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Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

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Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#141

Post by JustExAWS »

alistairSH wrote: post #62
steveBK123 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

It’s not hard to look at sales volumes of any of those to know that they don’t have mass market appeal - except maybe the Amazon devices and even Amazon cut jobs in that department and the managers there had to fuzz the numbers to get downstream revenue attributed to them.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/hey-alexa-why-costing-amazon-...

I can’t find a publicly attributable source now.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#142

Post by reaperducer »

foobarian wrote: post #96
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know anything about Ternus other than WikiPedia saying he was VP of hardware engineering. Jobs of course (in addition to being an asshole) really was a product guy - he wanted to build seamless appliances that just worked, blending hardware, software and design into a beautiful thing that just did what you wanted (or what Jobs thought you wanted, which he was well attuned to). I think Apple took some missteps…

Speaking of missteps, there was a period in late 2010s where MacBook Pros really took a bad turn IMO chasing some "thinness" fetish, but recovered nicely afterwards. My M4 is a glorious device built like a tank

Speaking of missteps, there was a period in late 2010s where MacBook Pros really took a bad turn IMO chasing some "thinness" fetish

It wouldn't be HN if someone didn't dredge up a decade-old axe to grind.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#143

Post by ComputerGuru »

foobarian wrote: post #96
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know anything about Ternus other than WikiPedia saying he was VP of hardware engineering. Jobs of course (in addition to being an asshole) really was a product guy - he wanted to build seamless appliances that just worked, blending hardware, software and design into a beautiful thing that just did what you wanted (or what Jobs thought you wanted, which he was well attuned to). I think Apple took some missteps…

Speaking of missteps, there was a period in late 2010s where MacBook Pros really took a bad turn IMO chasing some "thinness" fetish, but recovered nicely afterwards. My M4 is a glorious device built like a tank

> but recovered nicely afterwards

After Ives was fired/forced out/decided to leave to pursue his creative vision.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#145

Post by alsetmusic »

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?

I don't know, but he was Chief Operations Officer when all of this happened, so whatever happened in those regards happened on his watch and should be credited to him (as well as those reporting to him).

It's not like Microsoft's head of gaming has no bearing on their horrible mismanagement of the studios they bought and shuttered. That person was responsible. Do I know what they did day to day? No. But there's someone new in that position and I think that tells us something.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#146

Post by jonhohle »

highfrequency wrote: post #138
foobarian wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of missteps, there was a period in late 2010s where MacBook Pros really took a bad turn IMO chasing some "thinness" fetish, but recovered nicely afterwards. My M4 is a glorious device built like a tank

Why do you prefer the laptop to be thicker and heavier?

I think the preference is to have a battery that can run a CPU that's compiling, AI-ing, or rendering for an entire day (16+ hours) without having to worry about where an outlet is or being tethered to a wall or be thermal throttled. Right now that's a volume tradeoff. If there was something that ran as fast for as long and was MacBook Air (or the last Intel generation) thin, I don't think anyone would complain.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#147

Post by troupo »

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…

> IoT turned out to be sort of a nothing.

Mostly because it's fragmented and Apple was nowhere to be found with their initially quite good and promising but then completely abandoned HomeKit.

In 2026 I still can't have my always-on supercomputer in the form of AppleTV to do anything with any of the devices at home. And Home app is extremely stupid, extremely limited, and requires a PhD in rocket science to figure out how to do anything with it (espceially since they just bolted on Shortcuts totally on the side).

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#148

Post by petu »

highfrequency wrote: post #138
foobarian wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of missteps, there was a period in late 2010s where MacBook Pros really took a bad turn IMO chasing some "thinness" fetish, but recovered nicely afterwards. My M4 is a glorious device built like a tank

Why do you prefer the laptop to be thicker and heavier?

Nobody said that.

MacBooks of that period made compromises for useless gain in thinness. You can't with straight face tell that butterfly mechanism was a good tradeoff for .3 mm.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#149

Post by JustExAWS »

kilroy123 wrote: post #124
monkeydust wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What big hardware bets are people expecting him to take?

AR glasses that eventually replace the iPhone.

From a usability standpoint. Do you expect everyone to wear glasses? Are people going to all be out in public talking and doing hand gestures as input to their glasses? You don’t need to cater to different people who need different prescriptions for their fingers and for me, I have prescription glasses with two separate prescriptions and transition lenses.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#150

Post by alsetmusic »

colechristensen wrote: post #55
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…

Compared to game consoles, graphics cards, and all manner of other electronics things... have you ever seen Apple products on those stock tracker websites? Has there ever been an actual problem with scalpers? Ever had to sign up for a waiting list? No. Besides being a little hard to find some things for a period of days after a new release, you can just buy Apple stuff. The PS5 was hard to find in stores for TWO YEAR…

I was overly sleepy due to prescribed sleeping pills when I woke up at 6am to preorder my M5 MacBook Pro. I got stuck on the order page for five minutes because I didn't notice that I had to pick the color and hadn't done so. I checked out ten minutes after preorders went live and that cost me a week on delivery whereas I normally complete preorders fast enough to have my product arrive on the day of release.

We ordered a MacBook Neo for my partner and she had to wait three weeks for it despite the company obviously expecting strong interest in the product at launch.

> The PS5 was hard to find in stores for TWO YEARS

Pandemic and supply chain issues surely contributed to that. It can't be cited without context.

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