> It is unclear whether the spread-sheeting-loving, consensus-oriented, even-keeled Cook can successfully reshape the cult-like culture that Jobs built. Though Cook has deftly managed the iPhone and iPad product lines, which continue to deliver enormous profits, Apple has yet to launch a major new product under Cook; talk of watches and televisions remains just that.
It bothers me everybody ignores the already announced Mac Pro. It's more niche than an iPhone or iPad but an important one for many Mac users, and the specs and design really push innovation forward on a market that is almost dead (desktops).
Not only that, but the press seems to have a very myopic view on "innovation." It doesn't happen overnight. It was 6 years between the iPod and the iPhone, another 3 before the iPad, and they're still arguably refining both. If Apple still hasn't released something interesting in another 3 years, maybe (maybe) then it'll be worth agonising over.
And I couldn't agree more about the Mac Pro by the way.
The Mac Pro is a significant redesign, but not a new product line.
Apple has often (in recent years) been in a position where significant portions of their revenue are from product categories which did not exist 2 years ago. There is a fear that they will not continue to invent/expand into new categories.
I wouldn't really say it pushed innovation forward. It's a mac with heavy specs. The only thing innovative about it is the enclosure -- which, while novel, isn't terribly noteworthy.
The reason people ignore the Mac Pro is because it doesn't move the needle revenue/profit wise. At this point, all of Mac barely moves the needle. The Mac Pro is a tiny niche product that is cool and very much needed, just for a very small subset of people.
Delegation is not about doing the stuff you don't want to do but reluctantly handing off stuff you want to do to others because that is a more effective use of your time.
Jobs would have run Apple singlehandedly if he could, that's why he left behind such a huge vacuum to fill. Product roadmaps being what they are I think we'll see the real 'new, post Jobs Apple' in another year or so for the first time.
It's not about shipping crap occasionally, that could just as easily be attributed to trying things and failing and every big company has a long list of such failures. It's no different than running an incubator only then in-house and with a single unified brand and possibly synergistic effects. It's all about daring, trying to push the envelope and taking risks.
Delegation is not about doing the stuff you don't want to do but reluctantly handing off stuff you want to do to others because that is a more effective use of your time
Or because having someone else do that will be more valuable for the product or the organization as a whole. I recently delegated something that I wanted to do that I could probably do fairly quickly, but realized that it was good to share that particular task with a team member so he could improve his skills that way.
Jobs' bi-monthly iPhone software meeting, in which he would go through
every planned features [sic] of the company's flagship product, is
gone.
Judging by the current iOS development version, this is a regrettable change that will come to haunt them. Things like the new color schemes would probably not have gone through if there was any executive interest in the look of the new software.
Tim Cook's greatest strength is his realization of, and comfort with, the fact that he is not Steve Jobs. Why doesn't he have bi-monthly feature reviews? Because he wouldn't have as much to contribute as Jobs. He doesn't have the product intuition and he knows it.
What was unique about Steve Jobs was that he could perform so many different roles within the company. He could convince anyone he needed to join the company, he could ascertain just what kinds of products were likely to be successful, and he could get on stage and sell the living daylights out of the products his company had built. These roles are necessarily going to be performed worse when separated into different executives, just like a basketball player who can play great offense and defense is worth a lot more to a team than ten great offensive players and ten great defensive players.
As Bill Gates said, the (old) Apple model only works if you have a Steve Jobs. The new Apple can't function like the old Apple any more than a car can function without a steering wheel. The best thing Cook can do is transition the company to a more traditional management structure. Will the company be worse off than before? Of course, but it's the best they can do under the circumstances.
Ehh, I think the whole iOS7 UI thing is overblown.
Anecdotally we've been installing it on non-dev (tester) devices internally to help thrash our app pre-iOS7. The results have been very positive - people love the new design in general.
Even those of us on the dev team who've had it for a while have mostly gotten over the annoying bits that bothered us at first.
Who's to say there isn't "interest"? Some people like the new look, maybe Cook does too.
