Cook is a logistics genius. He really is. What he's achieved with manufacturing and markup is unparalleled in the industry.
What he suffers with is something that Jobs was so good at: looking at products from the view of the consumer. If Jobs sat down and used an entry-level Mac Mini in 2016, he'd question why it was so damned slow. The engineers would answer that it's due to the 5400RPM drive. So Jobs would simply make sure it's a Fusion drive at minimum to give the impression of quick real-world performance.
That's what's most frustrating. There's very little that needs to be improved to make every Mac across the board perform to an Apple-quality level. But sometimes I get the feeling he's looking to upsell more than the consumer getting a great product, regardless of what they buy.
There's one problem with that. He's NOT doing Logistics/Operations anymore. That was his old job. You know who's doing that now? Jeff Williams. Hand picked by Cook, who followed him from IBM back in 1998 and also graduated at the same university together in the days before IBM and Apple.
As far as improving on the products, the blame lies on him for approving such decisions. He allowed them to happen when he shouldn't have.
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In general, I think that Cook has done a good job at CEO, but he lacks the "cojones" to take risk on products and instead is happy with a more incremental and conservative approach. To be fair, most of those increments have been positive changes, it just not coming fast enough for some. With the phone as an example, people here complain about the form factor that has not changed in three years. I am actually okay with that. However, changing to OLED or mLED, getting rid of the bezels and home button are things that Apple could have done a while ago within the current form factor but has resisted IMO because of the conservative approach. The other issue is that Tim spends too much time in Politics and other efforts outside of Apple.
I would love for Tim to focus exclusively on Apple and take bolder decisions. Taking a few more risks (other than getting rid of the 3.5 jack) is what Apple has been based on and what has gotten them where they are. The conservative approach gives consistent returns, but a slower pace means the competition can and will catch up and eventually surpass them. This is what we do not want.
He has no balls to get things done nor rein in Ive's crackpot design acumen. He needs to stop kissing Ive's ass. Seriously. And making Ive Chief Creative Officer is a huge mistake.
Second, as far as the competition catching up, they already have. And surpassed Apple. The only way to turn this company around is to get rid of him and a few others because their executive presence is what's hurting it. And some of them are out of touch with today's consumers. Way out of touch.
And when ( and if ) Trump officially gets sworn in, he's gonna give Cook an earful, breathing down his neck to the point where he'll want to get out. I may not agree with Trump, but he's going to give Tim nightmares. Anyway, that's not the point of this post but rather to point out that Cook's presence, if prolonged, will hurt Apple in the long run.
The company has lost direction under him because he LOST control over the executives. The late Jobs, however, was not afraid to bring the hammer down.
Apple needs a new hammer. Not an ass kisser.