Tim Cook Sold Out Steve Jobs (2025)
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There’s trade-offs, but in most cases the Apple call has tended to err on the side of ease of use and ease of access to the mass market at the expense of flexibility and versatility for tinkerers. It’s good for a market to have companies willing to make different sets of trade-offs to please different segments of the market rather than all herding around the preferences of a cluster of nerds.
The real problem is that the rest of the industry has “Apple envy” and just copies everything they think they can get away with instead of making their own sets of trade-offs.
For the majority of apples history their products were incredibly niche mostly used by designers because certain admittedly superior software for these professionals only shipped with MacOS.
The ipod and iphone were the first true mass market products.
And even to this day PCs and Android(outside the US) dominate the market share by user count.
PC and android are not for tinkerers and nerd, they are the default, apple positions itself as the premium.
Apple chose an internal connector that worked with their CPUs. They couldn't even offer the connection styles on PCs; they worked differently.
Apple built its own mouse and keyboard cabling because they wanted to allow their users to connect their mouse to their keyboard, and to start the computer from the keyboard. No common cable offered them that.
Apple was literally first to the common rigid diskette. That they came up with file systems of their own is a measure of their early investments, and their need to maintain compatibility. They couldn't move to FAT, they had already made their own stack.
From my side of the fence, PC makers were laggards trying to save pennies who couldn't be bothered to invest in better technologies. Apple's success in cornering the majority of profits in the computer sector is a measure of their continued failures.
But that's often the right route. Sometimes what the others are doing is not enough to deliver a good result. Micro-USB sucked, so they made Lightning. Flash ran slow, so they helped kill it.
The lenient contract with Microsoft and the unexpected to them ruling on reverse engineering the BIOS sealed their fate.
But no company wants to compete in a commodity, they all want to be monopolies. All the Unix vendors tried to be common enough to be a selling point but idiosyncratic enough to lock in their clients.
Apple isn’t nefarious… they are the default.
Now, if we want to support their ambitions with our wallets is another question
However it was too late to regain control and PS/2 alongside MCA was largely ignored.
That's not true, well the second part is not true. it's not the default, it's a choice they made, there is no default.
They could have opted for maximum interoperability and openess.
Sk Hynix does not work with only sk hynix motherboards(I don't know if they even make motherboards), Intel cpus do not only work with Intel NICs. AMD GPUs do not only work with AMD CPUs. Nvidia GPUs do not require an imaginary Nvidia OS.
Hell windows is happy to work with whatever hardware you throw at it, but Macs nowadays have soldered ram and storage. And you can't install MacOS on any hardware you might like.
Getting files in or out of an iPhone without a Mac was a nightmare just a few years ago and I am confident it still is.
That is, it appears to tacitly agree with, and chide IBM for failing to defended, closed, walled-garden ecosystems.
That's certainly not what it seems they meant. It's just how one might initially read it and downvote.
https://www.ntari.org/post/how-clean-room-reverse-engineerin...
In my bubble, the world was about ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 and Amiga, Atari ST, before PC clones became relevant.
All equally vertically integrated as Apple.
Careful... overspecialize (overintegrate), and you breed in weakness.
My personal computing life began much later, in the early 90s, in a very strange place filled with people whose very personal philosophies, and computer experiences, were a much better fit for x86 land. But this is something you rarely see explored in the thinkpieces that often make the rounds here.
I'm kind of struck my this because it reminds me of the some contrast between the two platforms during the mid-90s.
While no PC manufacturer controlled their HW stack like Apple did, making Macs more expensive than PCs by almost double, Windows was the only viable OS option as Linux distros had trouble supporting print functionality. Windows was never not hot garbage.
What Mac users got for their money in 1996 was out-of-the-box media production capacity in the form of CD quality (if not DAT on some models) audio and video (though not full-size broadcast quality yet), TTS and -- I _believe_ -- voice rec and of course a superior UX that turned mere users into babbling near-cultish apostles. PCs had superiority in 3D modeling and animation as well as gaming likely helped along by industry adoption (even Steve Jobs' Pixar went PC) but I don't remember any independent PC-based 3D animation folks like I recall independent Mac based visual designers, sound designers/musicians and video producers.
Mac users got their money's worth especially if they were creatives IMHO
The clones happened with cleanroom engineering which is legal.
