He'd do some pretty cool in-person onstage presentation events
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Tim Cook Might Not Fully Retire After Stepping Down as Apple CEO — Here's Why
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Not really - there were hinges for folding designs that were display and device agnostic. OLED which paved the way for proper folding screens didn't come really become a consideration until roughly 2010-2011 but Apple would be daft not to do industrial design on all sorts and patenting stuff means others can't do it the same way. They also filed lots of stylus on capacitive screen patents and we know how Jobs felt about that.
But I think he would because he absolutely nailed it - they did research and it's extremely uncomfortable and unnatural to reach forward and touch a vertical screen. It's not just him that's said it but everyone at Apple since. What's more and even more damning we've seen them since 2008 fail on every PC label ever and now lots of PC laptops don't bother with them anymore.
The Touch Bar was a far better idea.
But whilst I agree he changed his mind on things moving forwards, he never relented and went backwards. Once that floppy drive left, you had to catch up, it wasn't coming back. Once they committed to something they stuck with it.
I think Steve would have gone all in on USB-C and not backed down from it - forcing everyone else to catch up. Losing a Thunderbolt 4 (or 5) port for a single use HDMI port that half or more of the buyers will never use was a ridiculously short sighted and weak decision. The MacBook Pro is like something designed by committee now when in 2016 it had a clear vision instead.
With you on the first part, not the second. Outside of the facts that touch bar was pretty cruddy for folks that touch type, especially if you have thick fingers as I do, you were constantly brushing up against it, and being deeply irritating for developers before they fixed the escape button in the second generation, as I can personally attest, and required context switching to look down from your screen it was also never spread far enough to ever be more than a gimmick.
To get traction, its inherent problems aside, it needed to be on all the laptops and on the external magic keyboard. You couldnt use it when your laptop was docked clamshell, like a lot of professionals do at their desk (and remember, it was only on the macbook pros), and you couldnt use it with an imac, with a mac pro, or with a mac mini at all. That means there really wasnt much incentive for most software to even try and take advantage of it. It was doomed from the very beginning
John Sculley, Michael Spindler, Gil Amelio, John Browett (Apple Store disaster). Though at least under Amelio Apple acquired NeXT, which paved the way for Jobs to come back and fire him.
And yet that same guy, that exact same man, the very same exact Steve Jobs, sold a keyboard Dock for the original iPad, where, when it was connected, to use the iPad you had to… reach out and touch the vertical screen.
So who really knows.
Personally, I think he would’ve went for it for one reason, the same reason I think they’re going for it now, accessibility.
As someone with a visual impairment, sometimes it is significantly easier to directly manipulate items on a touchscreen, even if just temporarily before returning to the keyboard and mouse.
And on a similar note, every single time, pretty much no exception, that I pass my computer off to someone who isn’t a Mac user, the first thing they do is reach to touch the screen because that is literally what almost every product these days does, so they just expect the Mac to have that as well. Jobs absolutely would have noticed that, if he would have wanted to do something about it is a completely different question because, again, the technology landscape of 2010 is very different in 2025.
Think Tim will remain CEO for some more time, maybe even 2 years more. Then he will probably be in some other role. Definitely not expecting Tim to leave Apple completely especially when others like Phil Schiller is still an 'Apple Fellow'
Does anyone know if Cook wants to be chairman? Yes there is all this talk about being chairman being the next progression for Cook but does he want it? He's at retirement age, he's got billions of $$$ in the bank as well as billions of $$$ in Apple stock, why not just bow out and enjoy retirement.
Except almost every single high end laptop has dropped touch screens. Dell XPS, Razer, Alienware, mainly because users never used them.
The iPad dock didn't force you to interact with a fixed vertical screen though - you would dock it to type something and barely use the screen - when you needed to touch the screen you could pick it back up and use it as tablet. I know many PC manufacturers tried those hybrid devices between 2008 and 2014 and they were horrible.
Too soon to write corporate obits but..
- Business (e.g. growth, profit): He's going to be remembered as one of the all-time greats, even for all of corporate America, never mind Apple. For many, this will be all that matters.
- Brand: He maintained Apple's brand. It would be a difficult argument said to say he grew it. It's more like he was a faithful custodian, and didn't diminish or damage it.
- Tech: He grew Apple's product ranges, from services to the Apple Watch. Some landed very well indeed (see profits, above). Some, less so. But again, it would be a difficult argument to say there was any kind of failure here especially compared to other tech companies that regularly launch products that die. Apple's graveyard is nowhere near as densely populated as, say, Googles, and Cook's record is at least equivalent to Jobs. He missed the boat on AI, and VR was clearly rushed so he could claim it. Both these are going to bite him in the ass in newspaper reports etc. But we need to wait for hindsight. A decade from now, it might seem very different.
- Culture: THIS is the area we can debate until the cows come home. It's directly related to brand growth. And again, I feel this is where he's more in line with the pre-Jobs CEOs. He's maintained, rather than grown/evolved, Apple's culture. Jobs was in touch with developers. He was in touch with design. He strode across several different pillars. I think it's a very hard argument to say this of Cook, who was primarily "an operations guy", who relied on trusted generals to essentially run the other areas of the business. He reminds me of President Bush Snr, who when asked about his vision for America, said "Oh, the vision thing...". I think Cook cares deeply about internal Apple culture. He just wasn't the guy for external Apple culture and my guess is that he had to be assisted with this (remember the keynotes where his voice was more like a teenager going through puberty? They fixed that pretty quick.) People even started to look to characters like Craig Federighi for this aspect, in desperation—and Apple has begun embracing this in some of its WWDC videos. Culture is undoubtedly one of Cook's main failings. But did it matter? With the areas above so successful, who cares?
Might be a bit high up for him to jump into but would love to have him lead ios again. I miss the simplicity of iOS in his era but that era of simple mobile OS's is probably extinct with companies wanting to and more and often unnecessary features into a mobile operating system to promote sales.
"Culture is undoubtedly one of Cook's main failings. But did it matter? With the areas above so successful, who cares?"
Who cares? It only matters to the few dozen people on tech forums still under Jobs' spell and caring about Apple's "culture".
What really matters are Apple's 1+ Billion active and repeat customers who love Apple products and continue to purchase them year after year after year, making Apple one of the most successful consumer tech companies in the world.
Those 1+ Billion happy and repeat Apple customers are what matter.
Honestly can't think of any features that made a big impact on my user experience since maybe face ID and interacting/replying to to notifications and I consider face ID more of a hardware feature. I'm also still rocking an iphone 12 pro but can't think of a software feature on later models that would make a major impact on my UI experience either. Maybe it's a power user thing?
Much more improved and faster Face ID signin. Much better camera app. Call screening. Preview app. Custom snooze time.
All of the above are extremely useful and
have made a major impact my usability.
As always ymmv. I’m on a 15PM. But my above list is phone agnostic.