Was Tim Cook The Right Choice For Apple? — With Tripp Mickle

Tripp Mickle is a reporter for The New York Times and author of After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul. He joins Big Technology Podcast for a special episode looking inside Apple after the death of Steve Jobs and evaluating its leadership's performance. Join us for a broad, deep discussion leaning on Tripp's years of reporting on one of the world's most fascinating companies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 1:03Speaker 01

  LinkedIn Presents.

• 1:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hello and welcome to the Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed, nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. Well, if you're listening to this show, you know that the company that I'm endlessly fascinated with is Apple. It is a demonstration of what it means to be a 21st century company. It dominates in almost every field that it plays in. It's also filled with complicated issues. Tells us it's a statesman or a moral company, yet it does lots of things that might not be considered that way. It's also a beloved company, but also one of the most secretive companies in the world. Let's peel that back, because this week, joining us is Tripp Mickle.

• 2:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  He's a reporter for The New York Times and author of the new book, After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul. You're about to learn a ton about Apple, lots of brand-new details in this book, which I enjoyed very much. Trip, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me, Alex. Thanks for being here. So let's just start, you start the book talking about the transition from Steve Jobs to Tim Cook. Why did Steve Jobs pick Tim Cook as the CEO? Because you would imagine that Apple is a company that would want someone more creative. Tim Cook is more of an operations guy. It's always been a little bit interesting to me that Cook runs the company.

• 2:42Speaker 02

  It's a great question. There's not a clear answer, but the clearest answer I was able to get in the book, and if you read the book, you'll see this, is that Steve understood that Tim was responsible for about half the company's value at that point. The supply chain that Tim Cook had constructed was so superior to what anyone else had in the world of electronics that to have overlooked Tim Cook would have been kind of cut your nose to spite your face. In addition to that, Tim had some other strengths that I think Steve recognized that he needed to lean on, and that was the fact that Tim was skilled at managing a large division within Apple.

• 3:26Speaker 02

  Not everybody had that strength. This is kind of a land of silos. And in losing Steve Jobs himself, Apple needed to find a new way to operate. And Tim Cook is the kind of person who's skilled at dissecting an organization and figuring out how to make it excel. That's essentially what he went to school for. It all.

• 3:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  Isn't that bizarre to you? I mean, Apple's one of the most creative companies on the planet. And I understand that, like, okay, operationally, Cook helped them get the parts and do things that other companies couldn't. But it's an operation standpoint.

• 4:08Speaker 02

  Right.

• 4:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  I mean, you even break down, you call him the operator, and you have another character in the book who I'd like to hear more about, who you call the artist. But.

• 4:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  Why go with the operator and not the artist?

• 4:23Speaker 02

  When you say bizarre, the first thing that is bizarre to me as somebody from the southeast who lives in California, it's bizarre to me that a southerner would be running this Californian company that like really is so culturally like Californian, right? I mean, you know, that was part of Jobs' ethos and part of the foundation of it. Beyond that, if you look at where the iPhone was shortly after its introduction, it was at like 10 million units. There are like 200 million units a year now. That's a huge aspect of what Steve Jobs knew Apple needed to be able to do is just accelerate and build out the number of units that they were going to have to sell. I mean, the iPhone was going to be, for all intents and purposes, in that moment, the

• 5:08Speaker 02

  future of the company for the forthcoming years.

• 5:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  But address the question. Okay, so Tim Cook has done an amazing job building that out, but is it sort of a capitulation where you say, okay, like we go, and I've like broke this down in my book, how you're either a culture of invention or you're a culture of refinement? And is the nomination of Cook just sort of an ascension to the fact that you're going to be a culture of refinement? And in which case, fine, because, you know, if you're going to be a Tim Cook culture of refinement, they, he took the company at $3 trillion, milked just about every inch of revenue you can out of the company and does other things. That's pretty interesting. You know, talk about the way that Apple has so much cash on hand and is essentially like the world's largest underappreciated hedge fund, which, you know, I'd like to talk to you about. But what does it signal?

• 5:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  And has that, has it been the case that Apple under Cook has been this, this culture of refinement?

• 6:02Speaker 02

  The selection signaled that in that moment, Tim Cook was the best, best man for the job. You'd had by that point, Tony Fadell.

• 6:14Speaker 02

  Fired, you'd had a situation where Scott Forsall relatively soon thereafter was ousted, but also probably at that juncture.

• 6:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  These are key members of Apple leadership.

• 6:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, these are, these are, these are key figures at Apple through Apple's history. Tony Fadell being the, one of the, one of the contributors to the creation of, of the iPod. Scott Forsall being the software engineer who really spear the development of iOS. That's the foundational software for the iPhone and its success. These kind of people were gone. Avi Tavanyan, if you go back further, he had, he had helped develop macOS. John Rubenstein, Ruby as he's known to many of his colleagues, who was the hardware engineer who led the development of the iMac was gone.

• 7:06Speaker 02

  Much of, much of the, the deep bench that existed at Apple was, was gone by the time Jobs, Jobs died.

• 7:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  So what do you make of that? I mean, it's interesting. It's like a, it sounds uninspired. That's, I mean.

• 7:18Speaker 02

  The choice, the choice sounds uninspired.

• 7:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, well, it's like, you know, I've, I've asked you like, so like, why Tim Cook? So it's A, he was good at operations. B, everybody else was gone.

• 7:29Speaker 02

  If you, it's interesting, if you go back and look at the book, I mean, even Jobs himself had, had trouble elevating Tim to COO.

• 7:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  COO.

• 7:37Speaker 02

  He, he, he had advisors who had to squeeze him and say, you're going to lose this guy to Hewlett Packard, which at the time had an opening for CEO and had Tim Cook very high on their list of people to, to poach and bring over and run their company. And these advisors told Jobs, if you don't elevate this guy, you're going to lose an important and critical piece of the company and why it's been successful. And that was when Jobs capitulated and did name him COO and also gave him license to be on the board of Nike. At that point, there weren't, there weren't any other executives at Apple who were of other companies. This all speaks to some of the dark history that Jobs faced, right?

