How serious is this comment? As a thought experiment, this intrigues me. Imagine Steve Wozniak suddenly pops in as CEO. What might happen to the company in the following years?
I doubt Woz would want the job. He's an engineer, not a corporate strategist, and he seems happy that way.
The ideal CEO would be a business strategist, innovator and thought-leader, and world-class marketer, but with enough of an engineering background to chase hard problems.
There aren't many of those around.
Jobs did okay at all four, mostly. Cook gets the first, mostly, and has adequate delegation skills for engineering and marketing. This works superbly when the engineering is world-leading (the M chips) and badly when the engineering is mediocre (the software.) The marketing has drifted towards attempts at luxury-consumer branding, which is an off-the-shelf pitch. It hasn't been a failure. But it has lost some of its distinctiveness, and it's a little incoherent at times.
Cook's still been hugely more successful than Sculley or Amelio. Sculley was a bland corporatist, and Amelio was very, very smart, but too much of an engineer to be good at the rest. He did really well elsewhere, but Apple just wasn't a good fit.
The job is a poisoned chalice. It's going to be extremely difficult for the new CEO to assert their authority over the established fiefdoms, keep the plates spinning, deal with a weird political and economic environment, and still create Apple-styled innovation.
The problem of running a $4 Trillion consumer hardware company, with incredibly optimized supply chain operations, is that it heavily constrains the directions a new CEO would take the company, and by extension, the set of plausible people who could take the helm. I think even if the next CEO has a new or different product vision, they'd need deep knowledge on the hardware side of the house just to steer in any different direction.
I don't know if OP is serious, but more than once, his name has come up on this topic in discussions in the past that I've had with people in my social circle who work at Apple. He obviously gets much respect and is considered an engineer's engineer.
I don't think anyone would be against Woz stepping into to revitalize Apple. The real question is whether Woz would do it.
Everybody loves Woz, for good reasons, but (a) he’s not a manager (b) he’s not executive material (c) he’s notoriously unmotivated (d) he hasn’t engineered anything significant since what, the mid-1980’s?
Valve is privately-owned with its BDFL owning over half of it. It has never gone through a leadership transition. It could relatively quickly go entirely bad after Gabe Newell is gone.
Shit, I'd take it. Sideloading, custom OSes, less-wimpy legal chops against hackers... Valve could turn Apple around.
A 5 year release cadence would incentivize the iPhone to change something more significant than just the price tag. And Proton would give me my first justification for a owning a powerful phone.
Everyone making recommendations for other apps is missing the fact that the article is aimed at non-techies who aren't going to fire up a terminal or go searching for a plain-text, non-stylized text editor. TextEdit can save as plain text as other posters note, but most non-techies want a word processor where they can change fonts and font styles.
While I do like TextEdit, I prefer Bean (https://www.bean-osx.com/Bean.html), which has been my quick word processor of choice on the Mac since the Tiger days.
Well said, and anyone who cares enough about text editing enough to notice is the kind of user capable of finding one (and probably having opinions on their favourite one, so apple couldn’t please everyone with a text editor anyway).
This article references how grade inflation has boomed since 2013 (when the authors were in school). Here's an article from 2013 bemoaning grade inflation:
Folks, this is an annual grouching point among folks who care about or work in academia. Nothing to see here.
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Edited to add that I am a community college English professor. Most people pass my class because the college has set the final drop date one month before the end of the semester, so students have plenty of time to avoid a bad final grade.
Tom Junod is a natural treasure. And for those who are complaining about the writing style; this is journalistic long-form non-fiction, not a technical article where you want the TL;DR executive summary up front. You read this stuff for the journey, not for the "I need to use this information now" approach. If you don't like the style, fine, but don't denigrate it. Much long-form non-fiction is written this way. He's weaving together three different strands of biography here - the two football players and his own connection to one of them -- with a meditative discussion on the acceptance of the risk of fatal injury in youth sports. And yes, you can have that many strands -- that's what braided essays do.
The author is a native French speaker (see his "About" page) and I think he is writing in English, which he clearly is not fluent in, to make a point: you can understand his argument, written in broken English, even though he could have run it through AI to clean it up and make it more palatable to a native English speaker.
Plugging "Hi my nephew's birthday is coming up soon and I want to get a gift for him. He likes dinosaurs and roblox. What gift can I get him that's in the range of $50?" into the free version of ChatGPT returns the following (I removed the links to the products):
Here are two great gift ideas under $50 that combine his love for dinosaurs and Roblox:
Roblox $50 Gift Card
Perfect for a Roblox fan — lets him choose his own Robux to spend on in-game items.
Comes with a free exclusive virtual item, as noted by Walmart, Best Buy, and others.
Instant digital delivery or physical card options make it easy and flexible.
Jurassic World Imaginext Thrashing Indominus Rex (14″)
A large, interactive dinosaur figure (~14″ tall) with thrashing action—great for imaginative play.
Priced at $49.99, so it stays within your budget.
Why these are top picks:
The Roblox gift card is a flexible present that he can use for virtual gear, outfits, or game passes—personalized fun guaranteed. Cards also include bonus Robux and exclusive items .
The Imaginext Indominus Rex is a hands-on toy that encourages creative, active play. It's well-reviewed and fits your price range perfectly.
How to choose:
Digital vs. physical gift: The Roblox card can be emailed (great for last-minute gifting) or bought as a tangible card.
Play preferences: Go for the dinosaur figure if he loves real-world play. Choose the gift card if he's big on Roblox screen time.
Bonus idea: You could pair them–get the gift card as the main gift and tuck the dinosaur figure into the package for a fun hatching surprise.
If you'd like other recommendations—perhaps dinosaur LEGO sets or interactive dinosaur books—just say the word!
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This is why AI is going to eat traditional key-word searching's lunch.
God, I miss Grantland. It was some of THE best writing on the web at the time. ESPN killed it and Bill Simmons went on to create The Ringer, which he then sold to Spotify. The Ringer pre-Spotify was good, but not as good as Grantland was.
