Tim Cook, the interview: Running Apple ‘is sort of a lonely job’ • Hacker News Board

Re: Tim Cook, the interview: Running Apple ‘is sort of a lonely job’

#121

Post by coldtea » Mon, Aug 15, 2016, 3:30 AM UTC

bitmapbrother wrote: post #113

coldtea wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm a six year iPhone owner who based off of the iPhone 7 rumors it's going to underwhelm in the innovation department and lose this customer. Yeah, because better CPU, GPU, camera(s), and such are not innovative enough... > The Note 7 looks awesome due to it being waterproof and other features Apple hasn't bothered to include. Yeah, for those of us using our phone on the shower it will be a god-send. Waterproof! S…

>Yeah, because better CPU, GPU, camera(s), and such are not innovative enough... They're not. They're expected. >Yeah, for those of us using our phone on the shower it will be a god-send. Waterproof! Such innovation! Right...

Innovation != surprise. If that was the case, the 1000x improvements we got by Moore's law would not count as innovation (except maybe when we completely change CPU architectures, e.g. from CISC to RISC etc).

And the kind of work, research and investment in getting new and improved cpus, gpus, cameras is hardly trivial.

If anything, the innovations mentioned (wireless charging, waterproof case) are both existing and trivial to adopt (if one wanted).

Re: Tim Cook, the interview: Running Apple ‘is sort of a lonely job’

#122

Post by coldtea » Mon, Aug 15, 2016, 3:32 AM UTC

jacalata wrote: post #81

coldtea wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm a six year iPhone owner who based off of the iPhone 7 rumors it's going to underwhelm in the innovation department and lose this customer. Yeah, because better CPU, GPU, camera(s), and such are not innovative enough... > The Note 7 looks awesome due to it being waterproof and other features Apple hasn't bothered to include. Yeah, for those of us using our phone on the shower it will be a god-send. Waterproof! S…

Bizarrely, none of the phones I know of that died from water damage were being used in a shower. We must move in different circles.

Pretty different, yes, cause I hardly know of anyone who lost their phone that way. I'm pretty sure there are a few. But I seriously doubt there are that many.

In contrast, a phone being damaged because it fell and broke its glass etc, I've seen and heard stories of dozens of times.

Re: Tim Cook, the interview: Running Apple ‘is sort of a lonely job’

#123

Post by ufmace » Mon, Aug 15, 2016, 3:35 AM UTC

roksprok wrote: post #102

ufmace wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say that "running out of time" is probably over the top, but there's some truth behind the idea. Their huge margins and huger stock price and market cap are based on the perception that they're the company that can produce industry-changing smash hits over and over again. But Jobs was really the one doing that. Can Cook's Apple produce the next big thing, something that takes the whole tech world by storm, like t…

Isn't Alphabet's P/E twice that of Apple? 13 vs 25 if I remember correctly. Doesn't this imply that it's Google, not Apple, that people are counting on to 'produce industry-changing smash hits over and over again'?

Interesting, I didn't know that actually. Seems GOOGL has a market cap almost as high and 2.5x higher P/E. Would make me wonder about Google a bit too. In my opinion, they don't really innovate at the market level like Apple does. They have the Search cash cow, Gmail was moderately innovative at the time, and most of their other stuff comes off as well-executed me-toos. Technically innovative, but not exactly opening up new markets for things that nobody knew existed.

It's also a narrative problem. Apple has the narrative going - Jobs is gone, can Cook really replace him? Google is mostly boring crickets as far as management narratives.

Re: Tim Cook, the interview: Running Apple ‘is sort of a lonely job’

#124

Post by coldtea » Mon, Aug 15, 2016, 3:36 AM UTC

codefolder wrote: post #95

coldtea wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I certainly don't agree with it. Wearables have a lot of potential, but wearable watches are fundamentally not a great idea - for practical reasons (screen too small, limited battery life) I'm not sure I follow. A wearable watch will have the biggest screen and better battery life combo than any other kind of practical wearable device I can think of (e.g. when not strapping a 3" screen and a battery pack the size o…

2/3 of Americans are considered to be overweight/obese . And before you say, 'that's even more of reason to own one,' no matter how sleek the advertising campaign to peddle a broadly useless piece of technojunk, you're never going to convince the populous that exercising is fun. Unless it detects cancer, it's just a toy. https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statisti...

>you're never going to convince the populous that exercising is fun

You don't have to convince the "populous", just enough tens of millions, and it would be a huge profit center.

And you don't have to convince them about exercise being fun or anything similar either -- just that not dying from heart attack and knowing your glucose levels and such is fun...

(There are 30 million people with diabetes in the US alone for example).

Re: Tim Cook, the interview: Running Apple ‘is sort of a lonely job’

#125

Post by zepto » Mon, Aug 15, 2016, 3:37 AM UTC

Houshalter wrote: post #100

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you also suggesting that they should get some sympathy? Why?

Because they are a human being, and because wealth is not equal to happiness. It seems to correlate with happiness, but probably because wealthier people have less stress, and that's certainly not true for a CEO.

But nobody is forcing him to do it. If it doesn't make him happy, he can change it, unlike many people.

Re: Tim Cook, the interview: Running Apple ‘is sort of a lonely job’

#126

Post by zepto » Mon, Aug 15, 2016, 3:39 AM UTC

geomark wrote: post #76

ktRolster wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW the apple watch sold fairly well: http://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-watch-with-sizable-sales-c... Expectations of course are ridiculously high.

