00:00:20 ◼ ► This is your last chance to go to atp.fm slash store and get yourself some sweet, sweet, sweet
00:00:33 ◼ ► I'll just remind people that the sale ends Sunday, April 26th at 1159 p.m. U.S. Eastern
00:00:54 ◼ ► We, these are the only shirts, the literally the only shirts that these colors came in and
00:01:03 ◼ ► So when we do these sales, there's a minimum number of shirts that have to be ordered for
00:01:07 ◼ ► them to bother printing them because it's like they do them in batches and they, you know,
00:01:31 ◼ ► And I was like, well, that person's not getting their silver shirt unless 11 more people order
00:01:35 ◼ ► Since then, since last week's episode, which I know hasn't been a full week because we're
00:01:43 ◼ ► The total number of orders for silver now stand at two, two people have ordered the silver
00:02:00 ◼ ► I mean, if this was a Bezos chart though, this would like, this would look really impressive.
00:02:10 ◼ ► Um, we have our Mac pro memorial shirt, which as I noted, uh, last episode, uh, was in,
00:02:19 ◼ ► And so it no longer says senior vice president of hardware or whatever, but I'm pretty sure
00:02:32 ◼ ► Uh, again, prophetic that the, uh, shirt has always looked a little bit like a tombstone.
00:02:36 ◼ ► Um, we've got our ATP T 65, a and B crossover cable shirts with all sorts of ethernet conductors
00:02:47 ◼ ► Again, if you want an M5 pro and max shirt, we're probably never going to sell them again.
00:03:08 ◼ ► And let me just quickly interject that the pixels in particular is available in a wide array
00:03:16 ◼ ► That's not only true of the pixel shirt, but it is very true of the pixels, pixel shirts.
00:03:21 ◼ ► Like since, like since, uh, recently we've basically made every design available, every possible
00:03:26 ◼ ► thing, pullover hoodie, regular sweatshirt, long sleeve t-shirt, like every tank top, everything.
00:03:38 ◼ ► But yeah, if you don't want a t-shirt and you want something that's different than that,
00:03:50 ◼ ► Um, again, um, if you want any of these shirts that are not sort of our perennial shirts, like
00:03:56 ◼ ► the, uh, the regular ATP logo one, now's the time to get them because they'll be gone for
00:04:00 ◼ ► ATP members get 15% off with their discount code that they can find on their member page
00:04:05 ◼ ► Or if they're logged into ATP.fm and go to ATP.fm slash store and just click on a link, it
00:04:26 ◼ ► So I will take this as my final opportunity to remind you that every single sale, one of
00:04:32 ◼ ► you that is listening to my voice right now says, Oh, I'll remember when I get home to do
00:05:20 ◼ ► This is, you know, a little dingus that you can connect to a computer to basically act as
00:05:27 ◼ ► And a couple of people wrote in, Mark Wadham writes, the manufacturer of the KVM recommends
00:05:32 ◼ ► starting with version 1.2 of their Mac software, which leaves a trivially exploitable set UID
00:05:47 ◼ ► In fact, I'm not, I don't think I even knew that there was Mac OS software for this thing
00:05:52 ◼ ► But if you choose to install that, maybe don't choose to because there's some complications
00:06:08 ◼ ► And then Dan Godin at Ars Technica writes from actually my birthday this year on March 17th,
00:06:13 ◼ ► researchers from the security firm Eclipsium disclosed a total of nine vulnerabilities in
00:06:27 ◼ ► And JetKVM, the most severe flaws allow unauthenticated hackers, excuse me, to gain root access or run malicious code on them.
00:06:34 ◼ ► I should also say that a lot of people reached out to say that the cool kid solution is not my beloved GLINet, but rather JetKVM.
00:06:42 ◼ ► Honestly, I didn't look at it long enough or closely enough to know why that's the cool kid answer.
00:06:55 ◼ ► perhaps Apple could sell an A19 Pro version of the MacBook Neo with a software-locked core for the same price and then upcharge for the full chip.
00:07:05 ◼ ► And I can't help but think of the brief foray that BMW did with subscriptions for heated seats, which everyone was justifiably up in arms about that.
00:07:13 ◼ ► I think someone also did, like, you pay money to unlock more horsepower in your car, too.
00:07:22 ◼ ► Like, we have a feature of your hardware that is disabled via software, and if you pay us money, we will re-enable it, and it will make your thing faster.
00:07:29 ◼ ► Yeah, I think this is also related to our discussion of ads in Apple Maps in terms of ideas that will definitely make money but will make people hate Apple.
00:07:39 ◼ ► Like, you know, having features that are available that are unlocked via subscription is most of the App Store's business model.
00:07:50 ◼ ► Like, you know, I don't actually have – like, I don't think such a model should be, like, you know, illegal or considered, you know, immoral.
00:08:03 ◼ ► Well, what irritates people, like, with the heated seats and with this idea of you unlocking a core in your thing is when you buy – like, you get a hardware thing.
00:08:14 ◼ ► Like, software is just infinitely copied, and giving you a copy of the software doesn't really cost much more than giving another person a copy.
00:08:21 ◼ ► But when you buy a car, there's labor and materials that go into putting the little wires to heat your butt and your back in the seat, right?
00:08:29 ◼ ► You've already got – someone did that, and that is not – that there is a marginal cost for that.
00:08:43 ◼ ► And so I think people feel worse when you buy a hardware physical thing that is a real live thing that costs money to produce and deliver to you.
00:08:53 ◼ ► And then they stop you from using the thing – the physical thing that you have in your hands.
00:08:58 ◼ ► And having a core that works in your SOC and saying, actually, we've changed the software so it won't use that perfectly good working core that we manufactured and sent to you.
00:09:09 ◼ ► Because, you know, if it's a chip with a working core, it is worth more than the chip without the working core, right?
00:09:19 ◼ ► That's why people feel worse because it's a physical good versus the whole thing is just software.
00:09:24 ◼ ► And yet you pay money and I unlock features, but, like, just because, like, you gave me all the software and it works and you're disabling it by a software.
00:09:31 ◼ ► Like, you didn't get anything more valuable or better than the person who got the software with it, you know.
00:09:44 ◼ ► Like, you can make the argument, well, it does cost money to send those bits and figure out what the cost to send the electricity of those extra bits that are in the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:09:52 ◼ ► But in general, I think human nature is if it's a physical good and I already have it and you're stopping you from using it, it feels worse than if it's software that I already have that you're stopping me from using some feature in.
00:10:08 ◼ ► Like, I understand your argument about there being, like, you know, physical parts being present.
00:10:12 ◼ ► Like, I understand that argument, but in this day and age, we have blurred the line so much between having the, like, physical ability to do something versus the right to do it and having to purchase the right to do it.
00:10:25 ◼ ► You know, it's not that different from the original DivX thing, just a lot less wasteful.
00:10:29 ◼ ► But, like, the, you know, we have, you know, DRM media now that you have to rent, you know, effectively to be able to access, even though you, even if you have, like, a downloaded copy on your computer, you still have to rent access to it.
00:10:44 ◼ ► You have, you know, DRM e-books, same deal with, you know, with Kindles and stuff like that.
00:10:58 ◼ ► There, you know, a lot of, like, IoT stuff, as we were just talking about, or, you know, just various, like, new home devices.
00:11:05 ◼ ► A lot of those things require some kind of subscription service to even use the physical device.
00:11:13 ◼ ► I feel like this line has been blurred so much by modern technology that even though, like, it is totally understandable if this is unpopular.
00:11:21 ◼ ► But I don't know if it's necessarily, like, a hard line to draw to say, like, this side of this line is okay and this side of this line is wrong.
00:11:29 ◼ ► Well, we'll see what people do because they really didn't like the seat heaters thing, but they're perfectly fine with SiriusXM.
00:11:36 ◼ ► People will pay for SiriusXM, even knowing their car has the ability to use Sirius, but, oh, you don't have a subscription to Sirius.
00:11:43 ◼ ► But when they tried to do, hey, we sell you a car or seat heaters, but you can't turn them on unless you give us money, people hated that.
00:11:51 ◼ ► They knew the heaters were under their butt right now, and people weren't just letting them turn them on.
00:11:54 ◼ ► Whether that makes sense or not, one of those is a business model that people accept, SiriusXM.
00:12:04 ◼ ► So maybe it's just in the car industry where people know that wires are under their butts, but we'll see how it goes.
00:12:08 ◼ ► I mean, the SiriusXM is a perfect example because the car has to have additional hardware to support that.
00:12:14 ◼ ► And the marginal cost to SiriusXM of each person receiving the signal they're already broadcasting is zero.
00:12:26 ◼ ► The best argument for Sirius is that they had to put a special antenna in the car just for Sirius and you're paying for the antenna.
00:12:49 ◼ ► Anyway, I do feel like there is a difference in, you know, the engine is a better example of like one of the two of the cylinders are disabled.
00:13:06 ◼ ► Well, what about all the cars that have like, you know, you can like mod chip the engine basically to like to use the same hardware, but just like, you know, pull up the specs a little bit.
00:13:19 ◼ ► I mean, it'll avoid your warranty and it'll probably damage your engine, but you know, that's up to you.
00:13:28 ◼ ► If it was, if it was like the John Deere thing where the manufacturer forbids you from using the chips, you know what I mean?
00:13:36 ◼ ► And I, you know, car manufacturers, I'm sure we'd love to do that, but the John Deere lawsuits, who people don't know that John Deere is a tractor company in the US and they try to DRM all their hardware.
00:13:53 ◼ ► If car manufacturers stopped you from, you know, putting a different engine control computer thing on your car, people would be very angry about that because it's such a common pastime.
00:14:05 ◼ ► I think all of these examples and exceptions and technicalities, I actually just proved my point that like this is a very blurry line.
00:14:13 ◼ ► And as time goes on, I think we're going to have more of the things that are kind of, you know, going across both sides of this line.
00:14:19 ◼ ► And I think, like, I won't draw a hard line and say like, okay, this is okay, but this isn't.
00:14:28 ◼ ► Even if the line is blurry, there are still things that are clearly on one side of the blurriness or the other.
00:14:33 ◼ ► And I feel like paying to use a working core in your chip is really far on one side of it.
00:14:39 ◼ ► So the line may be blurry and it may be a big smeary region, but this is so far from the line part of it that is just clearly a thing that people would be upset about.
00:14:48 ◼ ► So it could be that people eventually become acclimated to this and they start doing it.
00:14:58 ◼ ► We also wanted to call attention to a friend of the show, Joe Lyon, who has given us lots of really good feedback over the years about chip related things.
00:15:07 ◼ ► Joe popped off in a happy way on Mastodon and has, I think it was like 12 toots, tweets, whatever, about our discussion regarding RAM and Apple Silicon.
00:15:24 ◼ ► And then finally, for follow-up, Mark Gurman reports that there's a belief internally that the new Mac Studio won't ship until around October,
00:15:35 ◼ ► likely because of the component, some sort of component related delay, perhaps RAM, speaking of.
00:15:40 ◼ ► Mark continues, also the OLED touchscreen M6 powered MacBook Pros may arrive in early 2027 instead of late 2026.
00:15:48 ◼ ► That's bad news for me because I really kind of want to get a computer sooner rather than later.
00:15:54 ◼ ► October is like, at that point, like you would imagine the new version of macOS would be out or about to come out.
00:16:01 ◼ ► And if that's when they announce the new Mac Studios, it's going to be a while before I get one.
00:16:08 ◼ ► Who knows how long I have to wait to get like an Apple friends and family discount or whatever.
00:16:14 ◼ ► Like last year, I was disappointed that I could, you know, I failed to get a new computer last year because the Mac Pro situation was uncertain.
00:16:33 ◼ ► And also the rumor that the M6, you know, OLED touchscreen MacBook Pros were also going to come out this year is now in risk.
00:16:41 ◼ ► Maybe they'll come out early next year, but not looking good for fans of fancy new Macs this year.
00:16:48 ◼ ► Not to mention that if you get your eight terabyte SSD, which by the way, I'm also on that train.
00:16:57 ◼ ► If these prices keep up, I'm going to need a home equity loan just to buy a new laptop.
00:17:03 ◼ ► And I'm in a worse situation than you because my, well, I'm not even running Mac OS 26 now, but my Mac will not run Mac OS 26.
00:17:15 ◼ ► Apple, please release a Mac studio with an M5 something or other in it sooner rather than later.
00:17:21 ◼ ► We are sponsored this episode by Squarespace, the all in one website platform designed to help you stand out and succeed online.
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00:17:52 ◼ ► The answer was, all right, go, you know, sign up for some server thing, install some packages or have a nerd like me do it for you.
00:18:05 ◼ ► And you don't want to load people with a bunch of like hassles and complexity when they're trying to run their business.
00:18:29 ◼ ► You can even use AI to like automatically generate even more custom stuff for you so that it looks like your site and your design and your brand, not theirs.
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00:19:03 ◼ ► If it works well for you, and I think it will, then you can go to squarespace.com slash ATP and get 10% off your first purchase of a website or a domain.
00:19:31 ◼ ► And I must give my thanks to someone over at Apple for timing this as they did, because I was sitting here working on CallSheet, working fast and furiously on some new features for CallSheet that I'm really excited about, which we'll talk about another time.
00:19:53 ◼ ► And it turns out that Apple put up a newsroom post and let me read to you, to be honest, kind of a lot of it, but there's a lot there.
00:20:01 ◼ ► So from the Apple newsroom, Apple announced that Tim Cook will become executive chairman of Apple's board of directors, and John Ternus, senior vice president of hardware engineering, will become Apple's next chief executive officer, effective the 1st of September, 2026.
00:20:19 ◼ ► I find it somewhat interesting as sort of like the last act of Tim Cook as the CEO is that the first sentence of this press release says that Tim Cook will become executive chairman of Apple's board of directors.
00:20:36 ◼ ► I mean, it kind of is, but like, can't you also, can't you be like the CEO and the executive chairman of Apple's board?
00:20:47 ◼ ► But Tim Cook gets one last moment in the spotlight where it's like, I'm as of the writing of this press release, I'm still CEO.
00:20:55 ◼ ► I think this is actually reasonable, given that like the the amount of pressure and scrutiny from the press and Wall Street on a move like this.
00:21:07 ◼ ► It's yeah, it's all about like managing skepticism and doubt, because that's that's every like right in this moment, what you need to do when Apple is going to have a transition away from a very long running, very financially successful, successful CEO.
00:21:37 ◼ ► I think the funniest thing about this, like, you know, right right at the top of this, you have this big picture of Ternus and Tim Cook walking down.
00:21:55 ◼ ► So basically to be the CEO of Apple, apparently it's important to communicate that you have to be a smiling in side profile, white American guy.
00:22:06 ◼ ► You have to be wearing a blue button down shirt untucked with jeans and sneakers like that.
00:22:14 ◼ ► The only difference is that Tim Cook sneakers are white and John Ternus's sneakers are black and Tim's look a little bit more athletic and Ternus's look a little bit more like canvas.
00:22:25 ◼ ► You know, Cook has much more of a like, like the kind of silky sheen Oxford style material.
00:22:33 ◼ ► Maybe I can't identify quite the exact shirt it is, but it's that kind of like, you know, soft material that is that feels like a T-shirt, but has buttons and a collar.
00:22:42 ◼ ► Other than that, though, it's like, don't worry, we're replacing the CEO with another person that you can all be comfortable with.
