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Steve Jobs built consumer products that he wanted for himself, his family and friends. He would push for out of the box ideas while scrutinizing every detail of

Steve Jobs built consumer products that he wanted for himself, his family and friends. He would push for out of the box ideas while scrutinizing every detail of the product, optimized and repeated. Tim Cook builds the supply chain that he wants for himself, his shareholders and coworkers. He pushes for out of the box ideas while scrutinizing every detail of the supply chain, optimizes and repeats. Tim Cook builds supply chain the way Jobs built for consumers. Jobs needed customer insight, creativity and societal foresight. Instead to make product decisions Cook has a giant user base to "A/B test" (between different phone models/features every quarter), he can afford to wait/purchase/curate good ideas rather than use foresight, and purchase creativity and ingenuity. Apple no longer needs another Steve Jobs at the throne, they have access to hire two generations of the global population "raised by" and trying to emulate Steve Jobs while having the skills and 90% the talent of Woz. Apple today needs a master of execution that has a willingness to find the right new talent and give them a supply chain platform like never before seen. e.g. If you're talented in CPU and GPU development, where do you want to work in 2021/2022? Cook's supply chain optimization for A1 and M1 has made Apple one of the top three players in the industry. If as a developer, you want to re-think the need for a motherboard, or how to best integrate a Modem with the CPU (maybe a GPU/Neural Net enhanced storage/network card?), there is only one company you can go to right now to build that creative dream. Cook can leverage that creativity and ingenuity to delight customers while pushing like crazy on the supply chain. Recent quote from Elon Musk: "Every company will soon have EVs. Every company will also have Autonomous driving. But no other company will be able to out compete Tesla at manufacturing." Similarly, Amazon Retails' newest CEO Dave Clark used to head the supply chain logistics. Clearly Apple's board, Amazon's board and Tesla's board all focused on the same thing, supply chain and logistics, imply there is some clear long term customer and shareholder value about it.