And an okaish tv show where the first season is very loosely based on Compaqs clean room engineering effort. [2]
Basically what Apple News is, they don’t have a web or Android client.
There are news+ articles available to Apple subscribers. This is hardly “the internet”. This is analogous to premium memberships on websites.
Nor is it required that an app developer make an app for every platform. Microsoft doesn’t make office for Linux.
Wrong. Steve would have charged you for everything he thought they deserved, but he'd never allow ads in Apple Maps.
["We like our own stickers better."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COAOknlfMgI)
Handing the CEO reigns over to a supply chain or financial person is almost always a bad move.
They're the critical engine to every physical business, but don't confuse an engine with a steering wheel.
(And yes, I know Apple may be a more valuable company today from Cook's tenure, but I don't think anyone would say it's as cool of one)
Cook joined apple in 1998. They were not a behemoth. His first year, their net income was 300 million for the entire year.
There's a bit of power difference between SVP for worldwide operations (read: component supply and international manufacturing) and CEO.
Well Microsoft tried to do the exact same thing with that dreadful Microsoft Network in the early days of the web. So it's not inherit to Apple only, all large corporations would like their users locked up in their ecosystems.
Apple/OS X also contributed some nice things, by way of funding, hiring main devs, and/or heavily supporting certain FOSS projects: LLVM and Clang, CUPS printer drivers, WebDAV, WebKit, libc++, and Swift.
Also designed some widely used interface standards: FireWire (started by Apple), Thunderbolt (co-designed with Intel driven by Apple) which eventually turned into USB 4, Mini DisplayPort (later incorporated to the official DisplayPort standard, and even the design re-used for Thunderbolt).
There was nothing to "maximize rents" as there were no rents for the most part of OS X's journey until later Cook. They put out good products and people bought them, getting them out of near certain bankruptcy.
Judge the man on what he was. And he was those things brilliantly.
In the economics textbook sense of the word. You will own nothing and rent forever. You will not have control over your own data or devices. Having that control is a threat to someone's revenue model for getting you to pay for monthly subscriptions to things and services.
Microsoft's new user out of box experience for Windows 11 is also a fine example of this.
Imagine where we would be at right now if the Windows Phone had been a wild success and the Microsoft App Store on the Windows Phone was also a wild success. You think the fees and commissions charged and terms/conditions for app publishers would be much different?
The first sentence from the wikipedia article seems good to me: "R-seeking is the act of growing one's existing wealth by manipulating public policy or economic conditions without creating new wealth."
"Rent-seeking middlemen: These actors insert themselves into a transaction by force, law, or monopoly control. They do not make the trade easier or better. They just demand a toll or fee because they control access."
Monopoly app store enforced on devices by firmware/operating system lockout inserting yourself as the only middleman to distribute things meets the definition.
google "economics rent seeking app store"
> For example, just recently, Apple deployed its formidable multi-billion-user global cloud infrastructure in service of… promoting the Brad Pitt Formula 1 movie. People were, understandably, a bit disconcerted to see their wallet payment app sending them promotional messages about a film, and Apple undoubtedly screwed up in polluting a functional messaging channel about transactions with a commercial message, but hey — this is a clear sign Apple knows it’s got the power to drop a note directly into millions of people’s pockets.
I think it's important to remind ourselves that the responsibility doesn't lie with the one individual. Even the visit to the WH dinner - it is the company, Apple, via various structures committed to doing those things with various VPs and staff onboard brainstorming and supporting along the way.
So "John" may bring some nuances but let's not be under the illusion that a huge corporation like Apple would suddenly bounce off to a different track.
No, the responsibility lies with the culture of growth at all costs. Margins and revenues must continue to increase, whatever else happens.
If you want to blame someone, blame whoever decided it was a great idea to pay executives in stock/stock options. That's what incentivises this kind of behaviour.
As an aside, it's amusing to me that Apple ran so hard on privacy with (apparently) the explicit intention of creating a market for their ad products.
Yes, I do agree that extreme forms of capitalism are responsible for ruining practically every aspect of modern tech.
> Apple ran so hard on privacy with (apparently) the explicit intention of creating a market for their ad products
Indeed. It wasn't obvious at the time, but with hindsight we can see that the push for privacy was only in areas where Apple wanted to counter Meta/competitors or gain advantage in specific verticals. It was never "user focused".