00:22:56 ◼ ► It's like it's such a uniform and the business suit used to be the uniform of business people.
00:23:08 ◼ ► We're going to wear like jeans and T-shirts and hoodies and, you know, and then like it has just kind of formed its own version of the suit, especially at Apple, where like this is just the Apple suit.
00:23:23 ◼ ► Now, that's probably a very nice button down shirt, and I bet those are very nice jeans and probably very nice sneakers, but it's still like this is just the Apple suit.
00:23:40 ◼ ► Someone in the chat room says that Tim Cook is wearing Travis Scott Jordan ones in this picture, which are different shirt, different shoes than Ternus.
00:23:48 ◼ ► I will point out that this is dressing up for Ternus because I can't remember the last time I saw him not wearing a T-shirt.
00:23:54 ◼ ► Like even when he just did that, I just talked in the last episode about that YouTube interview he did with Tom's Hardware, wearing a T-shirt.
00:24:15 ◼ ► And I can't tell what Cook's strap is because Ternus also has mastered a move that I wish I could master, the partial sleeve roll-up to show off the Apple Watch and strap selection.
00:24:37 ◼ ► Next time we're around each other, which unfortunately the way we're going is going to be like two or three years, I will instruct you.
00:24:48 ◼ ► No, but when you have like the button sleeve – and to be clear also, Cook did not roll his up because he's more formal.
00:24:54 ◼ ► But the problem is you can't just push them up because that makes them all crinkle up and then they just slide back down.
00:25:50 ◼ ► So reading from the newsroom post, the transition, which was approved unanimously by the board
00:26:12 ◼ ► the leaks, as you look back on some of the executive reshufflings that have happened over
00:26:16 ◼ ► the last, I'd say, at least six months, it has looked pretty apparent that this was probably
00:26:32 ◼ ► I think it was multiple years ago that Tim Cook said in an interview, which he never accidentally
00:26:36 ◼ ► says anything in an interview, that he probably wouldn't be at Apple for 10 more years.
00:26:41 ◼ ► And I guarantee you there was already – I mean, whether the plan was finalized, whether all
00:26:47 ◼ ► the details were finalized, I guarantee you that, you know, knowing Tim Cook and knowing
00:26:51 ◼ ► how careful and deliberate and patient he is, this has probably been planned for a long
00:26:57 ◼ ► time, maybe not specifically Ternus, although I bet Ternus has been under consideration for
00:27:08 ◼ ► This probably was very careful, very deliberate and executed, as far as we can tell, very well.
00:27:15 ◼ ► And it's a very Tim Cook move to leave – we're not going to say retire, but to leave your
00:27:37 ◼ ► I asked a sneakerhead friend of mine, what is the deal with these shoes that Tim Cook is
00:27:48 ◼ ► My friend Adam said they were a limited run, and only select people were able to get them.
00:27:56 ◼ ► Continuing on from the newsroom, Cook will continue in his role as CEO through the summer as he
00:28:16 ◼ ► It was so clear that it was going to me, but I really wished – because I want him to go
00:28:20 ◼ ► I want him to retire from public life and live a wonderful life with his billions and give
00:28:44 ◼ ► And I think, again, like I think given the immense size and scale and influence of Apple
00:28:52 ◼ ► in the world and in politics and in finance and all, like they're so big, I think this is
00:29:17 ◼ ► That sounds familiar to me, but it's – in that role, he was mostly concentrating on dying
00:29:29 ◼ ► It's like, well, it just seems so much cleaner for Cook to stay out the Trump presidency so
00:29:34 ◼ ► he can just be the sin eater and the garbage sink for that whole terrible thing and then
00:29:41 ◼ ► But the alternative is that, okay, Ternus comes in, but Tim continues to be Tim Apple to our
00:29:52 ◼ ► One, because, I mean, dealing with like China and everything, he's got the experience and
00:29:56 ◼ ► the relationships there, whereas I imagine John Ternus doesn't spend a lot of time talking
00:30:07 ◼ ► But the other thing is, okay, well, Cook will continue to be a meat shield for Ternus so
00:30:19 ◼ ► Like, this all makes sense because it did, like, as we were talking, it didn't make sense
00:30:31 ◼ ► Like, given that relationship that's been built up and given how, like, you'd want the next
00:30:35 ◼ ► CEO to have a more clean political slate after Trump's out of the office, thank God, this didn't
00:30:45 ◼ ► And so this is probably one of the many reasons that played into Cook planning to stay on as
00:30:53 ◼ ► And I think the only question is, like, how cleanly will they be able to keep the separation?
00:31:03 ◼ ► How easy is it to do things differently than the guy who's still, like, staring over you from
00:31:09 ◼ ► That part, I don't actually mind, like, I'm very confident that Tim will let Ternus lead
00:31:19 ◼ ► What I'm worried about is Trump going to Ternus and bringing him into the spotlight with him
00:31:35 ◼ ► if Ternus's decision is, day one, I'm the new CEO, the new Apple policy is F you Trump?
00:31:44 ◼ ► And like, it would be, it's like essentially screwing up what Tim wants to do because Tim's
00:31:49 ◼ ► like, I'm supposed to be talking with the world leaders and dealing with them and trying to
00:31:52 ◼ ► keep them placated and, you know, selling out our values to make sure that we get all good,
00:31:57 ◼ ► we don't have tariffs and all that stuff. Like, that's what Tim clearly has wanted to do and
00:32:01 ◼ ► continues to do right now. And if Ternus says, no, actually, my new policy is no engagement with
00:32:06 ◼ ► them. We hate them. We don't engage with them at all. We are their mortal enemy. I don't see how
00:32:10 ◼ ► that can exist. You can't have the CEO saying that and the whatever executive chairman of the board
00:32:15 ◼ ► trying to continue that other policy. I don't think it's going to happen. I don't think Ternus
00:32:17 ◼ ► is going to do that. And that's my point, that he is not free to do whatever he wants with the
00:32:21 ◼ ► company in this specific realm. And it's one of the specific realms that I think Apple should act
00:32:25 ◼ ► differently. Oh, yes. But I think if like for Ternus, I think the best move for him is to not
00:32:33 ◼ ► rock that boat until Trump is out of office, you know, and let Tim continue to be the hate sink in
00:32:40 ◼ ► the political sphere. Let Ternus stay clean in that area and then start making changes once the path is
00:32:46 ◼ ► clear. Then you got to stop Tim from giving anything, anything with an Apple logo made of gold to anybody.
00:32:51 ◼ ► It's like you can continue to be our little like diplomat to these terrible people, but we can't
00:32:56 ◼ ► allow you to give Apple branded merchandise anymore. It's like in the app store, if you have a picture
00:33:01 ◼ ► of an iPhone in your app. No, sorry, you can't do that. We are sponsored this episode by Claude.
00:33:08 ◼ ► You know, I am always surprised how much Claude can do for me. The other day I had a big spreadsheet
00:33:14 ◼ ► and I just I'm like, you know what, let me see. I don't think I don't think I'll be able to help me
00:33:17 ◼ ► with this, but let me see. And I gave it to Claude and I said, hey, review this for these criteria.
00:33:22 ◼ ► Let me know what you find and what your takeaways are. And the insights it had, it was pulling references
00:33:28 ◼ ► from different areas of it. It was figuring out correlations between different sections that I
00:33:33 ◼ ► wouldn't have seen. And then I went and manually went through everything and checked it all.
00:33:37 ◼ ► And it was right. I am so blown away by how good Claude is. Claude is the AI for minds that don't
00:33:43 ◼ ► stop at good enough. It's the collaborator that actually understands your entire workflow and
00:33:47 ◼ ► thinks with you, whether you're debugging code and midnight or strategizing your next business move.
00:33:51 ◼ ► Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter. And if you're a developer spending half
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00:34:02 ◼ ► It reads your code base. It can take on things like writing tests, refactoring or debugging without
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00:34:22 ◼ ► And then I said, you know what? Generate more tests. And so it generated even more tests. I hate
00:34:28 ◼ ► writing tests. Claude wrote them all for me. It was amazing. And the code it wrote works and now is
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00:35:00 ◼ ► Thank you so much to Claude for solving my problems for me and for sponsoring our show.
00:35:04 ◼ ► All right. Arthur Levinson, who has been Apple's non-executive chairman for the past 15 years,
00:35:15 ◼ ► will become its lead independent director on the 1st of September, 2026. Tarnas will join the board of
00:35:26 ◼ ► Tim Cook joined Apple in 1998. He became CEO in 2011 and has overseen the introduction of
00:35:31 ◼ ► numerous products and services, including new categories like Apple Watch, AirPods, and Apple
00:35:35 ◼ ► Vision Pro, and services ranging from iCloud and Apple Pay to Apple TV and Apple Music.
00:35:39 ◼ ► So this section of the thing, we skipped a bunch of stuff. You can read the press release, but this
00:35:42 ◼ ► section is basically like, um, there are quotes and everything from people saying how they wonder how
00:35:47 ◼ ► wonderful everybody is. And we'll read some of those quotes later from, uh, Tim Cook's letter. But
00:35:51 ◼ ► this is the part of the press release written in the voice of the press release where they are
00:35:56 ◼ ► recapping how awesome Tim Cook has been and his history with the company. So joined in 1998 when he
00:36:01 ◼ ► became CEO, no mention of jobs in the, when he became CEO, although I think it's mentioned elsewhere.
00:36:05 ◼ ► And so this is, this is the, you know, we have a couple of paragraphs excerpted from here saying
00:36:10 ◼ ► what his legacy is. So first paragraph of talking about his legacy, here's what I did. I was CEO and
00:36:17 ◼ ► we did these things and he's got Apple Watch AirPods and he throws an Apple Vision Pro because we know
00:36:21 ◼ ► Tim really likes that, but I'm not sure that's on your greatest hits. And then he talks about, uh,
00:36:25 ◼ ► services, iCloud, Apple Pay, Apple TV, Apple Music. Some of those arguably like iCloud are, you know,
00:36:31 ◼ ► uh, transitional things from the job era and everything. But some of those are clearly his
00:36:35 ◼ ► like Apple Pay has got Tim Cook written all over it and Apple TV predates him obviously, but not the
00:36:40 ◼ ► current Apple TV and Apple Music as services. So I'd say Apple Watch and AirPods are two big feathers in
00:36:45 ◼ ► his cap and Apple Vision Pro remains to be seen, but that's how they chose to, well, that's his sizzle reel
00:36:51 ◼ ► for product stuff, things, product things that regular people would know about that I did as CEO. And
00:36:57 ◼ ► you know, it's not a bad list. No, it really isn't. Continuing under Cook's leadership. Apple
00:37:02 ◼ ► has grown from a market capitalization of approximately 350 billion to 4 trillion, which
00:37:08 ◼ ► this is old news, but that is stark. You started at 350 billion, which is nothing to shake your fist at
00:37:14 ◼ ► and end at $4 trillion. It's just bananas. Continuing, uh, representing a more than 1000% increase in yearly
00:37:23 ◼ ► revenue has nearly quadrupled from 108 billion in fiscal year 2020, 2011, excuse me, to more than 416
00:37:30 ◼ ► billion in fiscal year 2025. So this is the Tim Cook section of Tim Cook's accomplishment made numbers
00:37:36 ◼ ► go up by more than you can imagine. Again, if you've ever seen this on a graph that has a zero,
00:37:40 ◼ ► you know, uh, a zero rooted, uh, Y axis and you label the errors of Apple's history. So first of all,
00:37:48 ◼ ► if you label the errors of Apple's history, like, you know, beef like 1990 and earlier,
00:37:54 ◼ ► you have to keep in mind that during those years, Apple was like, uh, they did a joke about it in
00:38:00 ◼ ► Forrest Gump. It's like, Hey, if you got in on the ground floor of Apple before the Apple II became
00:38:04 ◼ ► popular, you made a ton of money because Apple was one of the first big tech stocks. It's like,
00:38:09 ◼ ► Oh, this little thinking company of Apple, they're going somewhere. And then the Apple II comes out and
00:38:12 ◼ ► it's everywhere. And it's like, wow, the stock went up so much. Apple's value as a company going
00:38:18 ◼ ► from nothing to huge success. It was a big story in the eighties. And again, so much so that it ends
00:38:24 ◼ ► up as a joke, a gag in the Forrest Gump movie and stuff, right? Look at that section of the graph on
00:38:29 ◼ ► like, you know, from the founding of Apple till today. And it looks like the flat part. That's the
00:38:34 ◼ ► part where nothing happened. That's the amazing success of Apple in the seventies, eighties and early
00:38:39 ◼ ► nineties. That's basically flat. And then you see Steve jobs come back and like, he turned the
00:38:43 ◼ ► company around and then you see the line start to go up a little bit, but it's still kind of in the
00:38:48 ◼ ► flat part. And then you see Tim Cook era and it's like, Oh, this is where Apple really was successful
00:38:53 ◼ ► because the numbers just get massive. It's like a big hockey stuff graph and graph. And Tim Cook dominates
00:38:58 ◼ ► the chart in terms of these kinds of numbers. Uh, we'll get to more of them in a second, but just
00:39:03 ◼ ► merely like, what is the market cap? Uh, what is the yearly revenue? Just huge, huge Tim Cook. Uh, I I'm
00:39:12 ◼ ► sure people can do lots of math on it. Like how many, I mean, he did a thousand percent in degrees or
00:39:17 ◼ ► whatever, but like how many multiples of like the, the go, go eighties Apple has he grown? It's just
00:39:21 ◼ ► tremendous. And if you don't care about business, if you don't care about the, you know, the success of
00:39:27 ◼ ► business people and CEOs and so on and so forth, and maybe these numbers don't impress you, but I know
00:39:31 ◼ ► there's a lot of people in the world who are, you know, who treat business as a pursuit in and of
00:39:38 ◼ ► itself, regardless of what business you're in. If you are the CEO of a company, uh, and your task
00:39:43 ◼ ► of making the company succeed, it's going to be very difficult for, it's going to be like, he's like the
00:39:48 ◼ ► Wayne Grunsky of CEOs. Like you'd never want to be compared against his numbers. Like within your chosen
00:39:53 ◼ ► sport of like, I am a CEO. It's like, okay. Uh, did you take your, you know, how, how much did you make
00:39:58 ◼ ► your company succeed? They brought you into CEO. And when you retired, the company was twice as big
00:40:04 ◼ ► as it was before. And Tim Cook's like, I did a 1000% increase, right? And we started huge. This is how
00:40:11 ◼ ► big we started. We started at 350 billion market cap and I leave it 4 trillion. And then he just drops
00:40:17 ◼ ► the mic and walks away. I don't care that much about business, but we'll other people do. And I think that
00:40:21 ◼ ► is much more impressive than his list of products. During his tenure, Apple has grown by more than
00:40:27 ◼ ► 100,000 team members and increased its active install base to more than 2.5 billion devices.
00:40:33 ◼ ► Apple services has been a major focus of Cook's. And during his tenure, the category has grown to
00:40:39 ◼ ► become more than a $100 billion business, the equivalent of a fortune 400 company. Holy God.
00:40:46 ◼ ► Yeah. So the, obviously they don't go into details as we always talk about, like, what does that mean?
