688: A Company Man

19:28John Siracusa:There's a little bit of news that happened, thankfully, and I must give my thanks to someone over at Apple for timing this as they did because I was sitting here working on Call sheet working fast and furiously on some new features for call sheet that I'm really excited about, which we'll talk about another time. And all of a sudden, my phone started blowing up. I have messages from everywhere. Slacks are going crazy, and I didn't know what was going on. And it turns out that Apple put up a newsroom post and let me read to you, to be honest, kind of a lot of it, but there's a lot there. So from the Apple newsroom, Apple announced that Tim Cook will become executive chairman of Apple's board of directors, and John Ternus, senior vice president of hardware engineering will becomes Apple's next chief executive officer, effective the 1st of September, 2026.

20:15John Siracusa:The transition.

20:16Casey Liss:I'm going to pause you a lot in here because I selected these paragraphs for a reason. I find it somewhat interesting, uh, as sort of like the last act of Tim Cook as the CEO is that the first sentence of this press release says that Tim Cook will become executive chairman of Apple's board of directors. And I feel like that is not the most important part of this news i mean it kind of is but like can't you also can't you be like the ceo and the executive chairman of apple either way that this news releases john turner's new ceo of apple right that's the news release but tim cook gets one last moment in the spotlight where it's like i'm as of the writing of this press release i'm still

20:54Marco Arment:ceo i think this is actually reasonable given that like the the amount of pressure and scrutiny from the press and Wall Street on a move like this. I was going to say he's not going to an island. Yeah, it's all about managing skepticism and doubt because that's everything. Right in this moment, what you need to do when Apple is going to have a transition away from a very long-running, very financially successful CEO, what you need to tell Wall Street is, everything's fine. Calm down. Also new CEO.

21:29Casey Liss:I feel bad for Turnus, though. He gets second billing in his own I'm the new CEO announcement, but all right.

21:35Marco Arment:He'll have plenty of attention. I think the funniest thing about this, right at the top of this, you have this big picture of Turnus and Tim Cook walking down. They're so happy. They're walking down a walk in Apple Park. And my favorite thing about this is that they are wearing the exact same uniform.

21:53Casey Liss:Yeah, they're little clothes.

21:54Marco Arment:So basically to be the CEO of Apple, apparently it's important to communicate that you have to be a smiling, side profile, white American guy. You have to be wearing a blue button-down shirt untucked with jeans and sneakers. The only difference is that Tim Cook's sneakers are white and John Ternus' sneakers are black. And Tim's look a little bit more athletic and Ternus' look a little bit more like canvas. and the shirt materials are different you know Cook has much more of a like the kind of silky sheen Oxford style material Ternus looks like he's wearing some kind of tri-blend I can't identify quite the exact shirt it is but it's that kind of like you know soft material that feels like a t-shirt but has buttons and a collar other than that though it's like don't worry we're replacing the CEO with another person that you can all be comfortable with it's the same kind of guy now of course it isn't at all but that's kind of what this picture shows it's like it's such a uniform and the business suit used to be the uniform of business people right like and everyone everyone kind of looked the same then silicon valley comes around like you know we can just wear whatever we want we're not going to wear suits we're going to wear like jeans and t-shirts and hoodies and you know and then like it has just kind of formed its own version of the suit especially at Apple, where like this is just the Apple suit.

23:20Marco Arment:It's just a button-down shirt and jeans and sneakers. Now, that's probably a very nice button-down shirt, and I bet those are very nice jeans and probably very nice sneakers. But it's still like this is just the Apple suit, and you have to make sure that to show continuity, these guys like each other, someone just told a joke, and don't worry, they look pretty similar.

23:40Casey Liss:Someone in the chat room says that Tim Cook is wearing Travis Scott Jordan 1s in this picture, which are different shoes than Ternus. I will point out that this is dressing up for Ternus because I can't remember the last time I saw him not wearing a T-shirt. Like even when he just did that, I just talked in the last episode about that YouTube interview he did with Tom's Hardware, wearing a T-shirt. He loves T-shirts. So why keep sending him T-shirts? He loves them. But he dressed up. He dressed up for his big PR photo. He's wearing what looks like a button-down T-shirt.

24:09Marco Arment:I will give them credit. They are wearing different color Apple Watch Ultras. is Cook's rocking the black one and Ternus is rocking the white one. And I can't tell what Cook's strap is because Ternus also has mastered a move that I wish I could master, the partial sleeve roll-up to show off the Apple Watch and strap selection. I wish I could master that move. I have not yet, but I have much to learn before I can become the next Apple CEO.

24:31Casey Liss:They just slide back down. That's the problem.

24:34John Siracusa:Well, but if you roll them up right, they don't. Yeah, this is not difficult. Next time we're around each other, which unfortunately the way we're going is going to be like two or three years, I will instruct you. This is about the only thing I can accomplish that's even vaguely related to fashion.

24:45Casey Liss:I mean, it's easy to get them into that position. My experience is they'll eventually slide down.

24:48Marco Arment:No, but when you have like the button sleeve, and to be clear also, Cook did not roll his up because he's more formal. But the problem is you can't just push them up because that makes them all crinkle up and then they just slide back down. There's a bit of a rolling in progress there. Like you have to like, I don't know how to do it though.

25:07John Siracusa:I shouldn't have been so smug. This is not buttons on the sleeves. so there's no cufflink area buttons on turnus's shirt that makes us far more difficult i take it

25:14Casey Liss:all back i can't believe this is the uh the tangent we're going on one sentence in the press release

25:18John Siracusa:he's a wizard a sleeve wizard hey man you you stopped us you stopped me i was i was cruising

25:24Casey Liss:right along i know i know i'm just i just stopped for the billing thing marco went off into fashion how do you not comment on these guys looking exactly the same in this picture no it's a good point it was a good point just you know i don't need all the the all the fashion detail anyway

25:37Marco Arment:we can continue did they have to include the trash can on the left side it's a nice looking trash can it's a beautiful they have beautiful trash cans at apple park but like really they

25:45John Siracusa:didn't they didn't want to paint it out uh yeah yeah all right uh where was i okay so reading from the newsroom post the transition which was approved unanimous unanimously by the board of directors follows a thoughtful long-term succession planning process thoughtful long-term widely leaked

26:01Casey Liss:succession planning process they left that widely leaked in that comma separated list of it but

26:06Marco Arment:that's fair like that is true like this was obviously like you know you can as we look back on even before the leagues as you look back on some of the executive reshufflings that have happened over the last i'd say at least six months um it has looked pretty apparent that this was probably the path that they were going down and that it was being executed very well so i do give

26:27Casey Liss:them credit for that and don't forget uh i don't remember the date of this but don't forget however however long it was. I think it was multiple years ago that Tim Cook said in an interview, which he never accidentally says anything in an interview, that he probably wouldn't be at Apple for 10 more years.

26:41Marco Arment:Exactly. And I guarantee you there was already, I mean, whether the plan was finalized, whether all the details were finalized, I guarantee you that, you know, knowing Tim Cook and knowing how careful and deliberate and patient he is, this has probably been planned for a long time. Maybe not specifically Ternus, although I bet Ternus has been under consideration for a long time. But Tim has probably been planning his exit for a good amount of time. This probably was very careful, very deliberate, and executed, as far as we can tell, very well.

27:14Casey Liss:And it's a very Tim Cook move to leave, not going to say retire, but to leave your CEO position at age 65 exactly. It's just like, you know, Social Security retirement age or whatever. It's just like, it's a plan that I can imagine him coming up with a decade ago and say, yeah, I'll probably aim for leaving around 65 and he's doing it.

27:35John Siracusa:All right, well, also real-time follow-up. I asked a sneakerhead friend of mine, what is the deal with these shoes that Tim Cook is wearing? He said that they are, as one of you said, the Travis Scott Jordan 1 fragments, which apparently were impossible to find, my friend Adam said. they were a limited run and only select people were able to get them. So there you go.

27:54Casey Liss:Nothing's impossible if you're a billionaire.

27:55John Siracusa:Exactly. Continuing on from the newsroom, Cook will continue in his role as CEO through the summer as he works closely with Ternus on a smooth transition. As executive chairman, Cook will assist with certain aspects of the company, including what? Including engaging with policymakers around the world as the prophecy foretold.

28:14Casey Liss:This is the thing I didn't want to be true. It was so clear that it was going to me, but I really wished it was. I want him to go to an island. I want him to retire from public life and live a wonderful life with his billions and give to charity and whatever it is that he wants to do. But no, that's not what's going to happen for the reasons Marco just cited. That's not what he wants to do. It's not good for the company's stability. He will continue on as chairman. And what will he do as chairman? He will continue to eat poop from our president and other world leaders.

28:44Marco Arment:and and i think again like i think given the immense size and scale and influence of apple in the world and in politics and in finance and all like they're so big i think this is what they have to do it's part i mean look steve jobs did exactly the same thing right wasn't he in the last few months of his life wasn't he i mean he was dying i mean yes but i mean like in the last few months of his life, when he left CEO to Cook, didn't Jobs stay as president of the board in some form?

29:17Casey Liss:I forget. That sounds familiar to me, but it's in that role, he was mostly concentrating on dying and not really spending a lot of time schmoozing world leaders, but this is one of the things we talked about with the timing of this. It's like, well, it just seems so much cleaner for Cook to stay out the Trump presidency so he can just be the sin eater and the garbage sink for that whole terrible thing and they let let turnus come in clean but the alternative is is that okay turnus comes in but tim continues to be a tim apple to uh our terrible president and to deal with world leaders and do all that other stuff one because i mean dealing with like china and everything he's he's got the experience and the relationships there whereas i imagine john turnus doesn't spend a lot of time talking to uh whoever is running china these days i forget what that person's name is um so that there's some continuity of care as they say there but the other thing is okay well cook will continue to be a meat shield for turnus so that he is let's say less sullied by the terrible things that apple is doing related to the current u.s administration

30:19Marco Arment:like this all makes sense because it did like as we were talking it didn't make sense to have to have tim cook totally disappear and retire completely during trump's term like given that relationship that's been built up and given how like you'd want the next ceo to have a more clean political slate after trump's out of the office thank god this didn't make sense for tim cook to retire completely during this term and so this is probably one of the many reasons that played into cook planning to stay on as executive chairman of the board that makes a lot of sense and i think the only question is like how cleanly will they be able to keep the separation yeah that's that's

31:00Casey Liss:my that's my fear that's like i want john turnus to do things differently than tim how easy is it to do things differently than the guy who's still like staring over you from the board you know i

31:09Marco Arment:mean i don't that part i don't actually mind like i'm i'm fairly i'm very confident that tim will let turnus lead the company without tim interfering with turnus what i'm what i'm worried about is trump going to turnus and and bringing him into the spotlight with him instead of going to Tim Cook.

31:27Casey Liss:You said you're not worried about Tim interfering with how Ternus wants to do things. But if Tim's job is to be the stupid Trump whisperer and deal with all that crap, what if Ternus' decision is, day one, I'm the new CEO, the new Apple policy is F.U. Trump. That's really hard for Tim to smooth over. It's essentially screwing up what Tim wants to do because Tim's like, I'm supposed to be talking with the world leaders and dealing with them and trying to keep them placated and selling out our values to make sure that we get all good. We don't have tariffs and all that stuff. Like that's what Tim clearly has wanted to do and continues to do right now.

