Tim Cook Reflects on His Legacy in Final Weeks as Apple CEO

[GregoryPeckEPA]

Didn’t Apple refuse unlocking iPhones for the FBI?

No. They refused to create a backdoor for them. It wasn’t an issue of unlocking a single device. The issue was the FBI wanted a skeleton key to all devices. No court order required. Imagine that!

It was a good thing Apple fought them but Cook didn’t do it to protect you, he did it because their entire business model focused around privacy and security. To acquiesce to the FBI would have effectively killed all their marketing and likely cost them unfathomable amounts of cash and a loss of market share that they likely would not have come back from.

Cook tried to scan all your images looking for CSAM, which received so much push back they eventually scrapped it. What do you think people would have done with a backdoor!?

 

[Steve Adams]

The BB CEO (Balsillie) was so hated as a person that when he tried to buy a sports team, the prior owners refused the sale on principle lol. The crazy thing is he is actually pretty influential in Canada as an “innovator”. Let thank sink in lol.

Not in my part of Canada, everyone here in the tech loop knows exactly what he is.

 

[JohannesO]

Thanks to Tim Cook's leadership we got the M-Series. I cannot thank him enough for that.

 

[CarAnalogy]

Ok,

My wife's sim card was hacked while in her iPhone some how. we were not out of the province since she got the phone and the pandemic was in full force so travelling was local and by ourselves. How did that happen. Once it did it was sending messages via imessage by itself. That's a pretty deep level hack. I have had people have their iCloud accounts hacked while only owning an iPhone. etc.

I have never seen this happen ever on an android device since I worked at the store. 5 years of dealing with these devices on a daily basis and androids come in with rouge bs apps creating pop ups. No account hacks, no sim attacks nothing. IMO apple has just as many issues when it comes to security.

I deal with hundreds of phones per week from TCL flips to 17 pro max and everything in between.

Those sound like account level takeovers, not necessarily to do with the phone itself.

Hopefully this was a while ago and SIM jacking is less of a problem but it still happens.

Not sure about iMessage specifically but once they control the number they can send via iMessage. Sounds like a clone rather than a transfer.

And yeah I agree Google does seem to have stronger account security than Apple. It’s a known issue they seem reluctant to address. As usual they’ve insisted on entirely rolling their own and so I think they are afraid to touch it too much.

 

[hughmass]

Oh, Apple tends to make great stuff, but as a cynic, I have to say I think the greatest achievement Tim Cook made is reflected in the latest financial news...the profit margins were so high as to be kind of mean.

 

[DEMinSoCAL]

Goodbye! Don't let the door hit you on the way out! All we got with this CEO is a fragmentation of devices, Mac Pro cancellations and revivals and cancellations, what a crapshow seriously.

While you have valid points, that not "all we got" as has been clearly pointed out by others here.

 

[ThailandToo]

I started with the iPhone 4. It was the pinnacle of skeuomorphism with iOS 6. Very cartoonish by today’s modern Liquid Glass design. While some may prefer the former look I don’t find the “ensh*ttifying” of their products to be a thing I recognize. Their UX is still very good and kudos to Apple for keeping it consistent over the years.

I actually think the products were more intuitive under Jobs, Forstall and Ive. Tim’s biggest threat was Forstall, so he set him up and fired him as soon as he could. Scott was supposed to be the future of Apple.

I liked all the iOS versions until Ive ruined them. Then the iPhone X made it harder to use them. My father in law still can’t use an iPhone without a home button. He simply is 80+ years old and doesn’t have the dexterity to manipulate the swipes the way Apple wants with swiping from the bottom.

It’s no longer intuitive in any way. The OS is horrific. It takes someone who one major change was all they needed to make. I should be able to hand an iPhone to anyone and they should be able to figure it out and manipulate it with their hands and fingers simply. This is just not the case - and I challenge anyone to simply think about it before they contradict this. My daughter has a disability, she needed the home button also and it’s now even gone from the iPad.

There are use cases that are no outliers actual users like elderly with arthritis in their hands who cannot use an iPhone.

 

[Steve Adams]

I know know my experience working in the biz for 5 years and with my wife's own Iphone. We got rid of our iPhones the day after we got the sim replaced. I would think much less of it but it was when the pandemic was on and we were only in our own spaces for a couple of years. No airports, busy public places etc. So there was not contact with others.

