5 ms·

How Apple Works

164 points by pmarin 15y ago

bugsy 15y ago
Aaron was right about what should have been done, but it's known that Ives incurred the wrath of Jobs recently when he said he was tired of working in the US and wanted to go home and Jobs said absolutely not. This put Ives on Apple's "Disloyal" list. Cook will be a disaster. He would have been fine as an exact opposite but balancing weight against a visionary leader like Jobs, as Ives would have been. But as the visionary leader, a man whose only contributions have been to reduce costs and quality in order to increase profits, it's going to go down a predictable path that other companies have followed. The salary and $385 million signing bonus thing being reported are obscene for Cook who has not a single case of innovation, because it is something he is simply not capable of. This is not an insult against him, it is a simple acknowledgment of his known strengths and capabilities.
- tjogin 15y ago
  It never ceases to amaze me how much amateur advice people have for the most successful tech company in the world.
  - iand 15y ago
    You're right, it's amazing that people have their own ideas and opinions.
    - tjogin 15y ago
      I'm not talking about about having an opinion. I'm talking about being so extremely full of yourself that you'd think that you can do a better job running the world's most successful tech company than they do. But I don't mind people doing that at all. Like I said, it amazes me, fascinates me, even entertains me.
      - eevilspock 15y ago
        What's even more amazing is that they are second-guessing the very man they imply is impossible to replace.
        tjogin 15y ago
        I guess what they really mean is that nobody could replace Jobs except they themselves. That is the only logical conclusion I can think of, at least.
      - iand 15y ago
        It's a thread about how Apple works. All kinds of opinions and punditry will come out. Debating the flaws in those ideas is a good way for those new to running tech businesses to learn. Seeing all the downvotes for having a controversial opinion is a bit sad really.
  - tententwenty 15y ago
    It shouldn't then. It's because Apple are so successful that so many have an opinion. I'd imagine that a lot more people have opinions on/advice for the NY Yankees than the Baltimore Orioles.
  - hyperbovine 15y ago
    I find it's generally related to how much stock they own in the most successful tech company in the world.
    - tricolon 15y ago
      I.e. large shareholders will contact Apple directly?
irons 15y ago
Steve Jobs wore a lot of hats (ruthless tastemaker and keynote impresario among them) not because the CEO must hold these roles but because he happened to be best at them. Arguing that they must be held by the guy with the organizational power to fire anyone is daft. No one person replaces Steve Jobs. Tim Cook and Jony Ive know it.
- donnyg107 15y ago
  Agreed. And even further, Jony's ability to deliver a keynote tastefully does not indicate to me that he shares Job's talent for vision and taste.
- rockarage 15y ago
  Someone has to be CEO and for the long term is Tim Cook really the best person for the job ? Steve Job is an irreplaceable part of Apple's lore, but that does not stop Jony Ive from making his own major mark. He already has a rich history of designing great products. To understand Aarons point better you have to watch Steve Jobs interview, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOgOP_aqqtg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOgOP_aqqtg . There he says the only problem with Microsoft is that they have no taste. Steve recognize some questions it's importance, he says having good taste is important for Apple. According to Steve having good taste is key to Apple's culture and success, Steve Jobs said it. A company can have great financial success without good taste, Steve Jobs said that about Microsoft. But as Aaron mentioned in the article that is not how Apple works. Tim Cook is great at operations, perhaps he should have stayed COO. The interesting move would be to appoint Jonathan Ive's as CEO. Of course to many that would seem unconventional and perhaps even risky. But that would be authentic Apple, that would be thinking different.
  - niels_olson 15y ago
    Implicit in your argument is that Tim Cook doesn't have good taste. I suspect he does. After all, look at his choice of employment.
    - rockarage 15y ago
bignoggins 15y ago
