“After what many consider Apple Inc.’s disappointing introduction of two new iPhones, the 5C and 5S, investors and consumers alike are wondering if innovation is truly stalled without the late co-founder Steve Jobs at the helm,” Therese Poletti writes for MarketWatch.
“Apple CEO Tim Cook has been second-guessed ever since he took the helm from Jobs, but those critics have become much louder as the two-year anniversary of Jobs’s death creeps near, on Oct. 5,” Poletti writes. “Jobs is believed to have left Apple with a pipeline of product plans and new ideas, but the longer we get from his passing, and the longer it takes for those products to come out, the more investors may question their existence. In addition, those products, when they are launched, will be traced entirely to Cook and the existing management team.”
Poletti writes, “And it leaves Cook in the unfortunate position of being permanently compared to the last boss, who may have simply exited the scene with exquisite timing — with the company at the top of its game. ‘It has slowed down,’ said Laurence Balter, chief market strategist at Oracle Investment Research, when asked about innovation at Apple.”
MacDailyNews Take: It has?
iPhone was released 5 years, 7 months, and 19 days after iPod.
iPad was released 2 years, 9 months, and 5 days after iPhone.
Tim Cook has been Apple CEO for 2 years and 24 days.
“Jobs may have died tragically die at the apex of his career, to be idolized by many after his death. The same can be said for movie stars and musicians who die in their youth or retire at the top of their careers, or like comedian Jerry Seinfeld, who ended his popular sitcom ‘Seinfeld’ while it was on top, leaving that show’s cast with the problem of spending their remaining careers trying to catch lightning in a bottle – again,” Poletti writes. “Tim Cook has his work cut out for him.
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We’ve been doing this for quite some time now. Every time Steve Jobs unveiled new products, the naysayers made themselves look like idiots, too.
We understand what we just saw last week. Innovation is safe and sound at Apple under CEO Tim Cook.
If anything Tim is creating his own identity just as Steve Jobs did. Apple will forever be know as the company Steve Jobs created. Same goes with Microsoft, we will all remember Bill Gates for its creation.
That should be “Bill Gates for his excretion”….yes?
There are those of you who continually praise Steve Jobs, as a visionary, and continually belittle Tim Cook.
If Steve Jobs was such a visionary why did he pick Tim Cook?
Maybe he was a visionary and you don’t know that yet.
Steve Jobs also picked Sculley. BAM!!!
FIRE Tim Cook!!!
And SJ learned a lot important lessons while he was away too. By the time he picked TC he was finally grown up.
So BAM yourself.
Oughtta have a doctor look at that nut…
Testicular ailments are no laughing matter.
Replacing a feisty, creative, charismatic politically moderate extrovert with a passive, number-crunching, boring, politically liberal introvert has got to have consequences! I cut Tim a lot of slack, but this is ridiculous! The plan really was to bring everyone into the limelight to create a replacement based on synergy! The sum of the parts are greater than the whole right? Well, not when your trying to replace Steve Jobs! The better strategy would have been to push that his spirit lives on in Apple and that it’s his vision that we still follow. Steve underestimated his own value, but we didn’t. He was the best of the best!
I too, think SJ was without equal, but using comparisions of him to deminish TC is stupid. No one who bashes SJ takes into account that SJ was in charge when the Cube was developed and during the false “antenna-gate”. SJ is spoken of in his “attention to detail” but things did slide by that the public didn’t like. TC’s critics don’t allow for the same that they did for SJ. Hypocrties.
And there is the development timeline. In retrospect, 8 years of development for three major products (more if you count the development of the iPod before its release) . . . this is not allowed for TC.
Do you actually expect TC to surpass SJ? if not, what is your beef, you anti-TC whiners?
“No one who bashes SJ takes into account that SJ was in charge”
Should read “No one who bashes “TC” takes into account that SJ was in charge
Steve Jobs advice to Tim Cook was to never ask himself “What would Steve do, but what is the right thing to do.” And Steve selected Tim himself, even after giving him a trial run while under going a liver transplant.
Tim is the best choice Steve could see. Why don’t you complainers just accept that Steve was smarter than you, that you don’t know as much as you think you do and STFU.
Your sentiments are understood, but it’s exactly this kind of oversimplified thinking that will truly get Apple in trouble.
In other words, be careful what you wish for. (See post below.)
