
Why Tim Cook Is Steve Ballmer and Why He Still Has His Job at Apple - ahuja_s
https://steveblank.com/2016/10/24/why-tim-cook-is-steve-ballmer-and-why-he-still-has-his-job-at-apple/
======
bad_user
The article is short on details why he thinks Tim Cook is like Steve Ballmer,
except for saying that Apple is slowly missing the boat on AI.

I don't know what Amazon does for AI, I haven't seen anything convincing from
them, but I'll trust the author that they are working on it.

However it's tough to beat Google in this space, because AI and machine
learning is what Google has focused on since _their beginnings_. Google's own
Search has always been a limited form of AI on which most humans with access
to the Internet have come to depend upon. And it is tough to beat them because
they not only have 20 years of accumulated knowledge and talent, but they also
have _a lot of data_ on users and haven't been afraid to break users' privacy
in order to get that data.

Now say what you will of Tim Cook, but he's nothing like Steve Ballmer, with
one big difference being that Tim Cook's Apple is making a stand for privacy
and security, which is actually quite rare to witness in this day and age.
He's a man with principles and for this I appreciate him a lot, maybe more
than I ever appreciated Steve Jobs.

It would also be stupid to try and beat Google on their own turf. It would be
like trying to beat Microsoft at Windows or Office, or Amazon at AWS. And for
important markets, Apple's secret is that they never had to beat anyone in
market share, all they had to do was to take over an important slice of the
high-end market, which is something they are really good at.

~~~
Certhas
Azure seems to be doing well and some people expect it to overtake AWS sooner
rather than later in market share.

The talk that Microsoft is irrelevant is a bit hilarious, given that they beat
google on revenue and income last year. They have morphed from a company that
is front and center to one that provides the infrastructure for the digital
side of non-tech business. Microsoft Office is absolutely pervasive, and it's
not going anywhere.

~~~
nathas
> Azure seems to be doing well and some people expect it to overtake AWS
> sooner rather than later in market share.

Source?

Edit: Sorry, that was lazy of me. Googled: [https://mspoweruser.com/cio-surey-
finds-microsoft-azure-will...](https://mspoweruser.com/cio-surey-finds-
microsoft-azure-will-overtake-amazon-aws-infrastructure-service/)

A bit of a biased source, "mspoweruser".

Read a bit more.. We'll have to see how the offerings change or evolve in the
next 5 years.

Edit 2: [https://rcpmag.com/articles/2016/08/02/microsoft-behind-
aws-...](https://rcpmag.com/articles/2016/08/02/microsoft-behind-aws-in-
cloud.aspx) AWS is still > 30% of the overall market, Azure hitting around
~9%.

~~~
Spooky23
It's all based on Morgan Stanley’s "2016 CIO Survey". It doesn't appear to be
publicly available.

I've been the drone filling out surveys like this for CIOs in the past.
Sometimes those surveys ask these sorts of things indirectly, especially if
it's a paid survey. For example, they might assume that O365 utilization
drives Azure adoption. (Behind the scenes O365 auth is an Azure service)
Another example would be asking if your org has MSDN or an EA. In both cases,
that provides some "free"/NFR Azure services.

A few years ago, Gartner pushed a survey like this where 40% of a group of
drunken CIO types at some conference claimed that they wouldn't buy PCs or
smartphones for employees after 2018. This stuff just isn't that meaningful.

------
cm2187
My opinion is that the failure of Microsoft has less to do with Ballmer than
with the absence of a Steve Jobs.

My experience with large corporations is that they naturally produce
mediocrity. The ownership of the final product or service is too diluted, with
too many people involved, pulling in too many conflicting directions. They
employ people who individually know what "good" means and what should be done
in an ideal world. But that knowledge and common sense gets lost with the
bureaucracy and the scale of the organisation.

So unless you get someone at the top who will force the company to still
achieve something great for their customers, you will end up with an MBA style
manager who will make decisions based on options provided by his teams and get
products designed based on specs from the top rather than trying to make
something great.

A great example is Windows 8. I heard Sinofsky had already been sacked by the
time he walked on stage to introduce Windows 8. Microsoft knew it was a shit
OS, and decided to push it nevertheless. I have seen this happening so many
times in other contexts.

But tablets are another example. Microsoft knew that tablets would be a big
thing well before the introduction of the ipad. In fact I remember a pre-ipad
interview of Ballmer where he was deploring that the Windows tablets never
took off. The problem was that windows-based tablets were too mediocre to
create a market.

But Apple is moving in that direction too now. The user experience is
deteriorating with every iteration of iOS. I can't think that someone at Apple
thinks it's a good user experience to nag their users with all of their
services (Apply Pay, iCloud, Apple Music, etc) over and over, with multiple
buttons to click to opt out. That will ultimately bite them too. Not
overnight, but over 10 years like with Microsoft. Not Tim Cook's fault. That's
what large corporations do.

