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Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

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Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#61

Post by mring33621 »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #58
steveBK123 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe Ternus is the kind of leader who could bring 0->1 innovation back to Apple in some form. Maybe an Alphabet "other bets" type setup? Or simply just taking more chances on completely new product lines that may or may not pay off in 5-10 years (like VisionPro). I mean when was the last big new bet previous to VisionPro? Wearables, with the Apple Watch in 2015 is probably it, a decade prior. (AirPods are huge but f…

I would hope that Apple doesn’t follow Google’s lead. Google has the attention span of a crack addled flea and struggles to make great products

Gemini is a great product

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#62

Post by alistairSH »

steveBK123 wrote: post #33
heroicmailman wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm honestly shocked they haven't done more with HomeKit and in-home devices. Give me a low-power, always-on, iPad-mini style display on my nightstand, on my fridge, on my kitchen countertop, as a desk companion... there are so many things they could do with that form factor. They could even just offer me a dock or a mount as an accessory in most cases and it'd probably juice iPad sales, but they don't even do that.…

I'd personally be a buyer for some home stuff, but the average normie consumer just doesn't care very much about home automation. IoT turned out to be sort of a nothing. I say this as an early adopter and continued user.. it just never broke into mainstream and it's been 15+ years. You make a good point re: Nest. I am kind of a doomer on home automation market in that I have been an early adopter and it's been around…

I don't know, the majority of people I know (mostly upper-middle class white collar) have at least a HomePod/Alexa/Google smart speaker. And many have a smart thermostat and/or smart doorbell/camera. Part of the problem with IoT/home automation is a lack of consistency across devices - they all want their own apps. HomeKit is so close to making that easy - you shouldn't have to spin up HomeAssistant with a bunch of plug-ins to make this stuff easy for the end-user, but that's where we are (and that's decades after the first gen stuff rolled out). I'd think it was an easy sell to have lights, doorbell, security cameras, and smart speakers all connected easily.

Anyway, feels like Apple could throw some weight into this market, with Apple-branded devices, and "win" the market. At least for households that are already heavily invested in iDevices. Right now, I have to poke around and find a smattering of off-brand stuff and only about half of it is natively HomeKit, so I have to run HomeAssistant with a HomeKit bridge, etc.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#63

Post by caminante »

retired wrote: post #10
CGMthrowaway wrote: post #2

Add to Cook's impeccable timing, that he stepped out of CEO role and into Chairman on exactly his 65th birthday, the very day he became first eligible for his pension

Being eligible for Medicare, Cook can finally afford to retire.

With a fixed income, I'm worried he can't afford to upgrade his iPhone every year.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#64

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

doitLP wrote: post #54
alsetmusic wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can anyone point me to what he does, on a day to day basis, that makes him and operational genius? How does it manifest in him personally? Under Jobs, he transformed the company from one that had hardware taking up space in warehouses waiting to be purchased and shipped to The iPod Company. Their sales of iPods were a huge part of their growth and resurgence. They had entirely new models and designs every year and…

Thanks, but how did he do it? Actually what does he do than saying “ok guys tip priority is moving these units”? Like do he come up with the strategies? Or is he good at picking winners when he sees them from proposals of his underlings?

Read the “Apple in China” book.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#65

Post by icedchai »

ecshafer wrote: post #48
snowwrestler wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tim Cook refreshing his 401k page every day to see if he’s ready to FIRE.

I know this is a joke. But when I was at Vanguard, something like 95-99% of our users literally just logged on, checked their balance and logged off. A decent percentage of the user base does that every day. So only a few percentage a day actually made a trade or anything else. I always found it pretty odd before I realized I only make a trade 1 or 2% of the time.

I'm one of those users! I make a trade at Vanguard maybe every other month! I have another brokerage account I use for more active trading. My Vanguard account isn't "for" that, and the UI is so bad it kind of discourages it.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#66

Post by mingus88 »

losvedir wrote: post #56
mingus88 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your points are why Apple isn’t entering that market. Mounts, cases, smart locks, thermostats, bulbs…where is the “iPhone moment” for this sector? It’s all small beans now. Why would Apple want to compete here? Personally I think any big moves in this area would be predicated on a next-level Siri companion. Stop futzing around with scenes, buttons, switches and pairing devices and just tell your house how it should w…

Well Siri can't do all the cool home automation stuff if the "small beans" aren't already there.

