To me what is wild is how this has been obvious even to people outside of Apple for dare a say a decade? (The Echo was released in 2014/2015)
Its interesting that Tim Cook has let this go on for so long.
I would love to know what the conversations have been at the executive level over these years.
You can only imagine what kind of top tier level executive state craft had to have been pulled off consistently by Siri/AI leadership to keep things progressing in this broken way internally.
ksec 22 hours ago [-]
>Its interesting that Tim Cook has let this go on for so long.
Quoting myself [1];
Plenty of examples. The problem isn't JG. It is Tim Cook. He is exceptionally poor at judging character. And I have been saying this for 10+ years.
John Browett, CEO of Dixons. Anyone from UK have said WTF at the time.
Angela Ahrendts, CEO of Burberry, the two together Apple has literally stopped expanding their Retail store despite having 10x as much customers. Rolled out many "changes" to Apple store when nearly every single one of them were walked back to Steve Jobs era. Mainly by Deirdre O’Brien who has been with Apple for 20+ years.
Changes of Direction in PR. Which leads to Katie Cotton leaving.
Forced out Scott Forstall. Tim is suppose to be the mediator.
Promote Craig Federighi, after all these years I am still not convinced he is the right person for the job. Especially after merging iOS and macOS team together.
Putting too much trust on Eddy Cue and sidelined Phil Schiller. Apple TV+, Apple Music, Apple Fitness, Apple Books, News, All these services are Eddy Cue. The committee that ultimately ruled for Apple's 30% cut? Tim Cook and Eddy Cue.
Probably a few more names missing.
I guess one of the few more names could be John Giannandrea.
I've commented here for a while that I feel like Tim Cook could be the problem.
I don't know where in the Steve Jobs playbook they are getting "stagnate for a decade and miss every boat by years". The Vision Pro release has been a debacle if not an out-and-out failure. We are told that Cook is in the job because he's a logistics genius and a getting-things-done expert, but the Vision Pro for example was a logistics failure, and a product failure, the likes of which Jobs would have rolled heads for. Siri is kind of nice but its functionality is basic at best, still.
I remember the story about the meeting Steve Jobs called about iCloud, where he asked the MobileMe team (paraphrasing) "What does MobileMe do?" and the team listed all the features, to which Jobs responded "well why doesn't it fucking do that?" and fired a bunch of them on the spot – later rescuing it somewhat by turning MobileMe into iCloud. Even Scott Forestall got the chopping block after delivering the UI for the iPhone very successfully, but was nevertheless still booted due to political and personality issues.
Yet have we heard of executives getting fired and berated for failures recently? No. Have any major heads rolled over the weakness like the Vision Pro and painful attempt at integrating ChatGPT? No. Have you tried to use "Image Playground" to make anything useful without it throwing up "sorry I can't do that for you Dave"? No, because it barely works, and won't create almost all the pictures I'd like it to, again because Apple are scared to the point of paranoia about anything that might damage their image, including the things now that they're baking into the computer that I paid for and yet cannot use in the way I wish. Is the iPhone actually better than its Android competitors? No.
It's understandable that they don't want to disturb the golden eggs of the iPhone and its huge profits, but I think Apple really do need to make some major changes in what they're doing and how they innovate going forward, and they need to be as daring as Steve Jobs would have been in doing it. Tim Cook isn't that guy.
dangus 23 hours ago [-]
I am much less negative on Tim Cook and I’ll tell you why:
Steve Jobs was a great vision leader but something of a bad manager in other ways. Being an asshole doesn’t magically make his track record perfect, especially if we include his first stint at Apple.
He was a great leader of a growth company. He motivated and sourced talent very well in his own strange way.
Tim Cook is extremely good at the logistics of a large and mature company, and Apple doesn’t need a Steve Jobs because it doesn’t need to grow.
Apple doesn’t need to do any of the shit that you’ve criticized them for doing badly. It doesn’t need the Vision Pro or an AI product at all. It doesn’t even need to innovate anymore, ever.
Apple is now entrenched in a duopoly. It literally can’t fail. They are basically like AT&T now.
They’ll make more money reselling cloud storage and bundling a glorified cable subscription with it. They probably make more money on their stupid credit card than OpenAI will ever make.
Hell, their services division makes more revenue than Macs and iPads combined IIRC.
Perhaps Tim Cook’s only failure is not canceling the Vision Pro product and not delaying Apple Intelligence. But the consequences of those actions are minimal if any. They probably sold the iPhone 16 Pro to millions of morons who don’t even care about the AI rug pull.
With a company so large, Tim Cook’s most important job is keeping the machine running, staying on the good side of all the countries involved politically, things of that nature. And in that sense he’s done a great job.
gizajob 23 hours ago [-]
"If you're doing business the same way you were 5 years ago, you're going out of business."
I'd say they were more like Nokia than AT&T.
dangus 11 hours ago [-]
Not really true in an end-state market where only monopoly players exist.
Nokia didn't exist in the end-state smartphone market. Smartphones were nowhere near done innovating when they were dominant, and now they are essentially a completed product.
AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile have done essentially zero innovation and they do great business.
Duke Energy does zero innovation and they do great business.
Coca-Cola does zero innovation and they do great business.
Do their businesses incrementally improve and become more efficient? Yes, but that's much different than being an innovation company.
Again, the mistake you are making here is mischaracterizing the type of business Apple is in based on the business they were in 10 years ago. Apple is not in an innovation business anymore. Most of its product lines are in areas where no startup can possibly enter the market and compete.
Apple is becoming a company where their financial functions outweigh their actual business (another example of a business like this are the major airlines like United and Delta that make more revenue on credit cards than actual flying). Again I had the example of services bringing in more money than some of Apple's major product lines.
