Is Tim Cook a Product Visionary? Does He Need to Be?
A recent video of Steve Jobs talking about corporate leadership and product vision has reawakened a debate about Apple CEO Tim Cook.
Steve Jobs (1955-2011)
A caption for the video at Digg has the title: “Steve Jobs Eerily Warned Against What Apple Seems To Be Doing Now.”
This one sentence is a perfect example of a defective thought process and click-bait journalism. Namely, take a preconceived notion, marry it with a video of a stellar personality, and draw a (false) conclusion, wrapped in the authority of the video’s personality.
That was enough to have several people, readers and friends, send it to me for analysis and discussion.
Innuendo Journalism
There are several facts that undermine the thesis presented..
- Tim Cook was hand picked by Steve Jobs to assume the leadership of Apple.
- Apple was a very different company under Steve Jobs. The company has transitioned from a one-trick-pony, “One more thing” product company to a vast corporation able to take on much grander challenges.
- Accordingly, Apple needs an experienced orchestra leader today. Not a lead vocalist. Plus, Mr. Cook has grown in maturity as a CEO in the last six years.
Another trick used to criticize Tim Cook is to say that because he came through the ranks as a leader of the sales teams and as COO that he fails as a singular product visionary—the apparent point of the Steve Jobs video linked above. Q.E.D.
I declare this to be all nonsense.
A company of Apple’s size needs an orchestra leader capable of properly managing the multitude of product visionaries within. Without that, Apple would degerate into a collection of fiefdoms run by lords of their own self-serving kingdoms. That’s the state Apple was in when Steve Jobs came back, and he fixed that problem immediately.
The suggestion is that because Tim Cook isn’t the sole originator of outrageously good tech products and rams them down the company’s throat he’s not suited to be the CEO. This kind of thinking is a fanciful, outdated, authoritatian notion for a much smaller company.
Orchestra Leader
Today, Tim Cook’s job is to be an orchestra conductor. He makes sure that everyone is on the same page and the instruments are superbly tuned. He’s not always succeeded perfectly, the 2014-2017 Mac lapse comes to mind, but he can hardly be compared, as Mr. Jobs suggested, to a corporate sales weenie to rises through the ranks only to guide his ship into a rudderless, maniacal obsession with money while great products languish. Or never get created.
The Tim Cook we know is passionate about quality, inspiring and secure products. He’s devoted to the vision of Steve Jobs but not so inwardly obsessed with his own agenda that he forgets how to lead a large, beloved, capable corporation.
Watch the Jobs video again. Great products sell themselves. Apple doesn’t fool itself into the idea that heavy handed sales techniques dupe the customer. Tim Cook’s heart-felt orchestration of the products brought to market is exactly what Mr. Jobs would demand of his successor years later.
Next Page: The News Debris For The Week Of September 25th. Hey, let’s sell a new camera always pointed at the customer’s bed.
Page 2 – News Debris For The Week Of September 25th –
A New Camera Always Pointed at the Customer’s Bed
Amazon has a new product in the Echo family called the Spot. I’m not so much focused on the idea of what it does (think of it as a Dot with an LCD display and camera) as the social implications and motivations behind a device that sits on your nightstand and points a camera at your bed.
The new Amazon Spot. Image credit: Amazon.
A moment of reflection.
The article that explores this is by Tom Warren at The Verge. The title is: “Amazon’s Echo Spot is a sneaky way to get a camera into your bedroom.”
Author Warren addresses the psychology of the situation and the systematic assault on the customer’s mental barriers. Just a few years ago, there was a major fuss about some smart TVs that had a TV camera facing the viewer. Later we learned that a government spy agency had learned how to hack into these systems.
So my question is, knowing that the Echo Spot is a virtually irresistible target for hackers, why bring it to market? And why would customers, who must be very suspicious of any product with a camera by now, happily pay for a product that’s always focused on their bed?
Related
Perhaps with a household full of enough internet cameras, people just won’t care anymore.
More Debris
• At Computerworld, Jonny Evans has a comprehensive list of: “How your iPhone can save your life.” It’s a good list to study on a rainy Saturday and make sure you know how to set up the various features.
• Yep. Apple’s iTunes is bloated. But was the approach Apple took with iTunes 12.7 sensible? Kirk McElhearn has his own ideas in “This Is Where iTunes Is Bloated.”
• Firefox, as we know, comes from the Mozilla Foundation. It’s a non-profit organization, not one of the tech giants loaded with corporate agenda. And so, many (including me) have a warm place in their heart for Firefox. However, over the years, the speed, simplicity and elegance of Google’s Chrome has resulted in a significant market share.
Firefox Quantum aims to address, at least the speed part. See: “Mozilla Gives Firefox a ‘Quantum’ Speed Boost.” The Mozilla blog has more details.
• Who was Amazon before there was an Amazon? Interestingly, it was Sears, Roebuck & Company. Here’s an interesting analysis at The Atlantic. . “The History of Sears Predicts Nearly Everything Amazon Is Doing.”
• Finally, here’s a tasty article at BuzzFeed that goes behind the scenes with Apple’s development of camera technology in its iPhones. “Inside Apple’s Quest To Transform Photography.” There are lots of nice tidbits including comments form Apple’s SVP of Product Marketing Phil Schiller related to Apple’s ultimate goal with iPhone cameras.
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Particle Debris is a generally a mix of John Martellaro’s observations and opinions about a standout event or article of the week (preamble on page one) followed on page two by a discussion of articles that didn’t make the TMO headlines, the technical news debris. The column is published most every Friday except for holiday weekends.
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