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Have they been perfect? No. Keyboards, App Store, still not entirely sure what the iPad Pro does, etc. But you know what Tim Cook didn’t do? He didn’t screw it

Have they been perfect? No. Keyboards, App Store, still not entirely sure what the iPad Pro does, etc. But you know what Tim Cook didn’t do? He didn’t screw it all up. Which sounds like faint praise, but I really think it’s inarguable that Jobs remade Apple, stem to stern, blood to bone, software to hardware. And to step in and take over a company that had been reborn like that, and not nickel-and-dime it into mediocrity? Remarkable. I don’t think anyone is really arguing Cook is a product visionary—I certainly don’t think Cook is himself. But just navigating the political landscape alone is truly impressive.

intergalplan 5y ago
> iPad Pro does, etc I get that. But. Having used many iPads, my favorite sizes are the 12.9" (Pro) and the Mini. Why (for the pro—I trust my love of the mini needs little explanation)? The 12.9" is so big that it's about the size of an 8.5x11" sheet of paper, which turns out to be a really convenient size for reading anything based on... paper. It's outstanding for reading PDFs of, say, textbooks, as it's large enough you might be able to get away with reading it in landscape, and is the best device I'm aware of for reading comics (ditto on the landscape mode, it works great, it's just a little smaller than a real two-page comic book spread). Yet it's light enough not to be a giant pain to hold. It's amazing for art (with a Pencil). Nice and big, very responsive. The larger screen makes almost anything you'd do on a normal iPad a little better. Movies, browsing, games. Low-distraction writing device with an external keyboard. It's a great companion for music where, again, the larger size is really nice for displaying sheet music or... well, almost anything else music-related you want to do. Last I checked the cameras & mics beat the hell out of most laptops, including Apple ones, for video calls. Know what it's very close in size to? A 13" MBP or Air. Know what it can do? Become a portable external monitor for same. Damn nice. 2-player board games. Again, the size helps a ton. My personal uses barely call for all the extra horsepower of the "pro" line, actually, aside from maybe drawing (which, AFAIK, has more to do with specialized hardware on the screen than with CPU power or memory) but holy crap, the screen size. It's glorious. If I could have only one computing device in my house I'd seriously consider making it the 12.9" iPad Pro (assuming I could keep my mechanical bluetooth keyboard, too). I can always SSH/Mosh to a unixy command line somewhere else, but none of my unixy machines are much good for most of what I use the iPad Pro for.
ProAm 5y ago
Cook is to Apple like Balmer was to Microsoft.
- colinmhayes 5y ago
  Balmer kind of blew it for microsoft though. Cook is doing well enough.
  - adventured 5y ago
    Ballmer didn't do much to harm Microsoft, he sales-managed the company - Microsoft increased in size considerably during his tenure. Sales went from $23 billion to $86 billion during the Ballmer years, a radical increase for an already large company. One can certainly give credit to Gates instead, perhaps, however Ballmer still didn't botch it. Azure and cloud Office were born during the Ballmer years as well, those were initiatives during his years that have been perfected under Nadella (who is a dramatically better product CEO). I consider Nadella's willingness to abandon the Windows religion as the single greatest contribution any CEO has made to Microsoft since the peak Gates years. The worst you can say about Ballmer is that during his reign Microsoft didn't take over the world by grabbing search and mobile. Which was a near impossible task, no company can or should own everything in such a way. I do believe if Ballmer had kept control for a longer period of time (another ten years or so), the risk would have increased of Microsoft getting permanently Oracle'd culturally. It wasn't entirely a bad thing to have a strong insider as a hand in the post Gates years (maybe a good question is: was there anybody else in 1999-2000, in the upper tiers of management, that would have been better fit for the task).
    - npunt 5y ago
      I think different eras require different types of leaders that sit on the explore/extract axis. Product leaders (the 'explore' end) are there to define product categories, while Sales leaders (the 'extract' end) are there to win in product categories. In the 70s, components were expensive and thus the market was mainframes and big company sales, so required a sales leader to extract the most, and the product could be average (like IBM, HP). In the early 80s, components were getting cheap enough to be affordable by regular people, so a product leader was needed to define the personal computing sector, as the product could not be average (not Commodore, TI, or IBM PC). In the late 80s - 90s, commoditization meant it was about capturing the value of the personal computing sector, so it required a sales leader to extract the most, and the product could just be average (like Windows, beige PCs). In the late 90s - 00s, it became cheap enough to start internet companies at scale and opened up an entire market, so it required product leaders to define the core internet offerings of cloud, social media, search, and ecommerce, and the product couldn't be average (not Yahoo, Myspace, or co-lo ISPs). In the mid 00s, components were getting small & powerful enough, so it required a product leader to define the mobile computing sector, and the product couldn't be average (not Nokia, Blackberry, Win Phone). In the 10s - now, with mobile and internet now defined, it required sales leaders to extract the most and the product could be average (like Android). Jobs was a success when product vision was necessary (early 80s, late 90s-00s), and a failure when it was not (late 80s-90s). Ballmer was a success when sales/extraction was necessary (90s) but a failure when it was not (the 00s), as I consider not leveraging a leading market position into multiple adjacent trillion dollar business sectors a failure. Cook has been a success for the past decade because the market really needed someone to execute well on the things that were just defined (mobile devices). According to the above theory, it should have been the decade of Android, but Apple's execution has been so much more competent than Google's that they ran away with it.
kergonath 5y ago
> I don’t think anyone is really arguing Cook is a product visionary—I certainly don’t think Cook is himself. But just navigating the political landscape alone is truly impressive. I agree. However, he is a master at providing the infrastructure and logistics to make other people realise their vision. And he does have a long-term plan. The scale and efficiency of Apple’s operations, as well as their continued success is mind boggling. There have been a couple of hiccups every now and then (and some tours de force as well); overall it is quite impressive.
chongli 5y ago
I can’t answer for those other issues but I’m an iPad Pro owner and I’ll say the 120Hz screen with the pencil feels absolutely magical. I think any Pro user who uses it for drawing and painting will not want to use anything else. It’s a legit professional tool. Looks like the new M1 version pushed even harder in that direction with its display and colour support. It reminds me of Macs back in the 90’s. Very few used Windows for creative work. The MacOS had ColorSync and professionals in photography and print, publishing, etc refused to use anything but a Mac due to the need for colour accuracy in their workflows. To an outsider it may have seemed baffling as to why these computers were considered professional tools when everyone else in business was using Windows.
- perardi 5y ago
  I fully admit I am a crusty old Mac user, who in fact started on the Mac back in those days. I perhaps don’t see the Pro in iPad Pro because I am wanting it to basically be a Mac, but tablet. Maybe it is truly an orthogonal product that does pro work differently. But the software story just still feels incomplete. Just feels so limiting in terms of file system and such.
  - chongli 5y ago
    I am also a crusty old Mac user from back then. I really miss MacOS 8 and its simplicity and spatial Finder. The iPad Pro is a pro device for creative professionals in visual arts only, to my knowledge. It’s definitely not a pro software development tool or anything else of the sort we’d use a Mac for. In some sense you can think of the iPad Pro as an attack on Wacom’s market. I’m not a creative pro by any stretch of the imagination. I use my iPad Pro for tutoring people remotely in mathematics, a task it excels at. I also play some games on it and use it for FaceTime calls because its front-facing camera is nicer than the one on my M1 MBA. I’m really happy with my iPad Pro even though I was hesitant about buying one for over a year. I was expecting buyers’ remorse to set in but it thankfully hasn’t. I keep finding new things to do with it. Scrolling through PDFs on the device is way smoother than the MBA, for example, so I’ve used it as a second screen for reading documentation while working.
snowwrestler 5y ago
Jobs became Apple CEO in 1997. Tim Cook joined Apple in 1998. It’s easy to forget, but Cook was a huge part of remaking Apple almost from the beginning with Jobs. His role has obviously expanded but he’s essentially running a company that he helped create.

