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Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

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Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#521

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Big Company Experience means you can thrive Roman style bureaucratic power plays, not actually build things. It does take a different kind of person to bootstrap something out of a garage into a company, and then continue that fledgling company to the next phase, but instead of going BCE, they should be tapping back into the Founder Energy, not the BCE people.

I'm not a Big Company person or a Founder. From my perspective, it's the "continue to the next phase" that is the whole problem. Not everything needs to be expanded to it's logical extreme. I've worked in a lot of places, and the ideal employer is probably one who is in the middle, and planning on staying there. The concept of "grow until you've eaten everybody" is sickening, and tiring. Especially for your non-C-sui…

In how I view my relationships with customers, I wouldn't want to sacrifice my relationship with customer 3 to get customer 5. My main concern would be in building a stable resilient org, not in growth unless we had a reason for growth.

I understand where you are coming from, but the archetypes I am describing are just as valid for non-profits. The scrappy person who starts something is different than the person that creates a functioning long term org with structure and delegation. The person who is good at launching from zero has a different set of skills than the person to who takes something that has launched into something that is sustainable.

I am not talking about the growth at all costs mindset. I think we agree, it is the growth at all costs mindset that replaces that builder to creates that stable org with a carpet bagger that has BCE that claims they are going to build the business 2x or more but all they bring in is politics. These are the snake oil salesmen that fail up.

If an org needs to be revitalized, rather than bringing in BCE, they should go back and bring in Founder Energy.

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a Big Company person or a Founder. From my perspective, it's the "continue to the next phase" that is the whole problem. Not everything needs to be expanded to it's logical extreme. I've worked in a lot of places, and the ideal employer is probably one who is in the middle, and planning on staying there. The concept of "grow until you've eaten everybody" is sickening, and tiring. Especially for your non-C-sui…

It's because almost universally, people almost always want more money.

We should be creating environments where money isn't the largest axis. I'd like more time.

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because almost universally, people almost always want more money.

We should be creating environments where money isn't the largest axis. I'd like more time.

Time and money are interchangeable.

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should be creating environments where money isn't the largest axis. I'd like more time.

Time and money are interchangeable.

Exchangeable but not interchangeable, the conversion ratios are all wrong now. Even in the early 90s, you could have a part time job and not live with roomates. This is no longer possible even for many people making "good money".

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#525

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Yeah, agree with your take. I think it's especially odd to describe Apple as suffering from this "big company problem" given that it seems like the execs there have tenures much longer than the norm. Cook has been at Apple since 1998, shortly after Jobs' return. Federighi originally worked at NeXT when it was acquired by Apple. Eddy Cue has been at Apple since 1989 and his Wikipedia page says he was instrumental in c…

Cook has been exceptional for the stock. But we would likely all agree that on the product end (take Siri for example), it is absolutely clear he and the leadership do not use the product. If they did, I do not believe they would be ok with it being horrendous for over 10 years. Also Apple has had a lot of mishaps under Cook (the wireless Air charger that never got made, butterfly keyboards, Vision Pro, Siri, an OS t…

>it is absolutely clear he and the leadership do not use the product. If they did

I am absolutely sure they do. The problem is taste. And they are as you said not product people. A high bar for quality expectation. If we remember 50% of people cant taste the difference between Coca Cola and Pepsi, while some others could taste which Coca Cola they were manufactured.

And that is what Steve has been saying, you need to care about the product way beyond normal people do. And have the energy to try and push things forward.

The expectation are exceptionally high because we compared it to Steve Jobs era. But even if we lower the standard modern Apple is still not good enough as it is.

To quote Steve Jobs. Stop chasing the bottle line which is what Tim Cook is doing, and start making sure your Top line is done correctly.

