26 ms·

Report: Tim Cook could step down as Apple CEO 'as soon as next year'

• bnchrch 11mo ago
  If you check my comments Im a routine critic of Apple. Specifically its mis-management of Siri. But, in my mind, Tim Cook is also responsible for the only exceptional qualities of Apple. Namely its production of the M series chips and the Vision Pro (yes really). They better have someone outstanding in mind as a replacement. Otherwise I could easily see the successor mildly improve Siri/AI functions, while continuing Apples new disastrous design language and drop the ball on the supply chain and vertical integration that makes their hardware products second to none.
  • dude250711 11mo ago
    With the right visionary, $2k phones and $500 textile cases will not be impossible...
    • wtallis 11mo ago
      $2k phones has been a thing for a while now, with the folding phones. Samsung Galaxy Z Fold currently starts at $1700 and Google Pixel Pro Fold starts at $1800, and both are over $2100 for the 1TB models.
  • epolanski 11mo ago
    Changing chip is way too little of an accomplishment in 10+ years of leadership of what was once the biggest tech company on the planet. The company isn't growing from years, and it's only saved by the positive offset coming from advertisement and app store growth.
    • pshc 11mo ago
      MacBooks outclass any other laptop in the market thanks to those chips.
    • wk_end 11mo ago
      Listen, I don't really like the direction Apple has taken either, but since Tim Cook became CEO of Apple in August 2011 the company's stock went from like $15 to like $275; it had a value of $400 billion and now it's worth $4 trillion, ten times as much. Any characterization of him as some kind of failure who killed Apple ("once the biggest tech company on the planet", "isn't growing", "only saved"...) is completely out-of-touch.
      • sharts 11mo ago
        How can we be sure this is specifically due to Cook and not the ecosystem overall? A lot has changed since 2011. Some was likely Cook continuing execution of things lined up by Jobs. Some could just be tech sector in general, etc.
        • JKCalhoun 11mo ago
          In some ways it doesn't matter. A bad CEO would have fucked up the ecosystem.
        • matwood 11mo ago
          > likely Cook continuing execution of things I love how people say 'execution' like it's an insult. Execution on the scale of Apple is an incredible challenge. Apple sells something like 425 iPhones per minute. It could be argued that execution is the biggest Apple innovation ever.
      • manmal 11mo ago
        It sailed on Jobs‘ monumental accomplishments, and still does. Including AirPods and Vision Pro, much of what fell into Cook‘s era was already well underway when Jobs died. Cook is a fantastic executor, fulfilling Jobs‘ legacy. But the tank is empty now, has been for a while.
        • KerrAvon 11mo ago
          Every bit of your second sentence is wrong. None of that was even on the drawing boards when Steve passed away.
    • victorbjorklund 11mo ago
      It’s not the only thing. The scale up of Apple is massive and so is the supply chain. Those are not really things consumers don’t see directly (just indirectly)
    • JKCalhoun 11mo ago
      "…and it's only saved by the positive offset coming from advertisement and app store growth" That has been part of the plan for a decade now since Eddy Cue was tasked with boosting Apple's income from "services". (It's worked pretty well for Microsoft.)
  • 827a 11mo ago
    Ternus is the leading candidate; VP of Hardware Engineering. He was very likely more directly responsible than Cook for all the things you liked about Cook's Apple. My fear for Apple right now is how most decisions they make appear to incentivize them toward becoming a perpetual middle-man in all aspects of your interactions with their products. They don't manufacture much of anything anymore; its on-contract. They design the M-Series chips, but don't make them. Their software sucks; they'd rather just take 30% of your interaction with actually-good software. Their AI and search sucks; they just pay Google $30B a year for theirs. Etc and etc.
    • nadermx 11mo ago
      What incentive do they have otherwise?
    • rhubarbtree 11mo ago
      Wait, Apple Pay Google for search?
      • gsharma 11mo ago
        No, it’s the other way around. Comment above is confused about the relationship.
        • SauntSolaire 11mo ago
          He's referring to the AI part of his sentence.