~~~
the_watcher
> My opinion is that the failure of Microsoft has less to do with Ballmer than
> with the absence of a Steve Jobs.

This argument would be a lot stronger had Microsoft not begun making such
major improvements as soon as Ballmer was replaced with Nadella.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
Have they really, though? I mean, sure, they've got the ole' hype train's
pistons pumping and the fanboys woohooing, but they still have produced a
version of Windows that is clunky and controversial. They open sourced some
stuff, but that's only because they are pushing for the clouds, not some
actual change in philosophy. Microsoft's changes are all skin deep.

~~~
the_watcher
Yes, they have. I know there is a lot of institutional hatred for Microsoft
from the tech sector that will take a while to overcome. But you'll be able to
call changes "skin deep" forever if you choose to explain anything positive
away as marketing only.

~~~
rayiner
They haven't managed to release a flagship Windows phone for more than a year,
Windows 10 is still a disaster, and Surface Book's execution was incredibly
botched.

Yeah, there is some good stuff for developers, but their consumer-facing
segment is still in shambles.

~~~
Fej
Surface Book is a fantastic device. What was botched?

~~~
rayiner
Power management was broken:
[http://www.techtimes.com/articles/166667/20160623/microsoft-...](http://www.techtimes.com/articles/166667/20160623/microsoft-
surface-book-surface-pro-4-firmware-updates-bring-battery-improvements-and-
sleep-mode-fix-heres-the-deal.htm).

------
zekevermillion
Even if I generally agree with disappointment at the apparent "maintenance
mode" of Apple's product line, I am not sure Ballmer is the best analogy. My
understanding is that Tim Cook actually is responsible for many of the supply
chain innovations behind Apple's dominant product lines. This is an incredibly
hard technical feat, not just blustery MBA crap. I suppose it remains to be
seen whether Apple can put its enormous cash hoard to work in R&D and new
product development. It could be possible for Apple to go the way of RIM but I
think it would be very hard to kill them given their unique supply chain
efficiencies (not to mention brand and balance sheet).

~~~
protomyth
If you take a look back, Steve Ballmer was responsible for a lot of the
success of Microsoft. He mostly got hate because people hated Microsoft. I'm
don't think Ballmer's list of accomplishments at Microsoft is fully
appreciated particularly compared to the good press Tim Cook as enjoyed.

~~~
the_watcher
No, Ballmer got hate because Microsoft's consumer products consistently
flopped. The stuff that those of us who flipped to Apple while he was in
charge used (Zune, Windows Vista, original Surface, Windows Phone) were
consistently underwhelming. However, Ballmer was simply inarguably an
effective CEO from the perspective of investors. He grew the enterprise
business consistently (which has a huge amount of value for legacy purposes),
and some of the stuff he launched to support that (Azure, notably) positioned
the company to grow in new ways that Nadella has really leveraged. He wasn't a
visionary at all, but Ballmer was one of the best executor CEOs out there.

~~~
alanh
For the kids out there: “original Surface” isn’t what you think. It was a
“smart table” and its most compelling use case was to present a menu right
underneath your place setting:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zxk_WywMTzc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zxk_WywMTzc)

~~~
doodpants
Don't forget this classic parody video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZrr7AZ9nCY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZrr7AZ9nCY)

~~~
alanh
There’s a distinct trend of YouTube commenters who believe that the Surface
(tablet) is somehow a descendent of the Surface table, just because their
names are the same. Interesting.

Funny video — thanks for sharing.

------
jasonsync
Apple does appear to be losing focus.

For example:

Apple has devalued the PRO moniker under Tim Cook's guidance.

By trying to ram it's Mobile OS into a PRO product (iPad PRO). I mean the UI
grid is still 4 x 5 on a massive 12 inch display. Nobody noticed it feels more
like Fisher Price? And the iPad "PRO" apps are all dumbed down, feature
limited versions of actual pro desktop apps.

Then, by stagnating a once well regarded PRO product, the Macbook PRO, they
further eroded the PRO moniker. Did they delay significant updates to the
Macbook PRO to see if existing users would eventually give the iPad PRO a try
first? Or did they simply want to drive Desktop OS marketshare back to
Windows?

And what about the slim Macbook with a fancy new port (USB-C) that's still not
available on any other Macbook, even 1.5+ years later!!!? Yes, that's exactly
how you devalue the PRO moniker. By releasing new, cutting edge tech on your
consumer products first. And then wait years before adding that tech to your
PRO line (I know, the new Macbook PRO is rumoured to ONLY have USB-C ...
sigh).

Don't even get started on the Mac PRO. Ya, that ridiculously underpowered,
overpriced PRO computer that you forgot about, that looks like a NYC subway
trash can.
[https://www.google.com/search?q=nyc+subway+trash+can&tbm=isc...](https://www.google.com/search?q=nyc+subway+trash+can&tbm=isch)
Talk about an awesome PRO design.

Talk about losing focus.

Eerily similar to later stage Ballmer Microsoft.