32:02Casey Liss:And if Turner says, no, actually my new policy is no engagement with them. We hate them. We don't engage with them at all. We are their mortal enemy. I don't see how that can exist. You can't have the CEO saying that and the whatever executive chairman of the board trying to continue that other policy. I don't think it's going to happen. I don't think Turner is going to do that. And that's my point that he is not free to do whatever he wants with the company in this specific realm. And it's one of the specific realms that I think Apple should act differently.

32:26Marco Arment:Oh, yes. But I think if like for Ternus, I think the best move for him is to not rock that boat until Trump is out of office, you know, and let Tim continue to be the hate sink in the political sphere. Let Ternus stay clean in that area and then start making changes once the path is clear.

32:47Casey Liss:Then you got to stop Tim from giving anything, anything with an Apple logo made of gold to anybody. It's like you can continue to be their little like diplomat to these terrible people, but we can't allow you to give Apple branded merchandise anymore. It's like in the app store, if you have a picture of an iPhone in your app, no, sorry, you can't do that.

33:05Marco Arment:We are sponsored this episode by Claude. You know, I am always surprised how much Claude can do for me. The other day, I had a big spreadsheet and I just, I'm like, you know what, let me see. I don't think, I don't think it'll be able to help me with this, but let me see. And I gave it to Claude and I said, hey, review this for these criteria. Let me know what you find and what your takeaways are. and the insights it had, it was pulling references from different areas of it. It was figuring out correlations between different sections that I wouldn't have seen. And then I went and manually went through everything and checked it all, and it was right.

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34:49Marco Arment:That's claude.ai slash ATP. And check out Claude Pro, which includes access to all the features mentioned in this episode. Claude.ai slash ATP. Thank you so much to Claude for solving my problems for me and for sponsoring our show.

35:08John Siracusa:All right. Arthur Levinson, who has been Apple's non-executive chairman for the past 15 years, will become its lead independent director on the 1st of September, 2026. Tarnas will join the board of directors, also effective the 1st of September, 2026.

35:23Casey Liss:Nice for Tarnas. He gets to be on the board of directors. Yeah, that's great.

35:27John Siracusa:Tim Cook joined Apple in 1998. He became CEO in 2011 and has overseen the introduction of numerous products and services, including new categories like Apple Watch, AirPods, and Apple Vision Pro, and services ranging from iCloud and Apple Pay to Apple TV and Apple Music.

35:39Casey Liss:So this section of the thing, we skipped a bunch of stuff. You can read the press, please. But this section is basically like, there are quotes and everything from people saying how they wonder how wonderful everybody is. and we'll read some of those quotes later from Tim Cook's letter. But this is the part of the press release written in the voice of the press release where they are recapping how awesome Tim Cook has been and his history with the company. So joined in 1998 when he became CEO. No mention of jobs in the when he became CEO, although I think it's mentioned elsewhere. And so this is the, you know, we have a couple of paragraphs excerpted from here saying what his legacy is.

36:11Casey Liss:So first paragraph of talking about his legacy, here's what I did. I was CEO and we did these things. he's got apple watch airpods and he throws an apple vision pro because we know tim really likes that but i'm not sure that's on your greatest hits and then he talks about uh services iCloud apple pay apple tv apple music some of those arguably like iCloud are you know uh transitional things from the job era and everything but some of those are clearly his like apple pay has got tim cook written all over it and apple tv predates him obviously but not the current apple tv and apple music is services so i'd say apple watch and airpods are two big feathers in his cap and And Apple Vision Pro remains to be seen, but that's how they chose to, well, that's his sizzle reel for product stuff, product things that regular people would know about that I did as CEO.

36:57Casey Liss:And, you know, it's not a bad list.

36:59John Siracusa:No, it really isn't. Continuing, under Cook's leadership, Apple has grown from a market capitalization of approximately$350 billion to$4 trillion, which this is old news, but that is stark. You started at$350 billion, which is nothing to shake your fist at, and end at$4 trillion. That's just bananas. Continuing, representing a more than 1 ,000 % increase in yearly revenue has nearly quadrupled from$108 billion in fiscal year 2011 to more than$416 billion in fiscal year 2025.

37:32Casey Liss:So this is the Tim Cook section of Tim Cook's accomplishments. Made numbers go up by more than you can imagine. And again, if you've ever seen this on a graph that has a zero, you know, a zero rooted, uh, Y axis and you label the errors of Apple's history. So first of all, if you label the errors of Apple's history, like, you know, like 1990 and earlier, you have to keep in mind that during those years, Apple was like, uh, they did a joke about it in Forrest Gump. It's like, Hey, if you got in on the ground floor of Apple before the Apple II became popular, you made a ton of money because Apple was one of the first big tech stocks.

38:09Casey Liss:It's like, oh, this little thinking company of Apple, they're going somewhere. And then the Apple two comes out and it's everywhere. And it's like, wow, the stock went up so much. Apple's value as a company going from nothing to huge success was a big story in the eighties. And again, so much so that it ends up as a joke, a gag in the Forrest Gump movie and stuff, right? Look at that section of the graph on like, you know, from the founding of Apple till today. and it looks like the flat part that's the part where nothing happened that's the amazing success of apple in the 70s 80s and early 90s that's basically flat and then you see steve jobs come back and like he turned the company around and you see this the line start to go up a little bit but it's still kind of in the flat part and then you see tim cook era and it's like oh this is where apple really was successful because the numbers just get massive it's like a big hockey graph and tim cook dominates the chart in terms of these kind of numbers uh we'll get to more of them in a second but just merely like what is the market cap uh what is the yearly revenue just huge huge tim cook uh i i'm sure people can do lots of math on it like how many i mean he did a thousand percent degrees or whatever but like how many multiples of like the the gogo 80s apple has he grown it's just tremendous and if you don't care about business if you don't care about the you know the success of business people and ceos and so on and so forth and maybe these numbers don't impress you but i know there's a lot of people in the world who are you know who treat business as a pursuit in and of itself regardless of what business you're in if you are the ceo of a company uh and your task of making the company succeed it's going to be very difficult it's going to be like he's like the wayne grinsky of ceos like you'd never want to be compared against his numbers like within your chosen sport of like i am a ceo it's like okay uh did you take your you know how how much did you make your company succeed they brought you into ceo and when you retired the company was twice as big as it was before and tim cook's like i did a 1000 increase right and we started huge this is how big we started we started at 350 billion market cap and i leave it four trillion and then he just drops the mic and walks away i don't care that much about business, but other people do.

40:21Casey Liss:And I think that is much more impressive than his list of products.

40:25John Siracusa:During his tenure, Apple has grown by more than 100 ,000 team members and increased its active install base to more than 2.5 billion devices. Apple services has been a major focus of Cook's. And during his tenure, the category has grown to become more than a$100 billion business, the equivalent of a Fortune 400 company. Holy God.

40:46Casey Liss:Yeah. So obviously they don't go into detail, as we always talk about like what does that mean the services category and it really means you know rent seeking for software developers which is not a particularly wonderful and friendly thing to describe but again when people read this they think wow he really signed up a lot of people for apple tv plus and that's not what it is it's not absolutely not um but that's his thing it's the thing that's currently growing you got to put it in the press release wall street loves it for the people who are interested in the sport and to be clear i'm not that interested in the sports of business but for the people who are interested in the in the sport of business these are big big numbers i'm interested in the sport of you know good products and that section is less impressive but if you are into these stats these are big big numbers these are just embarrass anybody numbers these are kind of like uh you know john turnus don't even try to do this because if you did another thousand percent increase it would be like the uh uh paperclip uh game what is that game universal paperclips oh yeah entire planet becomes paperclips if if john turnus had a tim cook like performance the entire earth would be apple so it's not possible so don't don't even try like don't don't try and i hope i hope the uh like the law of big numbers where it's like it's real easy to double when you have a small number you just mentioned it with the silver neo shirt but it's really really hard to do that next doubling when you're you know you are uh 99 percent of the gdp of the planet or something so yeah uh hopefully turnus will be dissuaded from even attempting to match this kind of numerical performance and thus turn his attention to things

42:17Marco Arment:that are more important in my opinion by the way i have very important real-time follow-up i have found what i believe to be the shirts they are wearing oh in the photo this is extremely

42:26Casey Liss:important put them in the put them in the show notes please so i i first i first thought that

42:31Marco Arment:might have been something from like um you know marine layer normal brand faherty however that's pronounced um anything and it's maybe theory i checked all those sites say miyake or whatever that guy's name so it's none of those no that's i figured it wouldn't be some like super super high-end thing because that doesn't seem like their way those those sneakers are pretty much super high-end it sounds like in terms of sneakers well yeah but so i i couldn't figure it out so eventually just pasted it into gemini and said find these um and it did and i'm pretty sure the matches are correct they are both from vuori that that brand of like you know fancy exercise wear and stuff i don't know how it's pronounced i say vuori but it's probably not that um uh anyway But Ternus is wearing the long sleeve Ponto button down.

43:11Marco Arment:It is a casual technical take on a classic button down, a slightly fitted athletic cut. And then Tim Cook has the bridge button down. It's a performance woven shirt designed to look like a traditional dress shirt with technical benefits. So it's a more structured, crisp look compared to the one Ternus is wearing, but still a minimalist aesthetic. Both shirts are around 100 bucks. Not bad. Not bad choices. And I think they accurately represent both of these people. It's like Ternus is looking a little more casual. Tim's looking a little more formal, but they're still both kind of technical, athletic, casual combos.

43:48Marco Arment:Perfect.

43:49Casey Liss:I can't believe this company is not sponsoring the show.

43:51Marco Arment:The funny thing is, I think they did sponsor podcasts around our sphere in the past. I don't think they ever sponsored us, but they certainly were nearby.

44:00John Siracusa:All right. Well, if you could provide links for the show notes, I would appreciate it.

44:04Marco Arment:Yep.

44:05John Siracusa:Continuing from the newsroom, Cook has made Apple's core values even more central to the company's decision-making and product development.

44:12Casey Liss:So this one, like the first line that hurt me was the other one that I put in bold in this thing, which is, you know, engaging with policymakers around where we all start coming. And there it is. This one, I'm not sure I saw this claim coming, even though as you'll read it, as you'll continue when you read, it's 100 % true, but there, I feel like there is an error of omission here. because to the extent that people are upset with Tim Cook, it is due to his lack of making Apple's core values central to the company's decision-making. You know what I mean? The problem is there's lots of core values and lots of them he has made even more central.

44:48Casey Liss:Like this is a true statement. We'll get to in a second why it's true, but it is also the source of, I think pretty much all of, almost all of the dissatisfaction with Tim Cook, whether it's minor dissatisfaction, like I don't like what he's doing with the products and Apple's core values to be about products, like as in keep selling an old product and people will keep buying it instead of wiping the table clean because you know something's better, all the way up to, hey, how you deal with the Trump administration is upsetting because we don't feel it reflects Apple's core values. That whole range of dissatisfaction with Tim Cook is not making Apple's core values central to the company's decision making.

45:20Casey Liss:But, you know, I give them credit for following it up with evidence because it is partially true.

45:27John Siracusa:Under his leadership, the company reduced its carbon footprint by more than 60 % below 2015 levels during a period in which revenue nearly doubled.

