Tim Cook Is Leaving. Good • Hacker News Board

Re: Tim Cook Is Leaving. Good

#101

Post by tempodox » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 2:12 PM UTC

AstroBen wrote: post #89

eddieroger wrote: post #9

It is so easy to sit on and critique from the sidelines. Steve Jobs had a passion for product, and it showed - he pushed the teams to make things he approved of, and that was the measure. Tim Cook had a passion for growth, and as the article states, Apple's income now rival some GDPs. They're different people with different drives. In fact, Jobs told Cook not to do what he would do, but do the right thing, and to Coo…

So much of Apple's growth is anti-consumer. You can't repair your device. They're intently focused on locking you in as much as possible, making it hard to leave, and not by making such a good product. They try their best to force app developers to pay them their 30% tax, even when the devs brought the customers in from elsewhere. They, for so long, refused to support RCS and downgraded the messaging experience with…

> Anything I missed?

The constantly sinking level of software quality. They make excellent hardware ruined by crappy software.

Re: Tim Cook Is Leaving. Good

#102

Post by moffers » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 2:12 PM UTC

AstroBen wrote: post #89

eddieroger wrote: post #9

It is so easy to sit on and critique from the sidelines. Steve Jobs had a passion for product, and it showed - he pushed the teams to make things he approved of, and that was the measure. Tim Cook had a passion for growth, and as the article states, Apple's income now rival some GDPs. They're different people with different drives. In fact, Jobs told Cook not to do what he would do, but do the right thing, and to Coo…

So much of Apple's growth is anti-consumer. You can't repair your device. They're intently focused on locking you in as much as possible, making it hard to leave, and not by making such a good product. They try their best to force app developers to pay them their 30% tax, even when the devs brought the customers in from elsewhere. They, for so long, refused to support RCS and downgraded the messaging experience with…

I think maybe part of the argument is that Apple’s closed system was a benevolent dictator-style ecosystem that was actually benevolent. Until it wasn’t.

Re: Tim Cook Is Leaving. Good

#103

Post by epolanski » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 2:12 PM UTC

vlovich123 wrote: post #19

Oof. This article gets so much wrong… > The rot starts when the salespeople end up running the company. > Then, in 2011, Apple promoted its head of operations to CEO. Tim Cook is not and never has been a salesperson. Head of operations at a company like Apple is a deeply technical role. That’s why he has a degree in industrial engineering and an MBA. > Today’s Apple doesn’t pass that test. And the failures aren’t dra…

> Head of operations at a company like Apple is a deeply technical role.

At that level and scale it's merely politics.

Re: Tim Cook Is Leaving. Good

#104

Post by rayiner » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 2:13 PM UTC

eddieroger wrote: post #9

It is so easy to sit on and critique from the sidelines. Steve Jobs had a passion for product, and it showed - he pushed the teams to make things he approved of, and that was the measure. Tim Cook had a passion for growth, and as the article states, Apple's income now rival some GDPs. They're different people with different drives. In fact, Jobs told Cook not to do what he would do, but do the right thing, and to Coo…

> It is so easy to sit on and critique from the sidelines. Steve Jobs had a passion for product, and it showed - he pushed the teams to make things he approved of, and that was the measure. Tim Cook had a passion for growth, and as the article states, Apple's income now rival some GDPs.

Who cares that it's Tim Cook's "passion" unless you're an Apple investor?

Re: Tim Cook Is Leaving. Good

#105

Post by eddieroger » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 2:13 PM UTC

miltonlost wrote: post #42

eddieroger wrote: post #9

It is so easy to sit on and critique from the sidelines. Steve Jobs had a passion for product, and it showed - he pushed the teams to make things he approved of, and that was the measure. Tim Cook had a passion for growth, and as the article states, Apple's income now rival some GDPs. They're different people with different drives. In fact, Jobs told Cook not to do what he would do, but do the right thing, and to Coo…

You didn’t address any of the criticism towards Cook and the decline of the product under him. All that matters seems to be “did the line go up?”

You're right, I didn't, because that isn't the measure of his leadership, which was my whole point.

> All that matters seems to be "did the line go up?"

Exactly.

Re: Tim Cook Is Leaving. Good

#106

Post by Schiendelman » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 2:13 PM UTC

drcongo wrote: post #68

sgt wrote: post #2

> Your AirPods just connected to the wrong device. Again. > iMessage is taking twenty minutes to sync a message between your laptop and your phone sitting six inches apart. HomeKit forgot the kitchen lightbulb exists, and will remember it again in three hours like nothing happened. I've literally seen nothing of this happen (or to my family all on Apple devices). While I don't doubt they do happen to some unfortunate…

AirPods and iMessage, agreed, never had a problem. The Home app though remains Apple's unloved ginger stepchild - every major OS release I'm hopeful that they've done something about it, but they never do. I'm starting to think Apple's internal view of Home / HomeKit is that they wish they'd never built it in the first place.

This is tough. Most home devices are built to be absolute bottom of the barrel. Notice that almost every HomeKit device says it only uses 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi?

Apple tried to do certification for a while in 2018ish, but nobody could get through it, so I think they stopped.

Apple is starting to build their own home devices and I expect them to eat the market and cause improvement via competition.

Re: Tim Cook Is Leaving. Good

#107

Post by simonw » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 2:13 PM UTC

tejohnso wrote: post #96

[flagged]

It's by far the strongest sign of AI writing. I counted 14 instances of the word "not" in this piece, and now I'm wondering if ratio-of-nots-to-length might be a really cheap way to spot text that came out of an LLM.

I think the reason is grates so much is that it's such a cliché. Given their nature, it's not surprising that LLMs would turn to clichés so much.

Re: Tim Cook Is Leaving. Good

#108

Post by infecto » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 2:13 PM UTC

AstroBen wrote: post #89

eddieroger wrote: post #9

It is so easy to sit on and critique from the sidelines. Steve Jobs had a passion for product, and it showed - he pushed the teams to make things he approved of, and that was the measure. Tim Cook had a passion for growth, and as the article states, Apple's income now rival some GDPs. They're different people with different drives. In fact, Jobs told Cook not to do what he would do, but do the right thing, and to Coo…

So much of Apple's growth is anti-consumer. You can't repair your device. They're intently focused on locking you in as much as possible, making it hard to leave, and not by making such a good product. They try their best to force app developers to pay them their 30% tax, even when the devs brought the customers in from elsewhere. They, for so long, refused to support RCS and downgraded the messaging experience with…

You might find that you are in the minority though. Nothing wrong with this at all but apple makes some of the best selling products in the market place and that has largely been because of Tim Cook.

Re: Tim Cook Is Leaving. Good

#109

Post by shibaprasadb » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 2:14 PM UTC

>Your AirPods just connected to the wrong device. Again.

>iMessage is taking twenty minutes to sync a message between your laptop and your phone sitting six inches apart.

Have these ever happened to someone? I have been using an iPhone for 2 years but have never experienced this.

Re: Tim Cook Is Leaving. Good

#110

Post by tempodox » Mon, Apr 27, 2026, 2:14 PM UTC

eddieroger wrote: post #9

It is so easy to sit on and critique from the sidelines. Steve Jobs had a passion for product, and it showed - he pushed the teams to make things he approved of, and that was the measure. Tim Cook had a passion for growth, and as the article states, Apple's income now rival some GDPs. They're different people with different drives. In fact, Jobs told Cook not to do what he would do, but do the right thing, and to Coo…

> I'd love to see the critics do better.

That’s underspecified. Part of the problem is that there are multiple incompatible definitions of “better”.