“It’s not easy describing Tim Cook’s role within Apple. Yes, he is CEO serving at the discretion of Apple’s board of directors,” Neil Cybart writes for Above Avalon. “However, there is much more than this going on behind the scenes and Cook’s formal title. Apple isn’t run like an average company and shouldn’t be judged as one. This impacts how we should grade Tim Cook’s performance as Apple CEO.”
“In trying to find an answer to this question, much more information is needed regarding Cook’s actual role within Apple,” Cybart writes. “Is he single-handily guiding Apple forward or has Cook come to depend on a smaller, inner circle within Apple’s SVP ranks? The answer plays a role in determining Cook’s contributions to Apple. Meanwhile, how much of Apple’s product strategy is actually determined by Cook rather than Jony Ive? This seems like critical information to have when judging Cook’s performance. ”
“The Apple Watch serves as a great example of how power within Apple is much more decentralized than many assume. Apple Watch is Jony’s baby,” Cybart writes. “One can repeat this exercise with every major Apple product and initiative. Should Tim Cook be judged by Apple’s success or failure in music and video streaming even though that is clearly Eddy Cue’s domain?”
“Tim Cook and his inner circle look after Apple’s day-to-day operations, while the Industrial Design group look after Apple’s product strategy. Meanwhile, Jony Ive as Chief Design Officer is left to do what he wants. If that role sounds familiar, it is the exact role formerly held by Steve Jobs,” Cybart writes. “With this new framework regarding Tim Cook’s inner circle in mind, let’s grade their performance.”
Much more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: You cannot effectively grade someone by passing the buck.
I would give him a D or D-.
Tim Cook, the new John Sculley. Sculley is a loser, Cook is incompetent. The latter is slightly a less harsh term than the former, but they basically mean the same thing.
A monkey could have ridden Steve Jobs’s coattails and Apple would be right where it is today. Cook has no idea what he’s doing. Apple’s products are lagging and disappearing. Product lines confused (still selling non-retina Macs and other products!). Dropped the ball on iPods by not revoltionizing them and making a wearable iPod… Watch is not necessary with crap battery life… Macs and OS X long in the tooth… MacBook Pros overpriced and underpowered… barely better than the original Retina MacBook Pro… with a deluded TouchBar… massive spending on R&D with nothing to show for it… confused hot mess that is Apple TV… trying to copy other companies and not that well (Apple pencil vs.t he much better Surface Pen)…
Definitely A*+…if only to annoy the clueless whinge’ing entitlement brats here who couldn’t even manage a broom cupboard let alone the biggest, most profitable tech company on the planet. Crybaby losers one and all.
Those are big words, Gotcha.
I suspect you would need to walk a mile in my shoes before you would have the knowledge and respect to understand. Then you wouldn’t ever even imagine to speak those words to my face.
Here are just a few of the professional level Apple products that they abandoned or left to rot, forcing us to scramble to replace them with a different company’s products:
– Aperture
– Airports
– Mac OS X Server
– Mac Server
– Mac Pro
– Apple Displays
If you think that Watches and Airbuds or iCloud is going to replace the above hardware and software, you are as clueless as Cook.
Apple gets good grades for doing a pretty good job overall. But as a leader, Cook is an absolute failure. You don’t even have to start into how bad Cook is at keeping core business lines healthy or delivering regular product updates. Look at how drastically Apple has slowed in other ways.
AAPL is no longer a growth stock and it pays relatively low dividends for a value stock. Plus Cook took on debt to appease Icahn and the sharks of wall st. Apple profits are flat. Financially, Cook isn’t delivering the goods. He’s fiddling around with fashionistas and outsourcing strategic financial planning to people who seem to think the iOS store will print my money forever. The businesses Apple has purchased or created under Cook are weak and limited and will never be the next great things. Rather than furthering the success of Jobs creations, Cook’s Apple can only do iOS. He is letting all othe Apple products die as the competition leaps ahead in technology after technology.
He killed the Mac, Apple Display and Airport. He gets an F
Lets hope its not killed totally but delayed… and lets hope the display situation will be reassessed.
Yes. We used to be able to use a Mac with a Apple display, Apple keyboard/mouse/trackpad with an Apple Time Machine, Apple AirPort, Superdrive, etc. Those days are gone.
We are heading towards a Mac with an LG display, a Linksys router, a Western Digital external drive for Time Machine, logitech keyboard/mouse, a Pioneer optical drive, etc. (Might as well be running a PC.)
