“Apple, under its new boss Tim Cook, overtook Exxon Mobil this week to become the most valuable company in the world following the publication of an impressive set of quarterly results,” The Irish Independent reports. “When Apple’s charismatic founder Steve Jobs died in October there were many who wondered if the iconic electronics and consumer products company would be able to survive without its presiding genius.”
“Apple’s first-quarter results published this week provided the first indication of how the company was performing in the post-Jobs era,” The Irish Independent reports. “Wall Street loved the better-than-expected numbers and pushed the Apple share price up by 7pc to $448, which valued the entire company at $418bn. It has now overtaken oil and gas giant Exxon Mobile to become America’s and the world’s most valuable company.”
“When [Steve Jobs] regained control of Apple in 1997 the company’s supply chain was a complete shambles, with two months of inventory piling up in warehouses,” The Irish Independent reports. “In his first year in charge, Mr Jobs managed to cut inventory to one month. Then, when Mr Cook joined Apple in March 1998 the process intensified. By September 1998, Mr Cook had cut Apple’s inventory to just six days and to just two days by September 1999. It was a bloody, brutal process. In order to reduce Apple’s inventory, Mr Cook slashed the number of Apple’s key suppliers from over 100 to just 24 and closed 10 of the company’s 19 warehouses. Apple also outsourced most of its manufacturing, mainly to China, around this time.”
“Despite having been a long-time protege of Mr Jobs, the two men are very different. In contrast to Mr Jobs’s often abrasive manner, Mr Cook is famously soft spoken. He prefers calm reason to the often abusive tirades that were a prominent feature of the Jobs management style,” The Irish Independent reports. “That doesn’t mean he is a pushover. Far from it. In fact, he is a workaholic who usually rises at 4.30am. He uses these early starts to work out at the gym — he has been a director of sportswear manufacturer Nike since 2005 — and bombard his colleagues with emails. Mr Cook is also notorious for his Sunday night conference calls during which he maps out Apple’s plans for the week ahead.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: How long ago could Jobs have accurately been described as “often abrasive” and prone to “often abusive tirades?” Five years? A decade? Even longer?
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Brawndo Drinker” for the heads up.]
Setting expectations starts at the top. Apple will continue to do very well under Mr Cook.
Cook is a master of FLAN technology, from the CPU’s and LEMN circuits that run computers, to the servers and COCO networks that store data.
As long as AAPL continues to develop along BUN, I agree it will do very well under Cook!
Mmmm… flan is yummy.
You’re slipping squigs, the anagram CPU has no nutritious meaning at all. But if you throw in some PB&J and BACN and EGG with that COCO FLAN on a LEMN BUN, I could possibly throw up!!
FLAN with COCO cover, mmmm… Yummy too.
I woke up feeling a little down with a thought that the Steve Jobs reiterates in his book, as well as this site that big companies eventually are turned over to sales bozo’s who lack the inspiration and development of new ideas. It is not that Cook is a sales guy, he is an operations genius. Who else could do what he has done in terms of managing the logistics for the massive roll out of apple products.
I fear that there will be an unfillable void with Steve gone. The ability for someone with the ultimate authority to say “That’s Shit” or to scrap a project and go back to the drawing board again and again. Steve was a visionary able to see what people didn’t even know they wanted and had the ability to take that and force it to be created.
Jobs had amassed an amazing team from Ivy, Cook, Rubi and many others but he was the lynch pin to make it all happen. Who will replace the ability to see ahead?
Also who will be able to wield the power to make the deals that Jobs was able to single handily broker (record companies, book publishers, movie industry) by taking a walk with them.
It is not that I don’t have faith in Cooks to keep Apple running and amazingly profitable, it is just that I don’t have faith that the 1 in 7 billion people is out there and if he or she is that they will find there way to Apple. My two cents.
I bet Scott Forstall will be the one. He has been reported to be much like him.
I understand your concerns; in some way I share them. There are some things that should keep in mind:
-Operations, where Cook shone before his promotion, is a large part of the advantage Apple enjoys over its competitors. Their supply chain, with Cook as its architect, is now by far the cleanest and most efficient in consumer electronics.
-Cook essentially ran the company during Jobs’s leaves of absence. He’s been much more than “the operations guy” for years.
-Many of the tough negotiations were led by other execs at apple, including Cook and Eddy Cue.
-Jony Ive is a design genius. Although Apple’s iconic design for the iMac, Mac Pro and iPhone were no doubt. collaborations, there’s no doubt they initiated in Ive’s shop.
No one will replace Steve, however, the culture that he instilled at Apple will survive for decades to come.
Early in January, I ordered on-line a 27″ iMac i7 on a Saturday. I live in Hawaii. The following Thursday it was delivered by FedEx via “regular shipping (no charge)”. Now that’s what I call service.
It’s Jonathan Ive, people. He has designed practically every major hit product. Forstall is also very smart. Eddy Cue may be a genius as well. There’s lots in the cupboard.
That’s nothing. Yesterday I ordered a Mac Book air on-line at 1.00PM (noon) and received it delivered to the door at 7.20PM. No charge for delivery. I live in Japan. 🙂
word is out that Jony has a large amount of power vs design. The two titans. Design and ops sound like a good match.