• 8:20Speaker 02

  If you go back to the eighties, he brought in John Sculley. He empowered John Sculley to lead the company and be somewhat of the grown up in the room and a bit of a marketing whiz. And then wound up being, in Jobs's view, knifed in the back and thrown and ousted out of his own company. So he had a reluctance that was rooted in his own experience to empower other people around him. And as a result, Apple was very autocratic under his leadership. And that was a key part of its success, right? It was, it was, he was, he was a tyrant and his rule was, his word was final and, and

• 9:02Speaker 02

  that was critical to the development of the products that they ultimately birthed. Was Cook a threat to Jobs' legacy? I think many people who are close to Jobs would look at Tim Cook and Tim Cook's background as an operator and say, that choice preserves Jobs' legacy as, as the great, you know, the great inventor of all these products.

• 9:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  Why not Johnny?

• 9:29Speaker 02

  Why not Johnny?

• 9:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  The head of design at Apple.

• 9:31Speaker 02

  Steve understood that Johnny Ive's skills were best deployed managing a small team of 20 designers, thinking ambitiously about the products they made and how those products would look and what they would do. And if you take somebody whose, whose strength is in creativity and you give them the responsibility for managing, at that point, I think around the time of Jobs' death, it was around like, I don't know, 11,000 people or something like that. And you give them that responsibility, when that's not their skill set, you're just setting them up to fail.

• 10:14Speaker 02

  So Johnny Ive therefore was never really part of the consideration for CEO of the company.

• 10:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, that's the artist.

• 10:25Speaker 02

  That's the artist. Artists aren't meant to file expense reports and approve expenses, right? They're they're they're meant to be dreamers and be thinking about what what the future may look like that the rest of us haven't yet, I imagine.

• 10:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And, okay, so I I think it's uninspired choice. However, like, and I've been tough on Apple, but my perspective would be that if you put this operations guy in, someone who was there as process of elimination, you know, he might help the company up to like a certain bump and, you know, that would be okay, but he's been leading Apple for a long time now. And the company is, you know, probably stronger than it's ever been. So what did Cook do? Well, yeah, I'm curious if you think that that's accurate. But what did Cook do after he got the reins of the company to make Apple as successful as it is right now?

• 11:20Speaker 02

  Your question speaks to how many people have underestimated Tim Cook over the years? If you go back to that immediate, that immediate transfer of power, most people thought Apple was doomed to fail in that moment, that there was just no way it would continue to excel after Steve Jobs, much less after Steve Jobs being led by Tim Cook, because their skill sets were so radically different. Tim Cook would acknowledge that their skill sets were so radically different. The one thing that he was, and he's talked about publicly, that he was beyond grateful to Jobs for doing is is freeing him from feeling like he had to be Jobs. One of one of the last things Jobs told him was, don't

• 12:03Speaker 02

  don't ask what I would do. Do do what you think is right. And and Cook has really leaned into that through the course of his career. And when you get to this question you posed, which is, why is Apple excelled despite the doubts from outsiders and the critics? It's it's really because Tim has recognized its strengths. He's preserved those.

• 12:30Speaker 02

  And through methodical work and persistence, he's turned those into great business opportunities. And to expand on that, if you look at at things like services, that's a real testament to Tim Cook recognizing an unseen and underappreciated opportunity already existing within Apple's business and elevating it and pushing it to where it could be so much greater than it already was.

• 13:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, but also, I mean, they've expanded the iPhone sales. I think there was like 100 million devices when Jobs was around. Now billion people have iPhones. How did that happen?

• 13:13Speaker 02

  How did that happen?

• 13:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, let me ask one more thing. So is that is like, we talk about services, but it's one fifth of Apple revenue. So is the expansion of Apple selling the iPhone actually what's behind the company's, you know, two and a half trillion dollar valuation and just bombs away revenue that they, you know, bring in every quarter?

• 13:35Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 13:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  Sorry, go ahead.

• 13:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure, because services wouldn't wouldn't be one fifth of Apple's revenue without the distribution underlying it from the iPhone's expansion. So the two are intertwined. And that's what that's what Tim Cook has been so effective at doing is taking this seminal product, literally the best selling product in history, and finding ways to build more value on top of it, whether that's with services and software or with with the watch, which wasn't necessarily something that that he dreamed up, but was something that he supported and advocated.

• 14:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and so you said that he, let's go back to the strengths. He saw Apple's strengths and exploited them and helped the company become bigger than than ever was. What were the, what are the strengths?

• 14:26Speaker 02

  Strength is, the strengths of Apple are primarily its its culture, its ambition, and

• 14:35Speaker 02

  This is a really hard thing for people to appreciate externally. It's attention to detail and perfectionism that just permeates the entire operation. And, and that, that is something that even as big as they've gotten, where they've gone from, you know, like 12,000 employees to 140,000 employees. They've been able to maintain those underlying and underpinning aspects. And by doing so, they're able to continue to release products that are, that are sharp. Are they as perfect as products were in the Jobs era? Not always. Was, were Jobs products always perfect? Ping is an example of a product that they pulled back from the market almost immediately.

• 15:18Speaker 02

  Um, but they, Apple has been persistent in, in perfecting the products that it's introduced. And as a result, it's been able to build real fast.

• 15:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  So you think Apple's culture is one of its strengths? Can you elaborate on that?

• 15:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, can I elaborate on that?

• 15:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  You should be able to, you just wrote the book.

• 15:40Speaker 02

  I'm just trying to think of the best way to elaborate on it. I mean, I, you've dealt, you've come across people from Apple. I mean, they have an attention to detail that is, that is, exceeds many other companies. And if you look at, the best way I can elaborate on that is if you look at people who leave Google, they often go on to do startups and those startups have success. And so by contrast, if you look at the people who've left Apple, often they pursue startups and those don't, they don't live up to the, to the ambition of the, of the founder. And, and one of the things that many of those founders will tell you is they begin to hire other people.