What the tech companies have been doing to the internet since about the early aughts has been no different, they've been using the same kind of enclosure strategy to limit and parcel out and divide up the internet among the ruling psychopaths.
This starts with a wrong assumption. Like if there was a "Linux community" company driven by a CEO.
I wouldn't care about the rents if they weren't in the form of ads being shoved in everywhere. The "2 ads in the first 3 results" of the App Store is a horror show.
I think it sucks too.
That's a pretty big euphemism for Steve Jobs being a piece of shit. What I've realized throughout the years of working is that being able to work as a team is almost more important than your technical capacity. You can always become better in your field, but becoming a better human is a lot harder.
Jobs revolutionized music and computing.
Like, maybe find a better example?
I guess it is possible, but I would be very surprised.
I might even think that the AK-47 or the Glock have more name recognition. But what do I know?
A "yes" on the AK, and a "no" on the Glock.
The AR-15, incl. its variants, isn't called "America's Rifle" for nothing; it's the West's (tm) (cultural) analogon to the AK. Make the test and ask some "normies" to pick out an AR-15. Then do the same for the Apple products. I doubt many will be able to pick out an Apple II.
It's good to have a fandom.
Okay. Sure. Just as there are people who call(ed) every video game console, or even home computer, under the sun "a Nintendo". I wouldn't call that casual familiarity... but I'm not here to argue about it.
> It's good to have a fandom.
I s'pose. If you've thought that's me you're sordidly mistaken; I'm not a gun afficionado but just somebody who's got to shoot short- and long-barreled guns to keep my weapon's permits, which I need if I ever have to carry one on the job. I would describe myself as casually familiar with guns, not more.
If anything he was one of the few hard a-holes that managed to channel that to productive purposes
Being a jerk is easy. Being a jerk that still keeps people motivated it really hard.
Kubrick was known for that as well.
Only total losers whine about such silly things in successful people...
That might depend on how strict "alone" is. (Perhaps by definition, only having a singular exceptional trait makes it challenging to be renown.) For example, might Fred Rogers count? Or Dolly Parton who, though remembered for many things, has kindness as a core part of her legacy.
I think many people are remembered for being kind, but only by those who knew them very well, such as family and friends.
RIP Dolly
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[meme:bobbyHILL@classroom_window.jpeg] "Thanks to Dolly, these kids can read, and they are very upset..."
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Long live the Queen['s Imagination Libraries]!
That phrase gets bandied about quite casually in my experience. Usually is an ironic light joke about somebody in your peer group on talking to other people or near your peer group.
As such, it's been sort of semantically watered down quite a lot in our popular cult.
But it's perfect for people like Steve Jobs.
He was, objectively, a huge POS. Ask anyone who worked with him. He ruined people for capital gain. He failed to acknowledge his first child. He time and again made people miserable.
Steve showed a generation of CEOs that being an asshole was a viable strategy.
The football t-shirts we were given for dailywear said something to the effect of "loved by few, feared by some, respected by ALL" – and I just can't help but feel this message was terrible advice for [our] young impressionable minds.
We probably deserved it, when playing more-modest football programs, when the opposing team changed their objective from scoring points to breaking our ankles (literally).
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All to say, I have several brothers, two of whom are experts in their respective fields (engineering and law), with decades (each) of practice and expertise:
they come off immediately as know-it-all assholes (to most people; to me, occassionally) simply because their levels of expertise come with the sacrifice of social niceties (not always, but often).
[within their circles, however, they are respected as gods]
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But to offer from their perspective (as a stupider brother of these two): most people my two "asshole" brothers deal with actually are quite stupid [relatively]; they are having to deal with us "morons" on an hourly basis [†]
Once you get past the outer asshole wrapper, these are the people that are driving our societies (for better or worse) "forwards" – do not forget this – they are assholes because they care so much about their work/goals [∑]
[†] remember the Carlin joke: think of the average person, and realize that half of people are dumber that that || to true geniuses (which I am not, but two brothers are) we are all "fucking idiots, most of the time" (to paraphrase their amalgamation)
[∑] e.g: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%27s_law> [tl;dr: half the work is performed by the sqrt(#people)]
My hypothetical argument (based on forty years with these two humans) is: the opposite would be worse (for these rare mental powerhouses "to not care," to not produce).
