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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

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 1y 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 1y 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 1y 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 1y 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.
    - isleyaardvark 1y ago
      Steve Jobs would not have been defined by or limited by his title.
      - blackqueeriroh 1y ago
        Steve Jobs was a dick and a monster and his product vision did not make him a good person or better for Apple over the long run.
- welks 1y ago
  If he hadn't tried to self-treat his cancer with acupuncture, fruit juice and herbs, he'd probably be around now to do that. The man was clearly a lucky idiot, and shouldn't be revered, but used as a cautionary tale of unbridled arrogance.
  - steve-atx-7600 1y ago
    A person should be judged by a stupid decision they made? I hope you never did anything that wasn't rational.
    - stickfigure 1y ago
      Stupid decisions that result in fatalities deserve extra judgement.
    - rootusrootus 1y ago
      Especially when it comes to life threatening illnesses like cancer. I've seen more than one entirely normal, rational person start grasping at off the wall solutions when faced with the imminent end of their life.
  - usui 1y ago
    Maybe watch this lecture by a medical professional https://youtu.be/81xnvgOlHaY https://youtu.be/81xnvgOlHaY before repeating a commonly-believed myth.
    - pgalvin 1y ago
      That lecture is by a doctor who had widely discredited views on cancer, often cited as an example of quack, pseudoscientific claims on the topic. His claims, specifically on cancer, were widely and roundly rejected by the scientific and medical community. This is not a controversial statement, either - his supporters proudly proclaim that his views are rejected by the vast majority of experts which, in my opinion, pretty much sums it up. I highly recommend people avoid falling into this dangerous rabbit hole.
  - 1y ago
- freediver 1y ago
  > Steve wanted to become chairman of the board and teach at Stanford. Do you have a source for this?
  - gyomu 1y ago
    I've heard it from Laurene on several occasions, she alludes to it in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdvzYtgmIjs&t=2825s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdvzYtgmIjs&t=2825s (in case the link goes down: Tim Cook, Sir Jony Ive KBE, and Laurene Powell Jobs, Code 2022 Interview with Kara Swisher)
    - freediver 1y ago
      Wonderful, thanks so much for taking time to link to this.
skywhopper 1y ago
They’re still not quite as bad as most alternatives but yeah, most of the principles that made them stand out are falling away.
tptacek 1y ago
I couldn't disagree more. Some of the worst Apple computers I've owned date to the Jobs era. All of the best have been from the Cook era. Apple Silicon has been an enormous success. (My first Apple was a TiBook, for what it's worth.)
- lbourdages 1y ago
  Well, the current hardware is solid - great build quality, powerful, insane battery life. However, software-wise, the peak was 10.6. There hasn't been the same level of quality ever since.
  - tptacek 1y ago
    I would not want to be running Snow Leopard. And remember, that's a release they had to do because 10.5 was so rough!
    - majormajor 1y ago
      Why not? Other than "because they're old"? Tiger and Snow Leopard in particular were very solid releases. Heck, the aluminum Macbooks from that era are still the foundation of Apple's laptop design. And they didn't have the butterfly keyboard fiasco! But this is a bit of a irrelevant distraction. Apple under Jobs wasn't loved for quality of hardware, it was loved for telling a better story of progress of personal computing. From the iMac "make it simpler by going back to basics, but future-looking basics" to "easier to manage, funner to use music players" through showing how smartphones and then tablets could be far more functional and usable than MS', Palm's, or Nokia's visions. The watch is the next best category-definer since then, and the iCloud cross-device stuff generally feels better-done than competitors still, but otherwise... refine, refine, refine, and slowly add more ads and upsells. Microsoft or anyone else could run that playbook, in a way that they never could match the Apple playbook from 1997 to 2011. (One side question here is "are there new segments out there waiting to be invented?" which I don't know the answer to. But even so, "becoming just another upsell-pushing, ad-driven, software-subscription-service provider" wasn't a necessary path.)
verelo 1y ago
You forget, the camera gets better every year! I've had an iphone for 15 years. I mean, it's fine...i just wish there was incentive for durability and sustainability v's replace it every 12-24 months. I guess sustainability concerns at Apple ends at ensuring their stock price is sustainable.
- harshalizee 1y ago
  What do you do with your phones that it doesn't last more than 24 months? I've had only two iPhones for almost 11 years. An iphone 6s and currently an iPhone 13 mini there entire time. They're solidly reliable
  - whiterock 1y ago
    Oh my, I have found my soulmate on hacker news <3
    - zippyman55 1y ago
      Its a threesome! (cringe) Yes, our iPhones really get pounded on and end up with so much street credibility as they look like they were shot with bullets but they keep working.
  - sothatsit 1y ago
    I was using an iPhone 7 up to this year when I got a new 17. The 7 just kept on trucking for a long time, even if the battery did suffer near the end.
  - bee_rider 1y ago
    I’ve had a 6+ and a 12. I guess 18 should be coming along soon, maybe it will be with an upgrade. But the 12 still feels… I dunno, really quite good. I’ve also had it in a case the whole time, if I opened a box and found this thing I don’t think I’d be unhappy. Other than the inevitable gunk that gets in the speakers and the charging hole, it could be new… I guess it is a race between battery health (80%) and update incompatibility, to see what will kill the thing.
manquer 1y ago
> that's what shareholders want What else could shareholders want? Employees, management, founders, customers, vendors could all have other goals, wants or desire but when you have a large number of shareholders that is what they want always. Shareholders - a large majority of them are institutional with their own shareholders they are accountable to, always want more money - that is a core principle of capitalism. Occasionally we can tie other objectives to financial gains to get a behave in a specific way, say a green initiative will improve the brand perception therefore brand value - because now they can charge more/ justify current pricing etc. It can at times align the other way too for risk minimization - a founder wants a large budget for something - like say Zuckerberg with Metaverse[3], or Musk with $1T pay [2] firing the founder is more expensive[1] so shareholders sign off. Fundamentally it always boils down to profit/value maximization for the shareholders. --- [1] By no means unique, except for the scale of money spent on a vanity project. [2] Firing is more expensive - Tesla trades at such crazy multiples those are arguably not viable without Musk. It is probably cheaper to give then $1T pay package or the similar $56b package from 2018 currently being disputed in court. [3] Almost impossible in Meta's case. The board can fire the CEO in any company, but since Zuckerberg owns > 50% of the voting shares, he as the majority shareholder can also fire the board anytime and replace with a board who will sign off. It is not absolute power though, there are some protections for minority shareholders as Delaware court is showing with 2018 Musk package case.
