“When Steve Jobs wanted something, he more often than not got his way,” Trevor Mogg reports for Digital Trends. “Without his drive and famously abrasive personality, it’s likely Apple would never have been transformed into the global phenomenon it is today.”
“With his health failing, Jobs stepped down from the top job at Apple in 2011, making way for Tim Cook,” Mogg reports. “Since then – you may not be entirely surprised to learn – the company has been easier to deal with, according to the boss of one of the world’s largest telecom companies.”
Mogg reports, “France Telecom-Orange CEO Stephane Richard, who was speaking to the press at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Monday, said that in the last couple of years the Cupertino company had clearly changed and become more accommodating in its dealings with partner carriers. ‘Apple has [become] more flexible, paying more attention to everyone else, probably a little less arrogant than they used to be,’ he told reporters.”
Read more in the full article here.
I don’t know if that’s necessarily a good thing. Steve was a martinet and he knew how to run a tight ship. Tim, on the other hand, is a softie, and there’s a downside to this.
Take the latest iOS update for the Apple TV for instance. Now when you transition to a YouTube video from music playing over AirPlay, the YouTube video doesn’t play or plays in the background beneath the menu icons. You have to restart Apple TV to get the video to play properly. Quality control totally missing.
And what’s with the iOS 6.1.1, 6.1.2 upgrades within a week? Another example of poor quality control. Steve would have fired the entire team responsible, but Cook, he tolerates rubbish.
Steven was probably the only one who could be this arrogant and bold — because he was genius and visionary, on some cases Jobs was as clear as if he was sent here from the future.
Others do not have this confidence, hence it would be stupid if they would express the same boldness and arrogance as Jobs did.
At times some CEOs think that they “know” how things should be done, but they fail miserably because they do not know actually, they only think they know.
Microsoft is the biggest example of that. The only reason why this company survived so many epic failures thanks to overconfident and yet stupid ideas implemented, is because they have a monopoly with Windows and Office. With this, they can endure no matter how many epic failures.
But in any other business, CEOs’ boldness and arrogance cost their companies’ a life.
I find this constant comparison of Tim Cook and his approach to managing the world’s most valuable publicly-traded company (fact-check) to the venerable Steven P. Jobs to be inane and annoying. Tim is not Steve. Get over it. Good, bad, or indifferent, it is the case that Tim runs Apple now. The world bitched and moaned about certain aspects of Steve’s personality, nearly continuously, and, now that there’s another person holding the reins, those same people complain that this new guy is not the same as the former.
There’s a very obvious reason or this that you are either ignorant of or conveniently ignoring, after Scully took over and Jobs got booted out Apple went into a downward spiral through several CEOs and was near bankruptcy and had completely lost its way.
Tim cook may not be driving Apple straight of a cliff but the nervousness of those who love Apple is perfectly justified.
Another thing to consider without Apple almost NO meaningful and certainly NO user facing advances happen in technology. We get Sony tv remotes with 127 cryptic buttons and car radios you need to read through a poorly written manual to figure out. We get user interfaces written by cruel sadists who’s last point of interest is malign their product easy or fun to use.
Unless you want to advocate moving back into caves and eating moss and hunting our own food, the world desperately needs Apple. We don’t need Samsung or HTC or google or amazon or IBM or dell or HP, or dozens of other companies that really contribute little to the world and would hardly be missed but the loss of Apple would be a crushing blow to the future of technology and humans interacting with it.
Absolutely agree with this post. Without Steve jobs and Apple we would not be at this state in computing using GUI and the mouse, as just two examples. The Graphic User Interface and the mouse were sitting in PARC at Xerox Headquarters for years when Steve Jobs saw them demonstrated for 5 minutes. From that 5 minute demo the true personalization of the Personal Computer happened. Without Apple the computer world would be at least 15 years behind where it is now
> Unless you want to advocate moving back into caves and eating moss and hunting our own food, the world desperately needs Apple.
Really?
It is amazing how many people are willing to overlook how Steve’s personality also resulted in a lot of bad decisions and missed opportunities over the years. We are lucky that there were some other strong willed people inside Apple in recent years to counter Jobs, one of them being Tim Cook.
Some truth to that.
After all, his “I’ll do it my way” attitude is essentiall what killed him, by refusing surgery for pancreatic cancer until he’d tried everything else…and apparently let it spread to his liver.
Sometimes a person’s strengths can also be weaknesses.
The Manipulator: Apple drops ball on flexibility and arrogance, stock expected to plunge.
Steve’s gone. Tim is the man. Things change. Get over it.
Here come the analysts in 3, 2, 1… “‘Tim Cook is a pushover’ says France-telecom CEO; Apple doomed”
“Tim, on the other hand, is a softie…”
I seem to recall a news item a few years back that would argue au contraire. In a meeting Cook was grilling subordinates over supply chain shortcomings. A few minutes after he criticized an employee he said with a cold stare, “Why are you still in this room?” Said employee left the meeting and immediately booked a flight to China.
That does not sound like a softie to me.
I read the title and thought “Isn’t that a bit like the pot calling the kettle black?” Who’s arrogant?
“Softie”. Wow. Like you know Tim Cook. FFS.
Beneath contempt.
i don’t know if Tim’s personality style behind closed doors is bold, but it’s painfully clear that Apple’s innovation and execution since Steve’s death have been far too timid and error-prone, as BLN stated.
… and yes, some of us criticized Steve for his bone-headed moves too. But we also understand that Steve got the company off the ground twice by out-innovating the competition. Under Cook, innovation has taken a back seat to “supply chain genius”.
A company with the resources that Apple has today should be in position to accelerate its growth, and instead Apple’s product introductions have been of poor quality, of small vision, or merely built on what Steve laid down first. We expect better. And if Mr. “Supply Chain Genius” was so good, then we wouldn’t have to endure repeated fumbled product introductions, sloppy software releases, hardware supply constraints, and stale product offerings. That’s the crap MS is known for. Once again, we expect better of Apple.
Yeah and when demand grows far beyond your expectations, let alone someone is savvy as Tim Cook, you go ahead and find new sources for incredibly complex and incredibly personal private hidden items and make them happen on an immediate basis, then we will listen to you. otherwise please step down and realize that Tim Cook has truly revolutionized the supply chain for the biggest tech company in the world
In other words, step down now Because you will never come close, fool