8 ms·

At Apple, Tim Cook leads a quiet cultural revolution

81 points by samspenc 13y ago

botolo 13y ago
I like Tim's style and I think he needs some time to get adjusted to his role. It's still not clear to me, after being an Apple user and fan since the beginning and after reading Steve Job's biography, how much innovation Steve really brought to Apple. What I mean is: was Steve really the one who gave the initial impulse for some of the most innovative products we have seen so far (i.e. iPhone, iPad, iPod, etc.)? In this case, I think that Apple is doomed. If, on the contrary, Steve was the quality checker, the one pushing everyone else to do better, I think that the current Apple's executive team can properly replace this role and do good at Apple.
- capkutay 13y ago
  No one else claims they had the 'vision' for the iPod/iPad/iPhone while at the same time everyone credits Steve so he must have been more than a quality checker.
  - nhaehnle 13y ago
    Is that really a qualitative difference though? Clearly, MP3 players had been around before the iPod. What set the iPod apart was much better design. This is, in a sense, a matter of quality checking, but to an extreme extent. Does the extremity of the quality checking turn into something qualitatively different? That seems to be a rather subjective judgement, hence why you had the back-and-forth.
    - inthewind 13y ago
      I don't think that is what set it apart. It was probably having a software program (iTunes), that could work with your hardware and manage your library. Not sure when they introduced the shop.
- seunosewa 13y ago
  Motivating a huge organization like Apple to produce brilliant consumer electronics products consistently is probably much, much harder than you think, else every one of Apple's competitors would have hired execs to do that for them.
- MaysonL 13y ago
  Given that most of Apple's products were implementations of ideas from Engelbart's lab and Xerox PARC, and that those ideas still have a lot of running room, I'm not too worried for Apple.
Udo 13y ago
Jobs' bi-monthly iPhone software meeting, in which he would go through every planned features [sic] of the company's flagship product, is gone. Judging by the current iOS development version, this is a regrettable change that will come to haunt them. Things like the new color schemes would probably not have gone through if there was any executive interest in the look of the new software.
- ajross 13y ago
  Who's to say there isn't "interest"? Some people like the new look, maybe Cook does too. Don't confuse process with results. Jobs' Apple produced great products because Jobs had great taste that aligned well with the market (and, to be honest, because he was the vortex of a feedback loop of praise), not because he had a "bi-monthly iPhone software meeting".
  - Udo 13y ago
    I'm not even talking about subjective things like tastes in icon styles. I'm talking about absolutely quantifiable missteps, such as bright-yellow symbols on a white paper background.
    - glhaynes 13y ago
      "If Steve were still around..." has been said so many times that it's a cliche. Steve shipped lots of crap [quantifiable crap, even]; I'm sure Apple will continue to ship lots of crap in the future. Doesn't mean they're doomed or even that quality has gone down.
      - Udo 13y ago
        I didn't mean to sound like that. From where I'm standing (and it's OK if this opinion isn't common), iOS and to a lesser degree OS X show outward signs of the internal struggles at Apple. There are some things that should have been caught, or that at least would have been more likely to be vetoed. It's a very feature/product-driven company, high-level oversight is expected but seems to be missing in places. To use another example, with the new iCloud apps (especially iOS backports like Notes and its ilk) on OS X, because there is no save button there is no way to tell if the document has actually been committed to storage or not. If you close the app, the document might be on the cloud somewhere, but it's just as likely to be trapped on a Mac's harddrive that has just been put to sleep. Not a good experience.
hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
> It is unclear whether the spread-sheeting-loving, consensus-oriented, even-keeled Cook can successfully reshape the cult-like culture that Jobs built. Though Cook has deftly managed the iPhone and iPad product lines, which continue to deliver enormous profits, Apple has yet to launch a major new product under Cook; talk of watches and televisions remains just that. It bothers me everybody ignores the already announced Mac Pro. It's more niche than an iPhone or iPad but an important one for many Mac users, and the specs and design really push innovation forward on a market that is almost dead (desktops).
- mmanfrin 13y ago
  I wouldn't really say it pushed innovation forward. It's a mac with heavy specs. The only thing innovative about it is the enclosure -- which, while novel, isn't terribly noteworthy.
  - hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
    I have to disagree. There's a couple of things that drive innovation, like the storage on PCI-Ex bus, and the fact they cram 12 Xeon cores and 2 high-end GPUs in a can and still manage to air cool it. The fact there's a good amount of high-end specs in a totally new form factor is what makes it interesting for me.
    - jmduke 13y ago
      You can make the argument that Apple's biggest triumphs haven't been hardware innovations but commercial and usability ones. People aren't necessarily concerned that Tim Cook can't make a better desktop, but that he can't concieve products that leapfrog entire markets and industries like the iPod, iPhone, and iPad did.
