Apple CEO Tim Cook is stepping down as Apple's chief executive officer, and hardware engineering chief John Ternus is set to take over, Apple announced today. Cook will continue on as Apple CEO through the summer, with Ternus set to join Apple's Board of Directors and take over as CEO on September 1, 2026.
I seriously could do a better job than him. I have so many friends and family that used to be diehard apple fans to the point of nausea, that now think of it as a meh kind of company.
Cook’s expertise was in the logistics. He’s definitely not been a great leader for them putting out exciting products, but he’s the reason they’re so much less affected by things like global shipping crises or RAM prices exploding than many other companies are.
Then keep him in the c suite running the logistics, not spearhead a giant company and run their reputation in the ground. This is what you get when you don’t keep the creatives in the c suite.
I suspect that the thinking when he was appointed was that logistics was going to be key to Apple’s future success. And at the time, they also had a number of high profile creative people in other roles, though they have pretty much all moved on since. And if you look at their financial performance in the years since Cook took over—which is the board actually cares about—it’s hard to say that this was a bad approach.
It has? They can’t keep the MacBook Neo in stock. iPhones haven’t been the market innovator for a long time but they do what they do and they do it well. I don’t see lots of complaints about iPhone crashing all the time; the biggest issues are battery life of aging devices and repairability.
His biggest failures, as I’ve heard it, revolve around the fact that he only cares about making short-term profits and doesn’t understand human beings. Steve Jobs did a lot of telling him to go fuck himself back in the day, to the great benefit of kot only the company, but to the customers. Why he was put in as the next guy to lead the company is beyond me.
Lol I’m a former diehard Apple hater that’s been using an iPhone for 4 years and loves Apple Silicon Macs.
But I still do think they’ve done a lot of idiotic things lately. iOS 26 works fine on my phone (some people are reporting performance issues), but the UI is hit and miss.
Apple Vision Pro seemed doomed from the get go, but they really made it worse by not launching a cheaper headset with Air branding half a year or a year in to actually drive market share enough to make it worthwhile for developers. Could’ve given it an A series CPU since we now know it works in a laptop so why not in XR or whatever they’re calling this.
Apple Vision Pro seemed doomed from the get go, but they really made it worse by not launching a cheaper headset with Air branding half a year or a year in to actually drive market share enough to make it worthwhile for developers. Could’ve given it an A series CPU since we now know it works in a laptop so why not in XR or whatever they’re calling this.
I think Vision Pro was doomed regardless. Go back and watch the iPhone announcement, then the Vision Pro announcement. Every single person in the auditorium when Jobs is presenting the iPhone is thinking of the thousand things they can do with that device. In the Vision Pro announcement, there’s none of that energy. If they released something that left zero question as to its purpose, the price could sit at $3K and they wouldn’t be able to make them fast enough. Instead we got an Oculus that won’t support most games and costs 6 times as much.
Don’t get me wrong, they have some great things about it. Garage Band, for instance. It’s just not forward thinking, not quality or design oriented anymore, and tries to keep you on their cloud pretty strongly. At least that’s how it was around 2017.
I’m not optimistic on this one, since one of the features of huge corporations is that the institutional shareholders that own them appoint the person they think will deliver the best YoY growth and Earnings Per Share. For a company that’s mostly saturated its market, this means enshittification and thumbscrew-tightening on its existing customers.
Google Cast and Miracast, RCS messaging, probably some find support depending on what you want, and I see a bunch of apps claiming to integrate with the Apple Watch but I have no way to validate them. My Fitbit integrates just fine.
The software is like one of those brides where they bind the feet so they can never become independent. And then services revenue is a goitre on this creatures neck constantly throwing it off balance as it tries to shamble forward.
I very much want ~2010 apple, where the hardware was maybe a bit meh, but the software was top tier.
The hardware is premium. That doesn’t mean it’s good. It’s impossible to work on or upgrade, for example. The parts are all high quality and the design is usually solid (except for a handful of things like systems known to overheat and “you’re holding it wrong” antennas), but for how much it costs I don’t want to have to buy a whole new one when I want to upgrade or have a hardware problem, no matter how much Apple would want me to.
He may not have the product vision or salesmanship of Jobs, but he’s a logistics genius and was a MAJOR part of saving Apple when he came on. I’m reading the book “Apple in China”, and he was very responsible for Apple’s incredible supply chain and the fact that Apple, itself, holds relatively little inventory with the exception of its stores.
The company has grown exponentially under Cook. The problem is that there hasn’t really been an awe inspiring new product developed fully under him.
I seriously could do a better job than him. I have so many friends and family that used to be diehard apple fans to the point of nausea, that now think of it as a meh kind of company.
Cook’s expertise was in the logistics. He’s definitely not been a great leader for them putting out exciting products, but he’s the reason they’re so much less affected by things like global shipping crises or RAM prices exploding than many other companies are.
