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[CM] Looking into Cook's "Only Apple can do it" mantra

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From the «innocent until proven guilty» department:
Title: ★ Only Apple
Author: John Gruber
Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2014 19:44:26 -0400
Link: http://daringfireball.net/2014/06/only_apple

1.

“Only Apple” has been Tim Cook’s closing mantra for the last few Apple
keynotes. Here’s what he said at the end of last week’s WWDC keynote[1]:

You’ve seen how our operating systems, devices, and services, all work
together in harmony. Together they provide an integrated and continuous
experience across all of our products, and you’ve seen how developers can
extend their experience further than they’ve ever done before and how they
can create powerful apps even faster and more easily than they’ve ever been
able to.

Apple engineers platforms, devices, and services together. We do this so
that we can create a seamless experience for our users that is unparalleled
in the industry. This is something only Apple can do. You’ve seen a few
people on stage this morning, but there are thousands of people that made
today possible.

Is this true, though? Is Apple the only company that can do this? I think
it’s inarguable that they’re the only company that is doing it, but Cook is
saying they’re the only company that can.

I’ve been thinking about this for two weeks. Who else is even a maybe? I’d
say it’s a short list: Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Samsung. And I’d divide
that short list into halves — the close maybes (Microsoft and Google) and the
not-so-close maybes (Amazon and Samsung).

Samsung makes and sells a ton of devices, but they don’t control any
developer platform to speak of. They’re trying with Tizen, but that hasn’t
taken off yet. So their phones and tablets run Android, their notebooks run
Windows or Chrome OS, and there’s no integration layer connecting all the
other stuff they make (TVs, refrigerators, whatever). I think Tizen exists
because Samsung sees the competitive disadvantage they’re in by not
controlling their software platforms, but they’re nowhere close to having
something that helps them in this regard.

Amazon sells devices (including soon, purportedly[2], phones) and certainly
understands cloud services and the integration of features under your Amazon
identity. But their aims, thus far, are narrow. Amazon devices really are
just about media consumption — books, movies, TV shows — and shopping from
Amazon. They don’t make PCs, so compared to Apple and the growing integration
between Macs and iOS devices, Amazon isn’t even in the game. And with their
reliance on Android (forked version or not), they don’t have anywhere near
the control over their software platforms that Apple does.

Google has all three: platforms, devices, and services. But the devices that
are running their platforms are largely outside their control. They sell
“pure Google” Nexus devices, but those devices haven’t made much of a dent in
the market. Google’s mindset a decade ago was centered around web apps
running in browsers. Google didn’t need its own platform because every PC had
a browser and people would use those browsers to do everything Google
provided in browser tabs. That meta-platform approach has limits, though,
particularly when it comes to post-PC devices. Their stated reason for buying
Android wasn’t because they wanted to design and control the post-PC device
experience, but because they wanted an open mobile platform on which their
web services could not be locked out.

Google’s aspirations for seamlessness largely, if not entirely, revolve
around Google’s own apps and services. They’ve long offered tab sharing
between Chrome on multiple devices — a cool feature, much in line with the
Continuity features Apple debuted at WWDC. But if Google did something
similar for email, it would only work with Gmail. Gmail on your phone to
Gmail in a tab in Chrome on your PC. (On the other hand, Google’s solution
would likely work from Gmail on your iPhone too; Apple (Beats excepted)
offers bupkis for Android users.)

That leaves Microsoft. Here’s a tweet I wrote during the keynote, 20 minutes
before Cook’s wrap-up:

Microsoft: one OS for all devices.

Apple: one continuous experience across all devices.

That tweet was massively popular,^1[3] but I missed a word: across all Apple
devices. Microsoft and Google are the ones who are more similarly focused.
Microsoft wants you to run Windows on all your devices, from phones to
tablets to PCs. Google wants you signed into Google services on all your
devices, from phones to tablets to PCs.

