Hacker News Reader

Comment by gabrielroth | Hacker News Reader

One factor that the author doesn't mention is Apple's success at lining up deals with component manufacturers. A couple years ago (before anyone had heard of the iPad) they locked in great prices on flash memory and LCD displays. They could do that because they were about to invent a huge market, and they knew it. Anyone trying to get into the tablet business in 2010 had to pay much, much more.

Steve Jobs and Johnny Ive are no slouches, but Tim Cook doesn't get enough credit for stuff like that.

View on HN

A hundred upvotes, really. Tim Cook turned Apple from a sloppy, cluttered mess to a perfectly tuned and calibrated machine. He designs business processes like Ive designs hardware enclosures. He's still at it, too, telling investors during the last earnings call that Apple once again snapped up a boatload of supply on an unnamed type of component.

I bet he'd be amazing at Starcraft, once he learned the ropes.

I believe it. In Starcraft, Macro beats Micro.

Tell that to those tanks!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3IbwjeCx6U

Getting some pictures of him wiping out some Korean Starcraft nerds :)

I knew Apple was on to something again when, not long after Jobs retook Apple, their inventory on hand started to approach that of Dell. That was Cook's doing.

I know this is going to burn my karma, but having watched the personality cult of Jobs grow to dominance, and now observing the mantle being handed over to Cook in a way that the cult appears just to have adapted to follow the new leader... it's a very disturbing sight.

Apple are a great company for sure, but I'm extremely uneasy reading things that make any individual such an icon, let alone with Apple where it's happened before.

Tim does appear to be a strong leader and sound COO, but please can we let this personality cult dissipate and not just replace the head that is worshipped. It's weird.

"I'm extremely uneasy reading things that make any individual such an icon...Please can we let this personality cult dissipate..."

Personality cults are much more important than you realise. The post-modernist approach seems to be to downplay the significance of individual visionaries in favour of diffuse accolades attributed to the group or larger corpus. It's nonsense.

Shakespeare was an individual (not a nebulous, anonymous, amorphous collective) of unique literary gifts. Jobs is a design and technological wizard who single-handedly righted the ship. Tim Cook is a process engineering and business operations mastermind of the like that has never been seen since Carnegie. Ives' industrial design methodologies will blaze the path for decades to come.

> Jobs is a design and technological wizard

You've fallen for it. Ives is the designer, not Jobs. Woz was the technological wizard, not Jobs. Jobs is a leader, a salesman and a marketer. Granted, he's a wizard (in the Oz sense of the word) but pull back the curtain and you'll find other incredibly talented people doing their jobs, if you'll pardon the unintentional pun.

"You've fallen for it. Ives is the designer, not Jobs. Woz was the technological wizard, not Jobs."

I don't think I've fallen for anything (in fact, I made strong mention of Ives with respect to industrial design). Being able to conceive good design and being able to guide good design are both signs of design competence; being able to conceive good technology and being able to guide its development are signs of technical proficiency. Jobs in his role as guide (or leader) is an exemplar.

I never claimed (and I don't think anyone else did) that there are no "other talented people doing their jobs".

Your rejoinder, rather than actually arguing against personality cults, is more a reminder that "a witty remark proves nothing."

> I never claimed (and I don't think anyone else did) that there are no "other talented people doing their jobs".

From your earlier comment:

> Jobs is a design and technological wizard who single-handedly righted the ship.

Thats you falling for the personality cult right there. That's also you claiming that Jobs somehow managed to fix Apple singlehandedly, which of course is wrong. Your comment about Ives trailblazing for years to come is quite amusing, given that Ive freely admits that he's heavily influenced by Dieter Ram's work (if you look at Ive's designs you'll see that he's following Ram's principles).

> Your rejoinder, rather than actually arguing against personality cults, is more a reminder that "a witty remark proves nothing."

That sentence appears to be a prime example of your quoted phrase.

Well. I am in favour of personality cults. I'm an ardent believer in personal responsibility. Personality cults encourage us to focus on our own performance and perfecting our own skills.