        • bobbylarrybobby 11mo ago
          Reports say that Apple will be paying Google a billion a year for a Gemini‘d Siri
      • 827a 11mo ago
        No, but Apple is likely to be paying Google for access to Gemini in the upcoming Siri revamp, and relies on Google's technology for the default safari search experience, which is what I was referencing.
  • dyauspitr 11mo ago
    I think it should be Sabih. Having worked with him he has a great head on his shoulders.
  • ChrisMarshallNY 11mo ago
    I think we’ll be seeing a lot more, from Vision. The Liquid GlArse thing is because they want to make every app a Vision app. Don’t forget how unimpressive the iPhone was, when it was first introduced. It has probably become the most successful product in history.
    • linkage 11mo ago
      > Don’t forget how unimpressive the iPhone was, when it was first introduced We have very different recollections, then. People audibly gasped when Steve demoed slide-to-unlock on stage. The first generation was sold out for a long time despite being eye-wateringly expensive compared to competing devices like the BlackBerry.
      • ChrisMarshallNY 11mo ago
        > despite being eye-wateringly expensive compared to competing devices like the BlackBerry. That’s sort of what I meant. The people who poo-poohed it, were marketing folks at more traditional companies (like the one I worked for, at the time). They literally laughed themselves into the poorhouse. I watched that happen, right in front of my eyes.
    • xwowsersx 11mo ago
      How unimpressive the first iPhone was?? Yeah, totally... a full touchscreen computer in your pocket with no physical keyboard, pinch-to-zoom magic people thought was CGI, a browser that wasn't a joke, visual voicemail, and an OS so smooth it made every other phone look like it ran on car batteries. Truly underwhelming stuff. It literally redefined an entire industry, vaporized half the product lines at Nokia/BlackBerry/Palm/Microsoft, and set the blueprint for every smartphone that exists today. But sure..."unimpressive." This is the weirdest revisionist history I've ever heard. If you mean that the iPhone has come a long way and that it was unimpressive relative to the phones we have 18 years later, sure. But unimpressive it was not.
      • ChrisMarshallNY 11mo ago
  • creer 11mo ago
    As to succession, Cook is an operations maniac. Hopefully that carries to preparing and planning potential successors.
• comrade1234 11mo ago
  Word is the next CEO is going to be picked ala Charlie and the chocolate factory. I hope that when you bought your Miyake iPhone sock you kept the bone-white ticket naming you the next CEO.
  • PeaceTed 11mo ago
    Oh dear here comes lazy barnacle man Grandpa Joe. Watch them ignore rules of the EULA agreement and they are sucked into the factory ventilation shaft holding the new iPhone Lighter-than-Air.
• PedroBatista 11mo ago
  The type of guy Cook is, was the “best” and safe choice for a company like Apple on the trajectory it was. Now everyone is a multimillionaire on the bank but the culture inside is quite hollowed out. Good luck for the next guy, he’ll need all of it.
  • mmooss 11mo ago
    Why do you say the culture is hollowed out?
• vlark 11mo ago
  Bring back Woz.
  • usui 11mo ago
    How serious is this comment? As a thought experiment, this intrigues me. Imagine Steve Wozniak suddenly pops in as CEO. What might happen to the company in the following years?
    • amlib 11mo ago
      I would like to think it turns into VALVe
      • unpopularopp 11mo ago
        So more lootboxes and illegal underage gambling everywhere? Cool bring it on! Also I'd imagine a Valve like Apple would only release a new phone or laptop every 5 years or so lol
        • bigyabai 11mo ago
          Shit, I'd take it. Sideloading, custom OSes, less-wimpy legal chops against hackers... Valve could turn Apple around. A 5 year release cadence would incentivize the iPhone to change something more significant than just the price tag. And Proton would give me my first justification for a owning a powerful phone.
      • usui 11mo ago
        Valve is privately-owned with its BDFL owning over half of it. It has never gone through a leadership transition. It could relatively quickly go entirely bad after Gabe Newell is gone.
    • PaulCarrack 11mo ago
      I don't know if OP is serious, but more than once, his name has come up on this topic in discussions in the past that I've had with people in my social circle who work at Apple. He obviously gets much respect and is considered an engineer's engineer. I don't think anyone would be against Woz stepping into to revitalize Apple. The real question is whether Woz would do it.
