin biography, which was well assembled and he seems well suited to writing about times long past. I can't say I've been thrilled with his handling of the Jobs biography though. It feels more like journalism than biography, and he can't seem to step out of the spotlight and just let the work stand for itself.
I'm also not an author, but it seems to me that if you made the call to "soften" something when you wrote it then you probably didn't have confidence in it. If you had confidence, you'd write what was true-- otherwise it kind of calls into question everything in the book. How much of the other material was shaped to reflect the message Isaacson wanted to present at the time?
Not a mind blowing revelation here. Cook runs the company and leaves the product details to others. Most companies work that way. Micro-managing is generally frowned on, it's just that Jobs managed to be "wrong" in almost every aspect of his approach but somehow score more winners than losers in the overall results. I'm sure Jobs looked at his available successors and decided putting Tim in charge of product was better than putting Ive in charge of finance.
To me this says more about Isaacson than it does about Cook, frankly.
I'm also not an author, but it seems to me that if you made the call to "soften" something when you wrote it then you probably didn't have confidence in it. If you had confidence, you'd write what was true-- otherwise it kind of calls into question everything in the book. How much of the other material was shaped to reflect the message Isaacson wanted to present at the time?
Not a mind blowing revelation here. Cook runs the company and leaves the product details to others. Most companies work that way. Micro-managing is generally frowned on, it's just that Jobs managed to be "wrong" in almost every aspect of his approach but somehow score more winners than losers in the overall results. I'm sure Jobs looked at his available successors and decided putting Tim in charge of product was better than putting Ive in charge of finance.
To me this says more about Isaacson than it does about Cook, frankly.
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Tim was responsible for revolutionising Apples supply chain and logistics when he joined which helped Apple ship its products and build them more efficiently. However without the products designed by Steve and Jony then it wouldn't have mattered.
The Steve Jobs era of Apple ended in 2014-15 I would say. He was involved in planning and products up to 5 years in advance when he died. Tim simply executed his plans until that point. Then what did he do when those plans finished and he was truly in charge? Pushed the prices up for every single product in Apples line up by ridiculous amounts, expanded the product line unnecessarily which led to gimping products on purpose so certain products would not eat into sales of another. Those gimped products were not worthy of the price hikes he put forward. Started paying dividends to shareholders so all they cared about from that point was making money instead of focussing on great new products.
This. That book was one of the most horribly-written books I've ever read. And I only finished it out of respect for Steve Jobs, who had just died, which I'm sure is exactly what the author wanted. Way to release it right when you know you'll make the most money... and then come out of hiding every couple years to drop some quotes and get more sales.
Edit: I don't mean that I think the author wanted Steve Jobs to die, just that he knew he would get tons more sales out of that death and was happy about it (the extra sales part, not the death part).
I’m sorry, but could someone please elucidate me on what exactly has made Tim Cook such a good (Or even great) CEO?
Also, these ridiculous comments about CEOs not needing to be product people is utterly ridiculous.
Google was lost until the founders returned to the company to lead innovation. They kept the former CEO in place as a defacto COO.
Amazon clearly has someone with vision at the top with Besos.
Name ONE innovative thing Apple has done since Tim Cook took the reigns. Just one, anything... notice nothing new, nothing innovative has come into the fold. The new MacPro is basically the 12 year old MacPro (2.0). The MacBook Pro “touchbar”?????
iPhone “face-id”????
Aside from having obscenely high margins on their products, what has Apple done that is leading in the industry?
I honestly believe too many of you commenters are Tim Cook apologists, perhaps out of a devotion to Apple as a whole. I love Apple’s products (price hikes aside) but it is not the same company it once was and it is like a once very sharp blade that has a new chef who doesn’t know how to take care of his cutlery. This has lead to a dulling of that blade and soon it will need to be replaced or a new chef will need to come in to take ownership.
Also, these ridiculous comments about CEOs not needing to be product people is utterly ridiculous.
Google was lost until the founders returned to the company to lead innovation. They kept the former CEO in place as a defacto COO.
Amazon clearly has someone with vision at the top with Besos.
Name ONE innovative thing Apple has done since Tim Cook took the reigns. Just one, anything... notice nothing new, nothing innovative has come into the fold. The new MacPro is basically the 12 year old MacPro (2.0). The MacBook Pro “touchbar”?????
iPhone “face-id”????
Aside from having obscenely high margins on their products, what has Apple done that is leading in the industry?
