Apple without Steve Jobs
No strings attached.
I’ve been pondering writing an article about WWDC and how it seems as though those expecting (against all odds) new products left Tim Cook’s keynote feeling disappointed while those who put the D in WWDC left feeling energized about the future.
No need: Others have already written that article.
In lieu of that, here’s one of my keynote live-tweets that can serve as the tldr version:
06/02/14 Tweet
It really does feel as though this year’s WWDC was all about the long term for Apple. That may not sit well with the collective short attention span of analysts and pundits, but I believe it’ll prove out to be great news for consumers.
Anyway, I’m not going to write that article. Instead, I’ve been thinking about another of my tweets:
06/03/14 Tweet
Right or wrong, “Steve Jobs never would have…” is used as a pejorative. It’s a way for trolls to take a cheap shot while complaining about Apple’s trajectory or Tim Cook’s leadership.
Ultimately, though, we’ll never really know what Steve Jobs would or wouldn’t have done in any given situation because, leaving aside that he’s dead, he was nothing if not maddeningly unpredictable when he was alive.
Bluntly, Steve Jobs’s silence in death is the only predictable Steve Jobs we’ll ever see.
With that in mind, WWDC 2014 sure feels like the week we’ll point to in the future when we say that Tim Cook and the rest of the leadership team (not to mention all those people we never see or hear from) began to take back the phrase “Steve Jobs never would have…” in an effort to rally.
This is a newly confident leadership team feeling as though it can make the right choices based entirely on making choices that Jobs might never have made. (Or maybe even just on making choices, period.) “Hallelujah!”
EVERYONE LIKES A GOOD METAPHOR
In the late 1990s, Apple was a deflated balloon and Steve Jobs returned to the helm as a desperately-needed supply of helium.
Now that he’s gone, we often look back and second-guess Tim Cook based on Jobs’s successes, and we ignore anything that might have compromised Apple’s potential for growth.
We’re comforted because that balloon is still floating.
Pundits especially tend to tea leaf a dark future based on cherries picked from Jobs’s past. (Funny how sour grapes then have turned into cherries now.)
Yes, Apple under the leadership of Steve Jobs was no longer a deflated balloon, but it seems as though Jobs in death ceased to be the helium and had instead become a string.
For better or for worse, then, WWDC 2014 was Tim Cook’s introduction as a pair of scissors.
Snip.