syshum 6y ago
I think that is fantasy land thinking on the part of all 3, and I am sure past companies all thought the same thing until someone did out compete them... Telsa is even more fantasy to believe Ford, VW, or Toyota will never be able to out compete them in manufacturing. Ohh sweet child.....
- pmorici 6y ago
  The other guys problem is they can’t design anything worth manufacturing at a price that is competitive to Tesla
  - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
    Tesla's market share in Europe has been falling over the last year. The other manufacturers are catching up, VW in particular.
  - syshum 6y ago
    Clearly that is not the case just looking at the sales volume of each. Tesla is a niche product catering to a small subset of Auto buyers. As other manufacturer ramp up their EV lines it will be clear that Telsa is not going to take over this market. For example in the US the standard Pickup Truck is still the most popular vehicle, Tesla's "Cyber Truck" as no chance of unsetting the F150 for that title, and F150 Electric will be out in 2022/2023 and most likely will be the fastest selling EV in the US and it will be interesting to see how the Mach-E does against Tesla
fma 6y ago
Did Musk really say that? The one impression I get of Tesla in terms of manufacturing...even overcoming all those setbacks is how they promised they to would build ventilators for hospitals. Everyone Ooohhed and Aaahed over it. Tesla never produced any ventilators. They bought basically CPAP machines from China. And my current google says as of October, their partnership w/ Medtronics to produce ventillators never materialized. As of October, they're going to help Medtronic build a single part. A single part...9 months after Covid...Not impressed. Meanwhile, GM & Ford turned around and produced ventilators for our National Strategic Stockpile. https://www.tesmanian.com/blogs/tesmanian-blog/medtronic-partnership-with-elon-musks-spacex-will-save-lives https://www.tesmanian.com/blogs/tesmanian-blog/medtronic-par... https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-tesla-ventilator-controversy-explained-2020-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-tesla-ventilator-c...
- axaxs 6y ago
  People in USA should really read about world war efforts. You had a typewriter company make the most iconic handgun of all time, and fledgling car companies building plane engines. It was a true feat of modern engineering, one I wonder if could ever happen again, given our lack of production prowess. The US now is full of product people who build overseas. While it's currently economically smart, it's a race to the bottom which eventually ends in completely foreign owned companies eating your lunch. It will be interesting to see how and if countries counter this eventuality.
  - danielscrubs 6y ago
    How would you solve the incentives though? If you increase the import duty you can no longer compete globally (because of less competition), which has happened for steel for example. Is there any other way that works?
  - simonh 6y ago
    Surely it's a race out of the bottom (low value assembly) towards the top (high value design, prototyping, software and services). What's the value of racing back down to the bottom again? I don't know the current BOM, but for most of it's history more of the value in the components in an iPhone was actually manufactured in the US than in China. Gorilla Glass in New York state, flash memory in Kentucky, the CPUs used to be made by Samsung in Texas. Final assembly is only a few bucks. A friend of mine here in the UK said the same ting to me a few years ago, his 6 year old boy was playing nearby so I asked him. Which would you prefer for your son, a job in design or software, or a job on an assembly line?
blueblisters 6y ago
> But no other company will be able to out compete Tesla at manufacturing. This is the reason I feel people are betting Tesla to get an outsized pie of the EV market even when the legacy OEMs catch up. When Tesla started manufacturing things in-house, folks were rightly skeptical about their manufacturing capabilities and their stupid refusal to rely on the automobile supply chain. The stubborn insistence to vertically integrate nearly killed the company. Now that it has a market cap several times its nearest competitor, it can raise enough capital to focus on capital efficiency of new manufacturing plants to scale up production. In their battery day video, that's what impressed me the most - they have control over every cost center in their supply chain, and can optimize for quicker/cheaper manufacturing much faster than anyone else. In some aspects, Tesla completely reversed Cook's playbook, and might even succeed at it if demand for Teslas remains high for the next decade or two.
- nmfisher 6y ago
  Forget about TSLA's market cap for a second and look at their actual manufacturing quality, where defect rates are higher than almost all other automakers: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/24/tesla-lags-auto-industry-in-quality-finds-new-jd-power-study.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/24/tesla-lags-auto-industry-in-... https://www.forbes.com/sites/edgarsten/2020/11/19/tesla-reliability-sinks-in-consumer-reports-annual-survey/?sh=28015bed5fbb https://www.forbes.com/sites/edgarsten/2020/11/19/tesla-reli... While I appreciate that it's exceptionally difficult to build an automobile manufacturing and supply chain from scratch, let's not pretend they've somehow overtaken conventional auto companies and that's why their stock price is high. Given the disproportionate share price when considering comparable EV sales, I'd say TSLA market cap is a function of the MDF - the Musk Distortion Field - rather than actual tangibles. That's not to say the two are completely disconnected. The MDF explains why TSLA doesn't spend a cent on advertising, which obviously boosts margins.
tkgally 6y ago
> Apple no longer needs another Steve Jobs at the throne... Much as I respect Steve Jobs’ innovations, I tend to agree. As others have pointed out (though I can’t remember who or where), the iPad and iPhone marked an end point in several decades of advances in personal computing. A thin flat tablet that you operate with one finger! And it listens and talks and sees! Whenever I have read people lamenting the lack of similar revolutionary advances under Tim Cook—and I have lamented that lack myself—I have wondered what exactly those advances might be. While something may be lurking ahead in the AI/health/direct-brain-interface space, I don't blame Cook for not having taken us there yet.
- GekkePrutser 6y ago
  They're only an end point because Apple stopped innovating. Tim Cook is great as a process leader but he doesn't have an innovative vision. For all his personal flaws Steve Jobs was all about innovation and didn't mind risking the company to achieve it. Now Apple is in a stronger position than ever financially but it must the drive to innovate right now at any cost. It was really what made Apple great IMO.
  - yazaddaruvala 6y ago
    What’s the incentive to innovate? Other smartphone companies are “innovating” with many failed attempts. Apple gets to avoid the failures, refine the feature and deliver successfully. “Playing catch up” isn’t an issue because Apple can bring any Android feature (hardware or software) to the iPhone in 2-3years. For example the Swipe keyboard. I needed to wait a few years to get it after I switched from Android to iPhone, but I didn’t mind too much. Meanwhile, thank goodness my phone doesn’t currently fold and break right now. I’m happy to have a folding phone when the tech is 10x better.

syshum 6y ago

I think that is fantasy land thinking on the part of all 3, and I am sure past companies all thought the same thing until someone did out compete them... Telsa is even more fantasy to believe Ford, VW, or Toyota will never be able to out compete them in manufacturing. Ohh sweet child.....

pmorici 6y ago
The other guys problem is they can’t design anything worth manufacturing at a price that is competitive to Tesla
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  Tesla's market share in Europe has been falling over the last year. The other manufacturers are catching up, VW in particular.
- syshum 6y ago
  Clearly that is not the case just looking at the sales volume of each. Tesla is a niche product catering to a small subset of Auto buyers. As other manufacturer ramp up their EV lines it will be clear that Telsa is not going to take over this market. For example in the US the standard Pickup Truck is still the most popular vehicle, Tesla's "Cyber Truck" as no chance of unsetting the F150 for that title, and F150 Electric will be out in 2022/2023 and most likely will be the fastest selling EV in the US and it will be interesting to see how the Mach-E does against Tesla

fma 6y ago

Did Musk really say that? The one impression I get of Tesla in terms of manufacturing...even overcoming all those setbacks is how they promised they to would build ventilators for hospitals. Everyone Ooohhed and Aaahed over it. Tesla never produced any ventilators. They bought basically CPAP machines from China. And my current google says as of October, their partnership w/ Medtronics to produce ventillators never materialized. As of October, they're going to help Medtronic build a single part. A single part...9 months after Covid...Not impressed. Meanwhile, GM & Ford turned around and produced ventilators for our National Strategic Stockpile. https://www.tesmanian.com/blogs/tesmanian-blog/medtronic-partnership-with-elon-musks-spacex-will-save-lives https://www.tesmanian.com/blogs/tesmanian-blog/medtronic-par... https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-tesla-ventilator-controversy-explained-2020-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-tesla-ventilator-c...

