Tim Cook - Book Review

I read the Leander Kahney book on Tim Cook on the long Emirates flights to and from India. In India, I had a conversation with an Apple consumer like me (not really that knowledgeable about the operations of the company). His point was India should require Apple make massive investments in return for access to their large market. I asked him if the US should expect the same of TCS, Infosys, other Indian outsourcing firms for similar access to their largest market? He ignored my question. Then we got into Apple needing to diversify production away from China given recent trade tensions. I asked him how India would improve its infrastructure to support Apple's finely tuned supply chain. Again, no good answers. Raise our amateur conversation a few levels of abstraction higher. It would highlight how Tim Cook is one of the most geopolitically influential executives in the world these days.

And if rumors of the Apple Car are true, Germany, Japan, S. Korea are just as interested in what he is going to do. So I thought it was odd that Leander's book does not look much at these global crosscurrents in his new book. Instead, I thought Kahney spends way too much time on race relations in Alabama where Cook was born and raised, and his sexual orientation. In that sense, I had the same reaction as I did to Walter Isaacson's book on Steve Jobs - bit too much focus on personal background and idiosyncrasies, less on the gears and timing belts of the Apple juggernaut.

Unlike Isaacson, Kahney did not have appear to have direct access to the subject. However, from the citations he did have access to a handful of Apple executives, and with his long time blog The Cult of Mac he has a slew of contacts in the Apple ecosystem. I find when I write books, I have to take off my blogger hat and not focus so much on newsy, gossipy stuff and focus instead on complex issues that corporate executives are interested in. I don't think Kahney does enough of that. So much of the book is actually cut and paste of lots of historical reporting about Apple. I wish he had spent time in China crawling through Foxconn, Fedex and various component vendors that make the remarkable Apple supply chain work. How it is orchestrated with last minute design changes, how it is mostly kept secret etc. 

I do like that Kahney addresses the silly notion that Cook is not innovative. By launching Apple Pay and Watch he has bought Apple a toehold in massive emerging digital payment/commerce markets and wearables/healthcare markets. And if Car becomes a reality, he should do  the same in rapidly changing mobility markets. Just wish Kahney had explored those a lot more about how those products are bought to life, and how their complex supply chains are choreographed.

You will likely understand Tim Cook a bit better as a human after you read the book. I found it did not really add that much to my understanding of him as a business executive or that of Apple's operations.