The Apple Paradox (Premium)

Open solutions always win in the end. Which does nothing to explain Apple’s success.

I recently relistened to Steve Jobs’ official biography on Audible. I’ve listened to this audiobook more than any other, and by a wide margin, though I cherry-pick the chapters that are about major Apple products and events, and skip the bits about Jobs’s personal life, Pixar, and other things that are not of interest. I strongly recommend this book to all readers of this site, no matter your feelings about Apple or Jobs. It’s an incredible story.

In the chapter about Google copying the iPhone with Android, Jobs speaks about “going thermonuclear” to stop this product. And he tells Eric Schmidt that no amount of money would prevent him from killing Android.

That never happened, of course. But this episode is, perhaps, the best example of what the Steve Jobs story is all about, from a personal technology standpoint. It’s about openness vs. control. And today, Apple’s control over its ecosystems has resulted in what is inarguably the most successful company in the history of mankind. Which is amazing, since open solutions always win in the end.

(To be clear, “open” doesn’t mean “Open Source.” Windows, as originally envisioned, is open. Windows 10 S is less so, but still technically open in that it is available for third-party developers to target. It’s just more limited.)

You can see this very clearly in Steve Jobs’ approach to competing with Microsoft and the PC in the early days of Apple. And then again in his identical approach to competing with Android in the smartphone era: Steve Jobs was many things, but he was unflinching in his belief that central control over the entire platform is the key to success, and to the best possible user experience.

Most Apple fans would agree with that assessment. That the limitations of choosing Apple are offset, and then some, by the fact that these products typically work very well, and seamlessly, and especially so when you combine them with other Apple products and services. Apple has created something unique, a safe and reliable bubble.

But history will record two things on this topic.

First, that this approach led Apple, and Jobs, to great success, yes. And second, that this approach, ultimately, is a loser. Just as Apple lost to Windows in the PC era, it is by most measures losing the smartphone war to Android as well. And it is losing the war over digital personal assistants—or ambient computing—as I write this. That’s a perfect strikeout over three waves of the five waves of personal computing.

And yet. Apple is the only company that is playing—or, will play—a major role in each of those waves. Microsoft dominated the PC wave, but it failed miserably in mobile. Google dominated in mobile and will most likely dominate ambient computing. But Apple is still fighting, is still a major player.

The Apple story is complex. Worse, there’s nothing to learn from it. No company can duplicate Apple’s success, and for a variety of reasons. Apple is a paradox.

But Steve Jobs is, of course, the single biggest reason for Apple’s successes. Jobs was so successful that today’s Apple is simply running on his momentum, or inertia, despite a growing list of mistakes and miscalculations in the years since his death.

Put another way, Steve Jobs is deservedly famous because only he could be that successful pushing a strategy that would have failed anyone else, or any other company.

Today’s Apple is run by Tim Cook. And, sorry, but Tim Cook is no Steve Jobs. To be fair, no one else is Steve Jobs either, despite various pretenders. Cook’s greatest contribution to Apple is that he engineered the foundation of the company’s success by outsourcing all of its hardware manufacturing to China. He’s a bean counter, a money guy.

According to his official biography, Steve Jobs left Mr. Cook with just one bit of important advice: Don’t think, “What would Steve Do?” he advised. Instead, just do what’s right for Apple.

That’s good advice. And he’s trying. Tim Cook has made small changes to make Apple more open—“open-ish,” if you will—though I think he’ll need to make more to truly adapt Apple to the inevitable shifts in the market.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because what’s happening to Apple now is what happened previously to Microsoft. A dominant company that coasted for too long on previous successes and then belatedly tried to change. This reminds me, very much, of Steve Ballmer’s final years at Microsoft.

Ballmer, too, had a belated realization that his company was about to hit an iceberg and that it was overdue for a course-correction. In Ballmer’s case, that iceberg was the iPhone and the cloud services it utilizes, and the course correction was called “devices and services.” It was a belated response to the post-PC revolution that was then chipping away at Microsoft’s core business. Most forget that Ballmer instigated this strategy, in part because his successor, Satya Nadella, has ridden it to great fame and fortune by just renaming it, to “cloud first, mobile first.” He actually went on a book tour to promote this. This, and his love of cricket, apparently.

Anyway, the reason most aren’t aware of Ballmer’s contribution to Microsoft’s course correction is that he was booted unceremoniously out of Microsoft. And the reason that happened is that Ballmer’s ties to the old Microsoft were too deep. Only with truly new leadership, the Microsoft board felt, would the software giant ever really change. They demanded an exorcism, and got it.

Well, that’s where Apple is today. Dominant, but drifting. And with a bean counter in charge of a technology company that was previously led by its visionary co-founder.

So the parallels are obvious. But what is Cook doing to change Apple? What is Cook’s course correction?

I see three major areas of change.

First, Cook is pushing Apple to take small steps to open up its platforms. In iOS, for example, customers can now choose a third-party iPhone keyboard over Apple’s. Jobs didn’t even want third-party apps on this platform.

Cook is also listening to feedback—something Jobs explicitly avoided because only he knew what Apple’s customers needed—and is changing products based on that feedback. There are exceptions to this, of course, but when the late 2016 MacBook Pro was poorly received, Apple released a new version just 6 months later, a first. And when the Apple Watch failed as an expensive fashion statement, Cook recast it as a fitness and health device. Most recently, Apple confronted charges that the iPhone is too addictive, especially for kids by pledging to change iOS and add more parental controls to the system to help parents.

Finally, Mr. Cook has uttered an almost hilarious number of apologies since taking over Apple. This was something Apple never really did when Jobs ran the show, and it requires a humility that Jobs simply did not possess. (Reference Antennagate or Steve Jobs’ open letter about Flash as obvious examples.) In his day, Jobs was applauded for not apologizing. But Cook’s Apple can’t stop apologizing.

In fact, Cook’s tenure at Apple started with an apology, for the poor quality of Apple Maps. But in the past year alone, Apple has apologized several times. It apologized for the terrible, non-expandable design of the MacPro, and about ignoring Macs altogether. And it apologized for purposefully killing iPhone performance in order to help battery life.

It’s perhaps fair to point out that Apple wouldn’t need to do any of these things—open up its platforms, listen to feedback, or apologize so much—if the company simply designed its product and services better. But my retort to that is that Tim Cook is not Steve Jobs and today’s Apple is not Steve Jobs’ Apple. This change was inevitable. If anything, Apple should be more aggressive in embracing it.

Is Tim Cook the right guy to lead the new Apple? He’s clearly a good guy, but I don’t believe so. And like Steve Ballmer before him, it’s only a matter of time before the company realizes the problem and moves to fix it. The only question is whether Cook is the solution. Or the problem. If it’s the latter, it’s not his fault. But the clock is ticking regardless.

PS: Any day now, Apple will announce another stunning round of financial results. And it is fair to criticize my opinion here by noting that Apple has only gotten bigger, financially, under Tim Cook. But as Steve Jobs points out in that biography, money was never the point. Building the best possible products is the point. And by that measure, Apple is absolutely stumbling.