[nostromo]

Mac development started stagnating under Jobs though, once the iPod and then iPhone really took off.

It's well known that Jobs was basically bored with the Mac and spent all of his time focusing on the iPhone.

This is where having a single visionary in charge of everything (including small decisions) breaks down. There are so many days in the week and you can't be everywhere at once.

Cook is the better CEO, and Jobs was the better founder / early CEO in my view. I'm thrilled with the M1, and I'm not sure that would ever be something Jobs would have developed.

[adventured]

I disagree about Cook being the better CEO. He's the better chief operating officer, which is the ideal combination with Jobs as CEO. A product person should always lead a company like Apple, if you can find one good enough to do the job. If you don't have that eventually you'll miss a critical inflection and the company will tip over. Cook will extract maximum profit from the product and ecosystem foundation that Jobs left him, which is exactly what he has been doing for a decade now. Jobs installed Cook in that role because he knew that operationally Cook wouldn't screw up the product map that was already primed. However Apple will need a product person after Cook.

[killion]

I think that is exactly right. Tim Cook is the most amazing supply chain and operational leader – but he is not a product person. He doesn't have the knack for diving in and really refining how things work.

Without that centralized leadership Apple will still have components that excel, like processors, but the fundamental user experience will keep degrading.

[steve_taylor]

> This is where having a single visionary in charge of everything (including small decisions) breaks down. There are so many days in the week and you can't be everywhere at once.

I don’t agree with this. The Mac was his baby and yet it didn’t blind him to the future being in handheld and wearable computing. And it’s led to phenomenal success. He could have doubled down on Mac at the expense of the smartphone market.

[m0llusk]

It is not true that Steve Jobs was bored with the Mac. Steve Jobs loved the Mac and would have preferred for it to be at the center. The thing is that Apple nearly died only just a few years before by not selling people what they wanted and by that time what people really expressed desire for using their money was personal devices.

Apple had many problems dealing with processor suppliers over the years and probably would have looked for solutions beyond Intel when they floundered no matter who was at the top.

[pcmoney]

Jobs started their own chip division to bring it in house shortly after his return despite knowing that bet wouldnt pay off for 5-10yrs and despite needing to resuscitate a dying company in the short term. He started the process that lead to the m1.