Siri first needs to fulfill the promise from the Apple Intelligence keynote. In this context, the small beans are things like setting timers and playing music reliably. AI was pitched as a true assistant who understood your whole digital life.

Nobody is going to hand control of their home to a system that was the dumbest smart assistant 14 years ago and is still behind everyone else.

It’s amazing to me that Apple announced vaporware that they didn’t know how to build yet. Nobody did, but Apple usually bides their time making it work before the reveal.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#67

Post by steveBK123 »

pjc50 wrote: post #59
steveBK123 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe Ternus is the kind of leader who could bring 0->1 innovation back to Apple in some form. Maybe an Alphabet "other bets" type setup? Or simply just taking more chances on completely new product lines that may or may not pay off in 5-10 years (like VisionPro). I mean when was the last big new bet previous to VisionPro? Wearables, with the Apple Watch in 2015 is probably it, a decade prior. (AirPods are huge but f…

For a while people were talking about the "Apple car". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_car_project ; seemingly they gave up on it because they realized that FSD wasn't quite going to work. I'm not sure why they wouldn't just pivot back to making a regular EV, it would still be guaranteed to sell millions of units at a premium price point by being a Tesla without (a) That Guy (b) build quality issues like panel ga…

The car always made the least sense to me in that its the polar opposite of what Apple had evolved to. High-capex in-house manufacturing onshore in a highly regulated space vs capital-light outsourced contract manufacturing offshore of discretionary purchase consumer goods.

There are no successful car makers that outsource production, and even foreign car makers generally make cars onshore in US for tariff/political/regulatory reasons.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#68

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

mring33621 wrote: post #61
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would hope that Apple doesn’t follow Google’s lead. Google has the attention span of a crack addled flea and struggles to make great products

Gemini is a great product

I have used Gemini, I have a personal subscription to ChatGPT and a corporate $5000/month allowance to Claude.

How is it better than either? How is it doing as a revenue making product?

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#69

Post by doitLP »

jinushaun wrote: post #27
doitLP wrote: post #18

> Cook was, without question, an operational genius I’ve seen this quoted time and again. In this article the evidence is that he outsourced manufacturing to a JIT chain in China. That doesn’t seem very genius to me. Yes they were able to uphold high standards and get preferential production and pricing but what else? Can anyone point me to what he does, on a day to day basis, that makes him and operational genius? H…

I think you underestimate what he does. It seems simple and obvious in hindsight, but if it were so easy, others would not be so far behind. A difficult thing done well looks easy. Reminds me of when Toyota disrupted auto manufacturing. Under Tim Cook, Apple has pretty much exclusive access to certain parts and suppliers. Apple buys up all the silicon. Competitors can’t compete at the same quality without paying a pr…

I’m not underestimating what he does, I’m asking what does he actually do to make it happen beyond setting priorities and holding subordinates accountable? I’m not questioning that he does many things well and right and even genius, I just want to know what those are!

I’m sure Isaacson will cover it well in his bio!

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#70

Post by greedo »

steveBK123 wrote: post #67
pjc50 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a while people were talking about the "Apple car". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_car_project ; seemingly they gave up on it because they realized that FSD wasn't quite going to work. I'm not sure why they wouldn't just pivot back to making a regular EV, it would still be guaranteed to sell millions of units at a premium price point by being a Tesla without (a) That Guy (b) build quality issues like panel ga…

The car always made the least sense to me in that its the polar opposite of what Apple had evolved to. High-capex in-house manufacturing onshore in a highly regulated space vs capital-light outsourced contract manufacturing offshore of discretionary purchase consumer goods. There are no successful car makers that outsource production, and even foreign car makers generally make cars onshore in US for tariff/political/…

The way Apple funded hardware purchases for their "OEM" manufacturers makes it hard to really say they were "capital-light."
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