So If I'm "falling for the personality cult right there", I'm more than happy to and I encourage more people to.

ps. The debate on whether Apple would be what Apple is today without Jobs' Great Return is long and storied. I won't wade any further into those murky waters (As per the personality cult ethos, I'd wager that Jobs saved Apple and that without him it would have sunk).

In term of design and technology, my impression is that Jobs is a filter and a coach. This should be thinner! It needs rounded corners! etc.

He is able to coax the best out of design and technology folk and direct it towards a valuable end.

  Shakespeare was an individual (not a nebulous, anonymous, 
  amorphous collective)

Not that it matters concerning the point you make, but that may not be the best example, as the question of whether Shakespeare was an individual genius is a matter of some serious, although somewhat fringe, debate [1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare_authorship_question

I am aware of the serious debate on the issue. But that's sort of the point I am trying to make: One approach seeks to recognise individual genius for what it is: the gift of a singular person; another approach seeks to discount those achievements by attributing them to a diffuse, sometimes ancillary but oft ill-defined group.

The latter approach has become prevalent in recent decades (in my opinion). Now, it is fashionable to question the legitimacy of an individual's greatness, to downplay it and instead award yellow stars to everyone who participated, no matter how tangential their contribution.

The new idea is that no one man could be so smart, so gifted or so diligent as to produce all that Shakespeare did; no one man could be so clairvoyant and visionary as to define the face of technology for a decade; no on man could have all that innate power.

I reject that view.

Exactly, it's a combination of betting big on market vision and component supplier management, and not as much about vertical integration. Case in point, "Apple secures 60% of global touch panel capacity, causing tight supply". Tight supply constrains iPad competitors price position with component suppliers.

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20110216PD219.html

Isn't 10" the standard netbook display size? Maybe not in the same aspect ratio as the ipad, but no one appears to be trying to stick with the ipad's aspect ratio anyway.

So is it buying in bulk or planning ahead that make Tim Cook the greatest COO in history? Because neither seem particularly amazing to me. Is it just the fact that the sums of money involved are quite large? Or is it the subtle undertones of sticking it to the competition so they can't compete fairly that makes this story (and the ones about patents) resonate so strongly with Apple fans?

It's both, as a matter of fact, and judging from the struggling competition neither is particularly easy. When discussing Cook's qualities and Apple's refined processes, there isn't much fanboy-ism involved.

They're simply really, really good at it.

And yet if you ask a hundred Apple fans why their competition is struggling you'll get a hundred different reasons. You seem to be claiming that planning ahead and buying in bulk to produce a cheap, boring looking, plastic tablet with a half-finished, linux-based phone OS and stylus interface would be enough to destroy the competition. Others would disagree.

And not only do you credit this one factor with decisive victory, you're attributing it not to Apple as a corporation, but to one individual. In other words, this is all about fanboy-ism. Indeed, like the face of Jesus appearing in a grilled cheese sandwich, the only interesting aspect of this story is the way the believers react to it. The underlying reality is suspect, but no-one seems to care as long as it fits their narrative.

What?

  > And yet if you ask a hundred Apple fans why their
  > competition is struggling you'll get a hundred different
  > reasons.

I'm not an Apple "fan." Also, given that success is usually a fairly complex phenomenon, varied opinions are hardly surprising. Ask a hundred so-called "Apple haters" why the company "sucks" and you'll get even more incongruent answers.

  > You seem to be claiming that planning ahead and buying
  > in bulk to produce a cheap, boring looking, plastic
  > tablet with a half-finished, linux-based phone OS and
  > stylus interface would be enough to destroy the
  > competition. Others would disagree.

I'm not claiming that, and I strongly doubt that I seem to. In fact, I'm simply defending the proposition that Apple's impeccable management of supply chains and inventory allows them to produce quality products at scale and reasonable price points. Yes, producing quality products (not cheap, boring plastic tablets) for 500$ is something that the competition can't do at this point. The stuff that is on par is more expensive (Xoom, Galaxy Tablet and so on); the stuff that is similarly priced or way cheaper (Notion Ink Adam, Archos) is very flimsy and immature.

The combination might destroy competition, including Apple, yes, but would definitely require sophisticated supply chain management. Right now, all relevant components are limited resources. What's so controversial about that?