45:35Casey Liss:Thumbs up. And by the way, big victory lap there saying, hey, not only have we been doing this environmental stuff, which is part of Apple's core values, and they have totally been doing it, and they're kicking butt and they're like, look, we are doing 60 % reduced it by 60 % since 2015. And by the way, because I'm Tim Cook, during that period, I doubled our revenue. So we reduced our carbon emissions, not at like status quo, like we're just doing the same stuff. And we reduced it by 60%. And then I doubled our revenue because I'm Tim Cook and that's what I do. And we still reduced it. Amazing.

46:04Casey Liss:Big mic drop. It is one of Apple's core values, just not the one I'm mad about.

46:09John Siracusa:Cook, who has long advocated for privacy as a fundamental human right, has made privacy and security imperative at Apple, setting a standard for user protection that continues to set the company apart from the rest of the technology industry.

46:20Casey Liss:True. 100 % true. Thumbs up. And as Marco pointed out, I think in the last episode, he has done that more than his predecessor. These are places where not only he has continued Apple's core values, he has made them even more central. There's no arguing that he has made environment and privacy even more central to the company's decision making and that those are today's Apple's core values. So partial credit. Yeah. He has also pushed for continued innovation in the accessibility space. I would say he just basically continued that one because I think Apple was pretty good about that before. But again, thumbs up, core value.

46:50Casey Liss:Good job.

46:51John Siracusa:Ternus joined Apple's product design team in 2001 and became a vice president of hardware engineering in 2013. Prior to Apple, Ternus worked as a mechanical engineer at Virtual Research Systems. He holds a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania.

47:04Casey Liss:So I'm thinking this is in my mind because both of my on my mind because both of my children are in college now. My son is about to graduate with both a bachelor's and a master's degree. And my daughter is just working on her bachelor's degree. um and i just want to put wanted to highlight this because it's like okay i think a lot of kids today think um if i don't go to a good school or if i don't get an advanced degree i'm never going to be anything turnus has got a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the university of pennsylvania and as someone with an engineering degree i can tell you an engineering degree from anywhere is is nothing to sneeze at but university of pennsylvania is not mit and he's just got a bachelor's degree and he's going to be the CEO of Apple.

47:50Casey Liss:So all I'm saying is that your degree and your school are not your destiny. Steve Jobs famously didn't even complete college because he didn't think it was doing anything good for him. And Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard or wherever the hell it was. And I know that's a cliche of like, I'm going to be a Silicon Valley CEO. I don't need to go to school. I'm not telling you not to go to school. What I'm telling you is that if you didn't get into the school of your dreams or if you quote unquote only have a bachelor's degree, that's not going to be your limiting factor. It's going to be everything else about you.

48:18Casey Liss:That's going to limit you. But you know, it won't be that.

48:21Marco Arment:Yeah, there are a lot of industries and businesses that really care a lot about the school you went to and how you did in it. Fortunately for people like me, that's not all industries, not all businesses. I barely graduated from college. My GPA was so low. Same. I don't actually even know it. I failed a required class senior year, had to take it in summer school at a different university, transfer the credits in, get my diploma by mail. It was a whole thing. But I think my final GPA was somewhere around 2.0. You know, certainly never anything I would have ever given an employer.

48:55Casey Liss:And that's not what stopped you from being CEO of Apple. Right. Well, I mean, I bet he got good grades. All I'm saying is that he's just got a bachelor's degree. I just feel like talking to my kids and everything. And it's like, oh, you can't get anywhere in this industry if you don't have at least a master's and probably a PhD. It's like, no, no, you can be CEO of Apple. if you just have a bachelor's degree, it's fine.

49:12Marco Arment:Yeah, like the secret to success is who you know, but the second best secret to success is what you've done. And that's what, you know, the tech business cares most. What have you done? And that, you know, so start doing stuff and that's how you get far. You don't just invest in college forever.

49:28John Siracusa:For what it's worth, the University of Pennsylvania, as ranked by U.S. News and World Report, which I'm sure this is a racket, but that's the best I can do on short notice, University of Pennsylvania, 16th best engineering school in the United States. That's pretty good. Would you like to guess, john what is boston university what rank um i think i told you this before when my daughter

49:47Casey Liss:was looking to be you and her like it was like listed as like a far reach school for her i'm like be you is a far reach like i went to be you and saw my wife and it was not a fancy school when we went there but apparently its reputation has increased i'm gonna say be you is 25 uh that is

50:01John Siracusa:a very good guess it is number 32 tied uh i can't see i don't see the list i've just been searching universities. I can't see what other schools it's tied with other than I can tell you it's tied with Virginia Tech, which is where I went. It also got an engineering degree. Also only barely, though.

50:18Casey Liss:Well, you and Tarnas, and really what you want to look up is how is the University of Pennsylvania regarded when John Tarnas went there, which was a long time ago. A hundred percent.

50:27John Siracusa:But I just thought it was funny.

50:28Casey Liss:Sorry to slam the University of Pennsylvania. As I said, an engineering degree from anywhere, any good accredited university, is a difficult thing.

50:34John Siracusa:yes definitely agree all right so um i can move on and there's there's plenty of other things for us to talk about is there anything i mean marco do you want to do your victory lap before we start

50:44Casey Liss:talking about other things well i i mean let's let's at least get through like we have the whole show for this so i think we can just get through the uh the last things that we have here and then we can just give our you know thoughts on the whole thing because i do want to get to the new york times thing because i think that's central to what i'm sure marco wants to talk about which like the Tim Cook legacy. All right.

51:02John Siracusa:So also announced today, Johnny Surugi has been named Apple's chief hardware officer. This is a different newsroom post. Apple today announced that effective immediately, Apple executive Johnny Surugi will become chief hardware officer. Surugi, who most recently served as senior vice president of hardware technologies, will assume an expanded role leading hardware engineering, which John Ternus most recently oversaw, as well as the hardware technologies organization. And I did a little asking around my understanding of hardware technologies is that that's the Apple Silicon part And then the hardware engineering is, you know, putting devices together part.

51:33Casey Liss:Yeah. I mean, if you want to, you can click this in puzzle piece wise to the rumor about Suruji, you know, potentially looking elsewhere and then them saying, no, totally, I'm staying. I'm not going anywhere. And it's like, well, as I said at the time, it doesn't mean that rumor was untrue. It just means that that rumor was late. And then maybe Suruji had a talk with Tim Cook and they decided that he would stay by, you know, giving him this more responsibility. Or it could just be that he was gliding into this role. Like this was always going to happen because it makes sense. It's like, who are you going to bump up to take Ternus' place when he leaves as the hardware guy?

52:02Casey Liss:Putting the awesome chip guy as now the hardware guy makes perfect sense. Because, hey, chip guy, you knocked it out of the park as chip guy. Then you get to be all hardware guy, like rewarding success. And Ternus knocked it out of the park as all hardware guy. And now he gets to be CEO. So this all makes perfect sense. I'm glad Surugi's sticking around. He seems to, I like the results. I like his work. Like Marco said, what can you do? Oh, Suruji can do a lot. So maybe talent retention is a potential challenge for him that we've heard rumor-wise. But so far, products are pretty good. So thumbs up on Johnny getting the nod to be hardware guy.

52:40John Siracusa:Additionally, this was actually the first thing that I happened to see was a community letter from Tim. It was very good. It is not very long. I really enjoyed this, and we'll hear your two opinions here in a moment. But I recommend reading this whole letter. I think this is an amount of humanity, humanness, I can't think of what we're looking for. Yeah, thank you. That we don't typically get from Tim. And I did listen to the emergency re-recording or additional recording of Upgrade before we recorded tonight. And I think Jason was saying that, you know, we haven't heard Tim be this human since his coming out letter from, I think it was like 2014 or something like that.

53:18Casey Liss:I think Gruber said that.

53:19John Siracusa:Oh, maybe it was Gruber. Okay, I thought it was Jason, but maybe I'm wrong. It doesn't matter. Somebody said it, and I would like to plus one it. And I thought this was really good. So let me read a couple of portions of it that John has selected. Today we announced that I'm taking the next step in my journey at Apple. A new person will be stepping into what I know in my heart is the best job in the world. That leader is John Ternus, a brilliant engineer and thinker who has spent the past 25 years building the Apple products our users love so much. Obsessed with every detail, focused on every possible way we can make something better, bolder, more beautiful, and more meaningful.

53:47John Siracusa:He is the perfect person for the job.

53:49Casey Liss:And I think that's an interesting characterization. So, you know, here's Tim writing his more personal, informal letter about what's going on. And he describes Ternus as first a brilliant engineer, which I mean, no one is describing Tim Cook as a brilliant engineer because he's not. That's the new CEO of Apple. So that is music to a lot of people's ears because that is John Ternus's reputation. And that is how Tim Cook has chosen to describe him. not a great business leader or uh you know a master of the supply chain or whatever but a brilliant engineer and then what has he done at apple building products so thumbs up on that characterization whether it was chosen carefully in tim cook style to spin the story in the way that he wants it to be told or whether it's just simply a reflection of reality that he is in fact a brilliant engineer with just a bachelor's degree but you know that's his mindset that's his bent he's working on hardware.

54:42Casey Liss:This is how he thinks. This is how he looks at the world. I hope it's true because I like that mindset.

54:47John Siracusa:Do you remember, even though I don't disagree with your characterization that Tim is not a brilliant engineer, he did get a undergraduate degree in industrial engineering from Auburn. Right.

54:57Casey Liss:But he did not spend his career pursuing anything really related to that. Maybe, I don't know. Supply chain engineering, maybe.

55:04John Siracusa:Yeah, that's what I was going to say. All right. I mean, it doesn't matter. Anyway, moving on.

55:07Casey Liss:Anyway, have you ever seen a news story where describing Tim Cook is a brilliant engineer or any or him characterized that way by other people talking about him. It tends not to be the top line item about Tim Cook.

55:19John Siracusa:Certainly not. Coming back to Cook's letter, John cares so much about who we are at Apple, what we do at Apple, who we reach at Apple, and he has the heart and character to lead with extraordinary integrity. I'm so proud to call him Apple's next CEO.

55:33Casey Liss:Yeah, that part I liked because, again, Tim Cook being more human saying like, what what do i want in my successor you know what am i looking for in in a leader um uh heart and character to lead with integrity that tim cook cares about that regardless of how much we disagree with him about his the manifestation of his supposed integrity with his various decisions that he made at various times about having to do with app store and developer relations and political stuff or whatever that uh you know he believes that he is acting with integrity and heart and that's what he's looking for in a leader he believes john turnus is going to do the same thing and i mean i still kind of feel like john turnus is a bit of a cypher because we've never seen him speak out of turn so to speak because yeah whatever um because he's always he's always been uh speaking in his capacity as an underling to the ceo of apple and they are very like single voice focused and on message or whatever so maybe we'll see different stuff from him now but i've never heard anything about him that made that made me think that he is not, in fact, a person of character and integrity.

56:39Casey Liss:And I really hope that's true. Tim Cook said it's true, so fingers crossed.

56:42John Siracusa:This is not goodbye, but at this moment of transition, I wanted to take the opportunity to say thank you. Thank you for the confidence and kindness you've shown me. Thank you for saying hi to me on the street and in our stores. Thank you for cheering alongside me when we unveiled a new product or service. Thank you most of all for believing in me to lead the company that has always put you at the center of our work. Every day we get up and think about what we can do to make your life a little bit better. And every day you've made mine the best I could have asked for. Thank you, Tim Cook.

