Tim COOk: Operations, not Innovation
Synthesis. It’s what makes the difference between commodity items and those that change people’s behavior.
Steve Jobs was the modern era’s foremost synthesist (a synthesizer is a musical device). He took parallel developments and made them intersect, creating devices that people wouldn’t have asked for since they didn’t know they were possible.
Yet he didn't create the individual trends. He just saw their symbiosis.
He saw mobile phones, communications devices like Blackberry, touchpad features (Newton/Palm Pilot), digital music players like Apple’s own iPod, Internet access (an underlying concept of the iMac), and digital photography and, while everyone else was focused on single-purpose hardware, had the imagination to combine them into one device.
James Dyson may come close in his ability to reconceive appliances, but he isn’t changing people’s behavior… unless it’s to convince consumers to spend w-a-y more for devices that accomplish the same result as more commonplace designs.
Both, though, seem to share the “how do I make it better” insights that alter how people decide what they need. Tim Cook doesn’t have that.
THE LINE COOK, NOT THE CHEF
Cook is good at optimizing operations, exploiting what’s already there, and building on an existing platform. He does not seem attuned to his customers' lives: a sense about what they won’t know they need until it exists.
Customer research might have prevented creating the Vision Pro as a consumer product. It's ideal for training (pilots, mechanics, engineers) and for maintenance technicians. It might even "fit" in a clothing store, letting people try on outfits before taking them into a changing room to make sure they fit.
MISSING THE OBVIOUS
Why Apple doesn’t make a television to accompany the Apple TV box is a mystery. A television that integrates seamlessly with the Apple TV makes practical sense. As a display for Macs and mobile devices, it expands possibilities, reduces the need for multiple displays, and provides a new revenue stream.
An Apple car should never have been considered. What Apple should probably have done is create CarOS and vehicle displays to extend the Apple ecosystem. In addition to synching everything on Macs, iPads, iPhones, and Apple Watches, CarOS would add car functions and display it all on an Apple console display. Even Find My… could be integrated and replace car trackers like LoJack.
HIRE THE RIGHT PEOPLE AND LET THEM LOOSE
Until Cook decides to hire people who are smarter at developing breakthroughs than anyone currently at Apple currently and then focus on what he does best — to make products more efficiently and, under the direction of his marketing and sales leaders, sell them more effectively — Apple won’t be more than the computing device equivalent of a car company: a business that creates multiple models that, whether they’re sedans or SUVs or trucks, all do the same thing to convey people from Point A to Point B.