00:40:50 ◼ ► The services category really means, you know, rent seeking for software developers, which is not a
00:40:54 ◼ ► particularly wonderful and friendly thing to describe. But again, when people read this, they
00:40:58 ◼ ► think, wow, that he really signed up a lot of people for Apple TV plus. And that's not what it is.
00:41:02 ◼ ► It's not, absolutely not. Um, but that's his thing. It's the thing that's currently growing.
00:41:07 ◼ ► You got to put it in the press release. Wall Street loves it for the people who are interested
00:41:14 ◼ ► but for the people who are interested in the, in the sport of business, these are big, big numbers.
00:41:18 ◼ ► I'm interested in the sport of, you know, good products. And that section is less impressive.
00:41:22 ◼ ► But if you are into these stats, these are big, big numbers. These are just embarrass anybody numbers.
00:41:29 ◼ ► These are kind of like, uh, you know, John Ternus don't even try to do this because if you did
00:41:34 ◼ ► another thousand percent increase, it would be like the, uh, uh, paperclip, uh, game. What is that game?
00:41:40 ◼ ► Universal paperclips. Oh yeah. It becomes paperclips. If, if John Ternus had a Tim Cook
00:41:47 ◼ ► like performance, the entire earth would be Apple. So it's not possible. So don't, don't even try.
00:41:55 ◼ ► Like don't, don't try. And I hope, I hope the, uh, like the law of big numbers where it's like,
00:41:58 ◼ ► it's really easy to double when you have a small number, you just mentioned it with the silver Neo
00:42:02 ◼ ► shirt, but it's really, really hard to do that next doubling when you're, you know, you are, uh,
00:42:07 ◼ ► 99% of the GDP of the planet or something. So yeah, uh, hopefully Ternus will be dissuaded from
00:42:13 ◼ ► even attempting to match this kind of numerical performance and thus turn his attention to
00:42:17 ◼ ► things that are more important in my opinion. By the way, I have very important real time follow
00:42:21 ◼ ► up. Um, I have found what I believe to be the shirts they are wearing. Oh, this is extremely
00:42:26 ◼ ► important. Put them in the, put them in the show notes, please. So I, I first, I first thought
00:42:30 ◼ ► that it might've been something from like, um, you know, Marine layer, normal brand, Fagherty,
00:42:35 ◼ ► however that's pronounced. Um, anything like that. And it's maybe theory. I checked all those sites.
00:42:40 ◼ ► You say Miyake or whatever that guy's name is. So it's none of those. No, that's it. I figured it
00:42:44 ◼ ► wouldn't be some like super, super high end thing. Cause that doesn't seem like their way.
00:42:47 ◼ ► Those, those sneakers are pretty much super high end. It sounds like in terms of sneakers.
00:42:51 ◼ ► Well, yeah, but so I, I couldn't figure it out. So I eventually just pasted it into Gemini and said,
00:42:56 ◼ ► find these. Um, and it did. And I'm pretty sure the matches are correct. They are both from Vooory
00:43:01 ◼ ► that, that brand of like, you know, fancy exercise wear and stuff. I don't know how it's pronounced.
00:43:04 ◼ ► I say Vooory, but it's probably not that. Um, uh, anyway, Ternus is wearing the long sleeve
00:43:10 ◼ ► Ponto button down. It is a, uh, casual technical take on a classic button down, a slightly fitted
00:43:21 ◼ ► woven shirt designed to look like a traditional dress shirt with technical benefits. So it's
00:43:27 ◼ ► a more structured, crisp look compared to the one Ternus is wearing. Uh, but still a minimalist
00:43:32 ◼ ► aesthetic. Both shirts are around a hundred bucks. Not bad, not bad choices. And I think
00:43:35 ◼ ► they, they accurately represent both of these people. It's like Ternus is looking a little
00:43:40 ◼ ► more casual. Tim's looking a little more formal, but they're still both kind of technical, athletic,
00:43:50 ◼ ► The funny thing is I think they did sponsor, they, they did sponsor podcasts around our
00:43:55 ◼ ► sphere, um, in the past. I don't think they ever sponsored us. Um, but they, they, they certainly
00:43:59 ◼ ► were nearby. All right. Well, if you could, uh, provide links for the show notes, I would
00:44:03 ◼ ► appreciate it. Yep. Continuing from the newsroom, Cook has made Apple's core values even more
00:44:09 ◼ ► central to the company's decision-making and product development. So this one, like the first
00:44:13 ◼ ► line that hurt me was the, the other one that I put in bold in this thing, which is, you know,
00:44:16 ◼ ► engaging with policymakers around where we also are coming. And there it is this one. I'm not sure I
00:44:21 ◼ ► saw this, um, claim coming, even though as you'll read it, as you'll continue when you read, it's a
00:44:27 ◼ ► hundred percent true, but there, I feel like there is an error of omission here. Um, because to the
00:44:34 ◼ ► extent that people are upset with Tim Cook, it is due to his lack of making Apple's core value
00:44:41 ◼ ► century, central to the company's decision-making. You know what I mean? And the problem is there's
00:44:45 ◼ ► lots of core values and lots of them he has made even more central. Like I, this is a true statement.
00:44:49 ◼ ► We'll get to in a second why it's true, but it is also the source of, I think pretty much all of,
00:44:54 ◼ ► almost all of the dissatisfaction with Tim Cook, whether it's minor dissatisfaction, like I don't
00:44:58 ◼ ► like what he's doing with the products and Apple's core values used to be about products, like as in
00:45:02 ◼ ► keep selling an old product and people will keep buying it instead of wiping the table clean,
00:45:05 ◼ ► because you know, something's better all the way up to, Hey, how you deal with the Trump
00:45:09 ◼ ► administration is upsetting because we don't feel it reflects Apple's core values. That whole range
00:45:13 ◼ ► of dissatisfaction with Tim Cook is not making Apple's core values central to the company's
00:45:19 ◼ ► decision-making, but you know, I give them credit for following it up with evidence because it is
00:45:25 ◼ ► partially true. Under his leadership, the company reduced its carbon footprint by more than 60%
00:45:31 ◼ ► below 2015 levels during a period in which revenue nearly doubled. Thumbs up. And by the way,
00:45:36 ◼ ► big victory lap there saying, Hey, not only have we been doing this environmental stuff,
00:45:40 ◼ ► which is part of Apple's core values, and they have totally been doing it and they're kicking butt and
00:45:44 ◼ ► they're like, look, we are doing 60% reduced it by 60% since 2015. And by the way, because I'm Tim Cook
00:45:50 ◼ ► during that period, I doubled our revenue. So we reduced our carbon emissions, not at like status quo,
00:45:56 ◼ ► like we're just doing the same stuff and we reduced it by 60%. I doubled our revenue because I'm Tim Cook and
00:46:01 ◼ ► that's what I do. And we still reduced it. Amazing. Big mic drop. It is one of Apple's core values,
00:46:07 ◼ ► Cook, who has long advocated for privacy as a fundamental human right, has made privacy and
00:46:13 ◼ ► security imperative at Apple, setting a standard for user protection that continues to set the
00:46:20 ◼ ► 100% true. Thumbs up. And as Marco pointed out, I think in the last episode, he has done that more
00:46:26 ◼ ► than his predecessor. These are places where not only he has continued Apple's core values, he has made
00:46:30 ◼ ► them even more central. There's no arguing that he has made environment and privacy even more central
00:46:35 ◼ ► to the company's decision making and that those are today's Apple's core values. So partial credit.
00:46:45 ◼ ► I would say he just basically continued that one because I think Apple was pretty good about
00:46:50 ◼ ► Ternus joined Apple's product design team in 2001 and became a vice president of hardware engineering
00:46:55 ◼ ► in 2013. Prior to Apple, Ternus worked as a mechanical engineer at Virtual Research Systems.
00:47:00 ◼ ► He holds a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania.
00:47:04 ◼ ► So I'm thinking this is in my mind because both of my on my mind, because both of my children are in
00:47:09 ◼ ► college now. My son is about to graduate with both a bachelor's and a master's degree. And my daughter
00:47:15 ◼ ► is just working on her bachelor's degree. And I just wanted to put wanted to highlight this because
00:47:21 ◼ ► it's like, OK, I think a lot of kids today think if I don't go to a good school or if I don't get an
00:47:35 ◼ ► Pennsylvania. And as someone with an engineering degree, I can tell you an engineering degree from
00:47:39 ◼ ► anywhere is is nothing to sneeze at. But University of Pennsylvania is not MIT and he's just got a
00:47:45 ◼ ► bachelor's degree and he's going to be the CEO of Apple. So I was like is your your degree and your
00:47:52 ◼ ► school are not your destiny. Steve Jobs famously didn't even complete college because he didn't think
00:47:58 ◼ ► it was doing anything good for him. So and, you know, Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard or whatever
00:48:03 ◼ ► the hell it was. And I know that's a cliche of like, I'm going to be a Silicon Valley CEO. I don't need
00:48:07 ◼ ► to go to school. I'm not telling you not to go to school. What I'm telling you is that if you didn't
00:48:11 ◼ ► get into the school of your dreams or if you quote unquote only have a bachelor's degree, that's not
00:48:16 ◼ ► going to be your limiting factor. It's going to be everything else about you. That's going to limit you.
00:48:19 ◼ ► But, you know, it won't be that. Yeah, there are a lot of industries and businesses that
00:48:24 ◼ ► really care a lot about the school you went to and how you did in it. Fortunately for people like me,
00:48:30 ◼ ► that's not all industries and not all businesses. I barely graduated from college. My GPA was so low.
00:48:39 ◼ ► I don't actually even know it. I failed a required class senior year, had to take it in summer school
00:48:44 ◼ ► at a different university, transfer the credits in, get my diploma by mail. It was a whole thing.
00:48:48 ◼ ► But I think my final GPA was somewhere around 2.0. You know, certainly never anything I would have
00:48:56 ◼ ► Right. Well, I mean, I bet he got good grades. All I'm saying is that he's just got a bachelor's
00:49:02 ◼ ► degree. I just feel like talking to my kids and everything. And it's like, oh, you can't get
00:49:05 ◼ ► anywhere in this industry if you don't have at least a master's and probably a PhD. It's like, no,
00:49:12 ◼ ► Yeah. Like the secret to success is who you know. But the second best secret to success is what
00:49:18 ◼ ► you've done. And that's what the tech business cares most. What have you done? And that, you know,
00:49:23 ◼ ► so start doing stuff. And that's how you get far. You don't just invest in college forever.
00:49:27 ◼ ► For what it's worth, the University of Pennsylvania, as ranked by US News and World Report, which I'm
00:49:32 ◼ ► sure this is a racket, but that's the best I can do on short notice. University of Pennsylvania,
00:49:45 ◼ ► I think I told you this before. My daughter was looking into BU and it was listed as a far
00:49:50 ◼ ► reach school for her. I'm like, BU is a far reach. I went to BU and so did my wife. And it was not a
00:49:55 ◼ ► fancy school when we went there. But apparently, its reputation has increased. I'm going to say BU is
00:50:00 ◼ ► That is a very good guess. It is number 32, Tide. I don't see the list. I've just been searching
00:50:07 ◼ ► universities. I can't see what other schools it's tied with other than I can tell you it's tied with
00:50:13 ◼ ► Virginia Tech, which is where I went. It also got an engineering degree. Also only barely, though.
00:50:18 ◼ ► Well, you and Ternus, and really what you want to look up is how is the University of Pennsylvania
00:50:28 ◼ ► Sorry to slam the University of Pennsylvania. As I said, an engineering degree from anywhere,
00:50:34 ◼ ► Yes, definitely agree. All right. So I can move on. And there's plenty of other things for us to
00:50:41 ◼ ► talk about. Is there anything, I mean, Marco, do you want to do your victory lap before we start
00:50:45 ◼ ► Well, I mean, let's at least get through, like we have the whole show for this. So I think we can
00:50:50 ◼ ► just get through the last things that we have here. And then we can just give our, you know,
00:50:57 ◼ ► because I think that's central to what I'm sure Marco wants to talk about, which is like the Tim
00:51:00 ◼ ► All right. So also announced today, Johnny Surugi has been named Apple's chief hardware officer.
00:51:10 ◼ ► Apple executive Johnny Surugi will become chief hardware officer. Surugi, who most recently served
00:51:15 ◼ ► as senior vice president of hardware technologies, will assume an expanded role leading hardware
00:51:19 ◼ ► engineering, which John Ternus most recently oversaw, as well as the hardware technologies
00:51:23 ◼ ► organization. And I did a little asking around, my understanding of hardware technologies is that
00:51:28 ◼ ► that's the Apple Silicon part. And then the hardware engineering is, you know, putting devices
00:51:32 ◼ ► Yeah. I mean, if you want to, you can click this in puzzle piece wise to the rumor about
00:51:36 ◼ ► Surugi, you know, potentially looking elsewhere. And then them saying, no, totally, I'm staying,
00:51:40 ◼ ► I'm not going anywhere. And it's like, well, as I said at the time, it doesn't mean that rumor
00:51:45 ◼ ► was untrue. It just means that that rumor was late. And then maybe Surugi had a talk with Tim Cook,
00:51:50 ◼ ► and they decided that he would stay by, you know, giving him this more responsibility. Or it could
00:51:54 ◼ ► just be that he was gliding into this role. Like this was always going to happen because it makes
00:51:57 ◼ ► sense. Like, who are you going to, who are you going to bump up to take Ternus's place when he
00:52:01 ◼ ► leaves as the hardware guy? Putting the awesome chip guy as now the hardware guy makes perfect sense
00:52:05 ◼ ► because, hey, chip guy, you knocked it out of the park as chip guy. Then you get to be all hardware
00:52:11 ◼ ► guy, like rewarding success. And Ternus knocked it out of the park as all hardware guy. And now he gets
00:52:15 ◼ ► to be CEO. So this all makes perfect sense. I'm glad Surugi is sticking around. He seems to,
00:52:20 ◼ ► I like, I like the results. I like his work. Like Marco said, what can you do? Surugi can do a lot.
00:52:27 ◼ ► So he's maybe talent retention is a potential challenge for him that we've heard rumor wise,
00:52:32 ◼ ► but so far products are pretty good. So thumbs up on Johnny getting the nod to be hardware guy.
00:52:38 ◼ ► Yeah. Additionally, this was actually the first thing that I happened to see was a community
00:52:43 ◼ ► letter from Tim. It was very good. It is not very long. I really, I really enjoyed this and we'll
00:52:50 ◼ ► hear your two opinions here in a moment, but I recommend reading this whole letter. I think
00:52:54 ◼ ► this is an amount of human humanity, humanness. I can't think of what we're looking for. Yeah. Thank
00:53:00 ◼ ► you. That we don't typically get from Tim. And I did listen to the emergency re-recording or
00:53:07 ◼ ► additional recording of upgrade before we recorded tonight. And I think Jason was saying
00:53:11 ◼ ► that, you know, we haven't heard Tim be this human since his coming out letter from, I think it was
00:53:17 ◼ ► like 2014 or something. I think Gruber said that. Oh, maybe it was Gruber. Okay. I thought it was
00:53:21 ◼ ► Jason, but maybe I'm wrong. It doesn't matter. Somebody said it and I would like to plus one it.
00:53:24 ◼ ► And I thought this was really good. So let me read a couple of portions of it that John has selected.
