Tim Cook is an engineer. He has a bachelor of science in industrial engineering. But why do you take 2 CEO's when I'm talking about CEO's of tech companies in general (like intel, IBM, etc.)
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John Ternus Again Profiled as Apple's Likely Next CEO
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Look at Apple Services, Fitness, TV, Pay, App Store etc. If you are happy with anything Eddy Cue have touched that I am lost for words.
Greg Joswiak, he may have worked well when Kattie Cotton was there. Since then nothing about Apple's Marketing is good.
Deirdre O'Brien may actually be better since she started working for Tim Cook before moving out and she is fundamentally an operation person. It would continue Tim Cook's legacy, but wouldn't bring any changes. And she actually fixed ( or revert ) almost all the damage Ivy, Angela, John Browett's damage to it. Almost all you have to do was to continue what Steve Jobs have left over and work in those directions. Turns out copying itself is hard enough. But she is the only one that manage to copy some of it.
Craig Federighi may be charismatic to many, but he has shown zero taste in UI, UX and software quality. Just look at the state of macOS and iOS. Not just the UI but the internal as well. Swift? SwiftUI? How many more new things do we have that doesn't bring *any* benefits to Apple's customers? These new tech may be fun and good for promotion. But so far they haven't make much difference to customers.
Ternus is perhaps a bad choice simply because Tim Cook like him. And so far Tim Cook has a very good track record at picking the wrong person. But may still be the best option out of all of the one listed simply because he understands products and hardware better than everyone listed.
Yep, but it is no longer valid.
The irony is that Jobs' philosophy of obsessive integration worked because the connected world was nascent. Now that connectivity is the baseline expectation, closed systems feel more like obstacles than features.
Apple's real challenge: can they reinvent themselves as an AI-first company, or are they the new IBM — excellent but no longer defining the future?
Tim biggest mistake ist that he tries to continue without creating new products. He presents the best iPhone ever 20 times in a row if necessary. But he missed the cloud, the connected world and he missed AI.
He is giving away opportunities like
- Competitive AW with 10 days battery live. Garmin can do it, why can’t Apple?
- An iRing with Apple Pay. Awesome - but Tim fears it would cannibalize the AW
- New grounds. Licensing Apple Pay to other companies would create revenue besides the AppStore
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CEO needs to be more like Steve Jobs, in that he is more interested in the User Experience, holistically, than any one engineering aspect or 1 product.
Then please tell me what is Cook's high tech strategy? Because I just don't see one.
Under Cook, Apple never starts something unless someone else (for example, Google) has already done it. He failed to revolutionize TV, he failed at the car, he failed at VR, he is failing at AI, he failed at speakers, etc.
So please enlighten me!
Really? An engineer with zero experience running a 160,000 employee company with 1+ Billion active and repeat customers, and brought in $416 Billion in Apple product/services sales for 2025? I suspect many here have no idea what *successfully* running a company with the complexity of Apple entails.
As an aside... Cook is an engineer, but also holds an MBA from an outstanding university (Duke).
Sorry Macrumors disagrees with you. I can ask ChatGPT to pull up old threads where it is claimed a chimpanzee could run the company.
Also I’m concerned about an engineer running Apple. Don’t think that bodes well.
Yeah. Being an engineer does not qualify one for running and being responsible for a company like Apple. As an side, and speaking from from experience... being a hardware and systems engineer, with many years of experience, there's no way that would ever qualify me to run a company like Apple. Not even close.
Cook didn't have that experience at first either. I'm not saying he's absolutely the best candidate, or that I'm remotely qualified to say who is and isn't.
But some fresh perspective would be nice.
But Cook does have the advantage of holding an MBA from one of the best universities in the US. Education counts.
Never used, last sentence. Therefore, not an engineer in my context.
Yes — Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple Inc., does have an engineering degree. He earned a **Bachelor of Science (B.S.) degree in Industrial Engineering from Auburn University in 1982.
After that, he went on to get a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business in 1988, which helped prepare him for leadership and management roles in technology and operations.
So while his undergraduate education was in engineering, his later academic focus shifted to business.
You’re the only one that thinks that. I’ll put money down that the succession plan is finalized before the end of the year.
1 is a number.
Also, with just 2 numbers — 0 and 1 — we can represent just about anything.
/In all seriousness, Ternus started working for Apple in 2001 so he’s been involved in more products than just those two examples.
1 is the loneliest number that you ever do…
Isn’t that just the way Apple operates? I think that’s been true going back to the iPod, if not further.
Maybe, but Cook just does what they do, and does not innovate. For example Jobs reimagined the phone, Cook just tries to copy. Cook has not reimagined anything. So there is a difference and I probably could have said it better.
BTW, I have the term reimagined, but could not come up with anything else to express myself.
Idk…products like Apple Watch, AirPods and the Vision Pro are pretty innovative, but no one bats 100%. It’s disingenuous to imply there’s been no innovation under Tim Cook.
Is it only coincidence that so many who complain about Siri's lack of comprehension seemingly cannot use standard spelling, punctuation, and grammar? It seems many of Siri's short comings likely stem from user error, especially poor diction.
I entirely concur -- but I'm not optimistic that it'll happen. Too many keynotes from too many CEOs have ended in catastrophe on stage; a pre-recorded keynote eliminates the risks associated with live demos. So now we have scripted videos that basically amount to a fancy press release, and sweeping computer generated transitions instead of astonished cheering crowds. Mind you, given how infrequently Apple manages to actually surprise us these days, I suppose you could argue that the days of cheering crowds at a tech keynote would still be a thing of the past, even if Apple reinstituted those live presentations.
Still, it's a real shame that the Steve Jobs Theater was completed just in time for Covid to hit, and ended up being used for televised events... what, like two or three times? And at least one of those was a pre-recorded video in an otherwise empty theater.
Of course, officially it's been used dozens of times, but I'm pretty sure most of those were private events that were not televised. I just wonder if perhaps Steve's legacy deserves better than that.