The east is red, the yeast is yellow, the beast is Redmond
WHEN STEVE JOBS announced he was taking a six month sicky on Monday, many of us looked at to whom he had handed the keys to the Kingdom and wondered who the hell Tim Cook was.
Replacing a Messiah is usually a dodgy business and some, like St Peter, prefer to end up being crucified upside down rather than keep doing the job.
Tim Cook, born in 1960, is the 'Prince Regent' of Apple, but there is a good chance that he will end up doing the job permanently if Steve does not get better.
The problem is that, in an outfit like Apple, managers don't get much practice at making decisions that their hands-on overlords, like Steve, don't approve of. Cook is taking control during a period of potential trouble for Apple.
The outfit has lost its number three ranking in the sales of laptops and could see other sales slide in the next six months.
So who is this bod who will have to save Apple while his boss gets better? Actually nothing is known about him really. He went to Auburn University in Alabama, did a 12-year stint at IBM and a few months at Compaq. In 1998 he was called in by Jobs to help him revive the house of Cupertino.
Apple had a great deal of success, mostly by getting out if its traditional business of making nice looking hardware that caught fire and turning to gizmos and toys. The success was all credited to Jobs. If Tom did anything, the press didn't know about it or report it.
There was an exception. In a back issue of Fortune magazine, Cook is described as kicking bottom when he joined Apple. It was he who sorted out the production, distribution, service and replacement of defective parts. He closed factories and warehouses around the world and led Apple to outsource the production of hardware.
But he refused to accept the title of being the genius behind Steve. While Steve was making sure that the colours and marketing were right, it was Cook who built a structure that worked.
No doubt he was good in management, but stepping into Jobs' black turtleneck might be a bit trying. Apple is 90 per cent marketing and design. It has managed to convince its fanatical fanbase, against all evidence, that it is somehow good for them. It takes charisma to do that.
What is more likely is that, however competent Cook is, cracks in the image will start to appear over the next six months. A recession will reveal how expensive this kit is and Cook may not have the charm to convince them that buying this stuff because it looks nice is enough.
If he fails then people will say it is because he is no Steve Jobs, but if he succeeds and then Steve comes back, it is likely he will just disappear into the shadows while Jobs' takes the credit again. µ
"Apple had a great deal of success, mostly by getting out if its traditional business of making nice looking hardware that caught fire and turning to gizmos and toys." Apple's market share has been *rising* for most of the last few years. Its traditional business of selling well-designed laptops that aren't complete shit hasn't done too badly. (Granted, people do tend to scale back their aspirations during a recession, but the fact that the much-hyped "netbooks" only accounted for a mere 5%-ish of sales this past year suggests those aren't the saviour of the IT industry either.) As for those gadgets and toys... How many hundreds of models of phones have Nokia, Motorola, HTC and SonyEricsson designed over the years? How much collective experience do they have? Yet a company like Apple could come out of the blue and wipe the floor with them after producing just *TWO* phones? WTF? Whatever your beef against Apple might be, perhaps you should be venting more of your spleen against their piss-poor rivals who haven't managed to produce a single credible rival to the iPhone or iPod. The only exception seems to be Palm -- a company which, like Apple, seemed to have been written-off by so many in the media. No, Apple aren't perfect. No company is. But I don't see what's so damned *wrong* about insisting that "Good Enough" is nothing of the sort. Stop blaming Apple for doing something right and start demanding why their rivals *keep getting it so damned wrong*.
They make the google adroid phone, plus the HTC Touch HD. The Touch HD is like the iphone but with a better screen, gps etc. www.htc.com Too many times there are clowns in charge of businesses who do not see the value in great products. Re Tim Cook, I'm sure he's a capable man, probably Jobs's right hand man. I expect the designers will not be getting sacked, and that there will be powerpoint presentations in Jobs's private room at the hospital. I think things will continue as normal unless some fools try to create a power struggle.
Jobs will run the company from invisibly his hospital bed while Cook is the public puppet seen to be running things. In actuality, Cook won't be running anything. That is my opinion. Assuming of course that this isn't a bait and switch and Jobs is worse off than we've been lead to believe. Apple could be seriously in trouble and their competitors should be chomping at the bits to take advantage of it. As noted, the recession makes buying over priced kit a rather unlikely possibility for most.
... Do you really think any senior exec in Apple would last very long if they sought any credit for anything that could possibly be attributable to Teh Steev? It's quite possible that Mr. Cook is actually taking care of business while the world follows Steve, and is happy (and well-compensated) to eschew the spotlight. Actually, if Tim does _too_ well, and Steve comes back, it may be curtains for Tim..
And the companion of the [...] Steve Jobs. [...] loved her The Cook than all the fanboys, and used to kiss The Cook often on [...]. The rest of the fanboys [...]. They said to him "Why do you love The Cook more than all of us?" The Savoury answered and said to them, "Why do I not love you like The Cook? When a hungry man and one who eats are both together in appetites, they are no different from one another. When the repast comes, they who eat will eat, separating the curds from the whey, the wheats from the chaff, the Apples from the eye, the toys from the pram, and The Hungry Mile will remain the Hungry Mile... "