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

[GregoryPeckEPA]

Ternus doesn't strike me as particularly charismatic

Cook is literally a robot. Talks like one with the pitch and tone of a printer. Has never said a single thing in public that was scripted corporate rhetoric. It's actually commendable just how much of a machine the guy is. Truly.

A plant looks more charismatic beside him!

We need someone to fix Apple from the inside out. Not a Ballmer getting up on stage yelling about developers!

 

[I7guy]

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.

Sorry, you’re not the one that is getting it with a preconceived notion. It’s not that hard.

 

[Brother Cavil]

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.

Intent? Seriously? "Because money" is precisely the job of a CEO. Do you think Apple is a charity? The CEO's job is to make as much money for the company as possible. That's the job Ternus is taking. If he fails at that job, the board will remove him. It's not about intent.

Cook is literally a robot. Talks like one with the pitch and tone of a printer. Has never said a single thing in public that was scripted corporate rhetoric. It's actually commendable just how much of a machine the guy is. Truly.

A plant looks more charismatic beside him!

We need someone to fix Apple from the inside out. Not a Ballmer getting up on stage yelling about developers!

Fix Apple? What's broken? Being the world's most valuable company? Having the most highly satisfied customer base in the industry? Software quality has slipped a lot in recent years and I certainly hope Ternus focuses his attention there, but I don't care about charisma. Cook is a robot, yes. What's your point? Are you looking for a CEO or an entertainer? I think it's pretty obvious what you want and I doubt you're going to get it from Ternus.

 

[flottenheimer]

Apple Silicon - and the transition to Apple Silicon - is, imo, one of the most impressive innovations Apple has ever pulled off. It happened under Cook. But man, is he boring - so scripted, repetitive and controlled - no rhythm or charm whatsoever.

 

[GregoryPeckEPA]

Intent? Seriously? "Because money" is precisely the job of a CEO.

Disagree. The job of the CEO is to keep the company healthy and growing. Money is a byproduct of that. Jobs knew it. Make great products and services. Money will roll in. Cook couldn't build Apple. He took it over and for whatever it's worth, he kept it going. But under his 15 year reign, he didn't make anything compelling. Jobs made iTunes, the iPod, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV and would have gone on to make more amazing things.

Cook took the A series and slapped it into the Mac. Cool beans.

 

[GregoryPeckEPA]

Apple Silicon - and the transition to Apple Silicon - is, imo, one of the most impressive innovations Apple has ever pulled off. It happened under Cook. But man, is he boring - so scripted, repetitive and controlled - no rhythm or charm whatsoever.

Jobs did the same with PPC > Intel. Which was arguably much harder because they had less resources and went through a lot of internal struggle with cocoa and carbon. Where do you think Rosetta came from? Cook just followed the same playbook and already had the entire hardware division making A series chips for years prior. All you had to do was shove in more cores and give it more room to breath.

I swear the people glazing Cook really don't know much about the company itself.

 

[Brother Cavil]

Disagree. The job of the CEO is to keep the company healthy and growing. Money is a byproduct of that. Jobs knew it. Make great products and services. Money will roll in. Cook couldn't build Apple. He took it over and for whatever it's worth, he kept it going. But under his 15 year reign, he didn't make anything compelling. Jobs made iTunes, the iPod, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV and would have gone on to make more amazing things.

Cook took the A series and slapped it into the Mac. Cool beans.

You can disagree all you want but that doesn't make you right. Money is not a byproduct of anything. Money is everything. Without money, there's no company. Yes, a CEO's job is to keep the company healthy and growing and that is accomplished by MAKING MONEY. So decisions are made with the company's financial health first and foremost in mind.

And you are absolutely correct. Make great products and services and money will roll in. You realize how much MORE money rolls in under Cook than under Jobs, right?? So what exactly is the problem. Cook appears to be making great products and services because the money has been rolling in. What are you upset about?

Apple was a 300B company when Jobs died. Today it's a 5T company. I get it you, you don't like Cook. He didn't wow and entertain you with every product release. But, according to your own statement, he must be a pretty amazing CEO because there's a lot of that money "byproduct" lying around Apple these days!

 

[casjohnr]

Mr AirPods - the most invisibly seismic product that completely changed the audio landscape.

