I think Jobs was driven by a genuine desire to make products that were cool, fun, empowering, and elegantly engineered.
A lot of that drive was motivated by unpleasant personal narcissism - he seems to have had a strong need to feel cool, fun, empowered, and elegantly engineered himself.
But still - it pushed computing in directions that were really positive.
I have no idea what Cook is motivated by. I suspect not even Cook knows what Cook is motivated by.
He knows what Jobs looked like from the outside, and he has some ability to follow some of the moves. But it feels as if there's an aloof and maybe even slightly hostile detachment that Jobs never showed much evidence of.
Unless he has an epiphany and understands that user benefits matter more than manufacturing margins, Apple's future is going to look increasingly unexciting.
Yeah, no doubt Jobs was driven by his demons and desire to prove himself ... but layered on top of that seemed to be some kind of genuine ideology and good taste. Say what you want about him but if the choice was between earning a little more or doing what he thought was "right" I think he'd go with the later... and he probably believed it led to the former.
Big companies are so difficult to steer and be allowed to do so, and in an increasingly complex world it's only getting worse. I'm not sure it's feasible for much longer for a person to have the amount of power and charisma needed to steer a company off the beaten path. The ever increasing entropy of modern time complexity is not all encouraging.
A lot of that drive was motivated by unpleasant personal narcissism - he seems to have had a strong need to feel cool, fun, empowered, and elegantly engineered himself.
But still - it pushed computing in directions that were really positive.
I have no idea what Cook is motivated by. I suspect not even Cook knows what Cook is motivated by.
He knows what Jobs looked like from the outside, and he has some ability to follow some of the moves. But it feels as if there's an aloof and maybe even slightly hostile detachment that Jobs never showed much evidence of.
Unless he has an epiphany and understands that user benefits matter more than manufacturing margins, Apple's future is going to look increasingly unexciting.