      - r00fus 13y ago
        Some of the biggest innovations that Apple made, IMHO, were pricing related. The push to mandate unlimited data with every iPhone (and make that data plan $20 with 200 SMS) was critical to the iPhone's success - for me, coming from the Palm platform, it was simply amazing, while one the road, to go to the App Store, download an app, and in seconds be using it. Wouldn't be possible for most if they had to have a conversation with AT&T for 30m to add a data plan prior to doing the above. Also, the innovation with the iPad to allow you to sign up for the 3G anytime pre-paid was incredible.
akg_67 13y ago
I found this statement in the article to be the key of managing. "He basically explained nicely that my job was to do the things that Mark (Zuckerberg) did not want to focus on as much." I believe it is something Cook and other CEOs follow too. Find a person to do the things that you don't want to focus on as much. If No.2's job is to do things No. 1 doesn't want to do, No. 1's job is to find No. 2's who wants to do the job No. 1 doesn't want to do and give that person autonomy. I agree Cook not leading planned feature meeting but he should have someone who wants to lead that meeting and be responsible for driving that part of the business.
beefxq 13y ago
So, the downfall of Apple?
- davexunit 13y ago
  One can only hope.
- inthewind 13y ago
  A hypothetical moment of realisation.
RyanMcGreal 13y ago
> the spread-sheeting-loving, I hope that's just a typo and not evidence that the writer doesn't know what a spreadsheet is.
jacquesm 13y ago
Delegation is not about doing the stuff you don't want to do but reluctantly handing off stuff you want to do to others because that is a more effective use of your time. Jobs would have run Apple singlehandedly if he could, that's why he left behind such a huge vacuum to fill. Product roadmaps being what they are I think we'll see the real 'new, post Jobs Apple' in another year or so for the first time. It's not about shipping crap occasionally, that could just as easily be attributed to trying things and failing and every big company has a long list of such failures. It's no different than running an incubator only then in-house and with a single unified brand and possibly synergistic effects. It's all about daring, trying to push the envelope and taking risks.
- yapcguy 13y ago
  Tim Cook is a weak man. Just ask vulture capitalist Carl Icahn, who tweeted this a few minutes ago. https://twitter.com/Carl_C_Icahn/status/370615097963450368 https://twitter.com/Carl_C_Icahn/status/370615097963450368
  - jacquesm 13y ago
    Icahn is an asshole, I wouldn't trust a word he says unless the other party confirmed it. Keep the Dell case in mind when you look at anything Icahn says or does. He's got money but 0 scruples.
- MartinCron 13y ago
  Delegation is not about doing the stuff you don't want to do but reluctantly handing off stuff you want to do to others because that is a more effective use of your time Or because having someone else do that will be more valuable for the product or the organization as a whole. I recently delegated something that I wanted to do that I could probably do fairly quickly, but realized that it was good to share that particular task with a team member so he could improve his skills that way.
- SimHacker 13y ago
  Wait, I though Tim Cook inherited Apple, and now you're telling me he delegates? Stay classy, Tim!
cwp 13y ago
I wish the article lived up to the headline. What cultural changes have occurred? The article doesn't say. It does say that Cook's personal style is different from Jobs (duh), that he's made some changes to the exec team (we knew that), and that there's conflicting anecdotal evidence about how employees are reacting to these changes... whatever they are. All in all, I don't see a revolution in any of this.
joe_the_user 13y ago
As I recall, Apple's fan would quite unapologetically acknowledge that Apple ran on fear of abuse by Jobs [1]. The story was that Jobs was a unique genius capable of running things that way and deserving to run things that way. The magical results were worth it. Just being near the "reality distortion field" was its own reward [2]. Regardless of how the rest of us might judge all this, Apple now has something of a problem. Decompressing from a previous abusive situation involves certain stages of recovery [3]. Even if, regardless of if, one began with the view that this was "abuse for the best all possible purposes" or how much one identified with the success of one's abuser [4]. In similar fashion to the problems faced by the liberalizing Stalinist regimes, Tim Cook may find that his liberalizing "tweaks" open flood gates that he will have trouble controlling [5]. [1] http://gawker.com/5847344/what-everyone-is-too-polite-to-say-about-steve-jobs http://gawker.com/5847344/what-everyone-is-too-polite-to-say... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_distortion_field http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_distortion_field [3] https://1in6.org/men/get-information/online-readings/recovery-and-therapy/stages-of-recovery/judith-hermans-stages-of-recovery/ https://1in6.org/men/get-information/online-readings/recover... [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome [5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Wall http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Wall
- pearjuice 13y ago
  It is as if I am on Wikipedia[0]. [0] If you know what I mean

