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

https://9to5mac.com/2025/11/14/tim-cook-step-down-as-apple-ceo-as-soon-as-next-year-report/

by achow • 8 months ago

211 437 8 months ago

bnchrch• 8 months 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• 8 months ago

With the right visionary, $2k phones and $500 textile cases will not be impossible...

wtallis• 8 months 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.

epolanski2• 8 months 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• 8 months ago

MacBooks outclass any other laptop in the market thanks to those chips.

wk_end• 8 months 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.

victorbjorklund• 8 months 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)

JKCalhoun3• 8 months 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.)

827a2• 8 months 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• 8 months ago

What incentive do they have otherwise?

rhubarbtree• 8 months ago

Wait, Apple Pay Google for search?

alberth• 8 months ago

Ternus team didn’t create M-series.

Johny Srouji team did instead.

https://www.apple.com/leadership/johny-srouji/

https://www.apple.com/leadership/john-ternus/

Mistletoe• 8 months ago

Their Siri sucks so they just borrowed Google Gemini.

ianburrell2• 8 months ago

Very few tech companies make the whole stack. Making chips requires specialization and is required for high end chips. Samsung is probably the only company that makes chips for their own phones.

dyauspitr• 8 months ago

I think it should be Sabih. Having worked with him he has a great head on his shoulders.

ChrisMarshallNY4• 8 months 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• 8 months 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.

xwowsersx• 8 months 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.

aprilthird20214• 8 months ago

Comparing the Vision Pro customer response and iPhone customer response is laughable, imo

matwood6• 8 months ago

The VP is cool, but it's still hard to see a future where everyone has one. As soon as I got my original iPhone it was clear that it changed everything going forward. The entire market changed on the spot. The VP has not done that, even if it may ultimately be successful.

creer5• 8 months ago

As to succession, Cook is an operations maniac. Hopefully that carries to preparing and planning potential successors.

comrade1234• 8 months 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.

PeaceTed5• 8 months 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• 8 months 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• 8 months ago

Why do you say the culture is hollowed out?

vlark• 8 months ago

Bring back Woz.

usui3• 8 months 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• 8 months ago

I would like to think it turns into VALVe

PaulCarrack• 8 months 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.

lysace• 8 months ago

I fear he lost that extreme edge in that plane crash.

TheOtherHobbes• 8 months ago

I doubt Woz would want the job. He's an engineer, not a corporate strategist, and he seems happy that way.

The ideal CEO would be a business strategist, innovator and thought-leader, and world-class marketer, but with enough of an engineering background to chase hard problems.

There aren't many of those around.

Jobs did okay at all four, mostly. Cook gets the first, mostly, and has adequate delegation skills for engineering and marketing. This works superbly when the engineering is world-leading (the M chips) and badly when the engineering is mediocre (the software.) The marketing has drifted towards attempts at luxury-consumer branding, which is an off-the-shelf pitch. It hasn't been a failure. But it has lost some of its distinctiveness, and it's a little incoherent at times.

Cook's still been hugely more successful than Sculley or Amelio. Sculley was a bland corporatist, and Amelio was very, very smart, but too much of an engineer to be good at the rest. He did really well elsewhere, but Apple just wasn't a good fit.

The job is a poisoned chalice. It's going to be extremely difficult for the new CEO to assert their authority over the established fiefdoms, keep the plates spinning, deal with a weird political and economic environment, and still create Apple-styled innovation.

amelius• 8 months ago

With Woz:

- Apple M-series CPUs become fully documented

- iOS is ditched. iPhones and MacBooks now run the same OS

- no developer fees

- fixed price to have an app in the App store

- App store and content filters become orthogonal. Anyone can start an app store. Anyone can make content filters.

- Apple starts releasing stuff for the maker-community such as Apple 3D printers

PeaceTed5• 8 months ago

Brace yourself for Wozstock 26

hackerbeat• 8 months ago

Only Craig Federighi can turn the ship around.

