So do Apple's 1+ Billion active and repeat customers who purchase Apple products year after year after year. Which also leads to shareholders liking him.
Happy and repeat Apple customers are the final arbiters of Apple's success. Not forum pundits.
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How Apple Changed Under Tim Cook: 15 Years in Numbers
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So do Apple's 1+ Billion active and repeat customers who purchase Apple products year after year after year. Which also leads to shareholders liking him.
Happy and repeat Apple customers are the final arbiters of Apple's success. Not forum pundits.
Black_Mage
Contributor
Of all the services launched while Tim was the CEO, I like Apple Pay the best. It's awesome. I don't have anything good to say about ads in Maps though.
Agreed.
Let us remember failures of Jobs era as well
- Apple Lisa
- iAds
- iReview
- MobileMe
- iTunes Ping
- G4 Cube (partial success, but not as solid as the later Mini, Trashcan Mac of its day)
- iPod version 1 (without windows support)
- Apple HiFi
- Initial Apple TV
- initial imac Hockey Puck Mouse
- White iBook G3 (Prone to logic board failures, display cable failures due to design "first" policy)
- ADC Port
- Firewire (Limited adoption compared to USB)
Don't get me wrong, I owned and used many items listed above, but financially many were total failures.
Abazigal
Contributor
I will say this has been Tim Cook's biggest redeeming quality. That he was his own man and as it turned out, maybe not be Steve Jobs was precisely what Apple needed to navigate an increasingly fragmented and polarised business landscape.
I will stand by my original assertion that different people are needed at different parts of Apple’s trajectory.
Steve Jobs was Churchhill.
Tim Cook is Eisenhower.
Let's see what John Ternus' legacy will be.
JTK Awesome
macrumors 6502a
Apple Car aka Project Titan
RIP Apple Car. This Is Why It Died
Any tech company moving into the auto space needs a manufacturing partner. But Apple’s EV died as it lived: alone.
I actually have 3, I use them to protect my car keys and whenever I take my iPhone 4 out of the house! lol
eveluvsrainbows
macrumors 6502a
1. What exactly did they break about the store experience? I was most recently at the Apple Store not that long ago to pick up a phone case for my 17 Pro Max and the people there were super helpful and kind and before that I was previously there in March to actually pick up the 17 Pro Max. Granted, I live in Canada, so a lot of the Apple Stores here still use the old layout / design structure instead of the newer design Apple has been rolling out in their store revamps and newly built stores, but even then I don't know what they can change about the people experience that would break the store experience. And even then, around 2 and a half years ago I was at an Apple Store in Los Angeles and there was nothing wrong about that experience either.
2. I'm confused by this as well, what exactly did they break with newer device releases? I've had no major issues with any of my iPhones since 2020 nor have I had any major issues with my MacBook Pro, AirPods, or my Apple Watch, so I am genuinely confused.
3. You can turn off PWM on the iPhone 17 series in Accessibility Settings as they added that setting after they updated the display controller in the A19 series to support enabling and disabling PWM.
Also, with regard to your worry that Apple might not change for the better under Ternus, I think it will. He has worked at Apple since 2001, initially in product design (he first worked on the Cinema Display, I believe the HD variant of it that came out in 2002) before moving to hardware engineering in 2013. He has a signiifcant amount of experience, and he has the potential to have a larger impact on improving Apple's hardware than Cook did especially with how much Ternus knows in that field. From what has been reported, he is also charismatic and well-liked within Apple so that will likely be to his benefit rather than his detriment. Also, Cook wasn't in financial engineering, he got a bachelor of science degree in the field of industrial engineering and a master of business administration degree. Ternus on the other hand got a bachelor of science degree in the field of mechanical engineering, but he has pretty much stayed in that field whereas Cook's career was mainly focused on supply chain matters whereas Ternus' career at Apple has mainly involved product design and hardware engineering. So I believe that Ternus will be a positive for Apple, especially in the hardware and software departments.
That's being fixed with iOS 27 and it is likely that with John Ternus taking the reigns in September and him being a hardware guy, there will be a stronger focus on better integration between hardware and software. That likely means that there will be a stronger focus on software quality as well; it is possible that Ternus could be more hands on with the iOS engineering team than Cook was. You actually already see improved software quality with iOS 27 where they put a larger focus on stability and performance and quality of life tweaks rather than major new features, which improve the overall iOS experience dramatically. The iOS 27 beta cycle for me has by far been the most stable beta cycle I think I have ever participated in.
Also, it should be noted that since 2011, iOS has grown from an immature operating system that was still in its early days (it was only 5 years old in 2011, and lacking a significant amount of functionality to boot even compared to Android at the time) to one that has grown into a quite mature and feature-rich operating system. With additional complexity comes a larger risk of bugs and issues cropping up, and it is impossible to avoid it no matter how hard you try, even with robust quality assurance and testing in place. That's unfortunately just what happens with software when it grows in feature set, it gets harder to ensure 100% stability all the time.
