
Tim Cook Stumbles at His Specialty, Shipping Apple Products on Time - tysone
https://www.wsj.com/articles/apples-latest-trend-product-delays-1515148201
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013a
Maybe the difference is that Apple has, recently, been announcing products
well in advance of their official release date. We knew about the HomePod and
the iMac Pro months before they failed to be released on the date promised.
Maybe nothing has changed about their ability to deliver products, we just
know more about their failures.

Horrible article.

~~~
valuearb
Apple is really good about not pre-announcing new versions of existing
products, but when it’s an entirely new product unlikely to cannibslize
existing products, they are happy to pre-announce way sooner.

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jkestner
His specialty is manufacturing/supply chain. These appear to be
design/development issues.

~~~
DRW_
Yeah, Apple taking so long to update their Macs (for instance) isn't a
manufacturing issue, it's their own development issues (all of which were
brought on themselves).

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post_break
I still think it's crazy that if you bought a MacPro or MacMini when it
launched and bought Apple Care it would have long run out, and the same
computer is on their store.

~~~
symfoniq
Apple is still selling "new" Mac Pros with Xeon E5-1650 v2 CPUs for $3K. I
just picked up a like-new refurbished HP workstation with the exact same CPU
for $350 on NewEgg.

~~~
benjohnson
I honestly think this really hurts them - I used to be able to tell people
"Just buy an Apple, it won't be cheap but it will be a fair value."

Now I have to people them what Apple models to avoid like the plague.

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1123581321
How many people do you talk to that were going to buy a Pro or a Mini? iMacs
and laptops, which most people buy, have been regularly updated. I don't agree
that it has hurt them because the obsolete lines are barely visible* to people
who don't understand how to evaluate a computer purchase, and presumably
anyone who understands how to shop isn't avoiding all of Apple over this.

* See a Best Buy in-store display or [https://www.apple.com/mac/](https://www.apple.com/mac/) for evidence of this.

~~~
radley
I've always recommended getting a "Pro" or Mini and recommend avoiding the
iMac completely. Throwing out a huge, decent monitor simply because you need
more processor power and/or storage is (sorry) asinine.

~~~
1123581321
Sounds like an opposite situation. GP's comment was about people avoiding
buying the lines that haven't been updated, and you are only recommending the
un-updated lines, so you aren't trying to steer people away from those old
machines.

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neonate
[http://archive.is/Sy6sJ](http://archive.is/Sy6sJ)

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smpetrey
Thanks!

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dilap
Previously Apple shied away from announcing products they were ready, and
tended to ship products that were reasonably bug-free and highly polished.

Apple seemed pretty unique in this, in the industry.

Lately Apple is more like everyone else -- announce early, rushed to meet
dates, not so polished and much more buggy.

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empath75
Yeah it seems less a case of missing shipment dates and more a case of
announcing earlier in the cycle. Jobs tended not to announce stuff until it
was ready to ship. I think Jobs had fewer leaks to deal with, which I think
forces Cook to announce things earlier.

~~~
valuearb
Don’t think they’ve changed at all. The imac Pro and HomePod are entirely new
products and they’ve always been happy to preannounce those.

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nafizh
Seems to me Tim Cook's legacy will be similar to Steve Ballmer at Microsoft.
Great for shareholders, terrible for the company's long term competitiveness.

~~~
kinkrtyavimoodh
As an aside, are there many examples of major (say Fortune 500) companies
where more than one CEO was famous / respected / acclaimed?

Maybe Sundar Pichhai but he is young in his CEO role so it's too early to
decide.

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awad
Top of my head? Goldman Sachs, GE, Disney, Ford (maybe not as fair since the
Ford last name gets you instant fame)

