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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.
So... do we get a proper tower mac pro back now?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
This is exactly the issue - change for the sake of change. There was literally no reason to change the power adapter. None. Removing USB ports? Stupid. It almost certainly still uses USB internally for the camera, keyboard, and trackpad, so it's not like the hardware isn't there. The function keys? This might possibly have been a step forward - at least it has the potential to be better. But internal testing should have revealed it to be annoying rather than more useful.
When they removed the floppy drive I thought it was the right move - same with optical storage drives. It's just too early for external drives and their core market (design and creative professionals) are the ones who are most likely to use external hard drives. As I said, I'll always need them. I have 7+ TB of music on Amazon S3 now, I'm dealing with datasets that are just too big to move around online (we have to ship drives to Amazon for imports).
Do you have ESP?
Preach.
The new-style keyboard and lack of ports drove this long-time Mac user to opt for an end-of-line MacBook Air over the newer MacBook. I had a Toshiba Portege back in the day, which was the original "thin laptop with a bag o' dongles(TM)", & all that dongly junk was tedious back then as well. Ironically, it was the old 12" MacBook Pro I bought immediately after that that turned me into a Mac user, partly because it had pretty much everything I wanted in one nice, compact box. My work machine's a pre-Touchbar MacBook Pro, & although the lack of an ethernet port on a "Pro" machine is still pretty silly, I can just about tolerate a single dongle (although it's inconvenient: I frequently work in a radio-quiet zone, & we have to keep a range of dongles handy for visitors).
I'm also holding onto my iPhone 6 because of the lack of a headphone socket on the newer models. I don't need even more dongles & adapters in my life. Like the late, great, Douglas Adams, I already have a drawer full of the stupid things.
And lastly, why are the "standard" ports on current iPhones and Macs different? Does Tim Cook want to own that one?
The current range of Apple products are just so disappointing in terms of actual usability.
"It just works." -> "It just doesn't really work any more."
"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...