57:08Casey Liss:And I believe that he does like it when people say hi to him and cheer when they announce new products. And not because of like ego gratification, he thinks he's wonderful. I just really think he's always enjoyed that part of being CEO. Like he enjoys that people are excited to see him and they really love Apple products and not like in a wholesome way. Like I do think that's the kind of person he is. Like he's just, you know an aw shucks happy kind of guy and the i when i see him in those environments i don't think he's acting happy or like you know being like false to the public or like glad handing like a politician i honestly think that he maybe you don't enjoy being mobbed by like fans or whatever but he basically he does appreciate that he that is probably one of the more fun parts of his job where he's not uh yelling at people to get on planes to china but is instead just getting to hear you know that people applaud when they announce products or they're so excited to go into the apple store to get a new thing or as he said at the top of this letter which i cut which again i echo what case that you should read he talks about the first thing he does every day when he wakes up at some ungodly hour before he exercises is read emails from people and you're like oh i bet i bet like he has staff that just filters the emails and just sends him the good ones trump style but no he talks about um he reads emails to people tell me how their apple watch saved a life and all that stuff but he also he mentions in his typical tim cook understatement when people will say that their products are disappointing them and the areas where they could do better so he's getting your angry emails too right like people aren't filtering out i hope all the angry emails that people get about how i've been apple customer since x year but now i'm so disappointed and blah blah no he's getting those too and hopefully they motivate him to do better and you know that was all in the letter and so i i feel like this again i don't know tim cook and there's very little to judge him by because he's so guarded as a person but this letter does read to me like really coming from his heart and he's being honest about the things he says he's also it's very tim cook in the things that he omits and doesn't talk about and doesn't address which is also part of him that annoys me but you know it's his letter he can write what he

59:09Marco Arment:wants for tim cook it's fine it's heartfelt it is i think it is honest in typical tim cook fashion you don't get a lot out of it like there's not a lot of value there's not a lot of surprises

59:23Casey Liss:there's nothing there's no super new information revealed here that we didn't know before you know

59:27Marco Arment:no like it's fine i'm glad he wrote it um and it is exactly what it's standard cook fashion

59:36Casey Liss:it is exactly what you'd expect his signature is weird too can we agree a signature is weird yeah oh that's really weird yeah i noticed that too i've never seen his signature like you see jobs a signature because people are always getting him to sign stuff especially in the jobs to era but even before that you'd see a signature on like the apple founding documents and crap like that and so you're familiar with the steve and steve jobs didn't have a great signature either but the tim cook one wow is it weird yeah the t is weird and tim it's like a j it's not script like the the im is kind of scriptable the m looks like an n and then cook is just like print it's just it's just it's fine he's probably signed his name a lot he's probably sick of it yep and then this final bit like i put this final bit in just because this is a stand-in i mean we're recording this the day of the announcement so there's sure to be more but this this new york times bit uh that uh casey's about to read is the stand-in for uh how does the rest of the world who is not like in the insular little apple techno you know enthusiast sphere how do they see what is the story from their perspective now granted it's slightly modified by the author of this new york times uh article who are at least one person i know trip michael has been on the apple beat and written books about Apple, so he's not really an outsider.

1:00:44Casey Liss:But how is this presented to the world? What does this story look like to the general public? And this New York Times snippet is my stand-in for that.

1:00:56John Siracusa:So Kelly Huang and Trip Mickel write, The retirement of Mr. Cook will end one of the most successful management runs in the history of American business. Apple has lost several top executives in recent months, worrying investors about the depth of its next generation of managers and its long-term strategy, particularly with artificial intelligence. The company has largely stayed on the sidelines as the rest of the technology industry has committed to spending hundreds of billions of dollars developing AI. Apple is also navigating increasingly choppy political waters, including whiplash over the Trump administration's tariffs, a looming antitrust trial, and geopolitical tensions with China.

1:01:29John Siracusa:In recent years, Mr. Cook, out of necessity, has become the technology industry's leading diplomat, making regular visits to Washington and Beijing to try to manage the often conflicting agendas of President Trump in, what is it, Xi Jinping? I think that's right, hopefully. China's leader. Even so, Apple is still one of the most profitable companies in the world, thanks to the stability of its sales of its iPhones, products like the Apple Watch and services, including iCloud and Apple Pay.

1:01:54Casey Liss:Again, this sort of summary of, you know, this is a very short story. I feel like they should have had this pre-written, like people's obituaries who are real old. They apparently didn't, because this definitely feels like it was hastily slapped together today. They should have pre-written the transition memo but i guess they don't do that for transitions only for deaths um the top line thing is you know uh they say retirement of mr cook which is not probably that accurate but anyway and one of the most successful management runs in the history of american business yep that's line one that's got to be line one especially for the new york times so like we talk about news he's a ceo we're going to measure him against other ceos the way you measure our hockey players against wayne grinsky he is the wayne grinsky of ceos he made numbers go up more than any numbers whenever went up before tim cook yeah yeah yeah number one um and then there's some other stuff about it and then they go to like okay well what about like there's got to be some bad stuff too controversies or whatever and so they talk about top executives reason leaving in recent months but i feel like it's just you know when this is changing leadership it's always going to happen i don't think that's on tim cook that's just the way it works uh but then their first line item of like things that might not be so hot about tim cook's apple like potential problem areas or maybe places where he drop the ball, they go for AI investment because in the general news sphere, outside of the very insular techno nerd sphere, but maybe also inside of it, it's like all these companies, all the big companies making headlines today are spending just so much money on AI and Apple is mostly not.

1:03:20Casey Liss:And they're talking about, you know, capital expenditures. How much money are we putting towards this in this year? How much money are we spending on building new data centers or buying gpus or doing all like money that we're laying out to do stuff and everyone's spending tons of money and not apple they don't they say like company has largely stayed on the sidelines and they say as the rest of the technology industry has committed to spending hundreds of billions developing they don't really talk about apple failing they didn't say apple failing to ship apple intelligence or like failing to to give things to their customers that other companies are giving which i feel like is the bigger failure like i don't think let's look at their capital expenditures compared to other companies and determine whether they're succeeding or failing in ai let's look at things they said they were going to ship and failed to meanwhile lots of other companies are shipping things that do the things that they were promising and customers like it but they don't mention that they just mentioned the capital expenditures maybe it's because the new york times then they get to navigating increasingly choppy political waters talking about tariffs and trump Trump.

1:04:21Casey Liss:And then I feel like this is this is so a New York Times view of this because it's not even presented as an opinion or one of multiple positions. But they just basically said Cook out of necessity had become technology industry's leading diplomat. That wasn't a necessity. That's a choice. This is how he's choosing to interact with China and Trump or whatever. But it's not like it's not out of necessity. But New York Times like, well, he had to do it. He just what he has, what Tim McQuick has done was a necessity. Like you can you can say you could agree with it or disagree with it, but it was, in fact, a choice, not a necessity.

1:04:59Casey Liss:But the New York Times is like, no, this is totally a necessity. He had to do this and to do anything else would be, you know, unthinkable because what would it do to the stock price? So that's their position. And then finally, what is not in this New York Times summary at all is many of the concerns that I and other super tech nerd people have about Tim Cook's leadership of Apple having to do with app store policies, developer relations, the specifics of the decisions with respect to Trump and China. uh all that stuff is not um not in the public consciousness not you know i'm sure trip michael knows about it but doesn't care it doesn't go in the new york times story because the only people who care about the stuff are weird apple nerds and i think it's right that only weird apple nerds care about that but this is a weird apple nerd podcast and it hurt me that none of that is in this summary and so when i see every story in the regular media not in the tech media about this transition, I'm going to be reading and looking, is there any awareness that a subset of super nerd, weirdo, Apple tech enthusiasts are really mad at Tim Cook about stuff that never gets mentioned in this.

1:06:11Casey Liss:And I find that, I don't know, a little bit disheartening because if it never gets mentioned in the New York Times story, I feel like it makes it easier for Turnus to dismiss it. It makes it easier for Turnus to ignore Marco's blog posts because it's like, well, none of that stuff came up in any of the stories about me becoming CEO. So it's obviously not something I should bother concentrating on because it's not of general interest. And that makes me sad.

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1:08:29Marco Arment:All right, Marco, victory lap. I am so happy this is finally happening. The Tim Cook era has had its strengths. Back when Steve Jobs was clearly getting sicker and when it became apparent, oh, he needs to step down as CEO, all of us in the Apple blogosphere and fandom, we were all basically on board. Like, yeah, Tim Cook is the obvious choice to be the next CEO. And that was for a number of reasons. tim cook was already you know taking a a visible leadership position in the company it was very obviously like the plan was to have him like be the next ceo he was good at his job he was good at operations he you know he he was good at at what he was hired to do which was to be an operational genius and a bean counter he was really good at that and we all knew at that time that for a company to lose Steve Jobs, it was going to be a huge deal for public perception, for doubts about the future.

1:09:32Marco Arment:Everybody was going to freak out, especially Wall Street, was going to freak out about, will Apple be able to continue innovating without Steve Jobs? And so Tim Cook was the obvious and the safe choice. And he led pretty much exactly the way you would expect based on the way that story was aimed at that time. He was brought in to be the safe, confident for Wall Street leader to take over from the visionary founder to assuage everyone's fears and to make the company predictable and grown up and to grow all the numbers over time. That's exactly what he did. So he did the job he was hired to do. He did exactly what Steve Jobs probably expected and wanted him to do.

1:10:21Marco Arment:this ship is in motion it's it's a it's an amazing it's an amazing ship it's done some great things continue on the path and figure out what's next and keep this amazing thing going don't let apple die when steve jobs died and and by the way also i would imagine what steve

1:10:38Casey Liss:jobs wished for tim cook was to i have to get to the quote or whatever but to continue to to embody apple's core values in the their decision making uh and and and fitting in with the jobs telling him don't do what i would do do what you feel is right one of the first things he did after he took over and jobs was gone was change apple's policy and charitable giving because jobs didn't want to like i think apple didn't have any match under jobs or whatever it was tim cook says this is more important to me than it was to steve jobs i want to change apple's charitable giving and matching policy so i'm going to do that and in the environment i'm sure jobs cared about that but when tim cook took over that's a that's a value that he brought in that he cared about more than jobs and he really concentrated on that and i guarantee you that steve jobs wanted what he wanted was things that are important to you that mesh with like the the core values of apple as trying to do good in the world pursue those they may be different than mine i cared about these things you care about those things but as long as the things are all good things pursue them because i don't think he would be happy if tim cook took over apple and just scaled the company but then didn't do any of the other sort of stuff like the environment or privacy or accessibility and just kind of like left let them at status quo or let them die on the vine i don't think jobs would have been happy about that even if he wanted tim cook to take over to be a steady leader to scale the company he would also really want you know i I mean, Tim Cook's not going to do the different ad campaign, but like whatever the equivalent of that is to Tim Cook.

1:12:11Casey Liss:And it seems like to him that was basically like the environment and privacy. Right. And I think he did that. And I think Jobs would have been happy with that as well.

1:12:19Marco Arment:So Tim Cook took this amazing ship that Jobs really had built and grew all the numbers. The Tim Cook era was not defined by massive, like big splash, brand new revolutionary products. Even though I think part of Apple's great product portfolio was attributable to the Tim Cook era. I think, you know, mainly if I had to point out like the biggest successes, like in terms of like innovative products, it's got to be the Apple Watch and the AirPods. Those were both solidly within the Tim Cook era.

