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A look at Tim Cook's presentation style

by Steven Sande Oct 11th 2011 at 9:00PM

Last Tuesday's "Let's Talk iPhone" Apple event was the first time that Apple CEO Tim Cook had the opportunity to run the show for a major product introduction. In the past, of course, most Apple product announcements were "Stevenotes," with the late CEO Steve Jobs wowing the audiences with whatever new products were coming out of Cupertino. Nick Wingfield of the New York Times discussed Cook's different presentation style in a post on the Bits blog.

Wingfield noted that Cook left the demonstrations of new products to his colleagues, in particular Eddy Cue, Scott Forstall, and Phil Schiller. He quotes Van Baker, a Gartner analyst, as saying that Cook was smart to avoid being like Steve Jobs: "I think one of the things Tim did was to, in essence, put a stake in the ground and say 'I'm not Steve, don't expect me to be Steve.'"

As Wingfield says, the number of iPhone 4S units presold during the first 24 hours of availability seems to show that it doesn't make much of a difference who is telling Apple's story. But former Mac evangelist and current venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki appeared to criticize Cook's style in a Sunday blog post, notes Wingfield. In his post titled "What I Learned From Steve Jobs," Kawasaki wrote that "Real CEOs demo." What's Kawasaki's objection to letting the product guys handle the product show and tell? "Maybe it's to show that there's a team effort in play. Maybe. It's more likely [if the CEO doesn't demo the product] that the CEO doesn't understand what his/her company is making well enough to explain it. How pathetic is that?"

I'm hoping that Kawasaki was not singling out Cook with this comment, and would hope that he'd point out Cook's positives with two of the other bullet points in his post: "A players hire A+ players" and "Real CEOs ship." What are your thoughts on Cook's presentation style and the comments from Guy Kawasaki? Leave your comments below.



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Nick Wingfield of the New York Times discussed Cook's different presentation style in a post on the Bits blog
 

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The Animaster

Tim Cook paces the stage WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too much. You either get horribly dizzy or horribly sleepy watching the guy on stage -- the calm voice, the pendulum-like 'swing'.

March 10 2012 at 8:25 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Montex

The TimNote was proof that Steve Jobs is a very, very tough act to follow. I doubt anyone could have performed well while walking around in the shoes of a giant.

October 12 2011 at 1:43 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Nooddee d

Seeing that Tim Cook MOST LIKELY KNEW that Steve Jobs was within minutes of dying, I think Guy and the rest of us should cut Tim some slack!

October 12 2011 at 1:13 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Arnan

I thought it was a boring and annoying keynote tbh, but not so much for Tim;'s performance. But more how they kept on saying they were better than everyone else in a nagging way. I didn't finish watching they keynote.

Tim, speaks too slow i think. Which makes his lines boring and slow.

October 12 2011 at 10:58 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Don F. Morrison

I think you're taking Kawasaki's comments out of context and being overly critical of him. Nowhere in his post does he compare Tim Cook to Steve Jobs. I took Guy's post as his tribute to a great man. Guy was trying to show everyone that Steve knew a blueprint for success and he followed it relentlessly.

No reason to drag Tim Cook into Guy's observations and lesson's learned from Jobs. Take it for what it was...

October 12 2011 at 10:52 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
fn0000rd

Steve was *excited* about everything. It's impossible to judge Cook's performance in this one instance, because of what was going on the the background, but really -- if he's not capable of getting excited about the products and conveying that ("Isn't this COOL?!"), then there's no reason why the CEO must give the keynotes.

Find some dude with charisma who loves the crap out of these gadgets. They're apple products, it won't be hard to do.

October 12 2011 at 10:28 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Steve Stanik

I think Tim was a little preoccupied since I'm sure he knew that Steve Jobs was on his last breaths. Let's cut the man some slack and see what the next keynote brings.

October 12 2011 at 9:01 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
cpragman

Seemed to me like Tim was trying to present the same way that Steve usually did, but was just more wooden doing it. It felt odd to me to see some of Steve's mannerisms (pacing a bit and saying "this is amazing" a lot) coming out of another person. Perhaps in the future, Tim will present in his own style, instead of mimicing Steve's style (woodenly).

October 12 2011 at 7:31 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Kelmon

If I could give Tim one piece of advice it would be to stop walking around the stage so much. Throughout his sections of the presentation he was constantly moving and that's very distracting/annoying. A degree of movement during a presentation is fine, and I certainly find it helps me when I'm giving one, but you can definitely overdo it.

October 12 2011 at 5:41 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
hfwbr

Kawasaki's being overly analytical, if not downright anal. Extrapolating from one presentation is akin to sportswriters predicting future standings after the outcome of one game, a foible they commit all the time. You'd think they, and Guy, would learn after a few years.

October 12 2011 at 4:41 AM Report abuse +1 rate up rate down Reply
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