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　　Jobs used a tyrant-like attitude to control the details of the product. He made a big move. He cut down what should be cut off with force, and developed what should be developed vigorously. Only then did Apple become the legend of Apple. When it came to Cook, these details in turn controlled the helmsman. He didn't dare to make too many changes, just changed the color, changed the UI, changed the size, regularly upgraded the software, and raised the price a little bit. Let the product become a hand-picking artifact. What Cook did, in fact, any mediocre marketer can do, but he happened to stand on the shoulders of giants, ride on the wings of singing, and cut into the harvest of innovative companies after success. period, enjoying the innovation dividend of Steve Jobs.

　　More disappointments with the iPhone 14

Apple unveils iPhone 14 on September 8, 2022

　　It has been eleven years since Steve Jobs died. In September of this year, the iPhone 14 just finished its product release. Compared with the surprise we had when the iPhone 4 was released more than a decade ago, the iPhone 14, which has barely changed its appearance, brought us a greater degree of disappointment. The standard version of the iPhone 14 uses last year's A15 chip, a notch and a 12-megapixel main camera. The new phone is the iPhone 13 in clean clothes.

　　For our generation, these eleven years are a snap. I still clearly remember the day Jobs died. Whether it was foreign media, Twitter, or domestic Weibo, various voices can be roughly divided into two categories: regret and accusation. Even the voice of accusation is louder than the former.

　　The accusations revolved around a "Jobs' Apple ruined our lives" rhetoric. The meaning is probably that iPhone and iPad have drawn our attention from paper, pen, sunlight and lawn to a touch screen, ruining family relationships, work, life, and children's eyes. Humanity has since fallen and will soon perish.

　　Eleven years have passed. These voices have long been drowned out and even become a joke. In the same way, the epic shot of Jobs when he released the first-generation iPhone has also become a joke for some people.

2007 Steve Jobs unveils the first iPhone

　　A famous Silicon Valley investor once said to Fortune magazine: "No one would let Tim Cook be CEO. It's ridiculous. What Apple needs is talented product managers, not the way Cook does the job. The one who gets it done."

　　Another rumor circulated right after Jobs died that Jobs left behind a detailed product plan, including new iPhones, iPads and Apple TVs, that would keep Apple alive for at least four years as long as his successors followed suit. year.

　　Is it "detail control" or "detail control"

　　At the time of writing this article, Queen Elizabeth II passed away and Prince Charles succeeded to the throne as King Charles III. While people regretted that a generation of monarchs went west, they also began to doubt whether the new king could completely deliver the land that his mother had laid down to the next one.

　　Perhaps, better than any of us, Tim Cook understands the pressure of a new king. In 2011, when Steve Jobs died, Apple had just entered the top 50 of the Fortune Global 500, and its profitability ranked 8th; this year, Cook has made Apple the first place on earth with a market value of $2,640.3 billion in 11 years. The second-ranked Saudi Aramco ($2,292.1 billion) had a full Louis Vuitton ($346.8 billion) more.

　　There is no doubt that, as the captain of a battleship-class enterprise, Cook handed in an answer sheet that satisfied all Apple employees.

　　But - Apple's market value has risen like eating yeast powder, what does this have to do with the vast majority of our ordinary consumers? Apple has more than 150,000 employees (sorry, I didn't count the sales staff in Apple's retail stores), which means that basically 99.998% of the 8 billion people on this planet don't get Apple's salary.

　　Not only do we not take Apple's wages, but we also throw money at Apple like crazy. To make a rough calculation, from the constantly updated iPod, iPad, iPhone, to the ever-changing MacBooks and iMacs, I have been willing to give it to me in the ten years after graduating from college, and sometimes I even have to queue up to throw it to me. Apple hundreds of thousands of dollars. Ten years, hundreds of thousands, an average of 10,000 a year. Ideally, 99.998% of the people on our planet would pay 10,000 yuan per person to 0.002% of people every year. Isn't this a victory for Tim Cook?