My impression is that the watch sold mainly because of Apple branding not because it solved a real problem or opened up an entire new market. People are hoping/expecting Apple's next big thing to become a viral hit lke the iPhone. The watch isn't that.

The watch is selling well and continuing to grow at a rate greater than the iPhone did over the same period.

Re: Tim Cook, the interview: Running Apple ‘is sort of a lonely job’

#127

Post by coldtea » Mon, Aug 15, 2016, 3:45 AM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #75

coldtea wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Working on the watch means that they aren't working on the Mac or the iPad. You do know that all 3 share the same basic OS and technologies (kernel, filesystems, basic services, lots of UI and helper code, etc) just in differently tuned versions with a different "facade" on top, right? Or that that they have different teams on each of these devices for everything that's not shared, teams that don't even communicate…

If everything is so rosy, why are we left with multi-year gaps in even minor product revisions for products like MacBook Pro, Mac Pro, iPod, iPad? I love the products. I probably have $15k of Apple hear in my home. But I'm not buying my kid a 3 year old computer to go off to college with at a premium price.

>If everything is so rosy, why are we left with multi-year gaps in even minor product revisions for products like MacBook Pro, Mac Pro, iPod, iPad?

Because the Air and MBP want to phase out in favor of MBPr and Macbook (plain) and they've been waiting on Intel to deliver anything significant to warrant a new product line for ages. (Intel Skylake CPUs in form factors and energy consumption compatible with the MBPr line have been TBD until recently --some still are--, and in limited production yields still. And previous generation didn't even give any performance speed bump of 2 and 3 generations behind MBPr CPU, and in some cases, worse). In the cases where Intel delivered, Apple did too (e.g. Skylake iMac and Macbook).

The Mac Pro has a similar story (and isn't their first priority or biggest seller anyway).

That said, not sure about any "multi-year gaps" regarding the iPad. The iPad Pro 9.7 came out in March, and the iPad Mini 4 less than a year ago, on September.

Re: Tim Cook, the interview: Running Apple ‘is sort of a lonely job’

#128

Post by tekklloneer » Mon, Aug 15, 2016, 3:46 AM UTC

bitmapbrother wrote: post #111

krisdol wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and partly because billionaires get less than zero sympathy if they talk about having difficult lives That quote from the essay reminds me of a Silicon Valley scene [1] where the CEO of the pseudo-Google company in the show gets vilified (rightfully so in the show) for complaining about how hard billionaires have it in this country. I bet the creator's read PG's essay and were inspired by it. [1]: https://www.youtu…

>pseudo-Google company I don't get why people think Hooli is some pseudo-Google company. In the Silicon Valley universe Google clearly exists. Eric Schmidt was in their series premiere and the show's opening intro animation clearly shows Google and YouTube.

It's because they probably can't use Google but they wanted a Google. It's a writing device to get around that inconvenient fact.

Re: Tim Cook, the interview: Running Apple ‘is sort of a lonely job’

#129

Post by aetherson » Mon, Aug 15, 2016, 3:50 AM UTC

ghostly_s wrote: post #6

TekMol wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder why he can't hire a "Sub CEO" whose job it is to handle 90% of the shit. Mission statement: "Act like the CEO. But you are allowed to pass the hardest 10% of your tasks to Larry. 10%. Not more.".

Isn't this what a COO does?

I think that every company handles its C-levels somewhat uniquely, for a variety of reasons. But if there's an archetypical COO job, I'd say it's the process-and-execution leadership job, but not the long-term strategy, big product vision job.

Re: Tim Cook, the interview: Running Apple ‘is sort of a lonely job’

#130

Post by coldtea » Mon, Aug 15, 2016, 3:51 AM UTC

haberman wrote: post #99

coldtea wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Basically at 25 he started running as fast as he could and it must seem to him that he hasn't stopped to catch his breath since. Every day new shit happens in the Google empire that only the CEO can deal with, and he, as CEO, has to deal with it. If he goes on vacation for even a week, a whole week's backlog of shit accumulates. With the difference that unlike a poor single working mother, or some 40-something fact…

The thesis was "some aspects of Larry Page's life are unenviable." Not "Larry Page's life is as hard as a poor single working mother." If you dismiss difficult aspects of a person's life because somebody else has it worse, then nobody actually has a hard life except for starving children in Africa. Maybe not even them: captives who suffer regular torture and indignity probably have it worse. Or modern-day slaves.

Even if "some aspects of Larry Page's life are unenviable", what part of "he can quit anytime" doesn't still hold?

Some parts of everyone's life are unenviable.

That said, I don't think it makes much sense to comparmentalize working lives into "enviable" and "unenviable" parts.

The end result is what matters, and the bottom line is that he has billions to show for it, can work as little or as much as he wants (the other stuff, that he's somehow "forced" is BS, he could take a decorative role in the company if he wished to), and he can retire at any time.

So what part should I show sympathy for? That, despite all these facts, he works e.g. 15-hour days? Well, so do tons of double-shifting dirt poor people, immigrants etc. Without the good parts, and despite their inclinations.

>If you dismiss difficult aspects of a person's life because somebody else has it worse, then nobody actually has a hard life

Not just "somebody else" -- 99.999% of the population. He has it better than statistically almost everyone on the planet. There are maybe 1000 or 10000 people in his position (net worth, age, etc.).