• 16:21Speaker 02

  And if those people aren't from Apple, they don't have that kind of Apple culture within them or that, that belief in perfection and attention to detail and hard work.

• 16:35Speaker 02

  There's there there breaks in the chain and those startups struggle to deliver on on the ambition of the founder and and and that's what Apple has like they they all work together toward a goal. It's not always as clean as they would like and I and they leave us with the impression that it is because they don't tell you anything about the hardships they run into when they're developing products. They just release them like rabbits out of a hat. But but they do get it done. Um, and I and I think that kind of startup world that you and I are both familiar with here in the Bay Area is a testament to to why Apple's culture is so strong.

• 17:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And and you know, I I remember speaking to someone, and this is in my book, but someone who had been at Apple, who was in this, she mentioned that she was in this hotel room or hotel conference room and picks up a mug from the table and she feels the mold line between the handle and the cup. And she goes, they could have just taken a little bit more time and smoothed that out and then pauses and goes, F you, Steve Jobs, because that's the sense of perfectionism that Apple had imbued in them is that everything needed to be as perfect as possible.

• 17:45Speaker 02

  That's a great example. And and you run into that constantly. And it is kind of mystifying when you look at people who who spun out of Apple, who had great success there and have not been able to replicate it elsewhere. Tony Fadell is one of the the exceptions to the rule. He was able to have a second act with Nest. But that's few and far between in in the Apple landscape.

• 18:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  Doesn't that make Apple struggle with software? Because with hardware, okay, I get it. Get the mold line off the cup. With software, a lot of the times, it's you get an imperfect product out, iterate, improve, iterate, improve, until the point where it's actually something that lots of people want to use. But it's much more difficult to do that, you know, to get it perfect right the first time. And Apple has struggled with that. Look at Maps, for instance. What's your perspective?

• 18:33Speaker 02

  Right. If you talk to, I I recall talking to somebody who left Apple and landed at Facebook and they were on the software side of the equation and they they found it invigorating to be able to work inside an environment where where they A B tested things and where they did iterate and improve. Whereas at Apple, they felt handcuffed because they would do all this work and do a product release annually, and then they turn around and do all this work and do a product release annually. And they didn't have that kind of refinement that you're talking about that is customary at more software centric companies like Facebook.

• 19:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, I also want to ask you about the subtitle of the book, How Apple Became a Trillion Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul. So we talked a little bit about how Apple became a trillion dollar company, right? It is sort of relentless operations, the ability to apply some of the principles out to different products like the watch and now services. But what about losing its soul? What is Apple's soul and how did it lose it? It's a pretty bold subtitle, so.

• 19:37Speaker 02

  This subtitle is a reference literally to the relationship that Steve Jobs had with Johnny Ive. He considered him a spiritual partner and a creative soulmate. So, literally, Apple lost its soul because Johnny Ive left the company in 2019. Metaphorically, it also speaks to some of the reasons that Johnny Ive became disillusioned increasingly during the Tim Cook years and eventually departed because the company became a place, because the company was once a place where art led to commerce and with time it became a place where commerce dictated art.

• 20:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  What does that mean?

• 20:17Speaker 02

  That means that shortly after Steve Jobs' death, there was an understanding internally within Apple that if we're going to pursue a product, it has to be a minimum of a $10 billion business. Because otherwise, it's not going to deliver enough financial value to us to meet the expectations of Wall Street. It will be more trouble than it is worth. So, all of a sudden, there were commercial restrictions on the ideas and products you might pursue.

• 20:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  And isn't that short sighted also because you know, how are you supposed to know if business is going to be 10 billion at the outset?

• 20:58Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, you can look at things like, okay, there are giant industries like healthcare or auto or or energy. All of a sudden, the iPhone was so big that these were the type of sectors that Apple was looking at and saying, for us to continue to grow, those are the arenas that we have to be playing.

• 21:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  Mm hmm.

• 21:19Speaker 02

  Because they had already saturated the electronics market and pretty much dominated it and become the largest profit generator in that world. So they had to look beyond those walls that they were kind of built to excel in and chase other big industries.

• 21:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  And how do you think they've done trying to chase those industries?

• 21:45Speaker 02

  It's been uneven, right? I think we can look at the track record over the past decade and say that of those areas that they've decided to pursue, the foremost are healthcare and auto. We still don't have a car, even though they set a goal of releasing one by 2019. And with healthcare, the watch got off to a shaky start. It took some time for adoption to build. It's been growing since then. It's still the linchpin of their health ambitions, but its health capabilities are somewhat limited and their exploration of things like medical, digital medical records has yet

• 22:30Speaker 02

  to yield anything that's benefited the bottom line.

• 22:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. What's your sense of what's going on with the car after having reported on it?

• 22:39Speaker 02

  Still at it, you know, still trying to solve a hard problem. I mean, the book goes into great detail highlighting why.

• 22:51Speaker 02

  They had this ambition to come in and disrupt Tesla in the same way they disrupted Nokia years, years earlier in the smartphone world. And why they weren't able to fulfill that ambition? And in large part, that's because of dissension, dissension within, within the ranks between senior leaders. The people who were advocating the idea of disrupting Tesla were largely on the engineering side, the hardware engineering side. Designers such as Johnny Ive were advocating full autonomy, which takes much, much longer. And while that would be a huge leap, the world's not ready for that. Waymo's been at it more than anybody else, and we still don't have full autonomy from now.

• 23:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  So how do you then square Apple's culture, right? Which you talk about this, you know, culture of perfection, a very, a very effective culture, in your opinion, with the inability to, you know, come to an agreement on, on a car, for instance? Because my reporting tells me that this car is, is nowhere near close to being ready to hit, you know, to, to even achieve the basic goals that it's wanted to.

• 24:00Speaker 02

  Right, right. So what, how does that get, get to the, get to the idea of perfection?