~~~
alexpersian
The Mac Pro and MacBook Pro are still very capable, solid, and focused
machines. Go into any dev shop on the planet and you will see that's true. The
only point your comment is right on is the Pro moniker being attached to an
iPad.

~~~
jasonsync
I'm one of those devs and I'm sure every dev shop has been itching for a
significant Macbook update for quite some time. Macbook PRO hasn't seen a
significant update since 2012. Just minor speed bumps and force touch in 2015.

So we're getting one next week - but why not sooner? That was one of the
takeaways from this article. Pace of innovation has slowed under Tim Cook.

~~~
IBM
4 years is right on schedule for redesigns of the Macbook Pro. Not sure how
the current narrative about Macs being neglected got started, but they're not
behind at all if you look at the previous cadence between redesigns. The
Macbook Pro also got a minor speed bump in May 2015.

The only difference this year is that Intel has been having problems
delivering on time (and without problems).

~~~
oddevan
> The only difference this year is that Intel has been having problems
> delivering on time (and without problems).

That is the entire difference. You're correct in that this is the expected
time between redesigns, but we also haven't gotten a spec bump in over a year.
That's unusual, and it's giving real fuel to the usually-overblown "[product]
is so stale!"

------
bischofs
Tim Cook is a "Bozo" \- He has moved the focus away from computers and the
companies core professional users and turned Apple into a fashionable health
services company. They will coast for a while on their dominant mobile market
share but eventually the stagnation and lack of new products will catch up to
them.

He built a watch, which was a "me too" product and answered a question that no
one asked. Jobs would never have done this because of the marginal increase in
utility that smart watches provides users.

He also wasted company time and resources on trying to build a car, which is
completely outside Apple's skill sets (the supply chains and profit margins
are radically different). It seemed like he was just trying to do something
innovative instead of actually looking at the needs and demands of users
inside the computing industry where apple should be focused.

Its unfortunate that Jobs didn't see his lack of product development skills
when he made him CEO - Jobs always talked about how product companies falter
when marketing/sales/supply chain guys run the company and not product guys.

~~~
LaSombra
This image
[http://core0.staticworld.net/images/article/2015/10/slide-06...](http://core0.staticworld.net/images/article/2015/10/slide-06-apple-
magic-mouse-2-100622394-large.jpg), to me, simbolizes the recent Apple.

~~~
audunw
I don't get the hate for this mouse design. Have you ever used it? Actually -
have you ever used a wireless mouse in general? You know how rarely you need
to change batteries or charge them right?

To design a wireless mouse around the idea of using it while being wired would
be a massive design fail. It would compromise the design of the common use
case in order to improve the extremely rare use case.

~~~
alexland
The design fail is not taking the obvious and consistent (albeit spaced out)
need to charge the mouse into account. It's not like some people don't have to
charge this mouse; everyone will charge the mouse at some point, and they will
do so consistently over the years.