wahnfrieden 1y ago
Arguably he overshot innovation, tried to kill the pocket bricks and failed (with a v1 that wasn’t meant to replace the rectangles but was supposed to be a first step toward that). Sounds like you’re ignoring Vision Pro.
- hellcow 1y ago
  Vision Pro is a perfect example of a greed-driven failure. Apple pissed off both devs and megacorps by keeping the ecosystem closed, fighting tooth and nail in courts such that every app needed to pay them 30% and couldn't be installed without their blessing, and unsurprisingly very few massive companies (or hackers) wanted to support Apple's fledgling closed garden. Without software, it's just a gadget.
  - bitpush 1y ago
    > Apple pissed off both devs and megacorps by keeping the ecosystem closed This was so incredible to see play out in real time. You know where else this is happening now? Car makers and CarPlay. CarPlay might be objectively better but car makers are giving them the boot, for very good reason. Apple overplayed their hand (or as you say, was incredibly greedy) and now they get to live with the consequences.
    - pbh101 1y ago
      Tesla announced they are adding it this week. Ford’s CEO expressed glee at GM removing it. There isn’t a CarPlay App Store nor downloads to get 30% from (or if there were, they’d appreciably be enabled by Apple’s platform as we aren’t in the habit of subscribing to or buying apps for our car today), and while we don’t know the licensing terms from the GM removal it sounded like privacy violations and extra subscription revenue are their motivations for dropping CarPlay. That doesn’t sound consumer friendly on the carmakers part at all. I think this field doesn’t line up with the overall thesis, squint as we might.
      - bitpush 1y ago
caycep 1y ago
it's saying a lot about the industry in that even given the above, Apple still has way more art/vision/soul than any other tech company out there...
- grishka 1y ago
  In a company founded by a visionary, it takes a surprisingly long time to squander all the internal culture after that person's departure. I would assume the larger the company was at that moment, the longer it takes.
- Fricken 1y ago
  We can't keep ignoring those Chinese tech companies. The ones that have pivoted into EVs, autonomous vehicles, and humanoid robotics, amongst other things.
AceJohnny2 1y ago
Cook's Apple got you: - Apple Watch - Airpods (& Pro) & Beats - Apple Silicon - Vision Pro
- csomar 1y ago
  Vision Pro is underrated. The issue is that it’s not at a stage where it can go mainstream but the tech is insane. Apple silicon is huge and the only reason I am considering a macbook pro and waiting for the M5 max/pro series. I think people are underestimating cook because none of these replaced the iPhone and because of the significant degradation in Apple software.
- gcanyon 1y ago
  If the Vision Pro were $1000 I'd buy it without hesitation. At $1500 I'd eventually talk myself into it. At $3500 I'm just waiting.
  - crooked-v 1y ago
    It's a product category that will be really interesting in ten years (no sarcasm), when the hardware actually catches up in usability to the concept.
- ww520 1y ago
  Apple also invested heavily into EV. Though not succeeded, they at least put money into new areas.
  - chubs 1y ago
    Is it worth mentioning that there are almost countless Chinese EV brands nowadays? I wonder if Apple was really trying. I’m sure it’s difficult, of course, but it seems like every week there’s a new car manufacturer. To quote Clarkson ‘how hard could it be’ ;)
    - seanmcdirmid 1y ago
      Maybe they tried and didn’t find that they could be competitive with the hundreds of Chinese EV producers. The market was crowded, and they didn’t see what special value they could add? I mean, it’s already cliche that xiaomi decides to release one, but they released a heat pump as well, their stores in the mall are pretty confusing.
brailsafe 1y ago
Huge corporations are in the business of manufacturing boring things at scale, throwing money into pits, and moving slowly, it's just what they do, at least after they're initial rise. It seems cynical, but I think only a rare person at a rare company might disagree. As soon as you have dominance, you want to protect that dominance rather try something categorically industry changing. Even if you did, it wouldn't be surprising enough to get much attention unless what it was completely upended your own product line.
jwr 1y ago
Most importantly, it seems Cook doesn't love computers and doesn't use many (most?) of Apple products. It shows. Especially with Mac OS.
- Razengan 1y ago
  Does any CEO actually use their own company's products? The richest and most "powerful" people still have meat-based assistants do all their shit: Take their notes, check their calendars, make their appointments, toast their bread.. And it shows: This is how you get features like "Edge Light" and an Invites app before fixing basic functionality that the peasants rely upon. Like how we get the weird iOS Journal app even though Notes could have done all that if they had improved it a bit. Steve Jobs was probably one of the few people in charge who actually used his company's own products. You need someone who's annoyed with the status quo enough to make a company to solve it, not just someone elected by a board.
  - lacy_tinpot 1y ago
    That's literally not true though??? I don't know how you even come to that kind of conclusion at all actually.
    - Razengan 1y ago
      > I don't know how you even come to that kind of conclusion at all actually. Because most products, including iOS/macOS now, have glaring annoyances or shortcomings that have gone unfixed for a long time. If Tim Cook or even Craig Federighi etc. actually used iOS/macOS in their day to day lives, they would have run into those issues sooner or later and they'd be fixed in a day. (Hyperbole is a thing but the point stands)
      - lacy_tinpot 1y ago
        > Does any CEO Plenty of CEOs do. The comment you replied to already questioned Tim Cook's usage of Apple products. Most Apple executives are probably using a Mac. Most engineers at Apple probably code on a Mac. Most engineers in the Bay already use Macs and have been using them for many years.
jaredklewis 1y ago
