This cliched argument is quite ironic and insane. A leader doesn't have to be visionary all the time. Just last week there was a news about Apple selling more Watches than the entire Swiss industry and no one would talk about Cook there but when things go wrong, we forget that it's someone in QA or Product but all the blame goes to how Cook isn't a Product guy.

> A leader doesn't have to be visionary all the time

Yes they do. If they're not visionary, then they're just a manager.

Apple grew because of a visionary, and now it shrinks because the best a manager can do is try to maintain the status quo in the face of changing factors. It's fundamentally a losing battle.

> Apple grew because of a visionary

Jobs was a business man and manager, and Apple hasn’t had ‘visionary’ product release every single time, some of them were run-of-the-mill upgrades. Arguably, iPhone may be the only major visionary achievement after Mac 1. Anyway, all of the Apple hecklers talked about how Jobs wasn’t a visionary, or had lost his vision, with every single product release, every Mac change, every iPhone, tablet, watch. Claiming that Jobs was the singular visionary and Apple is doomed without him has a long history, somewhat buys into a pro-Apple narrative, and views Jobs with rose-colored glasses. It’s a nice thought, but not exactly accurate.

> and now it shrinks

By what metric is Apple shrinking? They just reported their best quarter ever.

Cook has overseen just shy of 1 trillion dollars worth of growth for Apple. They routinely have quarters larger than Apple’s entire year back in 2011.

Cook is riding on the upward trajectory that was set before he took his role. Brand image carries a lot of inertia, and as a manager rather than a visionary, cook focused on getting the most use out of that pre-set trajectory while it lasted.

It has run out of energy. If AR doesn't pay off, it's all downhill for Apple from Q4 this year onwards.

This argument gets more and more ridiculous as time progresses. Apple is worth nearly ten times what it was eight years ago. It’s launched a watch which has, in a few short years, overtaken the entire Swiss watch industry in revenue.

This is just another take on the tired argument that Apple is only successful because of a core group of fanboys/girls who will buy anything just because it’s Apple, despite Apple’s customer base being an order of magnitude greater today than it was back then.

I set some fairly short term and trivially verifiable predictions. Save this comment and come back to it at the end of this year.

Unless Apple's AR play succeeds, they're going to be left in the dust by Chinese offerings with better functionality at half the price.

Cook has had the better part of the decade to come up with something new, and has failed to deliver anything except incremental minor updates which are increasingly convergent on competitor offerings. There is clearly no vision.

Are you just going to pretend the AirPods and Apple Watch don’t exist? By themselves they’d be a Fortune 500 company.

“Minor updates”. You have to be joking.

Are you going to pretend either AirPods or Apple Watch are meaningfully competitive against other offerings on the market?

There are headphones with better spec than airpods at half the price available right now. They're not locked to any ecosystem. Apple has no idea how to continue competing in the envelope of modern hardware because competitors either beat them or match them on every move but without the premium.

Save my comment. Check back in a year. It'll be a good lesson.

> Are you going to pretend either AirPods or Apple Watch are meaningfully competitive against other offerings on the market?

The definition of meaningfully competitive is growth, revenue, and market share. You're implying they're not competitive, which implies you think they're not making money. By what metric are they not competitive?

> There are headphones with better spec than airpods at half the price available right now. They're not locked to any ecosystem. Apple has no idea how to continue competing in the envelope of modern hardware because competitors either beat them or match them on every move but without the premium.

This claim has always been made, for 35 years, and has always been true of all Apple hardware. Yet they compete and make a lot of money. What you're demonstrating is you don't understand what Apple is making or why people buy their products. What you're demonstrating is that better spec cheaper hardware isn't enough to beat the competition.

Let's see your AAPL puts then.

An upward trajectory set in motion over 8 years ago?

You have no idea what you are talking about. Watch and AirPods were entirely Tim Cook and that’s one of their biggest successes in the history of the company. You don’t think Jobs had significant misfires? The hockey puck mouse, the Cube, the iPhone antenna issue, etc.? People are mad because the thermal properties of their computer are perceived to be less than perfect and somehow Cook is a failure? That’s ridiculous.

Perhaps I wasn't specific - "Product Visionary" I meant!

In the context of what we're discussing here, everything Apple does is product (including services), and needs a product visionary.

They've degenerated to minmaxing profits and running focus groups to tell them what to do without any overarching vision or long term plan, just like GP commenter said. It's sad. Steve Jobs is spinning in his grave.

But he's making very little noise while doing so.

The argument as stated was that Tim Cook is more focused on sales than engineering. You counter argue that they have sold a lot of Apple watches.

That does not compute.

The guy at the top will always get more than his share of blame and more than his share of credit.

No Apple watch is expected to last longer than five years, particularly with software updates.

Additionally, the Swiss watch industry is not being subsidized by the US health insurance industry.

The Swiss watch industry hasn’t gotten subsidies? You might want to check your history.

And the US health insurance industry isn’t buying watches in any great numbers (yet.) The US health insurance interest isn’t driving the demand, the demand is driving the interest.

What metric are you using to point to Apple's decline since Tim Cook came into the company? Product lines, revenue, customers, market cap, employees, daily client interactions, brand value, customer satisfaction?

I believe he is using the far more superior metric, called “subjective perception”.

Choice as a customer - choice of upgrading the RAM, choice of getting to keep the data in case the motherboard fails, choice of picking a non genius bar repair shop, choice of looking at product schematics, choice of being able to buy legitimate spare parts for Apple products

> What metric are you using to point to Apple's decline since Tim Cook came into the company? Product lines, revenue, customers, market cap, employees, daily client interactions, brand value, customer satisfaction?

Not everything can be measured, or measured practicably. Qualitative judgments are valuable.

Looking at things too much through the lens of metrics can make you blind to many things.

Except the metrics are overwhelmingly in Cook's favor on this one. Monumentally in his favor.

Tim Cook is (to an extent?) an engineer. He has a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering as well as a Master of Business Administration.

That doesn’t make you an engineer though that just makes you a graduate.

So a rigorous 4 year degree in a highly technical engineering stream doesn’t make him an engineer, but the script kiddie high school dropout making crypto apps is?

Give me a break. Tim Cook is more engineer than 90% of people who call themselves one.

... so he's an MBA

He's Gates Ballmer.