JKCalhoun3• 8 months ago

Maybe. But Craig is the software guy, their tapping John Ternus suggests Apple knows their hardware is still what pays the bills.

bobbylarrybobby2• 8 months 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• 8 months 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.

gyomu4• 8 months 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• 8 months 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.

welks• 8 months 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.

freediver3• 8 months ago

Steve wanted to become chairman of the board and teach at Stanford.

Do you have a source for this?

skywhopper• 8 months 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.

tptacek6• 8 months 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• 8 months 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.

steve-atx-76002• 8 months ago

What was different in the jobs era were the goals and trajectory toward achieving them. The tibook was just a first step.

coolestguy• 8 months ago

The guy who oversaw the silicon change is the one who's likely going to be the next CEO

throw_m239339• 8 months ago

Well Jobs obviously took risks, way more than Cook ever did. But Yes, Silicon was absolutely the right move, incredible performance leap, at an accessible price (but one could argue it's more of a failure from Intel). Now from a "culture re-definition" perspective, nothing is going to top what Apple did in the 80's and what they did again in the 2000's with the iPhone.

ardit33• 8 months ago

Apple Silicon was started by/during the Steve Jobs era in 2010. You seeing the rewards now (well starting in 2019), because it takes so long to produce a chip.

musicale4• 8 months ago

The TiBook was a milestone product and a great Jony Ive-led design. Apple has been making silver, thin, metal laptops ever since. Even a titanium iPhone for some reason. The last Titanium model with 1GHz, 1GB RAM, gigabit Ethernet, DVI, Firewire, DVD/CD-RW, 64MB Radeon 9000, etc. seems pretty great and could run both Mac OS 9 and OS X. And that glowing Apple logo on the back of the display (which I miss in modern Mac laptops.) The main defects (apparently fixed in later models) seem to be the weak hinge and display cables.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerBook_G4

gizajob2• 8 months ago

Sorry, Touch Bar MacBook Pros were the pits.

verelo2• 8 months 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• 8 months 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

Gigachad3• 8 months ago

In the real world I don't know anyone replacing their phone every 24 months. Usually people keep a phone for 3-4 years and then it gets given to kids/someone else for another few years usage. I doubt any significant number of people are chucking their 1 year old iphone in a draw to sit unused after they get the next one.

plorkyeran• 8 months ago

I'm on my fourth iPhone in 13 years and have never replaced a phone because of anything related to physical damage. I'd still be on my third but T-Mobile offered such a large trade-in value for my 2020 SE that upgrading was the same price as replacing the battery.

m4633• 8 months ago

they also added a filesystem to the phone.

wmichelin• 8 months ago

My iPhones last at least 3-4 years.

jimbob45• 8 months ago

I feel like there are a lot of iPhone features being slept on. Pairing Shortcuts and Apple Intelligence lets a grandma do some powerful work that she could never have done five years ago.

1123581321• 8 months ago

You make a point, but it’s hard to square valuing sustainability with that kind of personal replacement rate when the supported life is several years. That said, your old phone is either being resold or parted, and and the valuable materials from unusable parts are recovered through disassembly.

conradfr2• 8 months ago

Years ago the wisdom was that money was in software instead of hardware but for some reasons OSes and their updates became free.

If the incentive is for consumers to buy more devices the incentive change.

theshackleford• 8 months ago

I use my iPhones for five years minimum, same goes for laptops. I’m unsure what your issue is here.

I’m on my 13 pro max now and will be at least for another year or two.

testdelacc1• 8 months ago

This is absurd. I’ve kept an iPhone 12 for 4 years, only replacing it last month with a 17 Pro.

Throughout that time my 5 year old phone got every OS and security update. And it’ll get the OS update in 2026 as well. So the phone released in 2020 gets software updates till 2027 - 7 years. The main issue that makes people want to upgrade is battery life degrading. Good thing Apple offers cheap and quick battery replacements in store. I replaced my battery at the 2 year mark for a small amount of money and it felt like a new phone.