Not as a shareholder, but as a customer and user I’m very ok if they just focus on making those rectangles. Makes no difference to me if Apple does the new “innovative” products or if some other company does it. But if Apple starts getting “visions” and those interfere with the iOS and macOS experience that I have and like now, I’ll be annoyed. I like my MacBook, AirPods, and iPhone how they are now. If they don’t screw these up, great. Anything else is gravy. I feel your comment subtly implies that if Apple doesn’t start making a self driving car or LLM Siri or robot dog walker or whatever then it’s “boring,” but I strongly feel there is (for all intents and purposes) limitless engineering that could go into refining and gradually expanding their existing ecosystem of products and these efforts would be quite interesting in their own right. During Cook’s time at the helm, Apple has made major product improvements that greatly improved their value to me including AFS, arm laptop processors, Secure Enclave, camera improvements, and many others.
- yieldcrv 1y ago
  whew that visions is a triple entedre, way to go
- lamontcg 1y ago
  > But if Apple starts getting “visions” [...] I fear it is going to start getting visions of monetization and injecting advertisement and tracking into everything. I don't see where the growth is coming from unless they start trying to squeeze what they've got entirely dry.
- wilg 1y ago
  The problem is Apple’s software quality is the worst it’s ever been while the hardware is the best it’s ever been.
  - 01100011 1y ago
    I've been talking about switching to iOS from Android for over a decade. When Google finally pissed me off enough to get serious last year I just happened to buy my mom an ipad and perform the setup. Bad experience. Then helping my wife with her iphone cemented it: no way. I thought apple would be perfectly polished albeit a little restricted vs android but it was just as janky except in different ways.
mountainriver 1y ago
Mostly fair, but I can’t express how much I love the M series and where it’s heading. I’m biased as an MLE but this is the greatest thing ever to me
rapatel0 1y ago
Yeah. all you have to do is look at "Apple (lack of) Intelligence" to know that Steve's presence and taste is gone. User: "Siri, <insert question>" Siri: "I cannot answer that right now" <end conversation> User: <follow up question, but then user realizes that siri has ended the conversation, so they prefix again with Hey Siri> please ask chatgpt < insert question> Siri: "Hello, sure I can ask ChatGPT · Check important info for mistakes" ChatGPT: "Hello, how can i help you today" User: <insert question> ChatGPT: Answers question and siri terminates conversation User: <asks follow up question, but then user realizes that siri has ended the conversation, user then goes to settings and disables apple intelligence> Egregious...
overgard 1y ago
I dunno, the stuff they have now doesn't really need a lot of innovation. Like, my MacBook isn't very different from the one I bought in 2013 (other than massive performance improvements of course), but I don't really need it to be anything other than what it is. Same with my iPhone. I'll probably only replace that when the battery life gets bad. Most of the "innovations" on those lines have been annoying (touch bar, apple AI, etc.) In contrast, Microsoft has innovated a lot on the desktop since Windows 7 and I hate almost all of it. I'd happily go back to the old experiences.
LarsDu88 1y ago
They shipped AirPods and the Apple Watch during his tenure. And the ahem, Vision Pro. The M-series chips are probably the biggest win for Apple in the past 15 years. There hasn't been lack of category killers during his stint. If anything they are running out of places on the human body where you can stick a small computer. Surely the next CEO will hopefully not ruin the company and brand by cramming ads into everything.
- simonklitj 1y ago
  > … cramming ads into everything We don’t even have to wait for a new CEO for that! https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/26/ads-might-be-coming-to-apple-maps-next-year/ https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/26/ads-might-be-coming-to-app...
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- squigz 1y ago
  > If anything they are running out of places on the human body where you can stick a small computer. Well when the exterior is full, it's time to look inside!
  - simonh 1y ago
    We call it the Gonad Touch, and we think you’re going to love it. Apparently the name iBalls was considered, but just well it was rejected. The Gonad Pocket accessory is on hold pending litigation by Borat over his Mankini patents.
- pqtyw 1y ago
  > The M-series chips are probably the biggest win for Apple in the past 15 years. In a way yes. But from a business perspective there was a significant spike in Mac sales in 2021-2022. It has mostly levelled off and not that massively above what it was back in the Intel days. They probably also inadvertently increased the upgrade cycle too since there is no longer that much point to upgrade more frequently than every 4-5 years for most people. As proportion of Apple's total revenue Mac is actually lower than what it was back in 2015. Even lower than iPad revenue last quarter (which peaked ~2012 for that matter). And well.. as great as the M series is they are pretty much just a scaled up A series chips. IIRC my iPhone was already technically faster than my i7 Macbook back in ~2018.
jstummbillig 1y ago
The best Apple products that I have bought werde made in the Cook area. The M* MacBooks changed the game in terms of overall package. It's hard to overstate how much better I think they are than what was around during Jobs times and the gap has been closing only very slowly. Whatever he facilitated, it worked for me. Execution matters.
kakwa_ 1y ago
I think Apple has kind of a culture problem where the whole organization has to look-up way too much to its chief to make key decisions. This could have worked in Jobs times, because of the personality & vision of the latter, plus a rapidly evolving market. But this was no longer possible once the dust settled, specially with a logistician/beam counter like Tim Cook. Every bet he made was an abject failure, from the Apple Car to the Vision Pro. His only success was the M series macs, a really good but by no mean revolutionary step-up on a now minority segments of Apple's main market (i.e. internet terminals). Even the chaos relating to Apple's AI efforts seems to clearly indicate a clear lack of leadership and vision. For me, he will probably be remembered like Apple's Steve Ballmer. But even with a Nadela-like replacement, Apple needs probably a good hard look at itself and its internal culture.
- deleted 1y ago
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bmitc 1y ago
People blame Cook, and I do too. But for some reason Jony Ive never gets his discredit. He is the one who kicked off the boring rectangle, and it's clear he does not have the capacity to deviate from that. His industrial design was frankly terrible and people have lapped it up. Ever since the iPod, I can't think of an industrial design of Apple's or Ive's that was actually any good. Even today, compare an iPhone to an Xperia. The Xperia is bounds ahead of the iPhone.

