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Tim Cook Profiled in New Biography as 'The Genius Who Took Apple to the Next Level'

"Genius" Albert Einstein was a genius who gave us the Theory of Relativity. Margaret Hamilton is a genius who developed the concepts of asynchronous software and coined the term "software engineer." Akira Nakashima was a genius who created the foundations of digital circuit design. Tim Cook is a genius??? Because he partnered with MasterCard to create the Apple Credit Card?? It should read Tim Cook: the very shrewd Wall Street Businessman behind Apple's Services Strategy.
 
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crumpetkerfuffle said:
"Genius" Albert Einstein was a genius who gave us the Theory of Relativity. Margaret Hamilton is a genius who developed the concepts of asynchronous software and coined the term "software engineer." Akira Nakashima was a genius who created the foundations of digital circuit design. Tim Cook is a genius??? Because he partnered with MasterCard to create the Apple Credit Card?? It should read Tim Cook: the very shrewd Wall Street Businessman behind Apple's Services Strategy.
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Maybe Tim will win the Nobel Prize in Economics for the new Apple credit card. LOL
 
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I don't think that anyone can seriously deny that Tim Cook has delivered incredible value for investors, but equally Tim Cook's Apple has delivered similar value for loyal customers too.
 
Yes, the "genius" who bestowed the faulty keyboards of MacBook Pros on us, iPhones which can cost over a grand, charging mats which never materialized, etc. I know it's not fair to compare Tim Apple to Steve but there is a world of a difference between the two. What have we seen that was "revolutionary" instead of "evolutionary" out of Tim? Hint: nothing. (Although, to be fair, I guess the capabilities of the Apple Watch are more than just evolutionary.)
 
mikethemartian said:
I’m amazed by people who recommend buying AppleCare, specifically, in case one of the commonly known defects (i.e. butterfly keyboards) becomes an issue in the future. So Apple makes a faulty product and the buyer’s solution is to give Apple even more money for AppleCare?
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People do it so willingly. It's really shocking. People love Apple so much they don't even care about the faulty products they're putting out.
 
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What did they do? Tell Tim just before they took the cover photo that someone collided with his car in the parking lot? That's a pretty grim visage. I picture a future slenderman epic on reddit: "he looked just like Tim Cook on the cover of that book..."
 
The next level of greed and screwing customers? I’m sorry. Tim: if you and the other pensioners had left Apple years ago, we’d likely have a less profitable but much better liked company today. And who knows: someone else might actually be able to push timely releases and be capable of some basic supply chain management.

I’m sure you’re a great accountant though.
 
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bluespark said:
If you are an investor in Apple, it's hard to argue with his performance over the years Tim has been at the helm. Apple is one of the most valuable companies in history (arguably the most valuable), it has successfully diversified its income stream, its stock has done well overall, and its products have sold well and commanded high prices. Apple also successfully navigates one of the most complex supply chains ever. All of those are measures of success.

It's not even quite fair to assert that he's not a product visionary, since he introduced the iPad mini and entirely new -- and arguably groundbreaking -- products in the Apple Watch and AirPods, to name just two. I happen to love both of those. Apple's microchip development is also nothing short of astonishing compared to what most analysts thought was possible.

That said, I agree with others that there's something missing. The Mac, though still updated, has seemed like an afterthought since Tim has been here. He seems to completely misunderstand what many people want from that platform, and he has never unleashed the Mac team to be everything it no doubt wants to be. While Apple has always jettisoned legacy technologies, Tim has eliminated from Apple's various products even things necessary to many users, such as headphone ports and MagSafe. Product matrices are confused (see the MacBook line), and Apple has fallen behind on touch-capable PCs (make no mistake, Steve Jobs would have figured out how to add what works without undercutting his points on what doesn't work with touch). The current MacBook keyboard situation would have been intolerable to Jobs and to most tech CEOs. And Tim doesn't seem to have a clear plan on where iPhone should go from here.

In short, I generally think Tim has done a good job. But I also think it's about time for a change.
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Microsoft did well under Steve Ballmer during his tenure as CEO too. However, I don't think you will find a lot of people who think Steve did anything to innovate at Microsoft and pretty much just fought as hard as he could to maintain the status quo of the closed system of Microsoft products on Windows devices. It took Satya Nadella to refocus Microsoft on providing services to all customers across all platforms because Ballmer was simply to entrenched in continuing the way Gates had done things.