I disagree with this post. Jobs is still Chairman of the Board. I imagine decisions regarding "taste" will still run through Jobs. Ive is likely to have an increased role as well. Tim Cook does not have to take over all of the roles that Steve Jobs had in order to be successful. He just needs to execute on Job's vision, and other top executives like Forstall and Ive will step in to take over some of Steve's day to day.
- kalleboo 15y ago
  I think most people are taking on this debate with the ghoulish yet all-to-possible assumption that Jobs is not going to be with us for much longer.
  - pstuart 15y ago
    That's rather sanctimonious. edit below: ghoulish: 1. strangely diabolical or cruel; monstrous: a ghoulish and questionable sense of humor. 2. showing fascination with death, disease, maiming, etc.; morbid: ghoulish curiosity. 3. of, pertaining to, or like a ghoul or ghouls. sanctimonious: Making a show of being morally superior to other people. Steve is Apple. He created it, he saved it from death. There's only one logical reason why he would step down and people are mentioning that. It's too bad that your sensibilities are offended.
  - talicni_tom 15y ago
    http://www.tmz.com/2011/08/26/steve-jobs-apple-photo-resignation-ceo-sick/#.TllQFl1ghJE http://www.tmz.com/2011/08/26/steve-jobs-apple-photo-resigna... TMZ got a recent photo of him, take a look. I'm not a doctor but he doesn't look good.
    - Udo 15y ago
      If you know anything about pancreatic cancer and the other glimpses of Jobs' medical history, you don't need tasteless photos to figure out what is going on. People keep saying stuff like "get better Steve", which is a nice sentiment but at some point it's not appropriate anymore to talk about a terminally ill person that way. This guy has already survived a very long time with an illness that kills most people within months. He has now chosen to take a bow and exit the stage gracefully, a decision that I'm sure was made as late as possible. I'm certain that resignation letter has been sitting in a drawer at his lawyer's office for quite some time. The truth is this man will be dead within the next few weeks, let's give him the privacy to go out with decency. Paparazzi shots and discussions about how "not good" he looks are completely unnecessary. As far as this thread's topic is concerned, the question boils down to the point of whether Apple can thrive on execution alone. We'll see. Ideally, Ive will reconsider scaling back his role as a creative lead. I think together with Schiller's enthusiasm and Cook's organizational talent, there is no reason why Apple shouldn't continue to put out great innovation. But even if they do enter a creative slump, they have a lot of momentum and cash to carry them over any dry spell that might happen.
mashmac2 15y ago
Question: Why does the 'tastemaker' have to be CEO? A traditional CEO's role is to provide vision for the company, sure, but Cook clearly knows he's not Jony Ive, and I'm sure is willing to keep people like Ive around to make those 'tastemaker' decisions. I don't think tastemaker == CEO at all, necessarily.
- fab13n 15y ago
  Operational depts have a natural tendency to answer "that's not possible" when challenged very hard, and to try and negotiate compromises. You don't need the top guy to be the tastemaster, but you need his arbitrages to be heavily biased in favor of designers, not operatives. For this reason, it sounds worrisome to put the chief operative officer at the top position, generally speaking. Now I don't know Tim Cook, maybe he's able/trained to let the visionaries call the shots.
  - philwelch 15y ago
    I think if you're the COO at Apple, of all companies, you're used to making the impossible happen.
stcredzero 15y ago
If Apple is to continue its revolutionary successes, then there needs to be a well functioning "4-man band" to take his place. Mr. Ive can still supply the vision part, but he'll have to work together with others to ensure software design and execution are harmoniously in step. Fortunately, I think that's what Steve has been planning all along.
azulum 15y ago
being able to deliver a good keynote ≠ having a critical eye. and just like that, your argument vanishes in a poof of logic.
eevilspock 15y ago
It's funny how all of you armchair board members are second-guessing Steve Jobs.
schmittz 15y ago
Naming Tim Cook as CEO makes a lot of sense. Obviously, it made the most sense to Jobs himself. People like to think that Apple's design alone is the only reason the company's grown so large. It's easy to forget that without the operational work of Cook, Apple could not even have built the products they did. In that regard it makes more sense for Cook to be CEO because he can insure that the company remains as profitable as it is, while also enabling new devices to be realized. With great designs and weak organizational leadership, Apple cannot thrive as it has.
