It is also strange this being brought up now in 2024. Because from 2014 to 2021 or 2022, the only sentiment allowed was every employees are roughly equal. There are no high performer. No such thing as 10x programmers etc.
I have a feeling that's partially due to how much money a lot of those people (and Apple shareholders) have made under Cook's leadership. The growth has been nothing short of incredible. IIRC Apple shares have grown like 8x or 9x under him (when accounting for inflation).
That said, Apple products no longer really have that magic that they had under Jobs (IMO). That could be because they focus now on processes and operations much more than creative technologies. Besides the watch (which was a natural continuation/evolution after the creation of the iPhone), I can't really think of projects created and developed under Cook that are game-changers or come from left field.
Process people are great in times where you need to focus on doing the same thing, day in day out...or improve on those same things. In other words, operational execution. However, don't ever trust a process person to do any creative or abstract thinking - it's impossible for them. They have tremendous value for certain types of companies at certain key phases of growth. They are "how" people, not "why" people...and certainly not "what if" people.
However the magic really isn't gone. The Apple Pencil is a nice invention whose whole purpose is for creative endeavors.
Gradual refinement isn't a bad thing either. While this isn't a new invention, it definitely feels like magic to wake up, take my M1 Air everywhere I go, and not have to charge it again until I go to bed (even in 2024, I doubt I could do the same with a Dell XPS). The extra benefit is I have no gimmicky touch screen or never used 2in1 hinges to deal with as well.
Its insane that Microsoft, who also produces the XBox, just couldn't be bothered to produce a quality HTPC interface for Windows, when they already had all the elements for such as early as their fantastic Zune interface. To this day, there is no proper UI for hooking my PC to a TV and using it as a strict entertainment center. You gotta download Playnite/Emby , etc
I think you're sort of making my point for me in a roundabout way. We don't need our consumer computing devices to come out with new iterations every year. That's more down to the process people who listen to Wall Street's wanton cries of "QoQ growth for all of time must happen or else we will riot". They look at Cook and say "we have to copy that". Instead of following the gaming console trend (a new device every 4-5 years that was clearly several technological steps up from the previous console), they become addicted to releasing nearly identical products with a few marginal changes because that gets them nice quarterly numbers.
I'd rather own a device, use it a few years, and then upgrade when the product utility and usecase demands I need to.
And you can tell even if you dont know much about supply chain. Their whole product market segmentation and how every iteration is a price / component reuse for maximum profits.
It isn't about new product or magic as many claims. It is having the gut feeling, or taste, to say this feature will be in the new mid range, and this will be flagship only. At the expense of maximising profits. Right now the whole Apple just feels it is all about operating efficiency.
In the old days it was the exact opposite, as long as Steve Jobs thinks it is not Apple's core competency or others could do it better he is very much willing to pay for it. Keeping everything as slim and as tight as possible. Even when he knew it could save some money.
And a lot of designs and user experience just feels much more complex. It feels more Android or Windows with every update. The urge to ship features after features.
It is unfortunate. Apple used to be the The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. Now they feels very much the same as Google or Microsoft. With slightly better taste, fits and finish in their products.
I think the only thing still worthwhile at Apple is macOS but they have been on a killing spree trying to completely annihilate everything that made it good in the first place. In some ways it's still somewhat nicer to use than Windows but it matters much less now that their hardware prices have skyrocketed and the lineup only makes sense in a profit maximization strategy.
Their desktops do not make sense at the price they are sold at: what I would consider a minimum viable (16GB of RAM, 512GB of SSD) Mac Mini starts at 1200€ (but what you really want is the "Pro" 10 cores version at 1500€). The problem is that you can literally get a laptop that will perform similarly for the same price or even less money. You could say that the laptop has a bad screen (the one I checked had a recent OLED so that's doubtful) or won't last on battery or whatever but in comparison you basically get it for free.
Their laptop could be good but the design is not great and the pricing is just insane when you consider the market. The minimum viable pricing for a MacBook Air would be 1760€ and a MacBook Pro 2230€. At those prices you get very underwhelming CPU/GPU performance considering. For all the hype Apple Silicon gets, base versions of their chips are good for efficiency but when you consider overall performance it's not really a good deal. Again, what you really want is the "Pro" version, but it starts at 2.5K€ and at this point you realize that you could buy a more performant PC plus a decent laptop to carry around with about the same budget. Now macOS is nice, but at what price?
This seems not true. I suspect one of many things Jobs and Cook have in common many tech leaders lack is "taste", a refined ability to curate well.
What a strange straw man that I can't connect to reality
What I've seen (on this site, on twitter, and on reddit) over those years was a reckoning that 10x employees aren't often worth the bullshit - their toxicity, that they may make others around them more than 10x UN-productive, and that our industry may have had a habit of treating these 10xers with kid gloves not caring the path of destruction they left of (and especially) female engineers.
Yes, I did see the occasional blog or tweet thread from some claiming that they didn't exist at all, but it was always immediately challenged because the concept is ridiculous. We've all worked with at least one 10xer (and by the way most of them WEREN'T toxic, but actually incredible, helpful, and generous).