Ondrej Holzman Assessing Apple and the state of affairs is simply fashionable, whether in a positive or negative sense. As one of the most valuable and successful companies in recent years, Apple encourages this. It is possible to look at the Californian giant through different lenses, and recently two texts appeared that should not be missed by anyone who cares about Apple.
Na Above Avalon Neil Cybart wrote the lyrics Grading Tim Cook (Tim Cook Rating) and Dan M. independently published a comment on the same day Apple Inc: A Pre-Mortem. Both are trying to map where Apple has gone in the five years under the leadership of Tim Cook and how it is doing.
Both texts are stimulating also due to the fact that they try to approach the evaluation in a completely different way. While Neil Cybart as an analyst looks at the whole thing mainly from the point of view of business as such, Dan M. evaluates Apple from the other side, from the customer's side, with an interesting post-mortem analysis.
Tim Cook's rating
The main premise of Cybart's text is that it is not at all easy to evaluate Tim Cook: "When trying to evaluate Tim Cook fairly, you will soon find out that it is not an easy task. Apple has a unique corporate culture and organizational structure where Cook is not a typical technology CEO.”
Therefore, Cybart decided to determine the circle of Cook's closest collaborators (inner circle), who act as the controlling brain of the company, and it is with this circle of closest colleagues in mind that they evaluate Cook's performance in areas such as product strategy, operations, marketing, finance and others.
Instead of evaluating Cook alone, it makes more sense to evaluate the entire inner circle with Cook as the leader. The main reason is that it is difficult to distinguish where and how Apple's strategies are decided within this group. Note how responsibilities have been divided for some key products in recent years:
– Jeff Williams, COO (Chief Operating Officer): He oversees the development of the Apple Watch and Apple's health initiatives.
– Eddy Cue, SVP of Internet Software and Services: He directs Apple's growing content strategy into music and video streaming, although he also heads the overall services strategy.
– Phil Schiller, SVP Global Marketing: He took on more responsibility for the App Store and developer relations, even though these areas lacked a direct connection to product marketing.Apple's most important new product and initiative (Apple Watch and health) is driven by a member of Cook's inner circle. In addition, the areas that have had the most problems and controversies in recent years (services and the App Store) are now directly managed by people from Cook's inner circle.
It is the four-leaf clover Cook, Williams, Cue, Schiller who considers Cybart to be the most important man in terms of the main management of the company. If you missed Apple's chief designer Jony Ive from the list, Cybart has a simple explanation:
Jony has taken on the role of Apple's product visionary, while Cook's inner circle runs Apple. (…) Tim Cook and his inner circle handle day-to-day operations, while the industrial design group handles Apple's product strategy. Meanwhile, as Chief Design Officer, Jony Ive can do whatever he wants. If that sounds familiar, it's the same role that Steve Jobs had.
Thus, Cybart not only tries to report the performance of Cook's team in several key areas, but also provides a very good insight into what the organizational structure of the company's top management looks like today. We recommend read the full text on Above Avalon (in English).
Apple Inc: A Pre-Mortem
While Cybart's text seems rather optimistic, although it is certainly not without criticism, we find the opposite approach in the second mentioned text. Dan M. bet on the so-called pre-mortem analysis, which consists in the fact that we work with the premise that the given company/project has already failed and retrospectively we try to identify what led to the failure.
It is not easy to evaluate a company that I love as if it has failed. I have spent tens of thousands of dollars on Apple products and spent countless hours studying, admiring and defending the company. But I also started to notice too many unusual bugs and realized that turning a blind eye to them wouldn't help Apple.
Dan M. therefore decided to use this method to analyze five areas - Apple Watch, iOS, Apple TV, Apple services and Apple itself - in which he provides an almost exhaustive list of what is wrong with each product or service, where according to it discovers errors and what problems it presents.
Dan M. mentions both general criticism that is often leveled in connection with Apple and its products, as well as very subjective opinions on, for example, the functioning of the Apple Watch or Apple TV.
It is likely that you will agree with the author on many points, depending on your own experience, as well as completely disagree with him on others. Read the full pre-mortem analysis by Dan M. (in English) is nevertheless stimulating for further refinement of one's own opinion on this topic.
After all, in his text, the author refers to his friend's advice: "The Apple community makes a mistake - they accept what Apple is doing and then try to prove that it is good. However, everyone should make up their own minds instead.'
Exactly,
the fact that a person is critical of them does not mean that he does not want to buy/support them.
ie:
find courage and put the jack back
stop ruining the PRO series with useless nonsense (see the loss of mag sfafe mb pro) and start delivering good products that are quite expensive, but worth their price.
Pick up a stable system at last. Emoticons in sms are fine.