With this design, I get a first class experience using it when the batteries
aren't empty, but I literally cannot use the mouse when I need to charge it.
The idea that a mouse should sacrifice such a basic functionality requirement
just for the sake of a slightly better design is hilariously backward.

~~~
astrodust
Once a month I need to flip the thing and plug it in. The amount of hassle is
almost zero. It charges quickly enough that on a few minutes of charging it
can limp along for another hour or so.

I've had other cordless mice that needed to be charged in a special cradle,
which is basically the same thing, and I never heard anyone bitching about
"hilariously backwards" design. Most people reviewing the product thought that
was convenient.

------
dmix
I really like the dichotomy Steve Blank uses between "process" people and
"creative" people. I've only been working in tech companies for ~10yrs but all
my experience working in companies have shown me that the more a person is
obsessed with processes and structure, the less they contribute to the real
business value (product, design, marketing, etc). Not only in their own time
investment in the company but in their influence on others around them, which
tends to be high because they usual get managerial roles somehow.

These are the people who obsess over flaws in how work is done rather than the
work itself. Which has it's place in larger companies but even there it really
needs to be balanced, much more in favour of outward work.

Being a front-end dev I've had to work with many 'product managers' who spent
a big chunk of their time on the process stuff and most of the product ideas
were just shots in the dark without backing it up with data or experience, or
otherwise entirely reactionary to local customer issues or the bosses moods,
rather than with a strong vision or focusing on high level trends in customer
behaviour. Largely, I believe, because they spent a lot of their finite
resources focusing on the wrong things (internal optimization rather than
external, ie talking to customers, value prop).

There are many many traps that startups can fall into and this is a big one.
Especially when companies get VC and start adding non-core team members, then
feel the need to bring in managers.

------
programminggeek
One important thing that visionaries get credit for, but perhaps shouldn't...

Being in the right place at the right time.

It is a delightful bit of luck that Steve Jobs made it back to Apple. That
scenario could have been way different where Apple bought BeOS, and Steve Jobs
didn't return to Apple.

If Jobs isn't at Apple, he doesn't have the opportunity or resources to make
his vision for the iMac, iBook, iPod, iTunes, iPhone, or iPad a real thing. In
fact, he probably wouldn't have had the reason to envision any of the things
at NEXT.

Also, you could argue that Jobs being at Apple when ARM got good enough for
mass market smart gadgets at scale played into it too. If the tech isn't quite
there, it doesn't look as interesting at all.

Without the right tech being available, Apple stalls out at the iMac and Power
Mac and so on and is a profitable computer vendor, but not the most valuable
company in the world.

So, Tim Cook might not be as visionary, but it might also be a poor time for
anyone to be CEO as the opportunities shifted.

~~~
Tepix
I'm not so sure. Jobs learned at lot at NeXT, I think the next company/product
he would have worked on would have gotten it right, even if it hadn't been
Apple.

~~~
smacktoward
I'm not sure he learned much at all.

There is a very clear through-line connecting all the Jobsian products: an
aggressively streamlined approach to features, a fascination with high-quality
materials and novel industrial processes, and an aesthetic sensibility derived
from Bauhaus/Functionalism/Dieter Rams. All these elements are just as present
in his misses (Lisa, the original Mac, the NeXT Cube, the G4 Cube) as in his
hits (iMac, iPod, iPhone).

What separates his age of mostly misses from his age of mostly hits isn't any
change in his design philosophy; it's the passage of time. His misses mostly
came early, his hits late.

What this implies to me is that his later success wasn't due to _him_
changing, so much as the world changing around him. In 1984 and 1990 and 1995,
he was trying to sell _objects d 'art_ into a computing market that was
dominated by business/enterprise purchasers, who didn't care if the machines
they bought were ugly as sin as long as they were functional and interoperable
and cheap. By 2005 the market for tech had shifted away from those buyers into
the consumer market, where the priorities were completely different, more like
those of the fashion business than of the tech business of old.

Suddenly the Jobsian approach stopped being a liability and started being an
asset. But that's not because he learned how to aim better, it's because the
targets moved so that they were all neatly lined up in front of him.

------
bnegreve
Luck is generally involved in success.

So maybe this is just regression toward the mean and hasn't that much to do
with whoever is the CEO.

In other words, every very successful company is bound to be less successful
later. Nothing really exciting about this.

~~~
ufmace
That's what I tend to wonder about these visionary types - how much of it is
really a skill or talent that they have, and how much is just picking the
right thing at the right time. If Bill Gates had stayed in charge, would he
have forseen how the industry would change and gotten out ahead of it in time,
or be blindsided like everybody else? If Steve Jobs was still alive, would he
keep churning out industry-changers, or start to flop? Would either of them do
something amazing if they had been born 50 years earlier instead?

~~~
j1vms
> If Steve Jobs was still alive, would he keep churning out industry-changers

If he were alive and well, I think so. With the exception of iPad (which
wasn't subpar by industry standards but certainly signaled a descent into
mediocrity for Apple, and which I would attribute to Jobs' slowly disengaging
with the company due to his health issues), Jobs was on an unbelievable streak
between his return in the late 90s and about 2009/2010\. In the span of about
10 years, his company did several outstanding feats in holistic
hardware/software design, and it can't be a coincidence that the man was then
largely healthy and in command.

I do think that would have probably continued until the mid to latter part of
this decade had he continued in better health.

------
usaphp
I noticed that Apple lost track of usability since Cook came after their
release of a new keyboard at first, new arrows buttons on it are completely
unusable, on older keyboards they had spacing between the left/right and
buttons on top, now they extended left/right buttons and it makes it
incredibly hard to "feel" where they are, and the fact that MacBooks pros
still have an old layout makes it a night mare to switch between desktop and
laptop programming.

Another one is a new lock screen on iOS 10, sometimes the fingerprint does not
work or the finger is dirty and i know I want to unlock it with a pin, before
I used to be able to just swipe right away and type the pin, now it won't let
me and I have to repeatatly press the home button until it figures out that
the fingerprint won't work and it has to show me the pin enter screen.

Might be little things but it's what used to separate Apple from the crowd, I
don't want them to lose focus on those. And don't get me started on the new OS
X, which makes my maxed out 2014 rMBP look like slow PC from 2000.

