How Tim Cook Is Filling Steve Jobs's Shoes 209
The New York Times, in an article about Apple CEO Tim Cook, focuses in large part on the ways in which Cook is not Jobs. He's less volatile, for one thing, whether you think that means he's less passionate or just more circumspect. A small slice: Lower-level employees praise Mr. Cook’s approachability and intellect. But some say he is less hands-on in developing products than his predecessor. They point to the development of the so-called iWatch — the “smartwatch” that Apple observers are eagerly awaiting as the next world-beating gadget. Mr. Cook is less involved in the minutiae of product engineering for the watch, and has instead delegated those duties to members of his executive cabinet, including Mr. Ive, according to people involved in the project, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to press. Apple declined to comment on the watch project. ... Mr. Cook has also looked outside of Apple for experienced talent. He has hired executives from multiple industries, including Angela Ahrendts, the former head of Burberry, to oversee the physical and online stores, and Paul Deneve, the former Yves Saint Laurent chief executive, to take on special projects. He also hired Kevin Lynch, the former chief technology officer of Adobe, and Michael O’Reilly, former medical officer of the Masimo Corporation, which makes health monitoring devices. Not to mention the music men of Beats.
Left brain vs. right brain leadership (Score:1, Insightful)
Jobs was a right-brain leader. Creativity and creative genius cannot be emulated or duplicated. People should stop thinking that someone can just come in and do the same things he did, think the way he thought. It's impossible. Find another, equally brilliant right-brain thinker and maybe you have a shot at a new era of Apple that is reminiscent of building things around sacred geometry, art and magic - but new and different on its own merits.
He's not filling Steve Jobs' shoes ... (Score:5, Insightful)
How Tim Cook Is Filling Steve Jobs's Shoes
Cook is not filling Steve Jobs' shoes. Steve Jobs' shoes are in a display case at Apple's museum. Cook is wearing his own shoes.
Cook is not Jobs nor is he trying to be Jobs nor should he try to be Jobs. Jobs made lots of product design and development mistakes. His genius was in exploiting those projects where time and circumstances made them successful, in pretty much maximizing the potential of the products that turned out to be successful. In 2001 Jobs brought us both the iPod and the Flower Power iMac.
Cook has to use his own judgement, things Jobs said years ago don't necessarily apply any more. Time and circumstances have changed. The iPad mini is a good example. When Jobs frowned upon a smaller iPad a smaller device meant a lower resolution screen. Once pixel densities improved and a smaller device could have the same resolution as the original full sized device the circumstanced changed such that Jobs' original judgement no longer applied.
Jobs' good decisions have a time and a context. They are not necessarily universal truths. His shoes don't need to be worn.
Re:Left brain vs. right brain leadership (Score:4, Insightful)
Hey AC, don't worry, I'm not an Apple fanboi to any extent. I think Jobs was an asshole in many respects, a profiteering, egotistical glutton that couldn't ever get enough power under his belt. I think that had a lot to do with why he got cancer (stress). I don't even own any iDevices. I think the app store is inherently evil in how they regulate apps (think VLC, anything with F/OSS code in it). I could go on.
But you can't deny that Jobs *was* a creative genius. I bet you could count the number of people that could run such a huge corporation *and* stay true to the right-brain roots that built it on one hand.
Re:Left brain vs. right brain leadership (Score:5, Insightful)
Steve Jobs was not creative. At all. Name one thing he ever invented.
Typical engineering mindset - "inventions" are not the only yardstick of creativity. Pablo Picasso never invented anything either, but I hope you're not going to argue that he wasn't creative.
Jobs demonstrated a highly creative approach to business, acting intuitively and often flouting the rules of "what businesses should do." He transformed Pixar from a software company to an entertainment company. He change Apple from an also-ran PC manufacturer into a provider of an ecosystem of mobile and desktop devices with seamless software, entertainment and marketplace integration. He imagined what customers would want and took the gamble of building it, and had no fear of cannibalizing his existing products to do so. And, in the world of business, that is creativity.
Lets not rewrite history here (Score:1, Insightful)
Time and circumstances have changed. The iPad mini is a good example. When Jobs frowned upon a smaller iPad a smaller device meant a lower resolution screen. Once pixel densities improved and a smaller device could have the same resolution as the original full sized device the circumstanced changed such that Jobs' original judgement no longer applied
Ignoring the fact that when the ipad mini came out it was the low resolution device (1024×768 px at 163 ppi). Steve jobs had already launched the iphone 4 with its *cough* retina display (960×640 at 326 ppi) two years earlier.
You seen to forget that Jobsy(I like to park in handicapped space) was not the density of pixles...bit the size of the display to quote the foul smelling genius "It's meaningless unless your table includes sandpaper," Jobs said, "so that the user can sand down their fingers to around one quarter of their present size." He said 7-inch screens were actually 45 per cent the size of an iPad, which wasn't sufficient.
"Apple has done extensive user testing and we really understand this stuff," he added. "There are clear limits on how close you can place things on a touchscreen, which is why we think 10 inches is the minimum screen size to create great tablet apps.