GavinB 15y ago
Tim Cook has been playing a certain role to date. He has been in charge of execution and organization. Does this mean that he doesn't have taste? Does the fact that he is not a genius public speaker mean that he doesn't have great taste? It's possible that he does, and possible that he doesn't, but it's entirely possible that Cook has talents that simply weren't being tapped in his old job. I suspect that following up on the vision of Jobs and the design group actually takes a lot more of this magical "taste" than is immediately obvious. There are a huge number of decisions that need to be made even in the later stages of the process. It seems like we're assuming that because he was a COO, Cook doesn't have the talents that it takes to be a CEO. How can we possibly know that? The only evidence given is that he's a COO now, and doesn't have the showmanship that Jobs does.
- extension 15y ago
  We don't know that the assistant janitor at Apple doesn't have the killer taste required to run the company, but without any particular evidence of it, it's probably best to assume he/she does not. But we don't really know who was, is, and will be running the show at Apple, or how those matters of taste are truly decided. All we know is that this is the time they chose to officially announce Jobs' succession and that Cook is the person who they felt investors would have the most confidence in as CEO. The ultimate power is with the BoD, and probably with Jobs for the rest of his life.
  - ssharp 15y ago
    >We don't know that the assistant janitor at Apple doesn't have the killer taste required to run the company, but without any particular evidence of it, it's probably best to assume he/she does not. Steve Jobs did not specifically request that an assistant janitor take over as CEO. With Job's blessing, it's safe to assume that either Cook, or some system Job's put in place, is expected to continue Apple's taste.
nirvana 15y ago
Steve Jobs worked on a lot of products in his life- not only the many that we know about but probably several times that in products that didn't end up coming to market. But there is one product that is the most central to Steve's Life. In fact, it is his masterwork. He started when he was young and is still working on it today-- and that product is Apple itself. Steve says Tim Cook is the right person to succeed him, and I believe that Steve would never say this if he didn't believe it. He, more than anyone else in the world, wants to see Apple continue to be what he wanted it to be. Also, Tim Cook is gay (sorry but for me, that counts as an asset in the taste department). He's a creative guy (you have to be) and he's a uncompromising. You can't work as hard as he does and achieve what he has behind the scenes without a kind of ruthlessness that sets a very high bar. Tim's experience as COO is exactly what makes him the best man to fill Steve's shoes, if ruthless focus on design is what Apple needs. After all, Steve isn't a designer. Steve doesn't even, by all accounts, have a lot of natural taste. He's acquired the taste over many years. What Steve has always had, and what Tim seems to have, is an uncompromisingly high bar. Jonathan Ive is probably going to be well compensated for staying at Apple over the long term, and the skilled software designers and hardware and software engineers and those who lead them as well are critical. But the "vision" thing is not a mystical ability, and it isn't an innate talent, or if it is, both Tim and Steve have it. In fact, I think this is why Tim was the preferred choice by Steve, over people like Ron Johnson and Jonathan Ive. I think Steve saw this in Tim's nature, and not in Jonathans. This makes sense, because I think a designer has to be more flexible and more open minded and more willing to take risks. A designer has to produce some crap in the process of producing brilliance because you can't know in advance that it is crap. To be able to ruthlessly weed out the crap, you have to have a different perspective. So, Steve made the decision, and I think it makes perfect sense, but even if it didn't, who better than Steve to know who the right person is?
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
hmottestad 15y ago
That is some mighty small font and large margins. I wish people would make their text a bit easier on the eyes.
doomlaser 15y ago
This person doesn't know wtf he's talking about.
insidepitch 15y ago
