“Steve Jobs’s office remains Steve Jobs’s office. After his death in 2011, Tim Cook, his friend and successor as Apple (AAPL) chief executive officer, decided to leave the sparsely decorated room on the fourth floor of 1 Infinite Loop untouched,” Brad Stone and Adam Satariano report for Businessweek. “It’s not a shrine or place of mourning, but just a space that Cook sensed no one could or should ever fill. ‘It felt right to leave it as it is,’ he says. ‘That’s Steve’s office.'”
“Almost everything else on Apple’s campus in Cupertino, Calif., is different. The executive wing once radiated nervous energy, with handlers scurrying to anticipate the whims of Apple’s temperamental co-founder. Now there’s tranquility in the hallways, a reflection of the new boss’s calm Southern demeanor,” Stone and Satariano report. “Downstairs, the cafeterias are packed—the workforce has almost doubled. A mile away, behind a ring of fences, construction crews are building the massive foundation for the circular ‘spaceship’ campus that will accommodate 12,000 workers when it’s completed in a few years.”
“Cook’s professional background is in managing supply chains, not changing the character of sprawling, complicated, ego-filled organizations. Yet three years later, veteran Apple executives repeatedly and emphatically say they want the new boss to get credit for pulling off one of the more improbable high wire acts in business history,” Stone and Satariano report. “Cook’s culture hasn’t suited everybody. To one former senior designer, accustomed to spitballing sessions with Jobs to go over details as minute as the look of screen icons, the company no longer has the same allure. He says he left because Apple grew too large and that products once created in small groups are now done in sprawling teams.”
“‘Excuse my September allergies,’ says Jony Ive, rubbing his nose as he settles into a black leather seat in Apple’s executive offices,” Stone and Satariano report. “With an Apple Watch wrapped around his hand brass-knuckle style, Ive reveals that the project was conceived in his lab three years ago, shortly after Jobs’s death and before ‘wearables’ became a buzzword in Silicon Valley. ‘It’s probably one of the most difficult projects I have ever worked on,’ he says… Ive owns Jobs’s 15-seat Gulfstream jet, which he bought from Jobs’s widow at a significant discount, according to a person with knowledge of the transaction. As Ive, who helped Jobs decorate the interior, joked to a friend, “At least I don’t have to redesign anything.””
Tons more in the full article – recommended – here.
I hate those typical “journalistic” revelations on how everything else besides Jobs’ office is startlingly different. Thankfully, everything else is also mostly the same.
Is it the same dumb-ass professor that teaches all “journalists” that they have to invent fake drama no matter if it has place in reality or not?
This approach is kind of tabloidish.
This could’ve been a great story If it didn’t have all those anonymous quotes from former employees. And that whole tidbit about Ive supposedly buying Steve’s Gulf Stream from his wife sounds like silly gossip that had no relevance to the story.