gyomu 1y 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 1y 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 1y 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 1y 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.
  - isleyaardvark 1y ago
    Steve Jobs would not have been defined by or limited by his title.
    - blackqueeriroh 1y ago
      Steve Jobs was a dick and a monster and his product vision did not make him a good person or better for Apple over the long run.
welks 1y ago
If he hadn't tried to self-treat his cancer with acupuncture, fruit juice and herbs, he'd probably be around now to do that. The man was clearly a lucky idiot, and shouldn't be revered, but used as a cautionary tale of unbridled arrogance.
- steve-atx-7600 1y ago
  A person should be judged by a stupid decision they made? I hope you never did anything that wasn't rational.
  - stickfigure 1y ago
    Stupid decisions that result in fatalities deserve extra judgement.
  - rootusrootus 1y ago
    Especially when it comes to life threatening illnesses like cancer. I've seen more than one entirely normal, rational person start grasping at off the wall solutions when faced with the imminent end of their life.
- usui 1y ago
  Maybe watch this lecture by a medical professional https://youtu.be/81xnvgOlHaY https://youtu.be/81xnvgOlHaY before repeating a commonly-believed myth.
  - pgalvin 1y ago
    That lecture is by a doctor who had widely discredited views on cancer, often cited as an example of quack, pseudoscientific claims on the topic. His claims, specifically on cancer, were widely and roundly rejected by the scientific and medical community. This is not a controversial statement, either - his supporters proudly proclaim that his views are rejected by the vast majority of experts which, in my opinion, pretty much sums it up. I highly recommend people avoid falling into this dangerous rabbit hole.
- 1y ago
freediver 1y ago
> Steve wanted to become chairman of the board and teach at Stanford. Do you have a source for this?
- gyomu 1y ago
  I've heard it from Laurene on several occasions, she alludes to it in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdvzYtgmIjs&t=2825s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdvzYtgmIjs&t=2825s (in case the link goes down: Tim Cook, Sir Jony Ive KBE, and Laurene Powell Jobs, Code 2022 Interview with Kara Swisher)
  - freediver 1y ago
    Wonderful, thanks so much for taking time to link to this.

