“Tim Cook, Jobs’ successor as CEO, has promised so many times — and, recently, so assertively — that Apple has a new product category hiding up its sleeve. If Cook manages to offer little next week but the tweaks that he has so far passed off as progress, he may officially start being seen as a blowhard, the Chief Executive Overpromiser, the King of Incremental Thinking,” Marek Fuchs writes for MarketWatch. “Ironically, Cook has no one to blame but himself. For all his reputation as an operator, a man with competence but all the excitement of a coin collector, Cook has run surprisingly heavy with promises. When a CEO promises fortune and glory, he eventually has to deliver. A year ago at the D: All Things Digital conference, Cook pounded the table that Apple has ‘several more game changers in us.'”
“You got that? Several. Plural,” Fuchs writes. “Then February came and, though no game changers had come to market, Cook was still tossing around promises, telling the Wall Street Journal: ‘There will be new categories. We’re not ready to talk about it, but we’re working on some really great stuff.'”
“Apple and Cook’s success in China has given a bit more room for his prophesies of ‘several game changers.’ Without at least one, a reckoning for Cook is coming, though the exact timing could depend on the health and welfare of China, which helped Apple’s sales considerably in the latest quarter — and the stock, at least more than financial stunts like buybacks, dividend increases and major splits,” Fuchs writes. “In the end, Cook has been on the make, at least rhetorically, for a year now. If that rhetorical fails to turn into reality next week, Cook may be making himself incrementally expendable.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Marek is jumping the gun.
• iPhone was released 5 years, 7 months, and 19 days after iPod (2057 days).
• iPad was released 2 years, 9 months, and 5 days after iPhone (1009 days).
• The average amount of time between Apple’s last two revolutions: 4 years, 2 months, and 11 days (1533 days).
• Tim Cook has been Apple CEO for 2 years, 9 months, 5 days (1009 days).
• Tim Cook will have been Apple CEO for 4 years, 2 months, and 11 days (1533 days) on Wednesday, November 4, 2015.Those who underestimate Tim Cook’s Apple are in for a rude awakening.
Why is he writing this now when WWDC is happening on Monday?
It’s just a “setup” for anything Cook plans to announce.
First they say “show us the money”. Then after WWDC they will say, “…that all you got?”. Doesn’t matter what Cook announces. It could be a matter synthesizer or a teleportation device……doesn’t matter.
Let’s see… ummm… either Tim Cook was lying (and, hence, digging his own grave) or Marek is a very stupid and pompous prick.
Taking a wild guess, I’d say Cook is not so idiotic as to just lie about great products coming.
No wild guess that Marek is a very stupid and pompous prick?
True, but there’s always “Set Up” articles before every such Apple event anymore. However, the problem is that the public perception of Apple is that they’re nothing less than a Game Changer of industry … and that’s an extremely lofty goal to try to live up to. In some ways, Cook might have been better off two years ago in pointing out this fallacy and saying “No Promises”.
—
Oh, and speaking of promises and expecations, I was waiting for MDN to shift their goal posts and it looks like with this story they’ve now done so: because the “Innovation Clock” has now hit 2 years, 9 months, 5 days, MDN has shifted to a “…average amount of time…” metric – – in spite of how we always hear that the pace of innovation is increasing. Interesting!
—
-hh
Because he won’t be able to publish this story after Monday.
Of course he would… It’s unlikely that a new product will be announced at WWDC maybe a spec bumped iMac and that’s a BIG maybe but nothing of significance. I’m an Apple share holder and believe you me, we’ve (share holders) have been waiting for Tim to make good on his word ever since the last 2 conference calls… His words were “We are going to be releasing product(s), including new product categorie(s) across 2014”. He didn’t say at the end of 2014 or in the middle of 2014 but across 2014 misleading us to believe there would be products throughout the year. Well the year is half over now so even if they released a gauntlet of products over the next 6 months (which I doubt beyond the usual iPhone/iPad update) he still would not have been truthful in his wording of his sentiments which were very much on purpose to ease angst of investors. Purposely or not, his words were misleading; that simple.
gotta agree, Monday is the Last Chance Saloon for Cook’s “great products in the pipeline.” It’s either real or it’s bullshit.
…or it’s Memorex. – Ella Fitzgerald
nah, no one is afraid of homosexuals, so -phobic is the incorrect suffix. More like homoemesis.
Making up words now, botty? Google doesn’t think ‘homoemesis’ is a real word. Perhaps you would like to educate us.
I just did.
Derp. Yur reel smart durrr.
He is taking potshots at Cook hoping that he will be right so that he can claim to be prescient and gain followers.
I hate to disparage Mr Cook. But this is a distinct difference from when Steve Jobs was there. Steve didn’t promise anything. He didn’t say he had game changers. He just debuted a product and bam: game was changed. Tim has been saying this for awhile now without any really monumental things being delivered. Oh yes the existing products incremental changes are great but he needs a defining moment/product And just deliver it not keep making promises.
It won’t happen, you know why? Because Cook should be fired. He should take Ive with him. Both are rotting Apple to its core.
