“Eddy Cue doesn’t look like a man in the midst of his toughest year in decades. Sporting an untucked apricot camp shirt and blue jeans over camouflage socks and a pair of blue leather racing shoes from Germany, Apple’s SVP of Internet software and services pulls up a chair at one of the marble-topped tables outside Caffé Macs,” Rick Tetzeli writes for Fast Company. “Nowhere is there any hint that ‘Apple is doomed,’ as suggested by Forbes and other outlets, or that it is engaged in a ‘user-hostile and stupid’ campaign against its customers (The Verge), led by CEO Tim Cook, a ‘boring old fart… a supply-chain supplicant’ (culture critic Bob Lefsetz).”
“Under Cook’s leadership, Apple has come to seem quite fallible to many people. Its recent products have seemed far less than perfect, at least compared to the collective memory of its astonishing iPod–iPhone–iPad run from 2001 to 2010,” Tetzeli writes. “There are the public embarrassments, like its 2012 introduction of Maps, or those 2014 videos of reviewers bending, and breaking, an iPhone 6 Plus. Apple Pay hasn’t become the standard for a cashless society, and the Apple Watch ‘is not the watch we expect from Apple,’ according to John Gruber… Apple Music has been saddled with too many features, as if it were something designed by, God forbid, Microsoft; the lens on the back of the iPhone 6 extrudes; the new Apple TV has an illogical interface and confusing remote control.”
“Steve Jobs had been the company’s editor, proud of saying no to features, products, business ideas, and new hires far more often than he said yes. Apple’s seemingly diffuse product line reinforces the argument that Cook is not as rigorous),” Tetzeli writes. “Apple executives are careful to avoid suggesting that the company is moving beyond its founder’s vision, but that’s exactly what’s happening in Cupertino.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: This too shall pass.
Under Cook’s “leadership”, the Apple Mac has declined to the point that virtually no model is a recommended buy now.
Nice job Tim. You must be very proud of yourself.
Sick of Tim Cook apologists.
Time will tell.
And a lot of us are sick of anonymous Tim Cook bashers full of gripes, but no concrete plans for improvement. Gripe all you want (preferably not on this forum), but don’t expect me to care.
Spent 20 years listening to the same self deluded claptrap from the likes of you and the chin draggers above. You are no brighter or even more entertaining than those who preceeded you and Steve Jobs presense simply offered a different target rather than the nature of the attacks.
Mud-slinging may make some of us feel better but it changes nothing, not when guys like Tim Cook are making Billions in profit for shareholders.
His Board of Directors aren’t going to fire him for “lack of innovation,” “being asleep at the wheel,” or “wasting time with social activism” that they themselves support. Money talks louder than these empty accusations.
Saying that Tim Cook is worthless is the same thing as saying that Steve Jobs exercised poor judgement in recommending him as his successor as CEO, and that the Apple BOD, in accepting Jobs’s recommendation, and in continuing to support Tim Cook ever since, are also losers.
That line of argument ignores the fact of Apple’s massive financial success and social influence. Their success and social prominence makes them winners, not losers, in every dictionary except the one used by whiners.
Tim Cook is no Steve Jobs. Yet each CEO has their own way of leading a company. Many may not like how Apple is doing business today, I admit to be part of this group, but as long as Apple is diversing and making money each quarter all is good with Apple leadership.
As long as a company posts a profit all is good with leadership? That’s pretty shortsighted for a company that used to be so innovative. You might be okay with that, but I’m certainly not. Apple doesn’t even make the thinnest laptop anymore.
Sick and tired of Tim Cook bashers. There are a few facts you boys are missing. One of the biggest facts is Tim Cook has given Apple 10 times the profits after Steve’s passing. Second is that Steve Jobs personally gave Tim Cook this job knowing what he could do. The Apple Watch is far from a failure owning 75% of the market. Taking away all the companies who thought being first was going to give them an advantage. NOT!!! Apple Music is already at 15 million subscribers and climbing. For a new business model I would say that’s pretty darn good. I would like to know who says no Mac models are recommended as a buy right now? PC’s aren’t exactly flying off the shelves and what exactly would give them an advantage? Putting fingerprints all over your screen? No thanks. You can use a trackpad to do the things they say in those dumb windows commercials just as easily and you won’t have to clean your screen after too. Sorry I am not buying the doom and gloom B.S.
“I would like to know who says no Mac models are recommended as a buy right now?”