skywhopper 1y ago

They’re still not quite as bad as most alternatives but yeah, most of the principles that made them stand out are falling away.

tptacek 1y ago

I couldn't disagree more. Some of the worst Apple computers I've owned date to the Jobs era. All of the best have been from the Cook era. Apple Silicon has been an enormous success. (My first Apple was a TiBook, for what it's worth.)

lbourdages 1y ago
Well, the current hardware is solid - great build quality, powerful, insane battery life. However, software-wise, the peak was 10.6. There hasn't been the same level of quality ever since.
- tptacek 1y ago
  I would not want to be running Snow Leopard. And remember, that's a release they had to do because 10.5 was so rough!
  - majormajor 1y ago
    Why not? Other than "because they're old"? Tiger and Snow Leopard in particular were very solid releases. Heck, the aluminum Macbooks from that era are still the foundation of Apple's laptop design. And they didn't have the butterfly keyboard fiasco! But this is a bit of a irrelevant distraction. Apple under Jobs wasn't loved for quality of hardware, it was loved for telling a better story of progress of personal computing. From the iMac "make it simpler by going back to basics, but future-looking basics" to "easier to manage, funner to use music players" through showing how smartphones and then tablets could be far more functional and usable than MS', Palm's, or Nokia's visions. The watch is the next best category-definer since then, and the iCloud cross-device stuff generally feels better-done than competitors still, but otherwise... refine, refine, refine, and slowly add more ads and upsells. Microsoft or anyone else could run that playbook, in a way that they never could match the Apple playbook from 1997 to 2011. (One side question here is "are there new segments out there waiting to be invented?" which I don't know the answer to. But even so, "becoming just another upsell-pushing, ad-driven, software-subscription-service provider" wasn't a necessary path.)

verelo 1y ago

You forget, the camera gets better every year! I've had an iphone for 15 years. I mean, it's fine...i just wish there was incentive for durability and sustainability v's replace it every 12-24 months. I guess sustainability concerns at Apple ends at ensuring their stock price is sustainable.