Apple wants you to buy iPhones, iPads, and Macs. And if you don’t, you’re out
in the cold.^2[4]

Apple, Google, and Microsoft each offer all three things: devices, services,
and platforms. But each has a different starting point. With Apple it’s the
device. With Microsoft it’s the platform. With Google it’s the services.

And thus all three companies can brag about things that only they can
achieve. What Cook is arguing, and which I would say last week’s WWDC
exemplified more so than at any point since the original iPhone in 2007, is
that there are more advantages to Apple’s approach.

Or, better put, there are potentially more advantages to Apple’s approach,
and Tim Cook seems maniacally focused on tapping into that potential.

2.

Apple’s device-centric approach provides them with control. There’s a
long-standing and perhaps everlasting belief in the computer industry that
hardware is destined for commoditization. At their cores, Microsoft and
Google were founded on that belief — and they succeeded handsomely.
Microsoft’s Windows empire was built atop commodity PC hardware. Google’s
search empire was built atop web browsers running on any and all computers.
(Google also made a huge bet on commodity hardware for their incredible
back-end infrastructure. Google’s infrastructure is both massive and
massively redundant — thousands and thousands of cheap hardware servers
running custom software designed such that failure of individual machines is
completely expected.)

This is probably the central axiom of the Church of Market Share[5] — if
hardware is destined for commoditization, then the only thing that matters is
maximizing the share of devices running your OS (Microsoft) or using your
online services (Google).

The entirety of Apple’s post-NeXT reunification success has been in defiance
of that belief — that commoditization is inevitable, but won’t necessarily
consume the entire market. It started with the iMac, and the notion that the
design of computer hardware mattered. It carried through to the iPod, which
faced predictions of imminent decline in the face of commodity music players[6]
all the way until it was cannibalized by the iPhone.

Apple suffered when they could not operate at large scale. When you go your
own way, you need a critical mass to maintain momentum, to stay ahead of the
commodity horde. To pick just one example: CPUs. Prior to the Mac’s switch to
Intel processors in 2006, Macs were generally more expensive and slower than
the Windows PCs they were competing against. There weren’t enough Macs being
sold to keep Motorola or IBM interested in keeping the PowerPC competitive,
and Apple didn’t have the means to do it itself. Compare that to today, where
Apple can design its own custom SoC CPUs — which perform better than the
commodity chips used by their competitors. That’s because Apple sells
hundreds of millions of iOS devices per year. Apple’s commitment to making
its own hardware provided necessary distinction while the company was
relatively small. Now that the company is huge, it still provides them with
distinction, but now also an enormous competitive edge that cannot be copied.
You can copy Apple’s strategy, but you can’t copy their scale.

Microsoft and Google have enormous market share, but neither has control over
the devices on which their platforms run. Samsung and Amazon control their
own devices, but neither controls their OS at a fundamental level.

Microsoft and Google can’t force OEMs to make better computers and devices,
to stop junking them up[7] with unwanted add-ons. Apple, on the other hand,
can force anything it can achieve into devices. Apple wants to go 64-bit on
ARM? Apple can do it alone.

Let’s take a step back and consider Apple’s operational prowess. In their
most recent holiday quarter, they sold 51 million iPhones and 26 million
iPads[8]. In and of itself that’s an operational achievement. But further
complicating the logistical complexity: the best selling devices (iPhone 5S
and 5C, iPad Air and the iPad Mini with Retina Display) had only just been
released that quarter. iOS device sales skew toward the high-end, not the low
end, because they’re not commodities. Brand new devices sold in record
numbers. The single best selling and most important device was the iPhone 5S,
with an all-new fingerprint sensor and camera. A secure enclave for the
fingerprint data. Brand-new Apple-designed A7 processors — the first in the
industry to go 64-bit. No one else is making 64-bit mobile CPUs and Apple
sold tens of millions of them immediately. There are very few standard parts
in these devices. Consider too that Apple has no way of knowing in advance
which devices — and which colors of those devices — will prove the most
popular.

