When Jobs died, the big question around Cook was whether he could nurture a product as groundbreaking as the iPod, the iPhone, or the iPad. In the 2010s, the company tried to produce an autonomous electric car, but failed (an attempt that has reportedly revived it). But after a decade of Cook’s achievements have become the stuff of the CEO legend, holding him to that standard seems wrong. His management of the iPhone franchise has been the envy of every technology company.
And Apple did have new products in that decade. Ive himself was the driving force behind the aforementioned Apple Watch, even if his original focus on ultra-luxury was misplaced. (Apple’s course correction to emphasize the device’s fitness features turned out to be a winning formula.) AirPods, another wearable, added another beloved notch to Apple’s growing belt. Still, Apple’s biggest new revenue driver in the 2010 years has been its growing services business, essentially driving customers to milk their hardware to pay monthly fees for storage, music, news, and video. Mickle laughs at Apple for its overdone entry into filmmaking and television production, but the final laugh seems to be Cook’s, whose company won the first Academy Award for Best Picture for a streaming company. And while Apple Music has received bad reviews, the company’s relentless distribution engine has made it a financial success.
Meanwhile, Ive struggled for most of the decade. Although he led the Watch effort, a stint in managing software design didn’t play up to his talents. He ended up spending an inordinate amount of time nurturing Apple’s new headquarters, a beautiful monument to Jobs, but one that Apple’s customers can’t enjoy. Mickle also documents how a burnt-out Ive became a distant figure in the company, sometimes hours late for meetings. That’s in stark contrast to Cook, who lives his life as a perfectly functioning, just-in-time supply chain.
The stark juxtaposition makes for good reading. But the story of innovation at Apple in the 2010s cannot be summed up with one Face/Off frame only. It turns out that just as Jobs had a man with an alternate spelling of “Johnny,” so does Cook. But he’s not Jony Ive. It’s Johny Srouji, an under-the-radar engineer who leads the company’s chip development. that is the most important part of the company’s roadmap this decade: a transformation from a design-driven company to one focused on custom silicon. By creating its own innovative chips, Apple has not only managed to maintain its lead in the phone space and boost its Macintosh line, but the company is now in a position to create more powerful and potentially more magical products. deliver than its competitors.
When I asked Mickle why Srouji’s name isn’t in after Steve, he insisted I could find it in there. But when he tried to point me to the passage about Apple’s custom silicone guru, he found it had been cut from the book. Maybe Johny is coming lately, in the second printing.
I learned a lot about Cook and Ive in after Steve† But as this century of Big Tech approaches its second quarter, we’re not asking for the soul of companies like Apple. We want quality, innovation and reliability. That is a challenge for any company with billions of users. Even Mickle himself admitted to me that there was no way Apple could have kept its soul—whatever that might be—on its current scale. “It has had to lose the purity of its commitment as a result of the pressure it is experiencing from Wall Street to continue to deliver growth,” he told me.