harshalizee 1y ago
What do you do with your phones that it doesn't last more than 24 months? I've had only two iPhones for almost 11 years. An iphone 6s and currently an iPhone 13 mini there entire time. They're solidly reliable
- whiterock 1y ago
  Oh my, I have found my soulmate on hacker news <3
  - zippyman55 1y ago
    Its a threesome! (cringe) Yes, our iPhones really get pounded on and end up with so much street credibility as they look like they were shot with bullets but they keep working.
- sothatsit 1y ago
  I was using an iPhone 7 up to this year when I got a new 17. The 7 just kept on trucking for a long time, even if the battery did suffer near the end.
- bee_rider 1y ago
  I’ve had a 6+ and a 12. I guess 18 should be coming along soon, maybe it will be with an upgrade. But the 12 still feels… I dunno, really quite good. I’ve also had it in a case the whole time, if I opened a box and found this thing I don’t think I’d be unhappy. Other than the inevitable gunk that gets in the speakers and the charging hole, it could be new… I guess it is a race between battery health (80%) and update incompatibility, to see what will kill the thing.

manquer 1y ago

> that's what shareholders want What else could shareholders want? Employees, management, founders, customers, vendors could all have other goals, wants or desire but when you have a large number of shareholders that is what they want always. Shareholders - a large majority of them are institutional with their own shareholders they are accountable to, always want more money - that is a core principle of capitalism. Occasionally we can tie other objectives to financial gains to get a behave in a specific way, say a green initiative will improve the brand perception therefore brand value - because now they can charge more/ justify current pricing etc. It can at times align the other way too for risk minimization - a founder wants a large budget for something - like say Zuckerberg with Metaverse[3], or Musk with $1T pay [2] firing the founder is more expensive[1] so shareholders sign off. Fundamentally it always boils down to profit/value maximization for the shareholders. --- [1] By no means unique, except for the scale of money spent on a vanity project. [2] Firing is more expensive - Tesla trades at such crazy multiples those are arguably not viable without Musk. It is probably cheaper to give then $1T pay package or the similar $56b package from 2018 currently being disputed in court. [3] Almost impossible in Meta's case. The board can fire the CEO in any company, but since Zuckerberg owns > 50% of the voting shares, he as the majority shareholder can also fire the board anytime and replace with a board who will sign off. It is not absolute power though, there are some protections for minority shareholders as Delaware court is showing with 2018 Musk package case.

wahnfrieden 1y ago

Arguably he overshot innovation, tried to kill the pocket bricks and failed (with a v1 that wasn’t meant to replace the rectangles but was supposed to be a first step toward that). Sounds like you’re ignoring Vision Pro.

hellcow 1y ago
Vision Pro is a perfect example of a greed-driven failure. Apple pissed off both devs and megacorps by keeping the ecosystem closed, fighting tooth and nail in courts such that every app needed to pay them 30% and couldn't be installed without their blessing, and unsurprisingly very few massive companies (or hackers) wanted to support Apple's fledgling closed garden. Without software, it's just a gadget.
- bitpush 1y ago
  > Apple pissed off both devs and megacorps by keeping the ecosystem closed This was so incredible to see play out in real time. You know where else this is happening now? Car makers and CarPlay. CarPlay might be objectively better but car makers are giving them the boot, for very good reason. Apple overplayed their hand (or as you say, was incredibly greedy) and now they get to live with the consequences.
  - pbh101 1y ago
    Tesla announced they are adding it this week. Ford’s CEO expressed glee at GM removing it. There isn’t a CarPlay App Store nor downloads to get 30% from (or if there were, they’d appreciably be enabled by Apple’s platform as we aren’t in the habit of subscribing to or buying apps for our car today), and while we don’t know the licensing terms from the GM removal it sounded like privacy violations and extra subscription revenue are their motivations for dropping CarPlay. That doesn’t sound consumer friendly on the carmakers part at all. I think this field doesn’t line up with the overall thesis, squint as we might.
    - bitpush 1y ago

caycep 1y ago

it's saying a lot about the industry in that even given the above, Apple still has way more art/vision/soul than any other tech company out there...

grishka 1y ago
In a company founded by a visionary, it takes a surprisingly long time to squander all the internal culture after that person's departure. I would assume the larger the company was at that moment, the longer it takes.
Fricken 1y ago
We can't keep ignoring those Chinese tech companies. The ones that have pivoted into EVs, autonomous vehicles, and humanoid robotics, amongst other things.