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#526
post #237

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Plenty of examples. The problem isn't JG. It is Tim Cook. He is exceptionally poor at judging character. And I have been saying this for 10+ years. John Browett, CEO of Dixons. Anyone from UK have said WTF at the time. Angela Ahrendts, CEO of Burberry, the two together Apple has literally stopped expanding their Retail store despite having 10x as much customers. Rolled out many "changes" to Apple store when nearly ev…

To be fair, I’d counter with Jobs picking Jony Ive. Ive made gorgeous, lustworthy art objects that sucked as computers. The nadirs for me were iPhone 6’s bendgate and the 2015 MBP. Damn the functionality, we’ll make these suckers so slim you can shave with them! No one was begging for a MBP so thin it had to have compromised keyboard switches. Also consider the mouse that couldn’t charge while you use it, and the tra…

I think Jobs failed, but learned a lot from Sculley

That said I hated everuthing about ios 7 from a usability standpoint.

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#527

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Going to hard disagree with most of this. At any giant company with tons of executives (the article talks about the "Top 100" alone), if you didn't have at least some misfires then it probably means you're being too conservative. If anything, I give Apple props for making management changes relatively quickly when things aren't working out. For example, I have the exact opposite view of the forcing out of Scott Forst…

>if you didn't have at least some misfires then it probably means you're being too conservative. Think you've dunked too far into the McKinsey kool-aid here.

Bullshit, because I don't even know what "the McKinsey kool-aid" is on this topic.

But the best companies/teams I've worked at realized that some mistakes are inevitable, and they had a culture that quickly remedied those mistakes, learned from them, and moved on. The worst companies either (a) had "analysis paralysis" issues or (b) made lots of the same mistakes over and over and refused to learn.

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#528

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This is about charging, not how it sends data. And the batteries last a long time for this particular device, so there's minimal downside to unplugging. The downside to staying plugged in is there's a cable dragging around that makes the experience of moving the mouse a little bit worse all the time. A user has to be thinking about something to make a choice. Depending on the user to think about all these little aspe…

I guess we have to agree to disagree. To me, it's not about charging at all. It's about wireless vs. wired, and wireless is a buggy, defective user experience. I want to use my mouse full time while plugged in due to poor reliability when unplugged, and only Apple's devices say no--for reasons that don't make sense. I've never been bothered by a cable sticking out of my mouse.

They designed it as a wireless mouse. Moving the port wouldn't change the reliability of the signals without a redesign.

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#529
post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of examples. The problem isn't JG. It is Tim Cook. He is exceptionally poor at judging character. And I have been saying this for 10+ years. John Browett, CEO of Dixons. Anyone from UK have said WTF at the time. Angela Ahrendts, CEO of Burberry, the two together Apple has literally stopped expanding their Retail store despite having 10x as much customers. Rolled out many "changes" to Apple store when nearly ev…

The biggest thing that Ahrendts did was merge the online and physical stores. People forget that before she came around there was very little overlap. If you bought something online and you wanted to return it you had to ship it back instead of going to a store. It was one of the things that Cook wanted to get done by retail. Katie Cotton’s departure was in no doubt at least partly to do with her health. She died not…

The "idea" to merge online and physical stores was way before even Ahrendts arrival. I remember it was a common topic during even Steve Jobs era. But it wasn't done because I think it wasn't a priority. People forget iPhone could lose out to Android like how Mac lost to Windows.

Katie Cotton passed away in 2023. She left in 2013/2014. I think that is quite some time after Apple.

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#530

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Funny how that seemingly forgettable caveat is seen as a huge achievement for an executive. As a customer my biggest issue with the apple store is not the return process. It is the lack of them for the population of apple customers given how long it takes to get attended to and the difficulty of securing genius bar appointments. It worked alright 15 years ago but the stores needed to expand along with iPhone market s…

There’s probably some threshold they’ve reached at which just adding more stores doesn’t generate any incremental revenue. So you’ve got to wait a bit longer, well, where else are you going to go? Maybe I’m just a bit too cynical

And that is exactly the difference between old Apple and New Apple. Old Apple uses Apple Store as experience and services. It is part of the Apple ecosystem. It is not another "real estate property" like other Retail brands that is solely measured by incremental revenue.
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