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Tim Cook seems to be one of those CEOs who sits in his office doesn't participate in the innovation process, while Jobs took a more hands on approach to drive i

Tim Cook seems to be one of those CEOs who sits in his office doesn't participate in the innovation process, while Jobs took a more hands on approach to drive innovations to its ultimate form. I can't imagine someone presenting this "touchbar" bullspit to Jobs and not getting fired right away for such a dumb idea.

ceejayoz 10y ago
C'mon. Someone presented the hockey puck mouse to Jobs and not only survived, but got it into production.
- acdha 10y ago
  Not to mention the Mighty Mouse with the lint-magnet scroll ball, their entire server strategy, and countless software decisions like the iTunes UI, multiple generations of cloud services which were clumsy and confusing, etc. Jobs was good at what he focused on and other things tended to languish. For the last half decade, everyone has been focused on iOS. Cook seems to be getting the blame for basically doing roughly the same thing while not being Steve Jobs.
wxs 10y ago
Like Bret Victor? Who seems to have been involved in presenting this to Jobs? I'd say he's a pretty interesting guy and probably not worth firing even if you don't like one of his proposals. https://twitter.com/worrydream/status/641705818585337856 https://twitter.com/worrydream/status/641705818585337856
_red 10y ago
Its hard to give a meaningful critique of Tim Cook as CEO online since you are attacked either by the fanboys, shills, or haters. However, I think its becoming increasingly clear that Tim is "not a product development CEO". He is clearly, by far, probably one of the best COO's of the last 100 years (yes, I'm totally serious). Apple would've never had its rebirth if not for the duo of Jobs as product visionary and Cook as executor. Sadly with Jobs passing, Apple is slowly sliding back to the confused, overlapping, inconsistent product catalog circa 1998.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- elicash 10y ago
  I agree they've generally gotten more inconsistent. But this is an example of the opposite. It'd be MORE confusing to have the only difference between the Air and the Pro be the Touch Bar, as the author suggests. How does the a touch bar make it "air?"
- PKop 10y ago
  Relevant article[0] with same critique of Tim Cook (!= visionary product CEO) and what that means for Apple [0] https://steveblank.com/2016/10/24/why-tim-cook-is-steve-ballmer-and-why-he-still-has-his-job-at-apple/ https://steveblank.com/2016/10/24/why-tim-cook-is-steve-ball...
mhomde 10y ago
While I think Jobs was not perfect in many aspects it seems that Apple is unfortunately suffering from his absence. Ive and his team no doubt knows industrial design, perhaps better than any company right now. Yet they can't seem to connect with the needs of real users, their decisions seem more grounded in design "purity" and sometimes there's a disconnect between that and reality. Tim Cook seems very competent business person, but has little vision on his own. He'll not risk the bottom line out of conviction like Jobs did. Say what you want about Jobs but it seemed he was driven by a true sense of what users "should" want... the current leadership seems more to be about stock prices and retaining market share.
- lisper 10y ago
  > Ive and his team no doubt knows industrial design That's the conventional wisdom, but I dispute it. Ive and his team seem to have lost sight of some of the most basic principles that made the Mac great in the first place, like: it should be easy to tell what parts of the screen contain things that you can click on. I'm still running Mavericks because I want buttons to look like buttons. Is that really too much to ask?
  - galad87 10y ago
    Buttons on 10.10 and newer still looks like buttons…
    - lisper 10y ago
      We'll have to agree to disagree about that. The flat colored circles at the top left corners of windows don't look like buttons to me. And the OS is chock-full of clickable text that is visually indistinguishable from non-clickable text, and hidden controls that only show up when you hover over a magic area of the screen, again with zero visual cues that there is anything there. I like a good easter egg as much as the next person, but not when finding them is actually crucial to getting things done. There may be some widgets that still look like buttons, but that's not what I'm talking about.
  - mhomde 10y ago
rch 10y ago
I'm not a fan, but the touchbar will end up being accepted just like the dock eventually was.
bluthru 10y ago
The touch bar was prototyped 8 years ago: https://twitter.com/worrydream/status/791767756928462848 https://twitter.com/worrydream/status/791767756928462848
jaxondu 10y ago
Touch Bar is in the same 'spirit' as sending heartbeats in watchOS, the Digital Touch in iMessage. Things that looks cool at first, many viewed as gimmicky, and very un-Jobs.

