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Why Tim Cook Is Steve Ballmer and Why He Still Has His Job at Apple

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Re: Why Tim Cook Is Steve Ballmer and Why He Still Has His Job at Apple

#22

The article is short on details why he thinks Tim Cook is like Steve Ballmer, except for saying that Apple is slowly missing the boat on AI. I don't know what Amazon does for AI, I haven't seen anything convincing from them, but I'll trust the author that they are working on it. However it's tough to beat Google in this space, because AI and machine learning is what Google has focused on since their beginnings . Goog…

> He's a man with principles and for this I appreciate him a lot, maybe more than I ever appreciated Steve Jobs. Is he really? I mean from a strategic point of view he currently only has to gain from giving that outward appearance. Occam's Razor tells me that he is just luckily able to tread the high road because for him its the one without toll booths.

Well, if you're going to apply Occam's Razor, given that as a matter of fact most people don't give a shit about security or privacy, it's actually not in Apple's best interest to make this stand, at least when speaking short term, as it is negating them future revenue opportunities.

And they aren't doing it only in their press releases, but in their products as well. I'd enumerate features of iOS or OS X that have been very well thought out in this regard, but that would make for a blog post.

Re: Why Tim Cook Is Steve Ballmer and Why He Still Has His Job at Apple

#24
post #7
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? To an outsider who knows very little, Nadella seems to be doing great.

Isn't he kind of ruining Windows?

How so? I personally don't like all the pre-installed and unremovable stuff like Xbox, the fact that turning off Cortana is now really difficult, and how many knobs you have to turn to keep the os from sending everything you type to MS. Is that what's is ruining it, or is there something else?

Re: Why Tim Cook Is Steve Ballmer and Why He Still Has His Job at Apple

#25

Even if I generally agree with disappointment at the apparent "maintenance mode" of Apple's product line, I am not sure Ballmer is the best analogy. My understanding is that Tim Cook actually is responsible for many of the supply chain innovations behind Apple's dominant product lines. This is an incredibly hard technical feat, not just blustery MBA crap. I suppose it remains to be seen whether Apple can put its enor…

If you take a look back, Steve Ballmer was responsible for a lot of the success of Microsoft. He mostly got hate because people hated Microsoft. I'm don't think Ballmer's list of accomplishments at Microsoft is fully appreciated particularly compared to the good press Tim Cook as enjoyed.

My impression is that he got less hate and more ridicule.

Sure, Gates looked like the archetype nerd any time he presented something. But not was lightyears better than the whole "developers developers developers" dance Ballmer managed to pull.

Sadly the tech media have over the years blended over into lifestyle media. No longer is the computer or phone something to get a job done and that's it, now its a indicator of how you see yourself and how you want others to see you. And that image goes all the way back to the company making them, and the people that are the faces of said company.

Re: Why Tim Cook Is Steve Ballmer and Why He Still Has His Job at Apple

#26

Tim Cook is a "Bozo" - He has moved the focus away from computers and the companies core professional users and turned Apple into a fashionable health services company. They will coast for a while on their dominant mobile market share but eventually the stagnation and lack of new products will catch up to them. He built a watch, which was a "me too" product and answered a question that no one asked. Jobs would never…

The same could have been said about the ipod as well. It has little to do with computing and was marketed as a lifestyle product. Apple is notorious for being second to the market with its simplified vision of emerging tech.

Re: Why Tim Cook Is Steve Ballmer and Why He Still Has His Job at Apple

#27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think sometimes you have to break it to make it good/great again, like the first Mac OS X release. That's my 2¢. The fact that Microsoft is increasing revenue on Azure, for example, shows they are jumping on a bandwagon that should give them another revenue stream that they can use to reinvest. I might be wrong, but that's how I see it.

Well, I'm going to be honest here, I don't give two shits about Azure. Not only because I don't use that (I don't run any system, etc) but because there are dozens of providers. Unfortunately Windows is one of a kind, so if he ruins it (and 10 is definitely a step back from 8.1, from what I've seen) he's ruined something really important for some of us, something with no known replacement. (No, OS X and Linux don't c…

I don't know. From what I (and many others) have seen, Windows 10 is a big improvement over 8.1.

Re: Why Tim Cook Is Steve Ballmer and Why He Still Has His Job at Apple

#28
post #20

Applies to Pichai at Google too. Google was a search company that put the browser/mobile guy in charge. You are not going to see stuff like this http://aurelieherbelot.net/pears/ http://aurelieherbelot.net/how-small-is-the-world-wide-web-r... come out of Google for the simple reason they are busy playing empire defense all the while the need for a centralized search engine reduces.

Nah, Google is first and foremost about ads. Search was just a damn good gateway for pushing those ads. Now you get them pushed on phones and laptops (chromebook) as well.

Re: Why Tim Cook Is Steve Ballmer and Why He Still Has His Job at Apple

#29
post #20

Applies to Pichai at Google too. Google was a search company that put the browser/mobile guy in charge. You are not going to see stuff like this http://aurelieherbelot.net/pears/ http://aurelieherbelot.net/how-small-is-the-world-wide-web-r... come out of Google for the simple reason they are busy playing empire defense all the while the need for a centralized search engine reduces.

Isn't that the whole point of Alphabet? Google can play empire defense while Larry & Sergey make bets by creating subsidiaries and funding them with Google's free cash flow. I think Google's board recognized this phenomenon of large companies becoming risk averse and restructured in this way to try to avoid it.

Re: Why Tim Cook Is Steve Ballmer and Why He Still Has His Job at Apple

#30

Tim Cook is a "Bozo" - He has moved the focus away from computers and the companies core professional users and turned Apple into a fashionable health services company. They will coast for a while on their dominant mobile market share but eventually the stagnation and lack of new products will catch up to them. He built a watch, which was a "me too" product and answered a question that no one asked. Jobs would never…

This image http://core0.staticworld.net/images/article/2015/10/slide-06..., to me, simbolizes the recent Apple.
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