“Apple CEO Tim Cook is on top of the technology world,” Don Reisinger writes for eWeek. “His company is the most valuable in the technology industry and, at times, the entire world. According to a recent study, his firm’s brand value is above all others.”
“Despite the obvious success Apple has had, some folks aren’t so willing to give Cook the credit. Those people say that Cook inherited an extremely strong Apple from Steve Jobs and over last several quarters, the company’s success has been due to decisions its co-founder made. Cook, those critics say, was a bystander to greatness and he’s now reaping the fruits of his predecessor’s greatness,” Reisinger writes. “But that might not be entirely true. While there’s no doubt that Cook is benefiting from Steve Jobs’ decisions, he has still made a positive impact on the company since taking over as interim CEO and finally assuming the role last August.”
10 Reasons why Tim Cook has proven himself a fine replacement of Steve Jobs as Apple CEO:
1. There was no lag between CEOs
2. Look at the financials
3. Morale is still high
4. Handling China
5. The secrecy is intact
6. Overall quality has not slipped
7. Employees love him
8. It all comes down to corporate maturing
9. Market dominance, anyone?
10. Handling investors with care
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: Today is Memorial Day in the U.S. and we will be spending the day with friends and family. We will resume posting tomorrow morning as usual. As always, thank you for visiting MacDailyNews.com!
I think MDN is doing a great job, long may it continue! I am in Australia and the opportunity to keep up to date via your often pithy and witty comments is a privilege!
Enjoy Memorial Day and Good Luck from Australia Ronald Begg with 7 Apple devices!
Agreed – also from Australia and grateful for MDN and their work.
Enjoy the time with your families and have a good Memorial Day.
I have always thought of Memorial day as a world holiday of remeberance. Young gallant men who heeded the call to duty of their country, even if they were on the wrong side of history.
The difference between Tim and Steve is this.
Tim will take out a slide rule from his top pocket and tell you why you need to buy Apple products: The antenna is here and here, the screen is this and that resolution, the CPU is quad core, etc. A slide rule approach to presenting a product. Precise, but as boring as watching paint dry.
Steve, on other hand, would whip out the product from under a black cloth, sit on an easy chair and charm the pants off you by showing you how it works. Fireworks on stage. A mesmerising presence. An electric presenter without parallel. Your eyes were riveted on Steve while he strutted about the stage. The moment the presesntation ended, you knew you had to rush out and buy whatever Steve was promoting. He was that good. No one on the planet even came near to his ability to sell ice to eskimos.
You loved Steve for who he was. He was someone you could put your arms around, metaphorically speaking. With Tim, you’d buy the product because it came with the memory of Steve.
RIP Steve, we love you. You’re irreplaceable.
Oh BLN you are such a two faced troll.
While steve was alive you heaped insults on apple products and Steve (i.e. that he was primarily a showman and marketeer), now that He is gone its St. Steve and now it’s the current CEO that has the problems, and how apple is going to slip without Steve.
Give it a rest FUD’ster you are about as transparent as a glass of water.
Have you anything positive to add to what I’ve said or are you just a natural born whinging ninny?
The article listed 10 positives about Tim Cook. Instead of listing #11, agreeing or keeping your mouth shut (which you never do), you put the guy down.
Regarding whinging, give us a break. You post 1,000 negatives/complaints for every 1 positive. You’re so offensive, that even when you say something agreeable, forum members have a difficult time siding with you. They can’t even do so without prefacing their comment.
I agree. I usually skim past his posts.
Calling haters like you on your (nearly always) vacuous drivel IS a positive.
😉
Took the words right out of my mouth!
Jonny Ive was behind Steve, and is now behind Cook. Apple is not the sales pitch that you are making it out to be.
Steve’s presentations, although amazing, aren’t what truly sells the product. The product sells the product.
You seem to have a very sales based approach to things… And in Steve’s own words regarding that: “Look who’s in charge now, the sales guy”.
WELL SAID BLN
I do not like TIm Cook much as CEO. But, well, I do not know much about him. He was hired, he has amazing skills in logistics, he seems to be a kind gentle and knowledgeable man, very likeable leader, with care and passion to Apple but no Steve.
But Steve took the withering Apple and pressed the re-boot button – bringing it back to life. And while he did this, he drew a 1 dollar a year pay check. Steve also built and managed his extremely capable team. And Steve also knew the greed from the past was partial to the down fall of Apple while he was gone. Thats makes for a remarkable and honourable CEO with extremely passion for his company.
Now the success of Apple and price of the products is too expensive — the FORD that SAMSUNG is making nears the quality of the FERRARI Apple is selling. The life span of a cellphone is about 2 years – lucky if not obsolete in 4 years.
