| > Cook literally never led a software or hardware product team until he became CEO, after which he "technically" led every team at Apple. And why does that matter? Steve Jobs selected him because he felt he would be the best person for the job out of the executive team. > Jobs was behind Apple II Woz was behind Apple II. If you read the accounts, Jobs didn’t want more than two expansion slots and fought Woz on that and lost. Woz was ready to walk away with his design. > Lisa Commercial failure. > Macintosh Commercial failure. > NeXT Commercial failure. > Mac OS X Jobs was one of several people instrumental in making that happen, but I think you can hardly give him more than 50% credit in that one. I think you can give Jobs a lot of credit for the vision behind iMac, iPod, and iPhone. But it’s entirely disingenuous to discount the likes of Jony Ive, Scott Forstall, and all the other people who made those products happen. Jobs vision from the early Apple days was of computers as home appliances. You purchase it, it is complete as is (little to no extensibility), and it’s well-designed (physically) like the products designed by the people Jobs admired (Dieter Rams). That’s a great vision and what still drives the company today, but he was hardly singularly responsible for the success behind those products. |
It's not actually Jobs's choice. Apple is a publicly owned company, and both Jobs and Cook are employees, not owners. Jobs could recommend a successor, but the board of directors had the power to reject the recommendation. Never forget that when Jobs demanded that the Apple board of directors choose between him and John Sculley, they chose Sculley.
In any case, Jobs didn't expect to die until it was too late. He didn't have years to groom a successor. Cook was expedient.
> If you read the accounts, Jobs didn’t want more than two expansion slots and fought Woz on that and lost. Woz was ready to walk away with his design.
I'm not sure what this is supposed to prove? They were cofounders. They were both behind the Apple II. This is well known and documented. Of course Jobs wasn't Woz's boss, they were equals. And they had some disagreements, which is natural and expected. So what? I used to have cofounder bosses, and they argued and disagreed all the time.
>> Macintosh
> Commercial failure.
Um, no. No it was not. That's absurd. Otherwise Apple wouldn't exist now. What do you think Apple sold before iPod and iPhone?
>> NeXT
> Commercial failure.
It was acquired for $400 million. I'd love to fail that badly.
> But it’s entirely disingenuous to discount the likes of Jony Ive, Scott Forstall, and all the other people who made those products happen.
Good thing I never did that. You're arguing against a straw man. Jobs was the leader of a team.
By the way, Cook purged Forstall from Apple. And it's rumored that Ive was disappointed Cook didn't care about design like Jobs did.
> he was hardly singularly responsible for the success behind those products
I never argued that. What I argue is that Tim Cook is not a "product person" like Jobs was. Cook is not making design decisions; Jobs was.
It's funny that you're arguing against me with the straw man that Jobs deserves 100% credit, but you don't argue against the person I was refuting who claimed "Cook was arguably the real brains behind Apple's turnaround back in the early 2000s" and "Cook was actually the main driver of the company's success even before Jobs departed". Why aren't you criticizing that argument as much as or more than mine? However much credit Jobs deserves for his over 30 year body of work, how in the world would Cook deserve even more credit than Jobs for that???