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Apple's Tim Cook Shares What He Learned From Steve Jobs (businessinsider.com)
Speaking at Oxford, Apple CEO Tim Cook shared a lesson learned from the "spectacular" commercial failure of the Power Mac G4 Cube in 2000 -- and from his mentor Steve Jobs. An anonymous reader quotes Business Insider:
"It was a very important product for us, we put a lot of love into it, we put enormous engineering into it," Cook said of the G4 Cube on stage. He calls it an "engineering marvel." At the time, Cook was Apple Senior VP of Worldwide Operations, recruited personally by then-CEO Steve Jobs... While the design was a hit, it was $200 more expensive than the regular Power Mac G4, a more traditional-looking PC with very similar specs. And some Cubes would develop cosmetic cracks in the acrylic cube casing due to a manufacturing flaw. In his talk, Cook says that Apple knew the Cube was flopping "from the very first day, almost..."
Ultimately, Cook says, it was a lesson in humility and pride. Apple had told both employees and customers that the G4 Cube was the future. And yet, despite Apple's massive hype, demand just wasn't there, and the company had to walk away. "This was another thing that Steve [Jobs] taught me, actually," says Cook. "You've got to be willing to look yourself in the mirror and say I was wrong, it's not right." In a broader sense, Cook says that Jobs taught him the value of intellectual honesty -- that, no matter how much you care about something, you have to be willing to take new data and apply it to the situation.
He advised his audience to "be intellectually honest -- and have the courage to change."
And the article points out that today there's a small but enthusiastic community who are still hacking their Power Mac G4 Cubes.
Ultimately, Cook says, it was a lesson in humility and pride. Apple had told both employees and customers that the G4 Cube was the future. And yet, despite Apple's massive hype, demand just wasn't there, and the company had to walk away. "This was another thing that Steve [Jobs] taught me, actually," says Cook. "You've got to be willing to look yourself in the mirror and say I was wrong, it's not right." In a broader sense, Cook says that Jobs taught him the value of intellectual honesty -- that, no matter how much you care about something, you have to be willing to take new data and apply it to the situation.
He advised his audience to "be intellectually honest -- and have the courage to change."
And the article points out that today there's a small but enthusiastic community who are still hacking their Power Mac G4 Cubes.
Wait, now I actually read it.
""This was another thing that Steve [Jobs] taught me, actually," says Cook. "You've got to be willing to look yourself in the mirror and say I was wrong, it's not right.""
Steve Jobs, the archetypical narcissist, taught him that? Did he teach him that by providing an example of what not to do?
The Cube and Can are my two favorite machines becasue they fit into my desktop, esthetically. Differentiation in the electronics, NSM.
The processing power of each meant that the cube didn't last that long there, and the Can will eventually go. The cube CPU upgrade make it noisy (had a fan), and that constant annoyance was that about that. The Can is still sitting on my desk, and is perfect for what it is. But it's now 3yrs old, and simulations are taking hours to run again...
Both are Geek toys. Nothing wrong with that. But if Tim learned anything, perhaps it was that the Can would sell a certain number, and that is a 'success' in it's own right. But not a break away financial one.
Oh. And thanks, BTW, for both machines.
Here's exactly what Cook learned from Jobs: "not enough".
I'm simply disgusted with the changes to the latest macbook pros. I'm using a mid-2015 right now and I would have upgraded already if there were any actual "upgrades" available. Each model newer than mine is a downgrade in various ways - fewer ports, stupid touch bar thing replacing the function keys and escape key (I'm a vi user - ugh!), different power adapter (WTF?!?!?), etc. In addition to these literal downgrades there are no real upgrades to be had. I have 16GB of memory, I think they might have 32 now but, geeze, come on. Drive space? Not only do I have to pay out the ass for a flash drive, I can't easily connect external hard drives now since the ports are screwed up.
Just, stupid.
Apple led the way back when it made sense - getting rid of floppies (the time was right), getting rid of DVD drive (the time was right). But this is no longer leadership, it's just stupidity. People are still going to use external drives for some time - people like will likely use them indefinitely. I use a laptop with an external monitor (in my case a 49" UHD TV) - I need extra ports.