What more could Apple possibly do to make their devices more sustainable? The processors are insanely overpowered, so they don’t feel slow. The batteries are easy to replace. The software updates are there. Being a bit cynical, Apple only making small incremental changes each year reduces the need to upgrade even further.

If people want to replace their devices every year or two that’s on them, not Apple.

manquer• 8 months 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.

wahnfrieden2• 8 months 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• 8 months 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.

jayd16• 8 months ago

AVP is a great example of Tim's ability to execute the logistics despite lacking the user story driven sensibilities of Jobs.

caycep2• 8 months 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• 8 months 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• 8 months 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• 8 months ago

Cook's Apple got you:

- Apple Watch

- Airpods (& Pro) & Beats

- Apple Silicon

- Vision Pro

csomar• 8 months 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.

gcanyon3• 8 months 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.

ww520• 8 months ago

Apple also invested heavily into EV. Though not succeeded, they at least put money into new areas.

stinkbeetle5• 8 months ago

No, Apple had been doing their own silicon (presumably you mean for their phones) while Jobs was still CEO, and he bought PA Semi in 2008 which put them on the path to do their own CPU cores (iPhone 5 with Swift CPU was released the year after he died so he'd obviously seen the core design process through from the beginning to likely initial tape-out or very close to).

viraptor• 8 months ago

Beats started without Apple. They bought the existing brand.

raincole• 8 months ago

And it perfected iPad.

brailsafe• 8 months 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• 8 months 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.

Razengan4• 8 months 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.

FabHK• 8 months ago

Sorry, are you suggesting that Cook doesn't use a computer in his day-to-day work, or has a Windows PC or Linux box in his office? Somehow I doubt that.

(It's "macOS", BTW.)

zaphirplane• 8 months ago

Somehow I doubt he has is emails printed out and response by dictations ;)

blackqueeriroh4• 8 months ago

Cook reportedly uses all of Apple’s products, including the Mac: https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/22/24276142/tim-cook-wsj-in...

thordenmark• 8 months ago

MacOs and iOs are going off the rails. It is clear the CEO is not providing a vision, not guiding the direction, and not assuring the quality of those products.

While not as bad as Windows, which has way too many chefs in the kitchen, it is getting there.

jaredklewis2• 8 months 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• 8 months ago

whew that visions is a triple entedre, way to go

lamontcg• 8 months 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.

wilg3• 8 months 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.

m4633• 8 months ago

"vision" would be to do things for the customer

- actually allow privacy, even from apple itself. Like turn off telemetry, not just anonymize it. and opt-in, not opt-out.

- install apps without asking permission

- allow access to your data, for example to export your imessages

Just in general be respectful and polite

zaidf2• 8 months ago

No. I don’t want Apple to make LLM Siri. I do wish they would become the company unlocking creativity instead of shackling it. I will give you one specific example: iOS has extreme limitations on what it allows app developers to display on the Lock Screen. The area each app gets is limited. What gets displayed and how is very limited. How often the data gets displayed is limited.

This might sound like nitpick. But I guarantee you that if they removed many of these limitations, it will reduce total screen time: because many things that make people unlock their phone can be done from the Lock Screen…if only Apple leadership would allow and incentivize their product and engineering teams. Instead, they want people to force unlocking of the screen to do actual productive tasks because the next thing people instinctively do is…doom scroll. And doom scrolling is profitable for Apple.

It is 2025. I have to unlock and open Google Maps to reliably tell when the next train will arrive. Why? I’ve tried many apps that attempt to fix this. They are all severely limited by the iOS restrictions. Why? What are they optimizing for?

The Camera Roll app is a clusterfuck.

Apple Maps is considering introducing ads.

iOS makes little attempt to tell you about trials: I download an app, I enable the trial, I conclude within minutes this app is not it. Now to cancel, I have to make 5+ taps. Often, I forget until I get the receipt from Apple. You’re telling me no PM at Apple has proposed mechanisms like a reminder or popup a day before my trial ends asking if I want to cancel or keep the subscription? Apple knows after all that I have barely used this app!

