I think Tim Cook took Steve Job's vision and really took it to the moon. If you think about the last 15 years, Apple has really become the biggest possible version of itself without losing its values.

Tech in general has changed quite a bit though. I don't know how Steve Jobs would have reacted to AI, and I don't know where tech itself would be if Jobs were still around. But I do think the next evolution is due and yet to be seen. It's not clear that Tim Cook would be the one to effectively see that through. And so I think his timing is impeccable and probably aligned with what is best for Apple. I have a lot of respect here: time has shown that a lot of leaders don't let go until its too late.

I'd also add that from the perspective of an employee in the industry, Tim Cook has had a remarkably steady hand throughout multiple business cycles in the industry that have made Apple a much better place to work than many of the other very large tech companies: no massive over-hiring after covid, no massive layoffs to correct for that, average tenure at the company BLOWS other companies out of the water, a reputation for a strong engineering culture

I say this as someone who hasn't worked there, but has a large number of friends and peers who currently do or have in recent years.

> I think Tim Cook took Steve Job's vision and really took it to the moon.

I vehemently disagree with this. I think Cook's logistics and business-focused goals are, if not diametrically opposed to Job's product obsession, at the very least orthogonal to it. Almost everything about Apple the product, over the past 15 years, has either coasted (e.g. stayed at par with the rest of the industry) or gotten worse. The one exception is arguably Apple Silicon (and I'm sure their board is acutely aware of it).

Hacker News? More like MBA news.

I'm not just being snarky — I don't think it's reasonable to say the profit-maximizing service-oriented Apple is the best possible version of itself without losing its values of personal computing and individual empowerment.

Steve Jobs existed in an era where he could show us new technology when new technology brought a sense of joy and amazement; whereas due to a multitude of factors, new technology no longer causes such emotions for a substantial portion of people.

I am not a big Apple fan, but when I see what they did with the M-series MacBooks, it feels like they are from the future. And not just a year ahead or so, but more like a decade.

This is something Tim and John both deserve credit for.

Cook did a great job. I was hesitant when Steve Jobs died and Cook took over. Jobs was so visionary and it wasn’t clear that a finance guy would be a good fit. He clearly learned what he needed to and he trusted those people around him in the organization who also had vision to do what they do best. So, kudos to Cook. He proved my fears unwarranted.

Siri was under jobs. He saw AI before everyone else

> Tim Cook took Steve Job's vision and really took it to the moon.

He only carried what was left from Steve Jobs. But nothing special or groundbreaking came from him. Apple Vision failed, the transition to AI failed, many people still dislike what is done with the MacBook, he agreed to have the horrible glass UI design just like what Windows did a decade ago, and he failed to find the next Jony Ive, etc... Sure he was an awesome COO. But as a CEO, he was certainly way below Steve Jobs and even less taking his vision "to the moon".

> without losing its values

I would disagree here. Apple actually did lose their values, or they are in the process of doing so.

Ads in App Store results, Ads in Maps (coming soon!), constant upsells and pushes of subscriptions and services, forced upgrade of Numbers/Pages/Keynote with annoying nags that can't be turned off, things are getting worse.

Also, when the word "values" is mentioned, one cannot forget about Tim Cook's donations to Trump and his overall support of Trump and cozying up to him.

Cook has done more or less the opposite of what Jobs did.

Jobs was all about bold innovation, hugely risky bets on gamechanging products.

Cook is a timid logistics optimizer, and he's good at that. We reliably get an iPhone with slightly more RAM, slightly faster CPU on schedule every year. No category changing products.

Innovation has stopped -- after Jobs, there is only minor incremental improvement

Honestly, I think Jobs would hate the fuzzy, unpolished results that AI gives you.

I despise the Cook hate from some Apple fans. No he’s not the visionary that Jobs was. But I think he was the best person to scale Apple up to what it is today while still keeping the soul of the company alive.

> Apple has really become the biggest possible version of itself without losing its values.

I could not disagree more. Apple has become increasingly just another tech company shipping products that are great but not insanely so.

The level of insanely great coming out of Apple has been in steady and constant decline since Jobs’ death.

The “I wish Steve were still around so he could have vetoed this” that I get have been steadily increasing on a y/y basis for the last 5-10 years.

I’m not talking about big obvious macro stuff like the Airpods Max being super mid or how much my face hurts after wearing the ridiculously heavy Vision Pro for a while, but the constant subscription nags for $5 after buying a $1500 phone and a million other little paper cuts, culminating lately in the polished turd of an OS that is 26.x. Apple is the most un-Apple it has ever been in its history. Their contempt for their users is now palpable.

> Apple has really become the biggest possible version of itself without losing its values.

Such as Think Different, where you don't need to comply with the standard ways of doing things?

From a Steve Jobs interview in relation to this statement:

> When you grow up you tend to get told the world is the way it is and your job is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money.

> That's a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact, and that is - everything around you that you call life, was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.

(Via Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_different)

I couldn't think of a company to whose hardware "your job is just to live your life inside [someone else's] world" applies more, though maybe that's because Oracle doesn't make consumer hardware products

Edit: I should probably add that this isn't meant as a purely negative statement: many people want to hand over digital control and have someone else be bothered with keeping the hardware running and curating what software they're allowed to run. It's not me, and it's not what Steve Jobs said Apple was about, but it's not that I don't understand why someone's grandma would choose it