I've invested a ton in Apple hardware over the last 10 years, but when I have to buy another computer it's probably going to be running Linux. I have to keep a Mac or Windows machine around for Photoshop and such.
Do you have ESP?
Steve Jobs valued humility and admitting it when wrong? He literally told everyone experiencing a real, flawed antenna design in their phones that *they* were holding it wrong.
First link for "you're holding it wrong": http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TECH/mobile/06/25/iphone.problems.response/
This is a bullcrap attempt to further deify Jobs, reality be damned. Thank heavens some of us have and always will be immune to the supposed distortion field.
Captcha: conjure
Don't let Jony Ive run amok with your "Pro" laptops.
#DeleteChrome
Apple is always going to say whatever their new thing is is the way of the future, they are pretty much obligated to say that. Whether that is the G4 Cube, the Trashcan Mac, Magsafe, Firewire, styluses (styli?), the port-variationless Macbooks or iPhone face unlock but ultimately it is up to the customers to make the distinction whether that is true or not. The rabid fanboys will defend whatever they do and whatever they say anyway but ultimately they are a for-profit corporation and the market decides when they backpeddle and when they don't.
Some things have turned out to indeed be the way of the future, some haven't and some we don't yet know. It's obviously ridiculous to defend and parrot that XYZ is the way of the future just because Apple (or any company or person for that matter) says it is when they are trying to sell it to you.
Oh, okay. So instead of doing what Steve Jobs taught you, i.e. "You've got to be willing to look yourself in the mirror and say I was wrong, it's not right." you're telling us we're the ones who need to change?
Update the Mac mini, really update the MacBook Air and hurry up with the new Mac Pro already. Releasing hardware without headphone jacks and making all the UIs flat as shit isn't innovating, it's moving stuff around to give us the impression that you're doing anything at all.
#DeleteFacebook
"It just works." -> "It just doesn't really work _for_me_ any more."
I suspect you've been around the computer industry at least as long as I have. If so, that makes you a power user who has a very well-established set of tastes for the way things should behave.
You and I have not been the target market for Apple for about ten years now. Basically ever since the iPhone came out and Apple realized that it was a digital appliance company and Steve dropped the " Computer" off the name "Apple Computer". It wasn't a subtle move; he did it in front of the largest press event Apple hosted, directly following major product announcements.
For ten years Apple has been veering away from the customer base it always had. You and I have taken a journey, from VIP seats at the restaurant, with the ear of the maître d' ... to a bench in the back alley next to the dumpster, waiting for scraps.
Or hey, let me put it in even stronger terms. We're the engineers working at the local mill. Apple used to love living in our modest home and folding our laundry exactly the way we like it. But then, on a whim, she took part in a variety show, and Ed Sullivan happened to be in town, and he put her on live TV for five minutes and she wore a killer dress and sang with an incredible voice and now, ten years later, we are a long distant memory, still punching the clock at the local mill, while Apple lives in Beverly Hills behind a very tall fence designed to keep her millions of ravenous fans at bay.
That is our situation.
You can call the current range of Apple products "disappointing in terms of actual usability", but that strikes me as the perspective of someone who is used to interacting with their machines a certain way to do certain things, and doesn't actually care about all the other zillion things people use their machines to do.
The Apple restaurant no longer cares about our tastes in food. The Apple girlfriend no longer cares about what we do at the steel mill. She's gone, man. We can watch her sing on TV and hopefully enjoy that and wish her well, and recognize that it doesn't matter that she can't fold laundry worth a damn any more, because her laundry days are done. But that's the extent of our involvement here.
Even a MILLION geeks, all screaming in unison about the headphone jack, ... is irrelevant now. Last year Apple passed the one BILLION mark for iPhones sold, before introducing the iPhone 7. Then, in the ensuing year, they sold A QUARTER BILLION MORE. Those devices are "working", for many people. It's senseless to even try arguing the other way. But are they working for us? For you and me?
Well, perhaps if we get docking stations. And if bluetooth audio quality stops sucking...