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MacRumors Readers React to Tim Cook Stepping Down as CEO

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Apple yesterday announced that longtime Apple CEO Tim Cook is planning to step down from his role later this year, with current hardware engineering chief John Ternus set to take over as CEO. We've seen media reports suggesting Ternus will bring Jobs-like decisiveness back to Apple, as well as reactions from top world leaders, but we thought we'd also highlight what MacRumors readers think of the transition.

Tim-Cook-Goodbye-in-Front-of-iMacs-Feature.jpg

Reactions on the MacRumors forums run the gamut from positive to negative, with some people praising Cook for everything he's done for Apple, and others celebrating his departure from the role.

From Cook fans:
  • nfl46 - Thank you, Tim! He left John in a reallyyyyyyy good financial position!
  • RMMediccc - Thanks for being the right guy at the right time Tim. You will be missed, but it was time and you are making the correct call just as Steve did.
  • DocMultimedia - Congrats to Mr. Cook for amazing growth for Apple over so many years. Hopefully Apple will continue to grow under Mr. Ternus. So much respect for both (unlike many on this forum).
  • Adelphos33 - A lot of... let's say disappointing responses. Cook became COO on October 14, 2005. One of the best and most important executives of all time. He made a lot of people very wealthy, and not just Apple employees. A personally pioneering one as well.
  • KPOM - Tim Cook will go down as one of the best CEOs to lead a Fortune 500. I expect he'll stay on as executive chairman at least until January 2029 as he is Apple's ambassador to the world of politics.
  • transpo1 - Cook was the right guy for the job at the right time. He could never do what Jobs did, and Jobs could never do what Cook did. Jobs told him "Don't do what I would do, do what you would do," and like it or not, he made wildly profitable decisions that enabled the company to keep moving forward from a position of enormous success.
From Cook critics:
  • Kylo83 - good, hopefully we actually see real change now
  • firstcitazen - Ding Dong the ....
  • iPedro - But Tim Cook was anything but a visionary and he completely missed what Steve Jobs intended for Siri, which debuted in the iPhone the day before his death. New blood is needed and an engineer who's a stickler for detail is a great place to start.
  • turbineseaplane - Party time!!! 🥳 Fantastic news. It's time for some fresh ideology, I hope.
  • Anonymous123 - Good riddance. Glad to see the penny pincher finally gone. Hope this marks a new, better direction for Apple. Less focus on services and ads, more focus on higher quality software and hardware, please.
  • gleepskip - Tim Cook is so dull, his memoirs would be an autobiography titled "Supply Chain Optimization: A Love Story."
  • delsoul - Does this mean we'll finally get some ballsy, new daring products instead of trying to appease the shareholders nonstop with boring stale products
  • superarijit - He got fired, pure and simple, PR free. Why? Imagine the utter billions he lost on failed Apple Intelligence, Apple Car, Apple Vision Pro and more. Crap software, same hardware every year. He's lucky that iphone saved him each and every time.
  • tgurske - Thank god. I don't know why Jobs picked a Toyota Camry to be CEO but I can't wait for someone interesting to get in there.
  • iMac The Knife - 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.
  • HiVolt - It's finally happening. I really hope Ternus can make things better, and at least he will have a more interesting personality than a potted plant.
From Ternus fans:... Click here to read rest of article

Article Link: MacRumors Readers React to Tim Cook Stepping Down as CEO
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2026/04/21/macrumor-readers-react-john-ternus-ceo/
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Reactions: RashyIsBack2, Z-4195, SFjohn and 13 others
No MacRumors readers accused either of being an extraterrestrial without evidence?

Who's the CEO of this place, anyway?
 
I think it’s good that we’re going to have some young blood take the reins, but I don’t like how this forum has turned into a Tim Cook bashing fest. Was he a visionary? Far from it. But people don’t give him enough credit for his role in Apple’s turnaround when they were 90 days from bankruptcy. Steve introduced the products to the world, but Tim’s contributions to the supply chain really turned Apple into a powerhouse worldwide brand.
 
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Reactions: ignatius345, bushman4, xnu and 8 others
To paraphrase Dickens…”He was the best of CEOs. He was the worst of CEOs”

Cook was the right man at the time and hand picked by Jobs to steady a ship that would soon be rocked by Jobs impending death. But Cook stayed too long, perhaps 5-8 years too long. Too many boondoggles like the Apple Car, the Vision headset and in-house Apple Intelligence instead of just buying an AI company like Anthropic when they were still relatively cheap.

He did shepherd Apple to a 4 trillion dollar valuation. But a lot of that was stock buybacks and rigorous cost control.

The best thing under Cook without reservation, though, is undoubtedly the successful transition to Apple Silicon. That was a market defining and changing paradigm that started under Jobs nearly from the moment Jobs had to go hat in hand to Intel for chips once IBM refused to further support the G5 for Power Macs and the fragmented nature of the PowerPC alliance where Motorola was designing the G4 and IBM was designing the G5. Moto was doing fairly well with the G4 but IBM wanted to concentrate their PowerPC efforts on servers and mainframes and custom gaming consoles ( all three major gaming platforms at one time ) which both of those areas made more money for IBM than selling a few G5s for Power Macs.
 
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Reactions: uacd, Zeus2018 and IDKImMakingThisUpAsIGo
He is indeed one of the GOATs, as I said in my post! The worldwide reaction shows how important this Apple CEO position is. He did an outstanding job. 20 years ago I was still using BlackBerry phones and Windows laptops. Today it is 100% Apple, and I can get replacements same day delivered from the Apple Store if necessary. I spent all day working using Apple products like the excellent Apple silicon computers. The Apple Watch tracked my workout today. These are products that were launched and refined in the Cook era.
 
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