Ondrej Holzman Gone are the days when only one guy - the charismatic Steve Jobs, who could sell anything to people - ran wild for two hours at Apple's keynotes. Less than four years after Jobs' death, the Californian company is more open and diverse than ever, and its presentations confirm this. At WWDC 2015, Tim Cook let us see even more beneath the surface of the company's top management.
When you play the now-legendary 2007 keynote in which Steve Jobs introduced the first iPhone, one thing is easy to notice: the whole thing was run by one man. During the nearly one and a half hour long presentation, Steve Jobs did not speak for a few minutes only, when he gave space to key partners, such as the head of Google at the time, Erik Schmidt.
If we fast-forward a few years and look at the most important Apple events of recent times, we will see at each of them a whole constellation of managers, engineers and other representatives of the company - each of them representing what they know about like few others.
There are several reasons why this is so. On the one hand, Tim Cook is not the man with the aura of a genius who could stand in front of an audience of thousands for two hours and sell them even the most boring product in the world in an entertaining way. Moreover, in the beginning, he himself had quite a problem with appearing in public, but over time he gained confidence in the cramples and now he has become the director of the entire apple show, as precise as he was at the time in the position of operations director.
Tim Cook makes the opening kickoff, introduces the new product, and then hands the microphone to someone who has a significant stake in the entire project. Steve Jobs always drew all the attention to himself, it was his products, it was Jobs' Apple. Now it is Tim Cook's Apple, but the results are delivered by a highly diverse team of thousands of experts, often the best in the field.
Of course, all of this happened under Jobs as well, he himself could not be there for everything, but the difference is that Apple now emphasizes it publicly. Tim Cook talks about great teams, gradually reveals the most important figures standing just below the publicly known closest management of the company and, together with emphasizing the greatest possible diversity among employees, gives space on the podiums for those for whom it could have been just a crazy dream not long ago.
If yesterday's keynote took place two or three years ago, we would have probably only seen Tim Cook, Craig Federighi and Eddy Cue. The three would be able to present the new OS X El Capitan, iOS 9, probably also watchOS 2 and Apple Music quite playfully. In 2015, however, it is different. At WWDC, women directly from Apple appeared for the first time, two at once, and a total of eight faces connected to the company from Cupertino. Last September, for comparison, there were only four representatives, at WWDC 2014 there were five, and both keynotes were of comparable length.
In the last nine months that have passed since the iPhone 6 keynote, a lot of important things have happened that have indicated a change in trend. Tim Cook spoke even more loudly on the topic of human rights, the support of women and minorities in the technology sector, and his PR team began to systematically introduce other important figures of Apple to the world, whose faces we did not yet know, although their influence on new products was crucial.
Therefore, it was not only Craig Federighi who presented the news in the OS X and iOS operating systems. At the same time, Apple would certainly not be wrong to let its senior vice president of software engineering do all the talking. After all, it's probably the best speaker that Tim Cook has at the moment. Only seasoned marketer Phil Schiller can match him.
During his speech, Federighi gave the floor to two women, which at first glance may seem like a banality, but it was literally a historical milestone for Apple. Until yesterday, only one woman appeared at his keynotes, a few months ago Christy Turlington Burns, when she showed how she does sports with the Watch. But now women who belong directly to the senior management of Apple spoke at WWDC, and Tim Cook showed that women also play an important role in his company.
We can be sure that the news in Apple Pay, which was presented by VP of Internet Services Jennifer Bailey, could easily be presented by Federighi or Cue. The same was true of the new News application, which was demoed by Susan Prescott, vice president of product marketing. For Tim Cook, the fact that a female element will also appear at the developer conference was extremely important. She sets an example for everyone else and can continue her mission "for more women in tech".
And that it's not all about Cook, Cue, Federighi or Schiller that we find on the Apple website and who dominated most of the recent presentations, the Californian company proved when introducing Apple Music. The new music service was first presented by Jimmy Iovine, a veteran of the music industry who came to Apple as part of the acquisition of Beats and it was not yet completely clear what his role was in Cupertino. Now it's clear - like Beats Music, Apple Music should mainly follow him. Although there is still an intermediate link between him and Cook in the form of Eddy Cue.
From the subsequent output of the popular rapper Drake, who talked about the social function of Apple Music and the new possibilities of connecting with his fans, although not everyone was completely wise, but Apple could not care at all. Rather than a completely unknown engineer telling music fans something about the singer-fan relationship, the effect of the same words from the mouth of such a famous artist is much greater. And Apple knows this very well.
In addition to all the aforementioned, Kevin Lynch was also given space at this year's WWDC, who thus definitively became the spokesperson for the operating system in the Watch. Phil Schiller, who otherwise usually presents hardware news, and above all Trent Reznor spoke to the public via video. Another persona of the caliber of Drake, who works as a creative in Apple and also has a considerable share in the new music service. Even his influence on the entire music world can help Apple in the tough fight with Spotify and other competitors.
