“The philosophy of Apple’s late founder Steve Jobs will run through the company 100 years from now, Chief Executive Tim Cook said on Wednesday,” Arjun Kharpal reports for CNBC. “”
“Addressing students at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, Cook said that Jobs was the person who had influenced him the most ‘by far,'” Kharpal reports. “‘Steve’s DNA will always be the core of Apple. Steve is deeply embedded in the company. We celebrate him and we celebrate his philosophy. His philosophy … will be at Apple 100 years from now …The philosophy is sort of passed down with every generation … so yes, he’s very much at Apple,’ Cook said.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Let’s hope so. Apple did live (barely) through Sculley, Spindler, and Amelio, you know.
Insanely great products empowering people.
One could add these days “globally” to give some perspective of Apple’s importance in forging a way forward for humanity.
the most important legacy of steve jobs was his determination and courage to open retail centers for the primary purpose of genius assistance to customers. This at the time when computer stores were failing and all of apple management was seriously opposed to the idea. He put customers ahead of profit. This is a major blind spot for cook et al, resting on laurels while ignoring and losing best talent to turnover and frustration (apple retail would be unionized under different circumstances),
Jobs’ philosophy died at Apple several years back.
Jobs: make great products and services that will transform peoples’ lives for the better
Cook & company: make a great company called Apple with a high stock evaluation (products are not a lot more than a necessary evil to get there)
Jobs: deal with financial institutions as minimally as possible, financial institutions are a necessary evil that must be minimized
Cook & company: borrow, borrow, borrow. Pay dividends and do buy backs. Suck up to Wall Street and the major financial institutions on a regular basis
Jobs: Announce only major shift (game changing) products in advance of being able to ship them in quantity (e.g., the original iPhone)
Cook & company: Announce then worry about shipping enough product someday down the road for each and every product
Jobs: Bling was the least of his concerns.
Cook & company: Bling is the be all, end all. Flash is as important as substance.
And on and on and on
I find that there is a strong difference between Jobs’ philosophy, which is still alive and well and what actually precipitates from that, the so called on and on.
I like what you said about Jobs: make great products and services that will transform peoples’ lives for the better. Along the way though some of those products just did not cut it (commercially, ergonomically and so on), like the puck mouse or the Lisa but that does not change the vision, that people can be empowered by the tools they use.
It might look a bit different today, especially with the economy of scale but the changes you noted are part of Jobs parting words to Mr. Cook, the idea that Tim is going to decide for himself how to run the company, not trying to figure out or second guess what Steve Jobs was going to do.
That’s always the issue with vision and product, it’s like matter and energy. The two are related but they are often different.
Insanely great products, one was the iPhone but it took a lot of sweat blood and tears. The apple watch, people aren’t really sure about it, just like they weren’t ready for the first Macs or the first computers.
It takes a visionary to see that someday nearly everyone will be using a computer. It takes a visionary to see that someday nearly everyone will be wearing a computer.
And from there, well the vision of Steve Jobs, the vision of a human being and there are lots of human beings.
Heck I’m still waiting to see a OUI (Object User Interface) instead of a flat desktop, a hyped piece of paper.
Visions can take a long time to precipitate into reality, sometimes longer than a life time.
I’ve been involved with a lot of corporate and industry-wide international conferences covering a wide range of sectors and a very common sentiment is “We need to be more like Apple”. I’ve heard it said by CEOs of immense corporations for anything from automotive, banking, retail and telecoms. I don’t recall any of them saying that they wanted to be more like any other company at all, with the exception of rising companies wanting to become the largest company in their particular sector.
The bizarre thing is that each time I’ve heard it said, that person has demonstrated that they don’t understand how Apple operates and their particular company could never work like Apple does. The ethos of Apple is something that is widely admired, even if it’s not widely understood.
…just not executed or implemented regularly.
The ethos and greatness of died when Steve Jobs did.
Jobs philosophy maybe but not Jobs vision & leadership ‘n stuff.
I think Jobs would NOT be happy with all of the political bullcrap that Cook has gotten Apple involved in. He (Jobs) kept Apple out of that area.
Actually, Jobs didn’t stay out of politics or keep Apple out of politics.
What Jobs did was keep Apple (and for the most part himself) out of *publicly* pushing any political stance. Just do some digging. There are many cases in the public record where Apple under Jobs did, or did not do, something because of the political climate in a given situation.
Pipeline Timmy,
Hey Tim and Co., what’s the point of having “the best product pipeline in 25 years” if it takes you 25 years to fill it? — MacDailyNews, May 5, 2015
Real artists ship. – Steve Jobs
Time to retire “DNA” from corporate-speak.
and “emojis.”
yes, I concur…along with “double-down.”
That’s a nice sentiment Tim, but hidebound corporate conservatism is no better than hidebound social conservatism. As the world changes, Apple needs to be prepared.
Does it matter, when the next one hundred years, we would be all six feet under.
It will be a welcome return. Wish I could be there to see it.
Steve Jobs’ Philosophy will hang on a wall at the Spaceship ignored by those who are clueless and obsessed with other things- like how fucking thin an iMac or iPhone can be.
That was my first thought too, then I read,
“Steve’s DNA will always be the core of Apple. Steve is deeply embedded in the company”.
Which then led me to think … OMG! They blended him into the concrete!
Frackin’ laughable statement!
Pipeline Tim will be in the ground well before, then!
The Jobs philosophy has been being slowly eroding over this past 5 years since his death!
If Apple stays this course, in 20 years, Apple will cease being the Apple we all knew before Mr. Jobs death and will become quite a different company, if it survives and doesn’t get bought by some other entity.
Apple in 100 years will NO LONGER be the Apple Steve Jobs founded.
This can go either way. Could be a good, great thing in the future, biut also could be bad and only a shodow of itself in 100 years!
No way to really know.
Both Steves, BTW
Ok pipeline Tim, can you then just step aside and let someone with vision, passion and the ability to lead a huge staff to accomplish more than “talking”. I would like to see less “talking” and more “doing”, and I just don’t think that is in your capacity as a leader.