After Steve:How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul by Tripp Mickle offers a compelling look at Apple’s evolution, from its roots at the intersection of art and technology to its focus on the intersection of business and technology. Through meticulous research, Mr. Mickle details how the leadership changes initiated by Tim Cook made Apple financially successful while simultaneously dampening its culture. Fans of Apple and Steve Jobs will find the book fascinating as will anyone who wants insight into how a failing company reached world domination.
After Steve caused me to reflect on my time at Apple and align some of my experiences to events documented by Mr. Mickle. I offer my thoughts here.
The last time Steve Jobs appeared on stage, his gaunt appearance and diminished energy were impossible to ignore. There was hushed speculation within Apple that the company might not survive without him. When I joined Apple in 1997, it reported a loss of more than $1 billion. Gil Amelio was the CEO, and Steve Jobs was an advisor, having recently rejoined Apple after the acquisition of his company, NeXT.
Steve brought the company back to profitability and respectability by instituting a number of reforms. He canceled projects like the Newton, Apple-branded printers, PCI cards, and more. He focused on four products: consumer desktop, consumer laptop, professional desktop, and professional laptop. Its bloated product line, with thousands of SKUs, became simple.
Steve instilled discipline within engineering. Before his return, an engineer could develop an app and slip it into the build without formal oversight. As a consumer, I remember getting excited about some app only to have it disappear in a future build. A formal process developed for pitching ideas, creating prototypes, and developing an app or feature only after official approval.
Software releases were unpredictable. One never knew exactly when Apple would ship. There were delays and disappointments. Under Steve, an empirical process developed to track bugs fixed versus bugs created. We looked at charts that showed the fix vs. creation rates. From that, the program management team could predict when a release was feasible. As time went on, releases were regular. The program team learned to slow the bug creation rate by cutting problematic new features.
Inventory was a mess, with an industry high of up to 90 days. This seemed to drive Steve crazy. In one all-hands meeting he made it clear that we needed to beat Dell’s 5-10 days of inventory. That’s where Tim Cook’s talent came in. By the early 2000’s, Steve was able to brag to employees that we finally beat Michael Dell. Cook had not only decreased inventory but he controlled costs of parts, which made Apple more profitable.
Steve made demands and set goals that some employees felt were unrealistic. In a few meetings, someone would inevitably sketch a “Reality-Distortion Meter” on the whiteboard, with an arrow indicating Steve’s optimism with respect to what employees felt they could deliver. But we managed to deliver.
It was an exciting adventure under Steve. While Tim Cook was brilliant at operations, no one was sure whether the company would thrive under him after Steve Jobs died.
As I stood close to the stage at the Steve Jobs memorial on the Apple Infinite Looop campus, my blouse vibrated with the bass as Coldplay performed. It was both a cathartic and uplifting experience and made me optimistic about Apple’s future.
Tim Cook started out well, and I didn’t feel much different as an employee until he separated the iOS and Mac OS teams in 2013. Prior to that, engineers worked on both. Life was simpler. Scott Forstall’s departure in late 2012 was the impetus for that change.
Mickle provides an insightful account about Mr. Forstall’s fiasco with the Maps program. It was an embarrassing release for me as I watched my family and friends become frustrated and turn to Google Maps. Even my rural property was mapped incorrectly, adding to the frustration.
The premature release of Maps under Forstall marked the beginning of a cultural shift at Apple—a move away from the rigorous standards that once defined the company under Steve. Apple’s software engineering had a “dog food” program, where employees had to “eat their own dog food” by living on the bleeding edge of software releases. There were times when I had to update my computer with the latest engineering release every morning. Most employees kept a second computer handy in case the current release “bled” too much. It made me wonder—why didn’t Scott Forstall implement a similar “dog food” program for all employees in software engineering? Why didn’t Tim Cook insist on it?
One of Cook’s leadership decisions that Mickle discusses is the appointment of Jeff Williams, an operations executive, as VP of the Watch and Health team. Having worked on the Health team for a year, it was clear to me that Jeff’s expertise was neither in health nor personal devices. I believe the product development pace and vision suffered as a result. The Watch and its health features might have evolved more rapidly had someone with deeper expertise in personal devices and health been at the helm. Both Craig Federighi and Johny Srouji are Apple leaders who know their product and can mange effectively. Health needed the same sort of expertise.
It was disappointing that Williams appointed Kevin Lynch to head the Watch team. Lynch was known as the Flash champion at Adobe—a technology Steve Jobs famously hated. Lynch lacked vision, and many features that could have been included in early releases, such as menstrual and pregnancy tracking or immunization records, were deferred for years.
Mickle’s account of Jony Ive’s life was disturbing to me. For a man who came from such humble beginnings, Ive certainly learned to live the high life. While operations gurus like Tim Cook and Jeff Williams drove modest cars, Jony was chauffeured to Cupertino in a Bentley. I found his excesses and compulsions over the top. What would Steve Jobs, who took a $1 salary, think of Ive’s behavior post-2012? (Jobs did receive stock options and a jet, so the $1 salary was symbolic, but it made a statement.)
After Steve detailed Ive’s fixation on the design details at Apple Park. That project, to me, is what gutted Apple’s soul. The new campus, with its Jony Ive-inspired design, was too polished and impersonal for me. Everything had to be hidden, even the fire hoses and AED equipment, which were subtly labeled to avoid disrupting the clean lines. The glass Jony worked so hard to perfect was so clear that the first residents of Apple Park frequently ran into it, leading to injuries.
The office spaces lacked individuality, a stark contrast to the vibrant atmosphere of Infinite Loop. There, people decorated their offices and open spaces to express their personalities, with display cases filled with such things as Barbie dolls, toy cars, and Pez dispensers. There was framed artwork, favorite toys, ceiling decorations, and even foosball and pool tables. None of that was allowed at Apple Park.
After nearly 20 years of having a private office, I struggled to adapt to an open workspace shared with 28 other people. I was seated with chip designers because I briefly worked under Johny Srouji. I heard a lot of chip talk and learned a lot about chips. (It’s difficult not to eavesdrop in such a noisy environment.) While I appreciated learning something new, I felt my productivity falling.
When the AI department was established, I asked John Giannandrea to move my team to Infinite Loop, where we had private offices, space to think, and an opportunity to personalize the workspace. Even after relocating my team, I realized that the change in environment couldn’t compensate for the cultural shifts. Gradually, since Steve Jobs’ death, Apple had transformed into a corporate entity that no longer resonated with the company I once knew. Eventually, I made the difficult decision to resign.
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