1:12:52Casey Liss:And both of those, by the way, like he really you mentioned the stories like comparing him to Jobs. Those stories haunted him for years. How many years did you have to see those stupid stories about, oh, Apple's going to do an announcement. But is Tim Cook going to be able to pull Steve Jobs? involved like he could not get rid of those damn stories and when he did introduce new things it was like yeah but what he did that's not but it was like the whole like overnight success thing like the iphone wasn't an overnight success either but in hindsight everyone thought it was so when he came out when apple came out with airpods it's like all right fine like whatever they're they're earphones but like honestly who cares about headphones compared to the the iphone it's like fast forward a few years and allow it to grow like the phone did and guess what airpods are an incredibly important and successful product that totally changed their market category almost in the same way that the phone did simply by popularizing the concept of tiny little wireless earbuds but when they were announced everyone was like uh well you know whatever it's no iphone right and you know nothing's going to be the iphone but like and same thing with the apple watch take a while to get going but you'd fast forward a few years and you wake up and like huh the apple watch massively dominates the smartwatch industry that it basically founded on its own by for the first thing to reach volumes and airpods are i think another one of those like if airpods were their own company i think they'd be in the fortune 500 as well huge success but it's like ah they're boring and they weren't a hit on day zero so we get to write the story about how tim

1:14:13Marco Arment:cook isn't steve jobs right and and the real and tim cook isn't steve jobs but tim cook is tim cook and he he did and does have a lot of strengths that he did bring to this job the downside is that Tim Cook does not really value and understand some pretty important things that are critical to Apple's products. Number one, he's not a product person at all. He's also not seemingly particularly a fan of computers or computing devices. Like, he doesn't hate them, but he doesn't seem to have a passion for them. And he doesn't seem to understand software or design. Okay, what does it mean to lead Apple?

1:14:58Marco Arment:Apple is a company that succeeds by making really great products that integrate good hardware, made with good operations, sure, with good software and good design of both hardware and software interfaces. And Tim Cook doesn't really understand a lot of those elements. He probably doesn't fancy himself as somebody understanding those, but also that meant that he made leadership choices that I think didn't maximize the chances of those universally and consistently excelling. And we saw that. Tim Cook is really good at numbers and being the bean counter and being the operations person. but he's not that good at products he relied on other people to do that for him but because he didn't really have as much of a sense for it as steve jobs did i think it led him to make really inconsistent and misguided choices much of the time in those areas and i think his self-awareness

1:16:00Casey Liss:of that weakness is part of what led him to at least one poor decision which was the bending over backwards to make Johnny I stay longer than he wanted to, which at the time, like again, for Wall Street's perspective and from Tim Cook's perspective, seems like a good idea. Like everyone loves Johnny Ivey, super famous. He's done awesome stuff. Don't let him leave Apple. But I think it really hurt the company's products. And because he knew it's like, look, I need to delegate these things because I'm not good at them. And who better to delegate to than Johnny Ivey, the world's best designer? In fact, I want him.

1:16:26Casey Liss:I need him to stay there because if he leaves, who do I delegate to after? It's a risk. I know this guy is a safe bet. So I'm going to put him in charge of all design. And that was the wrong decision. And it was made, I feel like, out of trepidation about the idea of finding someone to fill that role. But like if you already if you become CEO and you've already got Johnny Ive, it's kind of like I don't have to worry about design. I got that covered. I know it's not my strength, but I've got the world's best designer of the things that Apple makes Johnny Ive. Right. But he gets older. He gets restless.

1:16:55Casey Liss:He wants to move on to other things. He starts thinking about leaving the company like, no, no, stay. We'll put you in charge of the software, too. You can design Apple Park, whatever you want. And there was a real dark period of Apple design there where things were not going great. And Tim was like, well, I've done my job as CEO. I retain the important talent. And it's like, if he wasn't so afraid of finding a new person to delegate design to that he could be confident would be, you know, do a good job, he wouldn't have made Johnny Ive overstay his welcome.

1:17:24Marco Arment:it is very important to point out like in the same way that wall street was very afraid to lose steve jobs they were similarly afraid to lose johnny ive not quite to that level but it was

1:17:33Casey Liss:it was notable and there's another case of where like the mainstream press the concerns that we were voicing at the time in the little apple tech nerd sphere about johnny ive do not exist did not exist in the mainstream press all they knew is johnny ive equals ipod imac iphone uh if he leaves Apple stock price go down. Like all of our concerns about the product decisions he was making and everything just did not appear in these articles, despite the fact that maybe they'd have like lower sales on the laptops or something, or maybe there'd be a story or two about the butterfly keyboard and stuff like that.

1:18:06Casey Liss:But it was never, it was never in the conversation of like Apple needs to retain Johnny Ive. Of course they do. And you know, this one little corner of Apple's most enthusiastic fans were saying, losing Johnny Ive might not be that bad at this point, but like Like that was not visible in the larger world and probably was another easy way for Tim Cook to disregard it because it never came up on his radar that people were upset about decisions Johnny Ive was making about products. Exactly.

1:18:28Marco Arment:So we get through, you know, the Johnny Ive era and during this era, they almost killed the Mac. They sure tried. And this is not an exaggeration. It was very clear that the direction that Tim Cook wanted to go was the iPad is the next era of mainstream computing. The Mac is legacy. Let's phase it out. That was very obviously the path they were on in both hardware and software. The Mac became even more neglected. They went through some terrible, the terrible hardware era of 2016 through 2020 or 2019. You know, the whole butterfly keyboard era where every Mac.

1:19:12Casey Liss:And also removing all the ports from laptops.

1:19:14Marco Arment:Right, removing all the ports, making the whole touch bar thing.

1:19:18Casey Liss:That was apparently on Ternus.

1:19:19Marco Arment:Hey, whatever. It happened on Tim Cook's watch, right? And as a result of the leadership structure that he had maintained, it was a bad time for the Mac.

1:19:30Casey Liss:You forgot dropping the ball to Mac Pro.

1:19:32Marco Arment:Of course. I mean, yeah, there are so many. They had to do the Mac roundtable, right? Obviously, things were a mess. The software quality took a huge dive during a lot of that span as well. They really had a lot of problems with software quality. These days, they do have some problems remaining in that area, but it's not nearly as bad as it used to be. Design quality, obviously that's a more recent biggest problem, but it's certainly been going this way for a while. Anyway, a lot of problems. And then you start looking at the industry as a whole. As everything shifts first towards really big cloud services and really big data services, You have the rise of things like, obviously, Facebook and the social networking whole area there and all the advertising sophistication that they're developing and tracking all this stuff.

1:20:25Marco Arment:And I think Apple's behavior around that was largely good in the sense that they did stand up for privacy a lot and they did block a lot of the impact of that from getting too deep into too many of their customers' systems. but there was this huge part of the industry developing that apple took no part in and wanted nothing to do with except they wanted some of the money so they then started doing things like app store ads they're now doing apple maps as they're going in these directions they want the money but they don't want to invest to either make these products great for users or particularly sophisticated in terms of like their capabilities like ad targeting um so they just they're just kind of doing these kind of like you know half-assed crappy versions of those kind of things and then and the whole services narrative they're pushing during this time and and the services growth story relies on somewhat making additive things that make people's lives overall better but largely either imposing taxes as a gatekeeper and or making the user experience worse to make a bit more money.

1:21:36Marco Arment:And that is largely the revenue growth story. Taking existing product lines and just making them keep going. Great. Okay. But the impact of the Cook era on them is we've maximized the money. It's going great and we need to find more. So after we can't raise prices anymore, what we're going to do is just start adding tack on things, services, ads, fees, upsells. And then we're going to just push and push and squeeze and just maximize everything. And that's when the user experience starts taking a nosedive, as we were talking about literally last week. What Tim Cook has led is a big expansion of the numbers and generally, you know, making the ship stable and mature and making it reliable for Wall Street.

1:22:27Marco Arment:But at the cost of some of the areas of the products having some pretty weird turns in the middle there due to a lack of understanding or leadership. And now some pretty big questions about their fundamental values that might be being compromised that could long-term erode the product. And the same thing is happening with the Apple brand itself based on Tim Cook's political choices. And what he built over this entire time was massively building up China to a point now that is geopolitically kind of risky. It is existentially risky for Apple in case anything weird would happen between the US and China.

1:23:10Marco Arment:And strategically, that's a pretty large flaw, I think. He did his job. He made the numbers go up, but in such a way that I think was optimized for short-term gain and ignored a lot of the long-term risks and quality and strategy that will possibly come to bite them later. Then finally, he totally over-invested in bad product decisions, the Vision Pro and the car, and then totally under-invested in what actually has turned out to be a pretty big deal, AI. And this story isn't over yet. We don't know how this is going to end up. We do know where it has been. we do know that Apple's efforts at AI so far have been nothing.

1:24:02Marco Arment:They've resulted in almost nothing. Siri has been just a massive disaster for a very long time. It's been holding back all their products. It has caused significant brand damage. And meanwhile, the industry is taking off in this massive way in this other area that they are just nowhere in. so when you look at this pattern the numbers guy takes over from the visionary ceo the numbers all go up the products kind of zigzag a little bit or a little confused mostly just make a bunch of money and mostly you're okay but then another then the next big thing is completely missed that's steve balmer that's exactly steve balmer tim cook just did a better job of it tim cook was a better bomber but he's still a bomber he still has played basically that story arc in the company's history he grew everything he kept the ship going he kept things stable but didn't have product sense and has left the company in not an amazing place in terms of future product growth because he totally blew it on the next big wave.

1:25:18Marco Arment:Microsoft missed mobile. Apple has missed AI. Microsoft did eventually do things in mobile. Apple will eventually do things in AI. But I think it's pretty clear that they're never going to be a leader in it. It's too late. They would have had to start a while ago. They would have had to maybe buy one of these companies when it was much smaller. They would need a very, very different corporate ethos and priority set that I just don't think they have. And so if Apple's ever a leader in AI, I'd be very, very surprised. In the same way that if Microsoft is ever a leader in mobile, I'd be very, very surprised.

1:25:53Marco Arment:Microsoft is still a great company and they still make tons of money and they succeed in other areas. But they did take a pretty big hit in their potential and in the roads they're able to take by basically being nowhere in mobile. That could happen to Apple with AI. Apple could be very restricted in its paths in the future, and it could be missing out on a whole bunch of potential because they missed AI. And meanwhile, could that billions and billions of dollars to develop the Vision Pro and the car have been better spent in any other way for any of the other products? Maybe making Siri better all this time.

1:26:32Marco Arment:Maybe getting into AI a little bit earlier. Any of those things. They could have maybe done better things with that money. And so even if you set aside the more recent stuff with Trump, which is abhorrent and that I think should tarnish Tim Cook's legacy forever, his general leadership of the company has been fine, predictable, but not visionary and not particularly effective for a design forward product focused company. He did really well at making money. And Apple has made a lot of money. They made all the money. Good job. But where are the products? The brightest part of the product lineup right now is hardware.