Since Apple is headed by that warehouseman (sorry, logistics), something like the "apple community" is just a myth. Professionals, including myself, who have WORKED on Macs for ten years and hipsters, for whom it is enough to bite an apple on the "hood" and reduce the thickness by -1 mm every year, are completely different worlds. We in the first group (we agree on this with all our colleagues) are slowly starting to come to terms with the fact that we will end up in the middle of nowhere - we don't like it. They took away the 17" (it was already under Jobs), OSX is becoming an unusable coloring book, connectivity and ergonomics have retired... and every other news about a possible development causes new gloom. I've gotten to the point where I wish Apple the hell out of nowhere - maybe in time some REAL visionary will show up again and their products will start to be REALLY cutting edge and innovative. Then I'll forgive them even such bullshit as the redheaded black man ;)
You wrote that exactly! Apple as a brand is becoming a shop in the hands of hipsters somewhere in Starbucks... they killed and damned everything that was tested in practice years ago.
And that's why.. They earn so much money that they could easily ignore the cry of the "pros" ;) So let's see when the modern hit will be "switchnout na widle". What about pro-hipsters? Who will be first? After all, according to the pricing policy, this Apple Bio has long been the subject of more chaste mothers and wandering artists than - what exactly is the "professional" in your presentation? The dying species that Apple's PR still has to nurse? So does it even work? Or does it simply go where it shines the most? After all, if I understood it correctly, Jobs' aim was not for you to be professionals who tinker with your PC - but for you to simply use, i.e. first buy... and then use a device "that we are not ashamed to give to our friends", "so , as it was meant to be".. well, right?
And how much money do I earn? For the last three years, share prices have stagnated, sales and profits have stagnated, and iPhone sales have also stagnated.
At the time of Windows Vista, many independent developers preferred to switch to Java or iOS, now many are disgusted by what Apple is doing. Many people change their phones every two years. If people start switching iPhones for Android phones in large numbers, Apple can drop by tens of percent year-on-year.
Well, I don't know, but if it doesn't work, iPhone sales will increase as much as possible, as well as turnover ;-).
PS: Java is starting to be dead again :-). Which bank would want that today, when it's leaking like a colander. Maybe for some internal systems :-D.
Yeah, like well thought out. But I personally don't know who these devices are for lately.
For professionals = professional, but unfortunately the performance and services I don't know if I correspond to those professionals
- you need to buy software for the company, it simply does not exist (such as paying from the company's credit for other employees with their credit, etc.)
– company-managed site with Linux, macOS, Windows
– I personally think that macOS is far behind iOS
– even the store on macOS is completely unusable, both for development (everyone is already leaving it) and for customers (slow, sometimes non-functional)
For normal mortals = people who come home and no longer work = iPad Air 2 and MAC Air?
– I don't like these products somehow.
– I'm currently satisfied with Air (even with the prehistoric display), but I don't think I have anywhere to go. It's perfectly fine for me, I would just install a much better display in it.
So who is Apple doing this for? It seems to me that neither fish nor crayfish :-(.
It is sad that Apple, under the leadership of that idiot Cook, is more interested in politics (understand the promotion of the ideas of so-called cultural Marxism) and a correct set of smileys, instead of inventing a high-quality replacement for the iPad Air 2 and Macbook Air..
Although the current keynotes are gender, racially balanced, and so left-wing, they all raise rainbow flags, but unfortunately they are still so boring that it's embarrassing to see where that vyCook went. Apple lives on the legacy of Jobs, despite Cook, it really won't work.
Unfortunately I'm as frustrated as you are in this regard, looking at a male couple with a couple of boys in the foreground gives me a "bullet in my pocket". Apple is a technological giant and should have taken care of what it did best, giving people quality, well thought out, reliable and easily interconnected tools. He should not criticize the democratically elected president for his political decisions, or preach which minorities/majorities are better than others and dictate how many of them will work where at least. I can't even imagine that Steve Jobs would be willing to deal with such matters at all, or dwell on them. When he didn't like something, he said to fuck with it, or to defend why it's so right, that was the philosophy and vision that brought Apple to where it was and that the current management benefits from. But we all feel that it is somehow fading away, and we see it mostly with Macs, which no one even dwells on in the article. By the way, you don't have to be a genius to see what's going on, that's when someone objects to me if I talked to SJ that I'm presenting it so harshly.
What is this for? Has anyone ever used this? Does Kuk use it? https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/ff557e51e52f85c09aa76a9dfef2f7e3832125725ef517e5ad892b3a0550eac4.jpg
I do not :-).
I think this is just fine, and if no one wants to, they don't have to use it, for simple pictures that will put a smile on your girlfriend's face. Even if something needs to be presented visually, for example, I sent a primitive proposal for a stop for a gate opened by a motor, the so-called "Fishback"
Thank you!!! After x months, thanks to you, I finally know that the box is for doodling - you're right, it's clever. I've always been confused by the nonsensical handwriting messages at the bottom that I don't know how to get rid of.
No one can please everyone - I as a user am satisfied, Apple products are reliable, the AppStore is trampled on and I have nothing to deal with. Someone is still dealing with a missing jack, wireless charging, someone with memory sticks. I don't care, I don't really miss any of it. Flies are there, of course, but on other devices too and much more fundamental.