Apple CEO Tim Cook Stepping Down, John Ternus Taking Over

[mazz0]

Well I hope he has small hands/pockets.

 

[jupiter82]

Good, maybe now we'll see some real innovation in Apple products again. Instead of the same products every year, with only a minor upgrade. Bye

 

[transpo1]

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.

The car thing was just too complex for Apple-- they learned that they had to become a car company in order to do it and that's why it was abandoned.

I do agree with you that the iPhone is a missed opportunity-- the iPhone should be the premier gaming controller that interfaces with an Apple TV gaming console. But there are a lot of people who use the iPhone for games, they're just normal consumers not gamers.

 

[Velli]

Meta glasses - absolutely awesome. With Jobs leading the pack, this is what he would have done and shipped it - not Apple Vision Pro that was DoA.

AVP revenue is quite close to that of Meta glasses - and twice that of Meta Quest.

Meta glasses may have a bright future, but that is yet to be proven. So is what Apple plans to do to follow up on AVP.

 

[visualseed]

So...any chance we will get new computers with actual bright lovely colours instead of the "let's try not to offend anyone so let's just have as blunt colours as possible....kill all saturation" ? Perhaps even translucent cases? How about 27"+ iMacs? Asking for a friend.

I doubt it was Cook, and certainly not Cook alone, who decided on the color and specifications of the hardware. The same team responsible for those choices is still in place, continuing to make those decisions. Ultiaitely the decison maker is the market at large and their wallets. Cool hardware may excite the "Spec Bros", but Apple will always gravitate to what actually sells.

 

[visualseed]

Sadly, nothing will change here. After a couple months it will be the same "Wah... Apple doesn't innovate anymore."

Basically ignoring the 1+ Billion happy/repeat customers (the final arbiters of a company's success) who love Apple products and propelling the company to being one of the most successful consumer tech companies in the world.

I think there’s a collective distortion of the past and an overstatement of how much Jobs actually “innovated.” Sure, the guy had a few grand slams, but the Apple products I consider the most innovative were created without him at the helm, often relying on features he strongly argued against.

 

[transpo1]

Ternus has been at Apple longer than Federighi.

That doesn't matter as much as age; especially when you've been passed over or at least not considered for a leadership position.

 

[transpo1]

He’s clearly on a garden leave. He won’t have any say or actual power, it’s just the way high profile people are ushered out a company.

He's going to be on the board-- he'll have plenty of input.

 

[transpo1]

This has been the succession plan for some time now.

Responses such as that just mean it was not time to tell you.

Probably, but still, it is sort of jarring how he was so sure just a short time ago. I wonder if they were always planning on doing it now or if they recently decided that they had to do it before the big, new product launches this fall to setup John Ternus for success.

 

[SmakFairy]

Jobs’ genius was optimizing for the possible, and the future, and the ideal. Cook’s genius was optimizing for the practical and the market and Reality.

Let’s hope the rails Cook put in place will not imprison Ternus in the walled garden. Let’s hope he can discover how to break the mold in fun and exciting ways. What he already brings to Apple’s hardware suggests he’s the right guy to do it.

 

[scoobs69]

MacBook Neo will be Tim Cook's legacy.

Not moving to their own Apple Silicon chips in their computer hardware?

 

[scoobs69]

Hopefully he brings some color, some emotion, some fun back to the mundane shades of grey that have taken over under Cook… emotion can be good. Color can be good. Maybe the MacBook Neo is a sign of things to come!

As opposed to the colors on the iMac - which weren't a sign of things to come? ...or had already existed?

 

[meepdarby]

Apple and Disney are the only companies where people care who the CEO are.

 

[seek3r]

Apple and Disney are the only companies where people care who the CEO are.

Oracle? Amazon? IBM? Google? Ford? Movie studios in general? Meta? Tesla? Microsoft? Boeing? I could keep going…

 

[jdolivarez]

It's insane to me that people are still complaining about the lack of innovation when an ARM chip is the single-core performance champion right now under his reign. The idea that ARM could be a viable desktop architecture, let alone competitive with high-end x86, in 2011 was unthinkable. The iPad was always the endgame of Jobs's vision of computing to begin with, a computer the size of a book that takes 20 minutes to learn how to use. We were always going to plateau in innovation after the form factor for internet computing matured, and we got the modern Smartphone/Tablet/Computer split under Jobs. Apple under Cook is an economic powerhouse; they just created a paradigm shift in computing architecture just 5 years ago, and their work on promoting the Apple Ecosystem™️ and maintaining Apple as a lifestyle company just as it is a computing company is definitely Jobs-esque. Cook was a phenomenal CEO, though I do look forward to Apple under Ternus and what an engineer-led post-Jobs Apple looks like.