1:27:20Marco Arment:The hardware is great. And hey, we got the hardware chief now as CEO. So I think this is very promising that the Tim Cook era is ending. We now have an end date. And I think, I mean, basically it's ending now-ish, like even though officially it's September, but like this transition is going to happen faster than we realize. You know, I think we're not going to see Tim Cook on stage at WBDC. Like there's going to be like, you know, I think we're, I think we're mostly done seeing Tim Cook doing a lot of public things. I think he's going to let Ternus take over a lot of that stuff immediately to get him out there and everything so I think the Tim Cook era is really effectively over and the Ternus era is beginning and we're going to see what that means all of these problems could continue we might have all sorts of brand new problems we didn't even realize that we were taking for granted during the Tim Cook era but I don't think so I think Ternus is going to be good because so far his background suggests that he actually has closer to what we want in terms of product sense, love of computing and computers and computing devices.

1:28:34Marco Arment:And he is also a younger generation. This will trigger over probably the next five years most of the Apple leadership that hasn't turned over yet to turnover. and we're going to get a generational turnover in Apple leadership. And that could take us in some exciting directions too, which you talked about in the past. So I think this transition is not without risk. There's always risk that something that we love or need will get worse. But I'm hopeful because I think that the things that Tim Cook was hired to do, he basically did for better and for worse. His job is done. And now it's time to see what's next for Apple.

1:29:17Marco Arment:and all of the flaws of the Tim Cook era can be swept behind us, and we can move forward as best as we can and try to improve. And I'm looking forward to what that ends up being.

1:29:30John Siracusa:So, Marco, I hear you saying, and don't let me put words in your mouth, but I hear you saying that Cook, to a degree, had an edict, he had a mission, and he has succeeded in that mission. And I think that I agree with that wholeheartedly. Do you consider Cook to have been successful by whatever metric you so choose? We agree that on paper, if his goal was to grow the company in leaps and bounds, and he has achieved that, that is already agreed to, do you think he was successful?

1:30:00Marco Arment:It's not a straight yes or no. I think if you had to say like overall, was he successful? Yes. I do think, though, that there's a lot of asterisk on that. And again, I am very concerned with the strategic importance that he has created in China. I think that is really uncomfortable for a lot of reasons, both for the world and for the country, our country, and for Apple itself. All of those things I think were made – were left in a worse position today because of Apple's buildup of China. the products you know as mentioned products are you know hit or miss in in certain ways but he was he was hired to be the wall street calming replacement for steve jobs and to take the company into like the bigger bigger and bigger and bigger direction and he did that so he did he did what he was hired to do i just think he didn't know his own shortcomings enough to put proper leadership in place below him to to cover the things he didn't he wasn't good at and i think the tim cook era probably lasted longer than it should have in general i would have liked to see the transition happen five years ago um but hey no better time than uh than now

1:31:17Casey Liss:i think he knew his shortcomings he just it's difficult when you difficult when you know you have the shortcomings to know the right person to pick and it's i think the main difficulty is like it's difficult for him to correctly weight the importance of issues in the categories where he's not an expert so i'm sure he had some vague awareness about all the various things that we've complained about that like product problems that apple has had but he's got so many things that he's juggling having to do with things beyond just the details of the products that when it comes time for him to decide where to concentrate things really have to be a seven alarm fire before he actually does something about like the the laptop keyboards or something because that's so below his concern for so long whereas if you're a product guy likes jobs or even maybe like turnus we'll see um even though in the grand scheme of things some some issue some disgruntlement about the some particular design a particular product isn't that big a deal in the grand scheme of things you know but we're apple this is the stuff we're supposed to get right and suddenly it it demands more forceful leadership from you in that area not that you're going to fix it yourself or know how to fix it but that you're going to rank it you're going to pay more attention to it and i really do feel like that tim cook paid attention to the things that he understood well and it took it was harder for things that he wasn't good at to go up to his level and i think again i think he did know that he wasn't good at those things but i think it's one of those things where it's like choosing what to spend your time and attention on is itself a an action as a ceo he may have thought well i'm not spending my attention on product design because i don't know anything about that i've delegated it's fine but you have to pay attention to that you have to treat it as seriously as you would treat a supply chain issue or you know some some other thing that you are good at just because you don't have expertise and it doesn't mean that you can just safely ignore it and everyone will take care of it because you're the leader of all of apple you do get to delegate to your lieutenants um and maybe you have difficulty judging whether they're good at their jobs but in the end it is your job to oversee everything and figure out which part needs attention now and he just didn't seem to ever give attention to the parts that you know that were that were failing because they weren't in his strengths um as for your comparison to balmer i continue to think that's not valid uh mostly because we'll see here i mean we'll find out but like um when balmer left the satya nadella transformation of microsoft was basically to turn it into a different kind of company it was like uh balmer was a continuation of the gates microsoft and nadella said actually i have a vision of a different microsoft that just cares about different things we're not all about windows everywhere we're not about windows and office anymore.

1:33:51Casey Liss:Now we're a services company. Now we're going to do our things on all platforms. It was just a real, a real transformation of the company to be a different kind of business, sort of like IBM transformed from the early days of IBM. The company that made the PC is not today's IBM. You know what I mean? IBM has transformed itself also coincidentally into more of a services type company. I don't think the Tim Cook to John Ternus transition will see Apple being transformed in the same way that Microsoft was after Nadella, which makes me say that Tim Cook is not a Steve Ballmer because Ternus doesn't have to transform Apple into a totally different kind of company, right?

1:34:26Casey Liss:It would be as if Apple stopped caring about selling integrated hardware and software and just became like a, you know, a business-to-business services company that put its software on all platforms. That's not going to happen. And I think that shows that Tim Cook didn't screw up Apple as Ballmer did. And also, under Tim Cook's leadership, of like you kind of uh passed by this quickly but i don't want to undersell it like he oversaw the iphone product line not just like oh just keep the iphone going he didn't just keep the iphone going he continued to make sure the iphone was it was we say this every year it's good every year almost every single iphone is really good and gets better and that's apple's most important product and it's one of the things tim cook seemed to be able to pay attention to there weren't a lot of stinker iphones and it's not like the iphone just stayed at the status quo and was afraid to make any changes the iphone has developed like we wish all of apple's product lines would develop it got a lot of attention it had a lot of innovation things were tried mistakes were fixed quickly uh the hardware software integration was pretty good even the os 26 is not that bad on the phone not like on the mac right so i i don't think like balmer is like let's just squeeze every last ounce of money out of windows and office and not really make them any better he didn't just squeeze every ounce of money out of the phone he continued to make the phone better and he also added a bunch of services on top of it but it's not like he said well the phone the phone when i become ceo in 2011 we it's fine we don't need to really change the phone much after that we'll just keep going same selling the same phone like that i think they have pressed on the phone and apple silicon and all that stuff like so in the areas where he paid attention he did i gave him some credit for the product lines that he cared about and paid attention to didn't just stay at the status quo and the iphone is their most important product and i think they just continue to knock it out of the park with that product i mean i care more about the mac i like the mac more but there's no arguing that they've been resting on their laurels with the phone they've been a the perfect combination of innovative and careful because you can't be like all the you know the other android phones that can just try all sorts of stuff like that's why android has folding phones first everyone and it has all the different innovations and the phones like they'll try everything right apple has to be careful but it also means don't just do the same thing forever try new stuff see how it works they made big ones they made small ones they made fat ones they made thin ones they're going to make a folding one uh they they got rid of the home button you know they're i give tim cook credit for that as well um and as for the china stuff like this is where like values being embodied in decision making is it becomes difficult because basically as you know if you read the apple and china book like it's not possible to scale apple tim cook become ceo in 2011 uh he wants to scale apple up and sell more phones it's very it's basically impossible to do that without doing what he did with china there's not even a lot of countries that you could have swapped out for china like don't do with china do it with somebody else like what are the other options it's kind of a situation where it's like if you really want to adhere to your core values apple cannot grow this fast i mean that's the reality of planet earth was if you just sat down in 2011 and said so tim you want to make the line go like this but what if i told you literally the only way to make the line go at that angle is you've got to invest heavily in china and with all the caveats and problems that comes with or you could invest uh equally heavily or more heavily in these other places that are you know not authoritarian regimes like china or whatever right but now the line can't go up as steep which one do you want to do and he made his choice which was i'm gonna make the line go up the steeper one and i'm gonna invest in china and i think mostly to his credit he knows the downsides of that maybe better than anyone he knows the downsides of it and apple has been trying to pull out of china there's been a thing in the notes for ages about apples uh the various efforts to pull back from china to the extent possible i think something like i forget what the stat was maybe like half of the of a particular model of iphone was not made in china but was made in india or something like that this is a delicate situation to extract themselves from it is a problem of their own making but it's not like they're doing nothing and all their press releases they'll be like rah rah china we love you we're not backing off or whatever but look at what they're actually doing they are trying to build more stuff in places other than china and it's really hard and they're doing it really slowly and that's why it was a you know that's why it was a momentous decision and why it is going to be his legacy as he's leaving turnus with this holding the bag on this or whatever but i think it's not like he you know he was going full throttle all china all the time until the day he left i think he has already tried to already started turning the ship around years ago it's just a big ship and it's going to take a long time so i don't know i i mean if you ask me it has to be a success as a ceo i think it's inarguably yes even though all the things that i have to complain about but my complaints have increased as his tenure has gone on and that really tells me his time should end and now is ending and so i'm happy about that but um i think as a ceo even though he didn't make every decision the way i wanted him to he made mostly good decisions and has inarguably been successful and i do continue to think despite various times that marco has not been able to bring himself to believe this is the case i do think in his heart of hearts he is a good person who is merely misguided many times let's say and maybe it's because i'm optimistic person i want to see the best in people and who can know like i'm just guessing about a person i've never met you know what i mean like it's hard to know he's so guarded but it seems to me that he is a good person who thinks he's doing the right thing and is just mistaken sometimes and that's like all of us the problem is that his uh mistaken uh assumptions about him doing the right thing have effects that are magnified by four trillion dollar market cap and that is uh that is you know he said he describes it as like what i know to be the best job in the world it's almost kind of like a curse like would you really want to be in charge of the world's biggest technology company it's a lot of responsibility and everything you do wrong is magnified uh it's like being you know uh control in control of the world's most powerful military if you had a conscience for example um it's a lot of responsibility and i'm not sure it's the best job in the world the best job in the world seems like uh already having that kind of money and sitting at a beach maybe but uh that doesn't seem to be uh the things that tim tim cook wants to do So here's hoping that he gets to that beach sooner rather than later.

1:40:53And let's turn us make decisions out from the shadow of Tim Cook.

1:40:58Casey Liss:Oh, and then one final thing, long term versus short term. You frequently said that he's made short term decisions, but I feel like the time scales are important here. He's been CEO for what? 15 years or something.

1:41:09John Siracusa:Thereabouts.

1:41:09Casey Liss:Yeah. Like and like his chickens are coming home to roost on his bad decisions like in China. And you're calling that he made that decision for short term. It's like, well, short term, I think, is like quarter to quarter or year to year. But if you make a decision that's going to turn out to be a big problem in a decade, that's long term thinking in business. Right. So he's made mistakes. And I feel like the mistakes have been long term mistakes, not a short term. I don't think most of the things he's done have not been with an eye towards. I got to hit the numbers for next quarter. Almost all of his decisions, including the bad ones, have been with an eye towards a decade from now.