• hackerbeat 11mo ago
  Only Craig Federighi can turn the ship around.
  • JKCalhoun 11mo ago
    Maybe. But Craig is the software guy, their tapping John Ternus suggests Apple knows their hardware is still what pays the bills.
  • bobbylarrybobby 11mo ago
    Federighi is in charge of software which is Apple’s weak spot right now; hardware has been firing on all cylinders for years now while software gets buggier and more confusing. I'm not sure how he could turn the ship around as CEO if he couldn't as head of software.
• ryandrake 11mo ago
  Cook's been great for massively scaling Apple (and its stock price) up, but the art, vision, and soul of the company is gone. It's just a stock price maximizing lawnmower now, just like every other corporate stock price maximizing lawnmower. If that's what shareholders want, fine, I guess. But I'd be bored just manufacturing the same boring rectangles every year. I think Steve would have been, too.
  • gyomu 11mo ago
    Steve wanted to become chairman of the board and teach at Stanford. Given how much he trusted Tim, I’m not so sure the company would have taken a dramatically different path had he been around longer.
    • ludwik 11mo ago
      But this sounds like an ideal setup, doesn't it? Tim is fantastic at execution, but he does need a shot of big-picture vision every now and then. Tim as CEO with Steve as Chairman, steering the broader direction, feels like it could have been a perfect pairing. The issue with how things actually turned out is that Tim ended up on his own - all execution, no vision.
      • gyomu 11mo ago
        How many people can name the chairman of the board at Apple today off the top of their head (Arthur Levinson)? And how much does Arthur Levinson steer the broader direction of the company? That's just not what the role is about. Steve was so effective precisely because he was able to get deeply involved in the day to day details in ways no other CEO has (whether on product matters, or personnel matters). That's not what you do as chairman of the board.
        • majormajor 11mo ago
          > How many people can name the chairman of the board at Apple today off the top of their head (Arthur Levinson)? And how much does Arthur Levinson steer the broader direction of the company? That's just not what the role is about. Jobs in that role would likely take a much more occasionally-active role w.r.t. future product direction since that was kind of his bread-and-butter and the company was his long-time passion project. Not because that's the regular purpose of that role, but because that's what he'd probably want to keep doing.
• cryptoboy2283 11mo ago
  He's cooked
• grumblingdev 11mo ago
  Yes!!! Such great news. Apple has really gone to shit. I am confronted by Apple performance and bug pain every hour of my life. I always think: how can someone think this is acceptable? Steve Jobs wouldn’t. Everything is such trash I could go on for hours. I realized a long time ago that if the person at the top doesn’t care then no one will. It seems hard to believe but it makes sense when you consider individual incentives, politics, and the complexity of software. Everyone wants a safe promotion and doesn’t want to take the risk to push things forwards. Apple Silicon seems great but the Intel MacBook was the worst piece of shit ever so they kind of had to. I have a 2019 that was the top of the line but can’t do anything without overheating. It’s barely usable for any second laptop tasks.
  • loloquwowndueo 11mo ago
    Wow such anger. > I am confronted by Apple performance and bug pain every hour of my life. Why do you keep buying Apple then?
    • UnreachableCode 11mo ago
      Is it at all possible he has an Intel Mac from 2018 that he hasn't been able to upgrade yet, likely due to insane cost? Because that's my thing
      • sokoloff 11mo ago
        I have an Intel MBP from that era. It’s showing its age, but still works well enough. If I was going to complain about the performance of an 7-8 year old laptop, I wouldn’t do it on a tech site for sure.
      • Klonoar 11mo ago
        The modern MacBook Air is the best deal in laptops today and will outperform your 2018 MB. It's also not insanely expensive.
      • grumblingdev 11mo ago
        This Intel is my secondary laptop - but give it any kind of non-cricial task and the fan is on max and its practically unusable. I have M3 Max now.
• gyomu 11mo ago
  I worked with John in the 2010s, brilliant guy, very human too. Couldn’t think of a single better person at the company.
  • wslh 11mo ago
    Would love to hear more about that beyond NDAs.