00:53:28 ◼ ► Today, we announced that I'm taking the next step in my journey at Apple. A new person will be
00:53:32 ◼ ► stepping into what I know in my heart is the best job in the world. That leader is John
00:53:36 ◼ ► Ternus, a brilliant engineer and thinker who has spent the past 25 years building the Apple
00:53:40 ◼ ► products our users love so much, obsessed with every detail, focused on every possible way we
00:53:44 ◼ ► can make something better, bolder, more beautiful, and more meaningful. He is the perfect person for
00:53:49 ◼ ► the job. And I think like that's an interesting characterization. So, you know, here's Tim writing
00:53:53 ◼ ► his more personal, informal letter about what's going on. And he describes Ternus as first a brilliant
00:54:01 ◼ ► engineer, which I mean, no one is describing Tim Cook as a brilliant engineer because he's not.
00:54:06 ◼ ► Uh, that's the new CEO of Apple. So that is music to a lot of people's ears because that is John
00:54:10 ◼ ► Ternus's reputation. And that is how Tim Cook has chosen to describe him, not a great business leader
00:54:16 ◼ ► or, uh, you know, uh, a master of the supply chain or whatever, but a brilliant engineer. Uh, and then
00:54:23 ◼ ► what has he done at Apple building products? So thumbs up on that characterization, whether it was chosen
00:54:29 ◼ ► carefully in Tim Cook style to spin the story in the way that he wants it to be told, or whether it is just
00:54:34 ◼ ► simply a reflection of reality that he is in fact, a brilliant engineer with just a bachelor's degree,
00:54:39 ◼ ► but you know, that's his mindset. That's his bent. He's working on hardware. This is how he thinks.
00:54:47 ◼ ► Uh, do you remember, even though I don't disagree with your characterization, that Tim is not a
00:54:51 ◼ ► brilliant engineer. He did get a undergraduate degree in industrial engineering from Auburn.
00:55:05 ◼ ► Yeah, that's what I was going to say. All right. Well, I mean, it doesn't matter. Anyway, moving on.
00:55:07 ◼ ► Anyway, I've, have you ever seen a news story where describing Tim Cook is a brilliant engineer
00:55:12 ◼ ► or any, or him characterized that way by other people talking about him? It tends not to be
00:55:18 ◼ ► Certainly not. Uh, coming back to Cook's, uh, letter, John cares so much about who we are at Apple,
00:55:24 ◼ ► what we do at Apple, who we reach at Apple, and he has the heart and character to lead with
00:55:32 ◼ ► Yeah, that, that, that, that part I liked because, um, again, Tim Cook being more human saying like,
00:55:38 ◼ ► what, what do I want in my successor? You know, what am I looking for in, in, in a leader?
00:55:46 ◼ ► Um, uh, heart and character to lead with integrity that Tim Cook cares about that regardless of how
00:55:57 ◼ ► his various decisions that he made at various times about having to do with app store and
00:56:01 ◼ ► developer relations and political stuff or whatever that, uh, you know, he believes that
00:56:07 ◼ ► he is acting with integrity and heart, and that's what he's looking for in a leader. He believes John
00:56:11 ◼ ► Ternus is going to do the same thing. And I mean, I still kind of feel like John Ternus is
00:56:19 ◼ ► whatever, um, because he's always, he's always been, uh, speaking in his capacity as an underling
00:56:26 ◼ ► to the CEO of Apple and they are very like single voice focused and on message or whatever. So maybe
00:56:31 ◼ ► we'll see different stuff from him now, but I've never heard anything about him that made it that
00:56:35 ◼ ► made me think that he is not in fact a person of character and integrity. And I really hope that's
00:56:42 ◼ ► This is not goodbye, but at this moment of transition, I wanted to take the opportunity
00:56:46 ◼ ► to say thank you. Thank you for the confidence and kindness you've shown me. Thank you for saying
00:56:50 ◼ ► hi to me on the street and in our stores. Thank you for cheering alongside me when we unveiled a
00:56:54 ◼ ► new product or service. Thank you most of all for believing in me to lead the company that has always
00:56:58 ◼ ► put you at the center of our work. Every day we get up and think about what we can do to make your
00:57:03 ◼ ► life a little bit better. And every day you've made mine the best I could have asked for. Thank you,
00:57:08 ◼ ► And I believe that he does like it when people say hi to him and cheer when they announce new
00:57:15 ◼ ► products. And not because of like ego gratification. He thinks he's wonderful. I just really think he's
00:57:18 ◼ ► always enjoyed that part of being CEO. Like he enjoys that people are excited to see him and they
00:57:23 ◼ ► really love Apple products and not and like in a wholesome way. Like I do think that's the kind of
00:57:29 ◼ ► person he is. Like he's just, you know, an aw shucks, happy kind of guy. And when I see him in those
00:57:37 ◼ ► environments, I don't think he's acting happy or like, you know, being like false to the public or like
00:57:42 ◼ ► glad handing like a politician. I honestly think that he maybe you don't enjoy being mobbed by like fans or
00:57:48 ◼ ► whatever, but he basically he does appreciate that. He that is probably one of the more fun parts of his job where
00:57:54 ◼ ► he's not yelling at people to get on planes to China, but is instead just getting to hear, you know,
00:58:00 ◼ ► that people applaud when they announce products or they're so excited to go into the Apple store to
00:58:04 ◼ ► get a new thing. Or as he said at the top of this letter, which I cut, which again, I echo what Casey
00:58:08 ◼ ► said you should read. He talks about the first thing he does every day when he wakes up at some ungodly hour
00:58:12 ◼ ► before he exercises is read emails from people. And you're like, oh, I bet I bet like he has staff that
00:58:18 ◼ ► just filters the emails and just sends him the good ones Trump style. But no, he talks about he reads emails
00:58:24 ◼ ► that people tell me how their Apple watch saved their life and all that stuff. But he also he
00:58:27 ◼ ► mentions in his typical Tim Cook understatement when people will say that their products are
00:58:30 ◼ ► disappointing them and the areas where they could do better. So he's getting your angry emails too,
00:58:35 ◼ ► right? Like people aren't filtering out, I hope, all the angry emails that people get about how I've
00:58:41 ◼ ► been Apple customer since X year, but now I'm so disappointed and blah, blah. No, he's getting those
00:58:44 ◼ ► too. And hopefully they motivate him to do better. And, you know, that was all in the letter. And so I feel
00:58:50 ◼ ► like this again, I don't know Tim Cook and there's very little to judge him by because he's so guarded
00:58:55 ◼ ► as a person. But this letter does read to me like really coming from his heart and he's being honest
00:59:01 ◼ ► about the things he says. He's also it's very Tim Cook in the things that he omits and doesn't talk
00:59:05 ◼ ► about and doesn't address, which is also part of him that annoys me. But, you know, it's his letter.
00:59:08 ◼ ► He can write what he wants. For Tim Cook, it's fine. It's heartfelt. It is. I think it is honest in
00:59:17 ◼ ► typical Tim Cook fashion. You don't get a lot out of it. Like there's not a lot of value. There's not
00:59:22 ◼ ► a lot of surprises. There's not there. There's no super new information revealed here that we didn't
00:59:26 ◼ ► know before, you know. No, like it's fine. I'm glad he wrote it. And it is exactly his standard
00:59:35 ◼ ► cook fashion. It is exactly what you'd expect. His signature is weird, too. Can we agree a signature
00:59:40 ◼ ► is weird? Oh, that's really weird. Yeah, I noticed that, too. I've never seen a signature like you see
00:59:43 ◼ ► Jobs a signature because people are always getting him to sign stuff, especially in the Jobs 2 era.
00:59:47 ◼ ► But even before that, you'd see a signature on like the Apple founding documents and crap like that.
00:59:51 ◼ ► And so you're familiar with the Steve and Steve Jobs didn't have a great signature either. But the Tim
00:59:55 ◼ ► Cook went, wow, is it weird? Yeah. The T is weird. And Tim, it's like a J. It's not script. Like
01:00:00 ◼ ► the I am is kind of scriptable. The M looks like an N. And then Cook is just like print.
01:00:05 ◼ ► It's just it's just it's fine. He's probably signed his name a lot. He's probably sick of it.
01:00:11 ◼ ► Yep. And then this final bit, like I put this final bit in just because this is a stand in. I mean,
01:00:16 ◼ ► we're recording this the day of the announcement, so there's sure to be more. But this this New York
01:00:23 ◼ ► how does the rest of the world who is not like in the insular little Apple techno, you know,
01:00:30 ◼ ► enthusiast sphere, how do they see what is the story from their perspective? Now, granted,
01:00:35 ◼ ► it's slightly modified by the author of this New York Times article who are at least one person.
01:00:40 ◼ ► I know Trip Mickel has been on the Apple beat and written books about Apple. So he's not really an
01:00:44 ◼ ► outsider. But like, how is this presented to the world? What does it what does this story look like
01:00:55 ◼ ► So Kelly Huang and Trip Mickel, right? The retirement of Mr. Cook will end one of the most successful
01:01:01 ◼ ► management runs in the history of American business. Apple has lost several top executives in recent
01:01:05 ◼ ► months worrying investors about the depth of its next generation of managers and its long term strategy,
01:01:10 ◼ ► particularly with artificial intelligence. The company has largely stayed on the sidelines as the rest of
01:01:14 ◼ ► the technology industry has committed to spending hundreds of billions of dollars developing AI.
01:01:19 ◼ ► Apple is also navigating increasingly choppy political waters, including whiplash over the
01:01:24 ◼ ► Trump administration's tariffs, a looming antitrust trial and geopolitical tensions with China.
01:01:29 ◼ ► In recent years, Mr. Cook, out of necessity, has become the technology industry's leading diplomat,
01:01:34 ◼ ► making regular visits to Washington and Beijing to try to manage the often conflicting agendas of
01:01:39 ◼ ► President Trump in what is Xi Jinping? I think that's right. Hopefully, China's leader. Even so,
01:01:44 ◼ ► Apple is still one of the most profitable companies in the world, thanks to the stability of its sales of
01:01:49 ◼ ► its iPhones, products like the Apple Watch and services, including iCloud and Apple Pay.
01:01:53 ◼ ► Yeah. So again, this this sort of summary of, you know, this is a very short story. I feel like they
01:01:58 ◼ ► should have had this pre-written like people's obituaries who are real old. They apparently didn't,
01:02:01 ◼ ► because this definitely feels like it was hastily slapped together today. They should have pre-written the
01:02:06 ◼ ► transition memo. But I guess they don't do that for transitions, only for deaths. The top line thing
01:02:11 ◼ ► is, you know, they say retirement of Mr. Cook, which is not probably that accurate. But anyway,
01:02:17 ◼ ► end one of the most successful management runs in the history of American business. Yep, that's line one.
01:02:21 ◼ ► That's got to be line one, especially for the New York Times. So like we talk about news. He's a CEO.
01:02:25 ◼ ► We're going to measure him against other CEOs. The way you measure our hockey players against Wayne
01:02:30 ◼ ► Grinsky. He is the Wayne Grinsky of CEOs. He made numbers go up more than any numbers whenever went up
01:02:35 ◼ ► before. Tim Cook. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Number one. And then there's some other stuff about it. And then
01:02:40 ◼ ► they go to like, okay, well, what about like, there's got to be some bad stuff to controversies
01:02:44 ◼ ► or whatever. And so they talk about top executives leaving in recent months with, I feel like it's
01:02:48 ◼ ► just, you know, when this is changing in leadership, it's always going to happen. I don't think that's
01:02:51 ◼ ► on Tim Cook. That's just the way it works. But then their first line item of like, things that might
01:02:56 ◼ ► not be so hot about Tim Cook's Apple, like potential problem areas, or maybe places where he dropped
01:03:02 ◼ ► the ball, they go for AI investment. Because in the general news sphere, outside of the very insular
01:03:09 ◼ ► techno nerd sphere, but maybe also inside of it, it's like, all these companies, all the big companies
01:03:14 ◼ ► making headlines today are spending just so much money on AI. And Apple is mostly not. And they're
01:03:20 ◼ ► talking about, you know, capital expenditures, how much money we putting towards this in this year,
01:03:26 ◼ ► how much money we spending on building new data centers or buying GPUs or doing all like money
01:03:31 ◼ ► that we're laying out to do stuff. And everyone's spending tons of money and not Apple. They don't,
01:03:36 ◼ ► they say like company has largely stayed on the sidelines. And they say as the rest of the technology
01:03:40 ◼ ► industry has committed to spending hundreds of billions developing, they don't really talk about
01:03:44 ◼ ► Apple failing. They didn't say Apple failing to ship Apple intelligence or like failing to give things
01:03:51 ◼ ► to their customers that other companies are giving, which I feel like is the bigger failure. Like I
01:03:56 ◼ ► don't think let's look at their capital expenditures compared to other companies and determine whether
01:04:01 ◼ ► they're succeeding or failing in AI. Let's look at things they said they were going to ship and failed
01:04:05 ◼ ► to. Meanwhile, lots of other companies are shipping things that do the things that they were promising
01:04:09 ◼ ► and customers like it. But they don't mention that they just mentioned the capital expenditures,
01:04:13 ◼ ► maybe because the New York times, then they get to navigating increasingly a choppy political waters
01:04:19 ◼ ► talking about tariffs and Trump. And that I feel like this is, this is so a New York times view of
01:04:24 ◼ ► this because it's not even, uh, presented as, uh, uh, an opinion or one of multiple positions,
01:04:33 ◼ ► but they just basically said cook out of necessity had become technology industry's leading diplomat.
01:04:38 ◼ ► That wasn't a necessity. That's a choice. He, this is how he's choosing to interact with China and Trump
01:04:45 ◼ ► or whatever, but it's not like, it's not out of necessity, but New York times like, well, he had to
01:04:50 ◼ ► do it. He just, what he has, what Tim McClick has done was a necessity. Like you can, you can say you
01:04:55 ◼ ► could agree with it or disagree with it, but it was in fact a choice, not a necessity, but the New York
01:05:00 ◼ ► times like, no, this was totally a necessity. He had to do this and to do anything else would be,
01:05:03 ◼ ► uh, you know, unthinkable because what would it do to the stock price? Um, so that's their
01:05:09 ◼ ► position. And then finally, what is not in this New York times summary at all is many of the concerns
01:05:17 ◼ ► that I and other super tech nerd people have about Tim Cook's leadership of Apple having to do with
01:05:24 ◼ ► app store policies, uh, developer relations, uh, the specifics of the decisions with respect to
01:05:32 ◼ ► Trump and China. Uh, all that stuff is not, um, not in the public consciousness, not, you know,
01:05:41 ◼ ► I'm sure Trip Michael knows about it, but doesn't care. It doesn't go in the New York times story
01:05:44 ◼ ► because the only people who care about the stuff are weird Apple nerds. And I think it's right that
01:05:48 ◼ ► only weird Apple nerds care about that, but this is a weird Apple nerd podcast. And it hurt me that
01:05:52 ◼ ► none of that is in this summary. And so when I see every story in the regular media, not in the tech
01:05:58 ◼ ► media about this transition, I'm going to be reading and looking, is there any awareness that a subset of
01:06:04 ◼ ► super nerd, weirdo, Apple tech enthusiasts are really mad at Tim Cook about stuff that never gets
01:06:10 ◼ ► mentioned in this. And I find that, I don't know, a little bit disheartening because if it never
01:06:15 ◼ ► gets mentioned in the New York times story, I feel like it makes it easier for turners to dismiss it.