I have a feeling my desktop collection of Apple products will vanish. Replaced by an Apple computer and phone and a bunch of assorted brand hardware. So sad…
And the apple battery and charger.
All apple branded accessories except over priced cables have been cut.
Apple displays were pretty much always made by someone else. Just rebranded. Same with mice and keyboards. The only difference is branding.
Actually, no. The panels (and before that the tubes) were all made by others. But, the displays themselves, including the supporting electronics and housing, were designed and made by Apple.
Tell that to SONY, Samsung, LG and others. I don’t believe Apple has ever manufactured a display. You’re absolutely right about design. But, heck, can you say “Trinitron?”
False….Jobs starting killing the Mac! Xserve, calling them a truck, etc.
Exactly. Jobs started this crap. It’s time for Cook to run his own show.
While I lament the loss of the Xserve, the death of the Xserve was not the start of the killing off of the Mac, and Jobs was in no way referring to servers when he was talking about “trucks”.
In fact, you can find a video out on the ‘net where Jobs describes what he thought, at that time, was a perfect computing environment where your entire setup was on a remote server and no matter what device you were using, or where you went, your entire setup was available to you. It was long before people were talking about “cloud servers” and “cloud computing”.
Apple has had a long love/hate relationship with servers. The Xserve was probably the apex, but Apple has designed, shipped, and then killed off several server variants, none of which were the beginning of the end for the Mac. Remember the Apple Network Server that Apple sold to be the center of a large Mac network? It neither helped nor hurt the sales of Macs.
Tim Cook has:
Destroyed our trust by hampering us with pricey dongles, starting with the unnecessary killing of the 30-pin connector and culminating in his ridiculous, locked down, non-upgradeable, useless Macbooks and so called Macbook Pros.
As an urban legend supply chain genius, this incompetent has systematically botched every single product launch in the last 6-years.
Cook has hired incompetent execs and fired or ran off competent ones for the past 6-years.
Cook has consistently released shoddy software and OS updates (INCLUDING THE MOST ANNOYING NAGWARE THAT HOUNDS YOU HOURLY), for the past 6-years.
Aside from releasing the most pointless products in history (Apple Watch and Airpods), Cook had failed to innovate, allowed the iPad and iPhone growth to stall, and has completely neglected or outright killed all the other Apple products that once thrived under Jobs.
In his frivolous and non-job-related pursuit of the futherance of gay rights and keeping his pasty, smug face in the spotlight (child molester grin and all), Cook has used his position of CEO as a soapbox to promote his social agenda and became a part-time, thoroughly incompetent CEO… almost the second he took over.
Cook has decimated AAPL, lost BILLIONS in shareholder value, and subsequently caused all serious investors to flee Apple stock.
For all these things Cook’s grade = F-
🙂
Tim Cook has:
Destroyed our trust by hampering us with pricey dongles, starting with the unnecessary killing of the 30-pin connector and culminating in his ridiculous, locked down, non-upgradeable, useless Macbooks and so called Macbook Pros.
As an urban legend supply chain genius, this incompetent has systematically botched every single product launch in the last 6-years.
Cook has hired incompetent execs and fired or ran off competent ones for the past 6-years.
Cook has consistently released shoddy software and OS updates (INCLUDING THE MOST ANNOYING NAGWARE THAT HOUNDS YOU HOURLY), for the past 6-years.
Aside from releasing the most pointless products in history (Apple Watch and Airpods), Cook had failed to innovate, allowed the iPad and iPhone growth to stall, and has completely neglected or outright killed all the other Apple products that once thrived under Jobs.
In his frivolous and non-job-related pursuit of the futherance of gay rights and keeping his pasty, smug face in the spotlight (child molester grin and all), Cook has used his position of CEO as a soapbox to promote his social agenda and became a part-time, thoroughly incompetent CEO… almost the second he took over.
Cook has decimated AAPL, lost BILLIONS in shareholder value, and subsequently caused all serious investors to flee Apple stock.
For all these things Cook’s grade = F-
🙂
A ‘C’ from me. ‘A’ on profits and margins. ‘D-‘ on product development. Mixed on promotions, stores, placement, services, cloud, etc.
Tim deserves good marks, Steve Jobs made the right decision.
