Patience is a virtue, and Apple lives to have the last word

Jun 16, 2014 08:01 GMT  ·  By
Tim Cook wearing the Nike FuelBand, a fitness-oriented device that will reportedly lend some of its functionality to the upcoming iWatch
   Tim Cook wearing the Nike FuelBand, a fitness-oriented device that will reportedly lend some of its functionality to the upcoming iWatch

A new profile on Tim Cook and his company at 1 Infinite Loop reveals that Apple under the Alabama-born boss hasn’t changed much since Steve Jobs passed away. Jonathan Ive himself suggests we’re just experiencing the calm before the storm, just as it was with the iPhone in 2007.

After upsetting Apple repeatedly with its bad reporting, the NY Times is taking another stab at deciphering Tim Cook & Co.

An unnecessarily lengthy piece by the magazine desperately seems to try to right the wrong it did in previous years, while admitting that Cook is still unavailable for comments when it comes to their profiling of Apple.

That’s okay, though. The publication marches on with comments from other people trying to decipher the CEO and his organization at 1 Infinite Loop, probably to no avail as we’ll discover this fall.

But there’s one interesting remark there attributed to Jonathan Ive, the company’s iconic designer who used to grab lunch with Steve Jobs and plan the future before the latter passed away in the fall of 2011.

The publication is quoting him as saying, “‘Honestly, I don’t think anything’s changed.’ And that includes the clamor for some exciting new thing. ‘People felt exactly the same way when we were working on the iPhone,’ Mr. Ive added. ‘It is hard for all of us to be patient,’ Mr. Ive said. ‘It was hard for Steve. It is hard for Tim’.”

Call it the calm before the storm or whatever comparison springs to mind, but one thing is certain. Ive has indisputably all but confirmed that Apple is being really “patient” right now, that something big is just around the corner. And it’s hurting them to the bone marrow that they can’t just blurt out, “we have your iWatch right here, we just need to work out a few kinks before we can show it to you.”

The tension surrounding Cook and Apple’s stock price these days mainly revolves around this elusive product that will reportedly track our health with the ability to improve it. The iWatch will also act as a wrist-worn gateway for email, SMS, and possibly even FaceTime calls, according to people familiar with the project. The thing sounds revolutionary to put it mildly, and it’s this new Apple jewel that Cook needs to deliver to convince everyone that he can continue Steve Jobs' mission.

And it’s unfortunate that people think that way. One such example is Laurence I. Balter, chief market strategist at Oracle Investment Research, who asks: “Where is the grand design? All we hear from Cook is there are some great products coming down the pike.”

Cook is reportedly less involved in the development of the iWatch than he was thought to be. Jonathan Ive and other “members of his executive cabinet” are overseeing the product up close, something that apparently doesn’t sit well with people who don’t understand that Cook is not trying to be Steve Jobs, that he doesn’t just barge into people’s offices telling them their work is “not magical enough.” He trusts his troops will do that for him, knowing that Apple is better off with the creatives working on the products and the operations people dealing with all things operational.

Yet, Cook is very interested in the product’s implications, and the company even reportedly plans to roll it out this year, “in the fourth quarter,” people with knowledge of the plans said. Frankly, I'm getting tired of waiting myself. But only because of the utterly fabricated despair that so-called experts are incrementally building around Tim Cook with each passing year since Jobs' death. As much as I hate to see the summer go every year, fall can't come fast enough in 2014.