intergalplan 5y ago

> iPad Pro does, etc I get that. But. Having used many iPads, my favorite sizes are the 12.9" (Pro) and the Mini. Why (for the pro—I trust my love of the mini needs little explanation)? The 12.9" is so big that it's about the size of an 8.5x11" sheet of paper, which turns out to be a really convenient size for reading anything based on... paper. It's outstanding for reading PDFs of, say, textbooks, as it's large enough you might be able to get away with reading it in landscape, and is the best device I'm aware of for reading comics (ditto on the landscape mode, it works great, it's just a little smaller than a real two-page comic book spread). Yet it's light enough not to be a giant pain to hold. It's amazing for art (with a Pencil). Nice and big, very responsive. The larger screen makes almost anything you'd do on a normal iPad a little better. Movies, browsing, games. Low-distraction writing device with an external keyboard. It's a great companion for music where, again, the larger size is really nice for displaying sheet music or... well, almost anything else music-related you want to do. Last I checked the cameras & mics beat the hell out of most laptops, including Apple ones, for video calls. Know what it's very close in size to? A 13" MBP or Air. Know what it can do? Become a portable external monitor for same. Damn nice. 2-player board games. Again, the size helps a ton. My personal uses barely call for all the extra horsepower of the "pro" line, actually, aside from maybe drawing (which, AFAIK, has more to do with specialized hardware on the screen than with CPU power or memory) but holy crap, the screen size. It's glorious. If I could have only one computing device in my house I'd seriously consider making it the 12.9" iPad Pro (assuming I could keep my mechanical bluetooth keyboard, too). I can always SSH/Mosh to a unixy command line somewhere else, but none of my unixy machines are much good for most of what I use the iPad Pro for.