 

[scoobs69]

Hip hip hooray! Cook ended up being the worst possible choice to succeed Steve Jobs as Apple's CEO - at least in terms of product design, user experience, and genuine innovation.

If you disagree, name two products released under Cook's tenure — not products already in Steve's pipeline (which typically stretched five years into the future) — that have proven more profitable than the iPhone or the iPad. And please spare me the "there's nothing left to invent" excuse.

To be fair, Cook delivered financially in some ways. There's no disputing that. But consider this: Steve Jobs built the ship, launched it, walked away, came back, and posted revenue growth numbers Cook can only dream about. When Jobs passed, Cook took the helm of the already highly successful F/V Apple as Captain Miser — penny-pinching his way to the top, with profits as his true north star rather than products. In short, Jobs built the ship, Cook just sailed it. I'm thrilled to see him go. I've been waiting years for this.

Oh, and for anyone pointing to Apple's rising market cap as one of Cook's crowning achievements, consider the following:

Jobs - 1997 to 2011 (14 years):
$2.3 billion → $337 billion, a 146x increase

Cook - 2011 to 2025 (14 years):
$348 billion → $4 trillion, an 11.5x increase

Apple stock you say? Here are some numbers for you (split adjusted):

Steve Jobs era (as CEO) 1997 to 2011:

Starting point - 1997:
$0.12–$0.15 per share (split-adjusted)

Ending point - 2011:
$12-14 per share
% gain: Approximately 6,000%–7,000%

Tim Cook era as CEO 2011 to 2025 (14 years):

Starting point 2011:
$12–$14 per share

Ending point (comparing the same 14 year tenure, ending in August of 2025):
$190-210+ per share
% gain: Approximately 1,300%-1,600%

Apple also became the world's most valuable company for the first time under Jobs.

Regardless of these numbers, it's far more impressive to essentially lead the building of what would become a billion dollar company in less than a decade out of your garage when you're 21 years old with a few thousand dollars and a dream, only to get fired by a joke of a CEO and board of directors, and yet still come back to turn it into the world's most valuable company, than it is for a 50 year old to take a multi billion dollar, globally popular company with a cult following, that was already valued well over a quarter trillion dollars, and penny-pinch his way to a 4 trillion dollar company.

If you hate Apple's product line-up this much, why are you even here? Go buy a Windows or Linux computer and an Android phone, and get on with your life...

 

[scoobs69]

Cook was a safe, boring choice and Apple under him was safe and boring.

Hopefully this new dude brings some of the magic back to the company.

Ok. ...Leaving Intel behind was safe... Got it!

 

[curtvaughan]

An engineer as a CEO. That’s promising!

They said the same thing with Pat Gelsinger's taking over as CEO of Intel. Time will tell. Gelsinger had been very successful in his career at Intel, primarily in his engineering leadership, culminating as CTO from 2001 until 2009. When he returned to Intel as CEO from 2021-2024, success was spotty at that role, particularly with adjusting to Apple's move to its own Apple Silicon SOC to replace Intel technology on Macs, as well as with rapidly giving ground to AMD in the PC markets.

 

[scoobs69]

Good riddance. Apple needs a leader thats product focused. Tim Apples political focus did very little for the brand, while the product lines became stale and uninspiring.

Name a better Intel Mac Line up than the one Apple has now?

What exactly is Tim's political focus?

 

[Chopper9]

Cellllllllllebrate good times, COME ON!

 

[meepdarby]

Oracle? Amazon? IBM? Google? Ford? Movie studios in general? Meta? Tesla? Microsoft? Boeing? I could keep going…

I disagree. Most of these companies tech savvy people will find the news interesting. But other than maybe meta and tesla the rest no one cares. Especially oracle, amazon, google, and IBM. The moment a company stops selling products and just starts selling “business solutions and cloud data infrastructure software” their CEO can literally be anybody and no one will care. Tesla matters only because elon musk is an Internet personality and Meta because the famous founder still runs it. But the moment these companies change hands, no one will care who their CEO is. I still believe that Apple and Disney are the only companies culturally relevant enough for people to care about CEO transitions. Right now it feels like a new pope has been selected at apple. If IBM got a new CEO there would be no message boards talking about it. Maybe google might fit here somewhere but I am stretching since google itself has also made CEO’s irrelevant.

 

[citysnaps]

Hip hip hooray! Cook ended up being the worst possible choice to succeed Steve Jobs as Apple's CEO - at least in terms of product design, user experience, and genuine innovation.

If you disagree, name two products released under Cook's tenure — not products already in Steve's pipeline (which typically stretched five years into the future) — that have proven more profitable than the iPhone or the iPad. And please spare me the "there's nothing left to invent" excuse.

