Tim Cook’s base hit

Many were disappointed by Apple’s product announcements yesterday, in particular the lack of an iPhone 5.  I was happy with the announcement and I think people will see the improvement, much like we did with the iPad 2.  People thought that was a weak release and yet it made the iPad an amazing device for me.

There are lots of theories as to why the iPhone 5 wasn’t released.  I’m confident the right answer is that it wasn’t ready, but I have my own alternate theory:

This was Tim Cook’s first product launch without Steve Jobs at Apple.  If Cook had launched an amazing iPhone 5, most of the credit would be directed towards Steve Jobs, perhaps accurately or perhaps out of reverence and respect.  More importantly, Tim didn’t actually need a home run yesterday, he’s in the honeymoon phase and he just needed a base hit.  And a base hit is exactly what he hit.  

In about 6 or 9 months though, he may very well need to show people that he can deliver a home run, and that’s when we’ll see an iPhone 5 with Tim proudly and deservedly receiving the credit.  

I’m not suggesting the iPhone 5 is ready to go today and that Tim Cook deliberately held it back – I’m suggesting that they wanted to give Tim a base hit before they give him a home run so there is some transition time for his leadership to ramp up “organically.”  If Cook hit a home run less than two months after Jobs stepped down, the credit would unquestionably be allocated to his predecessor.  This way, we have seen him have a successful, albeit modest launch, and he’s now on deck to knock it out of the park.

I can’t wait.

As an aside, of course Tim deserves a lot of credit for all the iPhone releases as he’s been integral to Apple’s success for a long time, but we know that the buck always stops at the CEOs desk, good or bad.