If you divide the actual price you pay for a iPhone at 600 bucks over 4 years… you are paying 150 buck each year for the FERRARI.
Yet, you can have a new Samsung every year at 50 bucks. 50 x 4 years is 200 buck, THAT’S a 400 dollar savings and you have recent technology – lol – not the best but hey – this fits some wallets and the economic conditions out there. Yeah i know… its the WALMART math – the lowest price is the law BUT thats why APPLE and most companies manufacture overseas in China; saving money and profiting MORE.
Ahhh but the other companies make cheap crap right. Cheap plastic crap. But its a cellphone man. You’re life does not depend on it. When is good enough not good enough? Did you buy the the BEST most expensive Mac? Did you buy the iPAD new with cellular and wifi at 64 Gb? People all have a different ranges of needs. I am a long time Apple fan. I have almost every model made… and a iPAD 1 – yup only. Only 2 years old – it lags in speed and some apps will not work… progress is too fast and things do become OBSOLETE… no way i will buy the top line iPAD again not unless OSX is running on a iSLATE at 15 inches. NO, I do not have an iPhone either though i might, once i see the iPhone 5.
If components are of good enough quality and can last 2 years – APPLE will be beat. So, the only way Appel can WIN is to destroy Android… but that does not seem likely either. Microsoft has their hands up Google butt way too far collecting licensing fees – yet Apple seems so preoccupied with Samsung blinded by the free OS scheme.
you forget to realize that cook has been around since 97. He is part of the equation that has made apple succesful.
Apple has a great team and cook is now leading that.
So far apple have not had a misstep and I doubt that any of us are qualified to make any judgements especially as we know so little of what apples plans are.
My guess I’d that it will be more than 4 inch iPhones and 7 inch iPads.
I for one am grateful that apples stock has grown 700% since I bought in and will continue to hold until there is real evidence that apple are losing their way.
Hey look, Don Reisinger, in his inexhaustible quest for page views via all things top ten listings, has finally produced something worthy of a click.
…OPS
Steve Jobs once commented about sales guys taking over creative companies, as a quip against Microsoft, but I wonder if the ops guys have taken over Apple.
Since Tim Cook took over as CEO, I worry that Apple has become too operations focused and not focused enough on design and … magic.
Perfect execution is fine, but of what is what Steve Jobs used to concern himself with.
I wonder about the “OPS guys” as well.
I posted this elsewhere:
In the Fortune Article there are several quotes about Cookiewuss’s New Apple that worry the crap out of me:
“…It looks like it has become a more conservative execution engine rather than a pushing-the-envelope engineering engine,” says Max Paley, a former engineering vice president who worked at Apple for 14 years until late 2011. “I’ve been told that any meeting of significance is now always populated by project management and global-supply management,” he says. “When I was there, engineering decided what we wanted, and it was the job of product management and supply management to go get it. It shows a shift in priority…”
“…Elsewhere there are signs of Apple becoming a more normal company…”
“…The ultimate “tell” of tectonic changes at Apple will be the quality of its products. Those looking for deficiencies have found them in Siri, a less-than-perfect product that Apple released with the rare beta label in late 2011, a signal that the service shouldn’t be viewed as fully baked. Siri’s response time has been slow, meaning the servers and software powering it are inadequate. “People are embarrassed by Siri,” says one former insider. “Steve would have lost his mind over Siri.” …”
nice post also – agree
OPEN a iPAD up and see the hack job – poor workmanship and glue gun assembly — this is not quality work. On the outside you feel you got a great product. And yeah, compared to other companies you sure do. But the components are not of higher military grade like a mac desktop is built.
Is Apple quality slipping? The price isn’t !
Spare us. Apple sold 35 MILLION iPhones in a single quarter. They simply cannot sustain such a pace unless operations is an intrinsic part of planning and execution. The articles predicated on “ex Apple employees” are about as useful as articles telling us what dead Jobs thinks.
1. There was no lag between CEOs
They knew for a very long and sad time that Tim would be stepping up. This was no surprise. Of course there would be no lag. The preparation should be attributed to Jobs, not Cook.
2. Look at the financials
It’s very easy to argue that Apple is still running on momentum. It was going like an out of control train before Cook stepped in. We shall see in the next year or two. Blaming Cook for anything that goes wrong is as unfair as giving him credit for Apple’s direction the day after Steve passed. It’s like when we blame Presidents for the state of the nation a year after taking office. Give Cook 4 years then look at Apple.
3. Morale is still high
Low morale at Apple is higher than normal morale at most companies. Again. Hogwash. Not that much has changed. There is nothing but frakin feldercarb in the tech media about Cook. There are reports of lower morale in engineering quarters while morale in the bureaucratic quarters has gone up.