~~~
SysArchitect
What keyboard has the arrow buttons you are talking about?

When I place the wrong finger on my touchID and press the home button once, it
shows me the pin entry to get into the phone. No multiple presses, nothing.
First bad read, shows the pin entry.

~~~
usaphp
The new keyboard on macbook and external keyboard has a different layout of
arrow keys [1] vs the older macbook pro keyboard [2]

[1] -
[https://www.evernote.com/l/ABV1fPm7JnBO76pqevjy990uALmIK39uZ...](https://www.evernote.com/l/ABV1fPm7JnBO76pqevjy990uALmIK39uZGk)

[2] -
[https://www.evernote.com/l/ABVer15u9rhODaV3U5QafcRx8eVu3HVq6...](https://www.evernote.com/l/ABVer15u9rhODaV3U5QafcRx8eVu3HVq6Io)

As for the touch ID - try double clicking the home button with a finger that
has no touch ID, it does not show a PIN entering screen. I used to double tap
all the time before to quicker unlock the phone and swipe to enter a pin, now
its' quite annoying and not as fast.

~~~
SysArchitect
Double clicking brings up Apple Pay. Clicking once with a finger that doesn't
have TouchID brings up the PIN entry screen.

------
fatbird
The single useful thing the article could have presented was how or why
Cook's/Apple's efforts at AI products will fail while Google's will succeed;
how Apple's AI products will be the Windows Phone of Cook's tenure (or, for
that matter, how Windows Phone failed or could have been done differently).
Without explaining how apparently similar efforts will yield different
outcomes, this is all jazz-hands about CEO personalities and Fortune
buzzwords.

~~~
Quequau
Man, I only have one thing about the pseudo-AI craze that I'd like to hear
from Apple to get my business: Seeing how their current top end SoC is so
powerful, stop sending all sorts of data to external parties to offload the
compute requirements to make stuff like Siri work.

~~~
nicky0
I thought Apple specifically didn't send your data to external parties. That's
one of the reason Siri is behind Google, which _does_ send you data to their
servers.

~~~
icebraining
AFAIK that's not correct, which is why it doesn't work offline.

See e.g.: _" [Nuance rep] said that Siri has both embedded and cloud
technology for voice recognition, but that the feature is overall a cloud
solution."_

[http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/05/30/nuance-confirms-
it...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/05/30/nuance-confirms-its-
technology-is-behind-apples-siri)

------
bshimmin
Apologies for this most gratuitous of bikeshedding, but if you're going to use
proper superscripts, _please_ sort out the line-heights.