I honestly believe too many of you commenters are Tim Cook apologists, perhaps out of a devotion to Apple as a whole. I love Apple’s products (price hikes aside) but it is not the same company it once was and it is like a once very sharp blade that has a new chef who doesn’t know how to take care of his cutlery. This has lead to a dulling of that blade and soon it will need to be replaced or a new chef will need to come in to take ownership.
true dat, but the question still is can Cook fill the creativity/passion void from Job-Ives.
Some say it's already filled, lots of tech enthusiasts say not.
Setting prices and increasing dividends it's just part of the job of CEO (IMO, Apple stuff has always been expensive). The CEO answers to the BoD and shareholders. If you don't make them happy, they will remove you and your team. They are owners of the company.
When Jobs was around, it was near impossible to remove him, because of his giant stature and he delivered value to shareholders since his return. With Cook, if he doesn't deliver value to shareholders, he can/will be removed.
John Lennon did say the Beatles could and did make **** songs that would sell regardless.
Jobs was more worried about someone having their own ideas or no ideas like Amelio or Sculley and messing everything up.I believe Jobs saw Cook as a mini-Bill Gates, having a businessman's vision more than a product person's, and as he got older he accepted that competent management just works all the time while genius product vision is rare and risky. (As much as I admire Jobs, Gates always had a bigger vision for himself, his company, and the industry.)
To hear some people talk and that includes plenty on the forums of this site, Apple doesn't need more revolutionary product -- although who's not interested in seeing what the next "one more thing" will be?-- it mostly needs to pay more attention to QA, bug fixes, user feedback on existing product (hardware and software). All this is a natural outgrowth of having become a major vendor of attractive products on a volume basis they may have only dreamed of back in the 80s.
And not everyone fancies himself an annual updater of computing gear. "Some people"
like me buy groceries every month but we may spring for a new-to-us car or an Apple-refurb computer only when the other one flat out dies.... even if we are part of the Apple aficionado crowd that did stand in line for a first gen iPhone, and then maybe a 4S, and maybe an SE... get it? This is why companies have marketing departments. To gather in new customers and keep the repeat ones coming back when they can afford it.
Oh but then it really is a fact that there are also the "but is it revolutionary?" junkies... who imo are busy making the computing gear industry into the next fricken "fast fashion" catastrophe that has befallen the garment industry and the planet. That's been the case ever since the owners of capital in a consumerist world they created to enrich them realized that you have to try to make people buy more and more often if they have become part of the bottom 80% of the planet that can't buy quality goods because they don't make quality paychecks. But responsible managers of capital try to manage business in a sustainable way.
Tim Cook hasn't ruined Apple. Tim Cook has pushed to make Apple stellar in safeguarding user privacy, get greener -- use more renewables, provide paths to recycling-- while offering innovative gear for users along with services to complement and enhance them, at a range of prices and now including pricing and products suitable to a burgeoning Chinese middle class. And let's not forget all that included software including impressive OS and iOS releases with ipad OS upcoming. Is Apple stuff pricey? Oh, maybe we forgot about the OS and the included apps and their interface with the company's services and stores.
Are those things perfect? Hell no. Could Apple do better? Sure. They're working on it, since they want to stay in business. CEOs get paid to look down the road five years out, day after day, and hazard a best guesstimate today on what it should be doing at that essentially unforeseeable point. Cook made CEO in 2011. So far it seems to me his assessors (the markets, the customers) seem to think on balance he's got pretty good eyesight. We wanted portability from our gear and still score that high as a priority Apple gives us that. We wanted privacy and Tim Cook said hell yeah and we got that too. Some of us have started wanting more focus on environmental and social/economic justice issues and Apple's been relentless in trying to get there without damaging its own bottom line.
None of this stuff is simple. All of it matters. Apple's board of directors is a diverse lot with diverse connections and they seem to think he's getting the job done. It's not that we in the peanut gallery don't count. We do. But most of the gallery must still be giving Cook a thumbs-up or he'd have been gone already because the board of directors (and Wall Street) hears us loud and clear too. Not least through our purchases and as repeat customers.
Dear Tim: Thanks! (and now about those bug fixes and that attention to user feedback...)
Since then Apple has produced the Apple Watch and AirPods. Both HUGELY successful products. How many "great new products" do you want in a span of 4 years?
Isaacson probably doesn’t have the credentials of the guy who wrote “Tim Cook: The Genius Who Took Apple to the Next Level”.