It's amazing to me how so many people outside Apple think Jony Ive could be a credible candidate for CEO, when no one inside Apple would believe that for a second. The only product-focused executive who would even have had a chance is Scott Forstall. To the naive observer, Apple seems like a hardware company. But it is really a software company monetized through hardware sales, just as Google is a software company monetized through advertising. As Steve himself said, differentiation through software is the key to all of Apple's products. Ive doesn't have much experience, credibility or interest in this area. On the other hand, Scott Forstall is the most powerful and credible software executive at Apple. More specifically: the Human Interface team that does all the HI design for iOS and Mac OS X reports to Forstall, not Ive. Ive isn't even one of the executives present at executive HI reviews, whereas Forstall is the one driving the decisions when SJ is not there. The HI team may get less outside visibility than Industrial Design but they make a much bigger difference to the experience of Apple products. Furthermore, it's clear from watching company politics that Forstall has the ambition to go to the top (as does Phil Schiller), and Ive just doesn't have that kind of drive. Ive has the trust and affection of Steve for being an artist, and that's the main reason he is on the executive team. He hasn't had to fight for it like the other execs. Note for example that Eddy Cue (iTunes, iCloud) and Craig Federighi (Mac OS X) still aren't on the executive team, despite heading critical product lines and much bigger departments than ID.
- richcollins 15y ago
  Ah so that is why the hardware is so much more aesthetically pleasing than the software.
  - richcollins 15y ago
    Come on who in their right mind would claim that iTunes and iCal look as nice as the iPhone 4?
dr_ 15y ago
It's not just about taste though, is it? WebOS was beautifully designed, but has basically been unsuccessful. It's really a combination of taste and the ability to execute on it. Jobs wasn't as successful with Next, despite his tastes. He may not have had the right team in place to work with, to execute on his vision. And with Apple, he already had a well established brand to work with. Even all of the products released by Apple under Jobs' reign were not successful, such as the G4 Cube, the first Apple TV, the ROKR iTunes phone - and who is to say that products he nixed wouldn't have gone on to be successful - no one really knows. Tastes are important, but there are a LOT of things that matter in addition to good design taste.
- fuzionmonkey 15y ago
  You make a good point. Execution is just as crucial to Apple's success as the good taste. Palm and HP never had much success because they couldn't execute on the hardware front. They were continually behind the curve on hardware and continued to push an unpopular form factor. As a former Pre user, webOS was a pleasure to use but the phone itself was poorly made and had dated hardware. HP/Palm was always too little, too late and they just couldn't execute. Apple's excellent supply chaining and fabrication processes are a huge edge against the competition. They can execute where other's can't.
fonosip 15y ago
Ive might have been Job's first choice. But he wanted to quit, scale back work a few years ago. He had to be convinced not to move back to England.
maxniederhofer 15y ago
Even if all your arguments are true, there is absolutely no reason to believe that the "top tastemaker" also needs to be CEO of the company.
far33d 15y ago
"Here’s how Apple products are created: a team of designers decide exactly what a product should do and how it should look and feel, their work is ruthlessly edited by Steve until he approves, and then the entire rest of the company is given the task of moving mountains to make that dream real." Unsurprisingly, this is exactly how Pixar works. But Pixar was essentially run by Ed Catmull, who is much more like Tim Cook than Steve Jobs. Yes, Steve was CEO, but he wasn't the tastemaker at Pixar. As long as the CEO trusts someone else to drive the taste and works hard to preserve that culture, Apple will continue to be successful.
tptacek 15y ago
There's a certain degree of arrogance built into the idea that the person best suited to run the world's most successful company is the one whose skills we can best appreciate. There's a connection, but one I can't well articulate, between that point and the success of the iPad. I know I'm not the only one who occasionally scratches his head at the popularity of a device that's too big to pocket and too small to compete with a laptop. But it's Apple's execution in the mass market that matters, not what the geekerati think.