The bigger concern I have in a world of genAI-overlords is that too many competing AIgoalsetters will result in us humancattle becoming "tragedied in the commons," where too many competing goals overwhelm the limits of actual humanity's desire "to care" [i.e. most people do NOT want to work all the time; these two brothers do, as I presume hyperintelligent genAIs will, as well].
#They'reMadeOutOfWeights #Inexhaustable
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I am an identical twin with one of these entities, yet am (probably) among the laziest people I've ever met (not that I can't/don't/&haven't worked), but I prefer to do literally nothing (hobbies, only, in limited dosages).
There are many engineers in the world and quite a lot of driven people who achieve things and enjoy letting one know it but the world is 8 billion people now and nobody can be Isaac Newton or Einstein or whatever. Nobody is really irreplaceable and one should not try to compete for renown unless one wants to make oneself unhappy. If someone loves you and you have enough to eat and somewhere to sleep and you're not overly worried about tomorrow then you're winning and if one of those things is missing then sort it out but don't go around talking about how you're lazy. ** that s*t.
Yes, this is how I observe my Truth; but also, what I'm trying to share/convey is that these "high functioning" individuals (e.g. two of my brothers) view almost everybody else as lazy (myself included).
While there is truth to this, I'm not trying to belittle myself; I'm trying to share how my own super-duper-intelligent brothers view most-everybody-else in this world... at least 7.8 billion of us.
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Thanks for your perspective. I think my biggest frustration (perhaps this is "normal: you got older"?) is that as they've hyperfocused in their specialties, they don't really have time for (almost) anybody else. I guess that's okay.
There are many other options... A reframe that may be more compelling:
Anger and lashing out at events you can't control is a form of stupidity. It is emotional stupidity. You are expending resources and energy for no gain. It's natural and expected, but also something we can improve at.
You are also likely harming your goals by engendering ill-will. Any motivational benefit provided by being tough on those you interactive with can be achieved more directly, without 90% of the "asshole" piece. One can be firm, assertive, and determined without the poor emotional regulation.
>> Lashing out at events you cannot control is a form of stupidity
...added to my bulletin board of motivational flashcards.
Those should not be ideals we strive for; you can excel without sacrificing social niceties and we should strive for intellectual humility. As one gets better in their respective fields (specially in ours that is always changing so fast), one should try to keep its ego in check. There is a saying in my country: "No one is so big that they cannot learn, nor so small that they cannot teach."¹
The problem with "know-it-all assholes" is that most think they are always talking to someone below them and their expertise carry on to all other fields². Their pride may prevent them from admitting from learning from even the most ignorant of beings.
As an exercise, ask your brothers the times that they were wrong (specially if there was anytime that came from someone that surprised them). If they fail to recollect many stories, I fear you're only hearing one part of the story and you'll never know it yourself. Steve Jobs himself used to do that: people would bring ideas to him that he would dismiss. A week later, he would come back with the idea presented as his.
We should strive to be gentle and humble to anyone, despite success in a field: we'll never know who we're talking to and what they can teach us. Perhaps is our misconception that we think that we're average (or above average) that prevents us from learning from other people.
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¹There is a variation, "No one is so ignorant that they have nothing to teach, no one is so wise that they have nothing to learn.", but I kinda like the former because it fits perfectly with the Lord of the Rings.
²I'm not raising the Dunning-Kruger card here.
I forgot to address that you mentioned explicitly that assholes are pushing our society forward and they are assholes because they care about their work. Be careful to not conflate expertise and assholeness. As I mentioned in my comment, assholeness is a disguise; it's not a necessary condition to be excellent in your field. It may help one to achieve their own goals sometimes --- which in general revolves around getting more money to the highest bidder and themselves. They care so much about their work that sometimes they have a huge blindspot that prevents them from seeing the tragedy of the commons right in front of them (per Upton Sinclair's law). No, it's not expertise, it's lack of character. They are simply unaligned with what's good for society vs. what would bring them more money. Steve Jobs was an expert in some fields, but he needed Steve Wozniak. Wozniak is a great counterpoint to Jobs expert-assholeness: he was an expert (a programmer's programmer), cared about his work, and for all accounts, was kind and ethical. As an example of just an asshole, there's Martin Shrkeli and several other politicians that fit the bill --- just assholes, not experts, pushing their own goals.
