Inside Steve's Brain - Leander Kahney [97]
Even for a company like Apple, which has always been ruthless and unsentimental, the statement seemed particularly heartless. It also had a gloomy finality to it. Questions about Jobs’s health dominated press coverage in the run-up to the show. Again, Jobs was forced to respond. On January 5, 2009, the night before the show opened, Jobs released a statement saying he had been suffering from a “hormone imbalance” for several months. “The remedy for this nutritional problem is relatively simple and straightforward, and I’ve already begun treatment,” he said. Many Apple watchers breathed a sigh of relief.
But on January 14, just two weeks later, in another internal Apple memo, Jobs revealed that his health problems were far more serious than he’d previously let on. He wrote that in the previous week he had “learned that my health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought.” He’d be taking a six-month leave of absence until the end of June to allow him to focus on his health, he wrote.
While Jobs would retain the title of CEO, he would hand over day-to-day operations to chief operating officer Tim Cook, who had acted as CEO during Jobs’s previous absence in 2004. Jobs planned to remain involved with “major strategic decisions” affecting the company.
The news sent Apple fans into a tailspin. The company’s statements about Jobs’s health were wildly contradictory and confusing. At first, his problems seemed easily remedied. Now they were so serious he had to take six months off work. Worse, Jobs’s temporary absence might easily become permanent. Perhaps his health wouldn’t improve, or this was the first step in a phased retirement.
The question loomed: “What would happen to Apple without Steve Jobs?”
The Rise of Tim Cook
As Jobs’s designated Number Two, over the last few years Cook has come to be regarded as Jobs’s most likely successor. Other candidates include Apple’s top marketing executive, Phil Schiller; the head of the iPod division, Mark Papermaster; and the head of design, Jonathan Ive. But in many ways, Cook seems to be the most fitting choice. He has many of Jobs’s best attributes, like a no-compromise demand for excellence and accountability, and lacks some of the worst, like Jobs’s volatile temper. While no one could ever replace Jobs, Cook appears to be a solid substitute as a permanent replacement when Jobs steps down, as he eventually must.
Tim Cook joined Apple in March 1998 as senior vice president of operations, in charge of fixing Apple’s sprawling manufacturing operations, which were in shambles at the time. Jobs recruited Cook from Compaq, where he’d been responsible for procuring and managing inventory for the entire company. Previously Cook had spent twelve years at IBM, working on manufacturing and distribution for the company’s PC division.
Before Cook took over, Apple had manufacturing plants in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. The operation was chaotic and wasteful. Some computers were made entirely in Asia; others in Europe or the U.S. Some machines were partly manufactured in Asia, shipped to Europe for further assembly, and then shipped back to Asia for packaging. It was a completely inefficient system.
Cook is credited with streamlining the process and eventually pulling Apple out of manufacturing entirely. He closed warehouses and factories and forced suppliers to set up shop next door to assembly plants. Apple’s manufacturing became extremely lean and efficient, and, most important, the amount of time the company sat on unsold goods went from months to days. Unsold goods can be a major liability, especially in consumer electronics, in which products are frequently upgraded or superseded by new models before they’re sold.
Jobs’s penchant for secrecy has helped Cook masterfully manage Apple’s product pipeline. If details of Apple’s new products leak, there’s a danger consumers will stop buying the current model in anticipation of the newer, improved version—leading to fire sales of old models, or worse, the dreaded Osborne effect, in which sales dry up