CEO Tim Cook – A look back

Before I begin to put my thoughts together about the totality of Tim Cook’s tenure, I want to say that I believe his even with the missteps I believe that overall that Tim Cook’s stewardship of Apple is a good one, but I feel early on his lack of an engineering background caused some long-term issues that were later mostly corrected. This is why I think having an person like John Ternus and his engineering background is a good choice as the next CEO.  

When Tim Cook was appointed as CEO in 2011, he was taking on the mantel from Steve Jobs. At this time Tim Cook was operationally and financially very strong with regards to his management of Apple but he was relatively insecure and deferred too much to ‘guru’ Jony Ive (almost cultish influence). This meant that there was not enough functional influence pushing back against the puritanical artistic design mentality. This lead to too much form over functionality during the years that followed. (2011 to 2015).  Looking back now to when Jony Ive was promoted upwards in 2015, this was actually the beginning of the waning of his influence. I feel up to 2015, Tim Cook was maybe to insecure about his knowledge to push back against the form over function era of Apple. Form is important, but not at the expense of functionality.  

I believe, It takes about 5 years for design changes (large ones) to make their way from idea to product release. So I am guessing it is at this point Apple started revisiting changing direction on hardware design with regards to functionality – and around this time I think Apple started seriously looking at the future of Macintosh devices with their own silicon. 

Maybe 2015/2016, the form over functionality with regards to design decisions not taking functionality into account started to impact Apple’s reputation… At this point, I started to get concerned with the future of the Macintosh computer line (it is the most important device from Apple for me). 

Then in 2019, Jony Ive left Apple and I have to say I was delighted with is exit. I believe Tim Cook during the first five years deferred to much too him because he was seen as the primary disciple of Steve Jobs when it came to product design aesthetics, and him would allow Apple to course correct.  

In 2019, Apple started reversing some of the design decisions. Some ports returned, Magsafe returned, MacBooks started to get a bit thicker. Personally, the extra ports other than Magsafe have no use for me… would prefer more USB-C/Thunderbolt ports than HDMI (I have 3 OWC Thunderbolt hubs one for each Thunderbolt port). This change would have had to of been in the works before Jony Ive actually left.

In 2021 Apple went with their new silicon and since and each generation since then for their MacBook line has seen a significant has seen significant improvements.  

From 2019 onward the engineering team seems to have more sway on device design decisions which balance functionality against form.

Tim Cook Summary:

During Tim Cook’s tenure at Apple we saw Apple rise with his influence on operations, to a certain extent hindered by his lack of experience on engineering and design decisions. He was able to course correct before on the engineering and design decisions with regards to products. We have seen the rise of Engineering cachet within Apple.  

Post Tim Cook as CEO:

I believe the decision to pick John Ternus as CEO is the right decision now as the another operations (or god forbid marketing person) guy is not needed as Apple seems to have enough knowledge and drive internally on that that that strength at the CEO level is not necessary.  The next area of Apple that has to be addressed will have to be the software side as that side is not functioning optimally.