[HN Gopher] How Tim Cook transformed Apple after Steve Jobs
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How Tim Cook transformed Apple after Steve Jobs
Author : wallflower
Score : 69 points
Date : 2021-02-14 17:09 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
| aborsy wrote:
| Anyways, I doubt the management style of Mr. Jobs (that worked
| well in 80s and 90s with subsequent momentum) would work today.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/4PG7M
| hyperluz wrote:
| I love my Apple pencil in combination with the iPad
| thebrain wrote:
| For what it's worth, I don't think Steve Jobs would have ever
| allowed the charging port for the Magic Mouse to ever be on the
| bottom and forced the user to have to leave the mouse on it's
| side to charge.
| fossuser wrote:
| Jobs wasn't perfect - rumor was the one button mouse exists
| because he picked it from an unfinished mock. The magic mouse
| also sucks (though I do like the large trackpad).
|
| I think their argument for the charging port on the bottom is
| because they didn't want people to be able to use it plugged in
| (so people wouldn't just leave it plugged in), it was
| intentional.
| vlunkr wrote:
| I think there needs to be a name for this type of baseless
| argument. COMPANY would never do UNPOPULAR_CHOICE under
| OLD_BOSS.
| yreg wrote:
| Steve might have actually loved it if he'd see it. It is
| rumoured that Apple put the charging port in such an awkward
| place to force people to unplug the cable as soon as the mouse
| is charged.
|
| I can imagine customers using the wireless mouse with the cable
| attached is something that would grind Steve's gears as well.
| Preventing the situation with a flipped tortoise design is a
| Steve thing to do.
| gvd wrote:
| It's so retarded. I have 2 magic mice. One is always charging
| so I can swap them out
| ritchiea wrote:
| One charge of mine lasts months, why on Earth would you need
| 2 mice? Worse case it runs out of battery and you take a
| 20min break to get enough charge to last you the rest of the
| day then make sure to charge overnight.
| tshaddox wrote:
| What kind of duty cycle are you using with your mouse? You
| get several hours of use from (literally) one minute of
| charging, and if you charge it overnight it will last for
| weeks.
| astrange wrote:
| Leaving batteries on a charger can wear them out much faster
| than just leaving it in a drawer. This is avoided by
| "optimized battery charging" on phones/watches/airpods now
| but I don't know if mice do it.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Any battery charger circuit without trickle charge
| disconnect is not worth an engineering 101 assignment.
| stjo wrote:
| In that specific case it looks like Apple did in fact made
| the right decision :D. 2 > 1
| airstrike wrote:
| Why would you buy two of the same terribly designed item
| instead of getting, I don't know, an MX Master (3)?
| joshspankit wrote:
| I don't know, I feel like Steve Jobs hated mice in general, or
| at least didn't understand the use of them.
|
| Look at the "puck" for example.
| underseacables wrote:
| I think the biggest change Tim made from Steve is that Tim's
| decision and management style seems more committee/group based,
| whereas Steve was much more autonomous; this is how it is now do
| it. I know he didn't want everyone thinking what would Steve do,
| but I do often wonder what someone with Steve's authority would
| do.
| duxup wrote:
| The impression I got was that Steve operated in a way that
| 'seemed' autonomous, but in terms of the results he was still
| letting folks around him do their thing, even if it went
| through him. Maybe it was the case of a strong personality /
| operational style that seemed more autonomous than it was?
|
| I find that people often seem to read strong personalities as
| sort of autocratic by default, even if they're not. Often when
| in those situations I've had to explain to coworkers that "No,
| he wasn't shooting you down, that was your chance to explain
| further / show him more."
| Applejinx wrote:
| That sounds about right. It was called 'management through
| walking around', and he got up in people's faces and demanded
| they perform better and compete with each other. He was the
| arbiter, and fickle, but he wasn't trying to get people to be
| subservient.
|
| Guy Kawasaki described it as, Jobs was so confident he
| brought a guy into Apple who took the company away from him.
| He was so full of himself it was impossible for him to be in
| any way threatened by capable subordinates no matter HOW good
| they were: he'd just bully them and be mercurial and try to
| get their maximum performance out of them.