164 points by pmarin 15y ago

bugsy 15y ago

Aaron was right about what should have been done, but it's known that Ives incurred the wrath of Jobs recently when he said he was tired of working in the US and wanted to go home and Jobs said absolutely not. This put Ives on Apple's "Disloyal" list. Cook will be a disaster. He would have been fine as an exact opposite but balancing weight against a visionary leader like Jobs, as Ives would have been. But as the visionary leader, a man whose only contributions have been to reduce costs and quality in order to increase profits, it's going to go down a predictable path that other companies have followed. The salary and $385 million signing bonus thing being reported are obscene for Cook who has not a single case of innovation, because it is something he is simply not capable of. This is not an insult against him, it is a simple acknowledgment of his known strengths and capabilities.

tjogin 15y ago
It never ceases to amaze me how much amateur advice people have for the most successful tech company in the world.
- iand 15y ago
  You're right, it's amazing that people have their own ideas and opinions.
  - tjogin 15y ago
    I'm not talking about about having an opinion. I'm talking about being so extremely full of yourself that you'd think that you can do a better job running the world's most successful tech company than they do. But I don't mind people doing that at all. Like I said, it amazes me, fascinates me, even entertains me.
    - eevilspock 15y ago
      What's even more amazing is that they are second-guessing the very man they imply is impossible to replace.
      - tjogin 15y ago
        I guess what they really mean is that nobody could replace Jobs except they themselves. That is the only logical conclusion I can think of, at least.
    - iand 15y ago
      It's a thread about how Apple works. All kinds of opinions and punditry will come out. Debating the flaws in those ideas is a good way for those new to running tech businesses to learn. Seeing all the downvotes for having a controversial opinion is a bit sad really.
- tententwenty 15y ago
  It shouldn't then. It's because Apple are so successful that so many have an opinion. I'd imagine that a lot more people have opinions on/advice for the NY Yankees than the Baltimore Orioles.
- hyperbovine 15y ago
  I find it's generally related to how much stock they own in the most successful tech company in the world.
  - tricolon 15y ago
    I.e. large shareholders will contact Apple directly?

irons 15y ago

Steve Jobs wore a lot of hats (ruthless tastemaker and keynote impresario among them) not because the CEO must hold these roles but because he happened to be best at them. Arguing that they must be held by the guy with the organizational power to fire anyone is daft. No one person replaces Steve Jobs. Tim Cook and Jony Ive know it.

donnyg107 15y ago
Agreed. And even further, Jony's ability to deliver a keynote tastefully does not indicate to me that he shares Job's talent for vision and taste.
rockarage 15y ago
Someone has to be CEO and for the long term is Tim Cook really the best person for the job ? Steve Job is an irreplaceable part of Apple's lore, but that does not stop Jony Ive from making his own major mark. He already has a rich history of designing great products. To understand Aarons point better you have to watch Steve Jobs interview, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOgOP_aqqtg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOgOP_aqqtg . There he says the only problem with Microsoft is that they have no taste. Steve recognize some questions it's importance, he says having good taste is important for Apple. According to Steve having good taste is key to Apple's culture and success, Steve Jobs said it. A company can have great financial success without good taste, Steve Jobs said that about Microsoft. But as Aaron mentioned in the article that is not how Apple works. Tim Cook is great at operations, perhaps he should have stayed COO. The interesting move would be to appoint Jonathan Ive's as CEO. Of course to many that would seem unconventional and perhaps even risky. But that would be authentic Apple, that would be thinking different.
- niels_olson 15y ago
  Implicit in your argument is that Tim Cook doesn't have good taste. I suspect he does. After all, look at his choice of employment.
  - rockarage 15y ago

bignoggins 15y ago

I disagree with this post. Jobs is still Chairman of the Board. I imagine decisions regarding "taste" will still run through Jobs. Ive is likely to have an increased role as well. Tim Cook does not have to take over all of the roles that Steve Jobs had in order to be successful. He just needs to execute on Job's vision, and other top executives like Forstall and Ive will step in to take over some of Steve's day to day.