But the whole quarter went off, operationally, pretty much without a hitch.
Record unit sale numbers with fewer product shortages and delays than ever
before. No one’s perfect — remember the white iPhone 4, which was announced
in June 2010[9] but didn’t go on sale until April 2011[10]? — but Apple is
very, very good, and has been throughout the entire post-NeXT era.

Everyone knows that Tim Cook deserves credit for this operational success.
Manufacturing, procurement, shipping, distribution, high profit margins —
these are things we’ve long known Tim Cook excels at managing.

As the Cook era as Apple’s CEO unfolds, what we’re seeing is something we
didn’t know, and I think few expected. Something I never even considered:

Tim Cook is improving Apple’s internal operational efficiency.

It has long been axiomatic that Apple is not the sort of company that could
walk and chew gum at the same time. In 2007, they issued a (very Steve
Jobs-sounding) press release that stated Mac OS X Leopard would be delayed
five months[11] because the iPhone consumed too many resources:

However, iPhone contains the most sophisticated software ever shipped on a
mobile device, and finishing it on time has not come without a price — we
had to borrow some key software engineering and QA resources from our Mac
OS X team, and as a result we will not be able to release Leopard at our
Worldwide Developers Conference in early June as planned.

In response, Daniel Jalkut wrote[12]:

The best we can hope for is that it is only sleazy marketing bullshit.
Because if what Apple’s telling us is true, then they’ve confessed
something tragic: they’re incapable of building more than one amazing
product at a time. The iPhone looks like it will be an amazing product, but
if Apple can’t keep an OS team focused and operational at the same time as
they keep a cell phone team hacking away, then the company is destined for
extremely rough waters as it attempts to expand the scope of its product
line.

Or consider the October 2010 “Back to the Mac”[9] event, the entire point of
which was to announce features and apps for the Mac that had started life on
iOS years earlier.

That seems like ancient history, given the magnitude of the updates shown
last week in both OS X Yosemite and iOS 8. All the things that make sense for
both OS X and iOS are appearing together, this year, on both platforms.
Everything from user-facing features like Extensions and Continuity to Swift,
the new programming language. This requires more engineers working together
across the company.

The same maestro who was able to coordinate the procurement, assembly,
production, and shipment of 76 million all-new iPhones and iPads in one
quarter has brought those operational instincts and unquenchable thirst for
efficiency to coordinating a Cupertino that can produce major new releases of
both iOS and OS X, with new features requiring cooperation and openness, in
one year. They’re doing more not by changing their
thousand-no’s-for-every-yes ratio, but by upping their capacity.

The turning point is clear. The headline of Apple’s October 2012 press
release said it all: “Apple Announces Changes to Increase Collaboration
Across Hardware, Software and Services[13]”. It turns out that was not an
empty bromide, meant to patch over run-of-the-mill corporate political
conflict. Tim Cook wanted Apple to function internally in a way that was
anathema to Scott Forstall’s leadership style. The old way involved fiefdoms,
and Forstall’s fiefdom was iOS. The operational efficiency Cook wanted — and
now seems to have achieved — wasn’t possible without large scale company-wide
collaboration, and collaboration wasn’t possible with a fiefdom style of
organization.

That also happens to be the same press release in which Apple announced the
ouster of retail chief John Browett, whose ill-fated stint[14] at the company
lasted just a few short months. Browett is a footnote in Apple history, but I
think an important one. Apple hired him from Dixon’s[15], a U.K. electronics
retailer akin to Best Buy here in the U.S. In short, a nickel-and-dime
operation where the customer experience is not the top priority. Browett thus
struck many as a curious choice for the head of Apple retail.

Browett’s hiring and the resulting failure of his tenure at Apple raised a
legitimate fear: that this was a sign of things to come. This —
penny-pinching and prioritizing the bottom line, losing sight of excellence
in the eyes of the customer as the primary purpose of the Apple Stores —
this, is what happens when the “operations guy” takes over the helm.

