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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

#181

Post by chongli »

usaphp wrote: post #157
chongli wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gamers are high end consumers They really aren't. PC gamers hang out on Reddit and other forums trading info about how to build a PC from commodity parts in order to get the absolute best price/performance ratio. It's not hard at all to put together a machine for less than a thousand dollars that would be competitive with the machines Apple sells for three thousand. There's no margin for Apple in this space.

> "It's not hard at all to put together a machine for less than a thousand dollars that would be competitive with the machines Apple sells for three thousand." That's a complete BS, I want you to give me an example of that. Less than a thousand dollar desktop vs 3000$ mac. Now re laptops. My PC friends keep telling me that MacBooks are overpriced And that you can get a faster PC laptop for half the price, but as soon…

Laptops are irrelevant to this discussion since nobody builds a laptop from off-the-shelf parts.

The issue I'm talking about is gaming performance. Apple sells Mac Pros starting at $3000. These machines use workstation class Xeon processors with ECC memory and workstation class graphics cards designed for double precision floating point computation. These features are irrelevant to gamers. It is not hard at all to build a cheap machine that can beat one of these workstations in all your favourite games, especially when you consider the abysmal state of OpenGL drivers on macOS.

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

#182

Post by kbenson »

Tepix wrote: post #73
kbenson wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 10 is definitely a step back from 8.1, from what I've seen 10 has been an advance in every single aspect I can think of. What are you seeing as being ruined?

I agree mostly, however there are the issues of privacy, ads embedded into the OS and forced updates.

> issues of privacy

I'll definitely give you that.

> ads embedded into the OS

If it's the lock screen ads, I have to say as ads go, I think they are actually the most unobtrusive ads I've ever seen. I actually just had to look up what they were, because I keep seeing them getting mentioned. Turns out, I have seen them, I've just ignored them every time, because when I'm looking to unlock my computer it's generally because I'm about to do something, and spending time futzing around with a small text overlay on the lock screen image isn't it.

So, I don't particularly feel like the lock screen ads are especially egregious. Though, I also got the free upgrade from Windows 8, so maybe that effects my opinion.

> forced updates

I am fully for this. We've seen what a world without forced updates looks like. The only reason the recent major DDOS attacks didn't have a bunch (or as many?) of windows PCs participating is because MS has gotten really serious about security, and making sure it's actually applied.

Also, there is a way to disable forced updating, and that's through a registry hack. You might think that's too complex, but I think that's the perfect level of complexity for what we are talking about. If someone isn't comfortable finding a specific location in the registry and manually changing a value, they definitely have no place determining whether their system should opt out of auto-updating.

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

#183

Post by mikeryan »

intoverflow2 wrote: post #174
WayneBro wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...he's nothing like Steve Ballmer... Your response was also short on details with regards to your major point, quoted above. Meanwhile, here are the points from the article. Like Ballmer, Tim Cook: - is an executor, not a visionary. - doubled revenue while also doubling profit for his company. - announced very few new products. - has the same kinds of challenges (facing disruption). - lacks passion for the product…

> announced very few new products. Look it up, he's actually announced plenty. Just they're kinda underwhelming. Off the top of my head: MacBook, Mac Pro, iPad Pro, iPhone+,MacBook HDMI Dongle, iPhone Headphone Dongle, Apple Pay, Apple Music, Apple Pencil.

MacBook, Mac Pro, iPad Pro, iPhone+,MacBook HDMI Dongle, iPhone Headphone Dongle, Apple Pay, Apple Music, Apple Pencil.

These are primarily iterations or extensions of existing products, not new products (in the blue ocean sense) as seem to be defined in the article. This is the complaint the article makes with "execution" executives. As products they're all mechanisms for increasing revenues on existing (re: stagnant) products instead of creating completely new product lines that reflect the changes in the market.

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

#184

Post by [deleted] »

bad_user wrote: post #12

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…

[deleted]

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

#185

Post by heisenbit »

It is worth noting that the author has a background in startups and entrepreneurship. Apple however is several magnitudes larger and running new initiatives on startup level requires isolation from the main business and a portfolio approach. Some companies show their their cards, some hint they have a list and Apple is traditionally very secretive.

The question is not whether Tim is the right guy for innovation but whether he has put the right guy into the place. John Ivy certainly continues to play a big role but has/is/will there be another internal leader emerging?