01:06:19 ◼ ► It makes it easier for turners to ignore Marco's blog posts because it's like, well, none of that stuff
01:06:24 ◼ ► came up in the, in any of the stories about me becoming CEO. So it's obviously not something I should
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01:08:29 ◼ ► All right, Marco victory lap. I am so happy this is finally happening. The Tim Cook era has had its
01:08:36 ◼ ► strengths, you know, back back when Steve Jobs was clearly, you know, getting sicker. And when it became
01:08:43 ◼ ► apparent, oh, they he needs to step down as CEO. All of us in like the Apple blogosphere and fandom, we were
01:08:51 ◼ ► all basically on board like, yeah, Tim Cook is the obvious choice to be the next CEO. And that was for a number
01:08:56 ◼ ► of reasons. Tim Cook was already, you know, taking a visible leadership position in the company that was
01:09:03 ◼ ► very obviously like the plan was to have him like be the next CEO. He was good at his job. He was good
01:09:09 ◼ ► at operations. He, you know, he was good at, at what he was hired to do, which was to be an operational
01:09:17 ◼ ► genius and a bean counter. He was really good at that. And we all knew at that time that like for a company
01:09:23 ◼ ► to lose Steve Jobs, it was going to be a huge deal for, you know, public perception, for doubts about
01:09:32 ◼ ► the future. Everybody was going to freak out, especially Wall Street was going to freak out
01:09:36 ◼ ► about, you know, will Apple be able to continue innovating without Steve Jobs? And so Tim Cook was
01:09:40 ◼ ► the obvious and the safe choice. And he led pretty much exactly the way you would expect based on the
01:09:50 ◼ ► way that story was, was aimed at that time. He was brought in to be the, the safe, confident for
01:09:58 ◼ ► Wall Street leader to take over from the visionary founder to assuage everyone's fears and to make the
01:10:05 ◼ ► company like predictable and grown up and to grow all the numbers over time. That's exactly what he did.
01:10:13 ◼ ► So he did the job he was hired to do. He did exactly what Steve Jobs probably expected and wanted him to
01:10:21 ◼ ► do. This ship is in motion. It's, it's a, it's an amazing, it's an amazing ship. It's done some great
01:10:26 ◼ ► things. Continue on the path and figure out what's next and keep this amazing thing going. Don't let
01:10:36 ◼ ► And by the way, also, I would imagine what Steve Jobs wished for Tim Cook was to, I have to get to
01:10:42 ◼ ► the quote or whatever, but to continue to embody Apple's core values in the, their decision-making
01:10:47 ◼ ► and, and, and, and fitting in with the jobs telling him, don't do what I would do, do what you feel is
01:10:53 ◼ ► right. One of the first things he did after he took over and jobs was gone was change Apple's policy and
01:10:59 ◼ ► charitable giving because jobs didn't want to like, I think Apple, Apple didn't have any match under jobs
01:11:04 ◼ ► or whatever it was. Tim Cook says, this is more important to me than it was to Steve Jobs. I want to
01:11:09 ◼ ► change Apple's charitable giving and matching policy. So I'm going to do that. And in the environment, I'm sure
01:11:15 ◼ ► jobs cared about that. But when Tim Cook took over, that's a, that's a value that he brought in that he cared
01:11:20 ◼ ► about more than jobs. And he really concentrated on that. And I guarantee you that Steve Jobs
01:11:24 ◼ ► wanted, what he wanted was things that are important to you that mesh with the, like the, the core values
01:11:31 ◼ ► of Apple as trying to do good in the world, pursue those. They may be different than mine. I cared about
01:11:36 ◼ ► these things. You care about those things, but as long as the things are all good things, pursue them.
01:11:41 ◼ ► Because I don't think he would be happy if Tim Cook took over Apple and just scaled the company, but then
01:11:48 ◼ ► didn't do any of the other sort of stuff like the environment or privacy or accessibility and just
01:11:54 ◼ ► kind of like left, let them at status quo or let them die on the vine. I don't think jobs would have
01:11:59 ◼ ► been happy about that. Even if he wanted Tim Cook to take over, to be a steady leader, to scale the
01:12:03 ◼ ► company, he would also really want, you know, I mean, Tim Cook's not going to do the thick and different
01:12:08 ◼ ► ad campaign, but like whatever the equivalent of that is to Tim Cook. And it seems like to him,
01:12:12 ◼ ► that was basically like the environment and privacy. Right. And I, I think he did that. And I think
01:12:17 ◼ ► Jobs would have been happy with that as well. So Tim Cook took this amazing ship that Jobs
01:12:24 ◼ ► had really had built and grew all the numbers. The Tim Cook era was not defined by massive,
01:12:32 ◼ ► like big splash, brand new revolutionary products, even though I think part of Apple's great product
01:12:38 ◼ ► portfolio was attributable to the Tim Cook era. I think, you know, mainly if I had to point out like
01:12:52 ◼ ► And both of those, by the way, like he really, you mentioned the stories, like comparing him to
01:12:55 ◼ ► Jobs, those stories haunted him for years. How many years did you have to see those stupid stories
01:13:00 ◼ ► about, Oh, Apple's going to do an announcement, but is Tim Cook going to be able to pull a Steve
01:13:03 ◼ ► Jobs? And but like, he could not get rid of those damn stories. And when he didn't introduce new
01:13:10 ◼ ► overnight success thing. Like the iPhone wasn't an overnight success either, but in hindsight,
01:13:14 ◼ ► everyone thought it was. So when he came out, when Apple came out with AirPods, it's like,
01:13:17 ◼ ► all right, fine. Like whatever their, their earphones, but like, honestly, who cares about
01:13:23 ◼ ► headphones compared to the iPhone? It's like fast forward a few years and allow it to grow
01:13:27 ◼ ► like the phone did. And guess what? AirPods are an incredibly important and successful product
01:13:32 ◼ ► that totally changed their market category almost in the same way that the phone did simply by
01:13:37 ◼ ► popularizing the concept of tiny little wireless earbuds. But when they were announced,
01:13:42 ◼ ► everyone was like, uh, well, you know, whatever, it's no iPhone. Right. And you know, nothing's
01:13:47 ◼ ► going to be the iPhone, but like, and same thing with the Apple watch take a while to get going,
01:13:51 ◼ ► but you'd fast forward a few years and you wake up and you're like, huh, the Apple watch massively
01:13:55 ◼ ► dominates the smartwatch industry that it basically founded on its own by the first thing to reach
01:14:00 ◼ ► volumes. And AirPods are, I think another one of those, like if AirPods were their own company,
01:14:04 ◼ ► I think they'd be in the fortune 500 as well. Huge success, but it's like, ah, they're boring
01:14:09 ◼ ► and they weren't a hit on day zero. So we get to write the story about how Tim Cook isn't Steve
01:14:13 ◼ ► Jobs. Right. And, and the real, and Tim Cook isn't Steve Jobs, but Tim Cook is Tim Cook. And he,
01:14:19 ◼ ► he did and does have a lot of strengths that he did bring to this job. The downside is that Tim Cook
01:14:28 ◼ ► does not really value and understand some pretty important things that are critical to Apple's
01:14:35 ◼ ► products. Number one, he's not a product person at all. He's also not seemingly particularly a fan of
01:14:43 ◼ ► computers or computing devices. Like he doesn't hate them, but he doesn't seem to have a passion for
01:14:49 ◼ ► them. And he doesn't seem to understand software or design. Okay. What does it mean to lead Apple?
01:14:57 ◼ ► Apple is a company that succeeds by making really great products that integrate good hardware made
01:15:04 ◼ ► with good operations. Sure. Um, with good software and good design of both hardware and software
01:15:11 ◼ ► interfaces. And Tim Cook doesn't really understand a lot of those elements. He probably doesn't fancy
01:15:18 ◼ ► himself as somebody understanding those, those, but also that meant that he made leadership choices
01:15:23 ◼ ► that I think didn't maximize the chances of those universally and consistently excelling.
01:15:30 ◼ ► And we saw that Tim Cook is really good at numbers and being the bean counter and being the operations
01:15:36 ◼ ► person, but he's not that good at products. He relied on other people to do that for him,
01:15:49 ◼ ► I think it led him to make really inconsistent and misguided choices much of the time in those areas.
01:15:58 ◼ ► And I think his self-awareness of that weakness is part of what led him to at least one poor decision,
01:16:03 ◼ ► which was the, uh, bending over backwards to make Johnny eyes stay longer than he wanted to,
01:16:07 ◼ ► which at the time, like again, for wall street's perspective and from Tim Cook's perspective,
01:16:12 ◼ ► seems like a good idea. Like everyone loves Johnny Ivy, super famous. He's done awesome stuff.
01:16:15 ◼ ► Don't let him leave Apple, but I think it really hurt the company's products. And because he knew it's
01:16:19 ◼ ► like, look, I need to delegate these things because I'm not good at them. And who better to delegate to
01:16:23 ◼ ► than Johnny, I have the world's best designer. In fact, I want him, I need him to stay there because
01:16:27 ◼ ► if he leaves, who do I delegate to after it's a risk. I know this guy's a safe bet. So I'm going
01:16:32 ◼ ► to put him in charge of all design. And that was the wrong decision. And it was made, I feel like out
01:16:36 ◼ ► of trepidation about the idea of finding someone to fill that role. But like if you already, if you
01:16:42 ◼ ► become CEO and you've already got Johnny I've, it's kind of like, like I don't have to worry about
01:16:46 ◼ ► design. I got that covered. I know it's not my strength, but I've got the world's best designer of
01:16:51 ◼ ► the things that Apple makes Johnny I've, right. But he gets older, he gets restless. He wants to
01:16:56 ◼ ► move on to other things. He starts thinking about leaving the company. You're like, no, no, stay.
01:16:59 ◼ ► We'll put you in charge of the software too. You can design Apple park, whatever you want. And
01:17:03 ◼ ► there was a real dark period of Apple design there where things were not going great. And Tim was like,
01:17:09 ◼ ► well, I've done my job as CEO. I retain the important talent. And it's like, if he wasn't so afraid of
01:17:15 ◼ ► finding a new person to delegate design to that he could be confident would be, you know,
01:17:23 ◼ ► It is very important to point out, like in the same way that Wall Street was very afraid to lose Steve
01:17:29 ◼ ► Jobs, they were similarly afraid to lose Johnny I've, not quite to that level, but it was, it was notable.
01:17:34 ◼ ► And there's another case of where like the mainstream press, the concerns that we were voicing at the
01:17:40 ◼ ► time in the little Apple tech nerd sphere about Johnny I've do not exist, did not exist in the mainstream
01:17:46 ◼ ► press. All they knew is Johnny I've equals iPod, iMac, iPhone. If he leaves Apple stock price go
01:17:52 ◼ ► down, like all of our concerns about the product decisions he was making and everything just did not
01:17:57 ◼ ► appear in these articles, despite the fact that maybe they'd have like lower sales on the laptops or
01:18:02 ◼ ► something. And maybe there'd be a story or two about the butterfly keyboard and stuff like that.
01:18:05 ◼ ► But it was never, it was never in the conversation of like Apple needs to retain Johnny I've.
01:18:10 ◼ ► Of course they do. And you know, this one little corner of Apple's most enthusiastic fans were
01:18:14 ◼ ► saying losing Johnny I've might not be that bad at this point, but like that was not visible in the,
01:18:18 ◼ ► in the larger world and probably was another easy way for Tim Cook to disregard it because it never
01:18:23 ◼ ► came up on his radar that people were upset about decisions Johnny I've was making about products.
01:18:27 ◼ ► Exactly. So we get through, you know, the, the Johnny I've era and, and during this era,
01:18:36 ◼ ► And this, this is not an exaggeration. Like it was very clear that the direction that Tim Cook
01:18:42 ◼ ► wanted, wanted to go was the iPad is the next era of mainstream computing. The Mac is legacy. Let's
01:18:50 ◼ ► phase it out. That was very obviously the path they were on in both hardware and software. The Mac
01:18:57 ◼ ► became even more neglected. Uh, they went through some terrible, the terrible hardware era of,
01:19:05 ◼ ► uh, 2016 through 2020, uh, 2019, you know, the, the whole butterfly keyboard era where every Mac
01:19:13 ◼ ► also removing all the ports from laptops, right? Removing all the ports, making the whole touch
01:19:17 ◼ ► bar, uh, thing that was apparently on Ternus. Hey, whatever. Like it happened on Tim Cook's watch,
01:19:26 ◼ ► that he had maintained, it was a bad time for the Mac. You forgot dropping the ball in the Mac pro.
01:19:31 ◼ ► Of course. I mean, yeah, there, there, there's so many that had to do the Mac round table, right?
01:19:36 ◼ ► Obviously things were a mess. The software quality took a huge dive during a lot of that span as well.
01:19:43 ◼ ► They really had a lot of problems with software quality these days. They do have some problems
01:19:49 ◼ ► remaining in that area, but it's not nearly as bad as it used to be. Design quality that that's,
01:19:53 ◼ ► you know, that's, well, obviously that's a more recent, uh, you know, biggest problem, but, uh,
01:19:58 ◼ ► but it's certainly been going this way for a while. Anyway, a lot of problems. And then you start
01:20:03 ◼ ► looking at the industry as a whole, as everything shifts first towards like really big cloud services
01:20:12 ◼ ► and really big data services. Like you have the rise of things like obviously Facebook and the social
01:20:18 ◼ ► networking, uh, whole area there and all the advertising sophistication that they're developing
01:20:24 ◼ ► and tracking all this stuff. And, and I think Apple's behavior around that was largely good in the sense
01:20:30 ◼ ► that they did stand up for privacy a lot. Um, and they did block a lot of the impact of that from
01:20:37 ◼ ► getting too deep into too many of their customers systems. Um, but there was this huge part of the
01:20:45 ◼ ► industry developing that Apple took no part in and wanted nothing, uh, to do with, except they wanted
01:20:51 ◼ ► some of the money. Uh, so they then started doing things like app store ads. They're now doing Apple
01:20:56 ◼ ► maps as they're going in these directions. They want the money, but they don't want to invest to either
01:21:00 ◼ ► make these products great for users or particularly sophisticated in terms of like their capabilities,
01:21:06 ◼ ► like ad targeting. Um, so they just, they're just kind of doing these kind of like, you know,
01:21:09 ◼ ► half-assed crappy versions of those kinds of things. And then, and the whole services narrative
01:21:15 ◼ ► they're pushing during this time and, and the services growth story relies on somewhat making
01:21:22 ◼ ► additive things that make people's lives overall better, but largely either imposing taxes as a gatekeeper
01:21:30 ◼ ► and or making the user experience worse to make a bit more money. And that is largely the, the revenue
01:21:39 ◼ ► growth story, taking existing product lines and just making them keep going. Great. Okay. But the impact
01:21:46 ◼ ► of the cook era on them is we've maximized the money. It's going great and we need to find more.