kalleboo 15y ago
I think most people are taking on this debate with the ghoulish yet all-to-possible assumption that Jobs is not going to be with us for much longer.
- pstuart 15y ago
  That's rather sanctimonious. edit below: ghoulish: 1. strangely diabolical or cruel; monstrous: a ghoulish and questionable sense of humor. 2. showing fascination with death, disease, maiming, etc.; morbid: ghoulish curiosity. 3. of, pertaining to, or like a ghoul or ghouls. sanctimonious: Making a show of being morally superior to other people. Steve is Apple. He created it, he saved it from death. There's only one logical reason why he would step down and people are mentioning that. It's too bad that your sensibilities are offended.
- talicni_tom 15y ago
  http://www.tmz.com/2011/08/26/steve-jobs-apple-photo-resignation-ceo-sick/#.TllQFl1ghJE http://www.tmz.com/2011/08/26/steve-jobs-apple-photo-resigna... TMZ got a recent photo of him, take a look. I'm not a doctor but he doesn't look good.
  - Udo 15y ago
    If you know anything about pancreatic cancer and the other glimpses of Jobs' medical history, you don't need tasteless photos to figure out what is going on. People keep saying stuff like "get better Steve", which is a nice sentiment but at some point it's not appropriate anymore to talk about a terminally ill person that way. This guy has already survived a very long time with an illness that kills most people within months. He has now chosen to take a bow and exit the stage gracefully, a decision that I'm sure was made as late as possible. I'm certain that resignation letter has been sitting in a drawer at his lawyer's office for quite some time. The truth is this man will be dead within the next few weeks, let's give him the privacy to go out with decency. Paparazzi shots and discussions about how "not good" he looks are completely unnecessary. As far as this thread's topic is concerned, the question boils down to the point of whether Apple can thrive on execution alone. We'll see. Ideally, Ive will reconsider scaling back his role as a creative lead. I think together with Schiller's enthusiasm and Cook's organizational talent, there is no reason why Apple shouldn't continue to put out great innovation. But even if they do enter a creative slump, they have a lot of momentum and cash to carry them over any dry spell that might happen.

mashmac2 15y ago

Question: Why does the 'tastemaker' have to be CEO? A traditional CEO's role is to provide vision for the company, sure, but Cook clearly knows he's not Jony Ive, and I'm sure is willing to keep people like Ive around to make those 'tastemaker' decisions. I don't think tastemaker == CEO at all, necessarily.

fab13n 15y ago
Operational depts have a natural tendency to answer "that's not possible" when challenged very hard, and to try and negotiate compromises. You don't need the top guy to be the tastemaster, but you need his arbitrages to be heavily biased in favor of designers, not operatives. For this reason, it sounds worrisome to put the chief operative officer at the top position, generally speaking. Now I don't know Tim Cook, maybe he's able/trained to let the visionaries call the shots.
- philwelch 15y ago
  I think if you're the COO at Apple, of all companies, you're used to making the impossible happen.

stcredzero 15y ago

If Apple is to continue its revolutionary successes, then there needs to be a well functioning "4-man band" to take his place. Mr. Ive can still supply the vision part, but he'll have to work together with others to ensure software design and execution are harmoniously in step. Fortunately, I think that's what Steve has been planning all along.

azulum 15y ago

being able to deliver a good keynote ≠ having a critical eye. and just like that, your argument vanishes in a poof of logic.

eevilspock 15y ago

It's funny how all of you armchair board members are second-guessing Steve Jobs.

schmittz 15y ago

Naming Tim Cook as CEO makes a lot of sense. Obviously, it made the most sense to Jobs himself. People like to think that Apple's design alone is the only reason the company's grown so large. It's easy to forget that without the operational work of Cook, Apple could not even have built the products they did. In that regard it makes more sense for Cook to be CEO because he can insure that the company remains as profitable as it is, while also enabling new devices to be realized. With great designs and weak organizational leadership, Apple cannot thrive as it has.

