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Report: Tim Cook to Step Down as Apple CEO 'as Soon as Next Year'
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Cook has done a good job at making Apple a behemoth in the tech industry. Many people also forget that the iPhone and iPad became the standard smartphone and tablet for the market under Cook, not Jobs. When Jobs passed the iPhone was still limited to AT&T in the US and a lot of people still didn't even have smartphones yet.
AirPods have become the standard bluetooth wireless headphone design that the rest of the market followed, the Apple Watch is the industry standard smart watch and probably is the only one that's generally successful. So Apple successfully created a companion device for the iPhone that no one thought they needed. "Services" as a category was built under Cook and now generates more revenue than most companies and reduced their reliance on iPhone sales. Apple Pay has been the primary driver of contactless payments in the US. The M-series Macs goes without saying, complete game-changer in that category. Overall hardware is better than ever.
My main issue with Apple now is the lack of quality control in the software over the past few years. I think they should focus more on getting iOS and MacOS back to the reliability and "just works" level that they were traditionally known for. Cook has more than earned every dollar he's been paid as CEO.
AirPods have become the standard bluetooth wireless headphone design that the rest of the market followed, the Apple Watch is the industry standard smart watch and probably is the only one that's generally successful. So Apple successfully created a companion device for the iPhone that no one thought they needed. "Services" as a category was built under Cook and now generates more revenue than most companies and reduced their reliance on iPhone sales. Apple Pay has been the primary driver of contactless payments in the US. The M-series Macs goes without saying, complete game-changer in that category. Overall hardware is better than ever.
My main issue with Apple now is the lack of quality control in the software over the past few years. I think they should focus more on getting iOS and MacOS back to the reliability and "just works" level that they were traditionally known for. Cook has more than earned every dollar he's been paid as CEO.
Instead, I suspect it'll be a CEO that wants to jack up services revenue to the detriment of hardware, and let the macOS side of things waste away.
There really is a role for the Apple Stores.
I was in my local Walmart superstore the other day, and happened to pass by their smartphone displays. They have just about all the phones from the major manufacturers there, on several tables. But they're all displayed the same way, with no immediate way to distinguish one manufacturer's lineup from another's. The iPhone section looks like all the others. Apple Stores help showcase Apple products (naturally), which I think is a valuable promotional asset. The employees in the Apple Stores are also far more trained on the features of Apple's products than the people working at Walmart, and there are more of them circulating around.
Also, I couldn't really hold any of the phones at Walmart in my hands since they were stuck in place to their display stands, unlike in the Apple Stores where they're lightly held in place using just Magsafe and a charging cable. Some of the phones, including at least a couple of the iPhones, were held to their stands with odd grippers overlapping across the top of the display surface at each corner, looking like a jealous robot had a firm grip on them and didn't want people to take them away from it. Not very inviting.
On the other hand, my local Best Buy superstore's display area for iPhones, Macbooks, etc. is designed more like a halfway point between Walmart's and an Apple Store, since you can pick up all the products. Key to this is that they have a couple people (maybe more) who monitor customers in this area. Walmart is too cheap to hire a couple people who would specialize in monitoring their smartphone and laptop display tables, and instead there are one to three floor people managing the entire electronics section from a central desk area.
The result of all of this is that you rarely see someone in my local Walmart shopping for phones or laptops in the store. I think they're likely to keep it that way.
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I'm not saying Apple can't provide stipulations as to how their phones are displayed.
The bold information is just hilarious. Also, the iPhone was being sold by Verizon before Steve Jobs died.
The iPhone was the standard smartphone well before Android devices came out, and the iPad has always been the industry standard tablet.
The guy is 65 and his tenure has been tainted with AI, Tahoe, and other issues affecting Apple's image. The question is: will his younger successor right the ship or just worsen the situation? Time will tell.
Yes, it's time for Tim to move on. Lots of deep issues in the company that need new blood and new focus.