I can keep going. Like OP said, it is pretty obvious the focus is on milking the cow. This is unfortunate because Apple’s positioning was to do the right thing for the user who paid a premium for the device. They are increasingly and consistently doing things that makes the CFO happy at the expense of its user base.

hulitu• 8 months ago

but as a customer and user I’m very ok if they just focus on making those rectangles.

You can get almost the same rectangles at half the price. /s

mountainriver• 8 months 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• 8 months 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• 8 months 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.

LarsDu884• 8 months 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• 8 months 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-app...

squigz• 8 months 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!

pqtyw4• 8 months 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.

pavlov• 8 months ago

The M-series chips are a continuation of the in-house chip design strategy that Steve Jobs initiated in 2008 when Apple acquired P.A.Semi.

So while Cook deserves credit for execution, the roadmap was laid in place by his predecessor.

tyleo3• 8 months ago

I’m with you. I think Cook has done pretty well. A replacement is not automatically going to be better. I’d wager there’s a good chance we get someone who just wants to squeeze margins rather than invest in risky and logistically complex hardware like the M chips on the Macs.

NaomiLehman• 8 months ago

The M silicon is the best thing that happened to computing in this millennium, in my opinion. And it will change the future of other OSs.

estimator7292• 8 months ago

Yeah, but a $250 sock though

JauntTrooper• 8 months ago

The AirPods have been my biggest source of tech wonder in recent years.

The noise cancelation features, and now the live translation function? So cool.

jstummbillig• 8 months 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_• 8 months 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.

bmitc• 8 months 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.

cryptoboy2283• 8 months ago

He's cooked

grumblingdev4• 8 months 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• 8 months 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• 8 months 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

rilindo• 8 months ago

Person probably issued Apple laptops from work, which, funny enough is probably why they get performance issues, as work is going to drop in the usual CPU killing anti-virus and other corporate tooling.

chihuahua• 8 months ago

Even without buying Apple, many jobs issue mandatory MacBooks. I can understand the frustration of having to deal with these. In my case, it's mostly the window management aspect of MacOS that infuriates me. I even spent $30 of my own money to buy uBar to make it a bit more usable. But uBar itself is buggy so it's not a perfect solution.

denkmoon• 8 months ago

Everything else is even worse

grumblingdev4• 8 months ago

I had a 13 Pro and I thought it was too out-dated which was why my Safari was ridiculously slow, so I bought the 16 Pro...noticed literally zero improvement. Overheats, bugs galore, search for apps is slow and still doesn't work.

I am seriously looking at Android now, first time in my life.

risho• 8 months ago

their software is not great but they literally make the best hardware on the planet right now. you don't get to being a 4 trillion dollar market cap by being trash. they must be doing something right.

bigyabai7• 8 months ago

Second-best, according to the stock market. They must be getting something wrong if 4.5 trillion in market cap is sitting around waiting to be eaten. By Apple's arch-enemy, no less.

Gigachad3• 8 months ago

It's not great, just everything else is worse. Windows is unbearably broken and loaded with adverts. Linux has been fairly neglected for desktops with few corporate sponsors.

grumblingdev4• 8 months ago

right now

Yes I admit the Silicon MacBooks are pretty good - albeit losing external GPU support and max 4 external monitors.

The Intel MacBooks were unusable though.

There is such a lack of competition. We really some new polished Linux variant.

bigyabai7• 8 months ago

There is no light at the end of the tunnel, Apple's shareholders are using this process to manipulate the stock price. If the next quarter performs poorly then the move up the timeline, if they do well then Cook's leash gets longer. Tim needs to be gone yesterday, not in a few months.

PeaceTed5• 8 months ago

Yep, if letting the stock market determine how the business is run, eventually it will be run in a way that will blow out the bottom of the bucket.