GavinB 15y ago

Tim Cook has been playing a certain role to date. He has been in charge of execution and organization. Does this mean that he doesn't have taste? Does the fact that he is not a genius public speaker mean that he doesn't have great taste? It's possible that he does, and possible that he doesn't, but it's entirely possible that Cook has talents that simply weren't being tapped in his old job. I suspect that following up on the vision of Jobs and the design group actually takes a lot more of this magical "taste" than is immediately obvious. There are a huge number of decisions that need to be made even in the later stages of the process. It seems like we're assuming that because he was a COO, Cook doesn't have the talents that it takes to be a CEO. How can we possibly know that? The only evidence given is that he's a COO now, and doesn't have the showmanship that Jobs does.

extension 15y ago
We don't know that the assistant janitor at Apple doesn't have the killer taste required to run the company, but without any particular evidence of it, it's probably best to assume he/she does not. But we don't really know who was, is, and will be running the show at Apple, or how those matters of taste are truly decided. All we know is that this is the time they chose to officially announce Jobs' succession and that Cook is the person who they felt investors would have the most confidence in as CEO. The ultimate power is with the BoD, and probably with Jobs for the rest of his life.
- ssharp 15y ago
  >We don't know that the assistant janitor at Apple doesn't have the killer taste required to run the company, but without any particular evidence of it, it's probably best to assume he/she does not. Steve Jobs did not specifically request that an assistant janitor take over as CEO. With Job's blessing, it's safe to assume that either Cook, or some system Job's put in place, is expected to continue Apple's taste.

nirvana 15y ago

Steve Jobs worked on a lot of products in his life- not only the many that we know about but probably several times that in products that didn't end up coming to market. But there is one product that is the most central to Steve's Life. In fact, it is his masterwork. He started when he was young and is still working on it today-- and that product is Apple itself. Steve says Tim Cook is the right person to succeed him, and I believe that Steve would never say this if he didn't believe it. He, more than anyone else in the world, wants to see Apple continue to be what he wanted it to be. Also, Tim Cook is gay (sorry but for me, that counts as an asset in the taste department). He's a creative guy (you have to be) and he's a uncompromising. You can't work as hard as he does and achieve what he has behind the scenes without a kind of ruthlessness that sets a very high bar. Tim's experience as COO is exactly what makes him the best man to fill Steve's shoes, if ruthless focus on design is what Apple needs. After all, Steve isn't a designer. Steve doesn't even, by all accounts, have a lot of natural taste. He's acquired the taste over many years. What Steve has always had, and what Tim seems to have, is an uncompromisingly high bar. Jonathan Ive is probably going to be well compensated for staying at Apple over the long term, and the skilled software designers and hardware and software engineers and those who lead them as well are critical. But the "vision" thing is not a mystical ability, and it isn't an innate talent, or if it is, both Tim and Steve have it. In fact, I think this is why Tim was the preferred choice by Steve, over people like Ron Johnson and Jonathan Ive. I think Steve saw this in Tim's nature, and not in Jonathans. This makes sense, because I think a designer has to be more flexible and more open minded and more willing to take risks. A designer has to produce some crap in the process of producing brilliance because you can't know in advance that it is crap. To be able to ruthlessly weed out the crap, you have to have a different perspective. So, Steve made the decision, and I think it makes perfect sense, but even if it didn't, who better than Steve to know who the right person is?