If I could change anything it would be to get rid of subscription apps and bring back things like iLife that allowed users to create on Mac instead of looking for 3rd party alternatives
Not sure I follow. iWork and iLife apps are now free with every new mac.
Bundled Apps on the cheapest MacBook Neo.
iWork and iApps circled (modern eq in some cases)......... + many more free software additions.
artifex
macrumors 6502a
When I first got my iPad 9, I was disappointed to learn that the "curated" lists in the store were already not so much actual novel or life changing games or creative programs, and more just whoever paid the most to be included that week. That was one of the things about the Google Play Store that I was hoping to escape.
artifex
macrumors 6502a
One upside of no longer being user serviceable is that the used market is a lot more commoditized, for the most part, except for the situation now with Minis (where you don't quickly know if that 1TB Mini is stock or user upgraded with some third party chip). And that secondary market helps drive the lifestyle a lot of people here like to have, of upgrading yearly and trading stuff in.
rybak17
macrumors member
In 15 years, the guy either couldn't figure out or was too scared to design a new mouse. Buy a brand new iMac today and you're still stuck with basically the same monstrosity from 2009, complete with that stupid charging port on the bottom.
2 products i really thought Tim would release were the Apple Car and the Apple TV (I mean, a real TV)
we'll never know
we'll never know
Steves Padawan
macrumors member
2012 iPhone 5 with lightning, new earpods
2013 iPhone 5S - first 64bit chip
2014 iPhone 6, iMac Retina 5K
2017 iPhone X
2019 iPhone 11 Pro
2022 iPhone 14 Pro
2025 iPhone 17 Pro
2020 - iPhone box without charger, without earpods
2015 - no stickers in the box
2024 - no siri ai
2026 - mb box without charger
basic iPhone with same camera sensor 4 years, Pro iPhone with sensor from 14 Pro in main camera even now
- slowing innovations on purpose
corporate greed improved and destroyed values
2013 iPhone 5S - first 64bit chip
2014 iPhone 6, iMac Retina 5K
2017 iPhone X
2019 iPhone 11 Pro
2022 iPhone 14 Pro
2025 iPhone 17 Pro
2020 - iPhone box without charger, without earpods
2015 - no stickers in the box
2024 - no siri ai
2026 - mb box without charger
basic iPhone with same camera sensor 4 years, Pro iPhone with sensor from 14 Pro in main camera even now
- slowing innovations on purpose
corporate greed improved and destroyed values
This is absolutely the best response to all the petty nitpicking about what Tim Cook did or didn’t do right.
As Abraham Lincoln is supposed to have said.…
“You can please some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot please all of the people all of the time.”
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User 6502
macrumors 65816
I expect NOT to see ads in the App Store, as they were never there and there was more space for apps actually deserving of the visibility as opposed to apps that just bought the prominence. It was just another pathetic move from a pathetic man who destroyed Apple’s reputation as a company that makes premium innovative products. Now it just makes expensive products full of bugs, ads and with a poor UI, low in innovation and that try to hook the user in expensive subscriptions.
User 6502
macrumors 65816
If we consider user base the measure of success then windows is peak quality and ballmer was genius. Oh wait…
A satisfied and repeating user base does not guarantee financial success….but the lack of one is a sure route to financial failure.
mrr
macrumors 65816
ZivaD
macrumors regular
I remember what apple used to be before his arrival at the top, bugs in software weren't just accepted back then, they fixed things.
Good riddance, I hope his replacement isn't just another accountant.
Good riddance, I hope his replacement isn't just another accountant.
bLackjackj
macrumors 65816
Let’s look at Tim’s losses in numbers;
- Apple Car (Project Titan)
- Estimated spending: US$10–15 billion over roughly a decade.
- Outcome: Cancelled in 2024 before a single car was sold.
- Thousands of employees were reassigned or laid off.
- This is widely regarded as Apple’s largest failed project.
- Apple Vision Pro
- Development likely cost many billions of dollars (Apple has never disclosed the figure).
- Retail price launched at US$3,499, limiting mainstream demand.
- Analysts estimate fewer than 500,000–600,000 units have been sold, far below what many expected. Apple itself has acknowledged it was aimed at early adopters rather than the mass market.
- Reports in 2026 suggest Apple has scaled back or shifted its Vision Pro strategy after weak sales.
- Apple Intelligence / Siri AI delays
- Apple has faced criticism for falling behind competitors in generative AI.
- Several promised Siri features have been delayed, affecting investor confidence and public perception.
Steve Adams
macrumors 68020
IT's everyone. Everything is an ad, subscription etc. It's sucks. I know. but if you want to use the products this is what we get.
Steve Adams
macrumors 68020
Johnny superdesigner did that to create the thinniest apple products evaaaaaaaa. Tim just let him cook, and ruin the products. They were right in kicking him to the curb. (p.s. He did not quit and just leave as both sides state).
BarredOwl
macrumors 6502
Good riddance to him at the helm. Too bad he'll still be hovering around though.