Apple' CEO Tim Cook is on a tirade. He obviously sees Android and Google as the lethal threats they are to the Apple' iPhone/iOS kingdom. But he doesn't want anybody else to know that.
Watch as Cook, the "gentle man with a soft spot for numbers," attempts to use a confusing plethora of numbers and statistics to further lock-in and bolt-down clueless Apple iOS-bots.
I clearly recall as Jobs' death approached, the Apple faithful's fear and loathing about who might replace "the single greatest inventor to grace the world since Thomas Edison or Nikola Tesla." (Poppycock, btw.) When Cook received his coronation, I thought, "what a weak choice. He'll never keep Apple strong with Job's bombastic leadership style--it isn't in him."
Well, I was right. Cook has all the earmarks of a desperate man, treading water furiously while trying not to swallow too much water and go under. Nope. Apple's new fearless leader is too much the "gentle man" to keep Apple afloat in the long-term. Apple requires a complete and total tyrant--like Jobs was-- to put the fear of God into every single designer, programmer and employee there. Nothing less.
Paramount to him as CEO, is to--however is necessary--keep that stock price up. Hmmm ... let's see, is there anything a desperate man mightn't say or do to keep the markets believing their precious stock price is rock-solid? Nope.
And no matter how much he attacks his arch enemies Android/Google/Samsung in court, in the press or from the stage at his little Apple pep rallies, Cook is throwing cream-puffs at a rising fortress. All anyone has to do--and I did--is take a look around the morning bus or subway. It used to be vastly weighted toward iPhones in use; now, Androids and particularly Samsung Galaxys are becoming the dominant devices.
Recently, I heard the verbal confirmation from an iPhone user, as she asked the person interviewing her for a job, "how do you do that on an Android?" Once the formerly Android-ignorant iPhoners start being forced to ask about Android, the end-game for iPhones is near.
So Cook and Apple are left with one scorched-earth strategy: misrepresent, then misrepresent more, and finally, misrepresent some more. Watch as Cook tells a bevy of wriggling whoppers to a laughing audience of Apple zombies about how much Android sucks.
Now, I don't have time here, nor time in the context of my overall life to fully dissect all of Cook's misrepresentations, mistaken use of statistics or mythological suppositions in this fast-paced, nearly four-minute diatribe against those taking vast amounts of his market share. But the most shocking untruth Cook referenced with verity at this 2014 Apple WWDC was this one.
A "hellstew" eh, gentle man? What's a real hellstew is your falsehoods
Cook, like his megalomaniac predecessor certainly would have, reasserted the fundamental lie that Android was more susceptible to malware than Apple's iOS. As Jobs did so sneakily before him, Cook again cemented this galloping myth that all Apple products are somehow, mystically immune to hackers and virus-makers worldwide. They are not.
Cook can't muster any true facts about how great his own Apple products are, so he takes the coward's way and speaks ill of his competitors' products. Steve Jobs incarnate.
Proof of Cook's inaccuracies, for anybody interested enough to care, can be found in the Business Insider' article entitled "Google Just Demolished Tim Cook's Case Against Android." Filled with very real facts and numbers around Android malware security, this rather short piece filled with graphs and links to professionally conducted research reports, is a very strong response to Cook's wishful thinking and fanciful dreaming and underlines just how desperate Cook's become.
And centrally, Cook's quick acceptance of Job's central life's threat to go "thermonuclear" against Android and Samsung has brought us full circle with somebody other than Jobs himself waging war against a superior, more popular competing product line. There's a surprise.
But Cook is no Jobs.
Let us investigate further. There are three big-vision, new product categories Apple and Cook have bet their farm on; not to mention the subsequent Apple stock price:
Apple TV
Cook's organization has been tinkering--but only tinkering with a TV product for years. While others like Roku have established clear, first-mover advantage with better, deeper and easier-to-use products. Even a convicted "Apple TV fan" points out the vast superiority of the Roku device here. With the established Roku, Netflix, Hulu and others entrenched, Apple seems to be rushing this thing along. Another deviation by Apple with this 'me-too' product is that they are now trying to compete on price. Never before has the greedy Apple, ever, ever been more price-sensitive than with this product where they're late to the game and find themselves already down 49-0. Game over.
Apple Pay
Perhaps the biggest example of Apple copying other front-runners, such as Google Wallet most centrally. Essentially, Apple said to themselves, "Gee, we already have over 800 million customer credit card numbers from iTunes, let's try to 'monetize' them over to use a payment system we (hastily) create." What's wrong with this? Well, for starters, can you imagine Steve Jobs letting Apple roll new products out his door with such speed? No way. While Apple Pay got early support from the required Visa/Mastercard consortium, so has every other possible payment method from Square to iZettle with many receiving direct investments from the charge-card giants. So they are clearly keeping their options open with alternatives other than Apple, as this article, "Apple Pay Faces Battles ... " points out. Not game over on this one, but looking quite dismal for Apple in my estimation.