axaxs 6y ago
People in USA should really read about world war efforts. You had a typewriter company make the most iconic handgun of all time, and fledgling car companies building plane engines. It was a true feat of modern engineering, one I wonder if could ever happen again, given our lack of production prowess. The US now is full of product people who build overseas. While it's currently economically smart, it's a race to the bottom which eventually ends in completely foreign owned companies eating your lunch. It will be interesting to see how and if countries counter this eventuality.
- danielscrubs 6y ago
  How would you solve the incentives though? If you increase the import duty you can no longer compete globally (because of less competition), which has happened for steel for example. Is there any other way that works?
- simonh 6y ago
  Surely it's a race out of the bottom (low value assembly) towards the top (high value design, prototyping, software and services). What's the value of racing back down to the bottom again? I don't know the current BOM, but for most of it's history more of the value in the components in an iPhone was actually manufactured in the US than in China. Gorilla Glass in New York state, flash memory in Kentucky, the CPUs used to be made by Samsung in Texas. Final assembly is only a few bucks. A friend of mine here in the UK said the same ting to me a few years ago, his 6 year old boy was playing nearby so I asked him. Which would you prefer for your son, a job in design or software, or a job on an assembly line?

blueblisters 6y ago

> But no other company will be able to out compete Tesla at manufacturing. This is the reason I feel people are betting Tesla to get an outsized pie of the EV market even when the legacy OEMs catch up. When Tesla started manufacturing things in-house, folks were rightly skeptical about their manufacturing capabilities and their stupid refusal to rely on the automobile supply chain. The stubborn insistence to vertically integrate nearly killed the company. Now that it has a market cap several times its nearest competitor, it can raise enough capital to focus on capital efficiency of new manufacturing plants to scale up production. In their battery day video, that's what impressed me the most - they have control over every cost center in their supply chain, and can optimize for quicker/cheaper manufacturing much faster than anyone else. In some aspects, Tesla completely reversed Cook's playbook, and might even succeed at it if demand for Teslas remains high for the next decade or two.

nmfisher 6y ago
Forget about TSLA's market cap for a second and look at their actual manufacturing quality, where defect rates are higher than almost all other automakers: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/24/tesla-lags-auto-industry-in-quality-finds-new-jd-power-study.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/24/tesla-lags-auto-industry-in-... https://www.forbes.com/sites/edgarsten/2020/11/19/tesla-reliability-sinks-in-consumer-reports-annual-survey/?sh=28015bed5fbb https://www.forbes.com/sites/edgarsten/2020/11/19/tesla-reli... While I appreciate that it's exceptionally difficult to build an automobile manufacturing and supply chain from scratch, let's not pretend they've somehow overtaken conventional auto companies and that's why their stock price is high. Given the disproportionate share price when considering comparable EV sales, I'd say TSLA market cap is a function of the MDF - the Musk Distortion Field - rather than actual tangibles. That's not to say the two are completely disconnected. The MDF explains why TSLA doesn't spend a cent on advertising, which obviously boosts margins.

tkgally 6y ago

> Apple no longer needs another Steve Jobs at the throne... Much as I respect Steve Jobs’ innovations, I tend to agree. As others have pointed out (though I can’t remember who or where), the iPad and iPhone marked an end point in several decades of advances in personal computing. A thin flat tablet that you operate with one finger! And it listens and talks and sees! Whenever I have read people lamenting the lack of similar revolutionary advances under Tim Cook—and I have lamented that lack myself—I have wondered what exactly those advances might be. While something may be lurking ahead in the AI/health/direct-brain-interface space, I don't blame Cook for not having taken us there yet.

GekkePrutser 6y ago
They're only an end point because Apple stopped innovating. Tim Cook is great as a process leader but he doesn't have an innovative vision. For all his personal flaws Steve Jobs was all about innovation and didn't mind risking the company to achieve it. Now Apple is in a stronger position than ever financially but it must the drive to innovate right now at any cost. It was really what made Apple great IMO.
- yazaddaruvala 6y ago
  What’s the incentive to innovate? Other smartphone companies are “innovating” with many failed attempts. Apple gets to avoid the failures, refine the feature and deliver successfully. “Playing catch up” isn’t an issue because Apple can bring any Android feature (hardware or software) to the iPhone in 2-3years. For example the Swipe keyboard. I needed to wait a few years to get it after I switched from Android to iPhone, but I didn’t mind too much. Meanwhile, thank goodness my phone doesn’t currently fold and break right now. I’m happy to have a folding phone when the tech is 10x better.