|
| So in a sense, it was all the other people. Not him.
|
| And in another sense, it took a very unusual person to be
| able to do that, and be constantly outclassed, and not begin
| to act defensively. There's a cost to it: Apple was doing the
| Newton way way before there were cellphones and such. Jobs
| wasn't that wise, just impossibly audacious, and as such he
| did manage to operate a team of exceptional people. He wasn't
| the team, but as far as a leader being the leader, he was
| about as intense as Gordon Ramsay, and absolutely he let the
| people around him shine: to him, that WAS him looking good.
|
| And it wouldn't make you safe from criticism for even five
| minutes, but he did love it when people around him were
| great. Jobs was the 'A players hire A players. B players hire
| C players. You hired THAT GUY?' manager. He not only expected
| people around him to excel, he literally demanded it.
| desiarnezjr wrote:
| Newton was all Scully as I recall. Not Jobs.
| drewda wrote:
| "Management through walking around" comes from Hewlett-
| Packard. At least as practiced by at Packard and Hewlett,
| it was supposedly more about learning from individual
| contributors in labs and on factory floors -- without only
| getting information filtered through middle management --
| not "getting up in people's faces and demanding they
| perform better."
| ValentineC wrote:
| I really liked this interview and discussion from two weeks
| back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26033689
| ksec wrote:
| Steve's advice was "Dont think what he would do, but do what
| you think is right."
|
| The problem is knowing what is right, and that is exactly the
| strength of Steve. Often by intuition, and some by experience
| where he made mistakes and he quickly correct. And right now
| the designed by committee seems to be lacking the latter
| attribute.
|
| Tim Cook is also much more focused on Revenue and Profits with
| their Strategy. Steve is much more product based.
| airhead969 wrote:
| By "transformed," they meant "over-monetized" and "ruined." TC
| snatched uncool, buggy, and wonky products from the jaws of
| material success.
| duxup wrote:
| The article seems to hinge around China and etc more than most
| things. I do wonder how capable any company is to move
| manufacturing out of China at any kind of large scale.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Boomberg was always very apologetic of China, if not to say
| bordering on lobbying for them.
|
| No wonder, Bloomber is one of very, very, very few Western
| media operating in China through a franchise agreement.
| dba7dba wrote:
| Samsung moved most or all of their factories from China
| recently.
| icelancer wrote:
| Apple M1 is the kind of thing that truly impresses in the post-
| Jobs era, IMO.
| rektide wrote:
| Years of snapping up brilliant companies/minds[1]!
|
| * PA Semi, 2008 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.A._Semi
|
| * Licensing then hiring most of the Imagination Technologies
| GPU engineers, including setting up an office down the street
| from them in St Albans, 2017-2020.
|
| * some of Dialog Semiconductor, 2018
|
| * Intel's smartphone division, 2019
|
| * Intrinsity, who had some cutting edge chip design, 2010
|
| There's also an unbelievable ton of photography, micro-display,
| motion capture, ar, computer vision companies they've acquired.
| They're plucking up 3-5 promising talented players a year in
| terms of microminiature sensors/displays/optics.
|
| Apple, the most exciting, gigantic, talent-acquiring behemoth
| that capital has ever given rise to. They do deserve accolades
| for doing great work, yes. But I also just am so very very sad
| to see so much talent disappear off the open market, distressed
| that the lead seems to only grow & grow over everyone else. At
| least if these engineers were working at Qualcomm or MediaTek
| the fruits of the labor could be shared, but Apple has total
| iron claims on their chips. It's imbalanced as it is, & Apple
| seems to have all the money & all the power to keep tipping.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > But I also just am so very very sad to see so much talent
| disappear off the open market, distressed that the lead seems
| to only grow & grow over everyone else.
|
| All that talent was up for grab: What were the other players
| waiting for?
