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Apple CEO Tim Cook Stepping Down, John Ternus Taking Over
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Thank God. Maybe finally we can have the era of apple like when Steve Jobs was CEO. Just kidding he is one of a kind, that will never happen again. But maybe at least one new innovative product comes out since he has an engineering degree.
I'd argue that there have been many innovations over the last decade that apple had missed the boat on.
Project titan? the long rumoued apple car? I was in china for a couple weeks earlier this month and it felt like anyone and everyone had an electric car in the market; I was in huawei and xiaomi stores and they had cars on display next to their phones and the cars themselves seemed quite impressive.
Why couldn't apple, for all of their resources do that? Because they wanted to stay in their lane? (no pun intended) because there's no money in it? what brands like xiaomi and huawei lack is trust in their brands, these cars do well domestically but many are non-existant internationally. You can't even buy them in most countries. An apple car wouldn't have that issue; they'd be pervasive. They'd basically be what tesla is today. Heck tim could've bought tesla for 50B back in 2019 if musk is to be believed. That's a 20 bagger that tim left on the table.
Apple's been trying to diversify away from solely hardware and move into the services space, yet bungled AI completely. I personally think AI is overrated and don't like bringing it up; but it's a fact that AI is currently a multi trillion dollar domain and apple don't have much of a footprint into it at all.
Consumer robotics? Not necessarily robot vacuum cleaners, or robot dogs but this is a field that'll boom alongside the AI boom. Companies are starting to manufacture general purpose robots industrial and commercial use already.
Even in the home space, connected devices are mainstream now. What happened to the apple tv? the likes of samsung/xiaomi/etc make connected everything from tv's to washing machines to microwaves and fridges. It's easy to scoff at the idea of an apple refrigerator today; but 30 years ago people would've scoffed at a apple telephone too. "But a fridge just keeps stuff cold" - that's old hat thinking. Imagine a fridge that monitored all of its contents, could reorder your milk as you ran low; kept track of your eating and nutrition etc. Some of these features probably already exist, but we'd never know because it'd be made by some no-name company who'd go bust before bringing it to market. Apple would've polished it and marketted the **** of it and sell it to everyone who needs a fridge.
Or home automation in general? how'd a company making doorbells go from a shark tank pitch to a 3.4B acquisition by google?
Gaming? The iphone is the most prolific gaming device in the world with more games than playstation, xbox and nintendo combined. Apple dabbled with the idea with their appletv devices but didn't follow through. Imagine being able to switch seamlessly from your handheld to the big screen, with the appropriate first party peripherals.
Not every new product needs to be revolutionary, they can be mundane; but apple used to be able to redo them in a way that somehow becomes sexy and made people line up for it.
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Trusteft
macrumors 65816
I am assuming that would mean to not listen to your post too? Though if he did, then he wouln't. Or would? Hmm.
I am old enough to know we are approaching that Augmented reality era some 30 years now. MS Hololens were released 10 years ago, died in 2024.
It might be a great product for it’s use case. VR in general made a long way but still, it is not mass product. I don’t think it ever will be.
the8thark
macrumors 601
Tim Cook moving into the full time political lobbyist role. It would suit him as he is very politically motivated and wears his political biases on his sleeve for everyone to see.
A new CEO that focuses more on making better products and getting them to us in better ways is what Apple needs. Not a CEO that prioritises lobbying above all else.
Tim did increase Apples profits a whole lot. The investors/shareholders would be happy. He has destroyed the heart and soul of the company in the process.
Let’s hope the new CEO can return Apple to a company where every employee has the equal opportunity to grow their career and every customer has the same opportunities provided to them by Apple.
Cook did a lot of good at Apple but at what cost? Was the cost worth it?
AndiG
macrumors 65816
Yeah, everyone knows that. Tim is a money guy and, as you said, has done an outstanding job, especially in the area of supply chains. But he was never a product guy. He shouldn’t have led Apple for so long.
We’ll see what happens—maybe as early as next year, but it might take five years.
Hopefully will see him in court on bribery of a govt official charges in 3 years time.