Basically anyone who needs a decent GPU. Apple is selling the same computer from 4 years ago at the same price when it was introduced and using the same parts! If you are a rudimentary user and do Facebook, email, and graphic design work, Macs are fine.
If you want to do any heavy lifting and work in either 3D or video editing, your best bet is to either build a Hackintosh or *gasp* buy a PC. I’ve been using Macs for 20 years. Been waiting over a year for a new machine that’ll suit my needs. The fact is Apple doesn’t make it.
I’ve used Macs for 20+ years. This will be the first time my money is going to someone else. Part of me wishes Apple would just port OSX, sorry macOS, to Windows and be done with it.
Tim Cook has had PLENTY of time to prove himself. He’s so busy making Apple the company great he’s lost focus on making great products for Apple’s customers.
“One of the biggest facts is Tim Cook has given Apple 10 times the profits after Steve’s passing.” And, Apple was making many times the profits in the late 80s under Sculley compared to what it was under Steve Jobs in the early to mid 80s. In the late 80s and even into 1990 many were proclaiming that Sculley was the PERFECT CEO for *any* computer company. (IIRC MacWorld even had him on their cover as the “Shogun” of the computer world.) However, he *DID* lay the foundation for Apple’s dark days. Anyone with more than two active brain cells will wonder if the same thing is not happening now.
“The Apple Watch is far from a failure owning 75% of the market. Taking away all the companies who thought being first was going to give them an advantage.” But, in its niche, the Newton was a great seller too. We all know where that ended up.
“Apple Music is already at 15 million subscribers and climbing. For a new business model I would say that’s pretty darn good.” It’s not a new business model. And, Apple bought Beats in order to get a damn good leg up on the process. I’d say that number of users is not so great given both those underlying conditions.
“I would like to know who says no Mac models are recommended as a buy right now?” Anyone who wants a state of the art computer that is not anything close to a ‘netbook. I haven’t met a professional computer user in over two years who has wholeheartedly recommended buying any Mac. Yes, begrudgingly when it is absolutely necessary, but not out of pure choice. Professionals don’t buy a computer for today. They buy them for what they can do with them over the next 2-5 years. That means being able to keep them current. That means buying the state-of-the-art today and using it for a few years. — then buying the state-of-the-art again. No professional buys three plus year old technology unless they absolutely have to do so.
“PC’s aren’t exactly flying off the shelves…” And, if the last quarter holds, Macs will be fading faster than PCs. So you’re advocating a worse sales rate than PC’s?
I don’t believe in the doom and gloom about Apple. Apple (and Tim Cook) can still turn things around. They likely have another year or two before the dark days return. I expect Apple will turn things around before this time next year — in all its product categories, not just Macs. I’m truly hopeful. BUT, I’m not going to bet 100% of my life savings on it.
“I would like to know who says no Mac models are recommended as a buy right now?”
Ultimately, it comes down to one’s Use Case for if they’re a good or bad value for you.
Graphics is one example.
Another is peripheral support for the 2015 MacBook — its USB-C port (and the only port on the machine) still lacks some hardware interface adaptors … adaptors which should have been designed, fabbed and in-stock on the day that this machine originally shipped.
And yet another is local high performance storage without the hit of the “Thunderbolt Tax”.
An example of this last one is the current BTO price of approx. $700 for a +1TB SSD upgrade: that’s the same as the retail price on a 2TB SSD …
… which all makes it very brutally obvious that Apple is not offering competitive _value_ for their Macs.
So much for ‘delighting the customer’ … remember when?
Don’t need new Mac models every year. Model T was a game changer because it is the same, you can get parts for it and it is a well-known thing. New models every year is what Buick and Chevvie did, and went bust doing. We are smarter than that. A Honda Civic or a Toyota Corolla, and a Mac, they are iconic and don’t need updating every year.
Macs aren’t a game changer anymore and you can’t buy parts for a Mac because everything is soldered in. I fail to see how any of this is relevant. Maybe you buy a Mac to be hip and cool and have it look nice. Fine I suppose, but that’s not want the vast majority of people buy computers for.
Apple has two things going for it at the base of everything. First, it’s the only machine that a user RARELY if ever needs to install anti-virus software on. Second, a customer can feel comfortable that Apple isn’t selling the customer data or otherwise using the customer information to make money or market to them. Bottom line – SECURITY. As long as Cook maintains that, he can’t harm it enough to run away the base of its customers.
Bingo
Has any one noticed the correlation between increase in apple’s stock price and the number bashers posting…….?
Its getting old and predictable…