In tech: Google before Alphabet, the former Yahoo, the former Sun. Twitter did
their musical chairs act, as well.

~~~
kinkrtyavimoodh
Google before Alphabet was only Eric Schmidt right?

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awad
Larry was the original CEO until 2001. He was then CEO after Eric Schmidt,
starting in 2011, until the formation of Alphabet in 2015.

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menacingly
It's probably difficult to have the resources of Apple at your disposal and
really internalize that you can't do some stuff.

We used to think the same naive thing about Microsoft. "Why can't they just
fix <X>. They've got all the money in the world." Sure, but at a certain
point, it stops being about resources. Two women can't make a baby in 4.5
months.

We often use construction metaphors in software, but a structure is at least
expected to be done at some point, not growing in size and complexity forever,
unbounded. I'd bet there's a point where even in the physical world a
construction crew would be paralyzed by the amount of variables involved in
moving forward.

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everdev
Sounds similar to the mistake of taking your best developing and having them
manage the dev team. Code quality will likely drop.

What made Apple exiting was their visionary products. With Johnny designing
and Tim getting them launched on time, Steve could be Steve.

We need a new Steve.

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bluthru
I know Apple doesn't have divisions, but would it seriously harm the brand to
have a B team keeping the Mac Mini (and other established products) updated?

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CamperBob2
The B-team concept is tricky to pull off. If certain products get a reputation
of being a tar pit where careers go to die, as is commonly reputed to happen
at Google, then good people won't want to work on them and good executives
won't want to manage them.

I don't know what the right approach is. If your company has a mixture of
products that are widely preceived as being divided into "sexy" and "boring"
categories, there may simply be no good answer.

~~~
bluthru
Yeah but if I'm in the first half of my career being on the B team at Apple is
still an honor.

My thought is that even if the Mac Mini team was filled with jaded workers, it
still would be in a better position than it is now.

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mankash666
Shipping brand new tech isn't like shipping a new T-shirt, where, for example,
the only change might be the print design. From the T2 processor in the new
Mac Pros to the iPhone X Ai/VR chips, from new filesystems to brand new cloud
services, Apple's 'critical path' is in R&D. How can an operations guy
accelerate that?

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typetypetype
Couldn't get past paywall, but it could be that Tim Cook is better at
operations then whomever replaced him.

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neurothustra
Yeah, it's kind of annoying when you click on an article that looks
interesting and it's locked up behind a paywall

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jsoni
[https://outline.com](https://outline.com)

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oil7abibi
Nifty.

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reaperducer
If it means less-buggy products, let him stumble all he wants. I'm tired of
billion dollar companies charging me for betaware.

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aaron-lebo
Has that been the result? I've heard fans complain about the quality of
software decreasing. So they're shipping buggy products slowly?

I'm tired of companies in general putting out junk. The complete lack of
embarrassment or care about putting out (and charging for) broken stuff
frustrates me to no end. What I especially hate is instead of companies
recognizing that and fixing it because they actually want to be better, they
make excuses.

Is product quality not a priority anymore?

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kirykl
I think such quality collapse is evident across many industries today. It
might be related to wage stagnation. Can't afford to buy quality, and no
incentive to produce it.

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dman
I think the issue is that in software you can only get promoted by writing
whizbang new features. Until the time companies figure out an incentive system
that properly rewards responsible stewardship of an existing product we will
be stuck in the current quagmire.

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bluGill
That won't happen until consumers figure out they care and put their money
where their mouth is. When people buy the latest and then complain companies
learn that the complaints are meaningless. When people start buying "brand-
quality" devices only after they have been in the market for a while companies
will learn that building a quality product pays because it has a longer life.

Airplanes and medical software is much more reliable (though both have major
problems)

Apple has no need to increase their quality: their customers are loyal at the
current levels. Their customers will say it is because the competition is
worse overall (the truth of this statement is different debate).

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dman
Look at Microsoft for an example of how you can ignore quality for a long
while before it catches up to you. (To their credit Microsoft did a stellar
job of climbing out of that hole).

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exabrial
Look I'm not an expert, but maybe if they stopped adding useless features and
they end "The War on Ports" they'd be doing better. Right now their sales are
driven by hype (and I guess an iMessage monopoly), not quality or value.

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ghostbrainalpha
The iMessage monopoly is actually a good point.

I switched to a PC for quality/value reasons recently after waiting too long
for update to Mac Pro.

Everyday I hate that I don't have iMessage on this machine. And my phone is
constantly propped up against my screen so I can stay connected to my text
messages.

I had no idea how much this would effect me and if I can find a third party
solution that connects me to iMessage I will probably be switching back soon.

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ryanmonroe
One of the features of iMessages is that they're encrypted and can't be
unencrypted by anyone but the Apple-authenticated recipient. This has the
downside that the only way to access those messages on non-Apple devices is to
create some kind of man-in-the-middle attack.

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brazzledazzle
Unless Macs have a secure enclave I don't think there's anything about that
encryption that requires Apple devices.