Apple storing your family photos on some computers they didn't design in a data center they might not even own is likely a more profitable and higher revenue business than the incredibly complicated hardware that they are selling you.
gherkinnn 24 hours ago [-]
How will Apple spin this at the coming WWDC? Apple Intelligence was the announcement last year and I've heard nothing but crickets since.
hu3 24 hours ago [-]
They need something big to overcome VR and AI failures.
5 days ago [-]
Rendered at 14:58:55 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
Its interesting that Tim Cook has let this go on for so long.
I would love to know what the conversations have been at the executive level over these years.
You can only imagine what kind of top tier level executive state craft had to have been pulled off consistently by Siri/AI leadership to keep things progressing in this broken way internally.
Quoting myself [1];
Plenty of examples. The problem isn't JG. It is Tim Cook. He is exceptionally poor at judging character. And I have been saying this for 10+ years.
John Browett, CEO of Dixons. Anyone from UK have said WTF at the time.
Angela Ahrendts, CEO of Burberry, the two together Apple has literally stopped expanding their Retail store despite having 10x as much customers. Rolled out many "changes" to Apple store when nearly every single one of them were walked back to Steve Jobs era. Mainly by Deirdre O’Brien who has been with Apple for 20+ years.
Changes of Direction in PR. Which leads to Katie Cotton leaving.
Forced out Scott Forstall. Tim is suppose to be the mediator.
Promote Craig Federighi, after all these years I am still not convinced he is the right person for the job. Especially after merging iOS and macOS team together.
Putting too much trust on Eddy Cue and sidelined Phil Schiller. Apple TV+, Apple Music, Apple Fitness, Apple Books, News, All these services are Eddy Cue. The committee that ultimately ruled for Apple's 30% cut? Tim Cook and Eddy Cue.
Probably a few more names missing.
I guess one of the few more names could be John Giannandrea.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43436174
I don't know where in the Steve Jobs playbook they are getting "stagnate for a decade and miss every boat by years". The Vision Pro release has been a debacle if not an out-and-out failure. We are told that Cook is in the job because he's a logistics genius and a getting-things-done expert, but the Vision Pro for example was a logistics failure, and a product failure, the likes of which Jobs would have rolled heads for. Siri is kind of nice but its functionality is basic at best, still.
I remember the story about the meeting Steve Jobs called about iCloud, where he asked the MobileMe team (paraphrasing) "What does MobileMe do?" and the team listed all the features, to which Jobs responded "well why doesn't it fucking do that?" and fired a bunch of them on the spot – later rescuing it somewhat by turning MobileMe into iCloud. Even Scott Forestall got the chopping block after delivering the UI for the iPhone very successfully, but was nevertheless still booted due to political and personality issues.
Yet have we heard of executives getting fired and berated for failures recently? No. Have any major heads rolled over the weakness like the Vision Pro and painful attempt at integrating ChatGPT? No. Have you tried to use "Image Playground" to make anything useful without it throwing up "sorry I can't do that for you Dave"? No, because it barely works, and won't create almost all the pictures I'd like it to, again because Apple are scared to the point of paranoia about anything that might damage their image, including the things now that they're baking into the computer that I paid for and yet cannot use in the way I wish. Is the iPhone actually better than its Android competitors? No.
It's understandable that they don't want to disturb the golden eggs of the iPhone and its huge profits, but I think Apple really do need to make some major changes in what they're doing and how they innovate going forward, and they need to be as daring as Steve Jobs would have been in doing it. Tim Cook isn't that guy.
Steve Jobs was a great vision leader but something of a bad manager in other ways. Being an asshole doesn’t magically make his track record perfect, especially if we include his first stint at Apple.
He was a great leader of a growth company. He motivated and sourced talent very well in his own strange way.
Tim Cook is extremely good at the logistics of a large and mature company, and Apple doesn’t need a Steve Jobs because it doesn’t need to grow.
Apple doesn’t need to do any of the shit that you’ve criticized them for doing badly. It doesn’t need the Vision Pro or an AI product at all. It doesn’t even need to innovate anymore, ever.
Apple is now entrenched in a duopoly. It literally can’t fail. They are basically like AT&T now.
They’ll make more money reselling cloud storage and bundling a glorified cable subscription with it. They probably make more money on their stupid credit card than OpenAI will ever make.
Hell, their services division makes more revenue than Macs and iPads combined IIRC.
Perhaps Tim Cook’s only failure is not canceling the Vision Pro product and not delaying Apple Intelligence. But the consequences of those actions are minimal if any. They probably sold the iPhone 16 Pro to millions of morons who don’t even care about the AI rug pull.
With a company so large, Tim Cook’s most important job is keeping the machine running, staying on the good side of all the countries involved politically, things of that nature. And in that sense he’s done a great job.
I'd say they were more like Nokia than AT&T.
Nokia didn't exist in the end-state smartphone market. Smartphones were nowhere near done innovating when they were dominant, and now they are essentially a completed product.
AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile have done essentially zero innovation and they do great business.
Duke Energy does zero innovation and they do great business.
Coca-Cola does zero innovation and they do great business.
Do their businesses incrementally improve and become more efficient? Yes, but that's much different than being an innovation company.
Again, the mistake you are making here is mischaracterizing the type of business Apple is in based on the business they were in 10 years ago. Apple is not in an innovation business anymore. Most of its product lines are in areas where no startup can possibly enter the market and compete.
Apple is becoming a company where their financial functions outweigh their actual business (another example of a business like this are the major airlines like United and Delta that make more revenue on credit cards than actual flying). Again I had the example of services bringing in more money than some of Apple's major product lines.
Apple storing your family photos on some computers they didn't design in a data center they might not even own is likely a more profitable and higher revenue business than the incredibly complicated hardware that they are selling you.