~~~
egwynn
I’ve never thought of this and never noticed it until you pointed it out. And
now it’ll probably bother me forever.

~~~
kbenson
I was going to say it's probably like vocal fry, where once you hear it you're
supposed to hear it everywhere, but I've never heard it myself. In making sure
I remembered the name right and googling it, I found a video and I was able to
hear it fairly clearly for the first time. Now I'm afraid I've inflicted
myself with this. :/

------
rackforms
There are clearly many holes in Apple's armor these days, but the one that
irks me the most is how Apple's literally handing the Education market to
Google. I swear if Apple's hardware announcements this week don't include a
Chromebook competitor I'm going to figuratively scream.

Chromebooks are fantastic products but I grew up in the Microsoft dominated
90's and hated it. It feels like Apple's almost trying to make itself obsolete
in markets it once owned. Competition please!

------
robg
He's underestimating their push into medical research and apps. It's $3
Trillion in the U.S. every year and they are further along than any other of
the Big Techs.

This: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-27/aetna-
to-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-27/aetna-to-make-
apple-watch-available-in-health-monitoring-push)

Is not about selling more watches and phones. And Aetna alone has 23 million
members.

------
erikb
It's also a power game, who gets the next number one spot. People want to have
their shot at giving direction to such a big ship. So they make friends with
the current boss, ensure loyalty by key employees to themselves, gain
authority over important projects. Then you cannot just fire them or put
someone else in front of them. I think it's also okay, that companies come and
go. If you look at it more closely each company is simply a paper and a bank
account. The ideas and people who made the disruptions possible will move on
to other paper-account combinations and innovate there.

------
sven-51
Applies to Pichai at Google too. Google was a search company that put the
browser/mobile guy in charge. You are not going to see stuff like this

[http://aurelieherbelot.net/pears/](http://aurelieherbelot.net/pears/)
[http://aurelieherbelot.net/how-small-is-the-world-wide-
web-r...](http://aurelieherbelot.net/how-small-is-the-world-wide-web-really/)

come out of Google for the simple reason they are busy playing empire defense
all the while the need for a centralized search engine reduces.

~~~
uiri
Isn't that the whole point of Alphabet? Google can play empire defense while
Larry & Sergey make bets by creating subsidiaries and funding them with
Google's free cash flow. I think Google's board recognized this phenomenon of
large companies becoming risk averse and restructured in this way to try to
avoid it.

------
coldcode
That's a dreadful comparison and makes no sense.

------
e15ctr0n
The article mentions Mark Zuckerberg only in passing but it is worth noting
that Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg are another visionary-CEO + world-
class-executor "dynamic duo" in Silicon Valley. Who will replace Mark
Zuckerberg after his departure? If it's Sheryl Sandberg, the same Steve
Ballmer / Tim Cook scenario will repeat itself and we can look forward to
future articles like "Why Sheryl Sandberg is the next Tim Cook and why she
still has her job at Facebook".

------
kimar
Funny that the article fails to mention Jony Ive as the obvious successor to
Cook. Doesn't it look like Apple has its next "creative CEO" all prepped up?

~~~
mikhailt
I'm curious you think it is "obvious"? I've never heard anyone say this of Ive
until now with your comment.

Jobs did make sure Apple has no power to ever get rid of Ive for any reason,
ensuring him an unbreakable tenure. However, to me, it's far more obvious that
he will never take on the CEO role because I think he's prepping to retire
from Apple in the next few years as there's a reason we've been seeing less
and less of him over the past few years, with his strong desire to move back
to England with his family and so on.

The only two people that's more obvious to me is Williams and Schiller but I
don't think Cook is going to be gone for another decade.

~~~
itomato
Next CEO will be an outsider.

------
jamisteven
Their bet is wrong. Ai is definitely the future, but people dont want Ai
driving everything they do, people want control, they feel liberated when they
can control something so much from ones hands, this is half the reason
adoption of smart watches is so small. Its not held in the hand, but worn. The
steering and control of a powerful vehicle, boat, car etc, we dont want these
things automated. Apple is on the wrong track, I agree with that but dont
believe the reason to be a lack of adoption in the Ai arena. Apple's design
choices since Jobs checked out have been inferior to its previous conceptions,
that will be their downfall, and that has no comparison to Balmer. Another
point the author fails to see is that Apple is not so much an innovator as
much as they are a good perfectionist. They didnt create the OS, the
Smartphone, the Mobile OS, etc. They simply waited for these things to pickup
mass user adoption, they looked closed at refining the points that users
complained about, then they created their own version of said product, should
they choose to go into Ai, this is how it will be done, after the world has
spoken its gripes on the current Ai offerings.

------
ahuja_s
Now that we have Nadella, it's kind of scary for Tim Cook to be compared to
Ballmer...

~~~
neolefty
How so? To an outsider who knows very little, Nadella seems to be doing great.

~~~
alexdumitru
Exactly.

------
heisenbit
It is worth noting that the author has a background in startups and
entrepreneurship. Apple however is several magnitudes larger and running new
initiatives on startup level requires isolation from the main business and a
portfolio approach. Some companies show their their cards, some hint they have
a list and Apple is traditionally very secretive.

The question is not whether Tim is the right guy for innovation but whether he
has put the right guy into the place. John Ivy certainly continues to play a
big role but has/is/will there be another internal leader emerging?

