Steve Jobs Criticized Tim Cook as 'Not a Product Person,' Says Biographer Walter Isaacson

[CWallace]

Cook (has) steered Apple more into subscription territory at the expense of devices.

Devices have reached saturation. All the Tier One OEMs (Apple, Samsung, Google, etc.) have seen their device sales contract from historical highs. Subscriptions is where the money is and every company that can do them is doing them because that is where they can generate stable long-term revenue from their existing customer base because there are no new customers to draw from.

Brilliant? Not a chance. Those were iterative, and neither amounts to more than a rounding error on Apple's balance sheet.

Well if you mean by "iterative", the Apple Watch and Air Pods made an existing product category actually usable and desirable, well then every single product Apple has made starting with the Apple II has been "iterative" so Jobs and Ive were not "product guys" either and this entire thread is pointless and should be closed.

 

[IxRich]

Devices have reached saturation. All the Tier One OEMs (Apple, Samsung, Google, etc.) have seen their device sales contract from historical highs. Subscriptions is where the money is and every company that can do them is doing them because that is where they can generate stable long-term revenue from their existing customer base because there are no new customers to draw from.





Well if you mean by "iterative", the Apple Watch and Air Pods made an existing product category actually usable and desirable, well then every single product Apple has made starting with the Apple II has been "iterative" so Jobs and Ive were not "product guys" either and this entire thread is pointless and should be closed.

I don't think so. The subscription market is saturated. There are already ample free services out there. Just because you reach saturation point isn't an excuse to stop innovating. Cook lacks imagination. He spends far too much energy on cost cutting and making social justice announcements and far too little time seeking out talented people to come up with the next big thing.

The wait for a new Mac Pro is just one example of how Cook lacks imagination or drive to create new products. Eventually when it did come out, it's overpriced, ugly and marketed only at the extremely top end of market. Basically, I doubt they'll sell more of this new Mac Pro than they did of the trash can version. Don't even get me started on the display and the ridiculously priced stand. I doubt anything like this would've passed Jobs.

 

[mikethemartian]

Strange that Cook with his degrees an engineering and science background is not a "product person" but Jobs with no degrees and no science background was

He has a degree in industrial engineering which would be part of the college of engineering at most universities but is also on the border between engineering and business. Most business schools have a similar degree for operations management.

 

[Bawstun]

Another day, another thread/news story where it's obvious Tim Cook needs to be fired. Been saying it for over 2 years now. I wish someone had the stones over at Apple to suggest it to the shareholders - the vision is completely lost. Even Steve knew before he died. Perhaps there was no one better at the time and that is why he chose Cook. We will never know. What we DO know, is that he is tanking Apple's marketshare and user upgrade numbers, and that that spells disaster. Time to act.

 

[Swift]

Well, has there ever been as good a product person as Steve Jobs? Not likely. And Steve wanted him to succeed him. As far as products, well, the only people who know the ins and outs of that are at Apple, and they don't talk.

 

[BGPL]

Tim Cook is a lobbyist that conducts Apple's business. He's good at pleasing Apple's target demographic(s), but I didn't need to hear the quote to know Cook isn't a product person. Jony Ive became 10x more known/popular after Jobs died because he became the closest thing to a product person they ever had.

 

[GtrDude]

And Cook is also 100% driven by greed.
Steve Jobs was driven by profit. He wanted Apple to be profitable. Cook is greed all over.
Cook is also completely removed from reality and can not for the life of him relate at any of us pawns who have actually made him as wealthy as he is. Nor does he have anything in common with us either.

 

[citysnaps]

Cook puts too much stock in "social justice" rather than innovation.

Not at all. You may not be aware that it's not a "rather than."

While Cook being an advocate for equal rights might anger and cause you grief, I and many others support that position.

Just one more reason I'm still in the Apple camp. Of course the superb Apple products I rely on and delight every time I use them factor in as well.

 

[Mescagnus]

Steve stated the obvious, as we now know. Maybe it should not have been "redacted" from the book?

Better late than never, though: it's good to have more perspective on this, from Steve's mouth.

 

[Greymacuser]

Not a product, trustworthy, honest, or non-creepy person.

 

[Imdougurnot]

When did Steve appear on Who’s Line is it Anyway?

 

[Baymowe335]

Tim Cook ruined Apple. Apple is a product company, it need more revolutionary product to survive. I agree that Tim Cook make Apple the most profitable company, but that doesn’t last long if there aren’t more revolutionary product being launched.

Survive? You guys are delusional...Apple is so much stronger as a company today than at any point in the Jobs era.

Absolutely crushing it. You may not like the products, but the increase in sales since Jobs died indicates you’re wrong....very wrong.

 

[CWallace]

Cook lacks imagination. He spends far too much energy on cost cutting...

He wasn't hired for his imagination, be it at IBM, Compaq or Apple. He was hired for his ability to execute (which includes cutting costs).

If Steve wanted someone with imagination to replace him, he would have named Jonny Ive or Tony Fadell as CEO.