Don’t forget that the name “Apple” carries some clout these days. Yes, Steve could get into the heads of the record labels and help them see the vision when Apple was floundering. Now, the foundation has been laid and the industry who’s-who’s know the Apple means business AND brings increased profits to the table. Add guys like Cook, Forstall and Ives to the conversation and you’ve got a winner.
I am pretty sure that Steve probably left them an outline for at least the next decade of ideas. After that they are on their own.
Tim Cook has been essentially running the Apple Show for the past two years. Past quarter is just one more indicator of TC’s effective management style.
Just read the Steve Jobs biography and you’ll realize why the next decade will be owned by Apple.
Hurrah for Tim Cook and Apple! But if I am not mistaken, Apple had become most valuable company in world for brief periods, possibly measured in hours, when Steve Jobs was still alive. Corrections welcome.
you are correct.
My only fear is that Tim Cook (as Jobs himself said) is NOT a “product guy.”
He’s been doing an amazing job running Apple, but so far, Apple is still blossoming and running on the momentum of the products that were developed while Jobs was at the helm.
I’m willing to give him a chance, but I do wonder if Apple will continue to be able to deliver game changing NEW products, like the iPod, iPhone and iPad.
He is a products guy. Who do you think has been managing the supply chain of Apple’s products. As long as Jonathan Ives is left alone to make decisions about how to design stuff and no Rubinstein type tries to get in his way, then Apple will be O.K. Tim is not a bean counter. Those are the ones you have to watch.
There is no doubt that Tim Cook is an ideal CEO. He has the acumen to make Apple super efficient and to squeeze every possible penny of profit out of the revenues. The term “Product Guy” as applied to Steve Jobs defines not how products are built or designed (yes, Jony Ive is your man for that). It is, rather, the ability to know what products Apple should invest in, and nature of those products: capabilities and features. Steve had an uncanny ability catch the whiff of a trend at its earliest stages, to know Apple had to be there, and what it would take in an Apple product to make it major player. He also had the ability to force his will on doubters. We don’t know if Tim has this ability to shape the direction of Apple. Time will tell.
word is that Jobs left direction that Jony have a large amount of power over design. Jony has been by Steve’s side since he came back to Apple.
John Ive was a huge part of the product development {among others}
We miss you Steve. Your company is in good hands.
RIP Steve …. The Crew is taking care of Apple …. We LOVE YOU Steve – WE LOVE YOU
I know. I’m glad to have Tim Cook and the terrific rest but I miss Steve Jobs. It’s like a “Big Chill” moment remembering SJ will never be with us again. He was Apple’s not-so-secret sauce. SJ was like a co-conspirator of cool technology who delivered. It’s hard to TRUST anyone else or any other company to do these same kinds of things so well or have the clarity of vision SJ had. I’ve no doubt too the letter Bill Gates wrote Steve more or less said “You’re a better man than I am Gunga Din!”
Tim Cook exported Apple’s manufacturing jobs to China and improved Apple’s gross profit margin and bottom line. That is his legacy.
Thanks to Steve Jobs’ genius, Apple has new products in the pipeline and Tim Cook will manage them into production and whatever degree of success they may have.
Tim Cook can follow the “Steve Jobs receipt” like other companies have attempted to do, but he will never have the ability to recognize when a new paradigm can open up a whole new market like Steve Jobs.
Not to fault Tim Cook, but sheer genius is hard to mimic.
Personally I am very frightened about tomorrow for Apple, and really frightened for my AAPL stock. The net is full of folks planning to start a boycott of Apple products. The NY Times and now many other papers are suggesting such. My own San Jose Mercury has more than 3 pages this morning damning everything Apple. And SJ is next door to Cupertino. I could see a huge assault on Apple and those of us who use Apple products. I blame Google, but maybe Apple a bit for all the damned lawsuits. I think all the droid folks have a new strategy organized by Google. Apple may have the cash but Google has the influence with its control of the internet. I really hope I am wrong.
There, there. There is no organized crusade, only isolated, panic-driven attacks by malagendized Luddites, professional fearmongers, and buggy-whip manufacturers. The standout quality of Apple products, combined with the company’s first-rate retail stores, its fashion cachet, its war chest and legion of attorneys, and above all its appealing commercials and word-of-mouth advertising, guarantee that ordinary people will tune out the saboteurs, planted stories, and fud campaigns…we’ve actually witnessed this. Weaselly opponents are going mad trying to understand exactly how to stop the Apple juggernaut; nothing seems to be working for them, pathetic assassins of excellence in a culture of cozy and predictable mediocrity.
Jobs promised that the design guy will be given the leeway to deliver even after he’s gone. Now, I doubt if the design guy can also manage a company as large as Apple. So you have two distinctive guys who run the company: one who is tasked to continue giving us previously “unthinkable” products and one who is tasked to ensure that these products are manufactured as per design and on time and that consumers actually hold of them. Maybe, the missing link here is the one who can see beyond — and that’s Steve. But as what Cook has also been mentioning, Apple culture — whatever it is — is deeply embedded in their thinking and ways. So I could only assume that they’re not out-of touch even as they’re trying to “re-create” the future of computing and technology.
I look forward to seeing more of Apple’s vision come to life.