All the hype and marketing cant sustain the company if the product is ****.
All the hype and marketing cant sustain the company if the product is ****.
1+ Billion active/repeat and happy customers (not forum pundits) are the final arbiters of Apple's and its products success.
They have spoken with their purchases. And is why Apple is one of the most successful consumer tech companies in the world. A big hat tip to Tim Cook bringing that level of success to Apple.
Perhaps, but is no one here willing to even entertain the possibility that Apple might actually be worse off without him?
Or is this a “his successor might tank the company, but it’s a risk I am willing to take” kind of scenario?
Don't try to rewrite history. Apple has almost always positioned its products at the high end of its market. It has always tried to justify it by value, but it has always been criticized as being too expensive when compared to commodity products.
As for not competing with NVIDIA CUDA for AI... why would it? Whether it has always executed perfectly or not, Apple is a company that has been dedicated to high design intentionality, end-to-end integration, and its "Think Different" marketing identity. It has never been about a single technology or maximizing speeds and feeds on some narrow set of performance metrics.
Apple is not your sports-tech team that is made to compete in every tech trend. It didn't chase relational databases. It didn't chase client-server. It didn't chase enterprise mail. It didn't chase gaming. It didn't chase general-purpose e-commerce. It didn't chase search. It didn't chase personalized advertising and ad-banner networks. It didn't chase CRM. It didn't chase SaaS. It didn't chase social networks. It didn't chase big data. It didn't chase NoSQL. It didn't chase social gaming. It didn't chase blockchain. It didn't chase quantum computing. Nor did it chase many other technology trends and markets.
Instead, Apple has let others chase these trends and integrated technologies only after they've gotten to commercial viability and a maturity level that would enhance the Apple experience. Jobs himself said that it isn't about the technology, but the experience.
Apple CEO probably one of their tuffest jobs in industry. Have to be technologically savvy, able to innovate, be a politician or pay the price., Able to keep advancing a relatively mature company. Wow. No easy job!!!
I don't know what to think about Tim Cook right now. The Apple Silicon are really a super innovation with a huge impact on the industry but things like iOS 26 are just terrible.
The iPhones/iPads and Macs are just immensely powerful with a lot of features hardware wise but when you see the software, you see a lot of things with problems. Apple Intelligence disaster (I won't use it anyways but well, iOS 26 going out with that amounts of bugs, same with Tahoe, the prices hikes, etc.
Maybe a younger blood is needed but if the vision of the new CEO is the same, nothing will change. I hope that iOS 26 and his liquid glass design don't last that much or I will avoid an iPhone for a long time.
The iPhones/iPads and Macs are just immensely powerful with a lot of features hardware wise but when you see the software, you see a lot of things with problems. Apple Intelligence disaster (I won't use it anyways but well, iOS 26 going out with that amounts of bugs, same with Tahoe, the prices hikes, etc.
Maybe a younger blood is needed but if the vision of the new CEO is the same, nothing will change. I hope that iOS 26 and his liquid glass design don't last that much or I will avoid an iPhone for a long time.
The Friedman doctrine is not objectively true, no matter how many people treat it as if it were divine revelation. The original concept of incorporation was to allow people to engage in collective public activities within defined limits and obligations in exchange for protection against personal liability. Fostering risk-bearing commercial activities was the intent. Shareholders were not entitled to primacy because shareholders only bear economic risk. Workers, customers, and society in general also bear economic risk and risks to life and livelihood. Shareholder primacy is not a universal norm. In fact, the only countries that maintain a strict shareholder-primacy model are the US, New Zealand, and Hong Kong. Most other countries permit or require the consideration of other stakeholders, with Germanic and Nordic countries providing the strongest legal protection for workers and the public. This is a major source of philosophical disagreement on this forum since those outside the US haven't been indoctrinated into the US way of thinking.
Please no, Microsoft, has been in a downfall since he took over, at least end user wise, i'm sure, shareholders love him.