There is a fine line that needs to be walked between innovation and appeasing share holders. Cook is mostly just doing the latter.

tptacek6• 8 months ago

Steve Jobs shipped a cordless mouse with a charger port on the bottom, the infamous hockey puck mouse, and a laptop that visibly discolored in the shape of handprints where your wrist rests. iTunes happened under Jobs watch and was unwound in the Cook era.

javman• 8 months ago

I'm a huge critic of the mouse with the charger port on bottom, but that was the 2nd gen magic mouse released in 2015. Is there another mouse that had charger port on bottom?

The 1st gen from 2009 used AA batteries.

enraged_camel• 8 months ago

I don’t know man. I got an Intel 7700K when it first came out, and six years later it was struggling with modern day workloads. I didn’t blame Intel or Microsoft, I just upgraded and my performance problems went away. Not sure why Apple is held to different standards.

rkomorn5• 8 months ago

I always think: how can someone think this is acceptable? Steve Jobs wouldn’t.

The same Steve Jobs that was at Apple when it made the puck mouse? The overheating Intel laptops of the mid 2000s? The "you're holding it wrong" iPhone? The "unusably slow after two years" 11in MBA? The Cube?

He wouldn't what, exactly?

jen729w• 8 months ago

the puck mouse?

My mate Tim, professional graphic designer, used it for years. Loved it. He might still have it for all I know.

The "you're holding it wrong" iPhone?

Was always nonsense. None of the Apple team used 'the bumper' and neither did I.

The "unusably slow after two years" 11in MBA?

Are you seriously here criticising one of the most revolutionary hardware products of the last 20 years?

FWIW I used mine for years and had a corporate Windows image running under Parallels. Everyone was massively envious. (I was a Domain Admin, I could add my own machine to the network.)

The Cube?

I'll give you that one.

paxys5• 8 months ago

What are you talking about they just released a $300 sock for your iPhone.

gyomu4• 8 months ago

I worked with John in the 2010s, brilliant guy, very human too. Couldn’t think of a single better person at the company.

wslh2• 8 months ago

Would love to hear more about that beyond NDAs.

jmcgough2• 8 months 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.

paxys5• 8 months 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• 8 months 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.

jmcgough2• 8 months ago

Stock was flat, but revenue more than tripled from $25B to $78B. MSFT is a dividend stock.

ProAm• 8 months ago

Long over due, he's done great but Apple needs fresh eyes. Apple's Ballmer era is over.

paxys5• 8 months 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• 8 months ago

might not come tomorrow or even in the next decade

…what company do you think is immune from disruption beyond the foreseeable future?

paxys5• 8 months 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.

trenchpilgrim2• 8 months ago

The big banks (unless they do fraud again), health insurance companies in the US, the major telecoms, Airbus, Bayer, Tyson, JBS SA, Nestle, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Anheuser-Busch, Cargill

gnarlouse4• 8 months ago

maybe AR/VR

I dunno, have you tried an Apple Vision Pro? It's actually a pretty phenomenal product for V1. I think really all they need to do is: (1) hit retina-tier PPD (pixels-per-degree) and (2) manage the weight, (3) do everything they're already doing, and I'm sold as a replacement for TVs & Desktop monitors.

aprilthird20214• 8 months ago

None of that will help, it has to be able to do something people want to do. Only us on tech forums care about the actual specs and how cool the tech is.

What can a person do in a Vision Pro that they're willing to spend $1000+ on that they can't do in a $300-$500 Quest?

It can't replace TVs and monitors because only one person can use it at a time

dada78641• 8 months ago

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.

I get what you're saying, but thinking about it, I'd be very surprised if the personal computing world ends up seeing anything like a paradigm shift that is so unprecedented it will catch the likes of Apple unprepared. And I realize it might sound arrogant or even ludditic to say this, but we'd need some sort of shocking new concept that no one ever came up with even in sci-fi. It's no longer really a matter of being able to technically implement something, but more about coming up with a human interface that is both totally novel and more convenient and practical than what we have now.

The qwerty layout comes from 19th century typewriters and we're still using it. The mouse was conceived of in the 1960s. Tiny computers that fit in the hand and voice operated devices have been utilized in early sci-fi works. And there's obviously VR, even though I think that's more of a toy than anything.