We can certainly look forward to an increasingly diverse array of people associated with Apple in other presentations as well. Apple is not only about Tim Cook, who is quite successfully trying to break the previous belief that Apple is Steve Jobs and Steve Jobs is Apple, i.e. that the entire company is symbolized by a single person. The public must understand that what matters is the indestructible and hard-wired DNA within everyone at Apple that will ensure further success. No matter who manages the company. For example, a woman. For example, Angela Ahrendts, whose first public appearance since joining Apple is probably only a matter of time.
Unfortunately, there were people on stage 4 who don't usually appear there and would rather not, they seemed strange to me.
Exactly.
What are we talking about, Craig is the best :)
He's funny, but I'd rather see Schiller on stage :)
WWDC showed how to end rape and harassment for reasons other than ability. E.g. both women could stay where they were until now, wherever that was.
Unfortunately, these were the two weakest points of the presentation, especially the first blonde. Uninteresting, boring, annoying voice, completely uninterested. After what Craig did for the show, it was an incredible fall down.
Tim - the standard, I don't really need it, but that's my opinion
Craig – great
Jennifer - no big deal, baby
Susan - better but nothing special
Jimmy - fat, must be on drugs
Eddy - quite ok
Drake - the biggest monster
It's a shame that Phil wasn't there, he's always nice too, but he'll be there as soon as the hardware is available.
I agree. and other media also agree on what most people saw - Iovine and Drake were talking about something, but the meaning somehow escaped (when I was watching it, I had to switch my taste somewhere else). this WWDC wasn't exactly the best.
I agree, it's better to have two who know it than 6 people who spoil the whole impression. towards the end it was terrible, reading and flipping through the pages was long and you could see that it was like a hot needle.
team? really? no one can present the file except for the old movers like Craig and Tim. WWDC was pretty much about nothing. 1.] an effort to revive the Kiosk, which was one big failure, and every file is looking for a way to hide the icon. 2.] an attempt to revive passbook, which wasn't such a gem either (and outside the US at all), by adding applePay (only functional in the US so far), 3.] Music is a hybrid of an overpriced copy of Spotify and the original Apple failure sockosit/ music. 4.] El Capitan has a news file for a minor update. 5.] They didn't even introduce AppleTV. New forms are also swarming, which are desperately pulling old canceled projects out of their sleeves.
great, the best for me is jimmy and two ladies. craig fesacik but tliacha for nothing, also a circus henchman.
tim is simply great, in that it is no longer a cult of personality from which fear came. nothing against jobs, but this new apple is more progressive and team-oriented. I'm still catching up on what jobs did there, see multitask for ios. finally, they started to move, and in 15 years, iOS will catch up with Android in terms of functionality. and no, android doesn't really lag on phones from 200 and up, and we're talking about a still small amount compared to the iPhone.
great, the best for me is jimmy and two ladies. craig fesacik but tliacha for nothing, also a circus henchman.
tim is simply great, in that it is no longer a cult of personality from which fear came. nothing against jobs, but this new apple is more progressive and team-oriented. I'm still catching up on what jobs did there, see multitask for ios. finally, they started to move, and in 15 years, iOS will catch up with Android in terms of functionality. and no, android doesn't really lag on phones from 200 and up, and we're talking about a still small amount compared to the iPhone.
This is the world according to the new left, although there are different people everywhere, but not because they really know anything, just because of what they have between their legs and the color of their skin. It's about as far as the company in the US has come. And now they're going to shit on us too.
Those two women were the worst of the entire presentation. Giving them space significantly reduced the quality of the presentation. It is unhappiness to live in modern Bolshevic, Marxist totality of so-called "equality".
IMHO, Apple is where it belongs because it was innovative, non-conforming, non-consumable and above all INCORRECT. The current management is trying to do the exact opposite.
Apple that was non-consumable? Well, maybe while he was moving over the grave. Incorrect? Come on. These are "the grass was greener once" style of nostalgic optimism.
He was incorrect and I agree with Mirek above. He was more daring as a company, now it has become a left-wing juggernaut riding on the wave of progressive cretinism, which is generally green in the US.
The difference is that Jobs 1) had the balls to blow/stump people who were inventing crap 2) could make a whip out of shit. And exactly as Mirek wrote below, he was a non-conformist. Apple is now much more open, mainstream (in terms of market position) and continues to "discover" the discovered and call it a revolution. Jobs had charisma, I don't think Cook has it, or I'm not his target group.
The blonde was a really annoying annoying goat. It occurred to me that today she works at Apple and tomorrow she would be a cashier at Tesco, completely uninterested, exactly the type of people that Apple really does not need. She rolled her eyes several times there, and I personally would have kicked out the door with her after such a performance.
Totally agree, I feel the same way about her.
I don't know, I've been watching X WWDC keynotes for the last week and I think that Apple has better and more suitable women for the main Keynote...
What Jobs rejected in HW and SW, i.e. diversification and fragmentation, after his death we now have live in the form of figures flashing on the stage during presentations. I understand the idea that it's good to show that we have a smart head for every feature, but as a result, it just makes me cringe in that head like you write below about an affected hen, a slobbery black man. The presentation should be about verbally transmitted information supplemented by slides, not a parade of characters. I guess Tim means well, but next time we can wait for the canteen staff to show us the innovative ApplePay. I mean that with exaggeration to avoid ranting