I mean, I still use my old B&O H6's which have outlasted my original AirPods by years but I'm a stubborn old curmudgeon.

I just wish they would find some of the same magic for the AirPods Max! Probably the only Apple purchase I regret because they're so damn unreliable 🙁

 

[zarmanto]

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.

So what you're suggesting is...

 

[Mrkevinfinnerty]

Apple Silicon - and the transition to Apple Silicon - is, imo, one of the most impressive innovations Apple has ever pulled off. It happened under Cook. But man, is he boring - so scripted, repetitive and controlled - no rhythm or charm whatsoever.

And even then that work was started under Steve Jobs..

 

[I7guy]

And even then that work was started under Steve Jobs..

So what you are saying is that Tim Cook will go down in history as one of the top CEOs because he was able to follow-up on SJ roadmap and make it happen, all the while getting rich and powerful in the process. Gives on pause, doesn’t it.

 

[GregoryPeckEPA]

And even then that work was started under Steve Jobs..

I keep saying this to record downvotes lol. Make it make sense. Cook just made a bigger iPhone. Queue Vine "wow." The only thing remarkable was just how poorly X86-64 was doing at the time (even AMD) to have ARM, a mobile, low power centric SoC, come in there and blow them out of the water!

Moreover, much of the success of M1 was the all the foundational work done by Jobs on making their OSes structurally sound. If you look back at all the core functionality, that is all Jobs and Forstall. Cook hasn't implemented anything rugged or time tested. In fact, his penny pinching has led to an overall decline in software quality. The syncing between devices for Apple Music is tragic, continuity is pretty broken these days (the copy paste used to work great, now not so much) and not much of their overall services aren't all that reliable and struggle between versioning, something Jobs had mastered. My old iPod Touch and Nano still work. Albeit support for them kind of vanished with macOS 17/18 and I don't think is really there in 26/27. You can say what you will, but a company that still somehow manages to support 20+ year old devices just out of sheer planning and solid architecture gets a tip of my cap! I don't care if they are obsolete.

Jobs was a legend with Snow Leopard and knowing when to slow down and make sure you aren't tripping over your own feet under the delusion you are running. I don't think Cook gets that. Or cares.

 

[GregoryPeckEPA]

I just wish they would find some of the same magic for the AirPods Max! Probably the only Apple purchase I regret because they're so damn unreliable 🙁

They've managed to screw around with the AirPod Pro line too. My Pros used to show up on all my devices consistently, reporting the buds and case battery life accurately. Worked like magic. The ANC on my Pro 2s on day one were exactly like the Pro 3s. Exact. Over time, both those vaporized. Now I have to open the case. Battery life hasn't gotten much better losing that feature either.

Not to mention the connectivity isn't as reliable and the fast switching often pulls my headphones to my other devices even though I am listening to music on my Mac. I scroll a post on reddit or a website on my iPad, bam, your AirPods have moved. Other times, no issues.

The entire experience feels really awful as of late.

 

[ZivaD]

Good riddance, I’m sure they will have an equally poor replacement lined up.

 

[Lounge vibes 05]

I like the logic jumps that people are making that, because, Apple started using their own silicon in the iPhone and iPad in 2010, it basically means that Steve Jobs was entirely responsible for the M1 nine years later.
When the truth is that Steve wasn’t even around for Apple’s first in-house CPU in 2012, and especially not their first- in- house GPU, which didn’t come until 2017.
Seriously, Google it. The A4 was the first chip branded as Apple’s own silicon, but it was not their design, their CPU or their GPU.

And reports from inside Apple all conclude that Apple Silicon in the Mac wasn’t even being taken seriously internally until after the Skylake MacBook Pro fiasco. that was 2016 and 2017, five to six years after Steve passed.

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www.macrumors.com

I think it should be obvious to people, but especially those visiting this website, that while Apple might have a vague outline of where they’d like the company to go in the next 5 to 10 years, there is not a chance that 2011 Steve Jobs was making decisions for 2021 Apple.

 

[platinumaqua]

I'm happy as a shareholder during Cook's tenure, but I've pretty much lost all excitement for their products at the same time.