Up until that point I have owned every iPhone from the 1 to the 13. I would upgrade every year just to see what was new. We replaced our iPHones with Pixel 8 pros and for the wife it was a bit of a learning curve. Now, however, She do not want to give it up. If we move to all apple, it will be everything in one shot, two desktop, two macbooks, two ipads, two iPhones and two watches. If we stay we only need to buy two laptops and one desktop. Financially, it makes sense to stay where we are. fundamentally, I am on the fence. I am not liking what Nadella is doing to Windows and software, but from what everyone is saying here, Apple is going down the same rabbit hole.

 

[Leobreaker]

M-Series chips, AirPods, maturing the iPhone. I think Tim did pretty good. Definitely some mistakes, but some pretty big wins. Though I am a glass half-full person. 🙂

 

[iwataasks]

Tim Cook's "legacy" will be the same as Jack Welch's one

 

[Steve Adams]

I actually think the products were more intuitive under Jobs, Forstall and Ive. Tim’s biggest threat was Forstall, so he set him up and fired him as soon as he could. Scott was supposed to be the future of Apple.

I liked all the iOS versions until Ive ruined them. Then the iPhone X made it harder to use them. My father in law still can’t use an iPhone without a home button. He simply is 80+ years old and doesn’t have the dexterity to manipulate the swipes the way Apple wants with swiping from the bottom.

It’s no longer intuitive in any way. The OS is horrific. It takes someone who one major change was all they needed to make. I should be able to hand an iPhone to anyone and they should be able to figure it out and manipulate it with their hands and fingers simply. This is just not the case - and I challenge anyone to simply think about it before they contradict this. My daughter has a disability, she needed the home button also and it’s now even gone from the iPad.

There are use cases that are no outliers actual users like elderly with arthritis in their hands who cannot use an iPhone.

I dread the day my son's 9th gen poops the bed too. I agree with everything you stated. I set up devices for elderly people who's family said you NEED to get an iPhone. No....You don't. But here we are. Watching them try to use it is comical. They are swiping up like it owes them money and wondering why they are not getting things to work.

Older generation get impatient easy I think. An android phone with the back/minimize/home buttion trio are much better suited to the older generation but their family "knows best".

 

[I7guy]

No. They refused to create a backdoor for them. It wasn’t an issue of unlocking a single device. The issue was the FBI wanted a skeleton key to all devices. No court order required. Imagine that!

It was a good thing Apple fought them but Cook didn’t do it to protect you, he did it because their entire business model focused around privacy and security. To acquiesce to the FBI would have effectively killed all their marketing and likely cost them unfathomable amounts of cash and a loss of market share that they likely would not have come back from.

Said another way, which is probably more in line with what Cook thought…it was the right thing to do. Sometimes the right thing to do and financial benefits are aligned.

Cook tried to scan all your images looking for CSAM, which received so much push back they eventually scrapped it. What do you think people would have done with a backdoor!?

This was the result of pressure from the government. I didn’t really think it was a good idea, but I think they had to do something. Thankfully this fell on it’s nose.

 

[Timpetus]

I started with the iPhone 4. It was the pinnacle of skeuomorphism with iOS 6. Very cartoonish by today’s modern Liquid Glass design. While some may prefer the former look I don’t find the “ensh*ttifying” of their products to be a thing I recognize. Their UX is still very good and kudos to Apple for keeping it consistent over the years.

SE/30, PowerBook G4 12", iPod click wheel, iPhone 3G, and iPad 4 were my entries to their major product lines. Been using Apple my whole life. I agree that Apple still does it the best, and their decline has been very modest. I'm in a weird spot, as a power-user and mild hacker I really miss the peak of jailbreaking and the Intel era was great for running all sorts of things on my MBP. I appreciate the ease of use of Apple products, but we've lost some of the extra layer of configurability that used to hide under the surface. It's almost enough to make me take a look at Linux, but I don't think I have the free time to make it work the way I'd want.

 

[Steve Adams]

SE/30, PowerBook G4 12", iPod click wheel, iPhone 3G, and iPad 4 were my entries to their major product lines. Been using Apple my whole life. I agree that Apple still does it the best, and their decline has been very modest. I'm in a weird spot, as a power-user and mild hacker I really miss the peak of jailbreaking and the Intel era was great for running all sorts of things on my MBP. I appreciate the ease of use of Apple products, but we've lost some of the extra layer of configurability that used to hide under the surface. It's almost enough to make me take a look at Linux, but I don't think I have the free time to make it work the way I'd want.

Linux is very easy to bend they way you want it to. But. if you need specific software, it's a no dice proposition.