• jmcgough 11mo ago
  Tim Cook at Apple was like Steve Ballmer at Microsoft. They scaled the company and made stock owners happy, but weren't true visionaries. I suppose there's a need for both types of leaders.
  • paxys 11mo ago
    Microsoft's stock was flat for Ballmer's entire tenure. Investors were most definitely not happy, and that was the very reason he was forced out. Tim Cook meanwhile has grown the company 10x. It's an idiotic comparison.
    • missedthecue 11mo ago
      Somewhat unfair. Ballmer took over at the dotcom peak. They were trading at ~70x earnings on his first day as CEO. That's the only reason MSFT stock performance under his leadership was (from start day to retire day) flat. There is no CEO who would have been able to flout the dotcom bust and maintain a 70x PE ratio for 13 years. But under his tenure, he grew revenue at one of the worlds biggest companies by almost 4x, a 10% CAGR, and EPS also increased considerably. Also, he wasn't forced out, and the reason ValuAct was pushing for a board seat at the time was because Microsoft was falling behind in mobile and tablets. Around that time, Microsoft had taken a $900m writedown related to Surface RT. Meanwhile, Tim Cook took over in 2011 when Apple's P/E ratio was only 13 (today it's 36). He has also obviously been a skilled operator, but stock charts by themselves don't provide all context or tell the whole story.
      • xtracto 11mo ago
        Mhmm Longhorn, Zune, phone, Skype, bungie , among many other failures. I was there, as a kid of the 80s, Microsoft, Windows, Visual Basic, VStudio were EVERYTHING up until around 2003, they just dropped too many balls.
        • voidfunc 11mo ago
          It was botching Mobile that really did Balmer in and possibly not reacting quite quickly enough to the need for Enterprise-grade Cloud Computing while Amazon was bootstrapping AWS right in Microsoft's back yard. They got the cloud situation under control but losing Mobile to Apple and Google was a disaster and they're paying for it still.
• ProAm 11mo ago
  Long over due, he's done great but Apple needs fresh eyes. Apple's Ballmer era is over.
• paxys 11mo ago
  Appointing John Ternus is going to be a pretty clear indicator to investors that Apple plans on continuing its iterative hardware, supply chain and operations focus and isn't looking to shake things up from a product or vision standpoint. Which may be the best move for the company (this strategy has definitely worked wonders for the last decade and a half), but I can't help feel that among all the large tech companies Apple is the one most at risk of a major disruption. It might not come tomorrow or even in the next decade, but whenever the next shift in personal computing happens (maybe AI, maybe AR/VR, maybe something else entirely) they are going to be caught unprepared and unable to adapt in time.
  • JumpCrisscross 11mo ago
    > might not come tomorrow or even in the next decade …what company do you think is immune from disruption beyond the foreseeable future?
    • paxys 11mo ago
      No company is immune to disruption, but plenty of them have innovation and adaptation in their DNA. IMO over the years Apple has lost that. Look at Google, or Meta, or even Microsoft. Diversified income streams. Clutch acquisitions. Massive capital investments. Data centers. Nuclear power plants. Moonshot factories. Self driving cars. AR glasses. Robots. Venture investing and dealmaking. Massive AI ambitions. Stuff they try might not always work, and sometimes fail spectacularly, but they still do it. Apple meanwhile has been perfectly content depending on a single product and the monopolistic hold on the ecosystem of that product for basically 100% of its revenue for the past two decades.
      • matthewfcarlson 11mo ago
        I don’t think Google is a great example to hold up here. They throw so much random crap at a wall hoping for another golden goose. Then kill anything that isn’t after a few years. If you can’t tell, I’m still salty about Google domains. Many of the things you listed need time to bake and Google never cooks anything more than a quick sear in the pan.
• tastyface 11mo ago
  Tim Cook will be remembered as much for competently maintaining Apple’s course after Jobs’ passing as for flagrantly dismissing democratic regulation while cozying up to (and dining with; and giving golden statues to) authoritarian regimes. Thanks and good riddance.
  • xeonmc 11mo ago
    Symbolized by his flaccid flag-waving at the Miami F1 race.
