Tim Cook Challenges Graduates to 'Think Different' in Duke University Commencement Address

[pika2000]

Is this guy *ever* at the Apple campus? Judging from his tweets it’d seems he is everywhere else but. The kind of lavatorial quality control of products and services Apple is suffering under him is shameful and disgusting. He only seems to be interested in nothing more than cash in his fat pockets and biased, liberal, lopsided agenda-driven politics.

Just leave Apple and run for a Dem post already FFS, at least give Apple a bloody chance to get back to great products again!

Then don't buy Apple products. Buy stuff from companies that support Republicans.
I mean why is this so difficult? Being mad at what Tim Cook is doing with his own time is fruitless.

 

[augustrushrox]

Tim Cook is a visionary. What a speech. Challenge the status-quo. Be the last to accept the world cannot be improved. Build a better way forward.

Yeah, because it's not like every single graduation commencement speaker ever effectively says the exact same thing...

 

[DakotaGuy]

Tim Cook is a visionary. What a speech. Challenge the status-quo. Be the last to accept the world cannot be improved. Build a better way forward.

Tim Cook is not a visionary. Tim Cook is a conventional bean counting CEO who inherited a very popular and trendy brand from a true visionary. The brand is still popular enough they can paste the logo on most anything and it’ll sell like hot cakes, but poorly conceived and incomplete products like HomePod might not be saved by the brand name.

I actually wish Apple would encounter a financial set-back in the future so the board will realize it’s time to put a real visionary back in charge of this corporation. Apple isn’t doomed, but the wash-rinse-repeat formula won’t work forever.

 

[pika2000]

Tim should challenge apple to "Think Different" and design "more repairable" macs and iOS devices, keyboards that can be easily replaced, memory and hard-drives that can be upgraded and not be proprietary and restrictive.

Too late now, should've asked Jobs about those then. I mean Jobs didn't even want customers to be able to open the original Macintosh.

 

[Tozovac]

Ugh. Tim needs to stop dragging sacks of Steve around like it's who he is. Anyone can clearly see it isn't. Tim isn't a visionary, Tim is a businessman. And that's fine? Nothing wrong with a profitable company - but Steve dropped enough acid to be able to look at the intersection between humans and tech differently. That was a unique perspective.

That perspective pushed the iMac and the iPod and smaller one-hand-usable iPhones - and their relationship to human beings made them game changers. But nowadays? That thinking is gone. FaceID.. come on. Steve's biggest rant was you start with the consumer and solve problems. Face ID, massive iPhones, TouchBar - all the opposite. Even small things like moving the power button. It was placed on the top of the phone to feel like a padlock locking. On the side - it doesn't have that same human interaction effect.

If Apple released a human centred designed phone - an iPhone SE 2 with a one-hand usable screen, same form factor, kickass battery and cameras, shrink the massive iOS 11 menus in Music etc, give iOS some more depth (some "real" skeuomorphism), Touch ID under the screen, price aggressively and go for volume - that thing would ****ing explode.

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[krause734]

Think different watchbands is about all the different I've seen lately.

 

[mikzn]

Too late now, should've asked Jobs about those then. I mean Jobs didn't even want customers to be able to open the original Macintosh.

maybe so, but you could always replace the memory, hard drives and keyboards easily until 2013. Then things got a lot more restrictive and proprietary 2 years after he was gone.

 

[mi7chy]

Cook must've made a sizable monetary contribution to force graduates to endure that incoherent rambling.

They say a company is only as competent as its CEO. Explains why Siri is so incoherent and robotic.

 

[Greymacuser]

Practice what you preach Kooky.

 

[Plutonius]

Somewhat ironic.

 

[pmau]

Think "Glued Together until Failure".
Which is true for todays under-educated graduates.

 

[Markoth]

Tim Cook is a visionary. What a speech. Challenge the status-quo. Be the last to accept the world cannot be improved. Build a better way forward.

Creating a profound-sounding speech is not as difficult as it may appear. It merely requires an adequate command of the English language, which anyone can acquire with enough book reading. A quality speech is more difficult, however.

