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Also, as Steve Blank points out (perhaps a bit too harshly), Tim Cook is a brilliant operator and optimizer, but very far from a visionary or brilliant product/

Also, as Steve Blank points out (perhaps a bit too harshly), Tim Cook is a brilliant operator and optimizer, but very far from a visionary or brilliant product/marketing mind. So far, he's taken the foundation that Jobs built and made it sing. 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... But so far, the products Apple has launched under his leadership haven't actually been all that well conceived. V1 of the Apple Watch was a confusing mess that didn't have a real, concrete purpose or place in anyone's lives. With v2, they stepped back and focused a bit (on the active/athletic market), but it's hardly a breakthrough device yet. Meanwhile, the iPad is (so far) falling far short of its potential to revolutionize computing. All of this could change. But for me, despite the stock price, the jury on the Era of Cook is still out.

kristianc 10y ago
C.f Apple Watch - its too early to tell. v1 of the iphone, which shipped without third party apps, and which WIRED recommended that you should jailbreak if you bought it, took many generations to reach maturity. The iPad takes a beating - somewhat unjustly - for failing to live up to the promises made of it by its marketing. Judged against almost any other product other than the iPhone, it's an enormous success. It created an entire product category, it sold more devices on its opening year than all previous sales of tablet sales combined. It captured an enterprise market that almost everyone said Apple would never be able to touch. It changed the behavior of the competition - BlackBerry, Google and Microsoft all rushed devices to market and Windows 8 was of course heavily inspired by the need to run well on touch devices.
- geophile 10y ago
  My wife works in an Apple store. During her training/indoctrination/kool-aid drinking, she was asked her impression of the iPad, and she said that it was a device for couch potatoes, consuming content. She was slapped down pretty hard for that. At the time, the ads for iPads showed users climbing mountains, exploring caves, writing symphonies, etc., with the iPad being an essential part of the activity. If the iPad is used in this way at all, it must be with a very, very tiny fraction of users, but maybe that wasn't the point. Maybe the point was to appeal to couch potatoes who imagine themselves to be more active and creative?
  - kristianc 10y ago
    I'm not sure there's anything majorly different with iPads in that regard. A lot of the Surface book and ultrabook adverts have focused on more creative and sexy applications. I haven't seen one for a while that says 'Runs Powerpoint like a motherf*cker'

kristianc 10y ago

C.f Apple Watch - its too early to tell. v1 of the iphone, which shipped without third party apps, and which WIRED recommended that you should jailbreak if you bought it, took many generations to reach maturity. The iPad takes a beating - somewhat unjustly - for failing to live up to the promises made of it by its marketing. Judged against almost any other product other than the iPhone, it's an enormous success. It created an entire product category, it sold more devices on its opening year than all previous sales of tablet sales combined. It captured an enterprise market that almost everyone said Apple would never be able to touch. It changed the behavior of the competition - BlackBerry, Google and Microsoft all rushed devices to market and Windows 8 was of course heavily inspired by the need to run well on touch devices.

geophile 10y ago
My wife works in an Apple store. During her training/indoctrination/kool-aid drinking, she was asked her impression of the iPad, and she said that it was a device for couch potatoes, consuming content. She was slapped down pretty hard for that. At the time, the ads for iPads showed users climbing mountains, exploring caves, writing symphonies, etc., with the iPad being an essential part of the activity. If the iPad is used in this way at all, it must be with a very, very tiny fraction of users, but maybe that wasn't the point. Maybe the point was to appeal to couch potatoes who imagine themselves to be more active and creative?
- kristianc 10y ago
  I'm not sure there's anything majorly different with iPads in that regard. A lot of the Surface book and ultrabook adverts have focused on more creative and sexy applications. I haven't seen one for a while that says 'Runs Powerpoint like a motherf*cker'