• blaufast 11mo ago
  Almost every top comment is negative. This negativity about apple has existed since the 90s. Apple has been the most profitable example of betting against the herd for the last 20 years. And possibly the easiest if you’re willing to look at the world plainly. I’m glad to see the herd hasn’t changed and I have plenty of gains left.
  • beeflet 11mo ago
    betting against the nerd
• oojuliuso 11mo ago
  I think Cook left easy money on the table by not competing against NVIDIA. They could've tested the waters by loading up Apple Silicon on PCIe riser cards, maturing the toolkit for AI workloads, and selling them at competitive prices. Yes I know they're in the business of making entire widgets, but it would've been easy money. The hardware and software stacks are there. Unlimited upside with nearly zero downside risk.
  • chvid 11mo ago
    I don't know why this is getting downvoted. Apple for sure could make very capable hardware/software for cloud AI workloads - directly taking on NVIDIA.
  • ed_mercer 11mo ago
    It sure as hell would have been better than wasting time with touch bars and vision pros. Edit: dare I add apple watches
  • cedws 11mo ago
    Apple seems to be avoiding building server hardware for some reason. It seems like a big opportunity, besides AI, the power efficiency of their chips would surely be attractive for datacentres. I think momentum is building for moving away from x86.
    • bdangubic 11mo ago
      Given how hot my Mac is when I do anything they’d need Pacific Ocean to cool that data center :)
      • trenchpilgrim 11mo ago
        My Apple Sillicon macbooks are the coolest running computers I've had in decades. Something might be wrong with your cooling system.
        • bigyabai 11mo ago
• lapcat 11mo ago
  I believe that Apple is planning for succession, which of course they should, as an obvious responsibility to shareholders, especially given the health issues of the previous CEO Steve Jobs. However, I don't believe that Tim Cook is on his way out. I certainly don't believe that Cook wants to retire. It's not like he has a family to spend time with. Apple is his family. The final but crucial paragraph in the Financial Times story is a quote from Tim Cook talking about Apple: “I love it there and I can’t envision my life without being there so I’ll be there a while,” he told singer Dua Lipa on her podcast in November 2023. The story appears to have a lot of hedge words and mere speculation: "as soon as next year" (so how late could it be?), "no final decisions have been made" about Cook's successor, "The company is unlikely to name a new CEO before its next earnings report", "An annoucement early in the year would...", "the timing of any announcement could change" (not that there is any specific timing!). My impression is that the reporters don't have the faintest clue when or if Cook is leaving.
  • caycep 11mo ago
    He was realistic in that he thought he'd prob retire before hitting 70...
• mvkel 11mo ago
  Be careful what you wish for. Satya Nadella is by most accounts the best person to lead Microsoft, currently the largest software company in the world. "The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste," said Steve Jobs. That largely remains true. Jobs called the computer "a bicycle for the mind." It immediately evokes a sense of freedom, magic, and fun. Satya Nadella calls AI "a cognitive amplifier," which sounds like some kind of cool Excel formula. Without taste being reinjected into Apple, it will remain uninspired and uninspiring, no matter who leads.
  • bitpush 11mo ago
    One should not forget that Mr Cook was handpicked by Jobs himself. So if Apple is lacking taste or leadership, it is partly Jobs' own making
    • gjvc 11mo ago
      yes but he was desperate (dying) when he made the choice
      • akmarinov 11mo ago
        His dying was also part of his lack of taste, since he went with alternative medicine rather than actual medicine
        • prmph 11mo ago
          Is it not rather the opposite? His striving for unconventional "taste" (as opposed to boring convention) was probably a factor in him seeking "alternative" medicine.
        • sipjca 11mo ago
          in some sense i think it shows having taste. sometimes taste can be dangerous. you can only have a taste for say rock climbing equipment, by rock climbing, which exposes you to danger.
  • 11mo ago
• semiinfinitely 11mo ago
  Apple sock and intelligence wasn't good enough?
• OhioMan2943 11mo ago
  He was very much a businessman- not a visionary- running on the fumes of the Steves success. As a company they leant way too far into status and luxury in recent times and neglected the human centric/humanist design that made them successful in the first place. Genuinely and in the politest way possible good riddance I am not fond of his leadership- except for the enviornmental initiatives which have been more successful in their impact than many nation states.