Don't confuse process with results. Jobs' Apple produced great products because Jobs had great taste that aligned well with the market (and, to be honest, because he was the vortex of a feedback loop of praise), not because he had a "bi-monthly iPhone software meeting".
As I recall, Apple's fan would quite unapologetically acknowledge that Apple ran on fear of abuse by Jobs [1]. The story was that Jobs was a unique genius capable of running things that way and deserving to run things that way. The magical results were worth it. Just being near the "reality distortion field" was its own reward [2].
Regardless of how the rest of us might judge all this, Apple now has something of a problem. Decompressing from a previous abusive situation involves certain stages of recovery [3]. Even if, regardless of if, one began with the view that this was "abuse for the best all possible purposes" or how much one identified with the success of one's abuser [4]. In similar fashion to the problems faced by the liberalizing Stalinist regimes, Tim Cook may find that his liberalizing "tweaks" open flood gates that he will have trouble controlling [5].
I found this statement in the article to be the key of managing.
"He basically explained nicely that my job was to do the things that Mark (Zuckerberg) did not want to focus on as much."
I believe it is something Cook and other CEOs follow too. Find a person to do the things that you don't want to focus on as much.
If No.2's job is to do things No. 1 doesn't want to do, No. 1's job is to find No. 2's who wants to do the job No. 1 doesn't want to do and give that person autonomy.
I agree Cook not leading planned feature meeting but he should have someone who wants to lead that meeting and be responsible for driving that part of the business.
I like Tim's style and I think he needs some time to get adjusted to his role.
It's still not clear to me, after being an Apple user and fan since the beginning and after reading Steve Job's biography, how much innovation Steve really brought to Apple. What I mean is: was Steve really the one who gave the initial impulse for some of the most innovative products we have seen so far (i.e. iPhone, iPad, iPod, etc.)? In this case, I think that Apple is doomed.
If, on the contrary, Steve was the quality checker, the one pushing everyone else to do better, I think that the current Apple's executive team can properly replace this role and do good at Apple.
Motivating a huge organization like Apple to produce brilliant consumer electronics products consistently is probably much, much harder than you think, else every one of Apple's competitors would have hired execs to do that for them.
No one else claims they had the 'vision' for the iPod/iPad/iPhone while at the same time everyone credits Steve so he must have been more than a quality checker.
Given that most of Apple's products were implementations of ideas from Engelbart's lab and Xerox PARC, and that those ideas still have a lot of running room, I'm not too worried for Apple.
I wish the article lived up to the headline. What cultural changes have occurred? The article doesn't say.
It does say that Cook's personal style is different from Jobs (duh), that he's made some changes to the exec team (we knew that), and that there's conflicting anecdotal evidence about how employees are reacting to these changes... whatever they are.
All in all, I don't see a revolution in any of this.
[+] [-] hcarvalhoalves|12 years ago|reply
It bothers me everybody ignores the already announced Mac Pro. It's more niche than an iPhone or iPad but an important one for many Mac users, and the specs and design really push innovation forward on a market that is almost dead (desktops).
[+] [-] Osmium|12 years ago|reply
And I couldn't agree more about the Mac Pro by the way.
[+] [-] e1ven|12 years ago|reply
Apple has often (in recent years) been in a position where significant portions of their revenue are from product categories which did not exist 2 years ago. There is a fear that they will not continue to invent/expand into new categories.
[+] [-] mmanfrin|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] clarky07|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacquesm|12 years ago|reply
Jobs would have run Apple singlehandedly if he could, that's why he left behind such a huge vacuum to fill. Product roadmaps being what they are I think we'll see the real 'new, post Jobs Apple' in another year or so for the first time.
It's not about shipping crap occasionally, that could just as easily be attributed to trying things and failing and every big company has a long list of such failures. It's no different than running an incubator only then in-house and with a single unified brand and possibly synergistic effects. It's all about daring, trying to push the envelope and taking risks.
[+] [-] MartinCron|12 years ago|reply
Or because having someone else do that will be more valuable for the product or the organization as a whole. I recently delegated something that I wanted to do that I could probably do fairly quickly, but realized that it was good to share that particular task with a team member so he could improve his skills that way.