> About Steve (Blank)

> After 21 years in 8 high technology companies, I retired in 1999. I co-
> founded my last company, E.piphany, in my living room in 1996. My other
> startups include two semiconductor companies, Zilog and MIPS Computers, a
> workstation company Convergent Technologies, a consulting stint for a
> graphics hardware/software spinout Pixar, a supercomputer firm, Ardent, a
> computer peripheral supplier, SuperMac, a military intelligence systems
> supplier, ESL and a video game company, Rocket Science Games.

> Total score: two large craters (Rocket Science and Ardent), one dot.com
> bubble home run (E.piphany) and several base hits.

------
DubiousPusher
Interesting read.

Though, there's something fabulously pretentious about writing an opinion
piece and then concluding it with a "Lessons Learned" section.

------
br3w5
Hasn't Microsoft done the right thing here though as a company for the long-
term: visionary CEO leaves meaning potential for great risk to the company >
put someone in place who shores up the finances > once finances are in a great
position bring a visionary in and change things around again. It reads to me
like Microsoft's long-term strategy as a company is actually really good. They
must have known they could not continue their dominance but they could
continue to be relevant if they had the finances to back it up. Swapping one
visionary CEO for another could is a risk because big ideas don't always work
(if executed poorly).

For any company, a charismatic dominant CEO leaving causes instability a board
would be foolish not to try and stabilise things at the company before moving
on again. A CEO does not act in isolation even though this article paints it
like that and takes guidance from their board.

------
alex-
Their is a feeling that CEOs of these large companies are completely
responsible for the direction a company takes. I have never served as a CEO,
but I can't help but imagine that large share holders are also very dominant
figures.

One of the attributes that Steve Jobs and Bill Gates appeared to share (I have
never met either) was a massive amount of trust/faith to run their respective
companies (eventually).

I imagine that this must translate to the board room where they were provided
the freedom to pursue avenues that a newly promoted CEO would just not be
allowed to do.

The author praises Steve Ballmer and Tim Cook for their ability to drive short
term growth, but had they failed to do so they may have been replaced by
someone more willing to focus on these returns. Eventually as disruption
occurs the share holders start to prioritize facing these new challenges.

~~~
herbturbo
> I imagine that this must translate to the board room where they were
> provided the freedom to pursue avenues that a newly promoted CEO would just
> not be allowed to do.

The author also mentions Disney, which is a company that was sliding into
obscurity until Bob Iger took over. As a newly promoted CEO he executed his
vision and put Disney right back on top. I can't imagine Disney's board was
particularly forward thinking back then.

~~~
alex-
You are right, it must be possible to execute on a vision while keeping
shareholders, who don't share your vision happy.

But I still feel that it must be harder than having carte blanche with the
organisation. Maybe I over estimate the different levels of freedom provided
to different CEOs.

Or maybe the ability to generate this freedom/trust/faith is one of the skills
that ultimately helps define a successful CEO.

------
erikb
"got a major release of Windows out without the usual trauma"? Did he already
release Windows8? If Steve Blank talks about Windows 10 he must have missed
something, or the usual trauma he experiences is way worse than what I would
even think possible as an extreme case.

------
Zigurd
I can sort of see the analogy but it does disservice to the way Ballmer led
Microsoft to become anti-customer in their promotion of DRM technologies,
among other strategic errors. Tim Cook seems genuinely pro-user in his
emphasis on privacy.

------
scrrr
Website-idea: Make a list of previous articles that predict the future of
Apple. ;)

~~~
alanh
You could call it “Claim Chowder” and put this linked list up on a domain
like, i dunno, daringfireball.net :)

------
ungzd
These hyped "conversational interfaces" and augmented reality remind me of
Clippy and Microsoft Bob. And IoT is real disaster, not innovation. So good
that they're not jumping onto these bandwagons.

~~~
ubercore
A non-disastrous IoT ecosystem would be real innovation. I'm still waiting for
it!

------
angularly
Well, it seems Apple are actually increasing R&D in AI:

[http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/10/17/apples-new-
japan-r...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/10/17/apples-new-japan-rd-
center-to-build-very-different-artificial-intelligence-tech-tim-cook-says)

------
ksec
There are two kinds of people, those who dont understand Apple, and those who
Thinks they understand Apple but they dont.

------
pducks32
Hey I may be wrong one day and this comment might not age well but I believe
what Apple _is_ doing with AI is crucial. Baking privacy into AI and ML is
really necessary and I'm happy someone is thinking about it. I think Apple has
a lot of AI stuff going on behind closed doors.

------
maxxxxx
Ballmer led Microsoft through years of sales and profits increases. Maybe MS
isn't "cool" but he certainly left a very solid and profitable company.