• cc101 11mo ago
  Cook saved Job's Apple? Hardly. Every aspect of today's iPhone violates what Job's stood for. Craig Federighi began his tenure by advertising 200 new features for the new version of iOS. Shortly later he did the same for the Mac. Feature bloat has been Federighi's prime focus. My iPhone is so packed with irrelevancies that is hard to use.
  • aabhay 11mo ago
    Then switch devices. Oh but you might need to find an alternate solution for your iMessage groups. And your apple watch. And your family icloud plan. And the apple ebooks you bought. And your airpod maxes. And your protection plan. And the airtags you own. The apple of Steve Jobs is gone, but the apple of today is as sticky as ever.
    • Hackbraten 11mo ago
      I switched four years ago. Those proprietary periphery devices you mentioned? Lesson learned. There are more expensive life lessons than owning a useless Apple Watch.
• stego-tech 11mo ago
  He did good, but he’s never really had a clear vision for the ecosystem. Lots of little projects that claim to change the world, but never see momentum behind them to execute properly (Vision Pro, their Gaming push, Fitness+, expanding the iPhone lineup, etc), and has failed similarly on business execution (failing to buy or pay Masimo, half-hearted pivots to smart speakers and AI to appease shareholders). Liquid Glass is really the canary in the coal mine that he needs to hand the reins off to someone else. Here’s hoping whoever the new executives at Apple bring a clearer vision of what the future of computing should look like in an era where so many of its biggest proponents are so dissatisfied with the subscription and cloud-based hell of today. A return to control over your devices and software, built atop best-in-class hardware platforms. Spending more time uplifting developers and addressing grievances (like how everyone loathes Xcode), actually supporting initiatives with capital and talent alike (such as improving their gaming capabilities - like how the Gabe Cube aims to do), and disrupt the wider industry trends of needless changes for promotions (like UI shakeups for no real reason).
  • gjvc 11mo ago
    the $1000 monitor stand was the canary for me
  • michelb 11mo ago
    I think Cook did an awesome job taking the reins at Apple. I can understand Cook not being a 'product visionary' as Jobs was (although Jobs also delivered some real stinkers), don't forget some of the people below Cook are still fossils from the Jobs era. I have no insight in the Apple of today, but they seem spread incredibly thin and all products and services are suffering from it. They don't seem to have an overarching product strategy that will benefit users (does benefit shareholders though), but they're also not nimble to quickly shift gears to trends.
    • stego-tech 11mo ago
      Oh, don't mistake my "time for him to go" opinion with my opinion of his tenure as a whole. By the major measures, Cook has done a phenomenal job steering the company through its post-Jobs era, creating a lot of growth in the organization and making immensely successful pivots ahead of the market attitude (like its pivot to in-house hardware and away from Intel/Qualcomm). I have a myriad of critiques, sure, but even a layman like me acknowledges that he's done an A-level job running this juggernaut to its current peaks. I just think he can't steer/lead it through the tumultuous next decade, is all, and that a newer leader with a clearer vision is needed to run the show at this juncture.
• gjvc 11mo ago
  this is a disaster. who else will bring the vision for $1000 monitor stands?
• frankacter 11mo ago
  Apple aquires OpenAI, Sam Altman takes over for Tim Cook and brings Jony Ive back.
  • wtsnz 11mo ago
    the most entertaining outcome is the most likely..
  • Toine 11mo ago
    Then appoints the new SteveGPT model as Apple CEO?
  • d--b 11mo ago
    and they make the iOrb
  • jurip 11mo ago
    And we can again enjoy horrible keyboards and gold watches.
  • fireflash38 11mo ago
    Are you saying this like it's a good thing? Cause Altman is representative of everything wrong with SV.
• mfiguiere 11mo ago
  Bloomberg's Mark Gurman: > As I wrote a month ago, Apple is due for a major management shake-up and the spotlight is squarely on John Ternus as Tim Cook’s successor as CEO. But I don’t get the sense anything is imminent as the FT is claiming. https://twitter.com/markgurman/status/1989764365705515220 https://twitter.com/markgurman/status/1989764365705515220
• avazhi 11mo ago
  Good. I like Cook but he’s not what Apple needs, at least not now. Time to go back to somebody closer to Steve in terms of artistic vision and obsessive commitment to the customer experience.