4. Handling China
Hell, this was his job before he took over the CEO position.
5. The secrecy is intact
I’ll give ya this one.
6. Overall quality has not slipped
“Overall” is subjective. I have detected a distinct drop in quality in all things OS X related. I am dealing with more bugs than ever. Sometimes I want to take Safari out and shoot it.
7. Employees love him
Why? Because they aren’t afraid of doing crappy work now? Because they feel as though if they under perform, Tim will be nice and understanding about it whereas Jobs would have been a tyrant? Because he gives unnecessary bounces and time off?
8. It all comes down to corporate maturing
“Corporate Maturing” oh please. Apple is as mature as they come. The company is over 35 years old. We don’t want Apple to become a stodgy, mature, MICROSOFT. You want it to stay on the edge, pushing the envelope. You want it to continue to steam past the competition, not become one of them.
9. Market dominance, anyone?
For now.
10. Handling investors with care
Investors need to STFU. Cook should have made it clear that any investor unhappy with the return they’ve gotten on AAPL is welcome to go invest in RIM, HP, Microsoft, DEL you name it. Instead he caved to the whiners.
It is not time to pronounce Cookiewuss a success or failure. Let’s talk around Christmas 2015.
Your tone and general post annoyed the piss out of me but I agree with waiting a few years before we assess his success or failure as a CEO.
I know what you mean, but we so badly need a picture of Cook in front of the IBM building sticking up the middle finger. Or maybe Dell……no, better still would be Google.
I’m afraid posing Cook – ‘saluting IBM with the bird’ would not be shocking enough.
In fact, I feel Cook seemingly suits the IBM side of computing very well and wouldn’t be surprised that he leaves Apple after his 5 years to join them.
+1000 well done… just about to post a similar list of points then saw yours… totally ARGEE.
Bottom line is that it doesn’t matter what anyone says right now. As many people point out, Cook was Steven’s choice and if history matters, every time I’ve ever worried about one of Steve’s choices, I’ve been proven wrong. (Except for that whole letting us develop apps for the iPhone thing.)
In a few years we will have results to look at. There are things that I sense are wrong at Apple, but they didn’t just start, that stuff was starting to happen while Steve was alive. I can’t blame Cook for those things.
If in a few years the stock is still stuck at the $500 level and Apple is still cranking out mediocre upgrades to iPhones and iPads, and AppleTV boxes and iTunes and Safari are still a big mess while we’re getting new “gestures” for OS X, well, that won’t be good.
By the way, happy Memorial Day MDN people and readers.
Time to stop looking through the rear-view mirror and focus on what’s in front of the windshield.
Cook, Forstall, Schiller, Ive, et al. are in charge. Jobs trusted them, I trust them.
me too
Thanks T/M. Appreciate your comments above. I do think Steve H below is good too – they and we need to focus on the future. We get to help design the future, because it doesn’t just happen.
No point in talking about what Steve would have done. He’s gone and isn’t coming back. Apple shareholders will just have to make do with who or what’s available. Since people keep saying that no one can replace Steve Jobs, then Tim Cook is just as good as anyone else since he at least worked with Steve for quite a while. I don’t know why there continues to be talk about Tim having a different style in running the company. He can’t pretend to be Steve so he has to do it in his own way. I’m sure he’s not trying to destroy the company. As a shareholder, I’m just hoping Tim can keep the company running at least halfway-decently for several more years. Griping about the way Tim is running the company isn’t going to help at all. I don’t think he can do anything more to boost Apple’s share price, though.
look, it wouldn’t have mattered if Jobs had appointed Jesus Of Nazareth as his successor, will begin to diminish just as Disney did when Walt died, and Akita at Sony and Edison at GE…people like Jobs are one in a jillion..Cook, or anyone else, can only keep the jiggernaut on cruise-control as long as possible. wasn’t magical, Jobs was.
juggernaut, I despise spell-checking..I already no how to spell.
lol, know. is there a way to turn that goddamned thing off, MDN?
I’d stick with ‘jiggernaut’ as it suggests both the strong spirits Apple is leading the competition to resort to and jiggering of their markets.
The reason Jesus is so lauded is he is said to be from the beginning — truth itself. Steve was not genius itself, he partook in genius. His approach was not linked inextricably to himself. It can be taken up by others, as he himself took it up.
Always 10 reasons. Come on! Give us six or eleven or whatever is relevant, but when you package everything in tens, you tell me you’re a marketer, not a thinker.
What if ten is the relevant number?
IMO a the “exploding” momentum for Apple came from Cook and not Jobs. Without Cook this company would never have had the supply chain as it is set up today. That along with innovation is Apple’s strengths. 1a and 1b. Apple without Cook would have had all of the good products as it has today but on a much smaller scale. That being said I do believe that Cook has to nurture the innovative genii of Ive and Forstall and see if more can be found.