Lets not start using words like "universal truths"(sic) when you are at best misinformed
Creativity (Score:5, Insightful)
Steve Jobs was not creative. At all. Name one thing he ever invented.
Apple. As in the company. It is very much the creative brainchild of Steve Jobs. He founded it, led it, it foundered without him and he rebuilt it. If you think that didn't require immense creativity and invention then I think you don't understand the meaning of the words. Furthermore many of the important details of Apple products have been shown to be directly attributable to Steve Jobs. No, he didn't do it all himself, but then nobody does in business.
Re: Left brain vs. right brain leadership (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:He's not filling Steve Jobs' shoes ... (Score:5, Insightful)
so when Google released their 7" tablet in July 2012, I bought one.
Then, in October 2012, Apple did a "me too!" and announced the iPad mini. I still think it was a reactionary move and I doubt the iPad mini would have surfaced at all if someone else hadn't released it first.
Wait, you think the iPad mini was approved, designed, engineered, mass manufactured and released in four months?
Creative With A Twist - (Score:4, Insightful)
We know that Jobs wasn't a technologist. Even in his later years you couldn't have possibly called him much of an inventor and certainly not one of the same caliber as Wozniak.
We also know that Jobs was a poor businessman until his later years, and even then, he only learned his lessons the hard way by nearly destroying the company after the early success of the Apple ][ series. He was no Markkula.
What Jobs was, other than an egomaniacal backstabber and chronic credit thief, was a nonpareil marketer. The only thing he promoted better than his products was himself, but that's besides the point - convincing his company and his customers that he was the second coming of digital Jesus (or an Silicon Valley version of the Old Testament God) was just part of doing business and a means of gaining control over his environment, necessary tasks for any executive despite his means of fulfilling them. He understood the concept and power of fashion and how easy it is to reach into that right-brain and some deeper, more reptilian components accompanying it, and cause people to want to buy things regardless of their technological merits. By transforming devices into accessories and attaching status to the Apple brand through trendy design and hip advertising, Jobs was able to create a commercial cult unmatched in recent history, and all of that has to do with a profound understanding of the irrational human mind. (The huge part that rests underneath the iceberg of consciousness, mostly unseen by ourselves.) That man could've sold dog droppings at $1,000 a pound and Apple would still be the richest company in the world. He was just that good, the king of postmodern consumerism.
I can't even be mad at him for how he ran Apple. I'm fascinated by it, actually. Not only is it instructional for future leaders, it's a validation of every critique of the common consumer and a gigantic rebuttal to the idea that agents in a market always behave rationally, when in fact they seldom do. (The greatest force in the marketplace is not reason but a combination of impulse and passion, which are perhaps one and the same.) I condemn how he treated his friends and his family and we all know now that he was a deeply unpleasant, Machiavellian asshole through and through, but if you ignore his character he did everything else right. He played his game astonishingly well and is one of the few people I would actually say 'won' at capitalism. It's a shame he didn't live longer. I would've liked to have seen where he would take the company next and what other schemes he would devise over time.
Speaking of which, he was no medical doctor, either. Too bad for him that he convinced himself he was one. Hubris kills in more ways than one.
Re:Creativity vs innovation (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the problem is more that many (most?) people seem to think that being creative and being innovative is the same thing. It isn't.
Steve Jobs may not have been the most creative person on the planet - but he was possibly one of the most innovative.
It's all well and good if you think of an idea on how to beat cancer - but the idea is nothing if you can't realize it.
Maybe Xerox had the first graphical user interface - but they had fairly little idea on what to do with it - Jobs did - and while many people will happily point out that Xerox had a mouse and GUI before Apple got there (and they're right) - how many can honestly say they had heard of a mouse and graphical user interfaces BEFORE they had seen one on an Apple computer or one of the countless GUIs that followed?
How many phones today would have touch screens and controls that look eerily similar to the iPhone ones, if the iPhone wouldn't have shown it before? (it doesn't matter, if you know a single phone before that had a touch screen - physically having the touch screen is not the same as seeing how it was all put together first).
Tablets had been around before the iPad - but what kind of sales did they have before? And what kind of sales do they have now? And - those that are selling the best now, in terms of their usability, do they look a damn sight more like the iPad, or more like whatever tablets were there before?
All those are cases of INNOVATIONs brought by Apple and which ultimately massively changed the face of the markets that they went into.
Another pointer on how Apple did something great and something new?
Name the last Samsung product launched that had a significant number of other players in the industry immediately clamoring to make something similar or "better"? When was the last time LG did? Google? Google possibly did with gmail - but search engines were there before, even large and well known ones.
Jobs was great in seeing something and seeing how it could be made useful far beyond what their original creators might have done.
Re:He's not filling Steve Jobs' shoes ... (Score:4, Insightful)
If you noticed, Jobs was fond of saying that "nobody needs X" until Apple figured out how to do X right. He was not the most open and truthful of men.