“There is a lot of chatter about Tim Cook these days,” Eric Jackson writes for TheStreet. “With each passing day, Apple seems to hit a new 52-week low. Yesterday, it gave up the spot of “world’s biggest company by market cap” to Exxon. You don’t have a steadily shrinking stock price without calls for the head of the CEO. I get that.”
“Yet, I struggle to understand what the critics are saying should be done by Tim Cook’s replacement,” Jackson writes. “What would they do if they were the CEO of Apple today?”
Jackson writes, “Succeeding Steve Jobs is a thankless job. Can you remember which NBC show succeeded Seinfeld on Thursday nights? Me neither.”
MacDailyNews Take: Is that supposed to instill hope in the hearts of the hopeless AAPL shareholders?
Jackson writes, “Be more of a showman? Isn’t this more of point one? Cook is who he is. He can get all the communications coaching he wants but he’ll never be Jobs. And even if he was, that was just one aspect of what made Jobs special.”
“By and large, I think Cook is doing all the important things right. Shareholders — and bloggers (who usually aren’t shareholders) — are wrong in their panting for the head of Tim Cook. Sometimes the hardest thing to do in investing is doing nothing. And waiting,” Jackson writes. “If you don’t like Tim Cook or Apple, sell your shares (or short your stock) and don’t use their products. I bought more Apple stock yesterday.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Tim Cook is the perfect man for this very difficult job. We can think of nobody better. There are only three issues we have with Cook so far:
• Marketing: Steve Jobs held a three-hour meeting every Wednesday afternoon with his top agency, marketing and communications people to approve each new commercial, print ad, web ad, and billboard. Does Tim Cook? If he does, does he have anything close to Jobs’ sensibilities in this area? Judging from Apple’s marketing since Steve left the building, he does not. Therefore, Cook needs to find a marketing guru to take Steve’s place, conduct these Wednesday meetings, and hold his marketing peoples’ feet to the fire until he/she is extremely satisfied.
• Presentations: Nowhere is it more obvious that Tim Cook is not Steve Jobs than on stage. Jony Ive needs to be convinced to take his passion live onto the stage. We saw him do it with extraordinary aplomb at Steve Jobs’ memorial. We see him do it in each new major product’s marketing video. Cook needs to cede the stage to the guy at Apple who is closest to having Steve’s vision, passion and presentation skills. Cook doesn’t strike us as having an overblown ego. He should step back. If Jony is reticent, he needs to be convinced. There is no rule that the CEO has to be the one presenting at Apple events. It is a total waste for Cook to keep trying so obviously hard to do something that is not his forte when Jony exists and is sitting right there backstage. We don’t hang on Cook’s every word (we just wonder why he’s overemphasizing some of them so much). We hung on Steve’s every word. We hang on Jony’s every word. It’s that simple. At the very least, have Tim MC the events, but make sure Jony is the one out there doing the reveals and gushing about the products. If Jony really loves Apple, and we’re sure he does, then he should demand the job. Step back, Tim, and focus on doing what you’re good at.
• Operations: With his newfound extra time having Jony doing the events like he should be, Cook will have time to mentor and oversee his operations guy, Jeff Williams, and make sure nothing like the total fsckup that happened last quarter happens ever again. Apple is too big and too rich to screw up things like iMac availability for Christmas shopping season. This isn’t 1996. Steve Jobs would have gone on a spree with an axe. Tim Cook, operations genius, is ultimately responsible for Apple blowing some 800,000 iMac sales in fiscal Q113 (holiday quarter). (Hopefully, he blew them into this quarter.) If Apple had those iMacs ready like they should have, not two months late, then they would have handily beaten the street in all respects and we wouldn’t be having this conversation today.
Fix these three things (the marketing issue being the most difficult as Steve was a genius) and, like we said, Tim Cook is the perfect man for the job.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
The curious case of Tim Cook, operations genius, and the missing iMacs – February 4, 2013
Apple pulls ‘Genius’ ad series from its website, YouTube channel – August 22, 2012