ProAm 5y ago

Cook is to Apple like Balmer was to Microsoft.

colinmhayes 5y ago
Balmer kind of blew it for microsoft though. Cook is doing well enough.
- adventured 5y ago
  Ballmer didn't do much to harm Microsoft, he sales-managed the company - Microsoft increased in size considerably during his tenure. Sales went from $23 billion to $86 billion during the Ballmer years, a radical increase for an already large company. One can certainly give credit to Gates instead, perhaps, however Ballmer still didn't botch it. Azure and cloud Office were born during the Ballmer years as well, those were initiatives during his years that have been perfected under Nadella (who is a dramatically better product CEO). I consider Nadella's willingness to abandon the Windows religion as the single greatest contribution any CEO has made to Microsoft since the peak Gates years. The worst you can say about Ballmer is that during his reign Microsoft didn't take over the world by grabbing search and mobile. Which was a near impossible task, no company can or should own everything in such a way. I do believe if Ballmer had kept control for a longer period of time (another ten years or so), the risk would have increased of Microsoft getting permanently Oracle'd culturally. It wasn't entirely a bad thing to have a strong insider as a hand in the post Gates years (maybe a good question is: was there anybody else in 1999-2000, in the upper tiers of management, that would have been better fit for the task).
  - npunt 5y ago
    I think different eras require different types of leaders that sit on the explore/extract axis. Product leaders (the 'explore' end) are there to define product categories, while Sales leaders (the 'extract' end) are there to win in product categories. In the 70s, components were expensive and thus the market was mainframes and big company sales, so required a sales leader to extract the most, and the product could be average (like IBM, HP). In the early 80s, components were getting cheap enough to be affordable by regular people, so a product leader was needed to define the personal computing sector, as the product could not be average (not Commodore, TI, or IBM PC). In the late 80s - 90s, commoditization meant it was about capturing the value of the personal computing sector, so it required a sales leader to extract the most, and the product could just be average (like Windows, beige PCs). In the late 90s - 00s, it became cheap enough to start internet companies at scale and opened up an entire market, so it required product leaders to define the core internet offerings of cloud, social media, search, and ecommerce, and the product couldn't be average (not Yahoo, Myspace, or co-lo ISPs). In the mid 00s, components were getting small & powerful enough, so it required a product leader to define the mobile computing sector, and the product couldn't be average (not Nokia, Blackberry, Win Phone). In the 10s - now, with mobile and internet now defined, it required sales leaders to extract the most and the product could be average (like Android). Jobs was a success when product vision was necessary (early 80s, late 90s-00s), and a failure when it was not (late 80s-90s). Ballmer was a success when sales/extraction was necessary (90s) but a failure when it was not (the 00s), as I consider not leveraging a leading market position into multiple adjacent trillion dollar business sectors a failure. Cook has been a success for the past decade because the market really needed someone to execute well on the things that were just defined (mobile devices). According to the above theory, it should have been the decade of Android, but Apple's execution has been so much more competent than Google's that they ran away with it.

kergonath 5y ago

> I don’t think anyone is really arguing Cook is a product visionary—I certainly don’t think Cook is himself. But just navigating the political landscape alone is truly impressive. I agree. However, he is a master at providing the infrastructure and logistics to make other people realise their vision. And he does have a long-term plan. The scale and efficiency of Apple’s operations, as well as their continued success is mind boggling. There have been a couple of hiccups every now and then (and some tours de force as well); overall it is quite impressive.

chongli 5y ago

I can’t answer for those other issues but I’m an iPad Pro owner and I’ll say the 120Hz screen with the pencil feels absolutely magical. I think any Pro user who uses it for drawing and painting will not want to use anything else. It’s a legit professional tool. Looks like the new M1 version pushed even harder in that direction with its display and colour support. It reminds me of Macs back in the 90’s. Very few used Windows for creative work. The MacOS had ColorSync and professionals in photography and print, publishing, etc refused to use anything but a Mac due to the need for colour accuracy in their workflows. To an outsider it may have seemed baffling as to why these computers were considered professional tools when everyone else in business was using Windows.

perardi 5y ago
I fully admit I am a crusty old Mac user, who in fact started on the Mac back in those days. I perhaps don’t see the Pro in iPad Pro because I am wanting it to basically be a Mac, but tablet. Maybe it is truly an orthogonal product that does pro work differently. But the software story just still feels incomplete. Just feels so limiting in terms of file system and such.
- chongli 5y ago
  I am also a crusty old Mac user from back then. I really miss MacOS 8 and its simplicity and spatial Finder. The iPad Pro is a pro device for creative professionals in visual arts only, to my knowledge. It’s definitely not a pro software development tool or anything else of the sort we’d use a Mac for. In some sense you can think of the iPad Pro as an attack on Wacom’s market. I’m not a creative pro by any stretch of the imagination. I use my iPad Pro for tutoring people remotely in mathematics, a task it excels at. I also play some games on it and use it for FaceTime calls because its front-facing camera is nicer than the one on my M1 MBA. I’m really happy with my iPad Pro even though I was hesitant about buying one for over a year. I was expecting buyers’ remorse to set in but it thankfully hasn’t. I keep finding new things to do with it. Scrolling through PDFs on the device is way smoother than the MBA, for example, so I’ve used it as a second screen for reading documentation while working.

snowwrestler 5y ago

Jobs became Apple CEO in 1997. Tim Cook joined Apple in 1998. It’s easy to forget, but Cook was a huge part of remaking Apple almost from the beginning with Jobs. His role has obviously expanded but he’s essentially running a company that he helped create.