• 24:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, you said they have a cult, their culture is one of their strengths, but it sounds like with the car, the culture is one of the biggest drawbacks. Talk about the infighting and the inability to agree on what it's.

• 24:14Speaker 02

  I wouldn't argue that the problem there is perfection. I would, I would say that the issue is how hierarchical Apple is.

• 24:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, so say more about that, yeah.

• 24:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, it's such a hierarchical company. I mean, there are literally a dozen people that meet once a week and chart the direction of the company. And then it flows and filters all the way down through the ranks. And in the Jobs era, he was, he was kind of the final bit of hierarchy for the company. But in the, in the Tim Cook era, Tim's largely stayed out of product. And so you've had a bit of a void. He's left, he's left his intenants to sort out their disagreements among themselves and not provided that direction. Because, again, he, he's not a product guy. He doesn't try to be a product guy. That's not his nature. And as a result, these disagreements have popped up as we've seen in the car

• 25:07Speaker 02

  case. And that's that slowed some of their product development.

• 25:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I think it's just, I think it's amazing that Apple continues to chug along, given that all the all these bullet points or all these data points I would think would hold it back. But it continues to to to crush it. So the book is After Steve, How Apple Became a Trillion Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul. We're talking with Trip Mickle, the author and the reporter, a reporter at the New York Times, new reporter at the New York Times. Congrats on the new job, Trip. We'll be back after the break to talk a little bit more about Apple's relationship with China, which I find endlessly interesting. And as well as to address some of the questions that have popped up on LinkedIn and Twitter and talk about Apple's approach to politics. So stick around, we'll be back right after this.

• 25:53Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 27:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back here with Trip Mickle, reporter at The New York Times and author of After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul, Soul being Johnny Ive. All right, let's talk about China. How important, you know, we talk about how Apple's become this 2-point, you know, X-trillion-dollar company. How important is its relationship with China to do it? I mean, we talk about how they forged relationship with the Chinese government. They have a very big market for the phones there. And their manufacturing is tied up pretty intricately into China.

• 28:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, 100%. You just laid it all out. I mean, that, it is, it is foundational to their business now. And if, if you go back and look at the, the moments that they've had slip-ups, it's largely been China-related. The best example being early 2019, when they had to, they had to slash guidance because...

• 28:46Speaker 02

  The iPhones that they they expected to do quite well in China fell far short of their expectations. So this is a rare miss. It's been sixteen years since they'd had to slash guidance and and that just underscored how important the sales are in that market. And then on the flip side, a year later in 2020, they slashed guidance again because China was the first to get hit with COVID and they shut down a lot of their manufacturing operations. And Apple was unable to produce the phones that it needed to sell around the world. That dependency in China was once again under a microscope.

• 29:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  And this this most recent quarter, they also they basically crushed their earnings expectations, beat everything except for iPads, which people expected. And, you know, then they do the conference call and they talk about how they're going to have some issues with China in the coming quarter. And their stock just plummets.

• 29:43Speaker 02

  Right. They were they were punished by investors not for their past performance, but for what's what's what's currently occurring because of because of the COVID restrictions in and around Shanghai, where they've had to shut down a lot of their factories. Yeah. I mean, there was a, I think you've had Jack Nickas on here before, and I think Jack had a line in his New York Times story a couple of years ago, or a year ago, about about Apple and China. And his turn of phrase when it came to China was there there is no plan B.

• 30:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 30:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  So, yeah, we I spoke with Jack about that. Do you do so? Tim Cook is like talked about how or Tim Cook is portrayed as this like statesman like CEO who talks about like all these issues. And, you know, paints Apple as the moral good, good company. You know, there's also been reports that I think it might have been in Jack's story that like they've had like, you know, they've worked with subcontractors who, you know, have plants in Xinjiang and like maybe that labor is coming to them, you know, in like pretty unethical ways, you know, via the Chinese government. Maybe you can clear up what I'm what I'm saying here. But doesn't that does it compromise them ethically morally at all by being that, you know, closely linked with the government in China?

• 31:03Speaker 02

  For the astute viewer, it does. But for

• 31:08Speaker 02

  The average person, that's not on their radar and therefore they haven't faced a lot of blowback. I, I, it does seem like if you look at the shifting political winds in the country, that that could change in the future. If, if we, we wind up in a situation where there is a big wave of Republicans into Congress and the Senate, they seem more inclined to hold tech companies' feet to the fire on, on their dependency on China and some of their grandstanding in the US, if you will. Um, there was a good example of this about a week ago. There's an FCC commissioner who put out a letter criticizing Tim Cook for

• 31:51Speaker 02

  making a, a really eloquent speech about privacy and how important privacy was and how Apple was kind of a bulwark to protect consumers' privacy relative to its, its tech peers. And, and the FCC commissioner was like, yeah, but what about, what about China? Like you have this huge business in China, this huge empire. If you're so concerned about privacy, why have you taken down VPNs there? And, and went through a number of issues to point out the inconsistency between what Tim Cook was saying about privacy in the US and what Apple's actions are in China. So.

• 32:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, that was Brendan Carr who's been on.

• 32:32Speaker 02

  Oh, I see. I didn't realize Brendan had been on the show. So, yeah.

• 32:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Um, I, I found it interesting. I thought it was weird that he concentrated only on the Voice of America app, which is the thing that he was like, why are you taking this down? But, um, you know, it's like, but anyway, I, I do think that like it's interesting that it was called out. Here's, I wrote this question down. Can it, can a company that big, you know, 2.6 trillion global operations obviously makes deals with, um, you know, governments around the world, can a company that large be principled? Or is it sort of a fallacy? What do you think?

• 33:08Speaker 02

  A company that large can talk about being principled, but I, I don't think we have any evidence of a company that large actually. Being, you know, the Dalai Lama or Mother Teresa, right? I mean, you know, it's really only individuals and even even they're flawed, right? Um, but it's really only individuals that can can be principled and see that that that kind of like principled nature all the way through. So especially I'm I'm happy to hear examples otherwise if you if you think there are. But um, but I can't point point to one.