01:21:57 ◼ ► tack on things, services, ads, fees, upsells, and then we're going to just push and push and squeeze
01:22:07 ◼ ► and just maximize everything. And that's when the user experience starts taking a nosedive as we were
01:22:11 ◼ ► talking about literally last week. What Tim Cook has led is a big expansion of the numbers and generally,
01:22:20 ◼ ► you know, making the ship stable and mature and making it reliable for wall street, but at the cost
01:22:28 ◼ ► of some of the areas of the products, having some pretty weird turns on in the middle there due to a
01:22:35 ◼ ► lack of understanding or leadership. And now some pretty big questions about their fundamental values
01:22:42 ◼ ► that might be being compromised that could long-term erode the products. And the same thing is happening
01:22:48 ◼ ► with the Apple brand itself based on Tim Cook's political choices. And what he built over this entire
01:22:56 ◼ ► time was massively building up China to a point now that is geopolitically kind of risky. It is
01:23:06 ◼ ► existentially risky for Apple in case anything weird would happen between the U.S. and China.
01:23:09 ◼ ► And strategically, that's a pretty large flaw, I think. He did his job. He made the numbers go up,
01:23:17 ◼ ► but in such a way that I think was optimized for short-term gain and ignored a lot of the long-term
01:23:24 ◼ ► risks and quality and strategy that will possibly come to bite them later. Then finally, he totally
01:23:34 ◼ ► over-invested in bad product decisions, the Vision Pro and the car, and then totally under-invested
01:23:44 ◼ ► in what actually has turned out to be a pretty big deal, AI. And this story isn't over yet. We don't
01:23:51 ◼ ► know how this is going to end up. We do know where it has been. We do know that Apple's efforts at AI
01:24:00 ◼ ► so far have been nothing. They've resulted in almost nothing. Siri has been just a massive disaster for a
01:24:08 ◼ ► very long time. It's been holding back all their products. It has caused significant brand damage.
01:24:15 ◼ ► And meanwhile, the industry is taking off in this massive way in this other area that they are just
01:24:21 ◼ ► nowhere in. So when you look at this pattern, the numbers guy takes over from the visionary CEO.
01:24:28 ◼ ► The numbers all go up. The products kind of zigzag a little bit or a little confused. Mostly just make a
01:24:34 ◼ ► bunch of money. Mostly you're okay. But then another then the next big thing is completely missed. That's Steve
01:24:40 ◼ ► Ballmer. That's exactly Steve Ballmer. Tim Cook just did a better job of it. Tim Cook was a better bomber, but he's
01:24:50 ◼ ► still a bomber. He still has played basically that story arc in the company's history. He grew everything. He kept the ship
01:25:01 ◼ ► going. He kept things stable, but didn't have product sense and has left the company in not an amazing
01:25:11 ◼ ► place in terms of future product growth because he totally blew it on the next big wave. Microsoft missed
01:25:19 ◼ ► mobile. Apple has missed AI. Microsoft did eventually do things in mobile. Apple will eventually do things in
01:25:28 ◼ ► AI. But I think it's pretty clear that they're never going to be a leader in it. It's too late.
01:25:32 ◼ ► They would have had to start a while ago. They would have had to maybe buy one of these companies when it
01:25:36 ◼ ► was much smaller. They would need a very, very different corporate ethos and priority set that
01:25:43 ◼ ► I just don't think they have. And so if Apple's ever a leader in AI, I'd be very, very surprised.
01:25:49 ◼ ► Microsoft is still a great company, and they still make tons of money, and they succeed in other areas.
01:25:58 ◼ ► But they did take a pretty big hit in their potential and in the roads they're able to take
01:26:05 ◼ ► by basically being nowhere in mobile. That could happen to Apple with AI. Apple could be very restricted
01:26:16 ◼ ► because they missed AI. And meanwhile, could that billions and billions of dollars to develop
01:26:24 ◼ ► the Vision Pro and the car have been better spent in any other way for any of the other products?
01:26:30 ◼ ► Maybe making Siri better all this time. Maybe getting into AI a little bit earlier. Any of those
01:26:36 ◼ ► things. They could have maybe done better things with that money. And so even if you set aside that,
01:26:42 ◼ ► the more recent stuff with Trump, which is abhorrent, and that I think should tarnish Tim Cook's
01:26:46 ◼ ► legacy forever, his general leadership with the company has been fine, predictable, but not visionary,
01:26:56 ◼ ► and not particularly effective for a design-forward, product-focused company. He did really well at making
01:27:17 ◼ ► is hardware. The hardware is great. And hey, we got the hardware chief now as CEO. So I think this is
01:27:27 ◼ ► very promising that the Tim Cook era is ending. We now have an end date, and I think, I mean,
01:27:35 ◼ ► basically it's ending now-ish, like even though officially it's September, but like this transition
01:27:41 ◼ ► is going to happen faster than we realize. You know, I think we're not going to see Tim Cook on stage at
01:27:45 ◼ ► WBDC. Like there's going to be like, you know, I think we're, I think we're mostly done seeing Tim Cook
01:27:49 ◼ ► doing a lot of public things. I think he's going to, he's going to let Ternus, you know, take over a lot
01:27:54 ◼ ► of that stuff immediately to get him, get him out there and everything. So I think the Tim Cook era is really
01:28:00 ◼ ► effectively over. And the Ternus era is beginning. And we're going to see what that means.
01:28:05 ◼ ► All of these problems could continue. We might have brand new, all sorts of brand new problems
01:28:12 ◼ ► we didn't even realize that we were taking for granted during the Tim Cook era. But I don't think
01:28:17 ◼ ► so. I think Ternus is going to be good. Because he, so far, his background suggests that he actually
01:28:23 ◼ ► has closer to what we want in terms of product sense, you know, love of computing and computers
01:28:31 ◼ ► and computing devices. And he's just, he is also a younger generation. This will trigger over probably
01:28:40 ◼ ► the next five years, most of the Apple leadership that hasn't turned over yet to turnover. And we're
01:28:48 ◼ ► going to get a generational turnover in Apple leadership. And that could take us in some exciting
01:28:51 ◼ ► new directions, too, which you talked about in the past. So I think there's not, this transition is
01:28:55 ◼ ► not without risk. You know, there's always risk that something that we love or need will get worse.
01:29:00 ◼ ► But I'm hopeful. Because I think that the things that Tim Cook was hired to do, he basically did
01:29:08 ◼ ► for better and for worse. His job is done. And now it's time to see what's next for Apple.
01:29:17 ◼ ► And all of the flaws of the Tim Cook era can be swept behind us. And we can move forward as best as
01:29:29 ◼ ► So, Marco, I hear you saying, and don't let me put words in your mouth, but I hear you saying that
01:29:34 ◼ ► Cook, to a degree, had an edict. He had a mission. And he has succeeded in that mission. And I think that
01:29:42 ◼ ► I agree with that wholeheartedly. Do you consider Cook to have been successful by whatever metric
01:29:48 ◼ ► you so choose? We agree that on paper, if his goal was to grow the company in leaps and bounds,
01:29:59 ◼ ► It's not a straight yes or no. I think if you had to say, like, overall, was he successful? Yes.
01:30:07 ◼ ► I do think, though, that there's a lot of asterisk on that. Again, like, I am very concerned
01:30:11 ◼ ► with the strategic importance that he has created in China. I think that is really uncomfortable for
01:30:19 ◼ ► a lot of reasons, both for the world and for the country, our country, and for Apple itself.
01:30:25 ◼ ► All of those things, I think, were made, were put, were left in a worse position today because of
01:30:33 ◼ ► Apple's buildup of China. The products, you know, as mentioned, products are, you know, hit or miss
01:30:39 ◼ ► in certain ways. But he was, he was hired to be the Wall Street calming replacement for Steve Jobs and
01:30:47 ◼ ► to take the company into, like, the bigger, bigger and bigger and bigger direction. And he did that.
01:30:53 ◼ ► So he did, he did what he was hired to do. I just think he didn't know his own shortcomings enough
01:30:59 ◼ ► to put proper leadership in place below him to, to cover the things he didn't, he wasn't good at.
01:31:05 ◼ ► And I think the Tim Cook era probably lasted longer than it should have in general. I would have liked to
01:31:17 ◼ ► I think he knew his shortcomings. He just, it's difficult when you, difficult when you know you
01:31:21 ◼ ► have the shortcomings to know the right person to pick. And it's, I think the main difficulty is like,
01:31:25 ◼ ► it's difficult for him to correctly weight the importance of issues in the categories where he's
01:31:31 ◼ ► not an expert. So I'm sure he had some vague awareness about all the various things that we've
01:31:36 ◼ ► complained about that like product problems that Apple has had, but he's got so many things that he's
01:31:40 ◼ ► juggling having to do with things beyond just the details of the products that when it comes time
01:31:45 ◼ ► for him to decide where to concentrate, things really have to be a seven alarm fire before he
01:31:49 ◼ ► actually does something about like the, the laptop keyboards or something. Cause that's so below his
01:31:53 ◼ ► concern for so long. Whereas if you're a product guy likes jobs or even maybe like Ternus, we'll see.
01:31:58 ◼ ► Even though in the grand scheme of things, some, some issue, some disgruntlement about the,
01:32:04 ◼ ► some particular design, a particular product, isn't that big a deal in the grand scheme of things,
01:32:09 ◼ ► you know, but we're Apple, this is the stuff we're supposed to get right. And suddenly it,
01:32:12 ◼ ► it demands more forceful leadership from you in that area. Not that you're going to fix it yourself
01:32:19 ◼ ► or know how to fix it, but that you're going to rank it. You're going to pay more attention to it.
01:32:23 ◼ ► And I really do feel like that Tim Cook paid attention to the things that he understood well.
01:32:27 ◼ ► And it took, it was harder for things that he wasn't good at to go up to his level. And I think,
01:32:33 ◼ ► again, I think he did know that he wasn't good at those things, but I think it's one of those things
01:32:37 ◼ ► where it's like choosing what to spend your time and attention on is itself a, an action as a CEO.
01:32:46 ◼ ► He may have thought, well, I'm not spending my attention on product design. Cause I don't know
01:32:50 ◼ ► anything about that. I've delegated. It's fine. But you have to pay attention to that. You have to
01:32:54 ◼ ► treat it as seriously as you would treat a supply chain issue or, you know, some, some other thing
01:32:59 ◼ ► that you are good at just because you don't have expertise. And it doesn't mean that you can just
01:33:04 ◼ ► safely ignore it and everyone will take care of it because you're the leader of all of Apple. You do
01:33:07 ◼ ► get to delegate to your lieutenants. Um, and maybe you have difficulty judging whether they're good at
01:33:12 ◼ ► their jobs, but in the end, it is your job to oversee everything and figure out which part needs
01:33:18 ◼ ► attention now. And he just didn't seem to ever give attention to the parts that, you know, that were,
01:33:23 ◼ ► that were failing because they weren't in his strengths. Um, as for your comparison to Balmer,
01:33:27 ◼ ► I continue to think that's not valid, uh, mostly because we'll see here. I mean, we'll find out,
01:33:32 ◼ ► but like, um, when Balmer left, the Satya Nadella transformation of Microsoft was basically to turn
01:33:37 ◼ ► it into a different kind of company. It was like, uh, Balmer was a continuation of the Gates Microsoft.
01:33:42 ◼ ► And Nadella said, actually, I have a vision of a different Microsoft that just cares about
01:33:47 ◼ ► different things. We're not all about windows everywhere. We're not about windows and office anymore.
01:33:50 ◼ ► Now we're a services company. Um, now we're going to do our things on all platforms. It was just a
01:33:55 ◼ ► real, a real transformation of the company to be a different kind of business, sort of like IBM
01:34:00 ◼ ► transformed from the early days of IBM. The company that made the PC is not today's IBM. You know what
01:34:05 ◼ ► I mean? IBM has transformed itself also coincidentally into more of a services type company. I don't think
01:34:11 ◼ ► the Tim Cook to John Ternus transition will see Apple being transformed in the same way that Microsoft was
01:34:17 ◼ ► after Nadella, which makes me say that Tim Cook is not a Steve Ballmer because Ternus doesn't have to
01:34:23 ◼ ► transform Apple into a totally different kind of company, right? It would be as if Apple stopped caring about
01:34:28 ◼ ► selling integrated hardware and software and just became like a, you know, uh, a business to business
01:34:33 ◼ ► services company that, so that put its software on all platforms. That's not going to happen. And I think that
01:34:39 ◼ ► shows that Tim Cook didn't screw up Apple as badly as Palmer did. And also under Tim Cook's leadership, like you
01:34:46 ◼ ► kind of, uh, passed by this quickly, but I don't want to undersell it. Like he oversaw the iPhone product line,
01:34:55 ◼ ► not just like, Oh, just keep the iPhone going. He didn't just keep the iPhone going. He continued to make sure the
01:35:01 ◼ ► iPhone was, it was, we say this every year, it's good every year. Almost every single iPhone is really good and gets
01:35:07 ◼ ► better. And that's Apple's most important product. And it's one of the things Tim Cook seemed to be able
01:35:12 ◼ ► to pay attention to. There weren't a lot of stinker iPhones and it's not like the iPhone just stayed at
01:35:17 ◼ ► the status quo and was afraid to make any changes. The iPhone has developed like we wish all of Apple's
01:35:23 ◼ ► product lines would develop. It got a lot of attention. It had a lot of innovation. Things were tried.
01:35:28 ◼ ► Mistakes were fixed quickly. Uh, the hardware software integration was pretty good. Even the OS 26 is not
01:35:34 ◼ ► that bad on the phone. Not like on the Mac. Right? So I don't think like Balmer is like, Oh, let's just
01:35:39 ◼ ► squeeze every last ounce of money out of windows and office and not really make them any better. He didn't
01:35:44 ◼ ► just squeeze every ounce of money out of the phone. He continued to make the phone better. And he also
01:35:48 ◼ ► added a bunch of services about it. But it's not like he said, well, the phone, the phone, when I become
01:35:52 ◼ ► CEO in 2011, we it's fine. We don't need to really change the phone much after that. We'll just keep
01:35:57 ◼ ► selling the same phone like that. I think they have pressed on the phone and Apple Silicon and all that
01:36:03 ◼ ► stuff. Like, so in the areas where he paid attention, he did. I gave him some credit for the product lines
01:36:09 ◼ ► that he cared about and paid attention to didn't just stay at the status quo. Uh, and the iPhone is
01:36:14 ◼ ► their most important product. And I think they just continue to knock it out of the park with that
01:36:18 ◼ ► product. I mean, I care more about the Mac. I like the Mac more, but there's no arguing that
01:36:22 ◼ ► they've been resting on their laurels with the phone. They've been a, the perfect combination
01:36:27 ◼ ► of innovative and careful because you can't be like all the, you know, the other Android phones
01:36:32 ◼ ► that can just try all sorts of stuff. Like that's why Android has folding phones first. Everyone
01:36:35 ◼ ► has all the different innovations in the phones. Like they'll try everything, right? Apple has to be
01:36:40 ◼ ► careful, but it also means don't just do the same thing forever. Try new stuff, see how it works.
01:36:45 ◼ ► They made big ones. They made small ones. They made fat ones. They made thin ones. They're going to
01:36:49 ◼ ► make a folding one. Uh, they, they got rid of the home button, you know, there, I give Tim Cook credit
01:36:56 ◼ ► for that as well. Um, and as for the China stuff, like this is where like values being embodied in
01:37:03 ◼ ► decision-making is, it becomes difficult because basically as you know, if you read the Apple and
01:37:07 ◼ ► China book, like it's not possible to scale Apple, Tim Cook becomes CEO in 2011. Uh, he wants to scale
01:37:14 ◼ ► Apple up and sell more phones. It's very, it's basically impossible to do that without doing
01:37:19 ◼ ► what he did with China. There's not even a lot of countries that you could have swapped out for
01:37:24 ◼ ► China. Like don't do it with China, do it with somebody else. Like what are the other options?