　　Cook won, and we used our "hidden poverty" to achieve Cook's victory.

Former Apple Design Director Jony Ive

　　Apple's market value has risen like eating baking powder. What does this have to do with Apple's former employees? Among the employees who left Apple during Tim Cook's years at the helm, Jony Ive, the former design director and Steve Jobs's royal designer, is probably the most representative. Cook's change in the direction of the business gave Jony the idea of leaving Apple, which eventually became a reality in 2019.

　　Cook's victory does not represent a victory for Jony Ive and the people who left Apple represented by him. If Jony is willing to share in Cook's victory, he's not leaving.

　　Likewise, what does Apple's market capitalization have to do with Jobs? Jobs used a tyrant-like attitude to control the details of the product. He made a big move. He cut down what should be cut off with force, and developed what should be developed vigorously. Only then did Apple become the legend of Apple. When it came to Cook, these details in turn controlled the helmsman. He didn't dare to make too many changes, just changed the color, changed the UI, changed the size, regularly upgraded the software, and raised the price a little bit. Let the product become a hand-picking artifact. What Cook did, in fact, any mediocre marketer can do, but he happened to stand on the shoulders of giants, ride on the wings of singing, and cut into the harvest of innovative companies after success. Expect.

　　The Apple of the Jobs era was winning by innovation, and the Apple of the Cook era was winning by marketing.

　　If the success of Jobs is "controlling the details" without fear, then Cook's success is "controlling the details" cautiously. If Steve Jobs was alive and his colleagues secretly said that he was "too bold" or "too imaginative" about product design, then it is conceivable that when Cook was in power, people around him would only complain that he was "too timid" about product design. Or "too conservative".

　　Today's iPhone 14 is a stark contrast to 2010's iPhone 4. Twelve years have passed, and the appearance of these two products is not very different. Even Jobs' daughter couldn't help but post an innuendo.

　　Twelve years ago, a 35th-ranked company launched a product that excited the world; 12 years later, the same company, already the planet's number one, launched a product that was a huge disappointment. Interestingly, everyone scolded, but swiped the card while scolding.

　　A man held a new shirt of the same style and color, saying that "the upgrade from iPhone 13 to iPhone 14 has been completed today."

　　Since there are greater benefits to stop innovating, why not do it? Enterprises have entered the harvest period after successful innovation. At this time, the most important task is no longer innovation, but escort, so that more leeks can be harvested.

　　I think that Cook's strategy of never-ending changes also has his shrewdness, that is, the product does not change much, so the learning cost is very low, and it is easy to get started, so it can continue to extract value from old customers and capture loyal consumers. Those who keep squeezing, catch turtles in the urn, and catch one by one. Anyone in business knows that extracting value from old customers is much less expensive than developing new ones.

　　IBM has done research and found that the cost of acquiring new customers is six times the cost of extracting existing customers. Most of the people who walk into the Apple store are consumers who already know and own Apple products. The busiest Apple store in the world is the Nanjing East Road store in Shanghai, serving more than 25,000 people every day. This also reasonably explains why one day selling ice cream at East Road in Nanjing can earn 20,000 yuan.

　　However, other than ice cream, many people who walk out of the Apple store should not be able to buy anything, and they have no money on them.

　　To be a master of technology or a slave?

　　Apple's products are so successful, of course, thanks to its smoothness, ease of use and visual enjoyment, but also thanks to its design concept from the user's point of view. The software engineering behind it is indispensable. Of course, the premise is that we also count the UI design into the software engineering.

　　In contrast, Apple's hardware progress in the past decade appears to be very "stable", which is a bit worrying. Whether it is the full screen, camera or the iteration of the USB Type C interface, it is more than half a year slower than the competing products.

　　It is a good thing to be able to control the development of technology and be the master of technology. If you are also working in a technology company, then you must have a deep understanding: many technical talents, many of whom are big bulls, will become slaves of technology if they are not careful.