As if we did not know this the only question is why Steve chose him to take his place Tim Apple clearly is not in for the innovation.
Of course Cook isn't a product person... He's a supply chain guy and apparently an absolute genius at it. Jobs scouted and hired him because of how good he is at his job, or at least what he did when Jobs was still running Apple.
More generally what Cook is good at is making things run smoothly with absolute minimum waste and overhead. What Jobs did was almost an antithesis of this with the way he intentionally made the different product groups to compete for top billing inside of the company. That may not always lead to the smoothest running as it's bound to generate friction within the company, but the methods that create the best end results aren't always the nicest or the most civilized.
A few years ago I spoke to someone who actually worked under Jobs at NeXt, then Apple and finally under Cook after Jobs was forced to step down and then died. According to him Jobs and Cook have vastly different management styles. When Jobs would do little to discourage things that could and would cause friction within the company and would personally resolve any conflicts, Cook just doesn't want to see any of this. His line is for the different product groups to just get along and work out any disputes they may have peacefully among themselves and just not bother him with any of it.
The guy abbreviated the difference between Cook and Jobs as follows: Jobs was a leader, Cook is a manager.
More generally what Cook is good at is making things run smoothly with absolute minimum waste and overhead. What Jobs did was almost an antithesis of this with the way he intentionally made the different product groups to compete for top billing inside of the company. That may not always lead to the smoothest running as it's bound to generate friction within the company, but the methods that create the best end results aren't always the nicest or the most civilized.
A few years ago I spoke to someone who actually worked under Jobs at NeXt, then Apple and finally under Cook after Jobs was forced to step down and then died. According to him Jobs and Cook have vastly different management styles. When Jobs would do little to discourage things that could and would cause friction within the company and would personally resolve any conflicts, Cook just doesn't want to see any of this. His line is for the different product groups to just get along and work out any disputes they may have peacefully among themselves and just not bother him with any of it.
The guy abbreviated the difference between Cook and Jobs as follows: Jobs was a leader, Cook is a manager.
Agree on John Browett. Strongly disagree on Ahrendts. On the first, Cook recognized immediately that Browett was a mistake and owned up to it, taking personal responsibility and correcting the problem.
History will show Angela Ahrendts to have been a fantastic hire. She successfully reoriented Apple retail at a time when every other retail chain was contracting their brick and mortar stores. It’s no coincidence that Apple has continued to grow its worldwide stores, bucking the trend when most chains have been closing stores as customers have been moving to online shopping. I challenge you to find an empty Apple Store.
Positioning Apple Stores as places to learn, as physical showrooms for their products while pushing for online sales, even to customers already at the store, and as locations for Apple’s legendary after market service, enabled Apple physical retail to grow and become places to build up Apple culture in the cities they’re in.
Angela probably left because it became clear that Jeff Williams was next up to take the reigns from Tim Cook and as an ambitious leader type, a former CEO of a major company, she didn’t see the point in waiting around. I’m sure she’s going to pop back up as CEO of another major company after she’s gotten her desired time off.
It's enough already with this rumor and hearsay. Jobs has no way of confirming any of this was said and if it was Isaacson should keep him trap shut. Additionally Jobs chose Cook and if he believed him to be incompetent he would said so loudly.
Cook is about as good as it is going to get unless Craig Fedeighi, Phil Schiller or Eddie Cue. If someone thinks bringing in an outsider will change things they are crazy. It happened before and the company went down the tubes. There was only one Jobs and he is gone. There are a lot of wannabes, but Apple does not need them. Non-USB3.1 ports on the MacBooks are not coming back and neither is Jobs so it is time to move on. Apple has been delivering steady Mac updates of recent and that should make everyone happy.
As for innovation the last thing I want to see is a debacle like the foldable Samsung phone. Better to be slow and steady than fastest to market.
Cook is about as good as it is going to get unless Craig Fedeighi, Phil Schiller or Eddie Cue. If someone thinks bringing in an outsider will change things they are crazy. It happened before and the company went down the tubes. There was only one Jobs and he is gone. There are a lot of wannabes, but Apple does not need them. Non-USB3.1 ports on the MacBooks are not coming back and neither is Jobs so it is time to move on. Apple has been delivering steady Mac updates of recent and that should make everyone happy.
As for innovation the last thing I want to see is a debacle like the foldable Samsung phone. Better to be slow and steady than fastest to market.