1:41:43Casey Liss:What is this going to be like? so i think that and you know you're grading on a curve here but a lot of ceos really are in the mindset of like what do i got to scrap together for this earnings report uh and tim cook has mostly been isolated from that simply because he's you know he's been so good at leading apple to continue to be successful that he has never been put into a position where everyone is staring at him and saying boy tim you better hit you better not have another loss this quarter or we're going to be coming out with the knives it's just merely been a question of oh did you make as many billions this time as you did last time and even the car thing like you mentioned you know sinking the money into that looking at how much money tech companies are putting into ai stuff now i think like one year or one quarter's worth of the tech industry's capital investment in ai probably dwarfs all the money apple ever spent on the car in a decade just because it was you know speculative and they didn't actually build anything and they're like oh apple spent 10 billion dollars on the car it's like people spend 10 billion dollars in one quarter on stupid data center crap for a service they haven't even launched yet so yeah the car was a miss but a i give him props for not shipping it because it would have been bad uh and b in the grand scheme of capex the car especially apple's amount of money the car is nothing compared to the money that companies are speculatively putting into ai in their panic spending in the hope not to be left behind and you know maybe that'll turn out you know maybe it'll be egg in apple's face and we said apple you should have been panic spending and putting those kind of kinds of dollars into ai because it turns out no one uses iPhones anymore and everyone just uses their hovering earphone pod from OpenAI and Johnny Ive or whatever.

1:43:15Casey Liss:But right now that's not the case. So, you know, I would also say on the Vision Pro, kind of jury's still out on how the AI thing's going to turn out and how the Vision Pro thing's going to turn out. At least Vision Pro shipped and maybe they make money on the hardware that they sell. I'm not even sure that's the case, but it remains to be seen. I think ultimately there's a lot to complain about

1:43:35John Siracusa:with regard to Tim Cook. And some of us, Marco, have done that a little more vocally than others. But I do think there's a lot to complain about. I also think that by any reasonable metric, his tenure at Apple was unbelievably successful. And perhaps I'm just getting, you know, not wispy-eyed, but, you know, maybe I'm just looking at things with rose-colored glasses because, you know, it's the end of an era. But I look at my computer that I'm using right now, which is, you know, an M3 Max MacBook Pro, which I think three years old now, something like that. And it's still incredible. I look at this MacBook Neo that, you know, just came out and from everything that anyone has ever said, you know, yeah, it's got flaws, but on the grand scheme of things, in the grand scheme of things, it's incredible.

1:44:20John Siracusa:My iPhone takes phenomenal pictures and keeps me connected with people far, far, far away. You know, one of my dearest friends from high school is now living in Australia and will FaceTime not irregularly. And that's just one example of many. You know, I look at the Vision Pro and yes, we can snark about how it's kind of a failed product so far. We can snark about how it weighs, you know, a whole ton and it's not exceedingly comfortable. And, you know, I don't have the occasion to put it on very often. But as I've said many, many, many times on the show, every time I put a Vision Pro on and use it, I am reminded that I am strapping the future to my face.

1:45:00John Siracusa:And there's so much incredible stuff that Apple has done. I think that their stewardship for privacy, I think them not caving during the San Bernardino situation, which obviously was fraught and you could make a very strong argument that Apple did not make the right choice. I think they did. I think that there are things that we can complain about, but on the whole, the last 15 years, which has been almost the entirety of my time paying attention to Apple. I only started paying attention a couple of years, a few years before Tim took over as CEO. It's been an incredible ride to watch all this and not to be a part of it, but to be a part of it.

1:45:36John Siracusa:And to go from my first real introduction to Apple, my first Apple product was an iPod Nano. And I adored that thing and I actually just found it recently, and it's incredible. Even today, it feels incredible in hand. And obviously, the dock connector is not great, but by and large, it's still a really cool product. And I look at all these devices, and I look at the things that Apple of the last 15 years have afforded people, but especially me. I mean, my career, no matter how you look at it, right now anyway, revolves around Apple. And I think that that's largely true for all three of us at the moment.

1:46:19John Siracusa:And that's not all Tim, of course, but it's hard not to get nostalgic. It's hard not to look back on the last 15 years. I mean, hell, this podcast started for real in March of 2013. So this is almost the accidental Tim Cook podcast, you know? And I can't help but feel like it's been a pretty damn good run. I echo a lot of the complaints that Marco has had. I have echoed them and I echo them now. And I think that I echo, you know, I, I echo a lot of the complaints that John has as much as I give John a hard time about his beloved Mac pro. Like it does kind of suck that there isn't a just completely bananas.

1:46:57John Siracusa:Absolutely. No, you know, no punches pulled computer anymore, but on the whole, I really do look at the last 15 years and say, you know what? That's a job pretty well done. And I think that we are all largely, not exclusively, largely better off for it. And I think that he should ride off into the sunset feeling happy and accomplished and proud of what he has done.

1:47:21Casey Liss:I do wonder if he'll give, do you think he'll give, he probably won't because he's a executive chairman. Like at what point does Tim Cook start giving candid interviews ever or does he just die? Because like. Wow.

1:47:31Marco Arment:I don't think, I don't think it's in him.

1:47:33Casey Liss:Yeah. Obviously when he's on the board, he's not going to give any candid anything. So let's say he retires. question. That's the question. Will Tim Cook ever retire from Apple's board?

1:47:42John Siracusa:I think he will. And I think the answer to your question, when he will start to get candid, if I were to wager a guess and try to psychoanalyze someone who I met once for about 30 seconds, I would say that he will start to get more candid when he is of ill health. And I think -

1:48:00Casey Liss:Right before he dies.

1:48:01John Siracusa:No, truly. I really mean it. Because if you think about it -

1:48:03Casey Liss:I don't know if he'll do it then even.

1:48:04Marco Arment:I don't think so.

1:48:05John Siracusa:I'm not sure he will. I'm not sure he will. And I could make a strong argument that he won't. But my guess -

1:48:10Casey Liss:Because Art Levinson is like 75 and he's not even leaving. He's just getting booted out of the non-executive chairmanship. And he's still going to be, what is it, the lead independent director. Art Levinson's not leaving that board until he dies. And I imagine the same will be true of Tim Cook. So I don't think he'll ever give a candid interview about Apple.

1:48:29John Siracusa:I think he will. Because I think if you're Tim Cook, and again, I'm really psychoanalyzing in a way that's borderline inappropriate, but what is his legacy? You know, he doesn't, to the best that we all know, he doesn't have any children. He doesn't, to the best that we all know, have any spouse. So Apple is to a large degree his legacy. And I think that if it were me and I was on Death's Door, and I don't mean that to be flippant, I'm being genuine. Like if I was on Death's Door, that is when I would want to try to do what I could to establish whatever legacy or properly cement any legacy that I may have had.

1:49:01John Siracusa:And I think that if he is to get candid, and I echo what you, I echo both of you going, I don't know about that. But if he is to get candid, I think it's basically when time is running out and he just wants to make sure that whatever it is that's important to him, be that reminding everyone about all the good environmental stuff Apple does or all the good privacy stuff Apple does and, you know, washing away all the bad stuff. One way or another, I think that's when he gets candid.

1:49:24Casey Liss:I feel like he's going to be a company man to the end. It could be. Even if he's totally off the board, he's an ill health, he's just never going to say anything bad about Apple, never going to do candid stories about what it was like to fight in the trenches is unlike for example like we talked about that recent like what was it 40th anniversary of the mac thing or whatever where you get people from the mac team telling like stories they've told before but like very sort of uh candid dysfunctional inside stories about the creation of the products they worked on because apple is not their legacy right their legacy in some respects is their participation in this team warts and all but they're they're not afraid to first of all they've been gone from apple for decades and second of all apple was not their company so they don't have to continue to say i just love apple it's wonderful it's been the best thing in my life blah blah never say anything bad about it no they want to tell you the bad stories they want to tell you the stories about how things were broken and people argued and you know how how their bosses were dummies and they did something clever despite their bosses telling them you know like they'll do that now while they're alive because it doesn't it's not a threat to their legacy it's your point casey whereas i feel like there is no time when tim cook is alive when he will not feel that he has to continue to tow the company line and say rah-rah apple like even something as simple as my you know regrets about how china was handled you know say something disastrous happens you know god forbid but say something disastrous happens with china while he's still alive in and he's 87 years old and he's on his deathbed and he's being interviewed he does an interview would he say like my one regret is maybe i could have handled china differently i think he would not say that on death's door i think he'd be like nope you're never that's never going to come out of my mouth i might feel it but i'm never going to say it so tough luck but we'll see like i mean it's when people are guarded and private in this way when people are so disciplined in their communication um it's human nature to wish that we could get at the real them and i guess i think the best we're going to get for tim cook is the increasing number of stories from people who are in the room with tim because they that that story is like their currency to like here's my tell-all book and not the tell-all book you know like this it's the only reason we know the the why are you still here story about the guy who had to go fly to china we don't know that from tim cook we know it from the people who are in the room with him and as those people who are in the room with him retire maybe we'll see them you know on the 50th anniversary of the iphone they're they're on stage in a little panel with uh cyber david poge um they'll tell their stories about uh when tim cook was a jerk in a meeting or what Tim Cook really thought about something behind the scenes, you know, like, and honestly, I'm not even sure how candid he is in that.

1:51:58Casey Liss:Like, you know, how many people hear Tim Cook's real opinion about anything ever like related to Apple? Probably like, those people could fit in a small room and the rest of the people aren't, you know, don't get to hear that, but we'll see. For now, I wish he would fade from Apple's day to day even more than And he already is. But you know, you take what you can get. Quote unquote retirement to be the executive chairman is better than him staying CEO.

1:52:24Marco Arment:All right. Thank you to our sponsors this episode, Squarespace, Claude, and Delete Me. And thanks to our members who support us directly. You can join us at ATZFM slash join. One of the many perks of ATP membership is our weekly bonus topic, ATP Overtime. Every single episode has bonus content exclusive to members. this week on overtime we're going to be talking about media and the limits of human perception we're going to be talking about audiophile stuff fancy video stuff it's going to be a lot of fun so you can join and listen atp.fm slash join thanks everybody we'll talk to you next week now the show is over they didn't even mean to begin because it was accidental oh it was accidental John didn't do any research Marco and Casey wouldn't let him Cause it was accidental It was accidental And you can find the show notes at atp.fm And if you're into Mastodon You can follow them At C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that's Casey Liss S-M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-A-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-N-S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A.

1:53:50Marco Arment:So it's accidental. It's accidental. They didn't mean to. Accidental. Accidental.

1:53:58Casey Liss:Tech Podcast. So long. So for the after show, I need to tell you what I told Merlin in a recent episode. We just don't look at the internet. you may already be spoiled for this and may make this after show totally moot. But if so, Marco can just cut it out and we'll do a different one. Okay. All right. This is for you two. No looking at the internet. I'm hoping you didn't see information that was on the internet very recently that would make this not fun. I would like the two of you in the style of you two trying to name the versions and names of macOS. I would like you two to name the CEOs of Apple in order.

1:54:37Casey Liss:Oh, no. In order? Oh, God. Now, I feel like you're helped a little bit because recently there was the, speaking of David Polk, he had that Apple at 50 book. And I know Casey was reading that. I finished it. There you go. It's given you a lot of information. And that's been in the news. And maybe Marco's seen it fly by. But Casey's memory is bad. So you two can collaborate if you want or you can compete.

1:54:57John Siracusa:There's no way we will do this without collaborating. I can tell you that right now.

1:55:00Casey Liss:All right. Well, maybe before you collaborate, you both, we're going to do them in chronological order. so and we'll do marco first because he's the least likely to know the answer um god uh apple's first ceo marco is what is your guess if you both don't know then you can collaborate well there was that

1:55:17Marco Arment:guy who was ceo for like 12 days right at the beginning don't help him casey we don't hear what he says oh i have a bunch of names so i have a couple of names floating around in my head but i don't think it's right i know like i think mike markala was one of the earlier ones i think John Browett was one of those earlier ones.