> About Steve (Blank)

> After 21 years in 8 high technology companies, I retired in 1999. I co-founded my last company, E.piphany, in my living room in 1996. My other startups include two semiconductor companies, Zilog and MIPS Computers, a workstation company Convergent Technologies, a consulting stint for a graphics hardware/software spinout Pixar, a supercomputer firm, Ardent, a computer peripheral supplier, SuperMac, a military intelligence systems supplier, ESL and a video game company, Rocket Science Games.

> Total score: two large craters (Rocket Science and Ardent), one dot.com bubble home run (E.piphany) and several base hits.

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

#186

Post by [deleted] »

intoverflow2 wrote: post #174
WayneBro wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...he's nothing like Steve Ballmer... Your response was also short on details with regards to your major point, quoted above. Meanwhile, here are the points from the article. Like Ballmer, Tim Cook: - is an executor, not a visionary. - doubled revenue while also doubling profit for his company. - announced very few new products. - has the same kinds of challenges (facing disruption). - lacks passion for the product…

> announced very few new products. Look it up, he's actually announced plenty. Just they're kinda underwhelming. Off the top of my head: MacBook, Mac Pro, iPad Pro, iPhone+,MacBook HDMI Dongle, iPhone Headphone Dongle, Apple Pay, Apple Music, Apple Pencil.

[deleted]

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

#187

Post by herbturbo »

alex- wrote: post #178

Their is a feeling that CEOs of these large companies are completely responsible for the direction a company takes. I have never served as a CEO, but I can't help but imagine that large share holders are also very dominant figures. One of the attributes that Steve Jobs and Bill Gates appeared to share (I have never met either) was a massive amount of trust/faith to run their respective companies (eventually). I imagi…

> I imagine that this must translate to the board room where they were provided the freedom to pursue avenues that a newly promoted CEO would just not be allowed to do.

The author also mentions Disney, which is a company that was sliding into obscurity until Bob Iger took over. As a newly promoted CEO he executed his vision and put Disney right back on top. I can't imagine Disney's board was particularly forward thinking back then.

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

#188

Post by usaphp »

chongli wrote: post #181
usaphp wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "It's not hard at all to put together a machine for less than a thousand dollars that would be competitive with the machines Apple sells for three thousand." That's a complete BS, I want you to give me an example of that. Less than a thousand dollar desktop vs 3000$ mac. Now re laptops. My PC friends keep telling me that MacBooks are overpriced And that you can get a faster PC laptop for half the price, but as soon…

Laptops are irrelevant to this discussion since nobody builds a laptop from off-the-shelf parts. The issue I'm talking about is gaming performance. Apple sells Mac Pros starting at $3000. These machines use workstation class Xeon processors with ECC memory and workstation class graphics cards designed for double precision floating point computation. These features are irrelevant to gamers. It is not hard at all to bu…

If you read my comment i was referring to mac desktops, laptops were a separate point in a discussion. Nevertheless you are comparing 3 year old Mac Pro with current PCs, at the time when Mac Pro was released it was on par with PC systems that costed around 3000$ as well.

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

#189

Post by aetherson »

wstrange wrote: post #112
aetherson wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if Alexa is the "best" voice assistant, but up until Google Home ships (has it yet?) it's the "only" voice assistant in the place that voice assistants actually matter. It'll be interesting to see if Google overtakes the Echo. I'm not a fan of Google's "no apps" approach.

It looks like Google will allow app integration with the Google Assistant: https://developers.google.com/actions/

Maybe. Of some kind. Starting in December.

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

#190

Post by Crespyl »

alex- wrote: post #161
Certhas wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Azure seems to be doing well and some people expect it to overtake AWS sooner rather than later in market share. The talk that Microsoft is irrelevant is a bit hilarious, given that they beat google on revenue and income last year. They have morphed from a company that is front and center to one that provides the infrastructure for the digital side of non-tech business. Microsoft Office is absolutely pervasive, and i…

The author called out, specifically, how Azure was in his opinion keeping Microsoft relevant "Nadella got Microsoft organized around mobile and the cloud (Azure), freed the Office and Azure teams from Windows, killed the phone business and got a major release of Windows out without the usual trauma. And is moving the company into augmented reality and conversational AI. While they’ll likely never regain the market do…

> a major release of Windows out without the usual trauma

What trauma-less release would this be?

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