[rdbl27]

Cook has done more or less the opposite of what Jobs did.

Jobs was all about bold innovation, hugely risky bets on gamechanging products.

Cook is a timid logistics optimizer, and he's good at that. We reliably get an iPhone with slightly more RAM, slightly faster CPU on schedule every year. No category changing products.

Innovation has stopped -- after Jobs, there is only minor incremental improvement

[racl101]

Reminds me of the Godfather and how they called Tom Hagen not a "wartime consigliere". This was at a time when conflicts were starting up again and Vito had just been gunned down. Tim is Tom. Steve was Vito.

When Steve Jobs came back in 1997 Apple was against the ropes and they needed some radical change lest they sink.

But after they stabilized around 2010s then they didn't need radical shakeups but to maintain the good thing they got going. Tim was the man for that. And he did it well.

And yes I get that in this case one is a consigliere and one is the Don but there's similarity here.

[walthamstow]

I don't own one, but the Apple Watch did very much change the category, defined it even. Vision Pro was a innovative bet, maybe not a great one. Apple Silicon completely changed the game.

[seabrookmx]

And the highest profit product you left out that was also category defining: Airpods.

[walthamstow]

Good point, thanks!

[rdbl27]

The Apple Watch is a niche product for a few tech nerds (at least outside of Silicon Valley tech circles), not an ubiquitous feature of everyday life for normal people the way the PC, the iPod, and the iPhone are.

Vision Pro was a science experiment that few people have even heard of.

Apple Silicon is a perfect example of a purely internal-facing logistics optimization: sure, it's fine in terms of saving money and boosting performance. 99% of end users do not know or care whether they have Apple Silicon or Intel chips.

[walthamstow]

Just utter nonsense about the watch. They're very popular with normal British people like my mother. M1 was a performance per watt revolution. Sounds like you're either clueless, hate Apple or Tim Cook, or all of the above.

[rdbl27]

No need for the personal attacks.

Let's keep it quantitative rather than relying upon personal anecdotes: Apple does not break out unit sales for the Watch (which in itself is telling.)

According to third party analyst estimates which are readily obtainable from search engines, the Apple Watch has shipped just over 100 million units worldwide since inception. Upgrade cycles are weak to nonexistent. Growth flatlined years ago -- even declining slightly in recent years. After the initial burst of interest from early adopters -- that is, tech nerds plus a few outliers here and there among normies -- demand fizzled.

The iPhone has shipped 3 billion units. It is in an entirely different category. While demand has roughly plateaued, there is a strong upgrade / replacement cycle. Annual iPhone sales are in the ~250M range -- far more iPhones are sold every year than all Apple Watches that have ever been sold in history.

The Apple Watch is firmly in the "niche product" category. It's not a "gamechanger for everyday life for normal people," notwithstanding the existence of a few normie outliers here and there.

[walthamstow]

> No category changing products

That's the bar you set. So you're saying the Apple Watch did not change the watch category? And likewise Airpods, or Apple Silicon laptops?

I don't know where the comparisons to iPhone have come from. No, it's not comparable to iPhone. Nobody said it was. That would be crazy.

You call Vision Pro a science experiment and dismiss Apple Silicon as irrelevant to users, but also say there's been no innovation. How do you square that?