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

hmottestad 15y ago

That is some mighty small font and large margins. I wish people would make their text a bit easier on the eyes.

doomlaser 15y ago

This person doesn't know wtf he's talking about.

insidepitch 15y ago

It's amazing to me how so many people outside Apple think Jony Ive could be a credible candidate for CEO, when no one inside Apple would believe that for a second. The only product-focused executive who would even have had a chance is Scott Forstall. To the naive observer, Apple seems like a hardware company. But it is really a software company monetized through hardware sales, just as Google is a software company monetized through advertising. As Steve himself said, differentiation through software is the key to all of Apple's products. Ive doesn't have much experience, credibility or interest in this area. On the other hand, Scott Forstall is the most powerful and credible software executive at Apple. More specifically: the Human Interface team that does all the HI design for iOS and Mac OS X reports to Forstall, not Ive. Ive isn't even one of the executives present at executive HI reviews, whereas Forstall is the one driving the decisions when SJ is not there. The HI team may get less outside visibility than Industrial Design but they make a much bigger difference to the experience of Apple products. Furthermore, it's clear from watching company politics that Forstall has the ambition to go to the top (as does Phil Schiller), and Ive just doesn't have that kind of drive. Ive has the trust and affection of Steve for being an artist, and that's the main reason he is on the executive team. He hasn't had to fight for it like the other execs. Note for example that Eddy Cue (iTunes, iCloud) and Craig Federighi (Mac OS X) still aren't on the executive team, despite heading critical product lines and much bigger departments than ID.

richcollins 15y ago
Ah so that is why the hardware is so much more aesthetically pleasing than the software.
- richcollins 15y ago
  Come on who in their right mind would claim that iTunes and iCal look as nice as the iPhone 4?

dr_ 15y ago

It's not just about taste though, is it? WebOS was beautifully designed, but has basically been unsuccessful. It's really a combination of taste and the ability to execute on it. Jobs wasn't as successful with Next, despite his tastes. He may not have had the right team in place to work with, to execute on his vision. And with Apple, he already had a well established brand to work with. Even all of the products released by Apple under Jobs' reign were not successful, such as the G4 Cube, the first Apple TV, the ROKR iTunes phone - and who is to say that products he nixed wouldn't have gone on to be successful - no one really knows. Tastes are important, but there are a LOT of things that matter in addition to good design taste.

fuzionmonkey 15y ago
You make a good point. Execution is just as crucial to Apple's success as the good taste. Palm and HP never had much success because they couldn't execute on the hardware front. They were continually behind the curve on hardware and continued to push an unpopular form factor. As a former Pre user, webOS was a pleasure to use but the phone itself was poorly made and had dated hardware. HP/Palm was always too little, too late and they just couldn't execute. Apple's excellent supply chaining and fabrication processes are a huge edge against the competition. They can execute where other's can't.

fonosip 15y ago

Ive might have been Job's first choice. But he wanted to quit, scale back work a few years ago. He had to be convinced not to move back to England.

maxniederhofer 15y ago

Even if all your arguments are true, there is absolutely no reason to believe that the "top tastemaker" also needs to be CEO of the company.

far33d 15y ago

"Here’s how Apple products are created: a team of designers decide exactly what a product should do and how it should look and feel, their work is ruthlessly edited by Steve until he approves, and then the entire rest of the company is given the task of moving mountains to make that dream real." Unsurprisingly, this is exactly how Pixar works. But Pixar was essentially run by Ed Catmull, who is much more like Tim Cook than Steve Jobs. Yes, Steve was CEO, but he wasn't the tastemaker at Pixar. As long as the CEO trusts someone else to drive the taste and works hard to preserve that culture, Apple will continue to be successful.

tptacek 15y ago

There's a certain degree of arrogance built into the idea that the person best suited to run the world's most successful company is the one whose skills we can best appreciate. There's a connection, but one I can't well articulate, between that point and the success of the iPad. I know I'm not the only one who occasionally scratches his head at the popularity of a device that's too big to pocket and too small to compete with a laptop. But it's Apple's execution in the mass market that matters, not what the geekerati think.