　　When you criticize a function that is not easy to use, they often come up with arguments such as "Do you know how difficult this implementation is behind it", "Do you know how hard this capacitor is", "Don't comment if you don't understand it", Defend your imagination limited by technology.

　　This is like when I judge a dish is not delicious, you have to say that I "don't comment if you don't know how to cook", "Do you know how expensive this material is" or "Do you know how difficult it is to make this", these are right It's just a pale excuse for me.

　　I can't cook, I can't eat yet? Isn't the dish made to eat? If it doesn't taste good, it doesn't taste good. It's useless to say anything. 99.998% of people don't care how you do it or how easy it is for you. Vegetables are for eating, not for telling stories.

　　Of course, during the festivals, the Mid-Autumn Festival and the Dragon Boat Festival, with the help of cultural heritage, we can taste the dishes with stories and taste different tastes and lives - but the premise is that the dishes are delicious. Satisfy my tongue first, and the rest are qualified to talk.

　　Jobs pioneered the use of PPT to release electronic products. In that era when watching live broadcasts depended on the speed of the Internet and the player could not be turned on when there were too many people, there were thousands of people, just for a sneak peek. When it comes to marketing, Jobs is still above Cook.

　　Not only marketing, but the product itself has also become a sample for other brands and rising stars to imitate. The conference of some domestic brands cannot be watched in minutes, because almost every conference will mention Apple. We are better than Apple, we are better than Apple, we are better than Apple. Can you be a little bit more stubborn, don't mention Laozi next time?

　　As long as you still think in your marketing concept that you can pass the fake to the real by declaring yourself to be better than your predecessors, you will never be able to surpass your predecessors. Apple ushered in an era, and the rest are copycats. One is the creator and the other is the reproducer. There is an essential difference between the two.

　　For example, no matter how well Lang Lang plays Beethoven, he is not Beethoven, because one is a composer and the other is a performer. While both are very respectable, they essentially eat two bowls of rice.

　　For something to be created is an extraordinary thing, a breakthrough. The rest is just improvement and perfection. There is a very apt word in German called Zuarbeit, which is a job of adding fuel to the wind and running errands.

　　Aren't these perfections and improvements noble? noble. Isn't it great? Great, of course great. However, if you talk about it every day and compare yourself with the creator, it will inevitably make people who know some history laugh at it.

　　Apple is not Apple after Steve Jobs left

Steve Jobs as a young man

　　I still clearly remember that in a class in 2015, the professor played a scene where Jobs showed the function of sliding the screen to unlock when he released the iPhone, which caused the audience to cheer. This video made some young German classmates sitting. Can't help but laugh.

　　Their laughter is innocent, childish, and perhaps not malicious. But I was sitting in the back of the classroom and took the laughter as a personal attack against me.

　　The laughter reminds me - I'm getting old.

　　Because when I saw that scene, I didn't want to laugh, but goosebumps and awe came back. However, when this emotion is ridiculed, it is like being stripped naked to show the public.

　　Young people no longer understand that passionate "age". Although it has only been less than five years, the world of mobile phones has changed, the closure of the closure, the shuffling of the card, and the large-screen mobile phone that does not require a pen has suddenly become the mainstream. Overnight, Nokia was gone, Ericsson was gone, Sony was gone, Samsung was gone - everything about this bloody storm seems to have never happened in the cognition of young people, they only used the iPhone when they were born, So take this design for granted.

　　It was also a few years ago that when someone wrote an article on Germany, they would say, "There are still people in Germany using traditional flip phones", or "Germans are reading in the subway, and no one uses a mobile phone. The slow life we learn". This kind of article can't be written now, because the development of technology can't be clapped with a slap. The construction of base stations cannot keep up, the data signal outside is not good, and there is no 2G signal in the subway. Of course, Germans have no need to use mobile phones. However, as the tide rises, with the upgrading of the entire communication industry, the user group of flip phones quickly shrunk to the interior of nursing homes.

