Jobs also picked the G4 Cube. He made mistakes, and Cook may have been one. Certainly it could end up being an excellent move, but only time will tell.
I'm always amazed that more people don't recognize the Cube as one of the most successful design manifestos in corporate history. Unlike the successful-in-their-time Candy iMacs, the Cube introduced a hardware design DNA that permiated virtually everything that followed it. Those traces remain clearly visible today - more than a decade later - in what could be fairly described as the world's most valuable product line.
For Jobs, a private or merely theoretical manifesto wouldn't have been enough. Apple designs everything from the concept to the manufacturing process to the unboxing and initial startup experience. For a something to be a true design reference, it had to cover all these bases. That means it needed to be a real product that actually shipped. Which it did.
If you measure the return using everything that followed its lead - which includes the flagship store - it has recovered its investment a bazillion times over. Whatever else the Cube may have been, it was not a mistake. The one-button hockey puck mouse with the too-short cable? That was a mistake.
Yes. The Mac Mini is a smaller Cube. The iMac is a squished-out Cube with a screen on the side. Like the Cube, they (and other Apple products) are personal computers that are more consumer appliance/device than the traditional tower or rack.
Another way of looking at the Cube (and its successors) is that it's a `desktop laptop'.
It's more than conceptual lineage - geometrically, the Mac Pro was a 1st gen. mini flipped on its side then amended with handles and vents. And the precise curve of the corresponding corners is repeated on the MacBook Pros. And the iPhone. And the iPad.
Now, identify one - just one - computer that shared those trademark corners when the Cube came out. Nothing else looked even remotely like it, including Apple's earlier products. Now, there's little - if anything - done by Apple that doesn't mesh with the Cube beautifully. Even the individual keys on the current wireless keyboard (which I'm using to type this) and the trackpad off to the side are clearly post-Cube, and entierly consistant with the direction it set...a decade ago.
In terms of towering achievements in industrial design, the Cube is to computing what the 1927 Yankees are to baseball.
I think Cooks leadership will turn out fine. And the real test will be whom he chooses. These big companies remind me of the roman empire. When the Principate put capable man to power the results were exceptional. When the barracks emperors came to power only to be repeatedly murdered again (cough Yahoo cough) it all crumbled.
For Jobs, a private or merely theoretical manifesto wouldn't have been enough. Apple designs everything from the concept to the manufacturing process to the unboxing and initial startup experience. For a something to be a true design reference, it had to cover all these bases. That means it needed to be a real product that actually shipped. Which it did.
If you measure the return using everything that followed its lead - which includes the flagship store - it has recovered its investment a bazillion times over. Whatever else the Cube may have been, it was not a mistake. The one-button hockey puck mouse with the too-short cable? That was a mistake.