Ends up, we should have no such worries. My guess is that it’s as simple as
Cook having thought that there were operational improvements to be had in
retail, and so he hired an operationally minded retail executive. He didn’t
understand then what Angela Ahrendts[16]’s hiring shows that he clearly does
understand now: that Apple’s retail stores need to be treated much like
Apple’s products themselves, and thus require the same style of leadership.

During the keynote last week, John Siracusa referenced The Godfather,
quipping[17]:

Today Tim settles all family business.

I’d say it’s more that Cook settled the family business back in October 2012.
Last week’s keynote was when we, on the outside, finally saw the results.
Apple today is firing on all cylinders. That’s a cliché but an apt one. Cook
saw untapped potential in a company hampered by silos.

When Cook succeeded Jobs, the question we all asked was more or less binary:
Would Apple decline without Steve Jobs? What seems to have gone largely
unconsidered is whether Apple would thrive with Cook at the helm, achieving
things the company wasn’t able to do under the leadership of the autocratic
and mercurial Jobs.^3[18]

Jobs was a great CEO for leading Apple to become big. But Cook is a great CEO
for leading Apple now that it is big, to allow the company to take advantage
of its size and success. Matt Drance said it[19], and so will I: What we saw
last week at WWDC 2014 would not have happened under Steve Jobs.

This is not to say Apple is better off without Steve Jobs. But I do think
it’s becoming clear that the company, today, might be better off with Tim
Cook as CEO. If Jobs were still with us, his ideal role today might be that
of an éminence grise, muse and partner to Jony Ive in the design of new
products, and of course public presenter extraordinaire. Chairman of the
board, with Cook as CEO, running the company much as he actually is today.

3.

This is what only Apple can do:

Software updates that are free of charge and so easily installed that the
majority of iOS and Mac users are running the latest versions of the OSes (a
supermajority in the case of iOS). Apple can release new features and expect
most users to have them within a year — and third-party developers can count
on the same thing.

Hardware that is designed hand-in-hand with the software, giving us things
like the iPhone 5S fingerprint scanner and the secure enclave, which requires
support from both the operating system and the SoC at the lowest levels. And
now Metal — custom graphic APIs designed specifically and solely for Apple’s
own GPUs. A custom graphic API to replace an industry standard like OpenGL
would have been a hard sell for Apple a decade ago, because the Mac market
was so relatively small. Microsoft could do it (with DirectX) because of the
size of the Windows gaming market. Now, with iOS, Apple already has the
makers of four popular gaming engines[20] on board with Metal.

Tim Cook has stated publicly that new products are in the pipeline, and he
seems confident regarding them (as do other Apple executives[21]). We can’t
judge them yet, but consider this: Recall again that in 2007 Apple was forced
to admit publicly that they had to pull engineering, design, and QA resources
from the Mac in order to ship the iPhone. This year, new products are coming
and but iOS and Mac development not only did not halt or slow, it sped up. In
recent years, the company grew from being bad at walking and chewing gum to
being OK at it, and most of us thought, “Finally”. But that wasn’t the end of
the progression. Apple has proceeded from being OK at walking and chewing gum
to being good at it. Thus the collective reaction to last week’s keynote: “
Whoa.”

And the whole combination — hardware, software, services — is gearing up in a
way that it seems to be just waiting for additional products to join them.
The iPhone in 2007 was connected to the Mac only through iTunes, a USB cable,
and a manual “Sync” button. Part of what made the iPhone a surprise in 2007
is that Apple clearly was in no position to add a new platform that
harmonized seamlessly with Mac OS X. Today, they are.

4.

Last week generated much talk of this being a “New Apple”. Something tangible
has changed, but I don’t see it in terms of old/new. As Eddy Cue told Walt
Mossberg two weeks ago[22], there was a transition, not a reset.

There is an Old Apple and a New Apple, but the division between them — the
one actual reset — was 1997, with the reunification with NeXT. Old Apple was
everything prior. New Apple is everything since.

