This doesn't sound like a positive development to me. This kind of structure almost always seems to lead to less accountability and more business-speak bullshit.
Another one from the article:
> investors now have the CEO's ear for the first time in years
To that, I say, "Oh crap".
Jobs took Apple to greatness because he obsessed over making incredible products. Build incredible products and the money and investors will follow. Change your focus to investors, operations, or accounting and watch as the products suffer.
CNN's breathless and laudatory tone in describing all these responsive changes from Apple just serves as a reminder that reporters should just keep their views to themselves. You can tell that this CNN reporter/editor has a tingle up his leg over Cook's touchy-feely professionalism... as though that's going to improve Apple in any way that matters to those of us who use their products.
Cook may not be a disaster on the level of John Sculley, but his focus on the corporation of Apple rather than on the coolness of its products would worry me if I was long on AAPL.
Tim Cook is a very talented business and operational manager. I don't think he should try to become a "product guy" CEO just because Steve Jobs was a product guy CEO. He should stick to spending his personal time on doing what he does best--operations.
Yeah, product development at Apple is going to suffer because Steve Jobs is gone. There's nothing anyone can do about that, including Tim Cook. The thing that Cook has to do is protect what remains of the great creative processes that are still going. If we hear that investors have Ives' ear, that's when it's time to panic.
It would worry me even as a just a user of Apple's products. It should worry all men because it could mean a slower progress of humanity in technology.
If it were not for the Jobs' obsession, would we even have an iPad in the year 2012? Given his absence, when are we going to have the next such a thing?
The world needs people like Steve. Apple, or not.
Not to sound to biased, but project management-style documentation is all completely horrific, obfuscating bloat.
We've spent the last half year basically establishing what we knew before the whole thing started. Documentation like that seems to be 100% bloat that is designed to make people feel like they're doing something to earn the upper management title.
The growing M&A team Lashinsky describes is a good case in point. Cook handled that when they had a fraction of the $110 Billion they have today. They started adding specialists when Google swooped in and acquired AdMob, and have done well since (Siri, Anobit, Chomp). Considering how much more competitive the talent market has become, this strikes me as perfectly logical.
1. As an example, gaming on OS X has traditionally sucked (it has gotten better in spite of Apple). The primary reason: Jobs didn't care about gaming. Put some bizdev people who are analyzing it for what the users want and what will grow OS X adoption, and there could be a very different outcome, including more M&A activity.
If you compare the Jobs 2.0 Apple to the 1990s Apple, improved operational execution (supply channel management, demand forecasting, etc) made a huge impact on the bottom line.
That's pretty impressive for an R&D focused company.
That's subsidized, for what it's worth.
I think Tim has convinced Jobs that operation and execution is all part of the product experience.
Assuming you're in your thirties: A man that has worked at Apple since you were a late teenager, in several leadership positions, has far more to do with what the company is today than your pithy comment.