 

[AAPLbuyback]

A phony who led Apple's ensh*ttification to satisfy stockholders at the expense of UX. That's his legacy.

Shareholders own the company.

People obviously like the direction of the stock wouldn’t be up near $5T.

Cope.

 

[Doomtomb]

"In my view, your legacy is described by others, not yourself. And so, I hope that people will say that I was a good and decent man."

It should be described by others but here's my take anyway.

 

[GregoryPeckEPA]

Said another way, which is probably more in line with what Cook thought…it was the right thing to do. Sometimes the right thing to do and financial benefits are aligned.

This was the result of pressure from the government. I didn’t really think it was a good idea, but I think they had to do something. Thankfully this fell on it’s nose.

Our fates aligned with shareholders on the backdoor. But the FBI is government. The CSAM scanning was still implemented and trialed regardless of how invasive it was, only pulled because public outcry. Which gives you a glimpse of how impossible it would have been to sell a backdoor.

Both show Cook isn’t chasing morals and ethics but money. Despite what all those “we believe privacy is a fundamental human right” slogans he loves quoting.

And incidentally, Apple scans every single one of your photos once it hits the cloud. They just don’t do it locally. All big tech does. They have to.

 

[GregoryPeckEPA]

Shareholders own the company.

People obviously like the direction of the stock wouldn’t be up near $5T.

Cope.

1. Valuation isn’t real. Just look at SpaceY.
2. Shareholders would see you paying for air and clean water if it meant more money. That’s the future you want? $30k a month rent. $67 for a banana.

Not even sure what you are flexing on. You talk like that $5T is in your bank account lol.

 

[Brother Cavil]

Instead he'll be remembered as making Apple shareholders wealthy through relentless penny pinching and milking users with incremental features.

So what features do you want? What would satisfy your tech lust? Do you see any other companies producing products with all of these amazing features that Cook denied us? Because, seriously, I don't see anything super innovative coming from anyone. I hear this complaint about Cook all the time (as if he alone plans every product and signs off on every feature... 🤯 ) yet NO ONE can ever articulate what Apple should be delivering, nor can they point to any products that satisfy this innovation lust. So, what SPECIFICALLY, do you think Apple should have delivered by now that was held back by Cook?

 

[Brother Cavil]

The Apple Car, project Titan, cost approximately $10 billion over the course of a decade (2014-2024). Apple's cumulative profit over those years was $744.4 billion. So, had Apple not run the project, they could have made about 1.3% more profit. You can call that money lost to the shareholders. I don't think you'll find many of them complaining about project Titan since the value of Apple stock increased ~1350% over the same period.

The Vision Pro project works for me. I use mine for hours every day. It has become an essential tool. But, then, I'm a professional using a professional tool. If it doesn't have enough Meta-toy in it for you, then I can see why you would hate it.



He'll be remembered for increasing the value of the company through the introduction of new products and features that made the company one of the most valuable in human history. He'll also be remembered for these things:

New Products: Apple Watch (2015), AirPods (2016), HomePod (2018), AirTag (2021), and Vision Pro (2024).

New product lines within existing categories: iPad Air (2013), iPad Pro (2015), iPhone SE (2016), iPhone Pro and Pro Max (2019), AirPods Pro (2019), AirPods Max (2020), HomePod mini (2020), Mac Studio (2022), Studio Display (2022), Apple Watch Ultra (2022), iPhone Air (2025), and soon to be released iPhone Ultra (2026).

New services: Apple Pay (2014), Apple Music (2015), Apple News+ (2019), Apple Card (2019), Apple Arcade (2019), Apple TV+ (2019), and Fitness+ (2020).

Silicon innovation: A7 (2013), Secure Enclave (2013), M7 (2013), S-Series SiP (2014), W1 (2016), A11 Neural Engine (2017), Apple GPUs (2017), T2 (2018), U1 UWB (2019), M1 (2020), M1 Pro/Max (2021), UltraFusion/M1 Ultra (2022), New GPU architecture/A17 (2023), R1 (2024), C1/C1X (2025), N1 (2025), M5 GPU neural accelerators (2025/26).

Human interface innovation: Touch ID (2013), Optical heart-rate sensor (2014), Digital Crown (2014), Taptic Engine (2014), Force Touch (2014/15), Apple Pencil (2015), FaceID (2017), Inductive charging (2018), Electrical ECG (2018), Fall detection (2018), Blood-oxygen sensor (2020), Body-temperature sensor (2022) Apple Pencil rotation/haptic/squeeze (2024), Vision Pro eye/hand input and sensor array (2024).

