Why Tim Cook Is Steve Ballmer and Why He Still Has His Job at Apple

Stop for a moment to imagine what being a homosexual teenager in 1970's Alabama was like. Also it's well known that his career at IBM was torpedoed over a gay "glass ceiling."

Tim Cook is a man who understands that privacy is a human right.

Was it? Blackberry often co-operated to provide governments with access to BBM message content[1][2].

[1]: http://thenextweb.com/asia/2013/07/10/after-a-lengthy-battle... [2]: https://news.vice.com/article/exclusive-canada-police-obtain...

Source?

Edit: Sorry, that was lazy of me. Googled: https://mspoweruser.com/cio-surey-finds-microsoft-azure-will...

A bit of a biased source, "mspoweruser".

Read a bit more.. We'll have to see how the offerings change or evolve in the next 5 years.

Edit 2: https://rcpmag.com/articles/2016/08/02/microsoft-behind-aws-... AWS is still > 30% of the overall market, Azure hitting around ~9%.

"Nadella got Microsoft organized around mobile and the cloud (Azure), freed the Office and Azure teams from Windows, killed the phone business and got a major release of Windows out without the usual trauma. And is moving the company into augmented reality and conversational AI. While they’ll likely never regain the market dominance they had in the 20th century, (their business model continues to be extremely profitable) Nadella likely saved Microsoft from irrelevance."

For example, I couldn't actually figure out if Tay.AI was an example of supreme idiocy or supreme hubris. Their repeated botching of Windows 10 auto-updates is not getting much attention because the profits have moved towards the cloud, but that it all the more telling considering that MS had quite a monopoly on the personal computing device market not long back.

Remember, it wasn't like they were caught by surprise at some of these innovations - they did start something called Windows Live Search way back when, they did have some of the world's first smartphones (except they were put together in a way that no one wanted to use), they also had the advantage of large piles of cash to use to acquire, say, a YouTube. After they finally ran out of options, they decide to jump on the open source bandwagon because otherwise there was a very realistic chance that they would have actually gone into a serious downward spiral, particularly in the currency that matters most for tech companies - the mindshare of software developers who actually wish to push the bleeding edge farther.

It might seem ironic that, given the majority of Ballmer's tenure was spent not just bad mouthing open source, but actively harassing the open source community [1], that the first thing that Ballmer's exit brought was a sudden embrace of open source. In reality though, their chameleon like stance towards open source - embracing it when it suits them while kicking it when it doesn't - was effectively the only possibility for MS to regain its reputation. After all, it is not as if they innovated their way out of that hole. The general contempt directed at MSFT is well earned by this point, and while they are supposedly trying very hard to make amends, one also wonders if the world might already have good Linux desktops by this time if not for Microsoft's active nuisance-making for most of the previous decade. Yes, the companies are merely trying to maximize shareholder profits, but there are lots of times when MS did things which were just cringe-worthy. See this gem from Bill Gates [2]:

"In the same leaked Microsoft internal 'Challenges and Strategy' memo, Gates outlined a solution to the problem: "patenting as much as we can. A future start-up with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose. That price might be high: Established companies have an interest in excluding future competitors." By 2004 Microsoft was accumulating 3000 patents a year."

And not to mention, the companies which ate away at Microsoft's profits actually came up with genuinely innovative stuff - even today, Bing is no match for Google's search - despite the fact that MS once used to pay people to use Bing (Bing Rewards)? What is MS doing which is similarly innovative? At least with regards to this article, yes, Microsoft is just another software company today which is making a set of the most expedient choices towards profitability.

[1] http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/microsofts-ballmer-warns...

[2] http://www.itpro.co.uk/101743/the-open-source-patent-war

I do agree there should be a way to trade privacy for services. Some things can be a lot better when they're personalized.

I'd like to see more granularity and control over the transaction, so it's more of a personal data exchange rather than privacy. Right now it seems to be an all-or-nothing proposition. Privacy first means we can have control over what data is shared. You can still choose to share what you want. That makes it much more of a trade. Right now I don't feel like I'm trading. Right now I feel more like I need to actively guard against people reaching into my "privacy" wallet while I happen to be using services they're offering.

Don't get me wrong: I'm using the services they're providing, and they should be getting something in return. Using Gmail as an example, people think of it as "free email". They're not necessarily aware of the nature -- or extent-- of the exchange. I'm certainly not. I have no idea the extent to which Google is using my data. It doesn't even need to be nefarious. All I'm saying is that I'd like the exchange to be more explicit.

So far we haven't figured out ways of making these kinds of exchanges easy. And I'd much rather see these exchanges happen in the market rather than solely rely on regulations to protect privacy.

I'm sure others have varying opinions on this. If you have an alternate take, please share a comment or a link. Thanks!

It'll be interesting to see if Google overtakes the Echo. I'm not a fan of Google's "no apps" approach.

> (An) NCPPR representative asked Mr. Cook to commit right then and there to doing only those things that were profitable.

What ensued was the only time I can recall seeing Tim Cook angry, and he categorically rejected the worldview behind the NCPPR's advocacy. He said that there are many things Apple does because they are right and just, and that a return on investment (ROI) was not the primary consideration on such issues.

"When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind," he said, "I don't consider the bloody ROI." He said that the same thing about environmental issues, worker safety, and other areas where Apple is a leader.

https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/tim-cook-soundly-rej...

And they aren't doing it only in their press releases, but in their products as well. I'd enumerate features of iOS or OS X that have been very well thought out in this regard, but that would make for a blog post.

That doesn't mean you're wrong, but it's a misapplication of the principle.

