3 ms·

Have we forgotten the Newton? The Newton had issues, but lack of daring design innovation wasn't one of them. Now that Palm has boomed and iPads and iPhones are

Have we forgotten the Newton? The Newton had issues, but lack of daring design innovation wasn't one of them. Now that Palm has boomed and iPads and iPhones are everywhere, it's difficult to appreciate how crazy the Newton was at the time. People didn't know that mobile book-sized computers were the future. The Newton was a bit too futuristic, too ambitious for its own hardware. Apple also tried a bunch of things in the OS space before NeXT and Jobs rode to the rescue. They just didn't succeed. Which brings this right back to Tim Cook, and the unsung operational heroes that really built Apple: It isn't that Apple didn't try to innovate in the Jobs-free interregnum. They just didn't succeed. It takes more than just good intentions and "vision": It takes operational skill.

felipemnoa 15y ago
OK, so if a Formula 1 driver wins the race, who gets the credit? The car or the driver? I would say the car is Tim Cook and Steve jobs is the driver.
- dasil003 15y ago
  That's a terrible analogy. There is not just one person making human decisions in Apple. Jobs deserves a lot of credit, but there are hundreds (if not thousands) of people doing the critical design work that make Apple products great. It's easy to sit on the outside and imagine that Apple doesn't have a decision-maker to equal Jobs, but only time will tell.
  - felipemnoa 15y ago
    >>Jobs deserves a lot of credit, but there are hundreds (if not thousands) of people doing the critical design work that make Apple products great You could say the same about the car-driver relationship. "The driver deservers a lot of credit but the car has hundreds (if not thousands) of parts doing the critical work of moving the car forward" Or you could substitute parts with designers. Keep in mind that Steve Jobs chose Tim Cook and Tim Cook worked only with the approval of Steve Jobs. Had Tim Cook not performed (just like the car) be assured that he would have been replaced by a better person (car)? This in no way diminishes the person (car) but notice that the main person doing the decisions is Steve Jobs (The driver). Had Apple failed everybody would have blamed Steve Jobs not Tim Cook, so I don't understand the double standard.
    - dasil003 15y ago
      Those parts are inanimate, they are not making decisions in and of themselves. Even the engineers working on the cars are operating within the unchanging constraints of physics. Also, if Apple fails people would blame Jobs, but if the car suffers a mechanical failure people don't blame the driver. The driver of a race car needs to push the machine to it's limit but not past it or he will flame out spectacularly. Such is not the case of an established technology company. In fact whole goal of a race is much more uniform than the goal of a company operating in the consumer market where you are contending with the fashion and whims of the public at large. All in all I just don't see the point of such an analogy. It sheds no insight. Racing cars and building tech companies are no more alike than skydiving and underwater basket weaving.
      - felipemnoa 15y ago
        One can only take an analogy so far. I still think the analogy is good but lets agree to disagree. OK, lets look at it this way. I think Steve Jobs could have been successful without Tim Cook, but Tim Cook could not have been successful without Steve Jobs (In turning Apple around). The reason I say this is because Steve Jobs use to do Tim Cook's job when he first returned to Apple. He did it himself, along with his CEO job, until he found Cook. Had it not been Cook he would have found somebody else. Lets not take credit away from Cook though. The guy is good, otherwise Jobs would not have given him the job. But I don't think that we can say that Apple would not be as successful without Cook. However, is almost universally accepted that Apple would not be here without Steve. Hence the Car-Driver analogy >:)
      - lwhi 15y ago
        It's a decent analogy .. especially when you consider what happens when the driver has to be replaced ...
- nickheer 15y ago
  In Formula 1, the winning driver gets a trophy, as does the team behind the car. The driver is whomever is CEO; the team is the company. But, as dasil003 said, that's a pretty horrible analogy.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]

felipemnoa 15y ago

OK, so if a Formula 1 driver wins the race, who gets the credit? The car or the driver? I would say the car is Tim Cook and Steve jobs is the driver.

dasil003 15y ago
That's a terrible analogy. There is not just one person making human decisions in Apple. Jobs deserves a lot of credit, but there are hundreds (if not thousands) of people doing the critical design work that make Apple products great. It's easy to sit on the outside and imagine that Apple doesn't have a decision-maker to equal Jobs, but only time will tell.
- felipemnoa 15y ago
  >>Jobs deserves a lot of credit, but there are hundreds (if not thousands) of people doing the critical design work that make Apple products great You could say the same about the car-driver relationship. "The driver deservers a lot of credit but the car has hundreds (if not thousands) of parts doing the critical work of moving the car forward" Or you could substitute parts with designers. Keep in mind that Steve Jobs chose Tim Cook and Tim Cook worked only with the approval of Steve Jobs. Had Tim Cook not performed (just like the car) be assured that he would have been replaced by a better person (car)? This in no way diminishes the person (car) but notice that the main person doing the decisions is Steve Jobs (The driver). Had Apple failed everybody would have blamed Steve Jobs not Tim Cook, so I don't understand the double standard.
  - dasil003 15y ago
    Those parts are inanimate, they are not making decisions in and of themselves. Even the engineers working on the cars are operating within the unchanging constraints of physics. Also, if Apple fails people would blame Jobs, but if the car suffers a mechanical failure people don't blame the driver. The driver of a race car needs to push the machine to it's limit but not past it or he will flame out spectacularly. Such is not the case of an established technology company. In fact whole goal of a race is much more uniform than the goal of a company operating in the consumer market where you are contending with the fashion and whims of the public at large. All in all I just don't see the point of such an analogy. It sheds no insight. Racing cars and building tech companies are no more alike than skydiving and underwater basket weaving.
    - felipemnoa 15y ago
      One can only take an analogy so far. I still think the analogy is good but lets agree to disagree. OK, lets look at it this way. I think Steve Jobs could have been successful without Tim Cook, but Tim Cook could not have been successful without Steve Jobs (In turning Apple around). The reason I say this is because Steve Jobs use to do Tim Cook's job when he first returned to Apple. He did it himself, along with his CEO job, until he found Cook. Had it not been Cook he would have found somebody else. Lets not take credit away from Cook though. The guy is good, otherwise Jobs would not have given him the job. But I don't think that we can say that Apple would not be as successful without Cook. However, is almost universally accepted that Apple would not be here without Steve. Hence the Car-Driver analogy >:)
    - lwhi 15y ago
      It's a decent analogy .. especially when you consider what happens when the driver has to be replaced ...
nickheer 15y ago
In Formula 1, the winning driver gets a trophy, as does the team behind the car. The driver is whomever is CEO; the team is the company. But, as dasil003 said, that's a pretty horrible analogy.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]