AceJohnny2 1y ago

Cook's Apple got you: - Apple Watch - Airpods (& Pro) & Beats - Apple Silicon - Vision Pro

csomar 1y ago
Vision Pro is underrated. The issue is that it’s not at a stage where it can go mainstream but the tech is insane. Apple silicon is huge and the only reason I am considering a macbook pro and waiting for the M5 max/pro series. I think people are underestimating cook because none of these replaced the iPhone and because of the significant degradation in Apple software.
gcanyon 1y ago
If the Vision Pro were $1000 I'd buy it without hesitation. At $1500 I'd eventually talk myself into it. At $3500 I'm just waiting.
- crooked-v 1y ago
  It's a product category that will be really interesting in ten years (no sarcasm), when the hardware actually catches up in usability to the concept.
ww520 1y ago
Apple also invested heavily into EV. Though not succeeded, they at least put money into new areas.
- chubs 1y ago
  Is it worth mentioning that there are almost countless Chinese EV brands nowadays? I wonder if Apple was really trying. I’m sure it’s difficult, of course, but it seems like every week there’s a new car manufacturer. To quote Clarkson ‘how hard could it be’ ;)
  - seanmcdirmid 1y ago
    Maybe they tried and didn’t find that they could be competitive with the hundreds of Chinese EV producers. The market was crowded, and they didn’t see what special value they could add? I mean, it’s already cliche that xiaomi decides to release one, but they released a heat pump as well, their stores in the mall are pretty confusing.

brailsafe 1y ago

Huge corporations are in the business of manufacturing boring things at scale, throwing money into pits, and moving slowly, it's just what they do, at least after they're initial rise. It seems cynical, but I think only a rare person at a rare company might disagree. As soon as you have dominance, you want to protect that dominance rather try something categorically industry changing. Even if you did, it wouldn't be surprising enough to get much attention unless what it was completely upended your own product line.

jwr 1y ago

Most importantly, it seems Cook doesn't love computers and doesn't use many (most?) of Apple products. It shows. Especially with Mac OS.

Razengan 1y ago
Does any CEO actually use their own company's products? The richest and most "powerful" people still have meat-based assistants do all their shit: Take their notes, check their calendars, make their appointments, toast their bread.. And it shows: This is how you get features like "Edge Light" and an Invites app before fixing basic functionality that the peasants rely upon. Like how we get the weird iOS Journal app even though Notes could have done all that if they had improved it a bit. Steve Jobs was probably one of the few people in charge who actually used his company's own products. You need someone who's annoyed with the status quo enough to make a company to solve it, not just someone elected by a board.
- lacy_tinpot 1y ago
  That's literally not true though??? I don't know how you even come to that kind of conclusion at all actually.
  - Razengan 1y ago
    > I don't know how you even come to that kind of conclusion at all actually. Because most products, including iOS/macOS now, have glaring annoyances or shortcomings that have gone unfixed for a long time. If Tim Cook or even Craig Federighi etc. actually used iOS/macOS in their day to day lives, they would have run into those issues sooner or later and they'd be fixed in a day. (Hyperbole is a thing but the point stands)
    - lacy_tinpot 1y ago
      > Does any CEO Plenty of CEOs do. The comment you replied to already questioned Tim Cook's usage of Apple products. Most Apple executives are probably using a Mac. Most engineers at Apple probably code on a Mac. Most engineers in the Bay already use Macs and have been using them for many years.

jaredklewis 1y ago

Not as a shareholder, but as a customer and user I’m very ok if they just focus on making those rectangles. Makes no difference to me if Apple does the new “innovative” products or if some other company does it. But if Apple starts getting “visions” and those interfere with the iOS and macOS experience that I have and like now, I’ll be annoyed. I like my MacBook, AirPods, and iPhone how they are now. If they don’t screw these up, great. Anything else is gravy. I feel your comment subtly implies that if Apple doesn’t start making a self driving car or LLM Siri or robot dog walker or whatever then it’s “boring,” but I strongly feel there is (for all intents and purposes) limitless engineering that could go into refining and gradually expanding their existing ecosystem of products and these efforts would be quite interesting in their own right. During Cook’s time at the helm, Apple has made major product improvements that greatly improved their value to me including AFS, arm laptop processors, Secure Enclave, camera improvements, and many others.

yieldcrv 1y ago
whew that visions is a triple entedre, way to go
lamontcg 1y ago
> But if Apple starts getting “visions” [...] I fear it is going to start getting visions of monetization and injecting advertisement and tracking into everything. I don't see where the growth is coming from unless they start trying to squeeze what they've got entirely dry.
wilg 1y ago
The problem is Apple’s software quality is the worst it’s ever been while the hardware is the best it’s ever been.
- 01100011 1y ago
  I've been talking about switching to iOS from Android for over a decade. When Google finally pissed me off enough to get serious last year I just happened to buy my mom an ipad and perform the setup. Bad experience. Then helping my wife with her iphone cemented it: no way. I thought apple would be perfectly polished albeit a little restricted vs android but it was just as janky except in different ways.