I just finished listening to the Sept. 14th Podcast of The Tech Night Owl, and Gene’s interview with Daniel Dilger about all these new releases, etc. and it really gets in depth with how insane these analysts are. Dilger presents a lot of good facts that are either ignored or distorted by the media. It’s a great Podcast and he is interviewed first, I recommend it because it gives you a far better view on the reality of the current situation (though they do have a typo calling it Sept. 14th 2014).
http://www.technightowl.com/radio/show-archives/
After what EVERYONE considers TOTALLY INCOMPETENT reporting of the color of two new iPhones, the 5C and 5S, TOTALLY MISSING the fact that Apple introduced a brand new 64 bit chip processor jouranalyst and analysts have gone like kneeling whores on the street to complain and whine and project as much as they can to driving the stock price down with their negative reporting leaving the world to wonder where exactly these new chips where made.
They will have to suck and swallow even harder than before to cover the LAUGHTER, ridicule and total disregard they have brought to this once honorable profession.
HA HA HA, not only did they missed the 64 bit chip processor know that they know, they still can’t figure out where it has been manufactured.
Proof on how MORONICALLY STUPID those analysts and jouranalists are.
Tim Cook isn’t competing against Steve Job’s ghost. It’s simply that ill-informed commentators are comparing Cook to Jobs without understanding what Cook has achieved and will continue to achieve.
Commentators reckon that iPhone 5S’s introduction has been disappointing, but that’s because they haven’t understood what the iPhone 5S actually is and what it’s implications are for the future of the iPhone.
Tim Cook will always be compared to Steve Jobs. Everything Cook has done so far was likely dictated by Jobs before his death. Give Tim Cook the same number of years as CEO as Jobs and whatever similarities or differences exist will be quite real.
Jobs came out with something new on average, every 3 years
Cook has rebuilt the missing pieces in 2 years
My take:
They have found the profile of the iPhone 5 and iPhone 5s as iconic
They will change the 5c profile each year since it just version 1
I like the gold! If I was due for an upgrade, that would be my choice. Tired of B&W, and the gold is a tasteful gold.
And that’s a lower case “s” my friend.
> And that’s a lower case “s” my friend.
After the capitalized 3G, 3GS, and 4S, it will be quite some time, if ever, before people switch to 5c and 5s.
I said waaaaaay back when that Apple should not use 5S as it could be read as fifty-five or ess-ess. They half-listened, and introduced a new problem instead. People will still write it as 5S due to historical precedent, causing the very confusion they were hoping to avoid, *and* when written correctly it’ll sometimes be mistaken as more than one iPhone 5.
Losing the will to live worrying about those particular problems, I mean do I worry more about whether I have one or two iPhones in my hand or should I grow a Charlie Chaplin moustache. Oh the pain of thinking.
I agree an “s” isn’t the greatest choice logically. I wondered if the original idea was a tribute “4=for” a dying Steve, and now has carried on. Letters are tough to choose though. An “H, B, L, M, F” and some other letters just don’t sound progressive/cool. Naming is tough, just ask car companies.
I hate gold I find it tacky and blingy but the colour of the new iPhone has nothing whatsoever to do with that colour, Champagne is a beautiful subtle shade and only idiots could not tell the difference, idiot enough to become analysts indeed. SJ would have nothing to concern him especially considering some of the lurid stuff produced under his stewardship.
Sure seems like a lot of posters (posers, perhaps) on this site don’t remember the “meh-bordering-on-derision” displays by critics and analysts when Steve introduced the iPad. Everything from jokes about the name to remarks about how innovation had died because it was “nothing but a big iPhone.” It didn’t really matter who replaced Steve, they would be in for exactly the same S**T that people are giving Tim right now. Steve WAS amazing and great….but he DID make mis-steps and brought out some less-than-well-received (and on occasion, less-than-well-thought-out) products….like, shall we say, the Cube and the 10th Anniversary Mac? Great ideas, not great execution. Y’all need to chill out some.
Umm, the 10th Anniversay Mac was built under Sculley’s watch.
In reality, Tim Cook is now competing with himself, stacking one mistep upon another!
He’s supported by Apple apologists, but it’s up to the Apple board to finally put an end to the bleeding. Tim Cook has demonstrated during his tenure that he is clueless when it comes to leading Apple.
I just hope that the Apple community and the Apple’s board takes much needed action… before this course of destruction is irreversible!
Uh huh, right. ’cause Apple’s really in such incredibly dire straights. Okay, sure.
We can all see what you’re saying – not.
