Why Tim Cook Is Steve Ballmer and Why He Still Has His Job at Apple
The article is short on details why he thinks Tim Cook is like Steve Ballmer, except for saying that Apple is slowly missing the boat on AI.<p>I don&#x27;t know what Amazon does for AI, I haven&#x27;t seen anything convincing from them, but I&#x27;ll trust the author that they are working on it.<p>However it&#x27;s tough to beat Google in this space, because AI and machine learning is what Google has focused on since <i>their beginnings</i>. Google&#x27;s own Search has always been a limited form of AI on which most humans with access to the Internet have come to depend upon. And it is tough to beat them because they not only have 20 years of accumulated knowledge and talent, but they also have <i>a lot of data</i> on users and haven&#x27;t been afraid to break users&#x27; privacy in order to get that data.<p>Now say what you will of Tim Cook, but he&#x27;s nothing like Steve Ballmer, with one big difference being that Tim Cook&#x27;s Apple is making a stand for privacy and security, which is actually quite rare to witness in this day and age. He&#x27;s a man with principles and for this I appreciate him a lot, maybe more than I ever appreciated Steve Jobs.<p>It would also be stupid to try and beat Google on their own turf. It would be like trying to beat Microsoft at Windows or Office, or Amazon at AWS. And for important markets, Apple&#x27;s secret is that they never had to beat anyone in market share, all they had to do was to take over an important slice of the high-end market, which is something they are really good at.