Lopp On Tim Cook's Apple

Rands In Repose:

The word that worried me the most in the press release was in the first sentence. The word was “collaboration”. Close your eyes and imagine a meeting with Steve Jobs. Imagine how it proceeds and how decisions are made. Does the word collaboration ever enter your mind? Not mine. I’m just sitting there on pins and needles waiting for the guy to explode and rip us to shreds because we phoned it in on a seemingly unimportant icon.

It is an interesting thought process, but I don’t know whether it spells doom or not. Jobs ran the company in one way. Cook is going to run it differently. That’s not necessarily bad … problem is, we just don’t know yet how the cookie will crumble.

It’s not like Jobs was an omniscient dictator. My impression is that he was more like a really harsh mediator; he had his own views, he heard views from others, and pushed for what was best.

In a way, that’s “collaboration”. There’s no reason why Cook couldn’t do a similar thing … or whoever is in charge of overall product strategy. From the outside, it seems like Schiller is the best fit for that role, but there is no reason it couldn’t be someone else. Ive? Cue?