  > And not only do you credit this one factor with decisive victory

I don't (cf. difference between necessary and sufficient conditions).

  > you're attributing it not to Apple as a corporation, but to one individual.

I don't. It's a fairly wide-spread habit to identify the work of a full department (operations) with its VP/head (COO Cook). Nothing wrong with that; reading it as "ZOMG TIM COOK IS DOING EVERYTHING WITHOUT HELP!!!!11" is naive at best. Of course, he relies on hundreds of engineers and administrators, but he's been successful in several companies so far and from what I've heard he is indeed a "hands-on" manager and workaholic.

Nothing fanboy-ish about that.

  > Indeed, like the face of Jesus appearing in a grilled
  > cheese sandwich, the only interesting aspect of this
  > story is the way the believers react to it. The 
  > underlying reality is suspect, but no-one seems to care
  > as long as it fits their narrative.

Oh, now you're just venting anger. Fair enough. Continue.

I'm not angry. I'm genuinely interested in myth-making, whether it's conspiracy theories or religion. The Tim Cook thing is too nebulous to argue about, but the A4 thing is the exact same from this perspective.

It's a chip designed and built and sold by Samsung, Apple's chief rival in smartphones (and soon, tablets) and yet the storyline around it is that Apple's competitors can't compete with it because it is Apple's special sauce. That's bonkers. Even more so when you realise that even the Samsung built chip is just a commodity. Samsung's own Galaxy S II phone will replace the next generation A4 with Nvidia's Tegra2 in some territories, that's how interchangeable a commodity it is. (Some speculation why they don't have enough of their own chip, either manufacturing teething troubles, or Apple's already put in a big order).

Yet Apple can put a logo on it, give it a cool codename and stand up and sell a commodity and have people believe it is something special. I'd love to know if this is something Apple marketing understands and intentionally manipulates, or if Apple just reflexively takes credit for the work of others (which by the way is the original meaning of the Reality Distortion Field if you look it up on folklore.org).

Given that the A4 story can thrive in the face of objective reality, you can understand why I'm amused and intrigued that the average time between people finding out what a COO does and deciding that Tim Cook is the best at it in the world is about 2 seconds. After all, even commodities are better when Apple uses them.

This makes Time Cook my dream date. Seriously, and I hear he swings my way too.

There are many ways to innovate in business and technology and design get a lot of time in the spotlight.

Operations, especially of a very large enterprise, with thousands of suppliers which also demands highly precise manufacturing and quality control, while having operations spread around the globe, and a public awareness factor that makes it vulnerable to any "Watchdog" who wants to make news... running a less-than-30-days-inventory system is playing on the Nth level.

Can anyone name anybody who has done something like that? Amazon's distribution network is a lot easier, as they control all the infrastructure. Dell doesn't have the volume or quality requirements or focused product lineup (which reduces substitution- eg: if dell is out of a particular laptop model, they have others to substitute, apple doesn't have that luxury.)

It is no wonder Apple is doing long term contracts for supplies like this.

Some have accused them of cornering the market, but this is not like cornering the market on Silver (look up Hunt Brothers) -- as anyone with reasonable technology can make a substitute for electronics components which are fungible commodities for the most part.

This is just good management of a very sophisticated manufacturing network.

Dude deserves and Oscar in Operations!

I'd be tempted to say that automotive just-in-time processes are, if anything, more impressive in terms of the industry integration. There you'll have hundreds of suppliers coordinating so that custom builds roll off the production line in an arbitrary order, with no more stock in hand than there are builds in the system for the next shift or so. I've seen it at work at BMW, and it is frankly terrifying to consider what the supplier contract terms must be like; if any one of them has a screwup as simple as packing their parts onto a transport in the wrong order, it has major cost implications.

I worked for a supplier. We had some teething problems once on a new vehicle. We ended up helicoptering parts to the final assembly plant, so we wouldn't shut it down.

Yeah, I was going to say, look at Toyota. They pioneered a lot of this stuff and are still at it.

At one point this operational oomph was Dell's strongest point with which they crushed the competition. Until everybody imitated them, which they couldn't prevent because they were in the totally commoditized PC market anyway.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com