Apple Succession Strategy: Keep the Old Guard Around as Long as Possible

Such as?

I can think of a few cases where the crotchety old guy poured absolute shit on the new guys who came up with radical new theories that turned out to be correct. But in both cases (Linus Pauling with respect to quasicrystals, Eric Thompson with respect to Mayan script decipherment), the field moved on long before he died.

You replied to me because your point has nothing to do with the point I made. Sorry still no idea why.

> keeping the old guard around only helps if the new leaders aren't having good ideas

Combining fresh ideas with experience is a bad idea?

In Apple’s case the leadership learned a ton of important lessons from being the scrappy underdog that was always fighting to succeed.

And they shouldn’t forget those.

But those same ideas and strategies may not work as well when you’re the biggest company in the world (or close). So I think either they’re in the tension you describe at the end of your comment, or they’ve taught the new generation the old ways so they’re not trying to change things enough.

The 30% starts off as a publisher/retailer's slice of the fee, for which 30% isn't a bad fee. But Apple has extended its 30% take from "this is what we take for people who buy stuff on our store" to "this is what we take for any transactions within applications buy from our store." This is (very weakly!) justifiable if you're looking at microtransactions as buying-on-an-installment-plan, but Apple is going much further and demanding 30% on what's effectively regular credit card transactions.

And if people consider American credit cards' 3% fees to be borderline usurious, think how much outrage a credit card with 30% merchant fees would create. And that's basically what Apple is trying to push now, a credit card with 30% merchant fees. No wonder they're desperate to prohibit apps from telling people "you can buy it cheaper anywhere but Apple."

> They’ve been going around demanding 30% of everyone’s revenue

Sorta Apples vs Oranges, but you should see how high the cut is for selling goods via places like Walmart/Amazon/Best Buy/etc.

> “Just don’t have an iPhone app” isn’t really viable at this point for a lot of businesses. It’s not 2008.

Interestingly, the 2008 Steve Jobs advice "Just make web apps and have people point their iP{hone's browser at your thing" is actually workable advice for an awful lot of iOS apps these days.

(I'm super pissed at Patreon caving to Apple and giving Apple 30% of every payment I send to support artists/creators just because Patreon think they need an iPhone app. )

Airpods of all the variations for one example, and those are ubiquitous.

AppleTV+ subscription based series, many of which have been extraordinarily well received, for another example.

Apple Watch and AirPods as two product categories panned at launch which have become power houses. Vision Pro might get there after a couple generations, too early to tell.

Let's look at it the other way around: what new categories did Jobs unveil? iPod, Apple Store, iPhone, Apple TV, iPad. Everything else was a remix. It's five things. People can point to four under Cook; Watch, AirPods, HomePod, Vision. Of course the company has slowed down, it's just normal but it's still innovative.

The point here is that the antitrust concerns are a natural consequences of them doing their job properly; with Apple becoming a bigger company - which is what is expected of them - it is quite natural that Apple will attract more scrutiny regarding their practices as a dominant player.

Their high level decisions and strategy created a desirable situation: Apple is bigger than ever. That situation has undesirable side effects, but overall the tradeoff is worth it.

It's what we call "rich people problem"; those are real problems - that need to be handled - but they are problems that "you wish to have" because it also means you solved a ton of other - more pressing - issues. And people don't usually look for "blame" in these situations.

Quite the opposite. Lack of succession planning is unlikely to be correlated with the effort required to organise retention of staff as Apple do.

And an overly dominant CEO generally doesn’t like senior staff who might provide counsel to stick around.

So the labour market only operates correctly if people opt for the highest paid job and do the most work?

Hard disagree from me then.

> That's a non tangible item and it means people are finding excuses to avoid participating in the market.

> Your goal is to have lots of "somethings" being done. That's how your economy grows and new opportunities are created.

That's quite a slanted view of how people participate in a real labour market. Pay is the easy to quantify stuff but most humans tend to have more than just pay as a priority, among others:

- time required for work (vs time spent on private endeavours, family, friends, ...). A Family and/or a healthy social life is a goal for most people.

- location (you might prefer to live in certain places due to culture or QoL)

- company culture (ideally, you might like how and with whom you work)

That's precisely not how markets work. A TON of people work not at the highest paying job but at the job they feel most comfortable. That can include a myriad of reasons:

- Job is more fun

- Flexible working hours

- More fitting location

- Allow WFH

- More vacation days

- Gym/food/something available

- Ability to learn from colleagues.

etc etc.

If the world were as you describe the job market would be a feeding frenzy where everyone is aiming for the top job by salary.