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Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

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Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#311
post #51

I don't think Cook gets enough credit for this [0] - Book: Apple in China. (Author Interview [1]) It's an undisputed damning account of how Cook was used by China to train millions of Chinese electronics manufacturers, managers, and engineers. The US took the most advanced industrial electronics manufacturing tech, and handed the expertise on a silver platter it to a long term strategic enemy. Frankly, he shouldn't l…

When people discuss this subject, I wonder what they think the counterfactual world would have looked like. Do people think China could have been kept backwards forever? I notice nobody goes around accusing Maurice Chang of doing this. Or W Edwards Deming.

Likening postwar occupied Japan, who is still a military and economic partner of the US, to 2000s-2010s China is certainly a choice.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#312
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an element of revisionism to this perspective. It used to be thought that integration with the global economy would gradually bring more alignment with Western values as well. The ideas was that a rising middle class would demand more say in running the country. That elites would need to become accountable to the people, ideally via democracy. That geopolitical competition would be positive sum.

That idea was minorly present during Clinton and Bush, by the time Obama was in office I think it was clear that was never going to happen. The book covers the period from 2016 on, so long after that neocon dream.

The idea lingered for longer than that. China under Hu Jintao wasn’t exactly friendly to the west, but it was Xi who really set China on its present course to build a multi-polar world, make real noise about reunification with Taiwan, etc.

This new direction didn’t become clear to both sides of the aisle in the US until a year or two into Xi’s tenure. If someone else other than Xi had been chosen, we would likely have a very different China today.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 orde…

Interesting. Do you think that "I forgot to push a button and had to wait a week to receive a new release" supports or counters the claim that new releases are sometimes hard to find for a period of days.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#314

Impressive Tenue, IMO. Apple Watch, AirPods, M1 Silicon, services. A few flops, like Apple Vision Pro and their confusion with AI. But that's ok given the wins. Overall, as a non-founder he's near the tops in CEOs over the last couple of decades. The only non-founders I would put above him are Satya (although he has a had a couple of rough years), Bob Iger, Jamie Dimon and maybe Andy Jassy. Taking a fair lens to this…

I'm not sure it's fair to call the Apple Vision Pro a flop in the traditional sense. While it may not have sold millions of units and been a household staple. It certainly focused the entire org on manufacturing a suite of chips and hardware that are on a completely different level than their competitors. Apple's now has a clear advantage in all dimensions that matter: compute, power consumption, size, capabilities,…

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Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#315
post #249

It may be unfair to Jobs, but I feel like the comparison of him as the genius vs. Cook the talented enabler is a bit flat. I think the genius of Cook becomes obvious when you look at the fate of Tesla - if Musk, another impressive mind of our time, had "gone away" in the right window and was replaced by a person like Cook who got it to really broad adoption, then everyone would say "Musk the visionary did it all", bu…

This is in fact what happened with SpaceX. Musk had the vision to make first stage reusability a thing with the Falcon 9, and Gwynne Shotwell is the operational genius behind the juggernaut that it is today.

Hilarious quote from her Wikipedia page:

> Shotwell has received particular praise from NASA Administrator Bill Nelson for her "phenomenal" leadership of SpaceX as it developed the Falcon 9 into the "workhorse" of the space launch sector.[19] Nelson had reportedly been concerned in 2022, after Elon Musk purchased Twitter, that it would be a distraction at SpaceX, but became more comfortable after meetings with Shotwell left him feeling reassured that she was in charge of day-to-day operations.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 orde…

"and supply chain issues" is what Apple didn't have. Well, I'm sure they had them, but they were able to navigate them.

The Mac M1 came out on practically the same day as the PS5, so I think it is a great example. The M1 was available in volume when they said it was going to be. What did Tim Cook do? That. Millions of products available when they said it was going to be, during pandemic-disrupted shipping.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#317
> Well, today we’re introducing three revolutionary products of this class. The first one: a widescreen iPod with touch controls. The second: a revolutionary mobile phone. And the third is a breakthrough Internet communications device.

Every time that i watch that keynote i think that Jobs should have started that list with the internet communication device thing, then the touch ipod and mobile phone last. The audicience responded to the internet device with a "meh" after the mobile phone announcement.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#318

On the AI/Gemini and the eventual replacement for an internal stack, Apple has done that before with Apple Maps. At the start people laughed at the melting bridges and the airport in a farm (the popular Airfield farm in Dublin, which we visited countless times with our daughter and their friends), but, in the end, it's a competent replacement for Google Maps. Apple is betting that good enough will get cheaper - with…

Google themselves also did this with Gemini, we saw how quickly OpenAI's lead was erased. It could make quite a bit of sense to use this as a crutch so they (Apple) can overhaul their own efforts free of production pressures.

I'm not really seeing it though. Apple is more hardware and holistic experience, they aren't traditionally pushing the boundaries of "web-scale" nerd software. As long as they can keep on top of the devices that end up in people's hands they will have a place and don't need to be an AI powerhouse. They're doing just fine using Google Search.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But is Medicare as good as the insurance you had before?

I can't speak for aworks, but most of the people I've spoken to on it, like my mother, say it's better than the private insurance they had before.

For general medical coverage, it was better for my Mom and now it seems better for me. Some things are not covered with traditional Medicare e.g. dental and vision.

Re: Tim Cook's Impeccable Timing

#320

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…

I bought a newer iPhone. My older one had the button to go to the home screen, the newer one replaced that with swipe up. After a year, the swipe up is still a nuisance. It often doesn't work, and I have to swipe up several times.

Do you use a case? My guess would be that when you swipe up, you're not quite starting low enough, perhaps unconsciously, because of the case being in the way. See if a case with a thinner front or smaller bezels helps. Using your index finger also works better than the thumb.

If that doesn't help, there are some settings you can try:

1. Go to Settings > Accessibility > Touch > AssistiveTouch and turn on AssistiveTouch. Under Custom Actions, set Single-Tap to Home. Now you have a home button. You can move this button anywhere on your screen and adjust its "Idle Opacity" so it's less distracting when not in use.

2. Go to Settings > Accessibility > Touch > Back Tap and choose Double Tap or Triple Tap. Select Home from the list of actions. Now you can tap on the back side of your phone to go home.

There's also Settings > Accessibility > Touch > Touch Accommodations, but that's more about preventing accidental touches and swipes, so that would probably make the situation worse for you.

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