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Exactly. Not just that, acquiring the talent is one thing.
| Providing the culture & resources for them to succeed over
| a long period of time? That's special & why most M&A
| activity results in a neutral or even negative result.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| By open marketet I think he/she means producing
| products/services that can be used by multiple other
| companies. As opposed to being confined to the Apple silo.
|
| Note: I'm not judging that analysis, just trying to refine
| the interpretation.
| rektide wrote:
| > All that talent was up for grab: What were the other
| players waiting for?
|
| That's exactly the problem with monopolies. As one two or
| three companies get to be ever more outsized giants (Apple:
| 2.2T$, Amazon & Microsoft: 1.6T$), owning more of the
| talent pool, there's less other players with any chance to
| build up success, to acquire talent.
|
| People can keep making small, successfully-acquired
| companies, but this idea that it's everyone elses fault for
| not challenging the monopoly is not a statement I'm very
| sympathetic to.
| nabla9 wrote:
| Monopoly power from two sided markets. Apple is in the
| position where it outbid competition. They take 20% cut
| from app sales and sell 200 million units.
| mushufasa wrote:
| This comment has a negative tone, but this doesn't seem to me
| to be a tragedy. Acquiring talent and putting them on the
| bench to stave off would-be competitors stifles innovation
| (re: Palihapitiya's criticism of Google). Acquiring talent
| and putting them to use on projects that achieve more scale
| and impact, sooner, than could happen at a small company --
| that seems like innovation and the free market market at its
| best.
|
| It's not like these people had their work stolen -- they were
| compensated!! Presumably quite well.
| rektide wrote:
| > Acquiring talent and putting them to use on projects that
| achieve more scale and impact, sooner, than could happen at
| a small company -- that seems like innovation and the free
| market market at its best.
|
| So, you're a fan of a free market, where free is defined as
| whatever direction Apple wants to go. Got it. Free for
| Apple to do as they please.
|
| I don't know if there's quite "consensus", but definitely
| one of the top 3 greatest, most important events in all
| computing was the Gang of Nine taking & extending IBM's AT
| Compatible bus to build the new, intercompatible ISA[1]
| bus. It took the fractured, proprietary world of
| microcomputers by storm, savaged many great company, by
| creating a genuine open market for personal computers. It
| commodified the system, allowed anyone to compete & to
| deliver peripherals & changes & innovations. The Gang of
| Nine freed a locked down proprietary computing market.
| Without their actions, we might not be typing on laptops,
| we might not have smartphones today. They freed the market.
| Innovation churned greatly, because there was so much going
| on, so much creativity, so many different things being
| tried.
|
| Today, only a very very few have the power to shape things.
| There are only two major smartphone OSes on the planet.
| There are only a couple scrappy hopefuls about, intent on
| freeing the market from this stagnancy, from everyone being
| on the same OSes for the entire next decade too: folks like
| Pine64, who are building a Linux PinePhone project, who are
| building great low cost open source dev boards, who are
| building DIY low-bandwidth long-distance LoRaWAN[2].
|
| Society needs to support healthy competitive free market
| innovation. Simply measuring how quickly one company is
| free to do whatever it wants, how quickly it can iterate,
| is not enough. All great events in computing, the modern
| saga of computing as we know it, came from a genuine
| freedom to explore & tinker with what might be possible.
| Leaving Tim Cook in charge of this human project is
| drastically against the human spirit of liberty & progress,
| and there's no good in computing that has ever come from
| these kinds of totalizing powers. These players have always
| ended up ossifying, off in some crystal palace they've
| built themselves, direly needing to be disrupted. Being
| free from competition, alone in your innovating, is a
| tragedy.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_Industry_Standar
| d_Arc...
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26145684
| mushufasa wrote:
| > Free for Apple to do as they please.
|
| What other definition of free do you suggest?
|
| The companies and employees they hired also had the
| freedom to reject the offers if they so chose. Freedom is
| consent.
| [deleted]
| smoldesu wrote:
| I wish I cared about the battery life in my laptop, it might
| even make me want one of those M1 devices.
| elktea wrote:
| "The 2014 iPhone 6 was "the poster child" of this transformation,
| according to a person involved in the product's development.
| While the device had complex internal components and a larger
| screen, it dropped the diamond-polished edges and the precisely
| cut glass parts of the back of the iPhone 5 and 5s, which had
| been difficult to produce."
|
| well, that explains why the iPhone went from such a unique design
| to generic plastic android. Glad the 5-esque design is back for
| the 12 series at least.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > well, that explains why the iPhone went from such a unique
| design to generic plastic android.