Then keep him in the c suite running the logistics, not spearhead a giant company and run their reputation in the ground. This is what you get when you don’t keep the creatives in the c suite.
I suspect that the thinking when he was appointed was that logistics was going to be key to Apple’s future success. And at the time, they also had a number of high profile creative people in other roles, though they have pretty much all moved on since. And if you look at their financial performance in the years since Cook took over—which is the board actually cares about—it’s hard to say that this was a bad approach.
In the short term, yes. You can ride a reputation for years. Now the shit has hit the fan.
It has? They can’t keep the MacBook Neo in stock. iPhones haven’t been the market innovator for a long time but they do what they do and they do it well. I don’t see lots of complaints about iPhone crashing all the time; the biggest issues are battery life of aging devices and repairability.
Seems like Apple is doing just fine.
But their fans keep eating the shit so it doesn’t matter.
His biggest failures, as I’ve heard it, revolve around the fact that he only cares about making short-term profits and doesn’t understand human beings. Steve Jobs did a lot of telling him to go fuck himself back in the day, to the great benefit of kot only the company, but to the customers. Why he was put in as the next guy to lead the company is beyond me.
RAM prices exploding only means Apple takes a tiny hit to their profit margin per device, considering how inflated they were in the first place.
Lol I’m a former diehard Apple hater that’s been using an iPhone for 4 years and loves Apple Silicon Macs.
But I still do think they’ve done a lot of idiotic things lately. iOS 26 works fine on my phone (some people are reporting performance issues), but the UI is hit and miss.
Apple Vision Pro seemed doomed from the get go, but they really made it worse by not launching a cheaper headset with Air branding half a year or a year in to actually drive market share enough to make it worthwhile for developers. Could’ve given it an A series CPU since we now know it works in a laptop so why not in XR or whatever they’re calling this.
Does anyone even like it? I haven’t seen anyone online or offline that actually even remotely likes it.
Edit: Nevermind, found the first guy further down the thread
It’s…fine. I miss the direct skeuomorphic design language of the older iOS.
Ever since about the time of Windows 8 I felt like all computers were just designed for other computers.
Not a fan of the bubble bobble theme
I think Vision Pro was doomed regardless. Go back and watch the iPhone announcement, then the Vision Pro announcement. Every single person in the auditorium when Jobs is presenting the iPhone is thinking of the thousand things they can do with that device. In the Vision Pro announcement, there’s none of that energy. If they released something that left zero question as to its purpose, the price could sit at $3K and they wouldn’t be able to make them fast enough. Instead we got an Oculus that won’t support most games and costs 6 times as much.
Don’t get me wrong, they have some great things about it. Garage Band, for instance. It’s just not forward thinking, not quality or design oriented anymore, and tries to keep you on their cloud pretty strongly. At least that’s how it was around 2017.
I’m not optimistic on this one, since one of the features of huge corporations is that the institutional shareholders that own them appoint the person they think will deliver the best YoY growth and Earnings Per Share. For a company that’s mostly saturated its market, this means enshittification and thumbscrew-tightening on its existing customers.
Help them switch to GrapheneOS!
Does it have Airplay? iMessage? Find My? Intervention with the Apple Watch? No? I’ll pass for now.
Google Cast and Miracast, RCS messaging, probably some find support depending on what you want, and I see a bunch of apps claiming to integrate with the Apple Watch but I have no way to validate them. My Fitbit integrates just fine.
Yeah.
The hardware is fantastic.
The software is like one of those brides where they bind the feet so they can never become independent. And then services revenue is a goitre on this creatures neck constantly throwing it off balance as it tries to shamble forward.
I very much want ~2010 apple, where the hardware was maybe a bit meh, but the software was top tier.
The hardware is premium. That doesn’t mean it’s good. It’s impossible to work on or upgrade, for example. The parts are all high quality and the design is usually solid (except for a handful of things like systems known to overheat and “you’re holding it wrong” antennas), but for how much it costs I don’t want to have to buy a whole new one when I want to upgrade or have a hardware problem, no matter how much Apple would want me to.
It’s the biggest company in the world. (Well, unless GPUs are here to stay).
He’s done pretty good.
He may not have the product vision or salesmanship of Jobs, but he’s a logistics genius and was a MAJOR part of saving Apple when he came on. I’m reading the book “Apple in China”, and he was very responsible for Apple’s incredible supply chain and the fact that Apple, itself, holds relatively little inventory with the exception of its stores.
The company has grown exponentially under Cook. The problem is that there hasn’t really been an awe inspiring new product developed fully under him.
And he sucked up to a fascist (screenshot at 4 minutes in article video):
https://www.macrumors.com/2025/08/07/tim-cook-gift-to-trump/
the next one will do the same