　　The thrifty German ordinary people generally seldom use the iPhone because it is too expensive; instead, they use some relatively cost-effective smartphone brands. But in any case, in Germany, the penetration rate of smartphones is already very high, comparable to China; there are fewer and fewer freaks reading books in the subway. This change did not fall from the sky, it was brought about by Steve Jobs. For this change, Jobs is the only person responsible, and other imitators are not eligible to claim.

　　In Germany, if you see a person with an iPhone, either he has a good income, or he is Chinese or an immigrant from the Middle East. Vietnamese and Southeast Asians don't use it much, mainly because they can't afford it.

　　Decorating yourself with luxury goods and peripheral equipment is actually a compensation for social and psychological positioning. Like music preferences, what you use represents your social group. If you feel that your social status is not high, then spend more money and buy things that you can afford, but only barely, and let others see you in a different light.

　　It also works, because since finding out I have a car, I have also changed from "du" (German "you") to "Sie" (German honorific "you") in the mouth of my neighbors. But my car is a Toyota, because I like German cars, but I don't want to buy used ones. In Germany, when I saw a series of BMWs driving by, nine out of ten were Chinese: BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, these are the used car brands that Chinese people especially like to buy.

　　In the era of Steve Jobs, the iPhone was a carnival for people who yearned for technological innovation. And by the time of Cook's present, it has become a status symbol no different from luxury. 5 friends hang out together, 4 of them have iPhones and only one has an Android, that person always feels like he doesn't fit in. Also, people can send AirDrop to take photos immediately, but you can only use WeChat to send photos after you get home with WiFi.

　　Apple's biggest move to win over the crowd and build a social group, I think, is to acquire the local tyrant headphone brand Beats. As an audio technology professional, I don't really like the Beats brand. I think its tuning is very contrived, and it is used by high school students who are not very mature. Putting these two bs on my head, I became a two b youth. When Apple acquired Beats in 2014, I believe many people were like me and couldn’t believe their eyes, because it was like a marriage between a farmer and a lady, and it was the intersection of two brands that were completely different from the same level.

　　Apple is no longer the pure white, glass, and stainless steel in the impression. Apple's colorful, cluttered product line now; starting with the iPhone 7, the 3.5mm headphone jack was eliminated. On the other hand, the magnetic charging port on the MacBook is canceled first and then installed again. Of course, this contradictory roadmap is not Cook's patent, but has been around since the days of Steve Jobs. Do you still remember how the earliest interface of iPhone and iPod was a big plug? Do you remember a website called me.com? This is a design that Jobs himself has admitted to failing.

　　However, even so, I don't believe that Steve Jobs, if alive, would have allowed Apple to have a camera assembly that protrudes so much, emit so many colors, and come up with such a "girly" design. The new iMac bears the brunt, and a lot of people love its design, which is an aesthetic degradation. Perhaps the reason behind this is that the United States is becoming increasingly outrageous politically correct. Watching Apple's press conference, you will find that minorities, women, and people with disabilities have begun to appear in Apple's most important positions. This is of course a good thing, but it is also unavoidable to doubt whether they are really good, or are they just standing out among the best because of their status? The final product says it all.

　　Because you know, in a hot workplace like Apple, it's perfectly normal to be a director-level figure and have 10,000 competitors with almost the same qualifications and abilities behind you. And the one who finally becomes the director is not necessarily the best among the ten thousand people.

　　Maybe you think it's a little unreasonable for me to say this, because this kind of perverted pursuit of political correctness has not spread to Chinese companies, so you don't have any empathy. Well, I am in Germany, let me tell you, when I entered the German National Institute of Music in Berlin, although the interview was passed, and the leaders wanted me to go to work as soon as possible, the general personnel office interfered with it and did not agree to hire me. The reason is: they I hope to recruit another disabled person this year, and I am not disabled. Political correctness is more important than the sky, and ability is not important. What is important is that enterprises must complete the recruitment tasks of political correctness and take social responsibilities. The same situation happened to a friend of mine. He was going to take a job at a big German bank. He passed five rounds of interviews and got a sample contract, but he couldn't get the job because the bank's union voted against it. The reason is— - The union wants to hire another woman, and he is a man.