 

[44267547]

Macrumors Snide comments against Cook for no other reason to bash him over a commencement speech. Rather pathetic. Its a privilege hearing Cook speak for these students in my opinion.

 

[Future-Proof]

Creating a profound-sounding speech is not as difficult as it may appear. It merely requires an adequate command of the English language, which anyone can acquire with enough book reading. A quality speech is more difficult, however.

Let’s see you do it then. Public speaking is not easy

 

[Tozovac]

Macrumors Snide comments against Cook for no other reason to bash him over a commencement speech. Rather pathetic. Its a privilege hearing for these students in my opinion.

Fair comment, he did "something" to get there, more than I have done in life to be asked, so kudos to him from me.

But are any kudos deserved for the products currently in the lineup of "his" company? Not so much. I find them much less engaging, less magical, less intuitive, less interesting-looking, less easy to use daily, less "Apple-like" since 2013. Apple is about its products bottom line, not its leader, and by that measure alone, it doesn't matter much to me what he says, when and where and to whom. He deserves praise for making spectacular money, not making spectacular products. Five years ago there was only one truly innovative, engaging, customer-first-focused company like Apple, while today (and then) there are/were hundreds of leaders of successful money-making companies. You'd need a 1-sided coin 5 years ago to select Jobs for this type of speech while you could flip a 200-sided coin today. So he deserves to be there why? That's just me.

 

[clauzzz203]

Think different than him maybe? Unless they’re after profit at the expense of the consumer.

 

[itsmilo]

I hate these kind of motivation speeches. It’s always rich people saying it too

 

[nexusrule]

All the Cook critiques do realize that they are objectively nothing compared to him professionally speaking? Most importantly, that they maybe should find something more meaningful to do with their lives than criticize a very successful person that works in a domain they don’t know nothing about? The truth is, if anyone of you critics was given the job of running Apple would with all certainty resign after 3 days because it would realize he doesn’t know the first thing about running a company, let alone a tech company and at that scale.
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I hate these kind of motivation speeches. It’s always rich people saying it too

Yeah, maybe they should ask poor people and people that failed at building a career to give speeches that are all about being successful in life and work.

 

[mi7chy]

I hate these kind of motivation speeches.

There was nothing motivational about that speech but rather a mixed bag of abusing the platform to push marketing, tail coat riding off of Steve Jobs' legacy, playing off of people's emotion to win support, etc. Somewhat predictable by now.

 

[citysnaps]

Macrumors Snide comments against Cook for no other reason to bash him over a commencement speech. Rather pathetic. Its a privilege hearing for these students in my opinion.

An opportunity to take a swipe at Mr. Cook and/or Apple provides a little blip of happiness and a sense of power to those where happiness and power are lacking in their lives.

 

[Tozovac]

Yeah, maybe they should ask poor people and people that failed at building a career to give speeches that are all about being successful in life and work.

He's helped raise great money. How has he directly helped guide truly great products? Money-makers are a dime-a-dozen relative to true motivational from-within and not-self-centric innovators creating truly amazing well-rounded customer-focused products (those last two being in short supply at Apple after 2013). Him giving a speech is not noteworthy or particularly deserved to some of us. To those who fell different(ly), then that's cool too.

 

[Naraxus]

Tim, take your arrogant and pompous platitudes and shove it

 

[Markoth]

Let’s see you do it then. Public speaking is not easy

Public speaking, and writing a speech, are two different things. I said nothing about public speaking. I'm aware that it's quite difficult.

Also, I'm actually a highly proficient writer. I can send you a pile of examples if you're interested.

 

[MalcolmTucker]

Tim Cook any Duke VP later traded music that they both like, no rap music was discussed.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

I hate these kind of motivation speeches. It’s always rich people saying it too

What would be the better alternative to the very successful, accomplished speaker? The failure? The average Joe/Jill? The "barely getting by" struggler? The lost dreams person? The life pessimist? Whatever the answer, imagine the major points of their speech... then think: would you want your graduate (or you as graduate) to hear that message at this particular point in life?