[+] [-] SimHacker|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yapcguy|12 years ago|reply
Just ask vulture capitalist Carl Icahn, who tweeted this a few minutes ago.
https://twitter.com/Carl_C_Icahn/status/370615097963450368
[+] [-] Udo|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qq66|12 years ago|reply
What was unique about Steve Jobs was that he could perform so many different roles within the company. He could convince anyone he needed to join the company, he could ascertain just what kinds of products were likely to be successful, and he could get on stage and sell the living daylights out of the products his company had built. These roles are necessarily going to be performed worse when separated into different executives, just like a basketball player who can play great offense and defense is worth a lot more to a team than ten great offensive players and ten great defensive players.
As Bill Gates said, the (old) Apple model only works if you have a Steve Jobs. The new Apple can't function like the old Apple any more than a car can function without a steering wheel. The best thing Cook can do is transition the company to a more traditional management structure. Will the company be worse off than before? Of course, but it's the best they can do under the circumstances.
[+] [-] potatolicious|12 years ago|reply
Anecdotally we've been installing it on non-dev (tester) devices internally to help thrash our app pre-iOS7. The results have been very positive - people love the new design in general.
Even those of us on the dev team who've had it for a while have mostly gotten over the annoying bits that bothered us at first.
[+] [-] ajross|12 years ago|reply
Don't confuse process with results. Jobs' Apple produced great products because Jobs had great taste that aligned well with the market (and, to be honest, because he was the vortex of a feedback loop of praise), not because he had a "bi-monthly iPhone software meeting".
[+] [-] simonh|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] allsystemsgo|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joe_the_user|12 years ago|reply
Regardless of how the rest of us might judge all this, Apple now has something of a problem. Decompressing from a previous abusive situation involves certain stages of recovery [3]. Even if, regardless of if, one began with the view that this was "abuse for the best all possible purposes" or how much one identified with the success of one's abuser [4]. In similar fashion to the problems faced by the liberalizing Stalinist regimes, Tim Cook may find that his liberalizing "tweaks" open flood gates that he will have trouble controlling [5].
[1] http://gawker.com/5847344/what-everyone-is-too-polite-to-say... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_distortion_field [3] https://1in6.org/men/get-information/online-readings/recover... [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome [5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Wall
[+] [-] pearjuice|12 years ago|reply
[0] If you know what I mean
[+] [-] akg_67|12 years ago|reply
"He basically explained nicely that my job was to do the things that Mark (Zuckerberg) did not want to focus on as much."
I believe it is something Cook and other CEOs follow too. Find a person to do the things that you don't want to focus on as much.
If No.2's job is to do things No. 1 doesn't want to do, No. 1's job is to find No. 2's who wants to do the job No. 1 doesn't want to do and give that person autonomy.
I agree Cook not leading planned feature meeting but he should have someone who wants to lead that meeting and be responsible for driving that part of the business.
[+] [-] botolo|12 years ago|reply
It's still not clear to me, after being an Apple user and fan since the beginning and after reading Steve Job's biography, how much innovation Steve really brought to Apple. What I mean is: was Steve really the one who gave the initial impulse for some of the most innovative products we have seen so far (i.e. iPhone, iPad, iPod, etc.)? In this case, I think that Apple is doomed.
If, on the contrary, Steve was the quality checker, the one pushing everyone else to do better, I think that the current Apple's executive team can properly replace this role and do good at Apple.
[+] [-] seunosewa|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] capkutay|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MaysonL|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cwp|12 years ago|reply
It does say that Cook's personal style is different from Jobs (duh), that he's made some changes to the exec team (we knew that), and that there's conflicting anecdotal evidence about how employees are reacting to these changes... whatever they are.
All in all, I don't see a revolution in any of this.
[+] [-] RyanMcGreal|12 years ago|reply
I hope that's just a typo and not evidence that the writer doesn't know what a spreadsheet is.
[+] [-] beefxq|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] inthewind|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davexunit|12 years ago|reply