Report: Tim Cook to Step Down as Apple CEO 'as Soon as Next Year'

[Abazigal]

Good now they can finally get someone in that will help Apple innovate instead of pushing the same old thing.

Apple has always been innovating. The question is whether they are innovating in a direction which you care about, or not. But there are well over a billion active iPhone users, and the reality is that the people who frequent this forum is a small subset of Apple users, and not necessarily representative of general consumer sentiment.

Case in point - the iPhone pocket is sold out worldwide. Sometimes, it’s okay to admit that we aren’t the target market anymore.

 

[nutriousmitten]

Cook has steered the ship competently and made everyone money.

The world and consumer tech and social media driven agendas and requirement is a lot different than when Jobs passed away.

And Apple is bigger and less agile and more layers to get things done, especially unique things and through to market as a result. They’ve innovated enough and focused on making things better, not breaking as much new ground.

Like Ive, who knows, maybe Job isn’t with Apple anymore if he was still alive, having left again at some point over the past decade to be in a smaller, more agile company and environment.

And Gurman throwing cold water on this means nothing; he is a defacto third party mouthpiece for Apple so his message and timing will be crafted properly when required.
Cook can be on the board, out of the spotlight, and enjoy the rest of his life with his hundreds of million dollars, as pass things on, with AI and all that comes with it for the next chapter of Apple, onto the next guy.

 

[svish]

Next year seems too quick. Will happen eventually but don’t think Tim is leaving soon. In fact he might be at Apple at least till the 20th anniversary iPhone is launched.

 

[opeter]

In an alternative universe, Apple could hire Steve Ballmer.

Sadly he is even older than Tim Cook. But it would be interesting.

 

[antonrg]

As long as it means some good changes and better focus on design and RnD, I am happy about this.

 

[danny842003]

How many people actually use AppleTV and what purpose does it serve? TV's have the same apps.

Retail has been dying for years. It's only a matter of time before the stores are mostly gone. UPS/Apple requires a signature for expensive items.

After my iPhone it’s the apple device I use most. We have 3 and they’re used daily.
The UI on TVs is generally rubbish in my experience.
It’s not something I quiz friends on but it’s not uncommon to see them in other peoples houses.

 

[H2SO4]

Never understood why people like him stay on for so long.
Yeah he may be driven to succeed but he's also in a position and has the resources to do almost anything he wants, relax - not be under such pressure and enjoy his life and family.

 

[JohnSmithJ]

It'll be great to have an actual product guy back in charge.

 

[macfacts]

Finally. Cannot wait until the Board ruins this and hires another bean counter instead of someone who understands product innovation.

the socks sold out, pure profit 🤑

 

[macduke]

It’s too bad Craig isn’t younger. John Ternus, don’t know much about his leadership abilities, but they’ve been pushing out some serious hardware.

I’m just glad it’s not a software guy. Whoever comes in needs to clean house on Apple Glass. And honestly Apple should just stay out of AI for LLMs. Phone hardware can never keep up locally, ant least not for a very long time until there are major technological breakthroughs, and using something off the shelf on their own hardware to preserve privacy is the right call I think moving forward.

I don’t want many things, but my top wants are the Apple C chip in the MacBook Pro for cellular connectivity, acceleration towards making every Apple platform better for gaming, and making Apple Glasses that have capabilities like Vision Pro but streamlined for AR and run off the compute of whatever Apple device you’re using, using an Apple-designed high speed wireless interconnect. I also want them to make an iPhone Flip for my wife, aka the small foldable iPhone that can fit in women-sized pockets. I also think Apple could make some really great home tech if they put their engineers on it, like a presence detection device that can sense motion through multiple walls and be used to automate HomeKit stuff.

 

[cardfan]

It’s time. John Ternus is a product design guy who has put out some amazing hardware. Apple needs that right now. Tim got the company massive profit but they have lost their soul in recent years.

Sounds like he’d make a lousy ceo though. Who cares if he knows product design. Shareholders want a bean counter.

 

[ThomasJL]

Need more a software guy over a hardware guy actually.

Scott Forstall is a software guy who majored in AI before AI became a big thing. That's what Apple needs.

