Sigh, Tim Cook is the Steve Ballmer of Apple. Just pay him out before is too late and put another creative in his place.
To lose a person of this caliber indicates a total lack of vision and trust in the executive leadership at Apple.
To lose a person of this caliber indicates a total lack of vision and trust in the executive leadership at Apple.
If Tim Cook made a mistake, it was letting Scott Forstall go instead of Jony Ive back in 2012. The two were widely reported to not get along. The fact that Tim Cook couldn't, or wouldn't, mediate between them like Steve Jobs used to do does reflect poorly on Tim's part.
2000-2013 was pretty... frozen. You don't need to remind of the failed battle of Mobile (that even Gates said it would give them at least 400b). Also the Xbox One launch fiasco, Surface RT, etc. And of course, the longhorn... Which I don't think is a Ballmer problem exactly, but it happened.
Alternative explanation: paying a premium for a person like this could be a lack of vision; Ive/Jobs could have been a Lennon/McCarthy situation, where neither were as effective alone.
Also in Cook's defense: Job's avowed plan was "milk the Mac for all its worth and develop the next hot thing". And frankly the Macs became neglected children under Jobs.
Although I hate it myself, I think the touchbar is probably a really good innovation -- but not for the high end Macs but for the consumer ones: for people who look at the keyboard when they type and who, used to phones, don't want to send the mouse way up to the top of the screen. I think the mistake was introducing it on the MBPs, rather than on the 12" MacBooks and MacBook Air (thankfully they didn't as I just traded my TB MBP for a new MB Air).
And now the new cheese grater.
And cook and his team have clearly recognized that the end of the tunnel for the iOS/MacOS train is visible, even if it's dim and very far away. And they are staking a position and trying experiments, more, frankly, than Jobs was ever willing to do, though admittedly the company now has much more resources than he had access to.
I am a firm user of MacOS/iOS but only because I believe it continues to suck less. Every time I need to replace my gear Apple has to "win me as a customer" again. So far they have, and I'm guessing they will continue to in the next few years. We'll see though.
ahem