After Steve : how Apple became a trillion-dollar company and lost its soul

From the Wall Street Journal' s Tripp Mickle, the dramatic, untold story inside Apple after the passing of Steve Jobs by following his top lieutenants--Jony Ive, the Chief Design Officer, and Tim Cook, the COO-turned-CEO--and how the fading of the former and the rise of the latter led to Apple losing its soul. Steve Jobs called Jony Ive his "spiritual partner at Apple." The London-born genius was the second-most powerful person at Apple and the creative force who most embodies Jobs's spirit, the man who designed the products adopted by hundreds of millions the world over: the iPod, iPad, MacBook Air, the iMac G3, and the iPhone. In the wake of his close collaborator's death, the chief designer wrestled with grief and initially threw himself into his work designing the new Apple headquarters and the Watch before losing his motivation in a company increasingly devoted more to margins than to inspiration. In many ways, Cook was Ive's opposite. The product of a small Alabama town, he had risen through the ranks from the supply side of the company. His gift was not the creation of new products. Instead, he had invented countless ways to maximize a margin, squeezing some suppliers, persuading others to build factories the size of cities to churn out more units. He considered inventory evil. He knew how to make subordinates sweat with withering questions. Jobs selected Cook as his successor, and Cook oversaw a period of tremendous revenue growth that has lifted Apple's valuation to $2 trillion. He built a commanding business in China and rapidly distinguished himself as a master politician who could forge global alliances and send the world's stock market into freefall with a single sentence. Author Tripp Mickle spoke with more than 200 current and former Apple executives, as well as figures key to this period of Apple's history, including Trump administration officials and fashion luminaries such as Anna Wintour while writing After Steve . His research shows the company's success came at a cost. Apple lost its innovative spirit and has not designed a new category of device in years. Ive's departure in 2019 marked a culmination in Apple's shift from a company of innovation to one of operational excellence, and the price is a company that has lost its soul. From the New York Times' Tripp Mickle, the dramatic, untold story inside Apple after the passing of Steve Jobs by following his top lieutenants—Jony Ive, the Chief Design Officer, and Tim Cook, the COO-turned-CEO—and how the fading of the former and the rise of the latter led to Apple losing its soul. Steve Jobs called Jony Ive his “spiritual partner at Apple.” The London-born genius was the second-most powerful person at Apple and the creative force who most embodies Jobs’s spirit, the man who designed the products adopted by hundreds of millions the world over: the iPod, iPad, MacBook Air, the iMac G3, and the iPhone. In the wake of his close collaborator’s death, the chief designer wrestled with grief and initially threw himself into his work designing the new Apple headquarters and the Watch before losing his motivation in a company increasingly devoted more to margins than to inspiration. In many ways, Cook was Ive’s opposite. The product of a small Alabama town, he had risen through the ranks from the supply side of the company. His gift was not the creation of new products. Instead, he had invented countless ways to maximize a margin, squeezing some suppliers, persuading others to build factories the size of cities to churn out more units. He considered inventory evil. He knew how to make subordinates sweat with withering questions. Jobs selected Cook as his successor, and Cook oversaw a period of tremendous revenue growth that has lifted Apple’s valuation to $2 trillion. He built a commanding business in China and rapidly distinguished himself as a master politician who could forge global alliances and send the world’s stock market into freefall with a single sentence. Author Tripp Mickle spoke with more than 200 current and former Apple executives, as well as figures key to this period of Apple’s history, including Trump administration officials and fashion luminaries such as Anna Wintour while writing After Steve. His research shows the company’s success came at a cost. Apple lost its innovative spirit and has not designed a new category of device in years. Ive’s departure in 2019 marked a culmination in Apple’s shift from a company of innovation to one of operational excellence, and the price is a company that has lost its soul. Steve Jobs turned Apple into one of the biggest, boldest companies to ever exist, upending industries and drawing throngs of customers desperate to own the newest iPhone. After his death, his corporate kingdom was beset by doubt about its future. Surely the company would falter without its visionary impresario. Or would Cook and Ive rise to the occasion ? Ive, whom Jobs considered a creative soul mate, was the obsessive artist, an Aston Martin-owning aesthete animated by crafting into reality new products like the Apple Watch and AirPods. Cook was the ultimate technocrat, a Honda Accord-driving number puncher who replaced Jobs's wizardry with MBA strategy, wringing new profits out of the iPhone through services rather than innovation. Their complementary efforts sparked a metaphorical custody battle over the company's identity, while also turning Apple into a juggernaut with a market value bigger than the GDP of many large countries. With its transformation came challenges, consequences, and a massive shift in corporate culture. Drawing on five years of reporting on Apple, “Wall Street Journal” correspondent Trip Mickle delves into perhaps the most daunting corporate succession in history and takes us behind the scenes of the world's most secretive company. He explores the grief and confusion that darkened its corporate campus after Jobs's passing and brings us inside the corporate brawls that resulted in the departure of talented staff. Mickle also renders the creative process of Apple's elite design team and the toll on its obsessive chief as they launched an ambitious effort to reinvent watchmaking, constructed a corporate palace, and updated their flagship products. Here, too, are the cunning maneuvers Cook engineered to outflank President Trump and appease China as will as fill the company's top ranks with like-minded executives disciplined in finance and operations. “After Steve tells the tale of how two men defied the odds and how a powerhouse of innovation transformed itself into a Goliath of commerce and a darling of Wall Street, in other words, how Apple lost its soul This book examines the path of Apple after the death of Steve Jobs and shows how the selection of Tim Cook as his successor led to the prioritization of revenue growth over innovation