Camera innovation: True Tone dual-color flash (2013), Optical image stabilization (2014-2016), Dual-camera iPhone (2016), TrueDepth (2017), Triple camera system (2019), Sensor-shift stabilization (2020), LiDar-assisted imaging (2020), 48-MP quad-pixel sensor (2022), tetra prism telephoto (2023), 48-MP three-camera architecture (2025)

And, I'm sure a missed a few.

I'm sure these were all on Steve's magical roadmap that he gave to Tim right before he died. 🙄

 

[I7guy]

Our fates aligned with shareholders on the backdoor. But the FBI is government. The CSAM scanning was still implemented and trialed regardless of how invasive it was, only pulled because public outcry. Which gives you a glimpse of how impossible it would have been to sell a backdoor.

Both show Cook isn’t chasing morals and ethics but money. Despite what all those “we believe privacy is a fundamental human right” slogans he loves quoting.

And incidentally, Apple scans every single one of your photos once it hits the cloud. They just don’t do it locally. All big tech does. They have to.

Multiple things can be true at the same time. Cook did the right thing and there were financial benefits.

Contrary to your assertion is doesn’t show Cook was chasing money, you don’t know his thought process, all you know are the outcomes.

As far as scanning, I’d rather have it done on-device then on the cloud. I’m not sure that’s any better. The reason the local scanning was abandoned was not just one reason, but the other is that it was unreliable.

 

[I7guy]

Visionless.
Unless that vision was purely about profits.

But certainly not in terms of hardware.

Throwing money and resources on projects that were either too late, too expensive, or not a good idea to begin with. I'm not sure how many man hours (years) was lost on the AppleCar and VisionPro projects alone. His vanity and ego won over common sense and the VisionPro was green lit.

Instead he'll be remembered as making Apple shareholders wealthy through relentless penny pinching and milking users with incremental features.

While you may remember Cook as a “relentless penny pincher” I can guarantee history won’t be so blind to his accomplishments.

Many companies throw r&d into projects that never see the light of day, but hopefully Apple took away something from that project for the future.

 

[I7guy]

I'm sure these were all on Steve's magical roadmap that he gave to Tim right before he died. 🙄

Well there is a theme that Steve handed Tim the roadmap for the company and with that roadmap a monkey could run Apple.

Some of this roadmap stuff might be truer than you think. But who knows.

 

[Brother Cavil]

My way-too-early-and-mostly-uninformed prediction for Ternus is that he brings back some of the style, vision, and excitement, and that he delivers less shareholder value. I'm good with that.

Ternus doesn't strike me as particularly charismatic, so I'm not holding my breath for excitement or style, but maybe a little vision. People who want a return to the Steve years will NEVER get it. Not only was he one of a kind, but society has moved on. My hunch is, almost everyone here complaining about Cook and his lack of innovation is over 50. No one will ever do it like Steve did it and that's why Ternus will disappoint them too.

So much of the Apple magic back in the day was made possible by the absence of a consumer internet and mobile devices. Apple was able to keep a lot of secrets. Jobs put on his annual show and delighted the crowd. In today's world, we already know every feature that is coming. Leakers have revealed everything. Rumor sites have beaten every tidbit to death. There's zero mystery so nothing feels exciting. Reading a site like MR is exactly what kills the excitement.

If Ternus delivers considerably less shareholder value, he'll be booted out. Apple is no longer the upstart. They are the establishment. Hundreds of millions of people are now relying on Apple's market performance to ensure their retirements. It's a completely different ballgame than when Steve returned to Apple and a completely different planet from the early days.

My prediction: Ternus is Cook 2.0. More incremental features. More ads. More subscriptions. I don't expect any radical changes in the way the business operates. Why mess with the best? Cook's formula has produced undeniable results. Not only is the company the most valuable in the world on any given day, but customers obviously adore the products (despite the tiresome anti-Cook griping here).

My hope is that Ternus, given his background, will focus on improving software quality. This is Apple's biggest problem today in my mind. The user experience has definitely degraded. But taking Apple in a bold new direction and magically satisfying the entitled tech lust of its most hardcore fans? Not going to happen.

 

[GregoryPeckEPA]

Multiple things can be true at the same time. Cook did the right thing and there were financial benefits.

You're still not getting it. Cook didn't do it because it was right, he did it because money. What part of that is a struggle for you?

No one's debating whether two things can both be true. We are debating over Cook's intent.