 

[CookeeTim]

I will judge him for two periods:

2011-2020 - Ive & Cook era
Things went by pure inertia until around 2015, when things starting going off. Between the Maps failure, the Apple car failure, the butterfly keyboard, the poor Macbook Air 2020 with a joke of a cooling system (a fan without any heatpipe going to it lmao), it was a terrible era.
People swear for Apple in this era due to the iPhone X, but aside from that, it was series of rehashes before (6-8), and afterwards as well (X-11,12-15). Outside of the iPhone, iPads were suffering, Macs as well. Airpods were the result of starting the trend of favoring shareholders over consumers. Homepod became the new trash can. The watch, well, it exists but did nothing special.

2020-2026 - Boiler plate is heating up

Decades after having a tight grip over their stuff, we finally see them being pushed into doing common sense decisions, like the adoption of USB-C on iPhones. Proper specs on their devices (iPhone 17), but I guess generosity doesnt last long.
The walled garden is finally starting to show cracks, after several decades of them neglecting due to 'security', and yet, taking 1 year to fix reported security issues. New CEO will take the ball, and I think, will probably suffer the heat of the last years of miss-decisions

 

[WilliApple]

Are they gonna start making M6 Mac minis?

 

[vantelimus]

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.

Leaving aside the fact that you do not know Cook's motives... If we are going to convict people based on our suspicions that their good acts sprung from base motives, then everyone is damned. I'd choose a man who does the right things for the wrong reasons over one who does the wrong things for any reason.

 

[vantelimus]

Disagree. The job of the CEO is to keep the company healthy and growing. Money is a byproduct of that. Jobs knew it. Make great products and services. Money will roll in. Cook couldn't build Apple. He took it over and for whatever it's worth, he kept it going. But under his 15 year reign, he didn't make anything compelling. Jobs made iTunes, the iPod, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV and would have gone on to make more amazing things.

Cook took the A series and slapped it into the Mac. Cool beans.

Jobs might have done lots of things. But he didn't. He died. He died from a curable cancer because he thought he could use alternative medicine. That makes me think it is suspiciously misguided to laud his judgment and use counterfactual speculation for what he might have done.

Cook's 15-year stewardship has seen new products and innovation that brought over 2000% growth to Apple. That's not cool beans; it's a blazing hot streak.

 

[GregoryPeckEPA]

He died from a curable cancer because he thought he could use alternative medicine.

That is wildly disrespectful and out of line. You're not god so you don't know what would have or not have happened if he chose a different path of treatment.

It also has literally NOTHING to do with Apple, Inc.

I think you might need to step away from the keyboard.

Good day to you.

 

[johnsawyercjs]

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.

Removal of a physical home button on smartphones wasn't initiated by Apple. It began with Android-based phones about six years earlier, though those phones substituted onscreen buttons which might be easier for people with dexterity issues to use than the swipe gestures Apple introduced, which Android phones have adopted, unfortunately for some (many?) people.

 

[MacBH928]

Fun fact. In order to please shareholders, customers have to be pleased first. There is no universe in where you can rationalize why apples’ customers kept on buying and buying, at times to produce record quarters.

That those customers that bought and bought enabled the shareholders to smile.

you obviously have not heard about Microsoft. Many customers continue to buy because there is no competition or whatever competitor exists its just as bad as the prior. monopoly and oligopoly are a thing. Not saying Tim increased shareholders profits using this, but it does exist.

 

[ckieran]

Airpods and Apple Watch are both great products and they were released under Cook. 2 revolutionary new categories is not bad.

Arguable the M Series was another major release umbrella - taking Arm fully mainstream and breaking backwards compatibility also took some courage, but look where it has brought us!

If only Intel originally pulled their finger out like they have recently... one could argue that the push for efficiency (by AMD and Intel) became necessary to stay relevant!

Thx Tim! And of course mostly thanks to Johny Srouji and the amazing silicon team 🤩

 

[I7guy]

you obviously have not heard about Microsoft. Many customers continue to buy because there is no competition or whatever competitor exists its just as bad as the prior. monopoly and oligopoly are a thing. Not saying Tim increased shareholders profits using this, but it does exist.

What you are suggesting is customers buy Apple because there is no competition?

I do not buy that customers buy Apple because they are the least worse and there is no competition.