The main element missing from my previous comment (which you responded to) is my failure to convey that my two expert brothers' "assholeishness" stems from having to deal with literal stupider people, all day long. Not just customer service dealing with general public -stupid, but actually 40-IQ-points-LOWER -stupid.
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>As an exercise, ask your brothers the times that they were wrong
I know most of the few skeletons hanging in their closets; somehow all the chaos, on the road went to me (they are both indoor cats, now).
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I'll read over more of your thoughts and update if anything else sticks out to me. From a legal-representation-POV, obviously you want a bigBAD asshole representing you (it's just how the game works).
Thank you for your replies, I'll muse over this discussion as well.
> From a legal-representation-POV, obviously you want a bigBAD asshole representing you (it's just how the game works).
This one I cannot think of a counterexample right now. It does seem necessary.
Is this a true realization though? Lots of people are very nice, but Jobs got a shit ton done that was truly remarkable.
That said, in the entrepreneurial space it's less clear to me this is true. In a team setting? Sure. But the C-suite of a business isn't necessarily a team sport and a lot of wildly successful CEOs are notoriously pieces of shit including Gates, Bezos, Zuck, Musk, and many others.
This sounds so self-gratifying. You could have also written: "I am better than Steve Jobs and I look down on him".
But I couldn't help, most of the way through it, to crystalize the respone, "How did we get the idea Tim Cook was chosen because he was likely to be much like Steve Jobs?" Honestly, having watched the Steve Jobs commencement address several times, I kept going back to his declaration that "Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new."
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Jobs died while I worked for Texas' body farm... his "liver line cutting" was big news; my own institution eventually found itself in an unrelated (and much bigger!) bodyparts trafficking scandal (look up "selling Texas bodyparts scandal" circa 2020) [†].
There's lots of money in used bodyparts.
To be quite literal: the majority of Americans are worth more dead than alive (considering 70%+ live paycheck-to-paycheck)...
[†] I am still donating my own body to the accused institution, UNT – I hope an equally-sick-fuck gets me =P
Remember that there are documented supply chain infiltrations with Apple's total compliance, that they don't conveniently tell about when running their "Apple is secure" ads
he knew he was facing an incompetent petty adversary. so instead of preserving his ego - he damaged his instead of damaging Apple itself. that's a martyr like sacrifice.
has Tim Cook put company profits over the customer - yes. but has Tim Cook preserved apple's value & position yes when it could have been severely damaged by trump, YES.
I will be glad when the Tim Cook era is over for good.
Also, you might want to do a little research on the current board members.
To do so was the right thing, as it meant standing up for everyone; giving up on the rights of the unpopular means in the end, none of us have that protection. It's a hell of a stance for a public company to take though, and a time Apple can say they were on the right side of history. Will anyone say the same about Cook being so subservient this time?
Cook embarrassed himself and every Apple employee by doing what Volkswagen did with the Nazis. That is what Cook will be remembered for.
Hopefully in 2 years every company that 'bended the knee' will excise the leadership that thought it was a good idea. Shows a lack of good judgement and understanding of the social order.
Your integrity as a leader has value. Squandering it to slow down some tariffs is foolish.
Steve’s main claim to fame was Apple 2.0 when he brought the company back from the brink of bankruptcy. He had almost no choice but to take radical bet-the-farm bets as the status quo was the company goes bankrupt.
Tim Cook inherited a company on an upward trajectory and kept it going. His core job was don’t $&@? it up, and at that he was very successful. Was Apple potentially less innovative during his tenure? Yeah probably, but it was stable and grew massively under his oversight, which was the job. Most shareholders that held their stock after Steve left are very happy with their returns since then.
https://news.macgasm.net/iphone-news/how-apple-fixed-antenna...
No, I don’t. It’s worked brilliantly for me for decades. You should try it sometime - if you have any decent opinions, that is.
> Reach customers where only Apple Ads can take you
ads.apple.com clearly promotes exclusive access to advertise to Apple users on Apple devices.