81 points by samspenc 13y ago

I like Tim's style and I think he needs some time to get adjusted to his role. It's still not clear to me, after being an Apple user and fan since the beginning and after reading Steve Job's biography, how much innovation Steve really brought to Apple. What I mean is: was Steve really the one who gave the initial impulse for some of the most innovative products we have seen so far (i.e. iPhone, iPad, iPod, etc.)? In this case, I think that Apple is doomed. If, on the contrary, Steve was the quality checker, the one pushing everyone else to do better, I think that the current Apple's executive team can properly replace this role and do good at Apple.

capkutay 13y ago
No one else claims they had the 'vision' for the iPod/iPad/iPhone while at the same time everyone credits Steve so he must have been more than a quality checker.
- nhaehnle 13y ago
  Is that really a qualitative difference though? Clearly, MP3 players had been around before the iPod. What set the iPod apart was much better design. This is, in a sense, a matter of quality checking, but to an extreme extent. Does the extremity of the quality checking turn into something qualitatively different? That seems to be a rather subjective judgement, hence why you had the back-and-forth.
  - inthewind 13y ago
    I don't think that is what set it apart. It was probably having a software program (iTunes), that could work with your hardware and manage your library. Not sure when they introduced the shop.
seunosewa 13y ago
Motivating a huge organization like Apple to produce brilliant consumer electronics products consistently is probably much, much harder than you think, else every one of Apple's competitors would have hired execs to do that for them.
MaysonL 13y ago
Given that most of Apple's products were implementations of ideas from Engelbart's lab and Xerox PARC, and that those ideas still have a lot of running room, I'm not too worried for Apple.

Udo 13y ago

Jobs' bi-monthly iPhone software meeting, in which he would go through every planned features [sic] of the company's flagship product, is gone. Judging by the current iOS development version, this is a regrettable change that will come to haunt them. Things like the new color schemes would probably not have gone through if there was any executive interest in the look of the new software.

ajross 13y ago
Who's to say there isn't "interest"? Some people like the new look, maybe Cook does too. Don't confuse process with results. Jobs' Apple produced great products because Jobs had great taste that aligned well with the market (and, to be honest, because he was the vortex of a feedback loop of praise), not because he had a "bi-monthly iPhone software meeting".
- Udo 13y ago
  I'm not even talking about subjective things like tastes in icon styles. I'm talking about absolutely quantifiable missteps, such as bright-yellow symbols on a white paper background.
  - glhaynes 13y ago
    "If Steve were still around..." has been said so many times that it's a cliche. Steve shipped lots of crap [quantifiable crap, even]; I'm sure Apple will continue to ship lots of crap in the future. Doesn't mean they're doomed or even that quality has gone down.
    - Udo 13y ago
      I didn't mean to sound like that. From where I'm standing (and it's OK if this opinion isn't common), iOS and to a lesser degree OS X show outward signs of the internal struggles at Apple. There are some things that should have been caught, or that at least would have been more likely to be vetoed. It's a very feature/product-driven company, high-level oversight is expected but seems to be missing in places. To use another example, with the new iCloud apps (especially iOS backports like Notes and its ilk) on OS X, because there is no save button there is no way to tell if the document has actually been committed to storage or not. If you close the app, the document might be on the cloud somewhere, but it's just as likely to be trapped on a Mac's harddrive that has just been put to sleep. Not a good experience.

hcarvalhoalves 13y ago

> It is unclear whether the spread-sheeting-loving, consensus-oriented, even-keeled Cook can successfully reshape the cult-like culture that Jobs built. Though Cook has deftly managed the iPhone and iPad product lines, which continue to deliver enormous profits, Apple has yet to launch a major new product under Cook; talk of watches and televisions remains just that. It bothers me everybody ignores the already announced Mac Pro. It's more niche than an iPhone or iPad but an important one for many Mac users, and the specs and design really push innovation forward on a market that is almost dead (desktops).

mmanfrin 13y ago
I wouldn't really say it pushed innovation forward. It's a mac with heavy specs. The only thing innovative about it is the enclosure -- which, while novel, isn't terribly noteworthy.
- hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
  I have to disagree. There's a couple of things that drive innovation, like the storage on PCI-Ex bus, and the fact they cram 12 Xeon cores and 2 high-end GPUs in a can and still manage to air cool it. The fact there's a good amount of high-end specs in a totally new form factor is what makes it interesting for me.
  - jmduke 13y ago
    You can make the argument that Apple's biggest triumphs haven't been hardware innovations but commercial and usability ones. People aren't necessarily concerned that Tim Cook can't make a better desktop, but that he can't concieve products that leapfrog entire markets and industries like the iPod, iPhone, and iPad did.
    - r00fus 13y ago
      Some of the biggest innovations that Apple made, IMHO, were pricing related. The push to mandate unlimited data with every iPhone (and make that data plan $20 with 200 SMS) was critical to the iPhone's success - for me, coming from the Palm platform, it was simply amazing, while one the road, to go to the App Store, download an app, and in seconds be using it. Wouldn't be possible for most if they had to have a conversation with AT&T for 30m to add a data plan prior to doing the above. Also, the innovation with the iPad to allow you to sign up for the 3G anytime pre-paid was incredible.

