Please, you can have Julian Assange in compensation!

“I have my own theory about why the decline happens at companies like IBM or Microsoft. The company does a great job, innovates and becomes a monopoly or close to it in some field, and then the quality of the product becomes less important. The product starts valuing the great salesmen, because they’re the ones who can move the needle on revenues, not the product engineers and designers. So the salespeople end up running the company.” – Steve Jobs

cook avoided your email

happy for that

now back to apples greatness

Don’t make me lose my faith in you, Tim!

-worried Apple supporter

And that is what the rest of the world doesn’t get, make an “insanely great” product and folks won’t care that you charge WAY more than anybody else, and they’ll fall over themselves to buy it.

That being said, you can find me camping in line until September 12th.

Cook, I hope you remember that you can take Browett out of the PC gutter, but you cannot take the PC gutter out of him.

Btw, my sources have told me Browett is not only an Apple executive, but also Cook’s golden boy. It was Cook who overruled other executives’ objections in the room and personally approved Browett’s staff cutting proposal.

No idea how on earth he made VP at Apple.

It’s not a good sign.

Precisely how much profit does Apple actually *need* to make? The stores are already ridiculously profitable per square foot. Apple is all about the experience and building loyalty, not squeezing margins.

As warned, the bloke’s a dick.

He clearly just doesn’t get it.

Sack him.

Dixons over here = shite, generally. The only big change in the last three years was when they copied the Apple Store layout . . . but with far fewer assistants . . . none of which (as ever) knew jack.

It’s nice he got shares worth many, many millions just for rolling up, though, isn’t it? When Apple said he was ‘head and shoulders’ above the other candidates, were they retail midgets? Or did Browett just talk the talk better.

I worry that that ‘talk’ was ‘marketing-ese’.

Remember what Steve said about what happens to a company when it gets run by ‘the marketing guy’?

Next thing you know, Browett is going to start opening Apple retail stores in barren strip malls and desolate car-choked landscapes. This is definitely not a guy who could have created the Grand Central store, or the Fifth Avenue store. He doesn’t think that way. He might be the right fit for some horrible place everyone hates to go to like Best Buy, but not for the Apple store.

We’re. Watching. You.

~ Us

I could have understood Apple picking somebody from B&O or maybe poaching someone from a chain like Gravis in Germany which practically eats, sleeps and breathes Apple.

But a bozo from DSG (or Currys PC World, as it now calls itself) was like taking the coach of the West Des Moines Wolves and making them the coach of the New York Yankees.

With the exception of the Equanet unit of the DSGi Business (which was a pre-existing business), nearly every part of DSG is a testament to the fact that the acceptance of a mediocre customer experience in exchange for a good deal is a one-way trip to medium-term frustration and long-term dissatisfaction: about once every two years, I go into a DSG store just to remind me how appalling the experience is and to encourage some gum-chewing, slack-jawed, acne-ridden wassock reading from the shelf-strip or the side of the box to go and learn something about the products they sell.

I was very concerned with the initial hire of John Browett, as Dixons is well-known for a lack of service. The recent news that he ignored the advice of veteran staff members in order to cut hours during back to school is cause for alarm.

Mr. Cook, one of the most important things to realize about retail is that it is an incredibly incestuous field. Most career retail managers, VPs, and executives have an extraordinarily narrow view of what constitutes an effective, successful retail organization. Comments from employees referring to Apple Retail as GAPple- from a tendency to hire store management from GAP- is reflective of the realities of retail. Bad practices and mismanagement are endemic and wide-spread in retail.

Focus on profits and metrics over customer service and employees (Apple’s “greatest asset”) is one of the most hideous and ineffective diseases in all of retail. Mr. Browett exhibited that pattern of thinking at Dixons and is now showing it at Apple.

I urge you to begin a new search for an Apple Retail executive and to strongly consider promoting from within the upper echelon of Apple Retail. Retail in general, and Apple Retail in specific, require new ways of thinking to grow and serve customers. Ron Johnson was, in partnership with the executive team, incredibly effective at this. You need true, visionary leadership at Apple Retail, someone who is willing to try new things and take chances that may not add to the bottom line. The narrow view that Mr. Browett possesses serves neither Apple, Apple Retail, nor your customers.

1. Like all business segments at Apple, retail is pushed extremely hard to deliver numbers. On many occasions, payroll is tightened in order to deliver a number to Oppenheimer.

2. I think we all wondered exactly what Browett would bring to the table. While we can assume he has likely made some good decisions, he dropped the ball in this case. At least he manned up and owned it.

3. We all make mistakes. The key is to learn from them. I would assume Cook will have him on a shorter leash moving forward before giving him more slack in the future.

Apple Retail deserves better. Browett needs to go.

M

I’m glad this was straitened out. (stupid rumors)

This is MADNESS!! It is not of ‘Steve Jobs personality/charisma/attitude’ to do this kind of shit.

He should be reassigned to toilet washing duties from now on.