IBM was selling mainframe computers before 1945? That's impressive, since ENIAC, the supposed first general purpose computer, was invented in that year
However, there is very good evidence that IBM did sell calculation and bookkeeping hardware to Nazi Germany, and that the Nazis used it to organize the Holocaust:
Yes Tim is not Steve. We all knew that and know that, so? It’s still the company that most respects its users’ privacy, which isn’t saying much but it respects it more than other companies with foreigners at the helm such as Microsoft and Google. Not that I think they’d be different if run by American born leadership. Bill nor Eric would not be better. It’s the state of affairs in the world today.
What an odd statement. Steve Jobs didn't know his biological parents until he was well into adulthood. And if you're going to bring up his biological father, who he wanted little to do with, why ignore his biological mother, Joanne Carole Schieble?
According to the NY Times, "Steve Jobs developed a relationship with his biological mother, Joanne Schieble [Simpson], while firmly declining a relationship with his biological father, Abdulfattah “John” Jandali."
https://archive.nytimes.com/bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/2...
I’d bet he’d never point this out.
The author is doing the same. Personal background has minimal impact in these kind of decisions.
Policy is about what happens to other people for politicians (and billionaires).
It made sense for apple to suck up, in order to avoid vindictiveness and extract benefits.
If they get super lucky, the tide turns and they keep going as if nothing happended a couple of trillion dollars richer.
If they are less lucky things get more authoritarian, they keep most of their autonomy extract more benefits, and dear leader keeps their balls in a small box on his desk.
If they get unlucky, the mercurial dear leader decides he is done with them, and their companies get broken up at best, or they fall out of windows down the road.
We have seen the last scenario play out in Russia, and the second one play out in China.
Taking a stand and calling out what's happening might be the decent thing to do, but gets them nothing.
This of course only applies to billionaires running huge companies, everyone else is pretty much better of making a stand.
Where Apple has been falling down is software. Vertical integration of hardware and software is their bread and butter, so I have to think he appreciates the software layer in ways that Cook (a business guy) is unable to appreciate. Wow, I really hope so. This could be a nice resurgence of quality coming up. I really hope I'm right.
I mean, a guy with an engineering degree is gonna be in charge. That's not Steve, who didn't earn a degree but had a deep product sense. But it's very different from Tim, who has no computer-nerd inside.
If Ternus doesn't fall into that trap, he'll be great.
And also being a supporting character at podcasts: https://youtu.be/WEnBCfzsgyE?t=95
The AI companies' marketing plan, FOMO, worked--just on themselves and competitors.
Everyone here is like “Jobs would have done this would have done that”, but the truth is he never lived long enough to turn Apple into the profitable and, mind you, financially resilient giant that it is today. It’s all idolatrous speculation, meanwhile Tim Cook has actually put in the work.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/23/opinion/apple-tim-cook-ou...
Absolutely right.
But Anil also falls into this trap of believing the myth of Jobs over who he actually was. Steve Jobs was a Silicon Valley capitalist who took parts the hippie counterculture ethos and baked it into an image that sold well to consumers. He was not some revolutionary, he just successfully used the language of revolution to sell a better product than his competitors.
The critical point is that there are points where she and her husband worked with Nazis, and where Otto Frank even justified one of his employees joining the Nazi party.
To paraphrase, (because it's been a few years since I read the book and I don't have time to look up the text,)
After the Franks were arrested, Meip (who hid the Franks) biked to a Nazi base where a sympathetic soldier fed her. (She was starving.) The soldier kept her in a Nazi prison overnight as a "fake prisoner" because she became too sick to bike home.
Otto Frank called one of his Nazi friends a "Good Man" who (paraphrasing) probably joined the Nazi party because he needed to find business opportunities. (Again, to survive)
> There's no point in having fuck-you money in the bank if you never say "fuck you"!
Imaging thinking it even matters what Tim cook or Trump do. Imagine thinking Tim Cook is anything but a stand in book keeper and stock promoter. Imagine thinking Trump is anything but a heel turn pro wrestler. Trump is bunkem for the masses and Tim Cook is irrelevant and a follower.
Steve was a an idea guy. Tim was a seeker of efficiencies and consensus -- boring and common.
I didn't buy one apple product during Tim's tenure but I still have my IIe and several old Macs converted to Linux.
Genius is often regarded as brutish or mean by lesser people. Your feelings on it do not matter.
Cook was simply too weak to resist enshittification. He was just another CEO.
Steve Jobs was a sociopath and an absolutely terrible leader himself, but he was a different kind of terrible.