• voidfunc 11mo ago
  Tim Cook was the right guy to run Apple after the death of Jobs. He is entirely the wrong guy to run Apple in the era of AI. The board must be wondering what Apple's AI strategy is and why they aren't pushing M-chips into the data center.
• vee-kay 11mo ago
  Does this mean finally that the next iPhone will not have that ugly notch at the top of its screen?
• ksec 11mo ago
  My Apple Wishlist. 1. Bring back Time Capsule and re-enter the Router market. 2. Work with American Express for Apple Card. There are plenty of Visa and Mastercard for every day common market. Go and dominate the premium section. 3. Apple Pay NFC using Felica offline payment and optimise the heck out of it for all transport, the fight back against QR Code as payment. 4. Bi-Yearly release on macOS. There is no need to have an OS release every year. Nor do I need an OS with so many feature. Last time I checked I could barely count 5 useful features on macOS in the past 10 years. 5. We need more optimisation on all OS, macOS, iOS etc. Computer doesn't feel snappier despite we have 10 - 100x more computer resources. I was hoping Vision OS, the need for VR and AR being latency sensitive would have helped but it doesn't seems that way. 6. 10 years later Safari is still the worst browser of all three, even Chrome haven managed to be memory efficiency and works in heavy tabs environment. I have less rendering problem with Firefox than Safari. It has been getting better especially with Safari 26 but it is still a long road to grind. The Safari team needs more resources. 7. Mac needs to grow its market share. Lower Upgrade pricing for Mac memory and NAND storage, and introduce Mac starting at $799 with edu price at $699. The Mac is making higher margin with Apple Silicon, and will do so even more when WiFi is made by Apple as well. Apple continue to be so focusing on higher margin they forgot about Market Share. 8. Separate the App Store into App and Game Store. Continue to charge your 30% on Games. And start freeing up your App Store Apps to lower percentage. I have been saying this for 12 years and counting. 9. Guarantee Loot box. As much as I want to get rid of this gambling loot box gaming. I dont think it is a realistic option. But Apple should enforce all percentage are guaranteed, i.e 0.01% of item will make its appearance in worst case at the 100th draw. I remember this was suggested a few years ago I am not sure if it is enforced. 10. Stop the whole UI Androidfication of iOS. If I want Android I would have brought one. Start making the iOS simpler. The Home Screen and searching for Apps after 20 years is a bag of hurt. 11. Swift, Swift UI, XCode. It seems doesn't matter whether you are a 300B company or 3 Trillion company they are still the same. 12. Can we bring back Key Travel. Before butterfly, which were great for key stability and less wobble, but key travel were too short along with reliability. Current scissors is only at 1mm while previous scissors were at 1.5mm. 13. Current track pad is way too large and bring false positive. We could either somehow make it zero false positive or we make the track pad a little smaller just like MacBook Pro Pre 2015. 14. If Apple Health connect all the data into one place, surely there could be Apple Finance where all my spending of Apple Pay Credit card can be grouped together for easier tracking?
• byyoung3 11mo ago
  To be fair, the iPhone, Mac, Airpods, M-series Chips, and Vision Pro are all the best products in their class. There's plenty of room for AI innovation, but Apple has never been a 'first entry' company, when they enter, it's with high quality.
• Simon_O_Rourke 11mo ago
  I presume he's moving on to some Trump appointed position.
• d--b 11mo ago
  God that iPocket backfired quickly
• aezizhu 11mo ago
  [dead]
• devadnani26 11mo ago
  weird
• rdm_blackhole 11mo ago
  I think Tim Cook deserves some praises from everything that's happened on the hardware side of things, even regarding the Vision pro. On the other hand I feel like the software side has been completely forgotten. Numerous bugs, weird crashes, and the infamous Liquid Glass update are really worrying signs. The fact that Siri is completely useless after 10+ years and can barely be trusted to set a timer correctly is completely unacceptable. I wish they would take a beat on the software and stop releasing new major OS updates every year but take their time to get things right even if that means that some years go without major updates. This is the first time since I bought my first MacBook Pro and Iphone that I am planning on holding off on installing the updates and I am even considering skipping MacOS Tahoe entirely. I just want things to be stable. A phone that works without major bugs, a MacBook that works without having to fiddle the dials or worry about some hidden incompatibilities. That is what Apple used to stand for. Nowadays not so much.
