When Jobs died, the big question surrounding Cook was whether he could nurture a breakthrough product like the iPod, iPhone or iPad. During the 2010s, the company tried unsuccessfully to produce self-driving electric cars (an attempt Reportedly resurrected). But after a decade of Cook’s achievement that has become a CEO legend, holding him to that standard seems misguided. The management of his iPhone franchise is the envy of every tech company.
And Apple did new products in that decade. It was Ive who was the impetus for the aforementioned Apple Watch, although his initial focus on ultra-luxury was misguided. (Apple’s adjustment of course to emphasize the device’s fitness features proved a winning formula.) AirPods, another wearable, have added yet another notch to the extension belt of the device. Apple. In 2010, though, Apple’s biggest new driver of revenue was its burgeoning services business, effectively attracting customers who used its hardware to pay a monthly fee for storage space. archives, music, news and videos. Mickle mocks Apple for its over-involvement in film production and TV production, but the last laugh appears to be Cook’s, whom the company won Oscar for the first best picture for a streaming company. And while Apple Music has suffered from poor reviews, the company’s relentless distribution drive has made it financially successful.
Meanwhile, Ive struggled for most of the decade. Although he led the Watch effort, managing software design didn’t work with his talent. He spent limitless time nurturing the new Apple headquarters, a beautiful monument to Jobs but one that Apple’s customers didn’t get to enjoy. Mickle also chronicles how an exhausted Ive became a distant figure in the company, sometimes showing up hours late to meetings. It’s a stark contrast to Cook, who runs his life as a perfectly functioning, just-in-time supply chain.
Close proximity obviously helps you read well. But the story of Apple’s innovation in the 2010s cannot be summed up in one word Face / Off framed alone. It turns out that just as Jobs had a guy whose spelling was “Johnny,” so did Cook. But he’s not Jony Ive. Its Johnny Sroujia highly qualified engineer who leads the company’s chip development. That is the most important element of the company’s roadmap for this decade — a transformation from a design-driven company to one focused on custom silicon. Since Apple has made its own innovative chips, not only is it trying to maintain its lead in phones and push the Macintosh line, but the company is now in a position to deliver powerful products. stronger and more magically capable than its competitors.
When I asked Mickle why Srouji’s name didn’t appear in After Steve, he insisted that I could find it in there. But when he tried to point me to the passage about Apple’s custom silicon specialist, he discovered that it was cut out of the book. Maybe Johnny will arrive soon, in the second print.
I have learned a lot about Cook and I have After Steve. But as this century Big Tech turns into its second quarter, we’re not asking for souls from companies like Apple. We want quality, innovation and reliability. That is a challenge for any company with billions of users. Even Mickle himself admitted to me that there was no way Apple could sustain its soul — whatever it was — at its current scale. “It had to lose its purity of commitment as a result of the pressures it faced from Wall Street to keep growing,” he told me.