Tim Cook ordered the production of decent hardware and pretty impressive ARM processors.
Jobs is the son of an immigrant? So is Kash Patel.
I do find the submissiveness of tech CEOs towards Trump ridiculous, especially since they pretended to be woke under Biden. Now corporate fascism has been unmasked. Better don't forget if a Democrat wins in 2028 and the CEOs are "woke" again. But singling out Cook? Really?
Author is projecting their own political outlook as the only correct one and is again turning Steve Jobs into tech jesus without acknowledging historical facts and realities of thing. Furthmore, Tim Cook deserves a lot of criticism but not having a spine cannot be one of them because his role isnt to rage against the machine.
Isn't Cook the guy who literally gave a gold statue to a sitting US president? I probably couldn't come up with a more spineless move even if I tried. Doesn't require a "rage against the machine" mindset to not intentionally go out of your way to participate in open and public corruption of politicians. Or am I remembering the wrong person here?
No that was indeed Tim Cook (though it was 24 karat gold plaque not a statue).
Whatever his legacy is, that's a thing people are going to remember him for, Bending the knee to a President who should never have been President in the first place.
According to whom? The American people seemed to think he should be president. The thinly veiled contempt for democracy and voters among those who hate Trump is funny considering how much time they spend talking about "defending democracy".
He's their clown, they just made him the rest of the worlds problem.
Still they elected him, they can deal with the fall out, the rest of us just wish they'd go away and deal with their own shit.
I would not want that job. As a matter of fact, as I started up the ladder in the company I was working for I realized that politics (internal and external) are a big part of the job and I was just not suited nor qualified for it, so I quit. But that is what CEO's must do if they want their company to be successful.
https://www.wsj.com/tech/steve-jobs-apple-next-cia-161b65f9
"The Hidden Debt That Apple Owes to the CIA: Without CIA funding that helped keep NeXT afloat in the ’80s, Steve Jobs might not have made a triumphant return to Apple—and the iPhone might not have its foundational operating code."
I'm inclined to see Apple Silicon as fairly innovative.
very much so -- same for UI components, which they keep changing for no good reason except to feel "fresh and new"
Where's Jolla? I did a quick place search (explicitly excluding La Jolla) but nothing turns up.
I wouldn't say they're an exact copy...
Then why is Apple releasing a folding phone now?
We'll see. I remember when the Apple Car was imminent, and it wouldn't be the first bullshit rumor in the Mac world.
Hell, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirPower_(Apple) was officially announced.
I don't want my next phone to be something I need to figure out all over again. I want the buttons in the same place, the OS to work the same way..
My phone is just another thing in my daily life like my car or my coffee machine. The less I have to think about any of those things - vs. just using them and getting on with my day - the happier I am.
There's advances to be had in cameras, battery life and other tech inside the rectangular slab, but in terms of innovating on the form factor, the practical reality of what people want to hold and put in their pockets will dictate the maximum size and form factor.
not one?
If you can come up with a better experience and it's a worthwhile change that materially improves the product, I will take it of course.
On the software side iOS introduces new useful features for sure, I don't deny that. They also took a nice simple flat UI and glass-ified it in a really dumb way. And the OS is so bloated that I lose 10-15% of my storage to packages and installation files (seriously go look up how much of your phone's storage is used by "System files").
But on the hardware side these days they're just fiddling with the camera and moving the buttons around, and that's not something I want to have to care about when I upgrade.
This is of course all subjective, I'm sharing my view here, not implying that I speak for the world.
Ive has been working at other stuff, like building a Ferrari that looks more like a giant RC car
Fucking hate this trend so much. My Pixel 8 is an absolute dogshit phone compared to my Pixel 2 for the same reason. Phones are giant now, impossible to use with one hand anymore, and slide off of fucking everything because they don't lie flat, and are uncomfortable to hold with how top-heavy they are too. I wish phone design would have stagnated, about 10 years ago. A phone's form factor did not need innovating! It was already perfect!
If you've got one device for all your computing then you want something more capable, I think there's more scope for variation is when it's in conjunction with another device, mobile plus your choice of watch/tablet/laptop/desktop/etc. that doesn't necessarily have to be on your person or quickly accessible, task dependent.
I recently booted up an old Samsung S10, and the size is just chef's kiss.