• klelatti 11mo ago
  Cook’s greatest achievement - Apple’s supply chain - has, as set out in the ‘Apple in China’ book [1], turned into Apple’s biggest risk and weakness. The next CEO won’t be worrying about Siri or Vision Pro; they’ll be trying to deal with Apple’s reliance on China. [1] https://open.substack.com/pub/thechipletter/p/apple-in-china https://open.substack.com/pub/thechipletter/p/apple-in-china
  • creer 11mo ago
    I sure hope Cook and teams have been actively working on this for a decade already. The book is interesting in showing both a lack of early awareness of this weakness, AND some people clearly noticing, AND Apple being very powerful and resourceful when it notices a problem.
• Razengan 11mo ago
  The real question we should all be worried about is what will happen to their promises of privacy? Does the public have any recourse if the post-Cook CEO wants to sell all our data to ads/spy companies? You know all the Apple Watches over the world must be a biometrics gold mine that any Dr. Frankenstein would be salivating over…
• nakamoto_damacy 11mo ago
  The perfect down-vote attractor: This is such a stupid and meaningless thing to discuss (whatever Cook's plans are), as he has no personality and no vision, and yet tons of reflective and philosophical comments in here.
• deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
• BirAdam 11mo ago
  Apple gets a lot of shade, but… I used Linux for about 25 years. With the rising cost of hardware, I bought an M4 Max MacStudio earlier this year as it was the best bang for the buck on CPU/GPU and the savings on those offset the extortionate pricing on RAM/SSD. You know what? Despite Liquid Glass being a bit of a downgrade recently, macOS is still good. Do I enjoy it as much as the old lampshade iMac or even 68030 Macintosh? No. Is it absolutely astounding compared to anything else available? Yes. It is. The ecosystem effects with my phone and AirPods is nice, but the computer alone is phenomenal. I completely understand why people get upset about certain things, but the Macintosh, the iPhone, and even the watch and headset are solid products. Not everyone is going to like them, and I’d be worried if everyone did; yet, I think Cook did okay. No one was ever going to be Steve Jobs, and given Steve’s failings, we should not want anyone to be Steve Jobs. His genius came at a severe cost to his family and to him personally. Apple is still producing solid products. They have warts, but that was true of every single product that Apple ever released. Nostalgia plays a huge part in making us think things have gotten worse. I have a Mac Classic II, a Performa, a PowerMac G3, an XT clone, and a Pentium machine that I use often… things are so much better now than before.
  • bigyabai 11mo ago
    > macOS is still good. > yet, I think Cook did okay. Kindly, I think your reality is being distorted. macOS could have gotten so good over the past 15 years; today, it's a pale imitation of Windows 8. It's got live tiles, radical acrylic accents, constant cloud service nags, and preinstalled advertisements everywhere across the system. OCSP won't let you launch certain apps unless your DRM API is online, for crying out loud! It is insulting. Tim Cook, in his wisdom, pivoted Apple harder into services. AppleTV, App Store, all the kinds of meaningless high-margin slop that can be created without direct competition. This has damaged macOS and iOS perennially, they are feature-poor operating systems when compared with desktop Windows and Android today. Can you imagine how much Apple would be worth if they didn't refuse to sign Nvidia compute drivers right now? Or how iOS would look with Vulkan 1.2 compliance and the Steam Deck's Proton stack? Apple is the #1 party holding Apple back, here! I daily drive Linux now, but the state of macOS is so ad-ridden and walled-off that I would rather do Linux development with WSL than bother setting up a Mac. It's that bad.
• emchammer 11mo ago
  It would be fantastic if Apple were to give Woz and Ive a mea culpa, bring them in again, and teach the next generations of engineers and designers. I mean for what Apple spent to license the third-party AI patchover.
• nikolay 11mo ago
  The sooner, the better!