I would give him a solid C. He is a master at product distribution but totally sucks as being the circus ringmaster at apple’s live events. I cringe when I watch any event with him using the same catch phrases over and over again. Give him as little time as he needs then get him off the stage. He is also not breaking any records in producing anything new or revolutionary. Apple since Jobs passed away has
1. Let the mac become the red headed step child,
2. Totally and continually disappoints with apple TV
3. Abandoned their high end professional users by neglecting any new product releases beyond the mac pro trashcan.
4. Currently is missing the opportunity that Amazon has pounced on with Alexa.
5. Left developers in the lurch with a piss poor App Store for both Mac and IOS. Try searching for any particular app and the results are insanely ass backwards.
6. Abandoned Pages and Numbers and has totally been left behind the likes of Google Doc and Sheets.
7. iCloud backup is insanely expensive and really not very good. I have had my photos personally purged from their system.
8. Apple Home feels like a pet project while I am sure other competitors are making huge strides in the home.
It is like Apple under Cook can’t chew gum and walk. They are so cash rich there is no excuse for not being able to handle all of these areas well. It is like by choice they choose to only focus on two things, a watch and iphone. “It Just Works” is a thing of the past. I feel like apple under Cook has been stifled and has completely lost its edge and magic. With Jobs it used to feel like we were getting a glimpse into Willie Wonka’s factory, with Cook we get to look into a boring empty company filled with empty promises, missed product updates and pure neglect for everything not an iPhone.
If Cook and the higher ups don’t see this, then the emperor truly has no clothes in Cupertino and it is time to start rearranging the deckchairs.
As CEO.. the buck stops with him… that is the position and thats what he gets paid for…
If Apple is suffering from lack of coherent vision… then its up to the CEO to find solutions and restructure the company in a manner that resolves the issues at hand. Not pass the buck to Ives.. or anyone else for that matter.
The job of a CEO is not to be everything and everybody …. but to strategize and structure things for best results.
Suffering from vision challenges … then double down on how to bring it back….
cant be done is not one of the options !
Grade wise i agree with BeosJim above. …
This is a counter-argument to the “Grading Tim Cook” article that this post links to. It essentially outlines many areas that Apple is failing at
View at Medium.com
I would give (and did give) Tim Cook a pass for the first three years, not two, as development timelines of any significant item can be three years. It really does often take that long for a major item (or major upgrade to an old item) to get it through design concept, final design, production design, initial test production, and finally full production ramp up. (Some of that can be done in parallel shortening the timeline, but it’s safe to assume three years.) Thus, since about September 2014 it’s been ALL Cook.
And, guess what? The more pronounced fall off in development of anything other than iPhone and Apple Watch has been since August 2014! So, looking at just that period, Tim Cook is failing at getting the vast majority of things done.
Dan’s analysis is excellent, a must- read for every manager at Apple.
It shows how much Cook hasn’t learned these last 5 years.
To be generous, I give him a D.
What Cook did as COO is follow the same playbook that his former employer, Compaq, did to cut costs. Outsource to the max to the lowest cost Asian suppliers you can find. That didn’t take any genious, every computer company was doing it. Apple relies on the same suppliers and assemblers as Dell or HP or Microsoft. Big deal. What brought in the flood of cash last decade was excellence in Apple product design and a huge focus on the user. The Mac was the hub of the digital lifestyle, and it was reliable and easy to understand.
Then the iOS store started raking in the easy money. At that point Cook decided that Apple’s iCloud would be the center of everything, and it all went to shit. iOS got emoji and whitewashing, the Mac advancements slowed to a crawl, iTunes effectively was put on ice because subscription services are all Cook wants to do. By dumbing down products and advertising the dream of 24×7 cloud service, he is attempting to push everyone into a monthly fee subscription plan. With zero effort, Cook and his executive team line their filthy pockets with app store skimmings while the engineering talent at Apple sits unused.
The problems are many, and they are growing. iCloud is unreliable, and Apple doesn’t even manage it. Apple is merely subletting Google and AWS servers. Apple Music/Beats like Apple TV is horrid and limiting and overpriced compared to the competition. The Apple Watch does not replace the phone and for most iPhone owners, doesn’t add any value to the user experience. iPads don’t sell because the consumer tablet market is saturated, and resales are hard because everyone discovered that the future of computing is not iOS. It’s too limiting for multi platform file sharing or simple tasks. Slapping the Pro label on a big iPad has done nothing to convince users that thin tablets will ever replace their Macs. So while cell phones are now essential, Watches and iPads are correctly seen as limited devices, just another digital gadget to charge and sync — when it works.