The only thing that is potentially in that same league of usefulness that I can think of is a brain-computer interface of some sort but those are currently so far away from having competitive practicality that there's a huge amount of runway.

dcreater• 8 months ago

You're saying as if it's a bad thing. We need new blood. Thank god IBM Failed and we got microsoft /hp/apple. Now it's time for the next wave to make the current Dinos go extinct

tastyface• 8 months 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• 8 months ago

Symbolized by his flaccid flag-waving at the Miami F1 race.

blaufast• 8 months 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• 8 months ago

betting against the nerd

oojuliuso2• 8 months 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• 8 months 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• 8 months 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• 8 months 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• 8 months ago

Given how hot my Mac is when I do anything they’d need Pacific Ocean to cool that data center :)

oojuliuso2• 8 months ago

They’re building servers now in Houston for their private cloud compute environments, but it’s just for them.

creer5• 8 months ago

left easy money on the table by not competing against NVIDIA

What!? Seems to me the timelines do not support this. Apple has already been diligent in using their chip design effort (for multiple generations of CPUs) - would they have had still more bandwidth for taking on the GPU field? And Apple's successes are more recent than Nvidia's success with GPUs. Apple silicon capability was not there yet when Nvidia created then conquered the GPU world.

lapcat• 8 months 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.

caycep2• 8 months ago

He was realistic in that he thought he'd prob retire before hitting 70...

mvkel4• 8 months 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.

bitpush6• 8 months 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

gjvc3• 8 months ago

yes but he was desperate (dying) when he made the choice

makeitdouble2• 8 months ago

Jobs called the computer "a bicycle for the mind." It immediately evokes a sense of freedom, magic, and fun.

The funniest part to me: I can't imagine Jobs on a bicycle. Perhaps when he was a small kid, but as far as I know he was notoriously on the jerky side of strongly motorized vehicles.

Which could perfectly align with his vision of the iPod and iPhone as powerful, but closed and restrictive and expensive ecosystems, replacing computers.

no matter who leads

Then only the next CEO will have a chance to reinject taste into Apple, so it needs to happen at the same time.

arresin• 8 months ago

I thought that quote came from Bill Atkinson.

card_zero2• 8 months ago

Hmm. Jobs used the bicycle metaphor extensively in this advert-interview thing: https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1050/0*SgDLtymZpgcXEA7...

Which (squinting) was printed in the WSJ in 1980: https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1148/1*wXZ9t85eJnREeDw...

But "bicycle for the mind" might be John Sculley, 1986: https://archive.org/details/apple-retro-books-collection/App...

Unless of course Jobs said it earlier.

rakejake4• 8 months ago

I often wonder why Satya Nadella is so venerated on HN compared to say, Cook or Pichai. As innovators, MS lags way behind both Google and Apple. I can't think of one bleeding edge product released during Satya's tenure. Say what you will about Apple and Google, they still consistently put out products that make you sit up and pay attention. What has MS been doing other than squeezing the MS Office and Azure cash cows?

sz4kerto• 8 months ago

For example he made the back then very-very brave decision to completely getting rid of Windows as the leading Microsoft brand. He had a very clear vision for Microsoft and the industry even if the outcome is not super exciting products for you and me. He’s not squeezing Azure - he was the person who made Azure into what it is now.

So he changed Microsoft fundamentally - a very difficult thing for such a large company.

I don’t see Pichai changing Google so fundamentally. I admire Cook though.

AndroTux• 8 months ago

Nadella is obviously a very smart and successful business leader. He achieved his goals and transformed Microsoft into a very successful, healthy company. This is why I personally think he isn’t just a bland idiot like for example Steve Ballmer.