• 33:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  No, I think it's difficult. I think I always find this like, you know, we are the moral good in the world's coming from corporations. Um, to be a little weird, like, you know, I would, I I think it would be much more honest to be like, hey, we're here to sell phones.

• 33:52Speaker 02

  Tim Tim Cook was astute and attuned to that. I know if you go back and the book hits on this, hits on like where this kind of principled presentation came from that Apple's really advanced. It was really rooted in their effort to develop a brand campaign and in and around 2012. They were under a lot of fire at that point in time because the New York Times had done its Eye Economy series highlighting how many jobs had gone to China, some of the working conditions for workers there. Greenpeace was really upset about some of Apple's, um, not even at that point greenwashing, but just really kind of environmental practices. The company was really trying to push back on that and it decided for the first time

• 34:37Speaker 02

  in years, it was going to develop a brand campaign. Um, it was going to be the first one since Think Different. And in the course of that, one of the ideas that were floated by the ad agency that was working with Apple was this idea of leave the world better than you found it. Um, and it was, you know, it was it was really captivating. I had in that it it showed a tree that kind of like had grown up and got really, really big. It started as like a small apple tree and and this was a. Kind of a cartoonish like drawing and the tree gets really big and it's highlighting all the responsibilities that as the tree gets that much bigger that it has to the world. And it culminated with the tagline, leave it better than you found it. And Tim Cook looks at it and it really resonates with.

• 35:22Speaker 02

  But he says, you know what, I'm going to use this internally because I can't very well go out and say, we're going to leave the world better than we found it right now when we're under attack for environmental issues, we're facing criticism for worker conditions in China. But he did internalize it. He did use it to rally staff. And then gradually, as Apple improved in those other areas, he began to use it publicly as well.

• 35:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, it's been a pretty successful campaign for that.

• 35:51Speaker 02

  Right.

• 35:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  I think people generally feel good about owning iPhone products or Apple products, whether they should or shouldn't.

• 35:56Speaker 02

  Right. It's been really successful for them and it's also been critical for Tim Cook finding a way to redefine himself relative to Steve Jobs. You know, Steve Jobs, if you're stepping into the legacy of this executive who was so tremendous in terms of dreaming up and introducing revolutionary products, that's not your thing. So you can't do that. This has become Tim's thing. I mean, he's talked a lot about these issues. One of the first things he did after becoming CEO was introduce corporate matching to nonprofits. And these things have been really effective in terms of winning over staff and having staff believe in the Apple mission within the world.

• 36:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  But it's kind of interesting because it also made Tim Cook kind of hated by his hometown.

• 36:47Speaker 02

  Right, right, right. It is kind of funny. I mean, that was the most fascinating thing about doing the reporting for this book was going to Robertsdale, Alabama. It's about an hour outside of Mobile. And showing up and thinking, this is a small town. Of course, he's got, of course, everybody's going to want to talk about Tim Cook because he's local boy done good. And instead, you'd knock on doors and people would kind of bristle at the notion of talking about Tim. And that's largely because, as I peeled it back, in 2014, Tim gave a speech about seeing a cross burning in Robertsdale when he was a teenager. And the town just...

• 37:30Speaker 02

  A, didn't believe that cross burning actually happened and B, didn't appreciate having a kind of it spotlighted for the world and thought that it put the town in a negative light. And therefore, they just don't really like Tim in his own hometown. It's very strange.

• 37:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, there's some kind of interesting details in the book about how the story doesn't fully add up. Do you think he made it up?

• 37:58Speaker 02

  He was challenged by a close friend about that, who sent him a pointed email saying, "Tim, if this happened, like, what did you do? Did you go to the police? What action did you take?" And he just kind of shrugged her off and said, "Do you not believe me?"

• 38:21Speaker 02

  There are some teachers around that time that knew Tim Cook and they recall him telling stories like this or about that event. And so it does seem to have some grounding in his own memory and his own recollection. But the town itself doesn't have any recollection of this event. And it's really hard to bear it out. I mean, I reported that one pretty deeply. And, you know, it was a cross burning in the yard of a black resident and there weren't black residents yet at that time because it was a sunset town, meaning most of the black community lived in neighboring communities. And when sunset arrived, they were, they left Robertsdale itself.

• 39:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Did Apple, what was it like working with Apple on this? Did they play ball? Did they make Tim Cook available?

• 39:14Speaker 02

  Uh, Tim Cook didn't respond to any of my emails or outreach to talk to him for this book. Apple took its standard tact, which is, you know, we're not, we're not going to make anybody available. I don't know how often you've had a chance to interview people over there, but generally speaking, they don't believe in talking about the past. They don't generally believe in talking about the present and they certainly don't believe in talking about the future. So in essence, they kind of don't talk. Like, that's just their nature. That's kind of their starting point, ground zero for them.

• 39:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, so is you think that was a, you know, a sort of a blessing or a curse for you when it came to reporting this book? Because I feel like you can also always like, I mean, it's nice to be able to speak with principals, but um, I feel like you can tell a more honest story without like having to include their spin.

• 40:05Speaker 02

  Well, if I was, if I was able to speak with principals, it wouldn't preclude me from talking to others and and rounding out my understanding of things. I I generally come at things and and think, look, I have an open notebook. I want to fill it with as much, much as possible and and in doing so, I'm able to kind of weigh

• 40:25Speaker 02

  different and competing narratives so that I get the most accurate story to bring forward for a reader. And that's, that's our job in essence is reporters. And so I'm, I never enjoy having people tell me like, they don't want to talk to me. That, that just means I can't do as good a job for the reader as I need to.

• 40:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Okay, that's a good point. All right. Are you open to take, we, I asked folks on LinkedIn and Twitter, um, you know, if they had any questions about Apple and like a bunch flooded in. You down to take some of them?

• 40:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure. I saw some of those flooding. I thought it was cool that you, you, you crowdsourced this one.