01:37:27 ◼ ► It's kind of a situation where it's like, if you really want to adhere to your core values,
01:37:32 ◼ ► Apple cannot grow this fast. I mean, that's the reality of planet earth was if you just sat down in
01:37:38 ◼ ► 2011 and said, so Tim, you want to make the line go like this, but what if I told you literally the
01:37:43 ◼ ► only way to make the line go at that angle is you've got to invest heavily in China and with all the
01:37:48 ◼ ► caveats and problems that comes with, or you could invest, uh, equally heavily or more heavily in these
01:37:55 ◼ ► other places that are, you know, not authoritarian regimes like China or whatever. Right. But now the
01:38:00 ◼ ► line can't go up as steep. Which one do you want to do? And he made his choice, which was, I'm going to
01:38:04 ◼ ► make the line go up the steeper one and I'm going to invest in China. And I think mostly to his credit,
01:38:10 ◼ ► he knows the downsides of that maybe better than anyone. He knows the downsides of it. And Apple
01:38:15 ◼ ► has been trying to pull out of China. There's been a thing in the notes for ages about Apple's,
01:38:18 ◼ ► uh, various efforts to pull back from China to the extent possible. I think something like,
01:38:24 ◼ ► I forget what the stat was, maybe like half of the, of a particular model of iPhone was not made in
01:38:29 ◼ ► China, but was made in India or something like that. This is a delicate situation to extract
01:38:34 ◼ ► themselves from. It is a problem of their own making, but it's not like they're doing nothing
01:38:37 ◼ ► and all their press releases. They'll be like, rah, rah, China, we love you. We're not backing off
01:38:42 ◼ ► or whatever, but look at what they're actually doing. They are trying to build more stuff in
01:38:46 ◼ ► places other than China. And it's really hard and they're doing it really slowly. And that's why it
01:38:50 ◼ ► was a, you know, that's why it was a momentous decision and why it is going to be his legacy as
01:38:54 ◼ ► he's leaving Ternus with this, holding the bag on this or whatever. But I think it's not like he,
01:39:00 ◼ ► you know, he was going full throttle all China all the time until the day he left. I think he has
01:39:04 ◼ ► already tried to already started turning the ship around years ago. It's just a big ship and it's
01:39:08 ◼ ► going to take a long time. So I don't know. I, I, I mean, if you ask me, it has to be a success as a
01:39:14 ◼ ► CEO. I think it's inarguably. Yes. Even though all the things that I have to complain about, but my
01:39:18 ◼ ► complaints have increased as his tenure has gone on. And that really tells me his time should end and
01:39:24 ◼ ► now is ending. And so I'm happy about that. But, um, I think as a CEO, even though he didn't make
01:39:30 ◼ ► every decision the way I wanted him to, he made mostly good decisions and has inarguably been
01:39:38 ◼ ► successful. And I do continue to think despite various times that Marco has not been able to
01:39:47 ◼ ► a good person who is merely misguided many times, let's say, and maybe it's because I'm an optimistic
01:39:54 ◼ ► person. I want to see the best in people and who can know, like, I'm just guessing about a person
01:39:58 ◼ ► I've never met. You know what I mean? Like, it's hard to know. He's so guarded, but it seems to me
01:40:02 ◼ ► that he is a good person who thinks he's doing the right thing and is just mistaken sometimes. And
01:40:06 ◼ ► that's like all of us. The problem is that his, uh, mistaken, uh, assumptions about him doing the
01:40:13 ◼ ► right thing have effects that are magnified by $4 trillion market cap. And that is, uh,
01:40:17 ◼ ► that is, you know, he said, he describes it as like what I know to be the best job in the world.
01:40:22 ◼ ► It's almost kind of like a curse. Like, would you really want to be in charge of the world's
01:40:30 ◼ ► is magnified. Uh, it's like being, you know, uh, control and control of the world's most powerful
01:40:36 ◼ ► military. If you had a conscience, for example, um, it's a lot of responsibility and I'm not sure it's
01:40:40 ◼ ► the best job in the world. The best job in the world seems like, uh, already having that kind
01:40:44 ◼ ► of money and sitting at a beach maybe, but, uh, that doesn't seem to be, uh, the things that Tim,
01:40:48 ◼ ► Tim Cook wants to do. So here's hoping that he gets to that beach sooner rather than later.
01:40:53 ◼ ► And let's turn us, uh, make decisions out from the shadow of Tim Cook. Oh, and then one final thing,
01:40:59 ◼ ► a long-term versus short-term. You've frequently said that he's made short-term decisions, but I feel
01:41:03 ◼ ► like the timescales are important here. He's been CEO for what? Um, 15 years or something.
01:41:09 ◼ ► Yeah. Like, and like his chickens are coming home to roost on his bad decisions, like in China.
01:41:17 ◼ ► short-term I think is like quarter to quarter or year to year. But if you make a decision,
01:41:22 ◼ ► this turn, it's going to turn out to be a big problem in a decade. That's long-term thinking
01:41:26 ◼ ► in business, right? So he's made mistakes and I feel like the mistakes have been long-term mistakes,
01:41:32 ◼ ► not a short-term. I don't think most of the things he's done have not been with an eye towards,
01:41:36 ◼ ► I got to hit the numbers for next quarter. Almost all of his decisions, including the bad
01:41:44 ◼ ► So I think that, and you know, you're grading on a curve here, but a lot of CEOs really are in the
01:41:48 ◼ ► mindset of like, what do I got to scrap together for this earnings report? Uh, and Tim Cook has mostly
01:41:54 ◼ ► been isolated from that simply because he's, you know, he's been so good at leading Apple to continue
01:41:59 ◼ ► to be successful that he has never been put into a position where everyone is staring at him and saying,
01:42:03 ◼ ► boy, Tim, you better hit, you better not have another loss this quarter or we're going to be
01:42:07 ◼ ► coming out with the knives. It's just merely been a question of, oh, did you make as many billions this
01:42:13 ◼ ► time as you did last time? And even the car thing, like you mentioned, you know, sinking the money into
01:42:17 ◼ ► that, looking at how much money tech companies are putting into AI stuff now, I think like one year or
01:42:23 ◼ ► one quarter's worth of the tech industry's capital investment in AI probably dwarfs all the money Apple ever
01:42:30 ◼ ► spent on the car in a decade just because it was, you know, speculative and they didn't actually build
01:42:35 ◼ ► anything. And they're like, oh, Apple spent $10 billion on the car. It's like people spent $10
01:42:39 ◼ ► billion in one quarter on stupid data center crap for a service they haven't even launched yet.
01:42:43 ◼ ► So yeah, the car was a miss, but a, I give him props for not shipping it because it would have been bad.
01:42:49 ◼ ► And B, in the grand scheme of CapEx, the car, especially Apple's amount of money, the car is
01:42:55 ◼ ► nothing compared to the money that companies are speculatively putting into AI in their panic
01:43:00 ◼ ► spending and the hope not to be left behind. And, you know, maybe that'll turn out, you know,
01:43:03 ◼ ► maybe it'll be egg on Apple's face. And we said, Apple, you should have been panic spending and putting
01:43:07 ◼ ► those kinds of dollars into AI because it turns out no one uses iPhones anymore and everyone just uses
01:43:12 ◼ ► their hovering earphone pod from OpenAI and Johnny Ive or whatever. But right now that's not the case.
01:43:17 ◼ ► So, you know, I would also say on the Vision Pro, kind of jury's still out on how the AI thing's going to
01:43:22 ◼ ► turn out and how the Vision Pro thing's going to turn out. At least Vision Pro shipped and maybe they make
01:43:26 ◼ ► money on the hardware that they sell. I'm not even sure that's the case, but remains to be seen.
01:43:31 ◼ ► I think ultimately there's a lot to complain about with regard to Tim Cook and some of us, Marco, have
01:43:38 ◼ ► done that a little more vocally than others. But I do think there's a lot to complain about.
01:43:44 ◼ ► I also think that by any reasonable metric, his tenure at Apple was unbelievably successful. And
01:43:52 ◼ ► perhaps I'm just getting, you know, not wispy eyed, but, you know, maybe I'm just looking at things with
01:43:58 ◼ ► rose colored glasses because, you know, it's the end of an era. But I look at my computer that I'm using
01:44:03 ◼ ► right now, which is, you know, an M3 Max MacBook Pro, what's like three years old now, something like
01:44:08 ◼ ► that. And it's still incredible. I look at this MacBook Neo that, you know, just came out and
01:44:13 ◼ ► from everything that anyone has ever said, you know, yeah, it's got flaws, but on the grand scheme of
01:44:18 ◼ ► things, in the grand scheme of things, it's incredible. My iPhone takes phenomenal pictures
01:44:23 ◼ ► and keeps me connected with people far, far, far away. You know, one of my dearest friends from high
01:44:28 ◼ ► school is now living in Australia and will FaceTime not irregularly. And that's just one example of many.
01:44:35 ◼ ► Um, you know, I, I look at the vision pro and yes, we can snark about how it's kind of a failed
01:44:41 ◼ ► product so far. We can snark about how it weighs, you know, a whole ton and it's not exceedingly
01:44:47 ◼ ► comfortable. And, you know, I don't have the occasion to put it on very often, but as I've said
01:44:52 ◼ ► many, many, many times on the show, every time I put a vision pro vision pro on and use it, I am
01:44:57 ◼ ► reminded that I am strapping the future to my face. And there's so much incredible stuff that Apple has
01:45:03 ◼ ► done. I think that their stewardship for privacy, I think I'm not caving during the San Bernardino
01:45:09 ◼ ► situation, which obviously was fraught. And, you know, you could make a very strong argument that
01:45:14 ◼ ► Apple did not make the right choice. I think they did. I think that there are things that we can
01:45:19 ◼ ► complain about, but on the whole, the last 15 years, which has been almost the entirety of my time
01:45:25 ◼ ► paying attention to Apple. I only started paying attention a couple of years, a few years before Tim,
01:45:29 ◼ ► you know, took over as CEO. It's been an incredible ride to watch all this and not to be a part of it,
01:45:35 ◼ ► but to be a part of it. And, you know, to go from, you know, my first real introduction to Apple,
01:45:41 ◼ ► my first Apple product was, was an iPod Nano. And I adored that thing and actually just found it
01:45:48 ◼ ► recently. And it's incredible. Like even, even today it feels incredible in hand. And obviously the
01:45:54 ◼ ► dock connector is not great, but, you know, by and large, it's still a really cool product.
01:45:57 ◼ ► And I look at all these devices and I look at the things that Apple of the last 15 years have
01:46:04 ◼ ► afforded people, but especially me, you know, I mean, my career, no matter how you look at it right
01:46:10 ◼ ► now anyway, is based on, you know, is, is revolves around Apple. And I think that that's largely true
01:46:17 ◼ ► for all three of us at the moment. And that's not all Tim, of course, but it's hard not to get
01:46:23 ◼ ► nostalgic. It's hard not to look back on the last 15 years. I mean, hell, this, this podcast started
01:46:29 ◼ ► in for real in March of 2013. So this is almost the accidental Tim Cook podcast, you know? And,
01:46:36 ◼ ► and, and I can't help, but feel like it's been a pretty damn good run. I echo a lot of the complaints
01:46:42 ◼ ► that Marco has had. I have echoed them and I echo them now. And I think that I echo, you know, I,
01:46:47 ◼ ► I echo a lot of the complaints that John has as much as I give John a hard time about his beloved Mac pro.
01:46:52 ◼ ► Like it does kind of suck that there isn't a just completely bananas, absolutely no, you know,
01:46:58 ◼ ► no punches pulled computer anymore. But on the whole, I really do look at the last 15 years and say,
01:47:05 ◼ ► you know what? That's a job pretty well done. And I think that we are all largely, not exclusively,
01:47:11 ◼ ► largely better off for it. And I think that he should ride off into the sunset, feeling happy
01:47:18 ◼ ► and accomplished and proud of what he has done. I do wonder if he'll give, do you think he'll give,
01:47:23 ◼ ► he probably won't because he's executive chairman. Like at what point does Tim Cook start giving
01:47:26 ◼ ► candid interviews ever? Or does he just die? Because like, wow, I don't think, I don't think
01:47:32 ◼ ► it's in him. Yeah. Obviously when he's on the board, he's not going to give any candid anything. So let's
01:47:36 ◼ ► say he retires. And I will, that's the question. Will Tim Cook ever retire from Apple's board?
01:47:42 ◼ ► I think he will. And I think the answer to your question, when he will start to get candid,
01:47:46 ◼ ► if I were to wager a guess and just, and try to psychoanalyze someone who I met once for about 30
01:47:51 ◼ ► seconds, um, I would say that he will start to get more candid when he is of ill health.
01:47:58 ◼ ► And I think right before he dies, no, truly, I really mean it because if you think about it,
01:48:03 ◼ ► I don't know if he'll do it then even. I don't think so. I'm not sure he will. I'm not sure he will.
01:48:10 ◼ ► Because Art Levinson is like 75 and he's getting, he's not even, he's not even leaving. He's just
01:48:15 ◼ ► getting booted out of the, the, the non-executive chairmanship and he's going to be, he's still
01:48:19 ◼ ► going to be, what is it? The, the lead independent director. Like Art Levinson's not leaving that
01:48:23 ◼ ► board until he dies. And I imagine the same will be true of Tim Cook. So I don't think he'll ever
01:48:28 ◼ ► I think he will, because I think if you're Tim Cook, and again, I'm, I'm really psychoanalyzing in a way
01:48:35 ◼ ► that's borderline inappropriate, but what is his legacy? You know, he doesn't to the best that we
01:48:40 ◼ ► all know, he doesn't have any children. He doesn't to the best that we all know have any spouse. Um,
01:48:44 ◼ ► so Apple is to a large degree, his legacy. And I think that if it were me and I was on death's door,
01:48:50 ◼ ► and I don't mean that to be flippant, I'm being genuine. Like if I was on death's door, that is
01:48:54 ◼ ► when I would want to try to do what I could to establish whatever legacy or properly cement any
01:49:00 ◼ ► legacy that I may have had. And I think that if he is to get candid and I echo what you, I echo both of
01:49:05 ◼ ► you going, I don't know about that, but if he is to get candid, I think it's basically when time is
01:49:10 ◼ ► running out and he just wants to make sure that whatever it is that's important to him, be that
01:49:15 ◼ ► reminding everyone about all the good environmental stuff Apple does, or all the good privacy stuff
01:49:18 ◼ ► Apple does. And, and, you know, washing away all the bad stuff one way or another. I think that's
01:49:23 ◼ ► when he gets candid. I feel like he's going to be a company man to the end. Like even if he's
01:49:27 ◼ ► totally off the board, he's an ill health, he's just never going to say anything bad about Apple,
01:49:31 ◼ ► never going to do candid stories about what it was like to fight in the trenches. Unlike, for example,
01:49:35 ◼ ► like we talked about that recent, like, what was it? 40th anniversary of the Mac thing or whatever,
01:49:39 ◼ ► where you get people from the Mac team telling like stories they've told before, but like
01:49:43 ◼ ► very sort of, uh, candid dysfunctional inside stories about the creation of the products they worked on
01:49:52 ◼ ► participation in this team, warts and all, but they're, they're not afraid to, first of all,
01:49:57 ◼ ► they've been gone from Apple for decades. And second of all, Apple was not their company.