1:55:37Casey Liss:You got a lot of names in the head, that's for sure.

1:55:39Marco Arment:I know some of the later ones, but like, jeez, the very...

1:55:43Casey Liss:I think the very first one

1:55:47Marco Arment:technically was probably Steve Jobs. That is wrong. Casey, you want to help him out?

1:55:50John Siracusa:No, it was Ron Wayne, wasn't it? No.

1:55:53Casey Liss:You don't have it either? You just read the book.

1:55:55John Siracusa:Who was the 12 Days guy? Wasn't that Ron Wayne?

1:55:58Casey Liss:I don't know what you're talking about, but no, it was not.

1:56:00John Siracusa:No, who's the third one? The adult in the room with the two of them?

1:56:04Casey Liss:It's some name that we don't know. We never talk about it. Actually, before we even do the list, do you know how many CEOs there have been of Apple? Like 12. Including John Ternus.

1:56:13Marco Arment:Oh, like 13 or 14, something like that?

1:56:15John Siracusa:Yeah, I was going to say the same. Somewhere low 10, low double digits, less than 15.

1:56:21Casey Liss:If you think there are 13 or 14, I would love to see you try to name all 13, but that's too high. There's not that many. Oh, no, it was eight, wasn't it?

1:56:27John Siracusa:It's eight and maybe nine.

1:56:28Casey Liss:Yes, you probably saw that on social media there. there's there have been eight apple ceos including john turnis jesus so for number one you don't have it casey no it's who is the guy he was you're thinking of ron wayne who was the the person who signed the incorporation papers and then bailed out and then bailed out two weeks later but he

1:56:44John Siracusa:was never ceo of apple then i got nothing uh yeah don't look at the chat room either because they're

1:56:51Casey Liss:spoiling it for all of you no i'm not okay um uh marco uh uh what do you call it um the office main character. Michael Scott? That was the first CEO of Apple. Michael Scott, 1977 to 1981. How did I not know that? Also known as Mike Scott.

1:57:08Marco Arment:Maybe that's why.

1:57:10Casey Liss:All right. Well, that's a tough one because it's 1977, 1981. I don't think either one of you were alive, although Casey did just read the book about him. Remember, he was brought in as the CEO when they formed the company. Okay. Number two, after Mike Scott. Oh, I got nothing on this. That was probably Jobs. Nope. you had it before Marko you want to try again was it John Browett Marko CEO Mike Marko yes Mike Marko Casey don't look at the chat room either I'm not looking at the chat room Mike Marko 1981 to 1983 the two Mikes Mike Scott and Mike Marko alright number three he's starting in 1983 so we did 77 to 81 81 to 83 now it's 1983 who becomes CEO of Apple

1:57:53Marco Arment:I think actually so my thinking now Now, I think Jobs was never CEO before he was ousted. I think that's how this happened. Casey, you want to help him with this?

1:58:03John Siracusa:No, I thought that that was correct.

1:58:05Casey Liss:I'm just saying you can collaborate now because you really need each other. Yeah, we do.

1:58:09John Siracusa:And I'm useless.

1:58:10Marco Arment:So I know at some point we have like, you know, John Scully, Gil Emilio. Like we have this series. I get was Scully the next one. I think Scully might have been the next one.

1:58:19John Siracusa:Yeah, but not this early, though.

1:58:21Marco Arment:Because wasn't Scully the only fire Jobs? Yes. Jobs was never fired. My answer was John Scully. What year did you say, John?

1:58:29Casey Liss:1983, he's starting. Markle ends in 83. I thought, no, I think Markle is right.

1:58:35John Siracusa:I think it is Scully.

1:58:36Casey Liss:You got it right. John Scully. He was recruited by Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs said, do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life because he was at Pepsi? Or do you want to come with me and change the world? He recruited John Scully to become CEO of Apple in 1983. John Scully lasted from 1983 to 1993. Yeah, long span. He launched the Newton because he thought he was a product visionary, but he was a guy from Pepsi. All right. Then was it Gil Emilio? So Scully is gone in 93. Who comes in in 1993? Jobs is obviously not here anymore because Jobs departed Apple during the Scully era in 1985, I believe.

1:59:14Casey Liss:So Scully is there for 1983, 85 Jobs leaves, and then it's just the John Scully show from 85 to 1993.

1:59:20Marco Arment:Yeah, but I thought there was somebody before Emilio. Maybe was there Mike Markle of then? we just said we already did mike marco oh was that john scott mike marco brown is the guy who

1:59:31Casey Liss:ran the apple store retail for like six months oh that's right that was for like a hot second yeah that is a that is very not in paper master i don't know why that name was stuck in your head but i just want to save you from saying brow it sounded like a ceo name all right after john

1:59:46John Siracusa:scully who takes over no but there was someone between him and emilio i could have sworn but i can't place who it was because marco's right i think marco had said it was i'll give you a hint

1:59:54Casey Liss:this CEO famously hid under his desk at various points because oh yes and he was of poor

2:00:01John Siracusa:physical health god I can't remember his name now but I know who you're thinking of

2:00:04Marco Arment:not Gil Emilio that's somebody else

2:00:06John Siracusa:no

2:00:07Marco Arment:I don't know

2:00:08John Siracusa:I couldn't pull a name out of a hat but I know who you're thinking of

2:00:11Casey Liss:one of you said it before but I'll save you because this is you know not a well-known CEO Michael Spindler 1993 to 1996

2:00:18Marco Arment:yeah I've heard that name before but I don't know this is like the period where Casey and I are not paying attention at all right

2:00:23Casey Liss:hiding under his desk is the note card and michael spindler not uh profiles in courage

2:00:28Marco Arment:it doesn't seem like that would be a tim cook thing to do no tim cook is never hiding under

2:00:33Casey Liss:his desk i can tell you that i don't think tim has ever sat down yeah exactly he's always on the move like a shark yeah that's all right so this ends in 1996 and 1996 who takes over as the

2:00:45Marco Arment:fifth ceo of apple that must be a gil emilio finally see well hold on i'm pulling emilio card

2:00:51Casey Liss:again.

2:00:52John Siracusa:No, hold on though, because if that's number 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 4. Because Jobs

2:00:55Casey Liss:is back by like 97 or 98, right? Yeah, Spindler is leaving in 96.

2:01:01John Siracusa:One, two, three, four, five, six.

2:01:02Casey Liss:Who takes over from Spindler in 96?

2:01:04John Siracusa:Oh, no, no, you've got it. You've got it. I just need to do the math. You've got it. You've got it.

2:01:07Casey Liss:Yeah, it's Emilio. Right? Gil Emilio. Okay. Yeah, who famously compared the Macintosh to the Maglite, which was the only other hardware electronic product he could think of that was high quality. He's like, the Mac, it's kind of like the Maglite, because that was the time, you know, Maglites were popular, and it was like, it's like a flashlight, but like a really good, really expensive flashlight. So the Mac is like the Maglite.

2:01:29Marco Arment:oh sorry gill yeah they really had a moment there with the mag lights but then like leds happened

2:01:35Casey Liss:and really killed them this is way before leds this is 1996 so mag lights were incredibly popular look it up kids it was it was a whole thing anyway uh he lasted from 1996 to 1997 the most important decision he ever made obviously was to buy next and get steve jobs back who was the sixth ceo of apple steve jobs that's right the first time he was ever ceo of apple he was not ceo of apple of any at any other time he was the co-founder but they brought on ceos to because they were kids and they brought on adults who understood business to be ceos and one of those people was recruited by jobs himself and that was the one who essentially uh defeated him in the politics in the boardroom politics of the day resulting in jobs leaving but when he came back he was i ceo then regular ceo steve jobs 1997 to 2011 he did not leave he was not kicked out he died it was sad number seven and tim cook there you go and number eight and then john turnus 2011 to 2026 john turnus 2026 to question mark i feel like we did okay yeah my apologies to

2:02:44Marco Arment:uh john syracusa jason snell and john gruber i mean i don't this is i don't expect people who

2:02:50Casey Liss:weren't into Apple to know these things. I just, I felt like Casey could have knocked it out because he just read a book on Apple history that talked about all of these people.

2:02:57John Siracusa:Yes, but I've read other things since then.

2:03:01Casey Liss:Casey has a small context window. He's waiting for the upgrade.

2:03:04Marco Arment:Also, wasn't that book like 600 pages long? Like it was even by the time you're at the end of the book, you forgot in the beginning.

2:03:09John Siracusa:Also true. It's like painting the Golden Gate Bridge. No, it was an incredible book though, despite the fact that I remembered nothing of it because I'm an idiot and I have no memory. No, it really was worth your time. And I think I might've said this already on the show, but just in case, you should find it in like a local library, which is how I did, or buy it or whatever. Or if you're reading it on a Kindle-like device, make sure it's one with color because they are incredible photographs in this book. It's really, really, really worth your time. You know, they didn't sponsor anything like that.

2:03:37John Siracusa:It's just genuinely a really, really good book.

2:03:39Casey Liss:I just started reading that one, but like from what I've gathered from other people looking at, there's not much in there that I haven't read in the 7 ,000 other books I've read about apple probably go-to recommendation for the years that are covered in this book is uh infinite loop by michael s malone it obviously ends at the date of publication and doesn't have any stuff after that i think it ends like like just like i think they added like a little chapter at the end about like steve jobs coming back or some crap but like it's basically like mike scott mike markla john scully michael spindler gil amelio bookends more or less you know and then steve jobs addendum right so it's it's it's like early apple like up to the the mid to late 90s but boy it does a really good job of covering all that stuff and really making these people into characters that are memorable um the fit that dave poke's 50th book obviously covers a much larger time span and has uh rehashes of many of the similar stories but probably can't spend as much time even at 600 pages or whatever can't spend as much time as a book that was written in the 90s can spend on the shorter time span that this has to cover so yeah i'm not just uh jason put a bunch of uh book recommendations for apple history i think on six colors recently i think he also did uh some recommendations in his wall street journal article so maybe we should link to those in the show notes but my personal rec for i guess what is now early apple history is infinite loop by i think his name is michael s malone we'll put a link in the show notes but um but yeah for if you want a more comprehensive one the pogu one is apparently good too i like i said

2:05:05John Siracusa:i just started yeah it's very good i also wanted to call out uh what is it is a revolution in the

2:05:09Casey Liss:valley is that the um hertzfeld one yeah i mean just go to folklore.org because revolution in the valley is the paper version of a subset of folklore.org if you want to know specifically about stories from the creation of the macintosh which is one of my favorite periods in haple's history and projects folklore.org is a website written by andy hertzfeld who was on the original mac team and he gets testimonials from i mean in the modern era they would call it an oral history of the early mac or whatever but really what it is is a bunch of blog posts written by original mac team members including herzfeld himself and there is a paper version of that called revolution in the valley that i think has most of the articles on the website but maybe not all of them but definitely check out folklore.org if you're interested in that well we did it marco i feel okay with this you did better than the mac names but i guess it's because there's fewer of them although i think it was 13 or 14 ceos like who are all these other people it's not been a lot mike scott mike markla john scully michael spindler gill amelio steve jobs tim cook john turnus there's only two johns in there scully and turnus