• 41:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Also, um, that, that thread is going to stay open on LinkedIn. Um, so if folks want to come in and, you know, Trip, if you were up to respond, like, that would be cool. But anyway, let's, let's keep the questions flowing and maybe we can get Trip back in the comments there. Um, and I'll, I'll put a, a link to your, your Amazon page and we can, um, we can roll with that. All right. Let's take this one from Michael Cohen. He said, I'd love to know, uh, your take on whether I've had to move on for Apple to become a trillion dollar company. We all think he was the soul of the company we use, but he wonders, uh, if his focus on design over functionality took the pendulum too far in the wrong direction.

• 41:39Speaker 02

  I'm going to answer that question in two ways. First, in looking back at the history of Apple, it's pretty clear that its alchemy is rooted in peers. Jobs and Woz built the company. Jobs and I've sort of rescued the company from bankruptcy. And then I've and Cook were responsible for this most recent decade, where you had the two seminal products being the watch and services, each one responsible for a separate piece of that. So I think I've contribution to this decade has been, been hugely important. Um, it's

• 42:14Speaker 02

  It got off to a rocky start, the watch did, but the wearables business has become a $38 billion business and that's a very valuable piece of of Apple's overall sales.

• 42:27Speaker 02

  Did he, did, did in his period of being part-time, did there, was there evidence in the eyes of people at Apple that form trunk function? Yes, yes, and and the book details that largely through the experience of Apple employees once they got to Apple Park. They just felt that there were some things that were overlooked that could have made the headquarters and headquarters experience sharper and a better experience. Name, I mean, like, great example is walking into the glass walls, just like the lack of, the lack of anticipation that people might do that.

• 43:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  So, so tell that story, because people, people would, I think it's a Mark Bergen story, who's gonna be on the show. So, so people would walk into the, to the walls inside the headquarters because they were that.

• 43:17Speaker 02

  It's so clear and so pristine, the glass internally and there are walls that separate various pieces of the circle from each other and doors, that people would just walk straight into the door. And so eventually, and they, you know, there were enough of these that they were calling 911 and bloody noses and so on and so forth. And so, so employees eventually started, you know, walking, some of them with their hands out saying they were like, almost like zombies, just to be sure, like, they were, their hands would hit the glass before their nose did. And early on, because Apple was having such a hard time with this, they, they ordered tons of stickers and they went in and put them up so that people could see the glass.

• 44:00Speaker 02

  So these are like little black dots that go on the glass. So they're blemishes on the perfection of the glass itself. And staff took to calling those Johnny's Tears.

• 44:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  Amazing. Okay, cool. By the way, did he speak with you for the book?

• 44:17Speaker 02

  You know, we, we just don't get to talk to everybody. So, you know, you try, you try your best and you get to everybody and you ask and you ask. I got an email from him because I sent one, one detail that we were able to come across. It was a video of his father developing hovercraft many years ago. And I, and I just sent it to him just because I thought it was just so cool. I guess this is ancient BBC footage of, of his dad in action. And I, I sent it to him and I talked to a lot of people who remember working on it. And he wrote me back. He's said he remembered it, you know, just like it was yesterday. Um, and that was like 50 some odd years ago, 60 years ago, that, that, that, uh, that hovercraft was, was built.

• 45:02Speaker 02

  So there's one quote from Johnny in the book. It's, it's from that email.

• 45:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  Wow. And that was the extent of it. Did you speak to Steve Wozniak?

• 45:10Speaker 02

  Woz has a busy schedule, so he, he was not able to make time, but he, his, his story has been told. And it was not, it was not, uh, at, at the centerpiece of, of this, of this book. I do have some commentary from Woz because I remember, uh, and I don't know if you were there, but they did the 10th anniversary release of the iPhone in 2017. And it was the first event on campus and Woz was there and he was kind of holding court with a lot of reporters, talking about how the Steve Jobs Theater was just so emblematic of the design sensibilities of, of Steve himself. And so there, there are some quotes from, from Woz in there, including his, his pronounced skepticism that the iPhone,

• 45:53Speaker 02

  even after that 10th anniversary edition, had much life left in it. He was, he was, he was kind of ready for a post-smartphone world at that point.

• 46:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I remember that. Yeah. So, um, for my book, I, I emailed Woz and I was like, let's, let's meet. And I think he, he emailed back and he's like, nah, I don't really do business books. And then I was like, well, and I was like, maybe you should consider ABC. And he's like, all right, in which case, let's figure out when and where. And it was this hilarious meeting. We had like me, him, his, I think his wife and his business partner all met, uh, down in a diner, um, and just kind of, you know, shot the shit about, um, sort of Apple's, uh, culture and stuff like that.

• 46:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  He's an interesting dude.

• 46:38Speaker 02

  Very interesting.

• 46:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  Interesting dude. I think that was probably the one and only meeting I'm going to get with him though. All right, let's go back to some questions. So this is from Michael Brown on Twitter. Was there a deliberate shift from the magic of technology through Steve to focusing on turning customers into large locked in recurring revenue? I think that's great.

• 47:01Speaker 02

  Right.

• 47:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  It was, it's basically a pointer on like, you know, and had Apple basically decided that, you know, it had its products and now it was just basically time to milk revenue out of consumers.

• 47:11Speaker 02

  I think Steve Jobs also, he was, he was at the forefront of building the wall garden, right? So I don't, I don't, I don't think he would, he wouldn't have any qualms about saying like, well, if we build a wall garden and it's better than any other garden and everybody stays in there, like we'd milk money out of them, like he would, he would be supportive of that. I'm just playing Monday morning quarterback here and guessing what his attitude would be about that. Apple has done that quite effectively. But they've looked to stretch beyond that to some degree. You know, the watch was their effort at that. And again, it was, it was uneven with its introduction, but it has gained ground.