He also picked Forstall. I know he had a following, but I don’t see Apple having the success they had the past decade, with Forstall at the helm.
Yeah, there isn't a day that goes by that I don't blurt out expletive apple multiple times, sometimes in public.
I cancelled Apple Fitness after subscribing since the very beginning because I had a year of fighting to get my AppleTV to connect to my phone or watch for authentication, often spending more time than the workout would have been trying to get it to even let me in before giving up. Just works .... my .....
Or Apple Maps... I put a multi-destination route in, connect to car play. Get out at the first stop, car still running, and CarPlay loses connection....come back to drive to the next stop, and after reconnecting Apple Maps clears my route...
There are a whole host of these stupid issues that have cropped up in recent years, and Tim Cook would rather focus on making the weirdest product segmentation decisions and expanding into vehicles than to have his teams double down on quality. I've always said, you look at the number of revised products a company like Dell can pump out in a year, and then you look at Apple and its like they have a single hardware team moving from product to product letting some products go 3 or 4 years or more between desperately needed updates. Richest company in the world refuses to staff up to meet the needs of their customers. We couldn't possibly invest in more engineers to fix our software bugs, we need to get more emojis in our software....
Instead of becoming a financial services company and focussing on how they can ignore court orders and keep their 30% fee on software they didn't write, they should focus on building their own products. Its not that we are bashing Apple products, which are still really well made... we dislike the company slowly releasing more and more buggy software or or charging 10-yr old prices on RAM and storage.
He will not be missed. He coasted on Steve Jobs product pipeline. There is a reason so many Apple loyalists in here were fed up with him. At least he will have more time for movie nights with the cheeto.
Mr Todhunter
macrumors 6502
All I see is gatekeeping - you’re only a REAL apple fan if you joined before the iPod.
I have plenty of friends and family who are super happy about their Apple products, mostly iPhone, Watch and TV, but also a few Mac, who didn’t own a single Apple product in 2011. Sure, there are things to complain about, but what - there were no bugs before 2011?
We wouldn’t all remember Snow Leopard so fondly, if Leopard wasn’t bloated and buggy as hell.
And that Dell comparison… the reason I like Apple is BECAUSE they are not like Dell.
I’d say it’s more that he was a peer.
When TC took over Ron Johnson (I think that was his name?) the former head of apple retail resigned soon after.
I think by 2028 the exec team at apple will look significantly different.
Samplasion
macrumors 6502a
This shouldn't surprise anyone. Hopefully he'll instil some quality back into Apple over obsessing over profits and share price? Would be nice to see, new products and a HUGE improvement in software quality.
I don’t get this criticism. First of all, embracing diversity was very clearly a Jobs thing, that Cook has extended. Second, the most ugly thing Cook has ever done was to eat his own personal motives and suck up to the current government because it was the right thing for the company. He has proven that he is willing to give up on his personal politics in order to serve the company’s interests.
Sadly, I think that comes with the territory.
I strongly disagree. He evolved it, he didn’t destroy it. It seems very clear to me that the Apple culture is still intact in the company, and in some cases that is part of the issues - Apple (the company, not just Cook) thinks it can do no wrong. To me, that is their biggest blind side.
In terms of how the products have developed, to me that is a resounding yes. People are just stuck in the past, as evidenced by many of the posts here. Apple would NOT have been in a better position if they had changed less.
I highly doubt we would have gotten Apple Silicon without Cook’s operational prowess. Innovative ideas doesn’t do it alone.
However, I do agree that they have issues on the political side, which is ironic given the claims that that is all Cook cares about.
The first thing I often do when waking up in a morning is grab my phone and go to the news, when I saw this news I had to double check with myself I was actually awake and not just dreaming!
Fair play to Tim and I hope he enjoys retirement and good luck to John!
Fair play to Tim and I hope he enjoys retirement and good luck to John!
Thats a cheap question. These CEOs don't get paid millions to sit there on money and invest it a little and make a bit more. Asking a random online chatter to come up with innovative products is a cheap question. The average individual isn't an inventor or innovative but they know when a good product comes out as in the iphone and ipod. The world does as well.