I think Tim Cook will eventually be compared to Ballmer. Yes, he has driven the stock to new high prices and had incrementally improved the iPhone to be the most popular smartphone in the world. However, I think we are now at a peak for Apple and the way its products are structured. iPhone sales have been stagnant since Fiscal Year 2015. It was only through a massive increase in price on the iPhone X that allowed iPhone revenue to increase in 2018.

We'll see how the push into services works, but based on the keynote a couple of weeks ago it seems like Apple still isn't ready to hit the ground running. Tim has made Apple as efficient and profitable as possible with his experience in supply chain perfection; however, I just don't think Cook has the vision to take Apple to the next level.
 
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jgdeschamps said:
Check out the Mac. Completely neglected under his watch.
Check out the iPhone. Completely overpriced and overrated under his watch.
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Idk, I could've sworn I just saw new iMacs and MacBook Air's released. Sounds like later this year the Mac Pro is coming too. The iPhone is on the high end, but its pretty close to its competitors. With the amount of X, Xs, Xs MAX and Xr I have seen recently I would say maybe they are priced just right. And can you please explain overrated? Not really sure what that means.

The guy hasn't been perfect, but far from as bad as this place makes him out to be.
 
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bbednarz said:
I think he has really done a great job regardless what the comment sections here have shown. The Apple Watch is going to be gigantic moving forward and that was a product that was developed completely under Tim Cook. The sales speak for themselves. People love Apple products.
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At least people has to give him credits for taking the Apple users to a entirely new level, where Microsoft users used to be a few decades ago: "market share speaks for itself lololo".

Smooth transition from people who buy rock-solid expensive computers for creative purposes and work, to a bunch of kids who are happy with their airpods, phones and watches, and are even happier to see some businessmen getting richer and richer.
 
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nebojsak said:
At least people has to give him credits for taking the Apple users to a entirely new level, where Microsoft users used to be a few decades ago: "market share speaks for itself lololo".

Smooth transition from people who buy rock-solid expensive computers for creative purposes and work, to a bunch of kids who are happy with their airpods, phones and watches, and are even happier to see some businessmen getting richer and richer.
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To be honest, I don't really care who gets rich.. I just want my products to work well and Apple products do that... If they didn't work well I would purchase something else.

The job of a CEO is to make the company money. That is his purpose at Apple. That is why I said what I said. I like to see Apple do well because it bodes well for the future of the products that I enjoy using. I am not a shareholder so their stock price means nothing to me. Just keep producing products that add enjoyment to my life and I will be a happy customer.
 
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CEO performance:

Jobs - returns to Apple in 1997 with market cap at $2.7B. Dies in 2011 with market cap at $350B

Cook - inherits market cap $350B in 2011 and as of today 2019 market cap is $940B

So what's more impressive - Jobs with a 130x growth in Apple's valuation or Cook for adding $600B to Apples valuation?
 
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california_kid said:
CEO performance:

Jobs - returns to Apple in 1997 with market cap at $2.7B. Dies in 2011 with market cap at $350B

Cook - inherits market cap $350B in 2011 and as of today 2019 market cap is $940B

So what's more impressive - Jobs with a 130x growth in Apple's valuation or Cook for adding $600B to Apples valuation?
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Why can't both achievements be impressive? Tim Cook isn't Steve Jobs and has never claimed to be. Are we really going to downplay Tim Cook adding $600B to Apple's valuation?

$600 BILLION.
 
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Genius? Haha. That's having a laugh. He's not a genius. There hasn't been any vast improvements on any of their hardware since he took over. He's all Social Justice and no substance. Jobs was a genius. Cook is mediocre and an embarrassment.

Where's the new Mac Pro, Tim? Too busy concentrating on virtue signalling and providing platforms for dodgy journalism to make money, than to actually improve the hardware.
 
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I am waiting for the BIO of John Scully, the REAL genius behind Apple
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bbednarz said:
Why can't both achievements be impressive? Tim Cook isn't Steve Jobs and has never claimed to be. Are we really going to downplay Tim Cook adding $600B to Apple's valuation?

$600 BILLION.
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If they hired an orang Utan, it would have been 700 Billion.

Basically doing nothing as CEO and NOT announcing that nonexisting charging mat would have made the company 100 billion more worthy
 
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