• 47:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. We got another one from Maribel Lopez. How has the process of innovating changed in the post-Jobs world? It's interesting because, yeah, it seems to be like Jobs would be the source of most ideas. I liked how he, you had this anecdote in the book where he would go to Johnny, he'd be like, I have a lousy idea. Johnny would be like, most of them actually were lousy, but some of them would just like, you know, silence the room and a lot of this stuff came from Jobs's and Johnny's brain. So how did, how did it change in a post-Jobs world at Apple?

• 48:19Speaker 02

  So in the post-Jobs, Jobs world, the, the reason that the book focuses so much on, on the watch is because that is the preeminent example of the product that they introduced that was new in a new product category after Jobs. And Johnny drove much of that. He really was the driving force behind it. It has, there, there, there are some competing stories about what the first idea of it was, whether it was, was Johnny at a, at a whiteboard, which is a story that's, that's highlighted in the book. You're writing the word smartwatch on on on the whiteboard for a few of his his designer colleagues and saying this is what we're gonna do.

• 49:02Speaker 02

  Or it was some of the designers kind of just banding about text messages and saying like, oh, we're we're gonna we're gonna do smartwatch and a and a designer who wanted to just test the idea. The next day came in Julian Hone, who wound up doing a lot of lead work on on the watch and making a model, an early model. Um, but it really was sprung from the studio, even though ideas were percolating elsewhere. And the reason I bring that up is because at Apple, there does need to be a driving force to get products into the marketplace, to get products to develop. And the open question now with Johnny gone is who is that driving force?

• 49:44Speaker 02

  I don't have the answer, and I think maybe we'll get the answer when we see AR glasses or when we see a car come forward. The car, to your point earlier, it seems a long way off still. And like, by the time that comes forward, how many people will have run that project? You know, I mean, they've been churning through executives and leaders on it for a long time.

• 50:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and it's interesting now that Johnny's no longer at the company. You know, where it's, I always thought, yeah, design was the the source of it. I heard it's moved to marketing in some ways, um, but I guess we'll find out. Thoughts on that?

• 50:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, I I think marketing has has more more sway over over the future of product as a consequence of of Ives absence. Again, this is a very hierarchical company.

• 50:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 50:34Speaker 02

  And and without somebody from design with a seat at the table at the to- top of the hierarchy, which in Johnny's absence, that doesn't exist anymore. Jeff Williams is the is the person running design and he is he is there at those executive meetings.

• 50:52Speaker 02

  But he's he's not by nature a designer, uh, so therefore, marketing, marketing has a bigger voice.

• 50:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, it's interesting, and I guess that goes to your point of commerce over form to start. To start with. Okay, here's one, here's another one from, man, I feel like I should have just turned this over to LinkedIn and Twitter if you were asking great questions. This is from Adella77. "I couldn't understand the logic of the first-gen gold Apple Watch focusing on the luxury element, when in reality the watch will be practically obsolete from a technical standpoint in a very short period of time. What was Johnny's thinking about this?" So I guess it like sort of goes to like, you know, why make this expensive gold band if you're about to develop the next generation pretty quickly? Like, why would people pay that much money? And it's, and to build on that, it is interesting that

• 51:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  they transformed it from a fashion thing to a health thing. So maybe you could talk a little bit about that.

• 51:46Speaker 02

  It's a great question, and one that the book spends a lot of, a lot of time digging into, which is, which is why was, why was fashion so critical to some of the early marketing of the watch? And I came into it with the, with the attitude and mindset that a lot of outside observers did, which is like, that just seems crazy. Like, why, why would you, why would you spend a ton of time and energy on that? And left with a deeper appreciation for the thinking behind. If you go back and you look at what made, in the eyes of a lot of, a lot of people at Apple, what made the iPod so successful was, it was this convergence

• 52:30Speaker 02

  of what Apple was great at, making great product and great software, with a cultural medium in, in music. And there was some ambition at the outset of the watch that they could pull off a similar feat, and they could fuse their sophistication with making product and software with, with fashion. So fashion was a stand-in for sport, for, for music in this case. And the reason that they were so focused on that was because they felt that

• 53:02Speaker 02

  If the fashion world rejected the watch and said, this is ugly and like you should never wear it, that it would just influence, because the tastemakers there are so influential, that it would sour people on wearing the watch. And they really wanted to get over that hurdle. They felt that hurdle was critical. I left pretty persuaded that that was sound focus. And when you start at that point and you think, okay, well, we need, this was another challenge they faced. They were making a product that existed previously. So people were bringing their own expectations to it. Yes, we had mobile phones, but we never really

• 53:45Speaker 02

  had a smartphone until the iPhone, right? It really kind of created a category as much as anything. We've had watches for hundreds of years. So they had to straddle this kind of like legacy and invent kind of like a future. And the goal is rooted in that. Is it nonsensical, as you all noted? Yeah, absolutely. Like, what was the point of that? But were there tastemakers who that they who they got that watch to, who showed it off, and it's as a result influenced other people's perception of it? Yes, I mean, Karl Lagerfeld, Beyonce, some of these people had a chance to get that gold watch. And it did have some

• 54:30Speaker 02

  influence from a PR standpoint.

• 54:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  Let's go to this one from Ethereum West. Not a security. Did Johnny Ive leave because Apple got boring innovation wise? Or was it because he became less influential after Jobs passed?

• 54:46Speaker 02

  It's a combination of both. It's a really perceptive question, but the book really covers why both of those became true. He was, first of all, tired after developing the watch. He wanted to step back. In stepping back, there were also changes at the company where more and more right brain leaders had influence. And

• 55:12Speaker 02

  While he was working part-time with the company, that influence of right-brain leaders only increased, and so his influence waned. And the combination of the two ultimately led to his exit.

• 55:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  Fascinating. Okay, we're coming towards the home stretch, but I found this to be pretty interesting. John Basile, he says, "They became the company they claimed to be fighting against 38 years ago." And then links the Apple 1984 ad where, you know, Apple, someone representing Apple sort of throws the hammer into, you know, this big, I guess, faceless character, which is, or face character, which is supposed to resemble IBM. But yeah, in many ways, they have become that, right? They, they are now facing lawsuits from, you know, many who say that they've become like this big, uh, massive company that restricts their ability to do business and is actually squeezing the upstarts that they used to be all about. And here's to the crazy ones, right?