 

[Bryan Bowler]

Tim Cook is an incredible Operations Officer. His skills as visionary product developer are not strong.

 

[modul8tr]

Cook puts too much stock in "social justice" rather than innovation. He's steered Apple more into subscription territory at the expense of devices.
When I see Cook, I think of how much of an embarrassment he is. He makes the rest of us gay men look bad, it makes us look as if we're incapable of being a good CEO.

This is one of the stupidest things I’ve ever read in my life. You can NOT be serious.

 

[thettareddast]

Walter Isaacson is an opportunist who wants to milk his horribly-written biography even more.

and why is a biographer admitting that he's coloring his book, whether by "softening" or dramatizing factual accounts?

 

[Pootie Tang]

And Cook is also 100% driven by greed.
Steve Jobs was driven by profit. He wanted Apple to be profitable. Cook is greed all over.
Cook is also completely removed from reality and can not for the life of him relate at any of us pawns who have actually made him as wealthy as he is. Nor does he have anything in common with us either.

For 2018 Apple achieved net sales of $265.6 billion and operating income of $70.9 billion, each representing a year-over-year increase of 16 percent, and exceeding the 2018 maximum annual cash incentive program goals for both of those performance measures.”

The Compensation Committee determined that no downward adjustments to the payouts would be made based on Apple's 2018 performance and the individual contributions of Apple’s executive officers and they approved the maximum total payout at 400 percent of annual base salary.

It was the second year in a row that Tim Cook got a major pay raise from Apple’s Board of Directors. In 2018 he made $15.7 million. In 2017 he received $12.8 million while in 2016 he made $8.7 million. Only $3 million of that is base salary. Everything else is based on incentives and bonuses for selling Apple’s products and services. If nobody buys Apple products, Tim Cook does not get any bonuses.

 

[thettareddast]

Not really. You can be a chef that knows how to cooks everything right (meat at the right temperature, perfectly steamed veggies, etc.) but doesn't know how to create a bold new dish by incorporating different flavors. So they are good at following recipes and perfecting the timing but can't create a new dish.

actually, what you're describing is a cook.

 

[Baymowe335]

Federighi actually has an entertaining presence on stage, Cook seems robotic and forced and Jobs loved the opportunity to express his vision.

I hope you are right in your prediction.

Cook has done the job of CEO and created $700B in value. Cook is a proven commodity and he’s likely the best supply chain mind in the world. He’s also an excellent CEO because the numbers prove that.

Federighi reports to Cook, so Cook enabling Craig to succeed in his current role and Craig doing well is a testament to both of them.

Just because Craig is good at his current job and has some charisma, doesn’t make him a good CEO.

 

[dankron]

Unfortunately no one can replace Jobs. No one will ever have the same dedication to the company as Jobs did... The sad side if it, is not that Tim is not a product guy, he is in fact the opposite of a product guy, he was the CFO before, and what is the job of the CFO? Cutting costs and increasing revenue. And that's why you are seeing apple products turning to ****.

- Macbook "Pro" with no Ports (if apple saved $1 on each macbook pro they sell by removing the SD card reader, and the rest of the ports, imagine how much money they are saving. not to mention all the dongle sales)
- iPhone with no headphone jack, but keep it on the Macbook pro, so people need to buy another set of headphones to use with their macs.
- The monitor stand that cost $1000
- "58" different iPhones that look like they are stuck in the past, when you compare them to the competition.

Since Tim, apple completely lost the "innovative company" status, yes in the stock market it's doing good, because the CFO it's doing its job, but it's as boring as bat sht in terms of products...

 

[pika2000]

And Jobs was not a management/CEO person. Not news. Thats why Jobs had Cook to be the one doing the CEO jobs. And now Cook has someone else in charge of product and engineering stuff.

In a huge company like Apple, you cannot have a CEO that has to do everything. That's not management.

 

[McScooby]

If TC was a product guy, then maybe we wouldn’t have so much glued & soldered stuff that we have today. I can still remember the ads when the iBook first came out, about what differentiated iBooks to their counterpart pc laptops, aside from the price, it was the dedicated graphics card, those days are long gone!

 

[Seanm87]

Name ONE innovative thing Apple has done since Tim Cook took the reigns. Just one, anything...

Apple Watch, AirPods, faceID, Touch ID, Apple Pay, 3D Touch, ECG monitor on the watch, the A series chips, True Tone, having 2 cameras on the iPhone, bezeless design, haptic vibration to name a few.

All these things were/are innovative when they released. Some of the have even been copied by everyone else like the bezeless design and pay features.

 

[Kabeyun]

And so what? Steve Jobs wasn’t an operations person. Every leader needs complementary talent for the company to succeed. This is just tittilating clickbait, and I can see that, predictably, plenty here are enjoying it.

 

[smoking monkey]

What a classless thing to say. Even if Jobs said it, bringing it up 8 years later and after Jobs has passed is just really bad form.