As Apple continues to take its eye off the ball on its hardware and software product lines — several of which are dying on the vine due to lack of timely updates — Apple has allowed Microsoft a chance to regroup and come charging back. Amazon and Netflix own media streaming distribution because Apple couldn’t make iTunes cost effective and user friendly. Google has chipped away at the iOS store to the point where there is no unique apps for iOS that you can’t also get on Android today. and the Mac app store looks like it hasn’t been improved in 4 years. Spotlight doesn’t work. Mail is clunky. Great apps like Aperture have been abandonded and iWork dumbed down for iCloud instead of enhanced for greater capability and intuitive Mac operation. Accessories and peripherals are stale, going 3+ years between updates even as the competition constantly improves. In the last 4 years, Apple’s biggest achievements in product design have been rose gold finish, compromised battery life, permanently soldered SSD and RAM, and dongle hell. Then, to top it all off, Apple just can’t meet any of its delivery dates consistently. Prices are high, store snobbery has reached new levels, but a comprehensive range of products to meet the needs of entry level kids and educational customers through the latest cutting edge power users has been whittled down to iCloud thin clients with a huge Apple premium price tag. Components are soldered and batteries are underwhelming. GUIs are hard to understand and basic functionality like Save As is hidden.
If there was ever a way to ruin a computer company, Cook is showing us how.
But lest you think I am unfair, let’s talk about 10 things Cook did accomplish:
1) he sucks up to the Trump administration as much as he sucked up to the corrupt democrats
2) he sucks up to Wall Street, allowing those vampires to service billions in Apple debt
3) he sucks up to China, giving the communist regime more business and now tech centers for easier IP theft too.
4) he sucks up to the fashion industry, offering impractical overpriced junk in stores with core Apple products fall behind
5) he imitates the competition’s moon shots, dumping billions into automobiles and other money pits without anything to show for it
6) he copies the big successes of the competition, offering inferior me-too products at inflated Apple prices or limited in functionality such that they are useless to the mass market. Maps. Healthkit. Beacon. iAd. Beats/Apple Music. Apple TV. iCloud. iWork. Watch. 12″ MacBook.
7) he ignores engineering reality while prioritizing the styling whims of Ive’s industrial design minions, effectively losing pro markets in less than 5 years.
8) he overpays for empty suit executives (Ahrendts) while doing an inadequate job attracting the fresh blood needed to invent the next great thing.
9) Blinded by the dream of a fully working umbrella of iCloud services that just work, he is seemingly ignorant of how horrible Siri is to use. How often Connectivity fails. How slow it is for file sharing to appear across devices. How incompatible iCloud stuff is with the rest of the world’s software. What a shoddy connection Bluetooth is.
10) Finally, he has ruined the innovative culture at Apple, allowing the beancounters and fashionistas to take over while ignoring a coherent product strategy that considers the user first. emoji are now trotted out as major product enhancements while the Mac Pro sits unimproved for over 3 years now, a self-fulfilling prophecy of low sales killed by lack of leadership.
Absolutely amazing, spot on take. Sad but 100% true.
Dude I’m so felling that rant
You have it down pretty much spot on 😉
Bravo, Mike!
I doubt I could have said it better myself no matter how hard I worked at it.
Very good, and that’s only a partial list.
C-
Product strategy is falling apart, new releases are slow, underwhelming, and disjointed. Success in short term financial management is easy thanks to iOS app store proceeds and the trip-ups from competitors.
Fact is, anyone else who showed up to work everyday could have gotten a C if he/she/it simply directed his teams to update existing products to be as good as the competition and stick to a timetable no less than once every 2 years between refreshes.
Truly revolutionary. That’s the only way to describe Tim Cook. The Apple Watch series 2 is the most advanced Apple Watch ever made. Let’s not forget project Titan. It is the most revolutionary car that Apple has ever designed. And lastly, Car Karaoke and Vital Signs are the most groundbreaking original TV shows never to be released to the public. Golden Beats. I could go on but the list is astonishing, revolutionary.
I give him an F U.
Tim Cook’s job is not to be Steve Jobs…no one can do that and Steve recognized that. There will never be another one quite like Steve Jobs, and certainly no one as attuned to Apple, as he built the company.
Tim’s job is to make Apple succeed without a Steve Jobs, without its visionary founder to always lean upon. Tim’s job is to make sure that Apple can survive and thrive with a team of mere mortals…ordinary people working together, albeit many with great talent and skills.
What worked for Apple under Steve does not necessarily work for Apple without him. Tim Cook so far has led to the company to heights unseen under Steve Jobs. Apple is doing just fine, and the critics have only their own speculations and flawed assumptions.