To be fair, Cook delivered financially in some ways. There's no disputing that. But consider this: Steve Jobs built the ship, launched it, walked away, came back, and posted revenue growth numbers Cook can only dream about. When Jobs passed, Cook took the helm of the already highly successful F/V Apple as Captain Miser — penny-pinching his way to the top, with profits as his true north star rather than products. In short, Jobs built the ship, Cook just sailed it. I'm thrilled to see him go. I've been waiting years for this.

Oh, and for anyone pointing to Apple's rising market cap as one of Cook's crowning achievements, consider the following:

Jobs - 1997 to 2011 (14 years):
$2.3 billion → $337 billion, a 146x increase

Cook - 2011 to 2025 (14 years):
$348 billion → $4 trillion, an 11.5x increase

Apple stock you say? Here are some numbers for you (split adjusted):

Steve Jobs era (as CEO) 1997 to 2011:

Starting point - 1997:
$0.12–$0.15 per share (split-adjusted)

Ending point - 2011:
$12-14 per share
% gain: Approximately 6,000%–7,000%

Tim Cook era as CEO 2011 to 2025 (14 years):

Starting point 2011:
$12–$14 per share

Ending point (comparing the same 14 year tenure, ending in August of 2025):
$190-210+ per share
% gain: Approximately 1,300%-1,600%

Apple also became the world's most valuable company for the first time under Jobs.

Regardless of these numbers, it's far more impressive to essentially lead the building of what would become a billion dollar company in less than a decade out of your garage when you're 21 years old with a few thousand dollars and a dream, only to get fired by a joke of a CEO and board of directors, and yet still come back to turn it into the world's most valuable company, than it is for a 50 year old to take a multi billion dollar, globally popular company with a cult following, that was already valued well over a quarter trillion dollars, and penny-pinch his way to a 4 trillion dollar company.

You conveniently forgot to include the almost two dozen flops Jobs released while he was CEO.

 

[Veinticinco]

Good riddance. Long overdue.

 

[DarrenSW]

Cook’ s product lines and services, and my opinion of each (YMMV):

Apple Pay (2014) - hit, real ‘out of the box’ thinking. Few instances of this since.
Apple Watch (2015) - hit, eventually. The rewriting of history to claim it was always a fitness product while conveniently forgetting the initial courting of the luxury fashion market (the Edition, the Galleries Lafayette pop-up, Angela Ahrendts, etc.) is typical Cook BS.
Apple Music (2015) - miss. iTunes + Beats Music still can’t overtake Spotify, arguably hugely overpaid for the latter too. And the App is still a buggy piece of crap.
iPad Pro (2015) - hit, initially to head off the Surface, latterly a magnificent piece of hardware. Still, really just a development of Jobs’ product that Jobs himself would never have approved. Which may be a good thing, or a bad thing.
Apple Pencil (2015) - hit. Steve didn’t stylus, Tim dared.
AirPods (2016) - slam-dunk, out-of-the-park hit.
HomePod (2017) - miss. A fatiguing listen, with a near-useless implementation of Siri; and being closed to all music services other than Apple Music is sheer stupidity. The later HomePod mini is however a spectacularly good audio product (albeit it still only works with Apple Music).
Apple TV+ (2019) - expensive miss (though with the occasional hit, and indeed Oscar!).
Apple Arcade (2019) - lazy miss. Courted the gaming sector, then decided they weren’t interested in putting in the hard yards. Just buy Nintendo, already!
Apple News+ (2019) - miss. Outside of Apple One, does anyone actually pay for this?
Apple Card (2019) - miss. Apple Pay it is not.
Apple Silicon/M1 (2020) - more epoch than hit, although it does have direct lineage back to PA Semi and the A4, therefore as much Jobs as Cook.
Apple Fitness+ (2020) - miss.
Apple One (2020) - miss.
AirPods Max (2020) - unsure; great product but massively overpriced, and with lazy as hell updates.
App Tracking Transparency (2021) - hit.
iCloud+ (2021) - unsure. Some great features, still way too buggy and overpriced compared to the competition.
AirTag/Find My network (2021) - big hit. Nefarious use cases cannot be blamed on Apple.
Apple Vision Pro (2024) - very large miss. Magnificent engineering but a $4000 tech demo/beta in search of a market.
Apple Intelligence (2025) - humongous, utterly embarrassing miss.
MacBook Neo (2026) - hit, but it’s just the new iBook, let’s be honest.

His various macOS, iOS and iPadOS updates are not listed. On those I will offer: the iOSsificaition of macOS has been a f ucking disaster; iOS and iPadOS continue to be brilliant under the hood but have barely innovated UI-wise since iOS 7 and have been going backwards UX-wise for some time now. System software should be a - if not the - priority for Jonny Appleseed.

 

[grammatica]

NGL, I'm not optimistic. John Ternus is an insider and has been socialized into Apple's culture.