Being compared to Ballmer is a compliment in my view.

------
youdontknowtho
Jesus.

Ballmer and Cook have made extreme amounts of money for their shareholders.
Major super truckloads of money. That's what businesses do.

The meta narrative of disruption is marketing, but somehow everyone keeps
talking about it like its real.

Even weirder is the emotional responses from some of the other commenters
about cloud providers? It's like they are sports teams or something. Just like
sports teams they have nothing to do with you, really. It's just a brand that
somehow you identify with.

(You could carry the sports team metaphor a lot further...tax abatements to
build datacenters/arenas...but let's leave it there...)

------
spectrum1234
This is one of the best articles I've read in awhile.

------
alanh
This title really rubs me the wrong way. To say one person “is” someone quite
different seems like a reductive and clickbaity way to say that they are alike
in one or two small ways. Better title: “Cook, Ballmer, and the Problem with
Naming Successors Who Are Good at Execution”

------
vi4m
No.

------
throwaway420
It's a little weird for me that a company supposedly in "maintenance mode" has
been ignoring the Mac for so long. Even a 5th rate computer company can manage
to come out with a new model once in a while. How did Apple get to the point
where a company in "maintenance mode" ignores a big product line like this for
so long? Is Apple not capable of executing on more than 1 project at once?

~~~
toyg
_> a big product line_

There's your mistake - next to i-devices, the Mac is simply not a big product
line. It's something they need to have around for ecosystem developers, and
something of a brand exercise in other sectors. Nothing more.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
True, but why is that so? Apple wants the high end consumer. Gamers are high
end consumers, and yet Apple doesn't sell them high end desktop or laptop
machines with gaming capable GPUs. Also no VR/AR gear. This seems like quite a
strange omission from their product line.

~~~
chongli
_Gamers are high end consumers_

They really aren't. PC gamers hang out on Reddit and other forums trading info
about how to build a PC from commodity parts in order to get the absolute best
price/performance ratio. It's not hard at all to put together a machine for
less than a thousand dollars that would be competitive with the machines Apple
sells for three thousand.

There's no margin for Apple in this space.

~~~
usaphp
> "It's not hard at all to put together a machine for less than a thousand
> dollars that would be competitive with the machines Apple sells for three
> thousand."

That's a complete BS, I want you to give me an example of that. Less than a
thousand dollar desktop vs 3000$ mac.

Now re laptops. My PC friends keep telling me that MacBooks are overpriced And
that you can get a faster PC laptop for half the price, but as soon as they
start giving me examples like razor blade or some msi laptops, they quickly
starting to see that base models of those cost > 1500$ and to get decent specs
for gaming you have to shell out upward of 2000$, so in the end you are paying
the same money you pay for MacBook.

~~~
chongli
Laptops are irrelevant to this discussion since nobody builds a laptop from
off-the-shelf parts.

The issue I'm talking about is gaming performance. Apple sells Mac Pros
starting at $3000. These machines use workstation class Xeon processors with
ECC memory and workstation class graphics cards designed for double precision
floating point computation. These features are irrelevant to gamers. It is not
hard at all to build a cheap machine that can beat one of these workstations
in all your favourite games, especially when you consider the abysmal state of
OpenGL drivers on macOS.

~~~
usaphp
If you read my comment i was referring to mac desktops, laptops were a
separate point in a discussion. Nevertheless you are comparing 3 year old Mac
Pro with current PCs, at the time when Mac Pro was released it was on par with
PC systems that costed around 3000$ as well.

~~~
chongli
I'm comparing brand new Mac Pros that Apple is selling right now, today. The
fact that Apple hasn't updated this product in 3 years is not my problem. I
can't believe you'd think that would not be a point in my favour.

------
adekok
Apple bought Siri, and then largely did nothing with it. The founders left,
and started another AI startup: Viv.

[https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/09/siri-creator-shows-off-
fir...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/09/siri-creator-shows-off-first-public-
demo-of-viv-the-intelligent-interface-for-everything/)

That AI capability _could_ have been Apples.

Instead of concentrating on user experience as a _whole_ , they concentrated
on "look and feel" of devices, along with UI.

Those are all good things. But having an iPhone with a _useful_ AI would be a
killer.

Instead, Google is pushing hard in this area. And will likely do well. Because
they're a data analysis company. Not a "pretty picture" company.

------
oldmanjay
I'm never impressed with the opinions of people who insist that Microsoft is
some sort of failure. The utter lack of incorporating basic observation of
reality into these theories is good for people who hate Microsoft, but little
else.