Wade, yes, Tim is not Steve — Never Will Be.
However, your statement, “Tim Cook so far has led to the company to heights unseen under Steve Jobs.”, is just wrong.
The three years after becoming CEO were still vastly based upon Steve and STEVE’s TEAM. It was not based upon Tim and Tim’s team. The last two years are Tim’s.
Name products that have been significantly updated or introduced since September 2014? (Anything up to– and including — September 2014 was at least partly due to Jobs and things he set in motion before he died.) I’ll give you the Apple Watch and the 5K iMac. Nothing else counts. Everything else has been evolutionary at best or falling behind the rest of the world as a norm and having stalwarts killed off at worst.
Even in the financial markets (which I would argue should NEVER be a basis for defining the vibrancy of a company) the peak in the first half of 2015 was an anomaly that may never be repeated given Apple’s current course of action. (To cover this more fully, if there is a Tax Holliday that allows Apple to bring huge sums into the U.S. with very little tax burden, I expect it to temporarily reach those peaks again before falling back to the current range.)
Wade, when are you going to wake up?
I thought we put this stupid comparison to bed. Because you are slow, let’s try again. No one expects Clueless Cook to be Steve Jobs. No one expects another Steve Jobs to magically appear and command Apple.
You keep posting the same false argument day after day. It’s TOTALLY false and has ZERO to do with Clueless Cook and present day Apple. Except as a deflection strategy, like pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
Pay close attention Apple Apologist GRANDE. Present day Apple is NOT fine. @Mike summed it up perfectly and I suggest you pull your big boy pants on and READ IT. 😡
Not just F but also jail time for wasting Apple’s precious resources in paying dividends and stock buys. Not buying when time was ripe to get Tesla, Netflix, and HBO. I want him to him to rot jail until his last day.
What a ridiculous fantasy, Apple buying Tesla, Netflix and HBO. What makes you think they would have wanted to have been bought? What makes you think they would have been a good fit for Apple?
Sheer lunacy to think they could have bought those 3 companies.
Not just F but also jail time for wasting Apple’s precious resources in paying dividends and stock buys. Not buying when time was ripe to get Tesla, Netflix, and HBO. I want him to rot in jail until his last day.
F for. Well most of you have some imagination.
A-
Well that was unpredictable. I have never seen breeze give Apple anything other than perfect grades for everything. What’s with the minus?
Don’t bet against the fruit.
He is either an absolute idiot or masterful genius. Take your pick. Or just look at the cash situation. As a business, purely from that standpoint, I’d have to say the latter.
The problem with declaring geniuses is that the situation is not static. Cook inherited so many resources, it is impossible to fail financially in the short term.
However, long term, Cook’s leadship will be correctly seen as weak and ineffective at keeping ahead of the competitors. As product after product goes stale on his watch, while the new products he offers are niche appeal devices, Apple’s success is bound to dry up. He desperately needs to diversify the hardware portfolio. Instead Cook seems to prefer fashion and consumer media over stable professional level products.
Did making movies save Sony?
Let’s Review the Eco-System:
Mac Pro – F – where is a new one? going on 4 years!
Display – F – where are they?
Dongles – F – who wants that?
iTunes – F – each new version actually gets worse, unreal
EarPods – F – missed Holiday season
iMac – F – missed Holiday season
Apple TV – F – 4k? audio i/o for control 4?
Mac Mini – F – where?
Maps fiasco – F – beta test anyone?
iMac 2013 failure – F – another missed opportunity
Securing TV content – F – This is also on Eddie Cue
Apple Pay – F – where’s the marketing for this?
iPod – F – abandoned
Beats – F – biggest waste of money in the company’s history
iWatch – C – battery issues
iPhone – C – last update was lacking
Keynotes – F – embarrassing to watch
MacBook Pro – F – where was the inventory to meet holiday demands?
iPads – C – at least it gets some attention
Mail – F – sucks at searching
Spotlight – F – gets worse every update
Apple Music – F – just because it completely messes up iTunes
Dividend – F – where’s the bump?
Aquisitions – F – update your own product landscape for your customers before buying another company
Inventory – F – always WAY to long on delayed inventory for new products…
Marketing – F – how often do you see a Apple ad? Think 10 years ago and think today.. significant drop off.
ONE MORE THING… FIRE TIM COOK
Sign here:
https://www.change.org/p/apple-board-of-directors-remove-tim-cook-as-ceo-of-apple