ceejayoz 10y ago

C'mon. Someone presented the hockey puck mouse to Jobs and not only survived, but got it into production.

acdha 10y ago
Not to mention the Mighty Mouse with the lint-magnet scroll ball, their entire server strategy, and countless software decisions like the iTunes UI, multiple generations of cloud services which were clumsy and confusing, etc. Jobs was good at what he focused on and other things tended to languish. For the last half decade, everyone has been focused on iOS. Cook seems to be getting the blame for basically doing roughly the same thing while not being Steve Jobs.

wxs 10y ago

Like Bret Victor? Who seems to have been involved in presenting this to Jobs? I'd say he's a pretty interesting guy and probably not worth firing even if you don't like one of his proposals. https://twitter.com/worrydream/status/641705818585337856 https://twitter.com/worrydream/status/641705818585337856

_red 10y ago

Its hard to give a meaningful critique of Tim Cook as CEO online since you are attacked either by the fanboys, shills, or haters. However, I think its becoming increasingly clear that Tim is "not a product development CEO". He is clearly, by far, probably one of the best COO's of the last 100 years (yes, I'm totally serious). Apple would've never had its rebirth if not for the duo of Jobs as product visionary and Cook as executor. Sadly with Jobs passing, Apple is slowly sliding back to the confused, overlapping, inconsistent product catalog circa 1998.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
elicash 10y ago
I agree they've generally gotten more inconsistent. But this is an example of the opposite. It'd be MORE confusing to have the only difference between the Air and the Pro be the Touch Bar, as the author suggests. How does the a touch bar make it "air?"
PKop 10y ago
Relevant article[0] with same critique of Tim Cook (!= visionary product CEO) and what that means for Apple [0] https://steveblank.com/2016/10/24/why-tim-cook-is-steve-ballmer-and-why-he-still-has-his-job-at-apple/ https://steveblank.com/2016/10/24/why-tim-cook-is-steve-ball...

mhomde 10y ago

While I think Jobs was not perfect in many aspects it seems that Apple is unfortunately suffering from his absence. Ive and his team no doubt knows industrial design, perhaps better than any company right now. Yet they can't seem to connect with the needs of real users, their decisions seem more grounded in design "purity" and sometimes there's a disconnect between that and reality. Tim Cook seems very competent business person, but has little vision on his own. He'll not risk the bottom line out of conviction like Jobs did. Say what you want about Jobs but it seemed he was driven by a true sense of what users "should" want... the current leadership seems more to be about stock prices and retaining market share.

lisper 10y ago
> Ive and his team no doubt knows industrial design That's the conventional wisdom, but I dispute it. Ive and his team seem to have lost sight of some of the most basic principles that made the Mac great in the first place, like: it should be easy to tell what parts of the screen contain things that you can click on. I'm still running Mavericks because I want buttons to look like buttons. Is that really too much to ask?
- galad87 10y ago
  Buttons on 10.10 and newer still looks like buttons…
  - lisper 10y ago
    We'll have to agree to disagree about that. The flat colored circles at the top left corners of windows don't look like buttons to me. And the OS is chock-full of clickable text that is visually indistinguishable from non-clickable text, and hidden controls that only show up when you hover over a magic area of the screen, again with zero visual cues that there is anything there. I like a good easter egg as much as the next person, but not when finding them is actually crucial to getting things done. There may be some widgets that still look like buttons, but that's not what I'm talking about.
- mhomde 10y ago

rch 10y ago

I'm not a fan, but the touchbar will end up being accepted just like the dock eventually was.

bluthru 10y ago

The touch bar was prototyped 8 years ago: https://twitter.com/worrydream/status/791767756928462848 https://twitter.com/worrydream/status/791767756928462848

jaxondu 10y ago

Touch Bar is in the same 'spirit' as sending heartbeats in watchOS, the Digital Touch in iMessage. Things that looks cool at first, many viewed as gimmicky, and very un-Jobs.