01:49:59 ◼ ► So they don't have to continue to say, I just love Apple. It's wonderful. It's been the best
01:50:04 ◼ ► thing in my life, blah, blah, and never say anything bad about it. No, they want to tell you the bad
01:50:07 ◼ ► stories. They want to tell you the stories about how things were broken and people argued and,
01:50:12 ◼ ► you know, how, how their bosses were dummies and they did something clever despite their bosses
01:50:16 ◼ ► telling them, you know, like they'll do that now while they're alive because it doesn't,
01:50:24 ◼ ► there is no time when Tim Cook is alive, when he will not feel that he has to continue to toe the
01:50:30 ◼ ► company line and say, rah, rah, Apple, like even something as simple as my, you know, regrets about
01:50:37 ◼ ► how China was handled, you know, say something disastrous happens, you know, God forbid, but
01:50:44 ◼ ► And he's 87 years old and he's on his deathbed and he's being interviewed. He does an interview.
01:50:51 ◼ ► Would he say like, my one regret is maybe I could have handled China differently. I think he would
01:50:56 ◼ ► not say that on death's door. I think he'd be like, nope, you're never, that's never going to come out
01:51:00 ◼ ► of my mouth. I might feel it, but I'm never going to say it. So tough luck, but we'll see. Like, I mean,
01:51:05 ◼ ► it's when people are guarded and private in this way, when people are so disciplined in their
01:51:10 ◼ ► communication, um, it's human nature to wish that we could get at the real them. And I get, I think
01:51:16 ◼ ► the best we're going to get for Tim Cook is the increasing number of stories from people who are in
01:51:22 ◼ ► the room with Tim, because they, that, that story is like their currency to like, here's my tell all
01:51:27 ◼ ► book and not the, you know what I mean? Like this, it's the only reason we know the, the, why are you
01:51:31 ◼ ► still here story about the guy who had to go fly to China? We don't know that from Tim Cook. We know
01:51:34 ◼ ► it from the people who are in the room with him. And as those people who are in the room with him
01:51:38 ◼ ► retire, maybe we'll see them, you know, on the 50th anniversary of the iPhone. They're there on
01:51:43 ◼ ► stage in a little panel with a cyber David Pogue. Um, they'll tell their stories about, uh, when Tim
01:51:50 ◼ ► Cook was a jerk in a meeting or what Tim Cook really thought about something behind the scenes, you know,
01:51:54 ◼ ► like, and honestly, I'm not even sure how candid he is in that. Like, you know, how many people hear
01:51:59 ◼ ► Tim Cook's real opinion about anything ever like related to Apple? Probably like, I feel people could fit in
01:52:05 ◼ ► a small room. Uh, and the rest of the people aren't, you know, don't get to hear that, but
01:52:09 ◼ ► we'll see. Um, I'm for now, I wish he would fade from Apple's day to day even more than he already
01:52:15 ◼ ► is, but you know, you take what you can get, uh, quote unquote retirement to be the executive chairman
01:52:21 ◼ ► is better than him staying CEO. All right. Thank you to our sponsors this episode, Squarespace,
01:52:29 ◼ ► Claude and delete me. And thanks to our members who support us directly. You can join us at
01:52:32 ◼ ► ATFM slash join. One of the many perks of ATP membership is our weekly bonus topic, ATP Overtime.
01:52:40 ◼ ► Every single episode has bonus content exclusive to members. This week on Overtime, we're going to be
01:52:45 ◼ ► talking about, uh, media and the limits of human perception. Uh, we were talking about audio file
01:52:50 ◼ ► stuff, fancy video stuff. It's going to be a lot of fun. So you can join us at ATP.FM slash join.
01:53:23 ◼ ► And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM. And if you're into Mastodon, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
01:53:49 ◼ ► So for the after show, I need to tell you what I told Marilyn in a recent episode, which is don't look at the internet.
01:54:17 ◼ ► I'm hoping you didn't see information that was on the internet very recently that would make this not fun.
01:54:23 ◼ ► In the style of you two trying to name the versions and names of macOS, I would like you two to name the CEOs of Apple in order.
01:54:39 ◼ ► Now, I feel like you're helped a little bit because recently there was the, speaking of David Polk, he had that Apple at 50 book.
01:54:47 ◼ ► There you go. It's given you a lot of information and that's been in the news and maybe Marco's seen it fly by.
01:55:00 ◼ ► All right. Well, maybe before you collaborate, you both, we're going to do them in chronological order.
01:55:12 ◼ ► Apple's first CEO, Marco, is what is your guess? If you both don't know, then you can collaborate.
01:55:22 ◼ ► Oh, I have a bunch of names. So I have a couple of names floating around in my head, but I don't think it's right.
01:55:29 ◼ ► I know, like, I think Mike Markala was one of the earlier ones. I think John Browett was one of those earlier ones.
01:56:07 ◼ ► Actually, before we even do the list, do you know how many CEOs there have been of Apple?
01:56:15 ◼ ► Yeah, I was going to say the same. Somewhere low, low 10, like, you know, low double digits,
01:56:28 ◼ ► Yes, you probably saw that on social media there. There have been eight Apple CEOs, including John Ternus.
01:56:38 ◼ ► You're thinking of Ron Wayne, who was the person who signed the incorporation papers and then
01:57:09 ◼ ► All right. Well, that's, that's a tough one, because it's 1977, 1981. I don't think either
01:57:14 ◼ ► one of you were alive, although Casey did just read the book about him. Remember, he was brought
01:57:17 ◼ ► in as a CEO when they formed the company? Okay. Um, number two, after Mike Scott. Oh, I got
01:57:23 ◼ ► nothing on this. That was probably Jobs. Nope. Uh, you had it before, Marco. You want to try again?
01:57:36 ◼ ► I'm not looking at the chat room. All right. Mike Marco, 1981 to 1983. The two Mikes, Mike
01:57:53 ◼ ► I think actually, so my, my thinking now, I think Jobs was never CEO before he was ousted.
01:58:28 ◼ ► year did you say? 83, 1983. He's starting Marco, Marco lands in 83. I thought, no, I think
01:58:35 ◼ ► Marco is right. I think it is Scully. You got it right. John Scully. He was recruited by Steve
01:58:40 ◼ ► Jobs. Steve Jobs said, do you want to, do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your
01:58:46 ◼ ► recruited John Scully to become CEO of Apple in 1983. John Scully lasted from 1983 to 1993.
01:58:53 ◼ ► Yeah. Long span. He launched the Newton because he thought he was a product visionary, but he
01:58:57 ◼ ► was a guy from Pepsi. All right. Then was it Gil Emilio? So Scully, Scully is, is gone in
01:59:04 ◼ ► 93. Who comes in in 1993? Jobs is obviously not here anymore because Jobs departed Apple during
01:59:11 ◼ ► the Scully era in 1985, I believe. So Scully is there for 1983, 85 jobs leaves. And then
01:59:17 ◼ ► it's just the John Scully show from 85 to 1993. Yeah. But I thought there was somebody before.
01:59:24 ◼ ► We just said, we already did Mike Markle. Oh, he's done already. Oh, was that John Browett?
01:59:28 ◼ ► Scott, Mike Markle. Browett is the guy who ran the Apple store retail for like six months.
01:59:39 ◼ ► I don't know why that name was stuck in your head, but I just want to save you from saying
01:59:46 ◼ ► No, but there was someone between him and Emilio. I could have sworn, but I can't place who it
01:59:54 ◼ ► I'll give you a hint. Uh, this CEO famously hid under his desk at various points because
01:59:58 ◼ ► things were going really badly and he was a poor physical health. God, I can't remember
02:00:02 ◼ ► his name now, but I know who you're thinking of the inoculum Emilio. That's somebody else.
02:00:06 ◼ ► No, I don't know. I couldn't pull a name out of a hat, but I know who you're thinking of.
02:00:11 ◼ ► Are you one of you said it before, but I'll save you because this is, you know, not a well-known
02:00:18 ◼ ► Yeah, I've heard that name before, but I don't know. This is, this is like the period where Casey
02:00:22 ◼ ► and I are not paying attention at all. Right. Hiding under his desk is the note card and
02:00:30 ◼ ► Cook thing to do. No, Tim Cook is never hiding under his desk. I can tell you that. I don't
02:00:34 ◼ ► think Tim Cook, has Tim Cook ever sat down? Yeah, exactly. He's always on the move like
02:00:39 ◼ ► a shark. Yeah. All right. That's all right. So this ends in 1996 and 1996, who takes over
02:00:45 ◼ ► as the fifth CEO of Apple? That must be a Gil Emilio finally. Well, hold on. I'm pulling
02:00:59 ◼ ► in 96. One, two, three, four, five, six. Who takes over from Spindler in 96? Oh, no, no,
02:01:04 ◼ ► you've got it. You've got it. I just need to do the math. You've got it. You've got it.
02:01:07 ◼ ► Yeah. It's Emilio. Right? Gil Emilio. Okay. Yeah. Who famously compared the Macintosh to
02:01:13 ◼ ► the Maglite, which was the only other hardware electronic product he could think of that was
02:01:18 ◼ ► high quality. It's like the Mac. It's kind of like the Maglite because that was the time on,
02:01:22 ◼ ► you know, Maglites were popular and it was like, it's like a flashlight, but like a really good,
02:01:26 ◼ ► really expensive flashlight. So the Mac is like the Maglite. Oh, sorry, Gil. Yeah. They really had a
02:01:32 ◼ ► moment there with the Maglites, but then like LEDs happened and really killed them. This is way before
02:01:37 ◼ ► LEDs. This is 1996. So Maglites were incredibly popular. Look it up, kids. It was, it was a whole
02:01:43 ◼ ► thing. Anyway, he lasted from 1996 to 1997. The most important decision he ever made obviously was to buy
02:01:49 ◼ ► next and get Steve Jobs back. Who was the sixth CEO of Apple? Steve Jobs. That's right. The first time he
02:01:58 ◼ ► was ever CEO of Apple, he was not CEO of Apple at any other time. He was the co-founder, but they brought
02:02:05 ◼ ► on CEOs because they were kids and they brought on adults who understood business to be CEOs. And one
02:02:10 ◼ ► of those people was recruited by Jobs himself. And that was the one who essentially defeated him in
02:02:16 ◼ ► the politics, in the boardroom politics of the day, resulting in Jobs leaving. But when he came back,
02:02:21 ◼ ► he was I CEO, then regular CEO, Steve Jobs, 1997 to 2011. He did not leave. He was not kicked out. He died.
02:02:29 ◼ ► It was sad. Number seven. And Tim Cook. There you go. And number eight. And then John Ternus.
02:02:35 ◼ ► 2011 to 2026. John Ternus, 2026 to question mark. I feel like we did okay. Yeah. My apologies to
02:02:44 ◼ ► John Syracuse, Jason Snell and John Gruber. I mean, I don't expect people who weren't into Apple to know
02:02:51 ◼ ► these things. I just, I felt like Casey could have knocked it out because he just read a book on Apple
02:02:55 ◼ ► history that talked about all of these people. Yes, but I've read other things since then.
02:02:59 ◼ ► Casey has a small context window. He's waiting for the upgrade. Also, wasn't that book like 600 pages
02:03:06 ◼ ► long? Like it was even by the time you're at the end of the book, you forgot in the beginning.
02:03:09 ◼ ► Also true. It's like painting the Golden Gate Bridge. No, it was an incredible book, though,
02:03:14 ◼ ► despite the fact that I remembered nothing of it because I'm an idiot and I have no memory.
02:03:17 ◼ ► No, it really was worth your time. And I think I might have said this already on the show,
02:03:21 ◼ ► but it just in case you should find it in like a local library, which is how I did or buy it or
02:03:25 ◼ ► whatever. Uh, or if you're reading it on a Kindle like device, make sure it's one with color because
02:03:30 ◼ ► they are incredible photographs in this book. It's a really, really, really worth your time. You know,
02:03:35 ◼ ► they didn't sponsor anything like that. It's just genuinely a really, really good book.
02:03:39 ◼ ► And I just started reading that one, but like I, from what I've gathered from other people looking at,
02:03:43 ◼ ► there's not much in there that I haven't read in the 7,000 other books I've read about Apple.
02:03:46 ◼ ► My go-to recommendation for the years that are covered in this book is, uh, Infinite Loop by
02:03:52 ◼ ► Michael S. Malone. It obviously ends at the date of publication and doesn't have any of the stuff
02:03:56 ◼ ► after that. I think it ends like, like, like, like, I think they added like a little chapter at the
02:04:02 ◼ ► end about like Steve Jobs coming back or some crap, but like, it's basically like Mike Scott,
02:04:06 ◼ ► Mike Markala, John Scully, Michael Spindler, Gil Emilio bookends more or less, you know,
02:04:11 ◼ ► and then there's Steve Jobs addendum, right? So it's, it's, it's like early Apple, like up to the,
02:04:16 ◼ ► the mid to late nineties, but boy, it does a really good job of covering all that stuff and really making
02:04:21 ◼ ► these people into characters that are memorable. Um, the fit that Dave Polk's fiftieth book obviously
02:04:25 ◼ ► covers a much larger time span and has a rehashes of many of the similar stories, but probably can't
02:04:32 ◼ ► spend as much time, even at 600 pages or whatever, can't spend as much time as a book that was written
02:04:37 ◼ ► in the nineties can spend on the shorter time span that is has to cover. So yeah, I'm not, uh, Jason
02:04:43 ◼ ► put a bunch of, uh, book recommendations for Apple history, I think on six colors recently. And I think
02:04:48 ◼ ► he also did, uh, some recommendations in his wall street journal article. So maybe we should link to
02:04:52 ◼ ► those in the show notes, but my personal rec for, I guess what is now early Apple history is infinite
02:04:57 ◼ ► loop by, I think his name is Michael S Malone. We'll put a link in the show notes, but, um, but yeah,
02:05:01 ◼ ► for, if you want a more comprehensive one, the Pogue one is apparently good too. I, like I said,
02:05:05 ◼ ► I just started it. Yeah, it's very good. I also wanted to call out, uh, what is it? Is it revolution
02:05:09 ◼ ► in the Valley? Is that the, um, Hertzfeld one? Yeah. I mean, just go to folklore.org because
02:05:13 ◼ ► revolution in the various Valley is the paper version of a subset of folklore.org. If you want
02:05:17 ◼ ► to know specifically about stories from the creation of the Macintosh, which is one of my favorite
02:05:22 ◼ ► periods in Apple's history and projects folklore.org is a website written by Andy Hertzfeld, who was on the
02:05:29 ◼ ► original Mac team and he gets testimonials from, I mean, in the modern era, they would call it an
02:05:35 ◼ ► oral history of the early Mac or whatever, but really what it is, is a bunch of blog posts written
02:05:39 ◼ ► by original Mac team members, including Hertzfeld himself. And there is a paper version of that called
02:05:44 ◼ ► revolution in the Valley that I think has most of the articles on the website, but maybe not all of
02:05:54 ◼ ► You did better than the Mac names, but I guess it's because there's fewer of them. Although
02:05:58 ◼ ► I think it was 13 or 14 CEOs. I'm like, who are all these other people? It's not been a lot.