There’s one way to save Apple from irrelevance: New leadership
“Apple is facing a reckoning of its own making,” Jesus Diaz writes for Fast Company. “The Cupertino, California company has fumbled so many times in the last year, it is quickly approaching a technological blackhole — a point of no return in its transformation from a world-changing force to an inconsequential churner of shiny stuff.”
There’s one way to save Apple from irrelevance, Diaz writes: get rid of caretaker Tim Cook and
Jesus Diaz for Fast Company:
Under the leadership of Tim Cook, Apple’s former COO turned CEO, the company has multiplied its output of iPhones, iPads, and Mac models, while also creating a constellation of wearables, home devices, accessories, and remarkable services and advertising businesses. Cook is an exceptional operationalist who has cranked the money printing machine that Steve Jobs built up to 11…
Of course, Apple can’t and won’t fail, financially speaking. Not for a very, very long time, at least. But that doesn’t mean it can’t fail in what it really counts and has always counted: its ability to impact the way we live, creating entire new markets like it did with the Apple II, the Macintosh, the iPod, and the iPhone…
While Apple was wasting time with the Vision Pro and its axed Apple Car project, OpenAI and Google actually started to create the next “Next Big Thing” with generative AI. Apple appears to be years behind them. The company now finds itself with some goggles nobody wants and the dilemma of signing a contract with Google or OpenAI in order to remain relevant in the AI race.
Beyond some vague promises about some supposedly cool AI coming out in 2024, Cook has yet to articulate a “cohesive larger vision” that makes Apple part of this new computing era. And yes, I know that a company the size of Apple’s has to release rinse-and-repeat iPhones and a million sizes of iPad. These are the realities of a business of global scale, where the spreadsheets win. But without the vision Jobs spoke about, Apple just becomes what it is now: a massive peddler of commoditized consumer electronics and services that are practically indistinguishable from the competition’s. Just look at how Sony did exactly that…
It’s time for the board to get a new leader that can provide that “cohesive larger vision” that Jobs articulated. If Apple wants to avoid becoming the new Sony, if it wants to change the world once again, if that’s even still the goal, it needs someone who has unmatched design and product sensibility…
And without another Jobs in the world, here’s a wild idea to make this vision happen: Cook should buy OpenAI and LoveFrom. Then resign and get Sam Altman and Jony Ive in control. Maybe he makes himself president of the board. Altman is no Jobs. He doesn’t have the articulate charm. But what he has done at OpenAI has certainly proved that he has the instinct and the ability to conjure a “cohesive larger vision” for users. You might even say the kid has that young Jobs spark (he did get kicked out of his own company after all). And Ive… well, Ive is Ive. Everyone loves Jony. He’s design personified. He’s Dieter Rams with an ASMR voice and accent that makes my knees weak.
Support MacDailyNews at no extra cost to you by using this link to shop at Amazon.
MacDailyNews Take: It only seems like we wrote this. It’s nice to see more and more people are now recognizing that Apple’s main issue sits at the top of its org chart. Would that Apple’s BoD – upon which, unfortunately, Tim Cook sits – would see it, too.
We have never voted for Tim Cook in the Election of Directors nor will we vote for any subsequent Apple CEO in the Election of Directors. A CEO should not be on the BoD; too many conflicts of interest. – MacDailyNews, February 28, 2022
As we wrote on March 22, 2024:
There are a lot of people inside and outside of Apple who think the company should have waited on the Vision Pro, but it’s fairly easy today to see why Tim Cook released this beta (alpha?) devkit: He likely knew last year, or had a strong inkling, that Project Titan was a goner and there wasn’t much excitement in Apple’s pipeline. He’d need something to point to as “innovation” while he continued on his seemingly unending quest to iterate and monetize products invented by Steve Jobs’ Apple (a very different place) while continuing Apple’s retail store buildout. He also needed something to energize developers and, who knows, they might come up with a killer visionOS app while Apple toils on the long road to real lightweight spatial computing glasses and beyond.
More importantly, Apple last year had already come to the sad realization that they’d missed the generative artificial intelligence revolution and would need a distraction while they feverishly scrambled to catch up (the fruits of which — alongside what sound like disappointing partnerships which hopefully, somehow, preserve user privacy — we’ll hopefully begin to see at WWDC this June).