However, it’s clear that Nadella’s goals are everything but noble. He doesn’t care about the product, and he really doesn’t care about the customer. He only cares about number go up.

jmkni• 8 months ago

I'm just incredibly disappointed with how Windows has ended up

As the CEO of Microsoft, he must use Windows, right? Unless he has a Mac

Like how can he use that ad-riddled mess every day and think it's fine, knowing he could make it so much better?

fireflash382• 8 months ago

Other commenters are raking Apple over the coals for bad experiences with MacOS. By the same token, Windows 11 is beyond awful. It's a complete buggy mess, never mind the secure boot restrictions.

bibimsz2• 8 months ago

VSCode revolutionized the IDE

semiinfinitely• 8 months ago

Apple sock and intelligence wasn't good enough?

t0lo• 8 months 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• 8 months 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• 8 months 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• 8 months 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-tech2• 8 months 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).

gjvc3• 8 months ago

the $1000 monitor stand was the canary for me

michelb• 8 months 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-tech2• 8 months 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.

rrrrrrrrrrrryan• 8 months ago

It's telling that you completely forgot HomePod.

Arguably their most AI-centric product line to date, and also their largest flop in recent history.

gjvc3• 8 months ago

this is a disaster. who else will bring the vision for $1000 monitor stands?

frankacter• 8 months ago

Apple aquires OpenAI, Sam Altman takes over for Tim Cook and brings Jony Ive back.

wtsnz• 8 months ago

the most entertaining outcome is the most likely..

Toine• 8 months ago

Then appoints the new SteveGPT model as Apple CEO?

d--b2• 8 months ago

and they make the iOrb

jurip• 8 months ago

And we can again enjoy horrible keyboards and gold watches.

fireflash382• 8 months ago

Are you saying this like it's a good thing? Cause Altman is representative of everything wrong with SV.

mfiguiere• 8 months 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

avazhi• 8 months 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.

voidfunc2• 8 months 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• 8 months ago

Does this mean finally that the next iPhone will not have that ugly notch at the top of its screen?

ksec• 8 months 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?

hexbin010• 8 months ago

5. We need more optimisation on all OS, macOS, iOS etc. Computer doesn't feel snappier despite we have 10 - 100x more computer resources

Not intentionally slowing down MacOS would go a long way to helping!

byyoung3• 8 months 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• 8 months ago

I presume he's moving on to some Trump appointed position.

d--b2• 8 months ago

God that iPocket backfired quickly

devadnani26• 8 months ago

weird

rdm_blackhole• 8 months 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• 8 months 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

creer5• 8 months 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.

Razengan4• 8 months 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• 8 months 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.

BirAdam• 8 months 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.

bigyabai7• 8 months 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.

ponector• 8 months ago

> macOS could have gotten so good over the past 15 years; today, it's a pale imitation of Windows 8

Or it could have gotten a full imitation of Windows 11.

hogdanish2• 8 months ago

macOS isn't without its sins, but I feel like "ad-ridden” is a stretch compared to the baseline of Windows 11 injecting promotions into the Start menu, OEM Android flavors full of carrier crap, etc. There's iCloud+ nags here and there, but it’s still by far the least noisy consumer OS right now aside from Linux.

Of course, if you consider iCloud's deep integration into Finder and the rest of the operating system a form of advertising, macOS is infested with ads. But then you’ve basically redefined “ad” to mean “any tightly integrated first-party service,” i.e. the core value proposition people are buying into with Apple's ecosystem at all.

(I still agree with your points about the lost potential of macOS, though)

bibimsz2• 8 months ago

MacOS is the best desktop operating system by far. If they focused on gaming for a few cycles they'd put windows out of business.

Would like better window management though. Just copy Omarchy.

hogdanish2• 8 months ago

Even as a diehard Linux user, I totally agree. If you can look past macOS's weak support for gaming, mediocre window management, and hostility towards unsigned binaries, the stability and experience it provides is second to none.

... Even then, you can still get around many pain points with third-party tools. AltTab + Raycast covers window management well enough for me and compatibility layers like Crossover/Wine are already great for gaming (which is hopefully only going to get better with Valve now working on x86 -> ARM translation layers)

emchammer• 8 months 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• 8 months ago

The sooner, the better!

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

Related Stories