Saying Tim has a tough job following Steve is no excuse to ignore the the in-your-face reality of one simple fact: Tim Cook has done a miserable job leading Apple. There is nothing at all he can point to other than tweaks and incremental updates that would have happened no matter who moved into Steve’s chair. There has been nothing innovative, nothing WOW, nothing to excite consumers or shareholders. Mindless pastels, skinny fonts, and silly icons don’t equal innovation. Sales of the phone are strong because the phone is great – something Tim had basically nothing to do with. But, there are all those “great products in the pipeline” right? Yeah, right.
Steve Jobs who created Apple was fired! Was that a mistake? There would be no Apple at all today if not for SJ. Steve picked TC because he had the skills and knowledge. SJ was very adamant about 1 thing. TC would be his successor. He recommended TC who had basically been doing the job since SJ got ill. SJ knew that TC would take the play book and run. He also knew that Sir JI was a creative genious that made ideas come to life in a special way. Apple has proved from well before the death of SJ that they are in capable hands with TC. Anyone who has followed the return of SJ realizes that his return is Apple 2.0. Follow from the colored all in one iMacs through iPod through iPhone and finally iPad and you will begin to realize that Apple has been following a great recipe for the entire first decade of the 21st century. There have been many other things along the way for example iTunes, Apple speaker that SJ thought sounded as good as his high end system. It wasn’t until TC showed up that they Apple began to hit the unbelievable sales figures. So, say what you want about TC. I really hope that he STAYS until he is ready to leave on his own terms. I like what he is doing a lot. Apple is the fine wine of tech. NO PRODUCT BEFORE IT’S TIME.
Cook is not chasing Jobs’ ghost. Cook didn’t abandon a baby in a hospital and then lie like the dog that he was that it was not his. Its his legacy to me … a lying ass, child abandoning, infantile dog. He did do us the favor of basically killing himself though by his stupid fucking diet habits that he tried to force on people around him. Good riddance, the selfish assscum.
Tim Cook is woth Steve Ballmer’s weight in gold to Apple. He’s a genius of a very different sort. Patience and vision are so utterly lacking in the people who are writing this drivel. Or, is it possible that they know that by writing this crap MDN and others of their ilk will pick up the story and spread it far and wide and, voila, eyeballs. Money from advertisers. It doesn’t deserve a ‘Click here for the story’. It doesn’t deserve anyone’s consideration. It’s just the same as the tired comments by BLN, iMaki, Jersey_Trader, to name but a few. Don’t worry, TC will be just fine.
It’s totally, completely unfair, but Cook will be compared unfavorably to Jobs until the day Apple releases yet another game-changing product on the order of the iPod, iPhone, and iPad.
It sucks. No company should be held to that standard. What Apple did in the first decade of the 21st century should be held as an extraordinary achievement, not something that Apple should realistically be expected to continue indefinitely.
But that’s just the way people are. Do something spectacular for them, and they love you. Stop doing the spectacular thing, and now you’re an utter failure.
——RM
Nothing that MarketWatch prints will stop me from ordering a new iPhone 5s on Friday.
Tim Cook is a great caretaker CEO.
Why would a testicle have taste?
MDN’s takes are spot-on. One incessant confusion is between operating a successful company and that same company’s share prices, they are most often not one and the same.
I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating as often as it takes:
Apple is not HP, or Dell, or MS, or Yahoo, or Google, or etc. Apple is a very rare breed that harkens back to a time when companies invented and manufactured their own stuff. The person at the top isn’t/wasn’t somebody you simply replaced when things didn’t seem to be going the way the naysayers said they should be. This is Apple in a nutshell, and it’s even been played out at Apple itself in the middle 90s. Installing high powered CEOs who had no vision, no sense for Apple, no path for Apple, did Apple not a whit of good and in fact nearly took it down.
There is no headline CEO alive today who has what it takes to run Apple even half as well as TC, and I believe that the naysayers realize this. Their intent has always been to see Apple fail, (to the degree that they have, for the last two plus decades, been desperately trying to tell us that Apple’s on its last leg), and they realize what the goal is – to get Apple onto the endless and most often fruitless merry-go-round of revolving CEOs. TC is not perfect and he’s certainly no SJ, but then again, neither is anyone else, and SJ knew precisely what he was doing when he installed TC.
But like every decision SJ made, it gets continually bashed, baked and soaked with a lot of ultra-spin, skewing and yes, naysaying.
I’m downvoting every one of your stupid comments.
Tim Cook forever competing with Steve Jobs’ ghost
Only in the minds of the unimaginative.
RIP Steve.
What the heck is wrong with ppl, press and anal-lysts. This was a MAJOR announcement by Apple with allot if ground breaking innovation. I thought this was very big. What the heck do ppl want? For Apple to build a Death Star to be impressed?