Apple Watch
Announced by Cook from the stage (where else?) in September 2014, this latest, greatest, overpriced piece of Apple disappointment instantly commanded the world's media attention. This lap-doggie press response, reflexively occurred in spite of the fact that this was anything but groundbreaking. Another "imperfect," overpriced product, too-late and too-far-behind the superior Pebble Steel and Samsung Gear. By the time Apple finally got off its duff and released its first smartwatch very recently, competitors will have had out in the market from one to three iterations of their smartwatch products. Game over.
Update on Apple Watch: Exactly as I had thought, everybody from the New York Times ("Why I'm Breaking Up with the Apple Watch") to sharp tech expert Shelly Palmer ("a paperweight") is denigrating this late entrant into the smart watch sector.
And just to seal the deal, another recent Apple "groundbreaking development," much-hyped, is iOS 9 Search. A supposedly "smarter Siri," iOS 9 is nothing really new at all and is another sneaky theft of the Google Now app which is vastly superior (in my opinion).
The real, not-even-veiled reason behind iOS 9 Search, is Apple's vengeful, preemptive effort to seize back the iPhone real estate they've lost to Google over the last few years of Cook's tenure. As a Fast Company article from last year entitled, "With iOS 8, Apple Hopes To Limit Google's Presence On Your iPhone" so correctly surmised, "The narrative that has emerged in the last two years was that Google made the best iOS apps, bar none: Gmail is better than Mail. Chrome is superior to Safari. And Google Maps made Apple Maps look, well, let's not go there. iMore once went so far to declare the iPhone one of the best Google phones on the planet." Yet another lame, wannabe app from Apple?
None of these three product categories plus one, that have been announced with such hype, such hoopla, will result in the bump to share price that stock analysts have already built into Apple's stock. Because none of them will result in the increase in revenue and profits that the pundits look for since iPod, iPhone, iTunes and iPad launched creating new markets.
Apple's Precious Beats
Finally, as if I might be asked for further tangible evidence of Apple's gross mismanagement, greed and harrowing profit motive (by some headhunter from New Guinea perhaps?), there's the awful story of Apple's 2014 acquisition of Dr. Dre's Beats.
These rap-blaring abominations have had our kids shrilly crying that "everybody has them," for years now and when we tell them "no," they throw tantrums as if we were denying them food and water. I hope you can tell them "NO" with great conviction now, after reading this paragraph. Beats are a $200 scam-travesty ($300 at Neiman Marcus and $99 for earbuds), mainly marketed to over-stimulated, programmed children and common street thugs who know no better than to buy a cheaply made, over-priced product, designed to break quickly and engineered-to-deceive products. ("How Beats Tricks You Into Thinking They Make a Premium Product"--Gizmodo, 6/18/15) So, if you don't nip this in the bud quickly and aggressively, you will be arm-twisted by your progeny to run right back out and pay more through the nose for another replacement pair.
Audiophiles despise Beats. They just don't sound good. Wasn't that kind of the reason one would BUY HEADPHONES? "In terms of sound performance, they are among the worst you can buy," says Tyll Hertsens, editor in chief of InnerFidelity.com, a site for audiophiles. "They are absolutely, extraordinarily bad." If I'm an Apple shareholder (I'm not), I'm calling for Tim Cook's head on a platter for frittering away $3 billion on this disgustingly dishonest company.
Throw in Apple's apparent complicity in Dre' and Jimmy Iovine's first relying on Noel Lee's Monster Products to completely engineer, manufacture, distribute and market their Beats' headphones, then cutting Lee/Monster out completely from their $3 billion Apple payday by rewriting history, and you get the lawsuit Lee and Monster filed in January against Beats, Dre, Iovine and HTC's American affiliate. This is yet another example why Tim Cook has to go. (Bose is suing Beats too--over patent infringement. Pattern patent infringement? )
Mark my words, Apple cannot let this lawsuit go before a jury because if the whole story comes out before that jury, Apple, Beats, Dre, and Iovine will all lose. Everything.
Even Taylor Swift can kick Tim Cook's (and Eddy Cue's) butt. She single-handedly pried loose millions from Apple's tight-fisted, avaricious grip for the music artists who supplied the content to Apple in the first place. Good for her.
Tim Cook evidently cares too much about the Apple legions' perceptions. Instead of issuing a plethora of press releases about his personal life, he would be well advised to focus on creating insane new products while making wiser, better diligenced, less hasty and desperate investments. (I know "diligenced" is not a word but it should be.)
Partnering with other tech companies might also be a good idea; previously, very foreign and distant from Apple's 'doesn't play in the sandbox well (or at all) with others' culture.
This guy isn't going to make it. I don't care if he's gay; who does? Most people familiar with Silicon Valley already knew he was gay but never cared.
I don't care if he's giving all his money away to charity either.
What matters, what's really important is how good are his leadership skills? Can he manage Apple?
I don't believe he can.