Scott Forstall is the answer

Absolutely correct. Scott Forstall is in large part responsible for Mac OS X, the iPod OS, and iOS. Where would Apple be without Mac OS X, the iPod, and the iPhone?

Forstall was a visionary who was the closest thing Apple had to another Steve Jobs.

While both software and hardware are important, software is the more important of the two. What would the early-2000s Macintosh, early-2000s iPod, and mid-2000s iPhone be if they had the exact same hardware but their OS was made by Microsoft?

Tim Cook is too clueless and mediocre to understand any of that, which is why he made the colossally stupid decision to fire Forstall. It's mind-boggling how Cook could not understand the extreme value (in terms of innovation and user-friendliness) that Forstall brought to Apple. It should have been blatantly obvious to Cook that losing Forstall would be an irreplaceable loss.

 

[vantelimus]

Hmm...

Why fears of a trillion-dollar AI bubble are growing

For almost as long as the artificial intelligence boom has been in full swing, there have been warnings of a speculative bubble that could rival the dot-com craze of the late 1990s that ended in a spectacular crash and a wave of bankruptcies.

techxplore.com

Maybe it's not such a bad thing to sit out entire trends, especially if they turn out to be flops in the long term.

Or even if it is an important trend but it takes you away from your core competence. Would people really want Apple to chase AI as hard as OpenAI and totally f*** up MacOS to the point that it makes Windows 11 look like the OS of the 22nd century?

 

[H. Flower]

Tim has done well, but it’s a new era and it’s time for some fresh thinking.

I was telling someone today how I don’t recommend Apple products anymore because so much of the echo system “just doesn’t work.” There’s a long list of things to rethink, but the first place I’d start is going back to simplifying the Apple experience.

 

[Schnegg]

Cook was a shareholder‘s fever dream of a CEO. Let‘s see if they get a product guy next.

 

[Ramchi]

I thought he is getting promoted as Chairman of Apple Inc after leaving the CEO Desk, with more stocks and more voting rights. That info is apparently missing in this news

 

[Alfonson]

whatever that means. I’ll never understand how some people romanticize capitalism and shareholder profits

It’s time. John Ternus is a product design guy who has put out some amazing hardware. Apple needs that right now. Tim got the company massive profit but they have lost their soul in recent years.

 

[Yr Blues]

Make some affordable products for the less fortunate while still selling luxury items to the upper class.

 

[Jonas Danielsson]

Let’s bring some with taste back and that do tools for professionals not for wankers

 

[Abazigal]

whatever that means. I’ll never understand how some people romanticize capitalism and shareholder profits

Apple’s profitability is a result of them making differentiated products that consumers are willing to pay a premium for. Them doing stock buybacks is essentially a way of returning excess cash back to the shareholders in a manner which defers taxation.

What this boils down to is that Apple is an extremely well-run company and I don’t see any shame in acknowledging or celebrating that. In contrast, I don’t see the point in cheering for profitless market share (ie: the Android market), and I have lost my taste for firebrand orators like Elon Musk who like to promise you the moon and the stars, but then clearly lacks the acumen to actually deliver on those promises, much less run a company properly.

Maybe it’s also a sign that I have reached middle age. I value stability and predictability and I guess I have come to appreciate that in Apple as well.

 

[macbookj0e]

Ternus I think would be a good choice. Federighi not so much.

 

[tyranne201]

The Apple board will make a DEI CEO hire and ruin everything. Get back to innovation and your roots. Btw: the whole marketing team needs to go. They have lost the vision of Apple or they never had it.

as long is someone passionate about apple culture, what's the problem?

 

[Jensend]

Make some affordable products for the less fortunate while still selling luxury items to the upper class.

Macs are cheaper than they've ever been, and the lower-end models are closer to the experience of the high end models than they've ever been.

 

[imperfectibility]

Cook is OK but he's no Jobs.

Very soon he’s going to have no jobs.

 

[circatee]

Quite a few mention that Tim Cook is no Steve Jobs.
However, would everyone ever be happy with anyone running Apple, other than Steve? 😳

PS: With a new CEO coming in, surely it would be a few years before we'd start to see THEIR products, designs, and ideas, no?