|
| I agree that some of the flagship iPhones since the iPhone 6
| have had less unique designs, but what are you describing as
| "generic plastic android?" None of the flagship iPhones since
| the iPhone 4 have had any significant exterior plastic. Are you
| talking about the iPhone 5C? I'm pretty sure that's the only
| one that ever had a plastic enclosure.
| nextos wrote:
| I don't buy Apple products and I don't use a smartphone. But in
| 2014 I borrowed an iPhone 5 from a friend and I found it truly
| well designed. Thickness and weight were very satisfying for
| 1-handed operation. I haven't found any of the successors to be
| anywhere close.
| imron wrote:
| The 12 mini is comparable in size and weight.
| oblio wrote:
| And its probably going to go away and future minis
| sidelined, as its sales are poor.
| joshspankit wrote:
| I feel like the story would have been different if they
| made it the size of the 4... Right now the "mini" would
| have still been considered a large phone in the 3GS days.
| joshspankit wrote:
| Only roughly comparable: if you line them up back to front
| you can see the whole notch of the mini behind the 5.
| ghaff wrote:
| The iPhone 5 was nice but I have to admit the screen seems
| tiny to me today. I do use phones one-handed a lot but I find
| I can still do that with an iPhone 12 Pro with my (admittedly
| large) right hand. Have never been really interested in the
| Plus models because IMO they don't really work one-handed.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| The good thing for them is that Microsoft Windows' quality
| decreased so much that I decided to buy a Macbook for the first
| time in my life.
| mtalantikite wrote:
| Agreed, I think the 4S was my favorite version -- felt
| substantial without being excessively heavy and easy to use
| with one hand. The 7 and 2020 SE I've had since then were all
| just purchases because they were the smallest option when my
| last phone died out. I've never really liked either of them.
| joshspankit wrote:
| When I heard "iPhone mini" rumours last year I was like
| "Finally! I can get a much more powerful 4S!"
|
| Unfortunately that's not what happened.
| fire7000 wrote:
| 4S was too fragile
| rayiner wrote:
| I _love_ the 12 Pro. The updated 5-esque design really
| withstands the test of time.
| ksec wrote:
| It wasn't just the design, Pre iPhone 6 was the era when Steve
| Jobs insisted on JIT supply chain management. And no
| manufacture could cope with the iPhone volume. Even when Apple
| have fully prepared for iPhone 6 launch, which was the first
| iPhone to have a phablet size display as it was called at the
| time. Production still couldn't keep up due to demand from
| China. iPhone 6 still remains the best selling iPhone in unit
| volume if you combine two quarter after launch.
|
| And that is part of the reason why you see lots more leaks from
| Supply Chain in post iPhone 4 era.
| superbcarrot wrote:
| It was pretty obvious at the time - after the iPhone 6 with the
| round edges and ugly antenna colors, the comically giant 6
| plus, then a few months later the first Apple Watch (which few
| people wanted because it was advertised as a notification
| device) - many people thought that Apple were on a downward
| trajectory because they've run out of Steve Jobs ideas.
|
| Both product lines seem much healthier now - last year's
| redesign of the iPhones was solid and the watch looks much more
| attractive with all of the health features.
| enjeyw wrote:
| I agree that the design of the 6 regressed from the 4/5, but
| the build quality is much higher than that of the average
| android.
|
| I'm still using a 6 as my daily phone, which means my phone is
| closer in generation to the original iPhone that it is to the
| latest one. I wish the (equally expensive) android phones I use
| at work had anywhere near that longevity.
| airstrike wrote:
| All these great minds at work yet somehow clicking on this link
| in iOS with the Bloomberg app installed takes me to its homepage
| instead of the actual article
|
| I hope between Tim Cook's and Michael Bloomberg's successors we
| can finally invent the technology to make that work as expected
| Jtsummers wrote:
| As another data point, the app on my iPhone takes me to the
| correct article.
| airstrike wrote:
| Somehow, I am not at all surprised...
| hu3 wrote:
| But it takes you to the wrong page faster than any Android!
| er4hn wrote:
| Not really on topic, but hilariously on point with the tech
| industry.
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