Tim Cook at Apple was like Steve Ballmer at Microsoft. They scaled the company and made stock owners happy, but weren't true visionaries. I suppose there's a need for both types of leaders.
Report: Tim Cook could step down as Apple CEO 'as soon as next year'
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Re: Report: Tim Cook could step down as Apple CEO 'as soon as next year'
#42Long over due, he's done great but Apple needs fresh eyes. Apple's Ballmer era is over.
Re: Report: Tim Cook could step down as Apple CEO 'as soon as next year'
#43Cook's been great for massively scaling Apple (and its stock price) up, but the art, vision, and soul of the company is gone. It's just a stock price maximizing lawnmower now, just like every other corporate stock price maximizing lawnmower. If that's what shareholders want, fine, I guess. But I'd be bored just manufacturing the same boring rectangles every year. I think Steve would have been, too.
You forget, the camera gets better every year!
I've had an iphone for 15 years. I mean, it's fine...i just wish there was incentive for durability and sustainability v's replace it every 12-24 months. I guess sustainability concerns at Apple ends at ensuring their stock price is sustainable.
Re: Report: Tim Cook could step down as Apple CEO 'as soon as next year'
#44Yes!!! Such great news. Apple has really gone to shit. I am confronted by Apple performance and bug pain every hour of my life. I always think: how can someone think this is acceptable? Steve Jobs wouldn’t. Everything is such trash I could go on for hours. I realized a long time ago that if the person at the top doesn’t care then no one will. It seems hard to believe but it makes sense when you consider individual in…
their software is not great but they literally make the best hardware on the planet right now. you don't get to being a 4 trillion dollar market cap by being trash. they must be doing something right.
Second-best, according to the stock market. They must be getting something wrong if 4.5 trillion in market cap is sitting around waiting to be eaten. By Apple's arch-enemy, no less.
Re: Report: Tim Cook could step down as Apple CEO 'as soon as next year'
#45Re: Report: Tim Cook could step down as Apple CEO 'as soon as next year'
#46Yes!!! Such great news. Apple has really gone to shit. I am confronted by Apple performance and bug pain every hour of my life. I always think: how can someone think this is acceptable? Steve Jobs wouldn’t. Everything is such trash I could go on for hours. I realized a long time ago that if the person at the top doesn’t care then no one will. It seems hard to believe but it makes sense when you consider individual in…
Steve Jobs shipped a cordless mouse with a charger port on the bottom, the infamous hockey puck mouse, and a laptop that visibly discolored in the shape of handprints where your wrist rests. iTunes happened under Jobs watch and was unwound in the Cook era.
Re: Report: Tim Cook could step down as Apple CEO 'as soon as next year'
#47If you check my comments Im a routine critic of Apple. Specifically its mis-management of Siri. But, in my mind, Tim Cook is also responsible for the only exceptional qualities of Apple. Namely its production of the M series chips and the Vision Pro (yes really). They better have someone outstanding in mind as a replacement. Otherwise I could easily see the successor mildly improve Siri/AI functions, while continuing…
Changing chip is way too little of an accomplishment in 10+ years of leadership of what was once the biggest tech company on the planet. The company isn't growing from years, and it's only saved by the positive offset coming from advertisement and app store growth.
"…and it's only saved by the positive offset coming from advertisement and app store growth"
That has been part of the plan for a decade now since Eddy Cue was tasked with boosting Apple's income from "services". (It's worked pretty well for Microsoft.)
Re: Report: Tim Cook could step down as Apple CEO 'as soon as next year'
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
How serious is this comment? As a thought experiment, this intrigues me. Imagine Steve Wozniak suddenly pops in as CEO. What might happen to the company in the following years?
I don't know if OP is serious, but more than once, his name has come up on this topic in discussions in the past that I've had with people in my social circle who work at Apple. He obviously gets much respect and is considered an engineer's engineer. I don't think anyone would be against Woz stepping into to revitalize Apple. The real question is whether Woz would do it.
Everybody loves Woz, for good reasons, but (a) he’s not a manager (b) he’s not executive material (c) he’s notoriously unmotivated (d) he hasn’t engineered anything significant since what, the mid-1980’s?
Re: Report: Tim Cook could step down as Apple CEO 'as soon as next year'
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
I couldn't disagree more. Some of the worst Apple computers I've owned date to the Jobs era. All of the best have been from the Cook era. Apple Silicon has been an enormous success. (My first Apple was a TiBook, for what it's worth.)
Well, the current hardware is solid - great build quality, powerful, insane battery life. However, software-wise, the peak was 10.6. There hasn't been the same level of quality ever since.
I would not want to be running Snow Leopard. And remember, that's a release they had to do because 10.5 was so rough!
Re: Report: Tim Cook could step down as Apple CEO 'as soon as next year'
#50Bring back Woz.
How serious is this comment? As a thought experiment, this intrigues me. Imagine Steve Wozniak suddenly pops in as CEO. What might happen to the company in the following years?
I doubt Woz would want the job. He's an engineer, not a corporate strategist, and he seems happy that way.
The ideal CEO would be a business strategist, innovator and thought-leader, and world-class marketer, but with enough of an engineering background to chase hard problems.
There aren't many of those around.
Jobs did okay at all four, mostly. Cook gets the first, mostly, and has adequate delegation skills for engineering and marketing. This works superbly when the engineering is world-leading (the M chips) and badly when the engineering is mediocre (the software.) The marketing has drifted towards attempts at luxury-consumer branding, which is an off-the-shelf pitch. It hasn't been a failure. But it has lost some of its distinctiveness, and it's a little incoherent at times.
Cook's still been hugely more successful than Sculley or Amelio. Sculley was a bland corporatist, and Amelio was very, very smart, but too much of an engineer to be good at the rest. He did really well elsewhere, but Apple just wasn't a good fit.
The job is a poisoned chalice. It's going to be extremely difficult for the new CEO to assert their authority over the established fiefdoms, keep the plates spinning, deal with a weird political and economic environment, and still create Apple-styled innovation.