You have to feel for Cook. After a decade plus of being able to iterate and monetize Jobs’ inspired products and services and continue adding retail stores around the world to spectacular effect, and being lauded for it, he now finds himself in a place that requires actual vision to be able to see which path to take. And he’s not the guy. Even the guy who put him in the position knew it.
Tim’s not a product person, per se. – Steve Jobs
See also:
• Contrary to popular belief, Steve Jobs knew about Apple Watch – February 13, 2023
• Work on Apple Vision Pro began under Steve Jobs – August 23, 2023
Beyond the fact that Cook can’t even execute a compelling live keynote address, his big send off, the “Apple Car,” [the idea of which was also germinated under Jobs] fizzled in ignominious failure.
See also:
• Scrapped Apple Car ‘a massive disappointment that will alter the course of the company’s history, perhaps for decades to come’ – Gurman – March 11, 2024
• Apple employees referred to doomed Apple Car project as ‘The Titanic Disaster’ – February 29, 2024
So, despite myriad misgivings and protestations inside Apple, Cook pulled the trigger early on the Vision Pro. He had to have something to point to that would buy him some time. Even Apple’s rubber-stamping board of lackeys would wake up and start asking questions otherwise.
While Cook is hemming and hawing when faced with shareholders (virtually, of course, never again in person for as long as Cook remains), Apple is currently in scramble mode trying to catch up to rivals — including the world’s most valuable company, Microsoft — in generative AI, a technology the company seems to have completely missed while focusing instead on the not-ready-for-primetime Apple Vision Pro, visionOS, its now-canceled decade-long multi-billion-dollar electric vehicle boondoggle, replacing leather in iPhone cases and Apple Watch bands with overpriced junk in a quest to “save the planet,” forcing employees to endure a constant barrage of time-wasting zero-productivity DEI sessions, and myriad other various and sundry “initiatives” which Cook deems of import. – MacDailyNews, February 28, 2024
When you lose your visionary CEO and replace him with a caretaker CEO, this is the type of aimless, late, bureaucratic dithering that ensues. – MacDailyNews, November 21, 2017
Until it gets another visionary leader (fingers crossed; Apple’s history has shown – cough, Sculley, Spindler, cough – that the next CEO could be far, far worse than the very competent caretaker Cook), Apple can afford to miss things like generative AI – which they clearly did – and then use its huge war chest to catch up – which they’re doing right now (fun times and 80-hour weeks inside Apple Park!) – and, hopefully, surpass rivals (or at least be as good). Apple will very likely unveil their catch-up work within months (this June at WWDC 2024) in iPhones (and iPads, Apple Watches, etc.) with built-in on-device generative AI and other new AI-driven features. – MacDailyNews, February 14, 2024
Again, as we wrote back on April 1st:
Apple was caught flat-footed, due to a lack of vision on the part of leadership. They were, uh, focused elsewhere. Apple’s traditional data center network is not fit for generative AI. It will take years and billions of dollars to catch up just to where GenAI leaders (OpenAI, Microsoft, Alphabet, etc.) are today.
So, the only solution is to partner with a [Google, OpenAI, Baidu, etc.] for the real GenAI stuff while pretending (marketing) really hard that some on-device AI Apple has whipped up in a few months is “insanely great Apple innovation” that’s at the heart of Apple’s 2024’s AI announcements when it’s really just an adjunct… Watch Apple make a big show of its on-device AI at WWDC and run many ads touting it from June onwards.
Apple hopes to buy time for the data center buildouts and investments that will be required for them to someday own their own AI technology and not have to license it from the likes of [Google, OpenAI, Baidu, etc.].
This is what happens after a decade plus with a caretaker CEO at the helm after he hits the last page of his iteration playbook, yet attempts to stay in the game for too long.
See also:
• Work on Apple Vision Pro began under Steve Jobs – August 23, 2023
• Contrary to popular belief, Steve Jobs knew about Apple Watch – February 13, 2023
Please help support MacDailyNews. Click or tap here to support our independent tech blog. Thank you!
Support MacDailyNews at no extra cost to you by using this link to shop at Amazon.
The post There’s one way to save Apple from irrelevance: New leadership appeared first on MacDailyNews.