mountainriver 1y ago

Mostly fair, but I can’t express how much I love the M series and where it’s heading. I’m biased as an MLE but this is the greatest thing ever to me

rapatel0 1y ago

Yeah. all you have to do is look at "Apple (lack of) Intelligence" to know that Steve's presence and taste is gone. User: "Siri, <insert question>" Siri: "I cannot answer that right now" <end conversation> User: <follow up question, but then user realizes that siri has ended the conversation, so they prefix again with Hey Siri> please ask chatgpt < insert question> Siri: "Hello, sure I can ask ChatGPT · Check important info for mistakes" ChatGPT: "Hello, how can i help you today" User: <insert question> ChatGPT: Answers question and siri terminates conversation User: <asks follow up question, but then user realizes that siri has ended the conversation, user then goes to settings and disables apple intelligence> Egregious...

overgard 1y ago

I dunno, the stuff they have now doesn't really need a lot of innovation. Like, my MacBook isn't very different from the one I bought in 2013 (other than massive performance improvements of course), but I don't really need it to be anything other than what it is. Same with my iPhone. I'll probably only replace that when the battery life gets bad. Most of the "innovations" on those lines have been annoying (touch bar, apple AI, etc.) In contrast, Microsoft has innovated a lot on the desktop since Windows 7 and I hate almost all of it. I'd happily go back to the old experiences.

LarsDu88 1y ago

They shipped AirPods and the Apple Watch during his tenure. And the ahem, Vision Pro. The M-series chips are probably the biggest win for Apple in the past 15 years. There hasn't been lack of category killers during his stint. If anything they are running out of places on the human body where you can stick a small computer. Surely the next CEO will hopefully not ruin the company and brand by cramming ads into everything.

simonklitj 1y ago
> … cramming ads into everything We don’t even have to wait for a new CEO for that! https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/26/ads-might-be-coming-to-apple-maps-next-year/ https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/26/ads-might-be-coming-to-app...
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squigz 1y ago
> If anything they are running out of places on the human body where you can stick a small computer. Well when the exterior is full, it's time to look inside!
- simonh 1y ago
  We call it the Gonad Touch, and we think you’re going to love it. Apparently the name iBalls was considered, but just well it was rejected. The Gonad Pocket accessory is on hold pending litigation by Borat over his Mankini patents.
pqtyw 1y ago
> The M-series chips are probably the biggest win for Apple in the past 15 years. In a way yes. But from a business perspective there was a significant spike in Mac sales in 2021-2022. It has mostly levelled off and not that massively above what it was back in the Intel days. They probably also inadvertently increased the upgrade cycle too since there is no longer that much point to upgrade more frequently than every 4-5 years for most people. As proportion of Apple's total revenue Mac is actually lower than what it was back in 2015. Even lower than iPad revenue last quarter (which peaked ~2012 for that matter). And well.. as great as the M series is they are pretty much just a scaled up A series chips. IIRC my iPhone was already technically faster than my i7 Macbook back in ~2018.

jstummbillig 1y ago

The best Apple products that I have bought werde made in the Cook area. The M* MacBooks changed the game in terms of overall package. It's hard to overstate how much better I think they are than what was around during Jobs times and the gap has been closing only very slowly. Whatever he facilitated, it worked for me. Execution matters.

kakwa_ 1y ago

I think Apple has kind of a culture problem where the whole organization has to look-up way too much to its chief to make key decisions. This could have worked in Jobs times, because of the personality & vision of the latter, plus a rapidly evolving market. But this was no longer possible once the dust settled, specially with a logistician/beam counter like Tim Cook. Every bet he made was an abject failure, from the Apple Car to the Vision Pro. His only success was the M series macs, a really good but by no mean revolutionary step-up on a now minority segments of Apple's main market (i.e. internet terminals). Even the chaos relating to Apple's AI efforts seems to clearly indicate a clear lack of leadership and vision. For me, he will probably be remembered like Apple's Steve Ballmer. But even with a Nadela-like replacement, Apple needs probably a good hard look at itself and its internal culture.

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bmitc 1y ago

People blame Cook, and I do too. But for some reason Jony Ive never gets his discredit. He is the one who kicked off the boring rectangle, and it's clear he does not have the capacity to deviate from that. His industrial design was frankly terrible and people have lapped it up. Ever since the iPod, I can't think of an industrial design of Apple's or Ive's that was actually any good. Even today, compare an iPhone to an Xperia. The Xperia is bounds ahead of the iPhone.