　　I'm not discriminating against women or people with disabilities. I only believe in one truth: let the capable people do it. When the ability is second and the identity is the first, the output will definitely not be first-class works. If you want to be really fair, speak with your ability, not your identity. Of course, that's another topic.

　　In the era of data is king, Cook also has innovation

　　If you've ever bought shoes online, your shoe size is permanently stored on the Internet. Every day we do online, we provide one or more companies and research institutions with massive amounts of data to help them study our behavior, so as to tailor products that are more suitable for us.

　　It is hard to say whether it will improve our lives, but it will definitely make us willing to pay for it.

　　Whether these data are private, for 99.998% of us, it is basically impossible to define from a legal point of view. And the picture these data can give you is often astonishingly accurate.

　　Remember that report from 2012? A supermarket in the United States can calculate that a teenage girl is pregnant only through shopping records, but her father who looks at her every day is unaware. The supermarket manager revealed that through the purchase behavior of 25 items, it is possible to determine whether a person is pregnant, and sometimes even calculate the specific day of childbirth. You go shopping in the supermarket every day, and you use your real-name loyalty card to earn points in order to take advantage of it, so your shopping list is saved in your name. After a while, the supermarket will know your life like the back of your hand. This is not A science fiction story, but a reality that happened ten years ago.

Apple's AirPods Max headphones in 2020

　　Since Apple launched its AirPods Max, the world's most expensive earphones, at the end of 2020, it has sold more than one million headphones in half a year. The price of this headset is close to 6,000 yuan, of course, it must be linked to Apple's own brand. At this point, Apple is still in the clear, because if it hangs the bad brand Beats, it can't sell for a good price.

　　AirPods Max is Apple's move towards AR and VR. This headset has a built-in head motion sensor, which can capture the position, posture and angle of the user's head, so as to rotate the sound field size and sound image of the playback through an algorithm, giving the listener an immersive feeling. Not only that, but the length of the listener's ear canal can be calculated by timing the sound wave reflections.

　　Wearing AirPods Max for a few seconds, your head related transfer function HRTF (Head Related Transfer Function) has been mastered by Apple. It's an individual function, more personal than shoe size.

　　So, does HRTF count as part of privacy? This is hard to say. Even if it counts, Apple can argue that this data is not related to your personal information, so there is no suspicion of saving, sharing or even resale of private data.

　　What is the purpose of collecting this data? Guessing, just guessing: do research on VR and AR, that is, virtual reality, augmented reality. As we all know, doing these studies requires massive user data, and it is necessary to learn and imitate how users move their heads in various scenarios, how to turn their heads, and so on. And the people who can afford VR and AR happen to be the people who can afford AirPods Max. So, who will pay for this grand scientific project? Of course the one million users. Not only did they fund Apple's research, but they also provided valuable usage data.

　　If you wondered why AirPods Max is so expensive, now you understand, because if it is sold cheaply, the purity of the data will not be high. Only the people who are willing to pay for AirPods Max are the people who are willing to pay to enjoy VR and AR, so of course, it is necessary to accurately study their HRTF.

　　The new iOS brings an update to Carplay, making it possible to see content from the Apple Car app on more of the dashboards while you're driving. This forces the car to share speed, engine speed, steering, and more with Carplay. This reminds us that Apple has been developing the Apple Car for several years. Maybe, I mean maybe: its autonomous driving needs more data that can only be collected by expanding Carplay.

　　Are there other data collection points? Readers can draw inferences. All in all, we fund research to help Apple make products that work better for us and then sell them to us. This is actually quite good. Who says this isn't Cook's innovation?