akg_67 13y ago

I found this statement in the article to be the key of managing. "He basically explained nicely that my job was to do the things that Mark (Zuckerberg) did not want to focus on as much." I believe it is something Cook and other CEOs follow too. Find a person to do the things that you don't want to focus on as much. If No.2's job is to do things No. 1 doesn't want to do, No. 1's job is to find No. 2's who wants to do the job No. 1 doesn't want to do and give that person autonomy. I agree Cook not leading planned feature meeting but he should have someone who wants to lead that meeting and be responsible for driving that part of the business.

beefxq 13y ago

So, the downfall of Apple?

davexunit 13y ago
One can only hope.
inthewind 13y ago
A hypothetical moment of realisation.

RyanMcGreal 13y ago

> the spread-sheeting-loving, I hope that's just a typo and not evidence that the writer doesn't know what a spreadsheet is.

jacquesm 13y ago

Delegation is not about doing the stuff you don't want to do but reluctantly handing off stuff you want to do to others because that is a more effective use of your time. Jobs would have run Apple singlehandedly if he could, that's why he left behind such a huge vacuum to fill. Product roadmaps being what they are I think we'll see the real 'new, post Jobs Apple' in another year or so for the first time. It's not about shipping crap occasionally, that could just as easily be attributed to trying things and failing and every big company has a long list of such failures. It's no different than running an incubator only then in-house and with a single unified brand and possibly synergistic effects. It's all about daring, trying to push the envelope and taking risks.

yapcguy 13y ago
Tim Cook is a weak man. Just ask vulture capitalist Carl Icahn, who tweeted this a few minutes ago. https://twitter.com/Carl_C_Icahn/status/370615097963450368 https://twitter.com/Carl_C_Icahn/status/370615097963450368
- jacquesm 13y ago
  Icahn is an asshole, I wouldn't trust a word he says unless the other party confirmed it. Keep the Dell case in mind when you look at anything Icahn says or does. He's got money but 0 scruples.
MartinCron 13y ago
Delegation is not about doing the stuff you don't want to do but reluctantly handing off stuff you want to do to others because that is a more effective use of your time Or because having someone else do that will be more valuable for the product or the organization as a whole. I recently delegated something that I wanted to do that I could probably do fairly quickly, but realized that it was good to share that particular task with a team member so he could improve his skills that way.
SimHacker 13y ago
Wait, I though Tim Cook inherited Apple, and now you're telling me he delegates? Stay classy, Tim!

cwp 13y ago

I wish the article lived up to the headline. What cultural changes have occurred? The article doesn't say. It does say that Cook's personal style is different from Jobs (duh), that he's made some changes to the exec team (we knew that), and that there's conflicting anecdotal evidence about how employees are reacting to these changes... whatever they are. All in all, I don't see a revolution in any of this.

joe_the_user 13y ago

As I recall, Apple's fan would quite unapologetically acknowledge that Apple ran on fear of abuse by Jobs [1]. The story was that Jobs was a unique genius capable of running things that way and deserving to run things that way. The magical results were worth it. Just being near the "reality distortion field" was its own reward [2]. Regardless of how the rest of us might judge all this, Apple now has something of a problem. Decompressing from a previous abusive situation involves certain stages of recovery [3]. Even if, regardless of if, one began with the view that this was "abuse for the best all possible purposes" or how much one identified with the success of one's abuser [4]. In similar fashion to the problems faced by the liberalizing Stalinist regimes, Tim Cook may find that his liberalizing "tweaks" open flood gates that he will have trouble controlling [5]. [1] http://gawker.com/5847344/what-everyone-is-too-polite-to-say-about-steve-jobs http://gawker.com/5847344/what-everyone-is-too-polite-to-say... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_distortion_field http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_distortion_field [3] https://1in6.org/men/get-information/online-readings/recovery-and-therapy/stages-of-recovery/judith-hermans-stages-of-recovery/ https://1in6.org/men/get-information/online-readings/recover... [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome [5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Wall http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Wall

pearjuice 13y ago
It is as if I am on Wikipedia[0]. [0] If you know what I mean