New Apple didn’t need a reset. New Apple needed to grow up. To stop behaving
like an insular underdog on the margins and start acting like the industry
leader and cultural force it so clearly has become.

Apple has never been more successful, powerful, and influential than it is
today. They’ve thus never been in a better position to succumb to their worst
instincts and act imperiously and capriciously.

Instead, they’ve begun to act more magnanimously. They’ve given third-party
developers more of what we have been asking for than ever before, including
things we never thought[23] they’d do. Panic’s Cabel Sasser tweeted[24]:

My 2¢: for the past few years it’s felt like Apple’s only goal was to put
us in our place. Now it feels like they might want to be friends.

It’s downright thrilling that this is coming from Apple in a position of
strength, not weakness. I’m impressed not just by what Apple can do, but by
what it wants to do.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

1.
According to Favstar[25]’s tweet popularity rankings, besting this gem
from five years ago[26]. ↩[27]
2.
With some exceptions for Windows users, notably the promise of support
with iCloud Drive. ↩[28]
3.
The Godfather analogy still stands[29]. ↩[30]


Links:
[1]: http://www.apple.com/apple-events/june-2014/ (link)
[2]: http://bgr.com/2014/05/01/amazon-smartphone-photos-kindle-phone-images-exclusive/ (link)
[3]: http://daringfireball.net/index.xml#fn1-2014-06-13 (link)
[4]: http://daringfireball.net/index.xml#fn2-2014-06-13 (link)
[5]: http://daringfireball.net/2012/01/the_church_of_market_share (link)
[6]: http://daringfireball.net/2005/09/ditty (link)
[7]: http://www.lostinmobile.com/home/if-you-are-using-windows-8-i-feel-really-sorry-for-you (link)
[8]: https://www.apple.com/pr/library/2014/01/27Apple-Reports-First-Quarter-Results.html (link)
[9]: http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/20/our-take-apples-back-to-the-mac-event/ (link)
[10]: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/04/27White-iPhone-Arrives-Tomorrow.html (link)
[11]: https://web.archive.org/web/20070414112638/http%3A//biz.yahoo.com/prnews/070412/sfth056.html?.v=87 (link)
[12]: http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/321/leopard-isnt-the-problem (link)
[13]: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2012/10/29Apple-Announces-Changes-to-Increase-Collaboration-Across-Hardware-Software-Services.html (link)
[14]: http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/10/29/john-browetts-short-tenure-at-apple-was-marked-by-strife (link)
[15]: http://www.dixonsretail.com/ (link)
[16]: http://www.apple.com/pr/bios/angela-ahrendts.html (link)
[17]: https://twitter.com/siracusa/status/473539789258371073 (link)
[18]: http://daringfireball.net/index.xml#fn3-2014-06-13 (link)
[19]: http://www.appleoutsider.com/2014/06/10/wwdc2014/ (link)
[20]: http://mashable.com/2014/06/02/apple-metal-wwdc/ (link)
[21]: http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/29/5759262/apples-cue-weve-got-the-best-product-pipeline-in-25-years (link)
[22]: http://recode.net/2014/05/28/meet-apples-latest-hire-and-apples-media-boss-jimmy-iovine-and-eddy-cue-come-to-code-liveblog/ (link)
[23]: http://www.macrumors.com/2014/06/02/ios-8-third-party-keyboards/ (link)
[24]: https://twitter.com/cabel/status/474264692009861120 (link)
[25]: http://favstar.fm/users/gruber (link)
[26]: https://twitter.com/gruber/status/2243900364 (link)
[27]: http://daringfireball.net/index.xml#fnr1-2014-06-13 (link)
[28]: http://daringfireball.net/index.xml#fnr2-2014-06-13 (link)
[29]: http://writing.jan.io/2013/01/20/the-wartime-ceo.html (link)
[30]: http://daringfireball.net/index.xml#fnr3-2014-06-13 (link)

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[CM] Looking into Cook's "Only Apple can do it" mantra RS Wood  <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2014-06-15 12:44 +0000

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