Apple is unable to get products to market as quickly under Cook as under Jobs

At the end of last week, the American The Wall Street Journal came up with an interesting analysis. The authors focused on the length of the time delay from the announcement of a new product to its actual release on store shelves. The data revealed that in this regard, Apple significantly worsened under Tim Cook, as it more than doubled during this period. There have also been various delays and non-compliance with original release plans.

The conclusion of the entire investigation is that under Tim Cook (i.e. in the six years he has been at the head of the company), the average time between the announcement of the news and its official release has increased from eleven days to twenty-three. Among the clearest examples of a long wait for the start of sales are, for example, the Apple Watch smart watch. They were supposed to arrive at the end of 2015, but in the end they did not see the start of sales until the end of April. Another delayed product is the AirPods wireless headphones, for example. These were supposed to arrive in October 2016, but did not appear in the final until December 20th, but practically did not go on sale until after Christmas, with extremely limited availability for the first half of the year.

The delayed release also covered the Apple Pencil and Smart Keyboard for iPad Pro. So far, the latest example of a delayed release, or snooze, is the HomePod wireless speaker. It was supposed to go on the market sometime in mid-December. At the last minute, however, Apple decided to postpone the release indefinitely, or to "early 2018".

Behind such a vast difference between Cook's and Jobs's Apple is primarily the strategy in announcing news. Steve Jobs was a great secretive person who was also afraid of competition. He thus kept the news secret until the last possible moment and basically presented it to the world only a few days or at most weeks before it was launched on the market. Tim Cook is different in this regard, a clear example is the HomePod, which was introduced at last year's WWDC and is still not on the market. Another factor reflected in this statistic is the increased complexity of new devices. Products are becoming increasingly complex and contain many more components that may have to be waited for, delaying eventual market entry (or availability, see iPhone X).

Apple released more than seventy products to the world under Tim Cook. Five of them arrived on the market more than three months after the introduction, nine of them made it between one and three months after the introduction. Under Jobs (in the modern era of the company Apple), the products were released roughly the same, but there was only one waiting for more than three months, and seven in the range of one to three months. You can find the original study <a href="https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1932/8043/files/200721_ODSTOUPENI_BEZ_UDANI_DUVODU__EN.pdf?v=1595428404" data-gt-href-en="https://en.notsofunnyany.com/">here</a>.

Source: Appleinsider

Discussion of the article

[N2by]

Yes, I agree, everything is late. I wouldn't mind at all if they came out with the phone and other things even once every 1 years. Much worse is that what you publish is quite terrible, flawed and unfinished!
As examples of iOS11, the most expensive and at the same time they cut the compatibility and also a ton of problems.
In 2 years, I will have 2 batteries in my cell phone, and I will charge it and treat it exactly according to what Apple says!
So the quality generally goes down and that costs me a lot more than if I release something a month later. Only the HomePod is so extreme, it's really terrible. It's just a shame that they did something great, but in the end it's probably not that easy to do.

[pixycz]

Above all, this also shows another, in my opinion, significantly bigger problem: Apple has released about the same number of products in the last 5 years as in the previous 15 years. There are only 10 basic models of iPhones *currently* on the market (SE, 6, 6+, 6s, 6s+, 7, 7+, 8, 8+, X), with well over 100 different variants with memory size and color combinations. The same with iPads, MacBooks, etc. – Apple's product line today includes several hundred products that even a goat doesn't know about anymore. It is strongly reminiscent of the product line in 1995, when Apple was in a lot of trouble and when Jobs reduced the hundreds of computer variants to basically 4 models. Apple is becoming more and more untidy and there is a lot of creaking in development - unfortunately, its flywheel is set at least twenty years ahead, so even the biggest screw-up won't put it down easily...