How do you follow an act like Steve Jobs, the best presenter in the business?
The answer is you can’t, and you shouldn’t even try.
Tim Cook should be given credit for that, even if his performance at the iPhone 4S launch today was subdued and low-key.
Cook speaks slowly and softly. He’s a courtly Southern gentleman. It can be a little soporific. He has none of the infectious enthusiasm that made Jobs’ keynotes so electrifying.
And he doesn’t have Jobs gift for outrageous hyperbole. Jobs would exaggerate to the point of absurdity, hyping even the most mundane feature. But it got the crowd really jazzed. You’d experience Jobs’ reality distortion field in full effect. You’d find yourself wildly clapping the ability to rotate photos in iPhoto, then afterwards, when the spell wore off, you’d wonder why you got so excited for so little.
Cook has none of this. Is he really excited about all the visitors to Apple’s new store in China? He said he was, but it didn’t come across.
There were complaints about the length of the keynote. But that always happens, even when Jobs is in charge. Everyone is impatient for the main event, the surprise ending.
Cook wasn’t helped by the substance of today’s announcement. Most Apple fans had worked themselves into a state of unrealistic expectation about the iPhone 5. Everyone wanted a brand new handset with a new design. Instead they got a console-capable chip and a camera to rival the best point-and-shoot. Pah — boring!
At least Cook didn’t try to emulate Jobs’ trademark “One More Thing.” If he’d tried to copy his old boss’s surprise ending, he’d have risked a huge flop and a harsh backlash.
Cook did it his own way: quiet, steady and a little bit dull. Never mind. Perhaps he will get more animated as time goes on. He’s shown on conference calls with Wall St. analysts that he has a quick brain and a sharp tongue. It would be great to see some of that in future keynotes.
Perhaps the biggest problem was turning over the presentation to a team of presenters. He was joined by Tim Forstall, Phil Schiller and Eddie Cue. But that has been Jobs’ practice for a while. And this is the new Apple. It’s a team effort now, not a one-man-show.
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander is an expert on:
Apple and Apple history
Steve Jobs, Jony Ive, Tim Cook and Apple leadership
Apple community
iPhone and iOS
iPad and iPadOS
Mac and macOS
Apple Watch and watchOS
Apple TV and tvOS
AirPods
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