Totally Agree Apple was doing -fine- (just fine) but what really kicked the afterburners in is Cook’s operations genus.
Normally premium products (particularly pinnacle products) cost more, but in the case of Apple you can have a phone that feels like a fine watch in your hand or some plastic-y piece of junk, same price.
You can have a Big plastic and flimsy sheet metal box that sound like a dust buster gone berserk or you can have a n IMac, carved for a single aluminum billet, elegant and whisper quiet, even when the fans are all spinning on max. Again same price.
This is (and has been) due to Tim’s genus.
NOPE.
Thus Spake Zarathustra.
Well Waly thats a good point – however in the spirit of Apple Computer not Apple Inc.
The runner up; Apple being in second place to Microsoft for so long HAS BEEN what we loved. Striving to succeed. Always innovating. The Powerful designs, insanely great programs and just being DIFFERENT. Made Apple far more appealing to everyone. Cook had nothing to do with that.
WORLD DOMINANCE and STOCK MARKET shattering records. Controlling supply chains, the law suits and viruses. Ewwwwww.
This is mostly during Cooks time slot. Apple inc already established as the momentum and expansion in to cellphones arrived.
Where is the Difference now? Cook for me represents Apple Inc.
Cranking out yearly (ho hum improvements) – remaining a high priced product and high quality control on production – he’s doing his old job still. And the people love him because the money is flowing in. All of Apple is laughing to the bank… hail Cook, “we are all multi-millionaires.” – Greed and gambling will be your down fall Apple. Ride the wave well while it lasts. I pray there is a Tsunami yet to happen.
I think the 1 dollar pay check, the passion and commitment to the company, all the new devices – is credited to the iCEO – and his re-birth at Apple. Seeing the return of Jobs was the EXPLODING MOMENTUM – not Cook.
Cook only secured the momentum that was already in place – that was achieved when he was hired – he did his job well and continues to do so – but also with the title CEO.
I am sorry I do not agree.
Many executives are WAY BETTER than Tim Cook in vital categories.
example:
— Category: Pure Savage Strength:
I bet Ballmer can hurl a heavier chair further than Cook!
— Category: Able to B.S someone into buying something worthless and make lots of money.
Sanjay Jha convinced Google to spend 12.5 billion (or more than 20 years Android profits) to buy Motorola, even though its patents are near worthless in patent fights as they are FRAND compromised, a company which has been steadily losing money for many quarters…
I bet you Jha can sell used junk cars better than Cook!
Category: able to provide RELIEF for criticized employees:
Elop ex Msft now chief of Nokia was able to make Symbian and Meego engineers and staff feel a WHOLE LOT BETTER. Symbian workers were accused that Nokia failings were due to the inferiority of Symbian. NOW with WP7 and CONTINUED LOSS of MARKET SHARE, they can now breath a sigh of relief : “See, losing market share is not due to Symbian being inferior, WP7 is ALSO LOSING MARKET-SHARE!”.
Category: Two for the Price of One
You got TWO (count ’em!!) CEO’s for Research in Motion for the ONE Tim Cook! Of course they are now EX- CEOs but the argument still stands.. !
Category: Art of Illusion
Able to B.S funds and banks to buy in your stock at 100 times Earnings!
Zuckerberg able to set IPO at 100 billion or 100 years earnings (Facebook gas 1 billion a year profit) while apple LANGUISHES at a P.E of 13 (even Lower ex cash!). Zuckerberg beats Cook hands down in the ART of ILLUSION !
funny.
Kudo’s and congrats on a great site. Always love your pithy/snarky/spot-on comments. Keep it up, MDN!
Where was it written that Steve has been grooming the board room for the transition after his passing basically since 2005?
It was in the book I think.
You can rationalize about Tim Cook as much as you like but the fact of the matter is that Apple Inc. post Steve Jobs is quickly morphing into yet another Google, Microsoft, IBM et al. The “Magic” is gone and Apple Inc. is no longer ‘Different’, it is only ‘Successful’ like so many others. I’m coming to terms with this reality but somehow I don’t care any more and others will quickly follow.
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I agree with the list, but I’d include “all detractors” to #10. Apple is doing a much better job handling the idiots who lob their critiques at the company. Whether it’s Greenpeace and their “misguided” green energy ranking, people who question the humanity of their supply chain or the DoJ, Apple’s “return of serve” is reminiscent of Andre Agassi in his prime.
No one REPLACES Steve Jobs. While Mr. Cook appears to be doing a fine job, and will shepard Apple into the future, the more accurate title should be “… a Fine Successor …”.