It looks like nothing at all, until it suddenly disrupts everything. It's easy to spot with hindsight, but at the time it's not at all clear what's disruptive and what's nothing.

Look it up, he's actually announced plenty. Just they're kinda underwhelming. Off the top of my head: MacBook, Mac Pro, iPad Pro, iPhone+,MacBook HDMI Dongle, iPhone Headphone Dongle, Apple Pay, Apple Music, Apple Pencil.

Sure, Gates looked like the archetype nerd any time he presented something. But not was lightyears better than the whole "developers developers developers" dance Ballmer managed to pull.

Sadly the tech media have over the years blended over into lifestyle media. No longer is the computer or phone something to get a job done and that's it, now its a indicator of how you see yourself and how you want others to see you. And that image goes all the way back to the company making them, and the people that are the faces of said company.

I wonder if Ballmer really got bad press outside of geeky circles until relatively late in his career, when hindsight showed that Microsoft was missing out on a lot of new products.

I believe that the hypothesis of the article is that people hated Microsoft because of Ballmer.

He was the face of "bad" Microsoft, the unashamedly anti-competitive win-at-all-costs bully. Gates could win some people back with his nerd-cred and things like the mid-'00s "security push". Ballmer was first and foremost a suit, or rather a suit trying to pretend he's down with the nerds just enough to screw them as soon as they turn around, and his "fuck you" attitude wasn't exactly friendly.

> I'm don't think Ballmer's list of accomplishments at Microsoft is fully appreciated

Probably because they were accomplishments for Microsoft rather than for the industry as a whole. Apple gets a lot of leeway because the iPhone really made a difference for the industry, not just winning but drawing a path. Microsoft has not really done anything like that since the Win 95 / Office / IE 5 progression.

There are developers that actually do enjoy using Microsoft stacks, even though we also have experience using other systems.

That said, I think Apple it much better positioned than Nokia and much more focused on continual disrupting their own position (ipad to phone to tablet to watch is an interesting morph away from single product). So long as they can keep innovating and dominate the supply chain, I believe they will have some long legs.

To stave off commodification, the said company can pivot into a fashion company where the value is derived from the brand itself. Instead of differentiating by feature, it can differentiate by 'brand value' and encourage repeat-sales by ecnouraging seasonal fashion cycles. "Rose Go^w^wTeal is the color of the season this year. If you don't have a teal device, you're so last year"

So we're getting one next week - but why not sooner? That was one of the takeaways from this article. Pace of innovation has slowed under Tim Cook.

And even that is not necessarily true anymore. The iMac tends to beat it on many tasks now. At this point, people buy it because they really want to bring their own monitor, or they just can't imagine an iMac could be faster, or they are one of the few people doing something the Mac Pro is still better at.

To design a wireless mouse around the idea of using it while being wired would be a massive design fail. It would compromise the design of the common use case in order to improve the extremely rare use case.

That image symbolizes Apple to me too. For me it represents how many seemingly poor decisions made by Apple often turn out to be less severe than they initially appeared—many even reasonable.

There is a very clear through-line connecting all the Jobsian products: an aggressively streamlined approach to features, a fascination with high-quality materials and novel industrial processes, and an aesthetic sensibility derived from Bauhaus/Functionalism/Dieter Rams. All these elements are just as present in his misses (Lisa, the original Mac, the NeXT Cube, the G4 Cube) as in his hits (iMac, iPod, iPhone).

What separates his age of mostly misses from his age of mostly hits isn't any change in his design philosophy; it's the passage of time. His misses mostly came early, his hits late.

What this implies to me is that his later success wasn't due to him changing, so much as the world changing around him. In 1984 and 1990 and 1995, he was trying to sell objects d'art into a computing market that was dominated by business/enterprise purchasers, who didn't care if the machines they bought were ugly as sin as long as they were functional and interoperable and cheap. By 2005 the market for tech had shifted away from those buyers into the consumer market, where the priorities were completely different, more like those of the fashion business than of the tech business of old.

Suddenly the Jobsian approach stopped being a liability and started being an asset. But that's not because he learned how to aim better, it's because the targets moved so that they were all neatly lined up in front of him.

If he were alive and well, I think so. With the exception of iPad (which wasn't subpar by industry standards but certainly signaled a descent into mediocrity for Apple, and which I would attribute to Jobs' slowly disengaging with the company due to his health issues), Jobs was on an unbelievable streak between his return in the late 90s and about 2009/2010. In the span of about 10 years, his company did several outstanding feats in holistic hardware/software design, and it can't be a coincidence that the man was then largely healthy and in command.

I do think that would have probably continued until the mid to latter part of this decade had he continued in better health.

[1] - https://www.evernote.com/l/ABV1fPm7JnBO76pqevjy990uALmIK39uZ...

[2] - https://www.evernote.com/l/ABVer15u9rhODaV3U5QafcRx8eVu3HVq6...

As for the touch ID - try double clicking the home button with a finger that has no touch ID, it does not show a PIN entering screen. I used to double tap all the time before to quicker unlock the phone and swipe to enter a pin, now its' quite annoying and not as fast.

But I still feel that it must be harder than having carte blanche with the organisation. Maybe I over estimate the different levels of freedom provided to different CEOs.

Or maybe the ability to generate this freedom/trust/faith is one of the skills that ultimately helps define a successful CEO.

Apple will be fine either way in the short term. Hell, they have enough cash saved up to run their company for many years even if they make zero income. But their brand reputation is starting to get tarnished when their ecosystems don't get supported. In the long run, having people wondering how frequently the ecosystems they buy into will be supported is a concern.