Actually Joe needs to be fired as an MDN commenter for repeating the same disingenuous drivel & rhetoric once too often. Get a life Clueless Joe from Mountain View Schmoes!
Except when Steve was around Apple wasn’t nearly as big as it is now and you didn’t have the entire world constantly badgering Apple about new products. Between the iPod and iPhone (6 years) you basically had 2 big things from Apple – iTunes Store and switch to Intel processors. But Steve wasn’t being badgered on a constant basis about lack of innovation. The press basically ate up whatever he served them.
Wrong. Steve always said the exact same thing Tim does. Go back and watch any interview where he’s asked about future products.
Well I think Steve delivered on a better basis to which u never had to question if Steve was going to deliver a game changer. Tim has said repeatedly “we got some great stuff coming down the pipeline” or something along those lines. I hope WWDC will produce some real great stuff not just incremental updates to software and increased specs for certain models of macs.
eh, the difference between the two is that Jobs was a visionary and Cook is a mere custodian. A good one, but a custodian nonetheless.
As usual, the calm voice of uncommon sense. All the more reason the custodian has lured star power from afar, one after another, to fuel the creative forge of the gods once again.
dunno, Dr Dre doesn’t strike me a creative forger of the gods…I just don’t get this deal at all.
In some remote abstract strategic landscape, forces may be aligning for the masterstroke that will win it all. It may be that Dre is the brute pawn that assists the bold knight in a brilliant pin of the queen, leading to a hopeless position for Black. But for all we know, White bungled. We shall see…
Did Steve Jobs have to live with people constantly saying he wasn’t as good as Steve Jobs?
Damn! That’s a bit strong. I might want to give Tim and Apple a few more months before I throw them under the bus if I’m this writer. Just sayin.
Marek Fuchs was obviously on a tight deadline to get this one published before next Monday…
Marek Fuchs up a lot a work and it doesn’t go unnoticed. This is just another example.
Piggy has to get his last squeal in before the “journalist” slaughter that will take place next week. Of course they’ll fall all over themselves claiming how they knew all along….
The game changers are lobbying the Supreme Court to promote, endorse and subsidize homosexual marriage which has no way to morally produce children as well as demonizing stockholders who have legitimate doubts about global warming after 10 consecutive years of global cooling. Aside from those, not much else. Keep up the good work, Tim!
Wow, what an erudite statement! Did you leave your tinfoil hat in your Mom’s basement?
“morally produce children”
No but they can adopt all the unwanted children born out of wedlock by immoral, selfish, self-centered, irresponsible heterosexuals.
Cue the leftwing bile…..
Bile?!! Excuse me! I wouldn’t exactly classify myself as left wing. But what iMaki said was certainly bile.
Yup.
It’s always projection with right wingers.
Clueless times ten
Yup.
Apple has an iWatch up it’s sleeve. It ain’t Capt Obvious until after its announced.
matter synthesizer or a teleportation device……
No…. it will be a quantum tunneling consumer computer.
But really, their own custom chip thiat runs everything….
iPhone, iPad, AND the mac would be cool !
And let’s not forget about the DOUBLE SCREEN iMac/iPad that uses the bottom screen for something “other than just a keyboard.”
Could be used as an equalizer, control pad, color corrector, AND keyboard, plus many other things developers could come up with.
It would be a blockbuster breakthrough for remaining enterprise users if Tim Cook would simply fix reliability issues with Mavericks IMAP email. We have been hosed now for six months.
Damm…
Forgot about the 3D electron beam glassless system, which uses an electron beam projected to each eye (much like the way a crt does), to create an 8k image directly on to the eyeballs, so good- it’s not possible to tell the difference between the image, and reallity.
Btw the government actually has worked on just such a system.
What non-English speaking country are you from?
I like Apple when they’re quiet. Quiet, like they were when they were working on iTunes and iPhone. They’re at their best when they’re the quietest.
Watch and see. Steve struck a deal with Gates. Tim mainly wanted Iovine. Just watch…
Who the f*** is Marek Fuchs? Talk about a “blowhard”!
Desperation. That’s Cook’s move on Beats, saying Apple is interested in obtaining people and products rather than be creative enough to produce new products. I won’t call Cook a ‘blowhard’ because of his professed ‘sexuality,’ but…it appears that is what he appears to be.
Any new game changing product will be announced at a special Apple keynote. Marek Fuchs is counting on this, that there will likely be no new product announcements at WWDC.
Fuchs will then be able to write his follow up article that Cook is a blowhard.
All the doomsayers will then all be back, calling for Cook to be sacked and we will have to put up with the crap about lack of innovation until the actual products are released a couple of months later.
But Cook knows this, and nurses a simmering vendetta against these poison-pen lampreys that have dogged him unrelentingly, and will pull sizzling dynamite from the magician’s top hat. A rabbit would not pacify those fools.
Merck Fuchstick will eat his words
Badly Timed FUD FUD FUD.
Yawn. Oh, yawn Marek Fuchs who writes for MarketWatch. Just in time for WWDC when we know, obviously, that your FUD will be proven hollow.
Patience Grasshopper. These changes will come. Just concentrate on preparing yourselves.