• 56:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  Their old commercial. Well, what, what happened to that?

• 56:11Speaker 02

  What happened to that? The, the, does the person who asked the question work at Epic? Because I, I do feel like this is like Epic's core, core line of argument against Apple, right?

• 56:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, they, they, that's, that's the thing about getting, getting big. And I think the struggle at Apple has been, as you get that big, like, they still, especially for people who were at the company when it was on the brink of bankruptcy, and those people are still very much in senior leadership positions there, they still feel like, you know, the, the company, the, the small company they once were. That's still part of their ethos. And I think that creates some internal conflict where they behave in ways that can, that can have catastrophic, you know, impact on smaller companies. And they don't fully appreciate their own weight in hats.

• 57:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, here's my last question for you. So I found it fascinating reading in the beginning of the book about Jobs' paranoia, about what Apple would become after him. Clearly, he knew there was going to be an after-Jobs era. And he talked about companies like Polaroid, for instance, that never quite figured it out afterwards, or Disney, which like took a long time as a struggling company before figuring it out. And it's a huge and important thing that the successor is someone who helps propel the innovation versus let it, lets it slide. So I'm going to give you two options to sort of compare Tim Cook to. And I'm curious, who do you think he's closer to?

• 57:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Do you think he's closer to Steve Ballmer, who was given this asset by Bill Gates, right? Windows and basically decided to milk as much money out of it, who cares what the future brings? Or do you think he's someone closer to a Michael Eisner, who had resuscitated Disney by, you know, greenlighting lots of hits and, you know, basically brought that company's mojo back? Which one does Cook more closely resemble?

• 58:15Speaker 02

  He's not Ballmer because his success speaks for itself and because, because they have managed to launch some products that have really continued the company's sales success in a way, and they haven't really missed something. I mean, that was, that was the big knock on Ballmer, right? He missed, he missed the smartphone. You can't really point to something that Apple's missed that's been catastrophic for them in the way that missing the smartphone was for Ballmer and Microsoft. Is he Eisner? Eisner had to come in and revive Disney. So it's hard for me to say he's Eisner. He's more Eisner than he is Ballmer, but Eisner, Eisner really came in and revived Disney after this period of dormancy.

• 58:59Speaker 02

  Tim, Tim inherited a company that was, that was poised to, to go on a tremendous run because, because the power and popularity of the iPhone was only beginning to be unleashed. As he came into his own, he's found a way to squeeze more value out of that particular product. And charted his own. I think in the future, it'll it'll ultimately be, you'll say, there are three choices. Is he more like Ballmer? Is he more like Isaac? Or is he more like Tim Cook? Or she? Whoever the executive might be.

• 59:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  And Apple Apple's future, you think is bright moving forward? Or do you think there's that it's been soaring based off of like Steve Jobs ideas like the iPhone and eventually I mean, even I like think about AirPods, which are like, you know, those are headphones for an iPhone and a watch is for watch. The Apple watch is a watch for iPhone owners. So I got God, I always do this. I said, last question, but I this is really the last one. Yeah. So in the future, how they gonna? How's it looking?

• 59:59Speaker 02

  The epilogue really highlights the clouds ahead for Apple and and and there are some dark clouds on the horizon, the first being antitrust and the threat that it poses to the entire services business and that core App Store business that is so central to the service revenue that they generate. And then the other being China. We're in a we're in a time period when the to when the when the plates of geopolitics are shifting in such a way that what may happen down the line could be could be catastrophic for Apple. I mean, if China were to do something

• 1:00:41Speaker 02

  like Russia's done and preemptively invade a territory that they consider part of their country, Taiwan, what what does that mean for Apple? What does that mean for its manufacturing? What does that mean for its reliance on TSMC for the chips that power its products? And what does that mean for the sales of iPhone?

• 1:01:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  And? Guess we'll.

• 1:01:02Speaker 02

  I guess we I guess we just that's going to be the story to watch.

• 1:01:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  It would be. I'll end. It'll be. It'll be a big problem for the company. Yeah. Okay. After Steve, how Apple became a trillion dollar company, lost its soul is on sale this week. Congratulations, Trip. Trip is the author. Where could people find the book? Where could people find your work online?

• 1:01:22Speaker 02

  Find it in bookstores, Amazon, bookshop.org, and Barnes and Noble, just about anywhere, anywhere you're looking. And then my work on the future about Apple will be on the New York Times website.

• 1:01:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, great. Well, I quite enjoyed the book. I really enjoyed learning kind of more about the history of Tim Cook, who's one of the most secretive CEOs, in my opinion. And it's great. It's cool that you went back to his hometown. I'm glad you shared some of that with us today. So folks, I hope you go check it out and get a chance to read it on your own. Thank you again, Trip, for being here. Thank you, Nate Quatney, for editing this. I appreciate your work, Nate. And thank you, LinkedIn, for having me as part of your podcast network. Really appreciate that. Thanks to all of you, the listeners. Hey, if you're still here and you want to give us a rating, five stars would really be appreciated. We're almost close to 100, so maybe you could be the 100th, and that would make you feel

• 1:02:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  great. Sure, make us feel great here at Big Technology Podcast. Also, I promised you my voice would be better after last week. Well, I've done all the exercises and feel like I've brought the A-game this week. So thanks again for being patient. All right, we will see you soon. We actually have a new bonus episode coming up pretty soon with Rich Greenfield talking about the market. He's one of the best analysts out there. And I am totally puzzled by the market, so hopefully we'll get a chance to bring you a bonus episode about what's going on pretty soon. All right, signing off, we will see you next time. Thanks again for listening. This has been Big Technology Podcast, and I hope you have a good one.

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  We're not worthy!

• 1:03:56Speaker 05

  The best things on TV really are free. You just have to know where to look. Escape to Pluto TV. Stream now, pay never.